Saucer Separation

[kirkfan]

Exactly. If the separation did increase combat odds, then certainly we should have seen it more often - the E-D quite often ended up having to fight.

Although they basically never had advance understanding that they were going to be the underdogs and in need of force multipliers, such as against the Zalkonians or the Tamarians or the Borg. If they did, perhaps they would have separated in preparation for those specific fights? The saucer does have potent phasers, and maneuverability is irrelevant in Trek combat anyway.

Timo Saloniemi

The Tamarians? You mean the people who spoke by metaphor?

 

[Timo]

Yup. They had a ship that looked like old Talarian junk at first, but it turned out they could shrug off the E-D easily enough and wallop her with such desultory precision that nobody died but all efforts to recover Picard failed.

A typical example of a fight where the E-D did not enjoy massive superiority and would have needed a bit of extra edge to triumph. This as opposed to the other two kinds, the common one where they fire a single blast at recycled footage of the Pakled ship and then dicate their terms, and the slightly less common one where the enemy renders them helpless with a snap of his fingers. Since our heroes didn't realize they needed the extra edge, we can't use the fight as evidence of saucer-sep usefulness or uselessness in fights, which is too bad.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mytran]

All this talk of the saucer being pursued by enemy vessels is somewhat beside the point of what should have been standard operating procedure for the Galaxy classes - dropping the saucer off well before advancing towards the danger zone. Picard and Riker even discuss this once and it is in a very matter of fact manner, indicating its routine-ness. The other situations we see saucer separation are unusual, for the most part

• flinging the saucer off at high warp after a dangerous situation has already started
• separating the saucer at a close distance to the danger zone, again because battle has already begun
• using the saucer as a distraction against a very dangerous foe
• emergency escape craft when the other half of the ship is doomed

The trouble is, those are the ONLY times we see the saucer. We never see it under "normal" separation circumstances.

 

[Timo]

I guess we could argue that some narrow set of parameters does exist that allows for the saucer to be dropped before a fight - and that this set is almost never met, but still warrants incorporating the feature.

Say, if you know there is only going to be one enemy; you approximately know where he is going to be; you know this sufficiently well in advance of the enemy taking action; and you are too far away from other assets to use those to provide safety for the saucer... Then you drop the saucer at a distance the field manual says is "safe".

But if you don't know who, where and how numerous the enemy is; if you are right next to UFP border fortifications; or if you do have an inkling that you are outnumbered, surrounded and generally screwed anyway... Then you don't drop the saucer, for no real gain.

We should remember that the saucer did separate more often than the lifeboats of the ship were launched or even ordered launched (if we count the umpteen iterations of "Cause and Effect" as a single one, that is). Yet lifeboats still were an installed feature, and did prove somewhat useful on one occasion, an atypical abandon-ship-to-the-enemy scenario.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Vanyel]

I know this is a late response and some good points have been made but I want to say:

In "Best of Both Worlds", Shelby suggests separating the saucer to give the Borg more than one target. Riker dismisses the idea saying they could use the power from the saucers impulse engines. If the saucer has warp drive wouldn't the Saucers warp engine's extra power be of greater importance than the impulse engines?

The saucer impulse engines can provide propulsive power in Riker's scenario of attached flight (and indeed in the Dominion War, Galaxy class ships fly with their saucer impulse engines lit, even if Riker's vision here came to naught). Saucer warp engines might be incapable of doing that except in Shelby's scenario of separated flight.

During the Dominion War the Saucer's Impulse engine being on in combined flight may have been one of the upgrades done to the Galaxy class, or it may have a capability all along. Riker may have been saying that the ship can use its Impulse engine in combined flight. The most likely explanation considering Riker's dismissal of Shelby's idea. Firing up the Saucer's Warp engine in combined flight may have been something Riker had Geodri working on, if the Saucer has a warp engine.

Also if it had warp capabilities, in Generations, the Saucer could have punched it to warp to get far away from the exploding Stardrive.

Not in the time allocated. They didn't even have time to punch in the impulse drive, apparently - it is explicitly capable of multi-hundred-gee accelerations at the very least, but here the saucer makes less than one gee (unless it was all shot in slow motion).

