Vents vs Spheres.

Or Microtron Metasingularity Isocontainers if you want to be on Voyager.

 

In answer to the original question, I like the spheres on the end-caps because they hint at some future technology that hasn't been invented yet. The grilles from the second pilot look too "conventional" and functional from a modern-day standpoint.

 

I would say that was the exact thinking when they added the spheres. It was probably Gene Roddenberry's idea. "No rockets!"

 

Ah, so I take it you have NOT seen the blooper reel footage depicting someone (either a stagehand or maybe the director) shoveling "something" into one of those two big "power blocks" as though it was, well, a coal-fired boiler.

 

Gregg Peters, associate producer.
http://www.orionpressfanzines.com/articles/startrekmyths5.htm

 

Well, so is “Bussard scoop”, which never appeared in any TOS episode. OTOH, “negative energy” and “antimatter containment” did, and “negative mass” showed up in TAS. Call it what you like, but it needs to be a source of hypergravity per Alcubierre, per Kip Thorne, and per an accurate reading of the guy who supposedly started the whole Bussard thing - Franz Joseph - who was talking about a spacetime scoop, not a gas scoop (see his description in interviews archived at Trekplace). Rick Sternbach misunderstood his “space energy-matter sink (acquisition)” to mean a matter intake, though Franz Joseph describes it in interviews to be like a jet engine- bending spacetime to flow through the nacelle and be restored to its original geometry as it exits. That would require some gravity source to deform space. Singularity, microsingularity, or “black star” - the TOS term from “Tomorrow is Yesterday” - you may take your pick.

 

TOS may have used terms like "antimatter containment" about the ship, but they only used "negative energy", "negative mass" and "black star" to describe unknown/new space phenomena and not ship mechanics. Technobabble we hear on screen: The nacelles have warp engines powered by M/AM in them, and may also have antimatter pods in them. No gravity discussions are ever used in conjunction with warp drive. KISS.

 

That is fair, though we repeatedly hear “gravity is down to point eight”. You can assume that refers to gravity artificially generated for life support, or gravity artifficially generated for warp drive, or both. It is certainly stated when the warp drive is struggling, for example, to permit the ship to escape Sol in “Tomorrow is Yesterday”.

And of course, there is absolutely no mention of the ship ever scooping gasses or matter for fuel.

The fact is, by the admittedly limited understanding of physics both in 1966 and today, any type of space warp would involve gravity manipulation. Ignore it if you must. But that does not change the fact that anybody conjecturing about how it would work would have grappled with warping spacetime, and spacetime is warped by gravity. That is, to reuse your term, “keeping it simple, stupid.”

 

@aridas sofia Actually, gravity is the warping of space-time by matter, be it dark or baryonic.

 

I guess I'm alone in preferring the vents. I always thought the spheres were for when they were orbiting a planet and the vent for traveling open space.

 

Picking both is cheating. Maybe one day they'll retcon all the external ship scenes where the CAGE has panels, WNMHGB has vents and TOS series has globes.

 

Amt models had spheres...therefore spheres it is

 

I built two AMT Enterprise kits in the 70s (used Lexington decals on the second one). They didn't have the spheres.

 

@PCz911 @ZapBrannigan
Required reading
https://culttvman.com/main/a-history-of-the-amt-enteprise-model-by-jay-chladek-part-1/

TL;DR No rear spheres until the 1975 retool of the model molds.

 

Mine didn't, therefore no spheres it is.

 

I didn't pick both. I said I liked the vents.

 

This mirrors my own thoughts about the process almost exactly! Add one EvilKirk into the mix of globes!

 

So much for my memory....

 

"Obsession" referenced a space creature that used gravity for FTL propulsion. Whether the Enterprise's warp drives also use gravity for propulsion wasn't made clear although Spock seemed to suggest that anyone with gravity propulsion could by bypass deflectors. And since Federation and Klingon ships don't appear to be able to bypass deflectors it's unlikely that they are using gravitational fields for propulsion...

 

I think that FTL warp drive can be gravity based, but what generates the gravity and from where?

From A Piece of the Action:
SPOCK: Captain. If the Iotians, who are very bright and imitative people, should take that communicator apart
KIRK: They will, they will. And they'll find out how the transtator works.
SPOCK: The transtator is the basis for every important piece of equipment that we have.
KIRK: Everything.​

A warp engine could be an array of huge transtator devices, which produces an intense artificial gravity field/bubble around the ship. The transtators are powered by highly-charged, super-heated plasma generated by a M/AM reactor in each nacelle. TNG would call them warp coils. TOS just calls them warp engines. So, how does a transtator work? The circle goes around and round and round...