Engine Room(s) on the TOS Enterprise (revisited)

I was unclear. I didn't mean the engine room was in the rim, just on the same deck level represented by that position which I'm saying is Deck 7. The engine room would be off the main ~50 foot radius curved corridor, well within the core of the saucer. It's upper level would extend up into Deck 6. A 35+ foot length pipe cathedral will even fit. The figure below shows the Season 1 Engine Room in the saucer where the upper right corner is on the center of the saucer and the engine room sits toward the rear port side of the saucer:

 

In my model a central M/AM reactor powers (charges) the crystals and the warp engines can operate without the crystals via bypass circuits. The ship probably couldn't travel very far though as without the crystals they wouldn't be able to regenerate M/AM fuel.
From "Mudd's Women":

SCOTT: One lithium crystal left, and that with a hairline split at the base.
SPOCK: Better rig a bypass circuit.
SCOTT: Can't. We blew the whole converter assembly.
...
KIRK: Well, switch to bypass circuits.
SCOTT: We burned them all out when we super-heated.​

We know if the converter assembly's bypass circuits weren't burned out the ship can operate without the crystals, just not at full power. In "Elaan of Troyus", the entire converter assembly was fused implying the bypass circuits were out and the crystals once again burned out.

So what about the M/AM reactors in the warp nacelles (the warp engines)? Energy from the converter assembly goes thru the main energiser and is sent to the nacelles where the energy is transformed/converted into M/AM fuel which is then dumped into the nacelle's M/AM reactor to be used in generating the space warp and thrust. This allows the engines to operate as fast or as slow as the rate of fuel being fed them.

In "The Corbomite Maneuver" the warp engines superheated but they are not drawing more power than the converter assembly can give - in fact, Kirk throws in Impulse power too to boost the warp engines output.

In "That Which Survives" the central reactor was generating too much energy which would have overcharged the crystals in the converter assembly so the energy had to dump somewhere. If the crystals that act as super capacitors were pulled to cut off power I would guess the bypass circuits would instantly fry and then the central reactor would immediately explode because the energy has no where to go. So all this extra energy is dumped to the warp engines which can handle it which buys additional time for the central reactor which instead would overload much later (~18 minutes?).

In "Mudd's Women" and probably "The Paradise Syndrome", the power systems (deflectors and phasers) are drawing much more power than the crystals can deliver at once which is what caused them to fail.

Of course, YMMV

 

That also could be a possibility.

I though you favored changing the size of t sets to make them logically fit in the ship. Would the engine room have to change much to fit in the saucer rim other than ceiling height, and the corridor connection you mentioned?

Given Voyager is 15 decks and about the same size of ship, that would be valid, even if not a popular solution. Anyone care to/have already worked out the deck arrangement of a 14 deck Enterprise and compared it to Voyager?

 

Well, yes, no, and maybe. It's mainly the concentric curved corridor intersecting the radial corridor leading to the Engineering Section that has to go due to the "undercut" or concavity on the underside of the saucer. but there is room for the radial corridor and entry foyer along the axis where the dorsal connects to the saucer, along the center-line of the set/facility. But I for one never put much stock in how the interior sets relate to the corridor sets, and do not think they represent the "real" relationship of interiors to corridors on the idealized starship of the imagination. FJ opted to have a turbo-lift service the area which, while not screen accurate, is consistent with the original description of the engine room set as accessed via a turbo-lift.

Also, both the three ft. filming model and the AMT model kit -both used onscreen to represent the Enterprise- have a much wider, flatter underside edge which could be used to accommodate the wider sections of the lower level set/facility itself which would "spill out" on either side of dorsal connection. And of course, the curved vaulted ceiling of the set will not work in this location, but that's why I see it as only a feature of the "other" engine room or "Engineering Deck" among the "lower levels", and besides, we never get a good look at the ceiling of the 2nd/3rd season set anyway.