I'll grant that is a strong possibility that there was not enough time to engage the warp drive, if the Saucer has warp drive.

Not the ones controlling separation...

Clearly, Data was fighting but a delaying act against an ultimately invincible foe with his lock-up act. He just didn't predict the shortcuts our heroes were able to take in their fight to get control back.

Data stopped the separation sequence, then locked out the ships controls. He set up forcefields to deny the crew access to the bridge. The bridge was even inaccessible by transporter. If the Saucer could make its own warp flight, logically he would have to lock out the Stardrive's computer. He would have known that once the separation occurred the Stardrive computer would be "unlocked."

I think that the saucer only has a warp sustainer, like the photon torpedoes have, which would allow the saucer to coast at warp speeds for a long enough time to get them out of danger.

But that doesn't account for "Farpoint", where the saucer only takes a few hours more than the stardrive section to cover a distance that amounts to several minutes at extreme warp. Are we supposed to think that in fleeing from Q, the combined ship only covered a distance of a lighthour or so? Supposedly, warp nine already gives at least three hundred billion km per 20 minutes ("Bloodlines"), that is, a million lightseconds per 20 min, or a hundred thousand per the evident 2 minutes of flight. That's more than a light-day, yet the combined ship was going much faster than warp nine, and the saucer wasn't delayed by even one full day in backtracking that flight.

Q put them right back on the Battle Bridge as if they never left it. They may have been closer to their destination than we thought allowing the Saucer's Sustainer to get them to the Bendii ahead of the Stardrive; or Q fiddled with time.

Also if it's far enough away it can call for help for the Stardrive section as well as itself.

Or the stardrive section or the combined ship can do that all by itself.

Yes the Stardrive or combined ship can call for help, but the Saucer being full of noncombatants would need to send out its distress signal separate from the Stardrive; also the Saucer could signal Starfleet that they need help as does the Stardrive just in case the Stardrive's communications array has been taken out in battle. Two signals would be better than one.

It seems the point of the separation scheme was that the ship would be so far away from all other assets that the only location of safety around would be the separated saucer. The skipper would just have to pick a suitable spot for this, hide the saucer there, and warp into danger (hopefully via a dogleg that would keep the enemy from discovering where the saucer had been left).

Agreed.

If the saucer is capable of warp, though, as in the pilot episode, then it will suffice to simply leave it standing off at a suitable distance to monitor the possible fight. If the enemy disengages the fight and goes after the saucer, he's pinned between two warp-capable Starfleet assets! If he can outrun the stardrive section, then there's no saving any part of the ship anyway; if he can't, he will be getting his backside peppered with torpedoes and phasers while running towards further phasers (and, reputedly, torpedoes, even though we never saw evidence of the putative saucer launcher).

Agreed only if the Saucer is warp capable.

Then again, whatever the rationale for the separation maneuver, Starfleet clearly stopped believing in it at some point. Perhaps it sucked from the get-go; perhaps something about the nature of the threat changed (say, the average Klingon or Cardassian got faster than the saucer's warp engines).

Timo Saloniemi

Or the Saucer not being warp capable was a big FUBAR by Starfleet.

 

[Squiggy]

Pretty sure if there was any possibility of Data traveling at warp while in total control of the saucer alone, he would've.

But that's it - our heroes were taking control away from Data, bit by bit. Splitting the ship in two would have been but one step in the process.

It would've been the last step.

 

[tharpdevenport]

If the saucer section is sublight speed only that means that wherever you are you likely won't get to any habitable planet before years have come and gone. The only hope is to be rescued by another ship and depending on where you are that could take years as well.

Add to this that in "Encounter at Farpoint", the saucer did cross interstellar distances after separation. The separation supposedly took place at warp speeds (even if the VFX doesn't show those expensive warp streaks), so perhaps the saucer can sustain warp if separated at warp?

I don't see how this is possible. One: as I recall, a warp speed involving warping the space around the ship, pulling it forward; the ship isn't moving itself -- it isn't thrusting itself forward. Once the saucer is out of the warp bubble, it should drop out of warp, and rather violently, too; in TOS the ships had to decelorate, so the saucer no longer has the warp bubble. Doesn't the deflector sih play a part, too?

