Maybe also because of the transwarp project, they developed SIF to counteract some new stress factors coming with that engine.
There are four decks, but as you pointed out the window rows point to five. I was toying with the notion of having the middle section have engineering-height decks, but the windows force me to have uniform deck heights throughout. And, IMO most of the Constellation mysteries have been figured out by MichaelS in his excellent Constellation technical manual thread. I intend to follow his lead on as much as possible. Regarding the Hathaway, surely she hadn't sat idle at that planet for very long? I would think leaving even old, dilithium and antimatter deprived Starfleet vessels anywhere for long wouldn't be a good idea. I'm sure she probably sat in a surplus yard before being towed there for the exercises. Perhaps other mothballed ships were similarly used. I would tend to agree with Mytran that the superstrong construction materials would have probably done most of the reinforcement pre-TNG. Maybe there was some sort of more limited field, but the impression I get when looking at TOS vs. TNG is that TNG tends to play a lot more with various structural and subspace fields compared to TOS. Thanks, blssdwlf. I wonder if the SIF gave rise to they type of impulse engine that used subspace fields to help lighten the ship to move them? That's a good notion. It's important not to forget how exponential the new warp scale is compared to the old.
That's a good point with SIF being possibly originally meant to help withstanding stresses in the Transwarp flight regime.
@Praetor - Personally, I lump pre-TOS/TOS/TMP-era Impulse engines into FTL-type engines that use some kind of lower-powered space warp to move. YMMV.
The big crystal things are described as Inertial Mass Reduction Fields, right? From what I understood of fandom reference material those things stabilized warp fields from the nacelles to make them usable at sublight.
Interesting. So would you fellas posit then that the driver coil that's mentioned as being developed in the early 24th century is simply a newer, cleaner way of doing the same thing, but that impulse power worked using mass reduction fields all along? Nob, when say big crystal things, do you mean the deflection crystals?
Yeah. The deflection crystals are, I think described in things like Ships of the Star Fleet as being mass reduction crystals of some sort. I think the driver coils are much smaller applications of similar technology that's probably more energy efficient. That said, given that the TNGTM posits that a GCS impulse fusion chamber has maximum output of something like 10^11 megawatts, and that each assembly has 3 (for a total of 9) plus a bunch of backup chambers, I wonder if they really do need efficiency....
Or the much smaller driver coils are as effective as the deflection crystal tech because the ships are now much lighter with their SIF and lighter frames.
TNGTM also mentions that SIF is subspace forcefield based, so perhaps it also has some mass lightening effects, too.
hmm ... maybe then the whole driver coil thing could be unnecessary, just let better and better SIF tech make the crystal obsolete. Although this could mean that turning off the impuse engines (maybe even just stopping the ship) also turns off the SIF.
Hm, I don't see why it would need to. Just let the SIF be on all the time, and the impulse engine handle the actual movement. I'm not sure I'm totally on board with having the deflection crystal(s) generate a mass-reduction type field. What about on TOS, where there was no deflection crystal apparent? I suppose the thing atop the saucer aft section could be some sort of generator coil predating the deflection crystal concept. Maybe the deflection crystal combined the notion of generating this field with directly channeling warp power into the impulse engines. Then, the driver coil combined with the SIF made this unnecessary.
That's because of the often times asked question how the ship stops. Does it turn around and brakes with the impulse engines? No, we have seen ships brake without that. Does it have somekind of thrust reverser? Maybe, but first that has to be a forcefield-based system, because we don't see mechanical thrust reversers. And second, I'm not sure if such a system would even work, because of physics. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think thrust reversers on planes work because the redirected thrust is pushing against the athmosphere. If there were no athmosphere, the redirected engine exhaust would simply nullify the thrust created by that same engine. So in space, a technology like this shouldn't work at all ... I think ^^ So then there was that theory that the ships in Star Trek are stopping by turning off their subspace driver coils, bringing the full mass of the ship back and that makes it slow down. And that's why I said switching off the "mass reducing tech" they use could be a problem. Phew! ... sorry, forgot that I based that assumption on my own opinion. Another theory I have about the deflection crystal is that it is just some kind of (subspace) radiator (like the glowing grilles on the nacelles which I also see as radiators), and in the time of TOS the white glowing balls at the end of the nacelles would be the same thing for the warp cores then located in the nacelles. And in the TNG-era the constantly glowing nacelles would do that and the deflection crystal is no longer needed.
The alternative might be that driver coils might actually temporary INCREASE the mass of the drive elements. That is make the impulse thrust heavier so that it imparts more force to the ship for acceleration. Also since the SIF is described as being scalable in output, it seems safe to assume it does "spool down" from time to time to increase weight of the spacecraft in general for "all stop".
Making the impulse thrust heavier ... that's a very good idea. It could explain that the ships don't behave as if they are made lighter, I mean, if a multi-megaton or so photon torpedo explodes on the hull of a ship that weighs ... let's say only as much as a small building or something, I wouldn't expect it to just sit there and rock a bit. But to slow down the ship, there still had to be some kind of thrust reverser. As I said in my last post, I don't think something like that would even work. Aditionally, there's the problem that even if they would work, on some ships the impulse engines positions would make it difficult to redirect the thrust with some kind of forcefield, or it would at least be a very complicated system.