And just to reiterate and be clear, I for one do not favor a saucer rim/impulse engine location for the Engineering Section just because FJ said so, but rather because of several self consistent clues from the show itself that indicate that FJ made the right decision. First, there's the previously discussed association of impulse engines with Engineering Section location from "TUC", and second, there is the scene in "TPS" when the ship is at maximum warp, and Scotty is in "engineering" (were not told which one) and gestures behind him as he says "These engines are beginning to show signs of stress", and since nothing in the series suggests that the warp engines are anywhere other than in the nacelles/pods, this could be taken as further evidence that he is in the Engineering Section -in the impulse deck- and is gesturing toward the warp drive engine/nacelles suspended out there behind him in that general direction. Of course, this would also indicate the orientation of this engine room, and that FJ got that right as well. And finally, for now, there's the aforementioned deck seven reference from "TDM" and from which "power failure in main energizers" is reported, which is consistent with an engineering room on that deck, which is consistent with TMOST/FJ.

 

I think two different procedures are implied here?

Spock may already know that switching to bypass circuits (plural) is not an option, because as first officer, it's his business to such things, so the alternative is rigging (hay-wiring) a bypass circuit (singular) which would do an end run around the crystals altogether, but Scotty informs him that's not an option either because they blew the whole converter assembly.

But later, when Kirk, having been occupied with other things and not being aware of the severity of the situation, suggests switching to bypass circuits, Scotty tells him that's not an option either because they've burned them all out.

Since we are told earlier in the episode that a burned out circuit is tantamount to a burned out crystal, then it follows that burned out bypass (power?) circuits may involve burned out crystals as well?

So perhaps switching to bypass circuits normally involves switching to at least two back-up crystals, which means that at the point in the episode when all this is discussed, they have burned out a total of five crystal/circuits not three, as usually assumed. this explains why, near the end of the episode, Kirk says they need six crystals, because by that time, that's exactly how many they had burned out.

This might also explain the reference in "Cats Paw" to channeling "bypass power" which suggests a separate power source rather than just a bypass around one?

 

PS:
The above is also consistent with "TAF" where "almost all" of the ship’s crystals (the four we see and later stolen-out of six total?) had been drained and were being re-amplified/re-energized. And since they had working bypass crystal/circuits this explains why losing four crystals didn’t seem to effect much of anything.

 

I'm sort of liking this idea that the ship needs four active crystals to operate at full power, and have two crystals in stand-by as a by-pass circuit. Unfortunately, all six crystals are installed in the one converter assembly. Superheating the engines and pulling high power through them can cause all of them to burnout. In MW, it was noticeable (lights dimming) when three active crystals failed, but nothing was obvious when the two crystals in stand-by were destroyed by the superheating condition. It also explains why Kirk asked for six crystals from the lithium miners.

 

Do we need a Trek Tech thread on the uses of Dilithium crystals by era?

 

I find the just the TOS era confusing enough , but if you start the thread, I promise to follow and contribute. I think the mystery is less in TNG and forward.

 

Here's a quick run down of the way i think it might be...

In TOS they can't recrystallize dilithium so they have to carry spares -if available- in case they burn them out. In TNG they do not need to carry spares because they can recrystallize their Dilithium.

In TOS they use natural crystals with impurities and lattice defects which limits the power channeling capacity, and so they need more than one for "full power". whereas in TNG they use pure synthetic or artificial dilithium which channels much more energy and one crystal is enough to power a starship.

In TOS the crystals apparently store energy from the M/A-M reaction, but in TNG they apparently do not, though it may be that this was just never mentioned, or something else has changed so that this capability is no longer needed?

 

Not that I disagree with the location if we're using non-screen sourced info but wouldn't this be assumed regardless of the source that an engineering section would be associated with the impulse engines? The size of the section isn't really pinpointed so why couldn't it extend a good chunk forward and laterally in the saucer?

It looked like he was gesturing to the cathedral section about the stress (even then his hand doesn't really point that way). If he was referring to the nacelles (which aren't visible from his vantage point) he's pointing too low even if he were at the back of the saucer rim.