I don't think they realized their error in the pilot.

 

[Ithekro]

Seperating the saucer at warp was considered risky (or was that just high warp?)

If the saucer is able to generate its own warp field, or at least borrow one from the whole ship, than it should be able to remain at warp speeds with whatever propulsion systems it has. A sustainer like the photon torpedoes are suppose to have, would allow for this, however it should be noted that Starfleet has managed to make a torpedo casing that is able to sustain warp 9 and hold a humanoid occupant. If it came from a starbase....how did it enter warp in the first place? Have some starship go to warp and fire off the warp probe? Or have a tiny one use engine that plots a course then warps to warp 9 plus then sustains the warp bubble for the trip without much alteration of course?

Now if the saucer section can at least manage a warp field the power of a freighter of two or three centuries past, then warp two should possible. Even cheap. Warp three shouldn't be out of reach. Warp four or five might be too advanced for what amounts to an emergency warp drive.

 

[Nebusj]

Seperating the saucer at warp was considered risky (or was that just high warp?)

The transcript seems ambiguous:

PICARD: Records search, Data. Results of detaching saucer section at high warp velocity.
DATA: Inadvisable at any warp speed, sir.
PICARD: Search theoretical.
DATA: It is possible, sir. But absolutely no margin for error.

So, it's inadvisable, but inadvisable is a flexible word, and it's left as possible. ``No margin for error'' seems to come into play at high speeds. Or because they were trying very hard to convince us that we were watching an action-packed chase of everyone sitting in their well-lit, comfortable chairs while going in a straight line.

 

[Ithekro]

The ship was also fairly new at that time. USS Galaxy and USS Yamato were not much older in terms of years of service. USS Enterprise had probably only finished her trail runs, shakedown cruise, and other acceptance runs before Picard took command of it only a few days before heading off to Farpoint Station.

 

[kirkfan]

The funny thing is that you can give a ship any shape you want since there's no aerodynamics to get in the way when you move in a vacuum. That's why the borg make cubes and spheres, because it doesn't matter. The most rational shape though would be a cylinder with its height equal to it's diameter as it's been demonstrated mathematically that it's the shape that minimizes the surface of the hull for a given volume. The less hull you have to protect the less vulnerable you are to an attack.

 

[Timo]

So, it's inadvisable, but inadvisable is a flexible word, and it's left as possible.

We may even argue that Picard took Data's ominous terminology seriously, and ordered the ship slowed down to impulse just before the separation. After all, even if we don't hear this command given, we do see that the separation sequence takes place while there are no warp streaks on the background.

The dialogue refers to the stardrive section "reversing power" both "at the moment of separation" to give the saucer clearance (Picard's plan), and after the separation has completed and the stardrive section is heading back towards Q (Picard's actual commands). This reversing of engines is needed to create deceleration.

...So, significantly, there is absolutely no mention of either dropping out of warp or going to impulse. It's just "reversing" and "decelerating" and "coming to a full stop". And thus one possible scenario has Picard breaking hard and dropping out of extreme warp seconds before separation (his "at the moment"), performing a sublight separation and turn, and then decelerating to what amounts to "dead stop".

The obvious implication would be that the saucer then uses its own warp engines to accelerate back to reasonably high warp and go to Deneb IV along some other, hopefully safer route, thus covering more than a lightday in a couple of hours.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Lance]

The ship was also fairly new at that time. USS Galaxy and USS Yamato were not much older in terms of years of service. USS Enterprise had probably only finished her trail runs, shakedown cruise, and other acceptance runs before Picard took command of it only a few days before heading off to Farpoint Station.

There's a popular fan theory that she is still undergoing those trial runs throughout the first season, and isn't given a clean bill of health (and a permanent chief engineer) until season two. And then when they see USS Yamato go bye-bye in front of their very eyes, they even begin to question the possibility that there's still some fundamental flaw in the ship design that hasn't been accounted for, therefore adding weight to the argument that the Galaxy Class is still a fresh and unknown quantity at that stage.

