Spoilers 31st/32nd Century Ships Revealed
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Presumably they do, since otherwise the whole galaxy would have switched over to them.
Knowing the Romulans they they are probably unsafe and unstable, but are used anyway.
The only way to make some of these ships into toys would be to immerse them in UV hardened plastic ellipses, that being the deflector bubble
Yep because no one still names things after King Arthur, or Jesus Christ, or Alexander the Great, Hannibal...
R
RichT
Guest
They shouldn't do, because they don't use antimatter, and dilithium is there to moderate the matter/antimatter reaction. Rick Sternbach provided a detailed description of how Romulan warp drives work for the Starfleet Technical Database in Star Trek Magazine. Beta canon, of course, but it's also a logical extrapolation. What else would the artificial singularity be there for, if the Romulan ships had conventional matter-antimatter annilhilation-based power sources?
Go rewatch TOS - "Mudd's Women", where it's specifically stated that the dilithium is used to channel the power of the matter/antimatter reactors through the ship. In fact:
http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/4.htm
So now the dilithium is not used to regulate the matter antimatter reaction it's used to channel the power from the reaction into usable power for the ship. And it's been that way since TOS.
so yes it's possible that the Romulans do need dilithium for the same reason; to channel the power generated by the artificial singularity through their ships systems and warp nacelles.
so sorry in this case it appears the people writing for Discovery have actually watched Star Trek.
That's impossible! Everyone knows that Kurtzman hates Star Trek and wants to replace it with his own!
R
RichT
Guest
Only the most advanced 24th century Warbirds use singularity engines. Sternbach's article specifically states that they didn't begin work on the singularity designs until after 2311. Matter/antimatter designs in the 23rd century, particularly as part of the Romulan/Klingon alliance, are entirely believable, especially as the Klingons continue to use M/A drives into the 24th century.
I do love how the quote you use to back up your argument about dilithium is explicitly about lithium though.
"Regulating annihilation" is bullshit to begin with - matter and antimatter annihilating is a real-world phenomenon that can be regulated in a thousand ways, say, by regulating the injection of reactants. Or toying with forcefields, if you want a Trek spin on it.
But the backstage role of dilithium, while not quite explicitly spelled out, has almost made it into canon dialogue. ENT "Bound" features one of 'em Orions suckering one of Archer's crew into revealing state secrets (although we don't quite learn if this bit here is among those):
Of course, Kelby there is drunk with pheromones and would say "That's right" if D'Nesh stated that dilithium reversed the polarity of the magnetic constrictors. Or that Kelby ought to behead his CO and take command.
Getting power out of antimatter, or black holes, is not magic. But moving at warp is. It's natural to think that dilithium is a necessary mediator there, turning raw power of various sorts into warp power, which then moves through warp plasma to warp coils and makes magic happen.
We could of course argue that only the coils are magic, and stuff until then is semi-plausible physics. But since we do know that dilithium is important and unreal, it sounds like a better idea to draw the line between reality and magic right there.
Timo Saloniemi
But the backstage role of dilithium, while not quite explicitly spelled out, has almost made it into canon dialogue. ENT "Bound" features one of 'em Orions suckering one of Archer's crew into revealing state secrets (although we don't quite learn if this bit here is among those):
Of course, Kelby there is drunk with pheromones and would say "That's right" if D'Nesh stated that dilithium reversed the polarity of the magnetic constrictors. Or that Kelby ought to behead his CO and take command.
Getting power out of antimatter, or black holes, is not magic. But moving at warp is. It's natural to think that dilithium is a necessary mediator there, turning raw power of various sorts into warp power, which then moves through warp plasma to warp coils and makes magic happen.
We could of course argue that only the coils are magic, and stuff until then is semi-plausible physics. But since we do know that dilithium is important and unreal, it sounds like a better idea to draw the line between reality and magic right there.
Timo Saloniemi
A Romulan/Klingon alliance in the 23rd century is pure speculation at this point. As is everything Sternbach says about the AQS system, or indeed most things he says about Trek in general. For some reason, writers are reluctant to lift chapters from the Tech Manuals even when resolving the week's crisis involves <tech>.
Interestingly enough, our heroes had the opportunity to study at least one semi-modern Romulan spacecraft in TNG, namely the reputed science vessel in "The Next Phase". That vessel was having warp core problems specifically, so it's at least possible that LaForge got a good look at that ship's main powerplant there. He clearly learned nothing about the AQS system yet, though - it's still news when Troi gets handed this nugget in "Face of the Enemy". Proof that at least some Romulan ships had conventional powerplants at the time? Probably not, considering they could simply have kept the nature of their system secret from their benefactors. LaForge only calls it a "pretty strange setup" before it has to be jettisoned and explodes...
