Did pre refit constitution class ships have vertical warp cores?

My preferred model is that reactors 1 and 2 are located in the nacelles and reactor 3 is in the engineering hull. These are the three M/AM reactors for the ship. There are additional fusion reactors to power the impulse drive and auxiliary power.

The M/AM drives have to run as a set, with the central reactor (No. 3) being the less powerful one, but needed to provide a timing coordination between the two main reactors in the nacelles. So, sabotaging this central reactor can disable the whole system. This allows for repeated references both on screen and behind the scenes to the nacelles being the main "power pods" where the bulk of the energy come from.

This fits into the ENT-TNG continuity by saying that the NX class technology allowed for a central reactor to power all the systems, but over the years, the engine technology of the 23rd Century outpaced the reactor technology and multiple, distributed reactors are needed to provided the necessary power. But by the refit-era, reactor technology was catching up and the choice was made to go back to the one main reactor set-up.

How this fits in to the STD continuity is not my problem as I don't accept that series as Prime Universe and don't see that it needs to fit in.

--Alex

 

Work in progress:
I'm growing on that the "intermix" nomenclature applies to mixing the dilithium crystal "magic energy" fuel additive during the M/AM reaction in the secondary hull. The dilithium crystal assembly somehow extracts/pulls the "magic energy" out of the crystals and injects it into the M/AM reactor. This generates the "intermix". I think the pipe structure is a plasma manifold needed to combine multiple lower power plasma streams taken from the M/AM reaction chamber into one powerful plasma stream. For some reason, loss of the dilithium crystals stops all M/AM power generation, so, the "magic energy" must be needed for controlling the M/AM reactions. The "magic energy" may also carried be along (i.e. intermixed) with the highly energized plasma (now the "warp plasma") to the warp engines. So, fundamentally, you need two components for warp drive, one, very highly energetic plasma from the M/AM reactions, and two, dilithium crystal "magic energy" needed for M/AM reaction control and/or for a fuel additive. For TOS, the intermixed warp plasma from the hull is injected into each engine's M/AM reactor (even more highly energized plasma) before going into the warp engine/coils. For TMP, the single M/AM reactor in the hull became powerful enough to eliminate the two M/AM reactors in the nacelles. In TNG, the dilithium crystals are incorporated directly into the M/AM reaction chamber, so, a separate dithiuim crystal floor doohickey or dithium crystal death room is no longer needed.

Could the "magic energy" be dark energy or dark matter particles? If particles, then "magic dust" may be more appropriate. YMMV .

 

Don't come in here with your reality and logic nonsense

 

DSC is actually of great help here, as the show features an engine room that is basically one out of at least two, considered "secondary", located off-center and at an angle, and dedicated to harebrained experiments. We have been given no clear reason to believe in a single m/am reactor or "warp core" in that show, and their big science barge could in fact well be a multi-boiler monster, with a couple of reactors in each nacelle for good measure.

(I'm pretty sure that the never-seen Chief Engineer is working on the "actual" warp core or cores, keeping the ship moving, while our heroes dabble in their silly experiments and drain power from their own spare m/am doodad, and never bother the CEO with their mushroom rituals.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

That's cool. You do you. In addition to not being Prime Universe, Discovery is (and I say this purely as a matter of my own opinion) poorly written drivel with no care for continuity to what came before. I can happily take as canon little tidbits regarding the TOS E from "Trials and Tribble-ations" or "In a Mirror Darkly" as those shows were definitely respecting what came before and their additions made sense.

I feel that the TOS canon is closed and I'll be very difficult to persuade elsewise.

--Alex

P.S. To you Discovery fans out there, I don't mean any of that as a personal attack on you. I'm glad you're enjoying the show.
--AM

 

In TNG and maybe the others we often hear of main engineering. Do we ever see or hear about another engineering room? I know Voyager used it's secondary core and I think all ships had one but as a back up and not working alongside the main core

 

Back-up warp cores just ruin good plot ploys.

 

Not to mention a healthy reserve supply of starboard power couplings, which seem to explode inexplicably every other episode.

Seems like a design flaw to me, and an excellent plot device for repeated use in Lower Decks.

 

I don't recall Voyager ever even mentioning their secondary warp core, let alone using it.
Or did you mean to imply that the crew probably salvaged it for parts during the series run?