Sure, Starfleet wouldn't send a ship out completely 'un-seaworthy' (with the exception of 1701-A, of course ). But there are lots of subtle moments in the first season which tie into the above theory that there are still plenty of quirks to work out in the new Galaxy Class design in year one, before ship's systems have apparently become much more normalised from year two onwards.

 

[Timo]

The most rational shape though would be a cylinder with its height equal to it's diameter as it's been demonstrated mathematically that it's the shape that minimizes the surface of the hull for a given volume. The less hull you have to protect the less vulnerable you are to an attack.

Actually, a sphere would have an even more advantageous ratio (which is why soap bubbles are spheres rather than cylinders). It's a somewhat awkward shape for many vehicles, but spaceships would do well with it.

OTOH, you could also choose the flat Starfleet saucer because (when you have Trek-style "down-pointing" artificial gravity, by whatever means, be it magically pulling floors or the acceleration from your engine) a cylinder of any height gives you more standing-height volume than a corresponding sphere (which suffers from compound curvature); the narrow edge of a maximally flat cylinder minimizes your profile against the enemy (assuming you can maneuver to present that profile to him); and sometimes you also want to maximize your surface area (say, if you want to catch or dissipate radiation in a particular direction).

Of course, Star Trek has come up with its own rationalizations for the weird shapes of starships, even if these aren't explicit in the dialogue. We see graphics of warp field shapes, and those are not just exotic but supposedly also quite confining in terms of Trek pseudophysics. OTOH, we see ships of any and all shapes, suggesting that there are many warp field shapes to choose from. But spheres and cylinders and other simplistic shapes are extremely rare, suggesting the engineers put high priority on optimal warp field shape and can do little with hull shape as a consequence. Tellingly, the ones using the simplest shapes are the Borg, the masters of the brute-force approach...

There's a popular fan theory that she is still undergoing those trial runs throughout the first season

...And then there's ST:FC where the next Enterprise has also been out in space with the usual heroes aboard for a full year, but everybody is still itching for the beginning of actual action. Quite possibly, Starfleet believes in shakedown years in a fairly demanding environment!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Squiggy]

We may even argue that Picard took Data's ominous terminology seriously, and ordered the ship slowed down to impulse just before the separation. After all, even if we don't hear this command given, we do see that the separation sequence takes place while there are no warp streaks on the background.

It was at warp.

 

[Timo]

Depends on the shot.

http://tng.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x01/farpoint_hd_209.jpg

If we take that literally ("visually"?), the stardrive section and the saucer both dropped out of warp right after the clamps were retracted.

How could we take it figuratively, though? Never mind the streaks. That's an awfully tight curve there - plausible with the speeds shown, certainly, but implausible if we assume slow-motion photography let alone warp speeds.

After the separation, the stardrive section is back at warp visually. No telling about the saucer.

http://tng.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x01/farpoint_hd_221.jpg

It's a lost opportunity: I for one would have loved to see how those mysterious warp streaks behave when there are two or more ships involved, on differing courses... Basically, I had to wait until VOY "Basics pt I" to see that happen, and it was fairly simple there.

http://voy.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/2x26/basicsI_193.jpg

Timo Saloniemi

 

[kirkfan]

So, it's inadvisable, but inadvisable is a flexible word, and it's left as possible.

We may even argue that Picard took Data's ominous terminology seriously, and ordered the ship slowed down to impulse just before the separation. After all, even if we don't hear this command given, we do see that the separation sequence takes place while there are no warp streaks on the background.
...

Yes, I saw that too but I blamed it on sloppy special effects.

 

[Squiggy]

Depends on the shot.

No. All the shots of the actual separation were shown with streaks.

You're showing after the separation.

 

[jimbotron]

TNG wasn't consistent with warp/impulse at the beginning.

In The Naked Now, Picard claims they're traveling at warp 7, but we see the following shots:

http://tng.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x03/nakednow_hd_002.jpg
http://tng.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x03/nakednow_hd_006.jpg

 

[Timo]

Well, that's insystem warp seven. And we know from "Paradise Syndrome" that it's slightly slower than half impulse.

Timo Saloniemi