Did pre refit constitution class ships have vertical warp cores?

I've always taken those as conduits that go up the pylons to the warp nacelles.

 

That only works if you ignore the length of chamber implied by the forced-perspective set (around 100 feet) or the true shape of the set (as per the Franz Joseph deck plans)

 

I guess one problem there is that the curvature of the ceiling (in the early versions at least) suggests this facility is off to one side, meaning every piece of machinery there is non-centrally mounted. Are these things duplicated port/starboard? Scattered across the volume willy-nilly in unknown numbers? Only present in single mounts of central importance even though mounted asymmetrically?

I'd love for Kirk's ship to have multiple "boilers", even if there's always a single key component for Scotty to fix in a crisis (after all, we only have one Scotty). Earlier and more advanced ships both would have an excuse to utilize just one "boiler", or one "turbine"...

Timo Saloniemi

 

No they didn't.

 

I don't think so. Based on onscreen evidence the original Enterprise appears to have had three matter anti-matter reactors. Two were likely the glowing balls on the end of each nacelle and the third is presumably in the engineering hull.

 

In one episode Kirk refer to reactors two, four and six (can't remember the title). I take this to mean that there are a total of six reactors, three reactors in each nacelle.

No reactor in the engineering section, they're kept at a distance in the nacelles, and run remotely.

 

I don't recall there ever being that many reactors mentioned on the show.
In Journey To Babel Kirk does order photon torpedoes two, four and six to be fired at the intruder, maybe that is what you're thinking of?
In Catspaw Lieutenant DeSalle ordered the output of reactors 1, 2 and 3 in to some relay stations.
In Day Of The Dove the alien being was detected in the engineering section, near reactor number three.

 

The "Catspaw" piece would suggest the existence of more than three reactors, or DeSalle would say "all" (unless he's a Herbert 1st Grade, and probably isn't). But those appeared to be impulse reactors in context.

Whatever we see in the DSC short could tie in to just about any of the previously seen bits. The thing on top? The TAS cover, perhaps. The verticalglowiness in the middle? The TNG core, or the TMP conduits. The armored orange glow beneath? The ENT core, or some TAS stuff, or hints at the sphere of the JJShip. Or this could be its own thing.

What is remarkable about that one is the empty spaces surrounding the doodad. Why have that? Is something supposed to move (up, down, sideways?)? Are the glowing boxes erecting a spherical field around the thing, and instead of space we actually have an invisible wall there? Is the space supposed to accommodate activities that are not currently underway, something besides power generation ops, or something that applies when the ship actually goes to warp?

Timo Saloniemi

 

Minor correction. Propellers do not generate power. Engines, in the nacelles, generate power, which is fed through driveshafts to the propellers, which use that power to generate thrust.

 

On the other hand, in aircraft a propeller and an engine are intimately mated: it's pretty seldom that two engines would turn one propeller (some Nazi experiments aside), and basically never that one engine would turn two propellers (engines that have contra-rotating props tend to functionally be two engines in one shell). In the naval world, this is far from said, and umpteen boilers might make half a dozen pistons or turbines turn either one screw or then four.

Starships might benefit from the flexibility of the latter analogy, is all. Even a fairly rigid system, like the mechanical coupling of four steam turbines to four propellers in US carriers, could feature wild cards such as the number of nuclear reactors used for providing the steam; likewise, a starship might undergo major changes inside while the "propellers" remained much the same.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Agreed, that is an important distinction, a distinction in how power from engines is directed to the motivating technology. In a somewhat similar vein, Lamboghini used to (and for all I know, still continues to) have their V-12s function as two V-6s connected to a common crankshaft, with each motor having individual ignition system,, fuel delivery, etc. . This was done to bypass stricter emissions regulations for larger motors, especially since the "larger" V-12 was actually only a four liter motor, when most domestic V-8s at the time were in excess of five liters.

 

Negative. Contra-rotating props were usually run from a single engine, via a gearbox. EG the late model Spitfires, used a Rolls Royce Griffon V-12 driving a geared contra-prop. The post-war Westland Wyverne was a turbo-prop, using a single turbine to run its contra-prop. Yes, there WERE compound engines too, but not exclusively.

 

The Wright brothers had one engine and two propellers. So it is possible.

 

Ha the impracticality of that gap is the first thing I saw too. But we are talking about a ship that tries to blind it's bridge crew with high intensity lights

 

Not everyone agrees, but I go by what we saw in That Which Survives. The antimatter valve is stuck open and the ship is racing and going to tear itself apart. Scotty crawls into a horizontal tube that appears to be parallel to the anti-matter stream. He is able to fix it and slow the ship. That implies to me a horizontal component. And then in Elaan of Troyius we find that the structure on the floor in main engineering holds dilithium crystals. So when you put the pieces together, they have a horizontal warp core on the deck below engineering. From the dialog and sets I have also assumed that the season 1 Engine Room is in the saucer and that object behind the grille is the auxilliary engergizer and the 2nd and 3rd season Engine Room is in the secondary hull and that one has the main energizer. The matter/anti-matter mix feeds to the energizers to power the ship. The one in the saucer can be supplemented by fusion reactors to power the saucer when separated. Many people mistake the TMP design to be the same as the TNG design, but in the TMP design, the matter/anti-matter reaction happens at the base of the vertical shaft. The shafts feed to the impulse deck and the warp Nacelles. We are not told what happens in the nacelles. From the TOS description there is something happening there as well. But we never get another description again until TNG. And there the reaction is entirely in the engineering hull and only plasma goes to the warp engines. So it really depends on how much you want to pay attention to every line of TOS dialog. If that is important, then that design had to have at least 3 reactors, one in the secondary hull and one in each nacelle (at a minimum). If you want to fit it in with the greater lineage of ships, then it had one warp core, horizontal, in the secondary hull. It is really your personal preference.

And that MSD is from Enterprise and was done by Doug Drexler. It is for a much larger ship than the 947 one all the older documentation gives. It straightens out the "Pipes" structure at the back of engineering and has those pipes go up to the nacelles. It has some nice details, but it gets many things wrong. I consider it a source of inspiration, but I've relied more on Jefferies cross section which shows a vertical structure going up three decks. But the reason I don't link that to the "pipes" is that for Phase II Jefferies had both something behind the grille and a verticle shaft. So I keep them separate for all TOS concepts.

But there was a thread where this was debated endlessly and there were several camps that were mutually exclusive. I prefer to take TOS as separate, but part of the whole, and link to episodes that fit with later developments, but there are also many episodes where you get the impression that the powerful reaction is in the nacelles and that is where all the power is generated. Like the engine/propeller analogy above. Enterprise kind of established what an inclusive design lineage would be without mandating it. So when it comes to TOS and what it has to say, you can almost make it fit anything depending on what episodes you consider important.

 

Which I find interesting since I think he was proponent of the 289 meter length.

 

It's not that much off. Counting pixels, the 289 meter length figure gives deck height of 2,2 - 2,5 meters from floor to ceiling, pretty close to the 8 feet or 2,4 meters from Matt Jefferies' original plans. Though the human figures are rather short.

Also, aren't all proper spaceships bigger on the inside?

 

Both the figures and features (rooms, shuttles, etc) are all scaled to about 10 foot deck heights. Plus the saucer has 11 decks. So the ship has to be around 1300' long to accomodate that scale interior.

 

Aren't all TV/film sets in general?