 

The apocryphal refit NX-01 apparently was supposed to have dual warp cores. The new 2021 SOTL calendar has an MSD in it showing this.

 

Ever since TOS, engineering spaces have been multi-room affairs - but actual dialogue references to, say, "Impulse Engineering" or "Engine Room Three" or the like do not exist. Those are fandom inventions or stuff to be found in novels or backstage sources.

DSC does call its engine room "Test Bay Alpha" in dialogue, and implies a separation from the ship's unseen Main Engineering.

That Janeway's ship would have a second warp core or a second computer core is only implied by the MSD graphics, and there are several plotlines that actually hinge on the ship only possessing a single working warp core or a single working computer core.

The assumption then is that nothing works "alongside" the main stuff. If the second examples (or other MSD things such as the aeroshuttle supposedly dangling below the primary hull) exist at all, they may be idle backups that require weeks of work to bring to life - or they may be hardware deliberately left ashore during the ship's first mission.

Timo Saloniemi

 

It would be entirely canonical for Starfleet vessels to have redundant backups, both at the micro and macro level. O'Brien constantly touted these redundancies every time something failed on DS-9 and bemoaned their absence in the Cardassian station's infrastructure.

 

Indeed. It's just that the one ship for which major backups have been indicated, in that MSD, is also the one ship that never could have had those backups - theft of the one and only core leaves the ship high and dry in "Day of Honor" (warp core) and "Concerning Flight" (computer core), respectively.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Doug Drexler planned it that way. The bigger Warp 7 core would have been experimental and potentially dangerous, so in case of catastrophic failure the ship would ditch the whole secondary hull and return to the original configuration.

 

Putting a belt and suspenders onto a ship isn't unheard of by any means. Basically, the Titanic also had that arrangement: reciprocating engines directly driving the outer two screws, and a turbine to make use of the slowly cooling wisps of leftover steam to likewise directly drive the central screw. Needlessly complicated, but perfectly functional for a transitional period in propulsion system development.

Would the Constitution be transitional? Perhaps not originally, but the design supposedly has some age on her in TOS already. Whatever Starfleet did to her in TMP and possibly DSC might be considered transitional, or remedial, or experimental; it might well entail overlapping power systems in each case.

Timo Saloniemi

 

You know what show was also written with no care for continuity to what came before? The original Star Trek! That's why fans have spend decades coming up with complicated theories of the inner workings of the Enterprise to make all the conflicting canonical statements work. You're doing it yourself fanwanking about 3 M/AM reactors with the one in the secondary hull needed for coordination etc., when in reality the TOS writers didn't give a crap about those details and it's honestly a bit annoying when fans talk shit about Discovery and call it poorly written drivel because of minor inconsistencies that really don't matter in the big picture while TOS contradicting itself for three years straight is explained away because of reasons.

If you don't like Discovery that's fine but don't hold it to higher standards than other shows and pretend TOS was somehow a continuity masterpiece.

 

Your right google tells me it was the main core that was ejected on multiple occasions

 

Eh, TOS had more continuity than you give it credit. That's fine. I'm not attacking you for liking a show.

But, my assessment of the poor quality of Discovery is not limited to its agreement with earlier Trek. In fact, if it was devoid of all Trek elements entirely and just an original story trying to stand on its own merits, I would still declare it poorly written drivel. It's full of dramatic payoffs that no one bothered to set up, and set-ups that go nowhere. It tries to sell emotional impact that is earned only by directing the actors to cry this time. Believe me, if the show was well written on its own merits, I would be quite forgiving about its "canon violations."

Anyway, I'm going to leave it here as I don't to derail this thread into a "why I hate CBS" diatribe. I think we've mostly had enough of that.

--Alex

 

Wow you couldn't be any more wrong. The damn thing is dripping with fan service and call backs, deep cuts and references that the causal fan would never catch.

 

Main engineering by itself implies the existence of other engineering spaces.

The only time we've ever really seen that in Trek is the Kelvin Universe movies, where main engineering was the warp core area seen in Into Darkness, and the rest of the engineering spaces reached from the deflector dish to the shuttlebay and consisted of a signals monitoring station, intermix chambers and coolant systems.