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Fun Fact About Hand Phasers

^ I never thought that the classic TOS original VFX green-glow dematerialization was vaporization. That never made sense, as you say. It always struck me as converting the target to pure energy or perhaps some sort of particles, like neutrinos that then scatter into space. TWOK re-imagined the effect as something else entirely, more like burning the target away.
 
In G7, Scotty is actually firing each phaser into the engine of the shuttle. It's the phaser's fired energy that's powering the shuttle, isn't it?
 
In general TOS tech dilithium charges and discharges, and we know that in G7 Kirk and crew could find no anti-matter residue suggesting that the shuttlecraft had blown up, and since dilithium apparently uses the M/A-M energy to recharge, it would seem that in this case the phaser energy is used to charge the dilithium?

The “fuel” line that broke may have led from the “matter” half of the mix, thereby preventing the production of energy through M/A-M integration? The fuel jettisoned at the end of the show may therefore have been the remaining A-M half of the mix?
 
Scotty did say he had to 'adapt' the Phasers to use their energy to launch the Shuttle (if all it need was 'power' - they could had drained the power packs directly. My point/ Whatever 'adaptation' was required might have required Scotty to use the Phaser in conjugation with some for m of mater (IE he's shooting said matter with the 'adapted' Phaser to create the substitute fuel that the Shuttle propulsion system can use.

[Look in the end, it's just a plot McGuffin solution.] ;)
 
Fun fact to be included in the rationalization of "The Galileo Seven": the leak left no puddle.

Seeing that it took place at the very bottom of the craft (and that the heroes checked from under the craft immediately after the crash!), we might want to rule out liquid fuel right there.

On the other hand, if the fuel is volatile or cryogenic in nature, it would make sense for it to escape in gaseous form - but also for a small amount of it to remain in the system as a liquid, completely useless because the loss of pressure in the system would mean it could not be pumped to where it was needed. It could be successfully vented in zero gee, though.

(Modify the nature of the fuel with the fact that its supply is measured in "pounds psi", a nonsensical unit today. But we may still speculate that anything involving "psi" is a gas under pressure. Or perhaps a telekinetic substance?)

When the craft takes off from the surface, it is forced to hover for the better part of a minute because the cavemen cling to it. This does not appreciably affect its ability to reach orbit later on, though - even though the heroes were extremely concerned about extra weight at an earlier stage. It makes sense, then, to assume that the hover is not part of the orbital ascent at all, but merely a preliminary maneuver performed by a separate drive system, an antigrav of some sort that doesn't need the lost fuel but does need energy of some other sort.

The phasers may have been crucial at that stage, then. Or then during the entire ascent, which for this once is performed using the antigravs rather than the normal engines - basically the equivalent of an F-16 trying to get from airbase to airbase by taxiing on a highway all the way.

That Scotty likens the phasers to a "substitute fuel supply" is probably our best proof that it is nothing of the sort. After all, Spock is convinced of the opposite, and if he says there's no substitute supply, we should trust his word. It takes Scotty's genius to see that the heroes can make do without a substitute fuel supply, and use the phasers instead of such a supply...

Timo Saloniemi
 
Timo said:
Fun fact to be included in the rationalization of "The Galileo Seven": the leak left no puddle.

Seeing that it took place at the very bottom of the craft (and that the heroes checked from under the craft immediately after the crash!), we might want to rule out liquid fuel right there.
Click to expand...

It's a sealed space craft, not a Ford Galaxy dripping oil in the driveway. A leaky pipe isn't going to leave a puddle unless there's a break in the hull. It could have gone anywhere under the flooring.
 
ZapBrannigan said:
...Maybe the vanishing act is not vaporization, despite Chekov speaking casually in ST6. Maybe the phaser on maximum kills by shifting the person into another dimension. And this other dimension is not even three-dimensional space like the Mirror Universe. Instead, it's a "place" that's not even a place. It's totally incompatible with existence as we know it, and when your body is shifted there, your molecules can no longer exist as such.
Click to expand...
That's how I see it too - a direct vaporisation would produce so much excess heat that anything or anyone in the immediate vicinity would catch fire. The most we ever see in Star Trek (post-TOS) is a small scorch mark on the carpet; completely insufficient. That waste heat is being shunted somewhere - subspace maybe?
Honestly though, I tend to lean towards a phaser simply "phasing" the subject into the same parallel dimension of energy that is utilised by the transporters. The principle difference is that the transporter is a controlled process with the intention of retrieving the subject later; the phaser performs a one-way trip.
 
Ssosmcin said:
It's a sealed space craft, not a Ford Galaxy dripping oil in the driveway. A leaky pipe isn't going to leave a puddle unless there's a break in the hull. It could have gone anywhere under the flooring.
Click to expand...

Yet the heroes specifically crawl under the shuttle to assess the damage...

Quite possibly something did break there during the hard, blind landing (because rather blind it must have been, for the shuttle to have ended up in such an inhospitable location on a planet apparently supporting human life or better), and this is why they first "lost a lot of fuel" and then had to "reroute" the remainder. It didn't leave a puddle under the craft, and it didn't leave a puddle under the floor, either, as we saw when Scotty fiddled with the machinery. Whether it escaped in gaseous form inside the shuttle or outside it then depends on how lethal it was if inhaled...

Timo Saloniemi
 
Timo said:
Yet the heroes specifically crawl under the shuttle to assess the damage..
Click to expand...

As I said, without a break in the hull, nothing would leak outside. So crawling under the shuttle would not reveal anything if the hull was intact. A leaky pipe (and the leak could be anywhere in the line - we just saw the guage) would deposit whatever fluid in the subflooring, not outside the ship. So this is still inconclusive.
 
We're talking about people who routinely use replicator and transporter tech here. All it really takes is energy and matter. But they aren't creating matter out of pure energy - they are converting one type of matter into another, and since the masses are likely comparable, it doesn't take HUGE amounts of energy to change, say, water to wine, or oxygen to hydrogen, but it will take some extra energy. Yeah, it takes energy, maybe a lot, but the phasers are a decent source of stored energy. TOS shuttles, however, are not known for having standard replicators or transporters like DS9 runabouts, but they may have enough circuitry aboard that Scotty (a miracle worker) could rig up something to convert oxygen to helium, and maybe a few other choice molecules that are great as shuttle fuel. It just takes energy. And they have some - lots of it - the phasers.

Just a possibility.
 
Mytran said:
Do they? I thought Scotty did all the maintenance through that little hatch in the floor?
Click to expand...

This is what I refer to:

http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x16hd/thegalileosevenhd183.jpg

Boma does the crawling after the heroes establish they have "lost a great deal of fuel".

And yes, there's definite "losing" going on. We don't know if there's a hole at the bottom of the hull, but there sure as heck isn't any fuel pooling inside the hull, as we get a very good look at the space between the cabin floor and the bottom of the craft when Scotty goes to work. So a liquid getting lost while staying liquid is a very unlikely scenario, unless we're talking about really minute amounts (say, something that could fit in the handle packs of three phasers :devil: ) amounting to the quoted "great deal"...

Timo Saloniemi
 
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