D'deridex-class Warbird Maneuverability

Discussion in 'Trek Tech' started by Captain_Amasov, Apr 24, 2013.

  1. Salvek

    Salvek Lieutenant Red Shirt

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    The interesting thing about the discussion of the D'deridex-class Warbird Maneuverability is the only canon source is the discussion of it maximum warp speed in the "The Tin Man"-when it is shown moving in anything besides a straight line -usually in a turning away from the Enterprise it does not appear sluggish at all. (sadly the realities of FX and ship model limitation) -mean it appears in some DS9 shots to be just moving in a straight line or still
    Its Maneuverability became a hot topic in the Star Trek Line forums as its games statistics appeared to agree with its a slug-but what i saw was how much "myth" comes from each subjective take on a vessels capabilities from seconds or more footage from a battle scene -It can be staggering to read
    One poster explained to new player that the D'Deridex had a weak frame because it took hits from the Chin'toka orbital platforms -but every other ship Fed or Klingon took hits and faired no better.
    I would love if they put a D'Deridex Warbird tech manual out to answer this.
    Being a fan of the Ship -i have found it odd that so many are confused or have issue over its large central empty area. To me it said "alien" design that simple why would they conform to our design (Human) why cannot form be over function-if they can practice AQS tech - I can accept a ship design that is different in layout.
     
  2. zDarby

    zDarby Lieutenant Red Shirt

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    First post, here, but I'd like to weigh in on this.

    I should say, first thing off, I'm sorry but I don't know the answer to the main question: D'deridex class maneuverability compared to Galaxy class at impulse. No clue, in fact.

    But the question of this ships' Artificial Quantum Singularity (AQS) power supply came up and I'd like to address it, with y'all's indulgence.... See, I had a long conversation on the Birth-of-the-Federations-2 forums about this subject in 2005 and I've been thinking about it ever since. I've figured out some more cool stuff on the subject since then that I'd like to share....

    "Timescape" demonstrated that an AQS is not like a Natural Black Hole (NBH) because if it were, the alien's offspring wouldn't have had any problems and the story would stops making sense. This is really the only clue we have for testing any Romulan AQS model for accuracy.

    My first thoughts about getting energy from an AQS was from an accretion disk and the resultant polar jets. If your singularity spins, it would have enough gravitational influence to literally pull space-time around it. Anything that's traveling through that spinning space-time will also be pulled into orbit around singularity. This forces the material into a disk, an "accretion disk". As material orbits, it rubs against the material orbiting just a little closer and just a little further from the singularity. The friction from this rubbing heats things up and the friction increases as the orbits get closer in. So much so, that Hydrogen fuses into Helium, which then fuses into Carbon, etc, all the way up to Iron, then further into the transuranics --this, even though fusion of elements heavier than Iron takes more energy than it gives off. Indeed, I read that an atom may give up as much as half its mass in energy in this process of fusion and frictional heating.

    Any atom that absorbs enough of this released energy to escape the accretion disk would then follow the singularity's magnetic field lines to the poles where it would have a high probability of bouncing off --like a magnetic mirror-- creating high-velocity jets out the poles. (It's even thought that over the course of a NBHs lifetime, this process might introduce a considerable amount of heavier-than-helium elements into the universe, enough to be comparable to the amount given off by supernovae.)

    This is the process proposed by Rick Sternbach in his article on getting energy from an AQS. But there are some definite problems to this proposal.

    First off, if you're only 50% of the mass you throw in comes out as energy, the other 50% is feeding the singularity's mass, making it harder to control and steadily reducing the maneuverability of you ship.

    Second, increasing or decreasing energy output would take time and planning. The material would have to travel from the matter injectors and deeply to accretion disk before it made any difference in energy output. When you take into account relativistic effects, this might take quite some time indeed. Depending on the geometry of the reactor, this could mean unexpected emergency power would have to come from somewhere else, as the AQS would need time to ramp up power.

