Antimatter converter assembly?

[DanGovier]

In TOS the nacelles were intended to be the power-generating hardware for Starfleet ships, hence the different number of nacelles on other designs affecting their performance (the single unit on the Saladin/Hermes limited them to destroyer/patrol and scout duties respectively, whilst the three nacelle Federation was an advanced dreadnought). This was later retconned though.

This is my understanding too. I've always been under the impression that the nacelles on TOS ships contained the actual matter/antimatter reactors. The Refit in 2270 did away with this 30 year old design and introduced the shiny new Intermix core, which was the precursor to the now common warp core.

 

[Tenacity]

i assume that atomic matter piles is a (1960's) referance to nuclear reactor. but it could have been the counter-part to the "atomic antimatter pile."

given that the warp coils (assuming tos tech had them) are in the nacelles. it makes sense to me the reactors would be in the nacelles too.

 

[blssdwlf]

Since the term "atomic matter pile" can be used as an archaic term for a nuclear reactor, I have to agree that the USS Republic had one. And since there's a reference to "points" which have decayed to lead in WNMHGB it's reasonable to assume that they used fission for minor energy generating purposes on board the Enterprise, too.

Nuclear reactors can mean either fission or fusion although I'm thinking Tenacity is on to something. "Atomic Pile" without the word "matter" is the archaic term for nuclear reactor (includes fission and fusion). So an "Atomic Matter Pile" must mean something else and the existence of an "Antimatter Pile" would suggest that to be the case.

Perhaps both the matter and antimatter are processed through some heating reactors (piles) to get them to the proper temperature before intermix? Or maybe "matter pile" and "antimatter pile" mean the same thing and are shorthand for "matter-antimatter pile"?

From "Charlie X"
CHARLIE: Yes. There was a warped baffle-plate on the shield of their energy pile. I made it go away. It would've blown up anyway. Well they weren't nice to me! They wanted to get rid of me. They don't now.

From "Court Martial"
KIRK: It's no secret. We were assigned to the same ship some years later. I relieved him on watch once and found a circuit open to the atomic matter piles that should've been closed. Another five minutes, it could have blown up the ship.

From "Journey to Babel"
MCCOY: Sure. A formal reception tonight, a hundred and fourteen delegates aboard for two weeks, thirty two of them ambassadors, half of them mad at the other half, and the whole lot touchier than a raw antimatter pile over this Coridan question.

From "Spock's Brain"
SCOTT: Either a nuclear pile a hundred miles across or...

Additional info regarding "lead" being an indicator of nuclear fission power... in "The Paradise Syndrome" we hear Scotty complain about Spock burning out the star drive with the line, "That Vulcan won't be satisfied till these panels are a puddle of lead." This could further suggest that there are processes with the star drive (matter-antimatter engines) that could decay or melt something ("points"?) into lead and it isn't exclusively tied to nuclear fission... YMMV.

 

[TIN_MAN]

From "Journey to Babel"
MCCOY: Sure. A formal reception tonight, a hundred and fourteen delegates aboard for two weeks, thirty two of them ambassadors, half of them mad at the other half, and the whole lot touchier than a raw antimatter pile over this Coridan question.

Oooh, another good catch about the antimatter pile.

I just discovered this thread had come back to life, but unfortunately I don't have the time to post any in-depth replies to all the preceding posts as I would like to, but I will try to get back to it this weekend.

One thing I will say though is that I noticed something interesting in my research. The Nacelles/pods (yes, in TOS they're the same thing) are always prefixed with various terms such as "antimatter", "matter-antimatter", "warp drive" etc. etc., but nowhere are they referred to as "engine" pods/nacelles. So make of that what you will.

 

[Mytran]

Oooh, another good catch about the antimatter pile.

I just discovered this thread had come back to life, but unfortunately I don't have the time to post any in-depth replies to all the preceding posts as I would like to, but I will try to get back to it this weekend.

One thing I will say though is that I noticed something interesting in my research. The Nacelles/pods (yes, in TOS they're the same thing) are always prefixed with various terms such as "antimatter", "matter-antimatter", "warp drive" etc. etc., but nowhere are they referred to as "engine" pods/nacelles. So make of that what you will.

A nacelle is often defined as "a streamlined casing on the outside of an aircraft or motor vehicle, especially one housing an aircraft engine." (https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/nacelle)
It is likely that in context of a starship, the presence of an engine is understood to have been included in the word "nacelle"

 

[blssdwlf]

A nacelle is often defined as "a streamlined casing on the outside of an aircraft or motor vehicle, especially one housing an aircraft engine." (https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/nacelle)
It is likely that in context of a starship, the presence of an engine is understood to have been included in the word "nacelle"

We also have"
"matter-antimatter engines" ("That Which Survives"),
"matter-antimatter propulsion system is the main drive" ("The Changeling"),
"matter-antimatter pods" ("I, Mudd),
"matter-antimatter nacelles" ("By Any Other Name"), and
"propelled by matter-antimatter reactors" ("By Any Other Name").

