OMFG MASSIVE SPOLIERS: NeoTrek Engine Musings

Because it's impractical to hide everything behind walls and bulkheads.

 

What is the GR quote about tech in trek's time: Technology unleashed or something of the sort? The tech doesn't impact the design or the aesthetics, because it is submerged within the aesthetic as a matter of course. I'm sure some TNG fan can come up with the relevant quote, they trotted it out a lot in the late 80s.

The trailer images I've seen of the jungle gym stuff (shuttle deck or engineering, I don't know which) seem like a bare-bones incomplete version of the insides of the TFF shuttlecraft, which is decidedly retro compared to most of Trek. But that was just a shuttle, whereas this is the engineering hull.

 

I'll go you a step further...

I took up a complaint to the forum where we're supposed to be able to take those complaints... the "Moderator Actions" forum. You'd be amazed to see how that one turned out. Go take a look in there sometime. It's full of people who get yanked around, go to complain, and get kicked off the board permanently for doing so. I guess it's a way of weeding out "the troublemakers."

I appreciate the attempts at "good advice" by some folks here... I used to think very much the same way. But that sort of advice is just about as useful as suggesting that if you only try to talk nicely to a zombie, he won't try to eat you. The first time you lose a chunk of flesh to a bite, well... you learn differently!

Seriously.. I've been here long enough to become very disillusioned with some of the leadership (not ALL, but certainly some) around here, and very disillusioned with the presence of a small, but very vocal group who have successfully driven away some of the better moderators on here, and who have driven away many, many members with differing viewpoints. I've watched lots of folks come here, with positive attitudes, get ripped to shreds for having an opinion which differs from "the cool kids" and end up being targetted... even "cyberstalked" from forum to forum... as a result. I've seen moderators engage in activity which is supposed to get people banned on here, and seen members who engage in activity which is supposed to get you banned "promoted" to moderators after that (including one who led an attempt at a denial-of-service attack on a political website... and organized that right here on this BBS).

So why am I still here, if it's so bad? Because this is all the result of a tiny, tiny minority of people on here. Most people are pretty cool on here. And even among folks who I disagree with regularly, most of us don't hold any animosity towards each other and the little conflicts are ultimately quite trivial.

The problem arises when someone who has power abuses it. Some moderators on here do that. Not "all" and not "most" but some. And those who do, really do serious harm to this community, as far as I'm concerned.

It's a tiny little exercise of power... trivial and inconsequential, in real-world terms. But it was done, in this particular case, not to exercise any form of justice but to SMACK someone DOWN, for purely emotional reasons.

When someone (1) mis-states their "supporting facts," (2) acts in an overtly rage-filled fashion, (3) kicks the object of their wrath off, with no opportunity to respond, and (4) shuts down the thread to prevent ANYONE from responding... that's not exactly glowing evidence of someone who thinks that the actually hold the moral high-ground, is it?

You really ought to read that thread, if you're going to comment. Seriously. It was ALL ABOUT TREK... using "Watchmen" only as an example of what might happen to Trek... and it was in the "Trek XI" forum. The conversation was pages long before I ever posted, and most of that was specific to Trek. Yet M'Sharak attacked me (no other way to describe his post) for "derailing the thread" by bringing Star Trek into it. If it weren't so wrong, it would almost be funny. He accuses me of "not knowing or caring which thread I'm in" when I've responded to posts which were already discussing Trek in that thread, IN THE TREK XI FORUM. He never bothered to read the thread. He just went into an emotional tailspin. I'll leave it to you guys to figure out why, if you're actually interested.

But please... please... stop telling me I'm "overreacting." I was wronged, and the person who did that wrong is one of the people who are supposed to be responsible for ensuring that sort of thing never happens. A parallel would be if you got mugged... by a cop.

My response? He wanted me "gone." Didn't matter that I hadn't done anything to justify it... this wasn't about right, wrong, whatever... it was about him wanting his own way and having the power to make it happen. So... in his forum... I'll let him have his way. He can "win."

I seriously considered leaving this place permanently, like so many others who've been mistreated have done. But there are enough real, worthwhile people... people who have stuff to say that's worth hearing (even if we don't necessarily AGREE)... that I decided not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

There are only a few people on this BBS I really, really can't tolerate (I can count them on my fingers, and most of those never leave TNZ). None of them are posting in this thread, nor have any of them posted in the Trek Art thread I'm involved in right now. I usually just ignore those people, unless they start attacking me directly, in which case I'll defend myself, or attacking someone else (usually a newcomer), in which case I'll do the honorable thing and come to the defense of that newcomer.