    Thirdly, and most significantly, a NBH small enough to be mobile --less than a million tonnes-- would want to evaporate so quickly from hawkings radiation as to be absurd: a 1e9 kg NBH evaporates in 84 nanoseconds if left to itself. (Oddly enough, it starts with a temperature of only 835 kelvin... Assuming I calculated properly.) To keep it form exploding, you would have to exert control over that singularity on the order of picoseconds! (pico = 1e-12) I don't know enough to do the calculations but I'd guess --due to the second problem-- this might be close to impossible. (I could be very wrong on that account.)

    Again, the one thing we know about an AQS is that it's not like a NBH. So what is it like?

    My second guess for extracting power from an artificial singularity, and the one I prefer, is that an AQS would be more accurately called an Artificial Event Horizon. I see it working like this: You have a spherical array of powerful gravity emitters focused to a point. (These emitters would be something like deflectors but physically smaller and specially designed for the task.) When they're turned on, the array creates an artificial event horizon whose radius can be made smaller or larger regardless of how much mass you have inside. ("Regardless" is a relative term, of course; relative to the power of the emitters.) From there, you would throw in mass and it would be saved within the event horizon to be extracted later via hawkings radiation. If you wanted more energy from the AQS, you make the event horizon smaller, increasing hawkings radiation; for less power, make the horizon larger. And the beauty of it is that the mass-to-energy conversion ratio is 100%, just like M/AM! However much mass you put in, 100% becomes available as collectible energy via hawkings radiation...eventually.

    Of course, this set up does beg a question: What would happen if such an AQS were run without any mass within? Could you extract energy directly from vacuum energy? Naturally, I don't know but I suspect the answer is, "no". See, the energy of hawkings radiation is stolen from the mass of the singularity. If there's no mass within, the singularity would gain negative mass and this negative mass would eventually overcome the gravity projectors. How quickly "eventually" would arrive is up for debate, at least until someone familiar with general relativity could do the calculations. Still, I suspect it would happen pretty quickly. None the less, it brings up the possibility of running the AQS on empty for a while until you can stop off somewhere and fill the tank.

    (Hrm... Then again, maybe not. If the singularity has a negative mass then wouldn't the particles of the hawkings radiation also have negative mass? If so, this would surely badly interfere with the gravity emitters and muddle the works. Opens up interesting possibilities, though... Oh, and antimatter, as it's currently understood, does not have negative mass.)

    Oh, yeah! And the other advantage of this Artificial Event Horizon model of the AQS is that it can take any kind of mass and turn it into energy! You could throw in asteroids, gas-giant atmosphere or humanoids --though probably not dark matter-- and out would come hawkings radiation, ready for use. This means an AQS powered vessel needs very little infrastructure to keep itself going --no antimatter barges to rendezvous with, for example. And if the vessel was stocked with industrial replicators, there'd be even less need for supporting infrastructure. Indeed, this is one explanation for the huge enclosed area within the D'deridex: a place for the industrial replication of a smaller, possibly fusion powered vessels! Or a small space station! Or a colonial township which could then be beamed into place! Or terraforming infrastructure, likewise with beamed installation! Such a vessel could be a jack-of-all trades, capable of so very, very much!

    And, finally, to wrap it up, an artificial event horizon would probably be a completely different environment than a natural one, giving the Timescape alien babys developmental issues.

    Ok. That's my long, $0.02 post on AQS power generation.
    Tell me what y'all think.
     
  3. The Librarian

    The Librarian Commodore Commodore

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    That's very similar to my own thinking, although I think your numbers for how quickly a million-ton mass evaporates are off. (The appendix to this paper has decay times and power outputs.) Hawking radiation does make a lot more sense than fiddling around with accretion discs, especially since you're going to get that radiation whether you want it or not. Trek certainly has the gravity manipulation capability to alter a black hole's event horizon, especially inside a confined space.
     
  4. publiusr

    publiusr Admiral Admiral

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    I actually kinda wish we had a small black hole a few thousand AUs out, to dump waste Warp a station that spins opposite to it or a magnetar and you have quite the dynamo.

    A sphere surrounding a black hole would have "alchemy" poles where X-ray jets could hit lighter elements and transmute them intio heavier ones
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthesis_of_precious_metals

    If a sphere is too hard to build then a statite which rides the jet low enough not to be pushed away (yet high enough to not fall in would be more do-able)
     
  5. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Of course, Star Trek technology can do miracles with gravity. Having a strong "natural" source of gravitational attraction combined with a suitable artificial gravity machine might yield a compact perpetual motion machine easily enough, without any real-world concerns interfering.