The fun part then is figuring out where Deck 7 is

It might however the dialogue for each failed lithium circuit is very specific:

SULU: That was one of our lithium crystal circuits, sir.
SULU: Another circuit, sir.
SULU: Another lithium circuit. Now supplementing with battery power, sir.
SCOTT: I don't know, sir. With those three lithium crystals gone
SPOCK: The entire ship's power is feeding through one lithium crystal.
KIRK: Well, switch to bypass circuits.
SCOTT: We burned them all out when we super-heated.​

If the bypass circuits were also using lithium crystals they would've been called out as such, IMHO, and we'd hear of additional crystals getting blown out.

Then again, it goes back to whether lithium/dilithium crystals are needed for warp drive. Modern TNG seems to put that as a requirement but (jumping over to TNG) where would the TNG "First Contact" Cochrane get crystals for his warp ship?

Technically, only 4 crystals has burned out. There were an unknown number of bypass circuits with a minimum of 2 but why not 4 for a total of 8 circuits for full redundancy?

In the episode the Enterprise was getting heated up externally and Kirk tells DeSalle to send bypass power to the heat dissipation units. It sounds like they're dumping excess energy from the main reactor around the crystal circuits for additional heat dissipation capability. Which oddly seems consistent with other bypass attempts from "The Return of the Archons" and "Arena" where they try to send power directly to the engines...

DESALLE: The temperature, sir. It keeps rising. Reading, Mister.
CHEKOV: It's up sixty degrees in the past thirty seconds. We're burning up, sir.
KIRK: DeSalle, channel bypass power into your heat dissipation units.
DESALLE: We've already done it, Captain. It had no effect. We're cooking up here.
​

Sure!

TOS: Crystals act like super capacitors and are able to be charged up with energy and discharge energy. Part of a crystal circuit in the crystal converter assembly. Also used for detecting antimatter phenomena. The Enterprise uses 4 crystals for full power utilization. They are not used to regulate M/AM reaction.

TOS Movies: They appear to be a Giant Crystal (compare to the smaller fist-sized TOS crystals or largish paddles) but do not regulate M/AM reaction. They appear to be necessary for energy storage and utilization.

TNG: A Giant Crystal (compare to the smaller fist-sized TOS crystals or largish paddles) regulate M/AM reaction in the warp core. It is necessary for M/AM reaction and to generate warp plasma.

 

In my layout, decks 6 and 7 comprise the rim of the saucer. There isn't room for anything substantial in the rim part of deck 7. The Engineering set wont fit, especially if you want to stick to the set layout. There just isn't 24 feet of clear deck space. The set would fit veritically, but not with the undercut. I moved it up to deck 6 and made the ceiling lower, but the deck plan the same.

 

In answer, let me quote Spock; "I believe I just said that". Unless I misunderstood your question, which is entirely possible.

Yes, his hand gesture isn't very specific, which is why I don't put quite as much weight on it as "TUC" reference, best not to get too preoccupied with it. But taken together with the other evidence from the show that I mentioned (and a few others) I think Occam's Razor applies and the simplest solution that fits all the factoids is that he's gesturing in the general direction of the warp drive engine nacelles.

I suppose so. If we really were Thermions watching this show without any additional reference sources then we really would be in a pickle, but fortunately we do have supplemental material at our disposal to help us figure these things out. My feeling is that TMOST's deck by deck description is far more consistent with the show than it is inconsistent, which is in itself strong evidence that it is based on discussions with the writing staff, who then used this info to inform their scripts, at least throughout most of the second season, and if it's good enough for them then it's good enough for me.

The episode is frustratingly unclear on this point, but I chalk this up to Roddenberry's directive to never go into to much exposition on how things work. YMMV. but the point is we are told that the they can't switch to bypass circuits because they burned them all out (and burned out circuits = burned out crystals) before they lose their last (primary circuit?) crystal. So that -plus Kirk's desire to get six total crystals later on- in effect tells us, in a round about way, that they did lose more than just the four crystals specifically called out earlier.

Well, we have the same problem if we assume that the 6 crystals Kirk wants include two spares or backups, why not four spare/backup crystals -one for each of the four crystal/circuits- for a total of 8? Or better yet, why not 12 crystal/circuits to account for the 6 drawers or bins we see in "TAF" (each holding two crystals)? I do not think we've exhausted the possibilities when it comes to filling in the gaps for TOS Tech. Maybe the two bypass crystals rely on the other four somehow, or vice versa?