 

They shouldn't... but the construction techniques used should look the same. The same basic rules and methods should be there.

Go on a cruise-liner... the most egregious example of "one part of a ship looking unlike another part of a ship"... and you'll find that even in that case, you're just looking at a fascia on top of the same basic construction used throughout the rest of the ship. It's still girders and beams and hull plating... still sealable hatches... still compartments... it's just "prettied up" a little bit more in some areas and not at all in others.

Go on a submarine (the best modern example of the sort of construction we're really discussing here) and you'll find that different compartments,while arranged different, are common in most ways. Look at a real spacecraft, and you'll find that while one compartment may be different, internally, than another, they share certain common features.

The most critical design element for a spacecraft is that it has to be able to survive mechanical failures (which inevitably happen, and just happen more often when being shot at by Klingons!) while keeping the crew alive and able to function for as long as possible.

Compartmentalization is the ONLY way to accomplish that. You may say "well, the ship is compartmentalized through the use of forcefields, not bulkheads." Which is fine... provided that you don't lose power. However, I'd be worried that if the ship is being hulled, you stand a very good chance of losing power at some point, so that sort of defeats the point, doesn't it?

Does a ship have to "look identical" in every region? NO, of course not. But it should (1) be built using logical, practical, consistent design and construction techniques... unless there's a truly compelling reason to do otherwise (such as, say, an agro-ship on BSG having different construction for the domes than for the hull), and it should (2) be as robust and safe as possible while still allowing it to do the job it's required to do.

The issue, I think, here is that the internal design of this new ship fails on both levels. It's inconsistent, without any evident reason for it to be so, and it's extremely vulnerable to what, I'd say, is inevitable damage.

If this ship got broadsided by nuKhan in the nuReliant, the entire engineering crew would be killed. The ship would be lost. Which would make for a very short version of nuTWOK.

 

To me, at least, it looked like the reactor(s) is/are contained within some sort of clear structure similar to the conventional swirly cores we have seen in the past. When they were ejected, some sort of piston seemed to have pushed them up and out the ports. It seemed self contained to me, i.e., it wasn't open to the rest of the engineering deck. That would solve the decompression problem.

And, it looked like they were ejected from the area where the neck meets the hull, but not from the rear-most part. They seemed to come from the forward section. I'd imagine that the engineering deck could vary in height, so the area with those reactors could be say, for the sake of example, 7 decks high, , until you hit the shuttlebay, under which the deck could continue, maybe only 3-5 decks high.

 

So, one "warp core," many reactor components? Is that the concensus?

 

I declare it so

 

As I said in another thread, I just saw the movie today, and I did not think the engineering was as jarring as everyone else seems to think it is. I was fine with it, but I still think we need some kind of control room, maybe in future movies?

 

That appears to be the only reasonable explanation so far.

So a newCanon warp core doesn't have a predominate intermix chamber. Can we still assume it works by combining matter and anti-matter through a dilithium crystal? Does it still distribute energy using plasma?

So what were all the pipes and tanks for?

 

Do we have any clue how it works in detail, from what we saw?

 

^ It's a Plot Drive. Really -- I doubt if TPTB really gave it that much thought...

Only Trek fans would obsess about it. (In a good way, of course. )

Cheers,
-CM-

 

I just figured that antimatter and matter were swirled around, or something like that, just in different reactor chambers.

 

I thought of it as a multi-cylinder engine. They probably have a dilithium room under it like the one in TOS, forgot the episode.

 

Any "Red Dwarf" fans in here?

We know that this thing was shot in a brewery... soooo...

It's a "Hop Drive." Invented by Holly, of course...

 

Heh, I figured that the vats were just sewage treatment, especially considering that they were apparently near a water processing area. And considering what's really in them, I don't think that I'm too far off.

(Beer sucks. )

 

That's pretty much been my take on the TOS setup for a while now. The dilithium pedastal takes the place of the carburetor.

 

Water-storage and getting it from one place to another.

I have to ask again: Where do you think Deuterium is found in?

 

You'd think they'd have extracted the heavy hydrogen from the water before fueling a spaceship, since there's no reason to lug all that extra H2o around if you don't have to.

And why can't the water in those systems be for drinking, restroom facilities and the like? They have to get from somewhere.