But the reason Ripper is used is to store and process a complete navigational chart with extremely accurate vectors, in lieu of one stored in the database and processed by the computer core, because apparently their navigational computer alone was not sufficient to perform such an apparently intricate task. I would figure the Binars from TNG would have been able to solve that problem without using a sentient being–if not the Daystrom Institute or some such.

The reason why Starfleet doesn’t readily adopt transwarp/slipstream/et al.—that is, faster-than-warp-9.999-technologies—in the 3 TNG-era series is, I think for the sake of story-writing purposes that don’t actually make sense when put to some real-world level of scrutiny. Simply put, it’s a plothole.

Anyways, my point is not so much that TNG doesn’t utilize such a technology, so much as it is that the crew of of the Enterprise D didn’t think it was possible—when in fact if DSC was part of Prime then it had been for centuries—with the one niggling point being significantly better processing power and more storage space than what Discovery has.