Yeah, it's partly because of the lack of turning around to decelerate or the presence of thrust reverse or even sideways-equivalent thrusters (like when they shear away 90 degrees to their flight path at full impulse) that leads me to believe that impulse engines are more field-based like warp engines. The only difference to me is that the impulse engines used more rocket/thruster fuel per action than warp engines.
Well the ship can cancel acceleration g's through the IDF. Perhaps there's some novel application of the IDF that reverses the cancelled energy and imparts it as a sort of reverse thrust. So rather than being simply a cancellation field, maybe the IDF stores inertia from acceleration.
Regarding IDF, I don't think it cancels out acceleration, but causes every atom in the IDF field (every part of the ship and every object aboard) to move together, it evenly distributes the thrust to every atom.
@Praetor - Just had a thought about scaling. Have you checked "Cause and Effect" and compared the sizes of the Bozeman to the E-D? Since they made physical contact, the distance to each other would be a known variable.
I like this idea a lot. I think that works out pretty well with your other theory. Really funny that you mention this, because I just watched this episode last night. This screencap in particular caught my attention: Using that as a guide, I came up with this: If the Galaxy is 642 meters, then the Soyuz is 347 meters, slightly bigger than I had calculated the Miranda (which would have the same overall length saucer front to nacelle rear) when I was basing the Constitution family's heights on the Excelsior's larger scaling rather than on the windows. I also watched "Relics" last night, and couldn't help but notice this warp core graphic for the Jenolan: Not surprisingly, NCC-2010 apparently has a vaguely TNG-style warp core. Interestingly, the top stack is twice as tall as the lower stack, which is more or less how a TNG core would fit in the Excelsior. Other screencaps more clearly show how the plasma comes out of the 'vat' and flows up into the nacelles. It's made me reconsider the notion of giving the Excelsior and Enterprise-A TNG-style cores, with the "acceleration" style reaction. (If it's good enough for NCC-2010 in 2294, why not NCC-2000 in 2293?) The problem with this is, I don't think this can go with the notion of having the antimatter pods in the humpback, and goes back to having antimatter pods in the deflector alcove. The other alternative would be putting the core in the secondary hull just ahead of the shuttlebay and the antimatter pods in the very bottom, but then that renders the neck somewhat useless unless I use it for deuterium storage. It also loses a direct connection to the deflection crystals (or whatever they are.) Thoughts?
Ugh, its Monday already and on top of it, the Dodgers are 0-2 in the NL Championship series. Hope everyone had a good weekend! @ Praetor That is a great find with the Jenolan. I'll have to work extra hard now to find evidence that reinforces my entirely personnel preference for the movie aesthetic over TNG aesthetics. Though if I recall, that model was a reuse of some kind of shuttlecraft in TUC. If the scale is meant to be anything close to that shuttle, then extrapolating a "full size" starship's warp core from this vessel is problematic at best. Coupled with other inconsistincies -- the fact that a TOS transporter sound and visual effect (sort of) were used instead of one of the movie era effects makes this a troublesome example of 23rd century hardware. One question I have is if that graphic appeared somewhere before. Does it have the name Jenolan on it? If not, it could be one of the many plates that got reused for various ships of the week. Another example that came up earlier was the ship in Peak Performance. Its warp core looked almost nothing like the TMP or TNG core, aside from being a vertical conduit. In fact, it probably has more similarity to the aborted Phase II core. Just as an aside, I do like the direction the JJ movies took. Rather than having ONE center of all powerful reactions in the ship, they had multiple warp cores. Not completely behind that, but its a step in the right direction. Having that one central engineering room for the ENTIRE ship is sometimes a necessary shortcut for television, but is not very realistic (to be fair, TNG did make attempts later in the series to show more access ways and the warp nacelle I think). But we are back to our TNG vs TMP core. IIRC, Shane Johnson in his MSGTTE explained the difference between the Enterprise and Excelsior Warp Nacelles as coming from different manufacturers. Meaning the difference isn't so much due a technology advancement, rather it is another contractor's approach to fulfilling the same functioning (not to say they aren't more advanced). But it is like the difference between Boeing and Airbus. Lockheed Martin vs Nothrop Grumman. The Mirandas, Oberths and similar old style starships we see in the 24th century may be the result of continued agreements with other manufacturer. But they are outfitted with newer tech. A 747 built in 1983 is not the same as a 747 built in 2013, even though they look similar on the outside. So while the MSD on the Ent-B shows a TNG style warp core, I could accept that the Excelsior utilized a TMP era structure, as it was a prototype, which often make use of existing hardware cobbled together to get the job done. Technological refinements and improvements can be accomplished once the initial design succeeds. I guess what I find myself saying is, I am okay with any other excelsior class using TNG tech, as long as the original excelsior, or at least in its NX-2000 phase, utilized the TMP era core. Egger and Nob -- love the contributions. These are great perspectives and always helpful to have a fresh pair of eyes. A belated welcome to the board Egger!