I think we can make an argument that the nacelles/pods contain the matter-antimatter engines/reactors.

Although I could also advocate that the secondary hull also could be considered a nacelle/pod and is also part of the star drive since I could not find any instance where they were explicit in how many total matter-antimatter engines/reactors the ship has...

 

[Mytran]

That would also tally up with Kirk's odd line in the Apple:

KIRK: Then use your imagination. Tie every ounce of power the ship has into the impulse engines. Discard the warp drive nacelles if you have to, and crack out of there with the main section, but get that ship out of there!

On the surface of it, it seems he just talking about detaching the engine nacelles, but he could easily be referring to the secondary hull as well.
Then again, he does make specific mention of the "main section", which is generally assumed to be the saucer

 

[TIN_MAN]

Oh, I completely agree that the term nacelle implies “engine”, I was not suggesting otherwise, just pointing out that the specific combination of “engine nacelles/pods” was never actually used in TOS.

What is established is that the nacelles/pods contain the matter/anti-matter fuel, and when we hear dialogue like…

“M-5 appears to be drawing power directly from the warp engines, tapping the matter-antimatter reserves.” (The Ultimate Computer)

And…

“Antimatter seems our only possibility. An ounce should be sufficient. We can drain it from the ship's engines and transport it to the planet surface in a magnetic vacuum field.” (Obsession)

It becomes clear that the nacelles/pods are also the engines, even if never referred to as such.

 

[TIN_MAN]

This thread seems to have gone dormant again, so I thought I’d give it a bump and add a little something more on topic.

Specifically, In TNG the dilithium is artificial and can be re-crystallized, whereas in TOS dilithium was obtained from natural sources at great expense.

This might explain other differences between the ways the two eras made use of the substance.

For example, in TOS they needed more than one crystal for “full power” this might be because even the best natural dilithium has some impurities which limits its ability to channel enough energy from the M/A-M reactor to power the entire ship and its systems; whereas in TNG the pure artificial dilithium allows a single crystal to power the entire ship and all systems.

So does this mean in TOS they needed multiple reactors, or did they have secondary crystal circuits that somehow received the energy from the main reactor crystal to power other high energy systems like deflectors and phasers etc.

Also in TOS/TAS they carried spare crystals to replace damaged or depleted crystals, which obviously is no longer necessary in TNG era since they can re-crystallize the single crystal (apparently while still in the reactor).

 

[Mytran]

I'd say some considerable crystal restructure is required in TNG, in order to turn this blob...

into this perfectly shaped tool...

Crystaline restructure was first mentioned in ST4, wasn't it? Perhaps one of the greatest improvised solutions every devised by Scotty, still in use as standard practise 80 years later!

 

[blssdwlf]

I'd say some considerable crystal restructure is required in TNG, in order to turn this blob...into this perfectly shaped tool...

I'm wondering how that works with "fragments" in TNG's "Peak Performance"?
http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/s2/2x21/peakperformance107.jpg

Supposedly this was enough dilithium to regulate the matter-antimatter reaction to have less than 2 seconds of Warp One. The amount of antimatter that was snuck over was only enough for a science experiment so how much power relative to "full power" were they able to generate?

So does this mean in TOS they needed multiple reactors, or did they have secondary crystal circuits that somehow received the energy from the main reactor crystal to power other high energy systems like deflectors and phasers etc.

I think in TOS a single matter-antimatter reactor fed energy to the Crystal Converter Assembly which connected to all the crystal and bypass circuits on the ship. The main energizers then pulled the charged energy from the crystals as needed. This would explain how Scotty was able to eject a crystal to look at it in "The Paradise Syndrome" while still producing power and Spock being able to pull off the crystal assembly to repair the energizer in "TWOK" without having to shut down the matter-antimatter reactor. It does seem that crystals wear out faster when they are heavily drained/under strain ("TVH", "Mudd's Women"). A single crystal could handle the full power usage under load but for not very long so to me it makes sense to spread the energy draw across multiple crystals.

TNG+ doesn't seem to use the crystals in that manner. Instead, the crystals must be present to regulate the matter-antimatter reaction. You can't pull them out while the warp core is running and they don't seem to hold a charge.

 

[TIN_MAN]

Yeah, TNG tech manual explains the "energizing" of the crystals as a process where the crystals are subjected to a fluctuating magnetic field of a specific frequency, which is what really allows the crystal to then function as a mediator for the M/A-M reaction.

So apparently, the crystals can "hold a charge" through some sort of magnetic hysteresis effect, though they might lose this ability under excessive stress and heat, again much like a magnet loses its field when heated.