    Similarly, the technology can rather effortlessly manipulate faster-than-light objects, allowing various laws of nature to be broken at the event horizon for the user's considerable benefit.

    Whether one really needs an AQS in addition to these miracle technologies is somewhat debatable, though.

    Timo Saloniemi
     
  6. zDarby

    zDarby Lieutenant Red Shirt

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    That article is awesome! My step daughter's 8th grade graduation has taken up a great deal of my time so I've not finished reading it yet. Still, excellent reference, thank you! :drool:

    The equations I used to calculate a black hole's hawkings power and evaporation time I lifted from Wikipedia. Serves me right for not fact checking them. :scream: :brickwall:

    I still stand by my speculations about Romulan AQSs; I still think they'd more accurately be called "artificial event horizons". Even so, I need to finish that article before I make any more of an ass of myself. :rommie:

    Ok. Here's how I read this comment: Our knowledge of physics & engineering now compared to three hundred years from now is like comparing such knowledge in Franklin's time to our own. Which is to say: Silly and naive, at best, and more likely to be ignorantly arrogant. (If I understood wrongly, I apologize and would appreciate the correction.)

    For me, to wave a hand and say, "it's technological magic," is to not play the game. The game is to extrapolate what we know into not only what might be, but what might explain what we see in Trek.....Or, at least, that's the game I like to play. :rolleyes: And, really, the point of this game --again, for me-- is to learn about what we know. Like being corrected by publiusr just now. :techman: AWESOME!!

    So, if I may be so bold as to ask --and I am, genuinely being humble, here:
    Which laws of nature do you see being broken with FTL near an event horizon?
    What benefits do you see a user gaining from these broken laws?
    How could you set this up for perpetual motion?
    Could any of these things be implemented within a D'deridex?
     
  7. zDarby

    zDarby Lieutenant Red Shirt

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  8. The Librarian

    The Librarian Commodore Commodore

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    Creating an artificial singularity just so you can use it for compressing matter seems a bit... excessive. Especially since you're going to be getting the Hawking radiation regardless.
     
  9. zDarby

    zDarby Lieutenant Red Shirt

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    ^The point, IMHO, is to CONTROL the hawking output. You get EXACTLY the amount of energy you need. No more, no less. The rest remains stored.
    And, of course, that the hawkings radiation converts mass to energy at 100%.

    ....

    I have come to the opinion, over the last couple of days, that the space between the wings is for transporting large objects --like cloaked listening outposts-- into hostile territory, where they get left to collect data. I suspect the wings separate and open to allow these objects to be larger than the front or back openings. Of course, these openings are pretty darned large, so it's not necessarily necessary.... Being able to use the volume within for towing would also make it easier for a D'deridex to tow home a war prize.

    I also suspect the interior of the wings to have the capabilities of an industrial replicator. Thus, objects large and small, needed for whatever mission they're on could be created in situ using local materials.

    Furthermore, I believe the vessel probably has two artificial quantum singularities: one in the bottom wing, one in the top. This way, one AQS can be fueled up with gas from a ram-scoop while the other is drained of mass -energy to run the ship.

    If one AQS was about to lose containment it would be possible to jettisoned the section of the wing which has the AQS containment facilities so the rest of the vessel could get away.Then, at the next save haven, this section could then be replicated within the wings, replaced in the socket and a new AQS initialized.

    I see a D'deridex as a completely autonomous vessel, capable of decades-long missions.

    None of this has anything to do with what we've seen on Trek or any of the Trek materials. I am speculating like mad. ...But... If I designed a vessel that looked like this, that's what I would have done.
     
    Last edited: Jun 10, 2013
  10. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    This is one possible way to interpret what we see in Star Trek in general. The other is that the very universe of the show is fundamentally different from ours, not merely in terms of pseudohistory but also in terms of laws of nature, and that warp drive can coexist with Newtonian physics and absolute frames of reference for that reason. "Future science" has not really broken any known laws of science - it has evolved in an environment where those laws never had any validity.