Actually, that's 'lithium. That is, we hear of paralithium and trilithium as alternates to dilithium in the course of Trek, so it makes sense to use a collective name for all these three and perhaps more.
Timo Saloniemi
R
RichT
Guest
And both those methods are clearly used in conjunction with dilithium already. There's many different ways to moderate nuclear fission in a modern nuclear power station but it doesn't mean we only use one. Using multiple methods in multiple ways gives us much greater control.
That's not backed up by anything on screen and is contradicted by the Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual, which does very much give the impression that, yes, only the coils are magic (and are also made out of unreal materials).
*cough* "The Enterprise Incident" *cough*
That wasn't a Warbird. I daresay that were the situation reversed a Starfleet runabout would be much less of a technological prize to the Romulans than a Galaxy class starship.
Actually, that's 'lithium. That is, we hear of paralithium and trilithium as alternates to dilithium in the course of Trek, so it makes sense to use a collective name for all these three and perhaps more.
That's against both the original script and the intent of the production team at the time, where it was explicitly crystals of elemental lithium being used. Also, paralithium and trilithium are not "alternates" to dilithium in the show, merely substances that are somehow related, and the relationship between the three has never been clearly established. In any case, referring to any of them as "'lithium" is incredibly confusing, given that a) there's a real element of that name that they seem to have at best only a tenuous relationship with, and b) you probably want to avoid ambiguity when discussing exactly which magic crystal your starship is dependent on.
Or at least as parts of a machine that also uses dilithium in some role. Which Kelby seems to admit as being "controlling the reaction", but that's as close as we get in terms of technobabble.
Yet the Manual isn't particularly relevant to onscreen events - and while the coils appear magical, so does the plasma that connects them to the dilithium end (it's special all by itself, such as in VOY "Fair Trade"). The special bit about dilithium in this respect is that out of all the unreal things, it's the one that actually borders on the real, that is, on mundane annihilation of deuterium and antideuterium.
Are you allergic to it or something?
No, the episode never mentions or suggests any sort of an alliance. Nor does any other episode as such, although "Reunion" does have Riker speak about a "new alliance" as a potential threat. This doesn't semantically necessitate the existence of an old one, though.
Hard to tell. We know runabouts run on antimatter, although we never heard of dilithium aboard runabouts. Conversely, we never learn of any clear-cut difference between small and large Romulan spacecraft.
What do you base this claim on?
Also, you can't have "crystals of elemental lithium" - trust me. The production team may have been ill advised on that issue, perhaps. But I rather doubt this ever happened, either. Far more probably, they thought "lithium" was a made-up word, just like their desired material was a piece of make-believe.
Paralithium is poor man's lithium in "The Chute", and tirlithium was on Booker's list of alternatives to dilithium in "That Hope Is You", so yes, they are exactly that. (Also, we know that paralithium and dilithium both turn into trilithium, as per "The Chute" and "Starship Mine".)
OTOH, if the three really are more or less interchangeable, and you can also throw in some cislithium and translithium and homolithium and whatnot, why worry? You already know which sort your starship uses.
Our one alternative would be to think that Scotty somehow suddenly switched crystals during early TOS. Hardly a superior proposition.
Timo Saloniemi
I'm just saying that in 930 from the 23rd century surely there are plenty if people and places of repute that ships can be named for. I think ship names were too earth-centric even by the 24th century and woukd be good to see deviation from that in the 32nd century.Yep because no one still names things after King Arthur, or Jesus Christ, or Alexander the Great, Hannibal...
Do we not need to know how the warp coils are powered and exactly with what substances to make the link between dilithium catalyzing M/AM reactions to working warp coils?
Not really.
Need? No, we don't need it in the slightest. It's a precipitating event to set up the current stage.
Want? Yeah, fans are going to want charts on this stuff.
Speak for yourself. I hate technobabble with a passion. TOS went three seasons with only occasionally giving some ridiculous technobabblee explanation here and there; and more often than not they were short one or two liners.
When TNG hit the airwaves; It seemed they couldn't go 20 minutes without somebody spending five of those minutes relating some ridiculous technobabble explanation. And more often than not the last 5 minutes of any episode of TNG was rife with such techno babble because they had to explain how they altered their deflector dish to I met the particle of the week that fixed everything.
The less technobabble the better.
For me, as somebody who is technical IRL, once I understood how the internal tech worked along with reading the expanded technical manuals and watching it line up with the Technobabble for the most part, it added to the sense of "Realism" to the technology of the world.
And when I speak to people IRL about subject specific matter, we do use technical terms that most normies wouldn't understand, so there is realism in that aspect depending on subject matter.
As with all things, it depends on how it is applied. In general, I agree. The technobabble becomes inane, basically like talking about industry inside information in front of those not in the field. It's rude, insulting and generally designed to sound more important than it actually is.
I view technobabble in a similar capacity. Useful, on a highly limited basis.
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