So not only would you lose engine power but the crystal itself might melt or fuse. This would tend to explain why occasionally in TOS and TAS Scotty was worried more about "draining" the crystals and the resulting loss of power than he was about "recharging" them with available energy from the M/A-M reactor.

 

[blssdwlf]

The TNG explanation of energizing the crystals in order to be able to regulate the matter-antimatter reaction makes sense in the context of TNG+. The crystals are located in the path of the streams and dialogue describe antimatter hitting the crystals.

It doesn't quite gel with TOS in the regulating capacity though. In TOS the crystals are not seen doing any regulating of the matter-antimatter streams as they are physically away from the reaction. In "Mudd's Women" they are described as circuits that can be bypassed. Even though we aren't sure what the reactor looks like in TOS, in the movies we see in "The Wrath of Khan" and "The Voyage Home", the crystals in the sequencer are housed in a nearby room/chamber on top of a pedestal with no matter/antimatter streams hitting them.

Which leaves TOS with a different explanation on how they used dilithium to generate power and a different meaning for when a crystal is charged/discharged.

Yeah, TNG tech manual explains the "energizing" of the crystals as a process where the crystals are subjected to a fluctuating magnetic field of a specific frequency, which is what really allows the crystal to then function as a mediator for the M/A-M reaction.

So apparently, the crystals can "hold a charge" through some sort of magnetic hysteresis effect, though they might lose this ability under excessive stress and heat, again much like a magnet loses its field when heated.

So not only would you lose engine power but the crystal itself might melt or fuse. This would tend to explain why occasionally in TOS and TAS Scotty was worried more about "draining" the crystals and the resulting loss of power than he was about "recharging" them with available energy from the M/A-M reactor.

 

[TIN_MAN]

OK. But couldn't these crystal circuits we see in TOS and TWOK and TVH, be the secondary crystals in the converter assembly which some how receives energy from the main crystal in the reactor?

Specifically, I'm thinking of something like an old crystal radio set with a little Tesla wireless theory tied in. Maybe Dilithium absorbs and converts neutrinos from the M/A-M reaction into usable energy and broadcasts this to other devices that have a tuned Dilithium crystal "power pack"?

This might even tie into the "Transtater circuit" said to be in the communicator (and other devices) since this is said to be the basis for all Federation technology. (A Piece of the Action)

Perhaps in TOS -due to the impurities and crystal defects in natural Dilithium- even major ships systems like deflectors and phasers are powered by these secondary crystals, but in TNG+ all major ships systems are now powered by the main reactor crystal and only small stuff like PADDS and other devices might receive their energy via transmitted/converted neutrino energy from the main reactor crystal?

 

[Mytran]

TOS episodes offer numerous examples of the crystals being tied into the technology that translates the raw energy of the M/AM reaction into a form usable by phasers, deflectors, structural integrity and other ship systems. I don't believe that they had any role in mediating the M/AM reaction which quite frankly can be contained by magnetic energy fields.

The role of the "single" crystal (really a fragment composite) probably has a two-fold role:

1. More efficiently mediate the reaction than the TOS setup
2. Tap the energy of the reaction and deliver that the ship systems (like the TOS setup)

 

[blssdwlf]

OK. But couldn't these crystal circuits we see in TOS and TWOK and TVH, be the secondary crystals in the converter assembly which some how receives energy from the main crystal in the reactor?

I think the problem is that we've never heard or seen of TOS having a M/AM setup with a "main crystal" and it would break a few of their stories. We know the TOS Enterprise utilized multiple M/AM reactors - and if they all needed a crystal to mediate m/am reaction to deliver power to the secondary crystals then we would have a surplus of crystals. An episode like "Mudd's Women" could have been solved by shutting down one of the reactors and using that crystal to replace one of the burnt out crystal circuits.

Plus, we also have "Metamorphosis" where we find out that the shuttle leaves an antimatter trail. This implies that TOS shuttles has some kind of m/am reactor onboard. That would mean we have even more extra dilithium to save the day with and they could have used these dilithium to solve the dilithium crisis in "Mudd's Women", "Elaan of Troyius" and "The Alternative Factor"...

But you've got to wonder though, what if the TOS universe dilithium doesn't or can't mediate/regulate m/am reaction? It would seem that if it could regulate m/am reaction then we would have evidence at least in TVH which came out around the same time as TNG was in production.

 

[Mytran]

I think the problem is that we've never heard or seen of TOS having a M/AM setup with a "main crystal" and it would break a few of their stories. We know the TOS Enterprise utilized multiple M/AM reactors - and if they all needed a crystal to mediate m/am reaction to deliver power to the secondary crystals then we would have a surplus of crystals. An episode like "Mudd's Women" could have been solved by shutting down one of the reactors and using that crystal to replace one of the burnt out crystal circuits.