    Amusingly, TNG "Nth Degree" suggests that Einstein in the Star Trek universe was an expert of quantum mechanics rather than relativity... Perhaps there was no relativity to discover in that universe?

    I'm game for that - but if the move in the game ignores the implications of established Star Trek phenomena and achievements, it shouldn't be considered a legal one.

    This is not to say that one couldn't build a machine obeying the laws of nature pertaining to our universe even when the Trek universe clearly allows one to take a shortcut. Say, one could still build a conventional space elevator to haul cargo to orbit even though transporter technology exists; even though it apparently costs very little in terms of energy to reduce the gravitational mass of the cargo before lifting it; and even though pulling with a tractor beam rather than with a tether allows one to ignore certain anchorpoint issues (that is, Newton's third law doesn't seem to hold for tractor beams).

    It just sounds silly to do that...

    It is hard to see how anything about Einstein's work (and, evidently following from this, Maxwell's) could hold true if mass can exceed lightspeed.

    But if Maxwell was wrong, this basically means that a lot of symmetry disappears from the universe, and one can get something from nothing by a dozen dirty tricks.

    Say, by purely classical terms, allowing mass to enter a black hole beyond the event horizon gives it exceptional kinetic energy - but extracting it from there again with a warp engine and/or with a mass-reducing field should take less energy than extracting it from there by conventional means (finite << infinite)... You don't need a black hole for this, cheating with any freefall will do, but the black hole case establishes with lamentable finality that warp engines do achieve infinite things with finite resources, and should be able to exploit the difference.

    Perhaps the AQS is merely a source of extreme gravitic pull, and a subspace field creates an asymmetry in this pull, so that objects fall in from one side and gain energy that they do not lose when climbing up from the side that has the mass-negating field in place. When they finally emerge from the subspace field at "wrong" velocity and regain their mass, they have gained considerable "illegal" kinetic energy.

    Of course, this sort of obvious cheating should lead to a wealth of applications that we nevertheless fail to witness in Star Trek. So perhaps there are checks and balances there from heretofore unknown / Trek-specific laws of nature that make it unprofitable to exploit such things to the fullest. But the very existence of starships that can escape from within a black hole is embarrassing evidence that one can get macroscopic benefit from breaking the symmetry of a gravitational potential well.

    Timo Saloniemi
     
  11. zDarby

    zDarby Lieutenant Red Shirt

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    I have heard it said on several documentaries --and had it born out in my own researches-- that Einstein understood quantum mechanics better then the leading quantum physicists of the era, and it's that understanding that made him hate it as much as he did. Einstein can and has be said to have made the quantum revolution possible with his 1905 paper on the photoelectric effect. Further, via his discourse with Bohr, he introduced many of the strange predictions of quantum mechanics in a effort to refute it, implying such a strange universe certainly couldn't be ours.... I would have to say Einstein was a First Rate quantum physicist, if not the best of his era, than certainly among the top 5 or 10, even though he hated quantum mechanics with a passion.

    Yes. Somewhere in Voyager, I remember someone quoting an age for the universe quite different from our current measurements: ~13.8 GY.... Looking it up in Memory Alpha, Voyager's crew thinks it's 16 GY. Without some major fudge-factor to our cosmological understanding, this is a HUGE difference between universes. And there are probably many, many more differences.

    Agreed.
    Agreed.
    Agreed.... But sometimes such things are FUN!! As proof, I submit your example. :)

    In this case, I would stipulate such a field would take more energy than you get from the particles.

    I'm going to have to chew on these statements for a time before I can address them. They're outside my POV.... The "box" I tend to think about trek in, if you will.

    Perhaps you could expand on your notion that Trek cannon allows for an absolute reference frame? This is a possible side-effect of warp I've never considered or encountered.

    ......

    I think I'm going to like you, Timo.
    I hope I don't piss you off somewhere down the line.
    ...Just as a general rule, if it sounds like I'm being a troll --or an ass-- it's very likely I'm just failing to be funny. Probably failing very badly. In which case a simple, "not funny and kinda insulting" will get a sincere apology from me right quick.