The point of the whole mental exorcise is to try to account for why Kirk wants six crystals in "MW" even though they only apparently burned out four, and why in "TAF" the phenomena drains "almost all" their crystal and yet no effects were noticeable from power loss, and we only see four crystals being re-amplified (the same four later stolen) -suggesting that the remainder of their full compliment of crystals were still in place doing their job, so 4 out of 6 would qualify as "almost all", IMHO.

 

I think you actually just drew the secondary hull of TAS Enterprise without knowing it:
https://www.hobbytalk.com/bbs1/4460081-post8.html

Hmm...

Show me some more...

 

Nice catch. Pure accident on my part. I never considered the TAS Enterprise, but now seeing it, it doesn't look half bad. I notice the TAS-E rear two windows are at flight deck level. It also explains how they park six shuttlecraft on the roomy flight deck.

 

Maybe it would be asking for too much--but I'd like to see your far from limited skill in fleshing out a good TAS side view.

 

Sorry, but this is not in my wheel house (painfully slow). The base intent of my thread was to discuss engine rooms. Shuttlebay discussions and ship drawings was a tangent.

 

Not a bad solution.

Hows this? One crystal in each of two engine rooms, maybe doing the TNG reaction regulation thing; four in the room seen in "The Alternative Factor" used for main power generation, system power, and bypass circuits. Total of 6. (In Mudd's women they burned out two more during a commercial break, lol. Simple.

P.S. Maybe one big crystal is enough in TNG because it can be recrystallized, and therefore justifies the nomenclature changes form a variety of terms for different functions to just "warp core."

 

I believe I was questioning the perceived necessity to cram the engineering section onto the saucer rim rather than spreading it out.

I'm going to disagree. Applying Occam's Razor it would appear that Scotty was just pointing out the glowy cathedral area that would technically be part of the engines (the stardrive). Plus he was about to go into problems with the circuits before he got cutoff.

Okay, let's get into TMOST then. P174-175 gets it wrong on the Sickbay location. It states Deck 7 but in series ("Elaan Of Troyus") it's actually Deck 5. Also on P175, TMOST describes Deck 7 primarily Sickbay and labs with the outer section a "protective shell" complex of water and other bulk storage and the computer core between Decks 7 and 8. This goes against Deck 7 being a place for an engineering section. P171 speaks of the impulse engine and main engineering facilities at the "bottom rear end of the saucer" and it's apparent that when you look at the cutaway on P177 that is where they meant it to be with the 2 story area drawn in. Too bad it's literally in the neck and super narrow in actuality. And if we examine the primary hull that is supposed to have 11 decks according to TMOST, it's really 7 or 8 decks that is of human height but you *can* get 11 decks if you count the super short ones below the bridge, the top and bottom domes and the short level above the bottom dome. So, yeah, we can use TMOST, but you'll want to use the TMOST version of the Enterprise to make it all work out.

Not all burned out circuit = crystals. "WNMHGB" had a burned out point (metal cylinder thing) in a circuit in the impulse deck. "Main circuits" that didn't involve crystals were burned through in "The Enemy Within". Keeping to Occam's Razor, only the circuits called out as Lithium circuits burned out crystals. The bypass circuits would simply be circuits that route around the crystals.

Well that's the mystery that we play with

"The Alternative Factor" is a different setup with paddles instead of crystals - and very well could be operating with 12 paddles at 2 paddles per circuit (hypothetically).

Why should we have seen noticeable power loss effects given the ship wasn't under duress? Was the Enterprise extending her shields around a distant ship or trying to blast a moon in half? At most she was had shields and phasers on alert status. And we are told that the noticeable effects were an orbital decay in 10 hours so she probably was coasting. Now if she came under attack we would have definitely seen a more noticeable power loss, IMHO.

As said, not according to dialogue. It would've taken longer to fall out of orbit but they weren't under duress or in need of using lots of power so the ship could be nearly drained of energy at this point.

