It could be possible to have a low-low-low grade warp drive in the saucer. It really only needs to do warp 1, since that's all you need to escape most situations, so it needn't be a big advanced drive like the stardrive.
Anything up to warp two would still fit the bill. If going to warp 2 or less sufficed in a certain emergency, then our heroes should be launching their shuttlecraft, which apparently are capable of that much... But if they don't launch shuttles, then warp 2 is too slow, in which case it makes little sense to launch a warp 2 -limited saucer, either. At warp 2, the saucer would be nicely capable of traveling between stars in a meaningful time. Okay, perhaps not by the Encyclopedia warp scale, but certainly by onscreen precedent. Kirk and Janeway traveled at warp 2 between stars often enough, after all. And warp 2 is something I would readily allow for a vessel with internal warp engines. Timo Saloniemi
Janeway went to warp?! Every time the show faded in from the titles, there was the ship cruising along at impulse. Every damn episode I yelled "do you people want to go home or what!?"
Hello to all. Its seems that the topic of this thread has devolved into another interminable 'Saucer Warp Engine' debacle. How many times do people need to be told that there is NO warp capability to the saucer section of the E-D before they finally get the message? Returning to the topic at hand, I believe that the junction between the Battle Bridge and the Suacer section is at least as strong as the internal bulkheads and structural members that make up the skeleton of the E-D. In an interview I conducted with Ed Whitefire (he created the original E-D blueprints) he says that ensuring the structural strength of the E-D was critical in the design process. The stresses on the ship during a battle would be immense and the fact that the Saucer section was never seen shearing off of the Battle head and careering into an unsuspecting Klingon Bird of Prey, is, in my view, ample testement to the strength of the junction between the two sections of the E-D.
But we weren't told on the show that the saucer doesn't have warp capability, the discussion will never end.
It still might theoretically end... If not for the fact that we were shown on the show that the saucer does have warp capability! Yeah, the idea that the stardrive/saucer joint would be an inherent weak point is an unsupported one. Mechanical joints in general aren't weak points unless they are built of inferior materials (which almost never happens today - hinges are typically much more durable than doors) or to imprecise tolerances (which still happens whenever it cuts down on costs). When the application so demands, precise tolerances can be used, making a joint at least as capable of withstanding stresses as a regular stretch of the structure. And since joints usually are fewer in number / smaller in size than regular stretches, it is possible/affordable to make the joints stronger than the rest of the construct, which I'd suspect to be the case with the Galaxy starships... Timo Saloniemi
Ever see a 1950s jet fighter with the engine removed, such as an F-86? The whole tail section of the plane comes off to access to engine. Yet they never broke off during high-G combat maneuvering. And they didn't even have structural integrity fields. WWII fighters' engines were attached to the firewall with four bolts. Thousand-pound, 2,000 horsepower engines swinging 13-foot 4-bladed props, hauling 7-ton machines around at 400 MPH. Four bolts. The average airplane wing, is attached to the fuselage frame only at the two wing spars. Two bolts (maybe four - two top and two bottom). Except for swing-wing planes like the B-1, F-14 and F-111, whose wings are attached only at the rotation pivot - one point of attachement for a high-speed, high-stress combat jet. Yet it all works just fine. I wouldn't worry about the saucer.
1- The saucer is connected to the stardrive with about 25 latches spread over a very large area buried under a huge saucer and protected from below by the thick neck of the ship, so it's unlikely it would be a weak spot. If an enemy did want to target a weak spot, then the ludicrously thin engine pylons would be a good place to aim for. 2- The saucer doesn't have warp drive, which always seemed really foolish to me.
HRHTheKING: The E-D has 18 docking latches. I don't remember any TNG episode that specifically mentions or even implies that the Saucer section had warp capability - vagaries of plot travel times notwithstanding. If I remember rightly, the Saucer module only seperates in times of emergency and under specific circumstances and thereafter acts as a 'lifeboat' for non-essential crew and passengers. The TOS 1701 was also designed so that the Saucer and Engineering sections could seperate, though never shown on-screen. The E-D also has a whale/dolphin deck(s), and although never seen on screen, there was a door shown labled 'Tursiops', but, not surprisingly, there was never a door labled 'Saucer Engineering'. I can only think of one Starfleet vessel that has multiple warp cores (the Prometheus-class, which has three) and that ship does not conform to the standard layout - one warp core per ship. Although not 'canon', both Ed Whitefire and Rick Sternbach's drawings of the E-D show no indication of warp capability. I think it would be a monumental oversight to omit a second, saucer-based warp core from the plans if there was actually meant to be one. Also, there is no surface detail (that I can see) on the saucer surface that would indicate a warp core ejection hatch like the one on the Battle section. Anyway, where would it be located in the Saucer?
Should also note the connections are weak if not seperated properly, since the saucer has high mass. Evidence of this is seen in Generations after Geordi says something along the lines of the clamps haven't fully released, but they have to get away from the stardrive section because it's breaching. When the ship forces away, you can hear some noise and seen hundreds of tiny glittering pieces flying away; borken clamps I would think.
Gotta weird feeling, just a feelin', this may be seen in Trek 11. If so, it'll be worth it to see it on the big screen.
If I'm not mistaken, the Impulse Drives actually have internal field coils - essentially miniature warp coils - hence the ability to reach superluminal speeds. Can't we just agree that these are being used to sustain low warp where ultimately necessary (perhaps overuse causes too much wear on the Impulse drives), and leave it at that? Therefore the saucer can reach low warp on occasion, without specifically having warp engines. Jesus, anybody would think the lives of 1,012 people rested on this debate...
Here's my point dudes: If the stupid shuttles in the bay all have warp cores it would be silly in the huge ass saucer section that holds them all doesn't have them. If the designers made it so that ship can separate, than they must have given it a warp drive capabilityat least as good as a shuttles. My memory on this is hazy but didn't it use wrp drive in "Arsenol of Freedom"?
^Well, maybe it's a lot easier to make a 2-ton shuttle go to warp than a 2-million-ton saucer. The shuttle just needs a tiny little reactor and two modest-sized nacelles. A warp drive system may take up a huge amount of space in the saucer that's needed for mission or living equipment. Then what you have is a big spaceship full of two massive drive systems with less space for other important stuff.
I would think that a warp drive is important enough to make some space in the saucer section. The Defiant has powerful warp engines, yet the entire ship looks to be smaller than the saucer section of the Galaxy Class, so I'm sure an upgrade could add a warp drive to the saucer.
Or perhaps an upgrade removed the warp drive from the saucer between the time we witnessed saucer warp in the first season of TNG, and the time these ASDB guys drew the blueprints and wrote the manuals sometime after season three? By that time, Starfleet might have already decided that separating the saucer was impractical for any reason other than atmosphere-entering "lifeboating", so the warp drive there was unnecessary, too. Timo Saloniemi
In "The Arsenal Of Freedom" La Forge seperated the ship, then sent to saucer to safety, so a "lifeboat" equipped with warpdrive would be far safer because it could get out of harms way faster, as opposed to being the sitting duck it would be with only impulse.