Vertical Warp Core?

[Timo]

Indeed, I think the only time we saw a ship flying "above" a planet (but not within its atmosphere) would have been in ST3, when the ship commandeered by Kirk approached the cloaked Klingons above the Genesis planet. Funnily enough, this would have been the one time the heroes should have been concerned about the possibility and consequences of firing a warp core into the planet!

TOS in general preferred shots where the ship presented one flank to the planet, and TNG did likewise, although some shots involved funny angles. DS9 and especially ENT added more shot types, but they tended to favor ones where the ship was below and the planet above when they wanted to drive home the fact that "space has no up or down".

Timo Saloniemi

[Santaman]

Hmm, if the core explodes I'd like the engineering hull to be between it and the saucer section which holds most of the crew, maybe thats why its ejected downwards, would be a shitty moment it if pops up and explodes while its between the nacelles and saucer...

[DonIago]

Not as bad as if the ship's orientation suddenly shifts immediately after the core's fired and it impacts the saucer. :P

[KamenRiderBlade]

DonIago wrote:

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Not as bad as if the ship's orientation suddenly shifts immediately after the core's fired and it impacts the saucer. :P

That wouldn't matter since gravity flows in the direction of the gravity plates and even without direct power, gravity plates in ST will run for quite a few hours on there own.

[Darkwing]

Well, Timo, that's the sort of sloppy thinking that messes it up. Writers for ENT didn't think about it. Back in the 70's, we were all certain the reactors were in the nacelles, and it seemed clear the TMP linear intermix chamber was a radical departure, moving the reactors from 1 small one in each nacelle to one big one inside the hull. If anyone has the TMP novel, I think there was even some mention in there about it being one of the changes. So when TNG developed the idea further, and then dubbed them warp core, that made sense. But when ENT reused the term, I seriously doubt they deliberately intended to say "you just never knew it was in use all the time". Most likely, they just assumed it was ok, just as the scriptwriters for POTC didn't think about when "ok" was invented. Movies no longer hire a research company to check theirscripts for facts and anachronisms, just to ensure they don't use real names or copyrighted fictional ones.

[Vanyel]

KamenRiderBlade wrote:

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That wouldn't matter since gravity flows in the direction of the gravity plates and even without direct power, gravity plates in ST will run for quite a few hours on there own.

But the ships gravity doesn't extend beyond the hull. If the core were being ejected and the ship started, for whatever reason, tumbling nacelles over saucer wouldn't the saucer be in danger of being hit?

One of the reasons I asked about a horizontal core would be that the hatch would basically be a slide that directs the core down (from the POV of the ship) and away. Old technology could be used to help speed the core on its way, a spring. Or the just nearly as old directed explosives.

[blssdwlf]

You're thinking more like the launch system on the F-22 Raptor where it ejects the missile (in this case, horizontal core) downwards?

[Vanyel]

Down at an angle and away. For arguments sake only, the hatch would open at a 45 degree angle from the plane of the ship, then eject it at that angle.

[SchwEnt]

I'd like to think that a vertical warp core is not a static component and a ship must be designed around it.

Many Star Fleet ships are primary hull saucers and separate nacelles, but not necessarily similar. I don't think the internal warp engine components must be identical from class to class.

The location of the reactor, the intermix shaft, the dilithium chamber, all that... I'd think it could be varied in accordance with each ship design. Just because a Constitution class featured a vertical intermix chamber, a Reliant-type probably would not, nor would a Grissom-type or a FJ Saladin or Hermes.

And then ENT showed a horizontal arrangement, so there you go. Other layouts of internal warp engine components should be possible with every class of ship.

[brian577]

SchwEnt wrote:

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I'd like to think that a vertical warp core is not a static component and a ship must be designed around it.

Many Star Fleet ships are primary hull saucers and separate nacelles, but not necessarily similar. I don't think the internal warp engine components must be identical from class to class.

The location of the reactor, the intermix shaft, the dilithium chamber, all that... I'd think it could be varied in accordance with each ship design. Just because a Constitution class featured a vertical intermix chamber, a Reliant-type probably would not, nor would a Grissom-type or a FJ Saladin or Hermes.

Except it did
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/File...ngineering.jpg

[blssdwlf]

Although the Reliant had a similar intermix shaft it wasn't anywhere as long as the one on the Enterprise. The technology was the same, but it's a different size and probably configuration to run it out to the warp engines on the Reliant, IMO.

[Jimi_James]

Vanyel wrote:

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Who does it seem that all the Starfleet ships we've seen, with the exception of the 1701 in TWoK, have vertical Warp Cores? On the Enterprise D it seemed to take up 2 decks, but specs, as I recall, showed it at 4 decks high. That's some 40 - 50 feet if you assume those decks it transverses have Jefferies tubes.

The warp core on the Galaxy Class is much larger than just four decks. Even the Intrepid and Sovereign class ships, both of which we have seen ejecting their cores, have warp cores that span more than four decks. The Galaxy class Warp Core spans at least 12 decks, and this doesn't even include the antimatter storage pods and the Deuterium storage tank.

The Intrepid class warp core looks to be about eight decks tall, while the Sovereign class core is roughly fourteen decks tall. Comparably, the Defiant class warp core is only three decks tall.

These figures were obtained, by looking at various MSD's of each ship class and simply counting the decks.

You can check out this guys blog: http://lcarsgfx.wordpress.com/
He has some great highly detailed MSD's for those that are interested. You can also find a few on Doug Drexler's blog.

[DonIago]

Yeah, for budget reasons which wouldn't on a practical level seem to make sense, most of the warp core is apparently not readily visible/accessible from Main Engineering.

The TMP set made a lot more sense to me in that regard, with Engineering stations accessing the intermix chamber on every level...or at least more than two levels.

[Timo]

...Although we never learned exactly what could be accessed there. Would there have been moving parts, or would the platforms merely have allowed repairmen to slap patches over possible punctures?

If seems that the "nodes" of these tube things have at least one "functional" capacity, that of shuttering the flow and allowing a firewall to slide down to cut the tube. (Perhaps the shutters are then opened again and the flow burns its way through the seemingly orifice-less firewall?)

From what we see, it's clear that the tube thing can make turns, including relatively tight ones (we see three 90-degree angles); it being "vertical" or "horizontal" may be a gross oversimplification, really. Perhaps on Kirk's ship, it becomes more like diagonal within the neck, and does a loop around the dilithium chamber for greater effect, whereas on Khan's, it really looks like a spaghetti monster?

Timo Saloniemi

[jayrath]

If we're ready for filming explanations, having it vertical allows us to see the whole thing. Kind of. Yes, it runs all the way up to the attic, but characters can move all around it, behind it, etc. Otherwise you need a matte or, as in both TOS and TMP, a forced-perspective set that can only be filmed from certain angles.