Notice that this episode points out that the loss of the first 2 crystals is preventing the ship from operating at full power. If the bypass circuits were really crystal circuits then it would be a simple matter of moving the 2 bypass crystals over to replace the 2 lost crystals to restore full power capability but that apparently isn't the case so in the TAF setup the bypass circuits are unlikely to be crystal circuits.

Captain's log, stardate 3088.7. We are no closer to finding an answer to the strange phenomenon than we were at the beginning. Not only have two of my crewmen been attacked, two of our dilithium crystals are missing,and without them the Enterprise cannot operate at full power. They must be found.​

In TNG the single big crystal is used for regulating the M/AM reaction into warp plasma. We know in "Peak Performance" that tiny dilthium chips in the warp core and AM fuel can run a ship like the Hathaway at warp speed.

In DS9, Enterprise and Voyager they change up the phrase to call it the "Dilithium Matrix" in the warp core which is absent from the TNG series. The recrystallization isn't present in the earlier Enterprise series though.

 

I'm afraid that TMoST suffers from the same inconsistency as the series itself. The deck descriptions and the cross section were done by different people and don't agree. And in the cross section there is no 2 story engineering space that we ever see in the series. it has things drawn in that we never witnessed. I'm sticking strictly to the text description of the saucer because that is what the TMP crew were using (by way, I think, of Franz Joseph). TMoST never describes any other deck contents, only saying that the secondary hull was given over to engineering and the hangar. So there I have made use of the cross section, but only so far as the contents go. For the decks I have gone by the windows on the exterior which create a different deck layout. The series itself is even more vague than TMoST and the only thing we ever get in the series to indicate where season 2/3 Main Engineering is comes in the way of a special effect from The Day of the Dove. And we all know how reliable the special effects were. Still, that places it on the same deck as the TMoST cross section does, although a bit forward.

I seem to remember that different episodes used different deck designations for the same location. And with 3 different descriptions of the interior, it isn't surprising. We have Matt Jeffereis cross section which shows 9 decks in the saucer, the season 2 writer's bible listing 11, and the season 1 writer's bible listing 20. So in any episode with a deck reference you have to ask which version they were going by or did they just make it up and did the staff writers bother to correct it. My understanding of Roddenberry's main rewrite focus was to make the story work for the series and be outstanding. So how often did they bother to correct technical details, especially when one of their stated goals was to be vague and leave things unexplained. That is why I don't hold to a strict interpretation of everything in the series. They were using a different standard. It would drive the Thermians insane to try to reconcile all the contradictions. 20 years later when TNG came along, they realized fans cared about those things so they started keeping better track and making things more consistent. I think they Thermians could make an ENT D and even the Refit, but the TOS Enterprise would have them squabbling over details like we are. Without the outside sources and later canon to go by, a lot of these things just have too many variable answers.

I long ago ceased to imagine that there would ever be a consensus on some of these thing, though I had never delved into all the various ways the engineering systems were referenced and that is even more confusing that settling on the length of the ship and how many decks it has. And my project is not just one ship. I am trying to work out the systems of 5 ships simultaniously (TOS Ent, TMP Ent, TFF/TUC Ent, TSFS Excelsior, and Ent B). So I'm looking across a span time (3 years our time, 100 years Trek time) to fill in the gaps and produced somthing logical and functional. I've only glanced at the NX-01 design and left it alone as it is an older system. They only thing I took from it was the horizontal nature of the warp core (which seems to be supported by That Which Survives). So many of the creative drawings of the TOS Enterprise internal systems fail when you run them through the gauntlet of what we see on screen. Even Doug Drexler's drawings for In A Mirror Darkly don't line up with what we see in the show (he has the pipe cathedral as part of the warp drive with the pipes angled the other way and butting up to the hangar). So even in that last appearance of the TOS design we have some further differences. They also gave us some additional sets, which no one in this thread seems to be using (including myself).

I'm hoping in this thread we can continue to whittle down the number of possibilities to something reasonable that can inform the projects we are working on. My drawings are mostly of the equipment, not the function, so I hope my drawings will be like the TOS Enterprise - adaptable to many theories.