In that type of engineering setup, I think a big honking crystal in the middle of a reactor would be incompatible with the delicate "crystal circuits" that are referred to elsewhere.
For me though, I'm happy for the M/AM reaction to take place in the nacelles, behind layers and layers of forcefields!

Plus, we also have "Metamorphosis" where we find out that the shuttle leaves an antimatter trail. This implies that TOS shuttles has some kind of m/am reactor onboard. That would mean we have even more extra dilithium to save the day with and they could have used these dilithium to solve the dilithium crisis in "Mudd's Women", "Elaan of Troyius" and "The Alternative Factor"...

I think that "antimatter trail" is a just a slang term for what was referred to as a ship's "warp trail" in the TNG era, ie the disturbance in local subspace whenever a warp engine is used.
There is not doubt that the shuttles were FTL, but I'm happy for the M/AM reaction to take place in those rather obvious nacelles, sans crystal.

But you've got to wonder though, what if the TOS universe dilithium doesn't or can't mediate/regulate m/am reaction? It would seem that if it could regulate m/am reaction then we would have evidence at least in TVH which came out around the same time as TNG was in production.

I think this all goes to show that only a very specific type of processed dilithium in a very special, artificially held configuration is capable of mediating the M/AM reaction in the manner specified. In the TOS era, they were still doing it in a more "rough and ready" manner; less efficient perhaps, but still practical.
Common Dilithium was still great for converting the raw energy of the reaction into a more controlled form useable by the rest of the ship and when that failed, there was trusty) albeit far less efficient Converter Assembly (mentioned several times in TOS)

 

[uniderth]

Based on my study of the dialogue the Enterprise works like this. The dilithium crystals are basically like super compact batteries. They are the source of main power on the ship. Ships power from the dilithium crystals is fed through lithium crystals. You could possibly say that the lithium crystals are like step down transformers, but that would be supposition. When a dilithium crystal is drained it can be re-charged/re-amplified presumable using power from the matter/anti-matter reaction. For warp power there are probably three matter/antimatter reactors. One in each nacelle and possibly on in the engineering hull. The single reactor presumably in the engineering hull seems to be critical in the control of the other two. All the anti-matter is in the nacelles.

I'm still trying to work out The Animated Series dialogue of having a "matter engine" and "antimatter engine" along with a "antimatter" nacelle and a "matter nacelle"

Plus, we also have "Metamorphosis" where we find out that the shuttle leaves an antimatter trail.

I'd argue that the matter anti-matter reaction is in the nacelles of the shuttle. There is very little room inside the shuttle, even for lift support, so sticking all the power generation out in the nacelles is no problem.

 

[TIN_MAN]

On the one hand, several episodes of TOS show the M/A-M reactor(s) producing ever greater warp speeds, as in "The Changeling" and "That Which Survives" with no apparent connection to Dilithium.

On the other hand, several episodes of TOS show that Dilithium is necessary for the warp drive/engines to function, as in "The Day of the Dove" and "Elaan of Troyius".

Also, in TOS the ships power is said to be "pulled through" the Dilithium as in "Mudd's Women, and the shape of crude crystal will effect the "energy flow" which might destroy the ship, as in "Elaan of Troyius".

So how do we reconcile all this?

 

[TIN_MAN]

I'm still trying to work out The Animated Series dialogue of having a "matter engine" and "antimatter engine" along with a "antimatter" nacelle and a "matter nacelle"

Yeah that's a bad bit of dialogue to be sure, but I interpret Kirk's line to mean "we need both matter and anti-matter fuel to regenerate the engines". This would be consistent with the situation they are in at that moment.

And actually, the idea that one nacelle carries the matter fuel and the other the anti-matter fuel, is not all that problematical, and might even explain why, in "That Which Survives", Scotty goes into the access tube leading to the M/A-M integrator and then there is talk of jettisoning the "pod" if necessary. Since in TOS, pods = nacelles, then Scotty would be in the anti-matter pod trying to shut off the flow of fuel to the central integrator/reactor (in the secondary hull?); and if he fails, then jettisoning the one "A-M pod/nacelle" would still save the ship.

I'd argue that the matter anti-matter reaction is in the nacelles of the shuttle. There is very little room inside the shuttle, even for lift support, so sticking all the power generation out in the nacelles is no problem.

This would be consistent with TNG's "Timescape" -where they are in a runabout-

“DATA: We have an engine failure warning in the
PICARD: Report!
LAFORGE: The starboard nacelle just cut out.
DATA: Attitude control has been restored.
PICARD: Full stop. What happened?
LAFORGE: The starboard antimatter pod is completely drained. The fuel reserves are empty.
PICARD: Is there a fuel containment leak?
LAFORGE: No, sir. The containment field is intact, all engine systems are operational. The fuel is just gone.”



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