Can you walk around inside the engine nacelles?

Well they did it in Enterprise, and they even have some kind of small control room near the front end of each nacelle which I assume is for monitoring stuff but with the engines running that control room would be off limits so it's not really useful at all.

But apart from the NX01 Enterprise did any of the other Enterprises have access to the warp nacelles, or was that the exception? By access I mean could you get into them from inside the ship and walk around like they did in Enterprise?

 

Three Enterprises have had people traipsing inside supposed nacelles:

NX-01 in ENT "Catwalk"; the engines had to be shut down first.
NCC-1701 in TAS "One of Our Planets Is Missing"; the engines had died first.
NCC-1701-D in TNG "Eye of the beholder"; only a small control cabin, but the engines were in varying states of activity during the adventure.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Those Discovery nacelles would make a great jogging track for the Command Training Program candidates.
I haven't seen them show the inside of a nacelle.
The Galaxy class had accessible nacelles but think they only got shown once or twice.

 

Not while they're turned on.

Unless they find a plot reason where it has to happen and then suddenly it'll be okay.

 

Troi would totally do that to Geordi.

 

They have forcefields you can jump through, and skeletons in the walls!

 

TAS Kirk and Scott walking inside an idling nacelle:

I think there were only 8 sets of the plasma discharge tubes along the catwalk length. Kirk and Scott were going to the aft section with some antimatter to recharge the engine for a restart. Supports the concept that there is a matter-antimatter reactor in the nacelle.

 

That seems odd isn't the MARA in the lower hull?

 

The heroes are kickstarting their engine. Might be the equivalent of using a hand crank or even a gunpowder charge to force the cylinders of a combustion engine to move, wholly apart from the regular method of operating.

Indeed, the dialogue refers to "the antimatter nacelle" specifically, even though there are two nacelles. Perhaps only the portside one is equipped with the kickstarting chamber?

Timo Saloniemi

 

well, suposidly.. the warp engines were supose to be an "all Included" with the reactor in the nacelle, but latter decided to have the MA/AM reactor to the Eng hull.

Now for the nacelles, I think it has been established that one can walk around inside via a catwalk, control room etc. but has to be de powered. I'd think, logically, one whould have to have this ability to effect maintence on the nacelles.

 

Not originally. The original idea for the nacelles were future versions of airplane engines. These creators and designers of TOS were all WWII veterans. They took their real life experience and projected forward. Nacelles were like the big propellers on bombers. Those were the plane's power plants. The nacelles were envisioned as the power plant. This is why the idea of adding more nacelles meant adding more power was such a big idea back in the day.

Nacelles, as the power reactors, were mounted on struts away from the habitable areas so the radiation didn't kill people.

Then TMP came along and the idea shifted to a single M/AM reactor in the engineering hull. Since the original idea of nacelles being the power reactors was never stated explicitly, the TMP and TNG idea is assumed to always have been the intent.

This is fine and all but it creates the fan problem of adding nacelles to a design no longer makes sense. You see these uber ship designs with 47 nacelles as if those nacelles were supposed to do something. With the M/AM reactor in the main hull, adding more and more nacelles doesn't mean anything any longer.

Now with the TMP/TNG idea, the nacelles only function is to warp space and create a subspace warp bubble.

 

So the modern idea is that the nacelle is the propeller while the antimatter reactor is the steam turbine powering the propeller. A ship might have one big powerplant and four propellers to channel the output, or two powerplants geared into a single prop; a starship might be similarly configured in several ways to best translate power to motion.

Having the nacelles "put distance between radiating bits and crew" never made an ounce of sense, though: the pylons do their damnedest to place the nacelles right next to the crew compartment.

Timo Saloniemi

 

I thought there were three M/AM reactors with the small one in the engineering hull dilithium crystal regulated for antimatter production.

 

Oh they're called MAMs..... I call them MARAS Matter Antimatter Reactor Assembly

 

Very little of the clumsy NASAspeak in the TNG Tech Manual actually makes it into onscreen dialogue or even onscreen Okudagrams. For the heroes, the power-producing bit of the warp drive chain is "the warp core", plain and simple.

Except for the TOS heroes, whose drive chain apparently was more complex, potentially featuring many reactors, none of which warrant mention. Only impulse reactors appear to be discussed.

Timo Saloniemi

 

I wouldn't call a concept that was dropped 40 years ago modern, but, hey, whatever warps your starship.

I have wondered if the angled Jefferies Tube that Scotty worked in on TOS was supposed to be inside the nacelle support pylons.

 

I figured the "Warp Nacelles" were supposed to similar to modern Turbo-Fan jets as unit that propels the StarShips FTL.

While the M/AM would be the Power Plant that generated the power to feed those Turbo-Fan's.

Star Trek would borrow concepts from both Aircraft & Maritime Ship engineering basics when it came to StarShips.

 

My head canon:

1. At warp, the ship acts as a jet plane. The two big wing mounted warp engines burn antimatter fuel with matter for power:
   1. Matter is sucked in by magnetic field ram-scoops similar to jet engine air-intakes.
   2. The matter is processed and stored for use in the warp engines and the third M/AM reactor.
   3. The neck pylon resembles the vertical stabilization tail of a plane.
2. At impulse, the ship acts as a naval vessel with underwater propellers. The saucer top spine act as the ship's impulse keel/rudder. The impulse engines are powered by:
   1. Main power provided by the third M/AM reactor,
   2. Power diverted from the warp engines, or
   3. Secondary power from fusion reactors and emergency batteries.
3. A third M/AM reactor was installed in the engineering hull to:
   1. Provide main power for other ship functions,
   2. Produce antimatter fuel, and
   3. Supplement additional power to the warp engines.
4. Main power:
   1. Is for other ship functions (deflector shields, phasers, sensors, life support, matter processing, etc.)
   2. Can also be supplemented by power diverted from the warp engines, or
   3. Can also be supplemented by secondary power from fusion reactors and emergency batteries.

 

In My Head Cannon, the M/AM reactor or MARAS (Matter Antimatter Reactor Assembly) <- Can't figure out which is the better or more apt acronym> is the power generator and the Electro Plasma is the main form of transfering energy across the vessel to the various ships systems including Warp Nacelles for FTL propulsion and Impulse Systems for STL manuevering.

Impulse has two main parts, Focused Fusion Exhaust from the Impulse Exhaust which uses EM Driver coils for controlled vector thrust and linear acceleration and Gravimetric Drives for All-Directional Manueverability. The combined two parts form the Impulse STL propulsion systems.

 

For my TOS technobabble: Gravity manipulation is king! I envision a simple gravity drive for the impulse engines, giving both forward and reverse thrust. Ship maneuvers are done via the ship's impulse rudder which also uses gravity. The ship needs to generate an inertial dampening field (another gravity system) to maintain a constant one g environment. It also cancels the ship's mass out of the relativity equation (no infinite mass and infinite energy as you approach the speed of light), so, low FLT speeds are possible on impulse.

The warp engines are also huge gravity devices used to physically warp space (how else does one warp space?) and propel the ship to high FLT speeds. The ship's main deflector is another gravity device, and on and on... Of course, YMMV.