Or just elaborate use of magnetic fields along with wireless power transfer (much more advanced obviously).
Why overcomplicate?
How would detached Nacelles work?
- Thread starter yotsuya
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Or just elaborate use of magnetic fields along with wireless power transfer (much more advanced obviously).
Why overcomplicate?
Or they can be fully operational SpaceShips with their own independent Power Sources.
If each segment of a detached vessel has their own Miniaturized power source, you can see why some ships seems so much more powerful since you have multiple power sources to pull from.
Let's say a Warp Nacelle gets destroyed, you send in a replacement, attach the Warp Nacelle via software connection, boom you're off to the races.
It's not a Dry Dock procedure to fix things correctly.
It's literally "Here's a new Warp Nacelle" of the same model.
There would be HUGE logistical advantages & battlefield advantages to have the Warp Nacelles be independently powered.
Yes they could be.
But wireless transfer of power is hardly new, and we know SF makes extensive use of magnetic fields.
Their entire hulls are magnetically sealed in fact (at least in the 24th century), so it makes sense that they would likely make use of these technologies to separate and power the warp nacelles.
Nothing to date indicates that the nacelles are individually powered... and what we saw of the 32nd century, indicates, they are connected to the main hull via programmable matter.
I suspect its a combo of wifi power transfer, magnetic fields and programmable matter (since we saw on Disco that its nacelles were initially detached after completing the retrofit with programmable matter- and also when the nacelle was damaged in S3 at warp, we've also seen programmable matter again which connected the nacelle - acted as a pylon).
During warp, nacelles tend to connect to the hull anyway, they just detach them during sublight (but again, I fail to see how this actually benefits ships maneuverability because we know they had the ability to lower the entire ship's inertial mass to virtually nothing by simply establishing a low level subspace field around it and move around like fighter craft anyway).
True
But what if there is a disruption in the power transfer beam due to spatial phenomena?
That could affect the Warp Field Geometry and be enough to knock a ship out of Warp.
Having the Reactor inside the Warp Nacelle inside avoids alot of that potential issues, especially since you have EPS conduits inside the hull to route directly to the Warp Nacelle
We saw the USS Discovery-A reconnect the Warp Nacelles when they go to Warp or Spore Jump.
The actual "Real 32nd Century" era vessels never need to reconnect, they just float adjacent to their parent vessel.
Go back & watch it carefully for the scenes w/o focusing on the USS Discovery, but on the other vessels.
Remember in TNG where they had the power transfer between the Enterprise & the Romulan D'Deridex & there was a Temporal Anomaly.
They like to animate the power transfer beams if possible to give the audience a solid visual indicator.
But given that most 32nd century vessels don't connect except for Discovery-A, which was a Retro-Fit onto a much older Space Frame.
Again, that seems to be a Discovery-A specific feature, probably limitations of Retro-Fitting.
To me, a more interesting question is why they became detached in later centuries in the first place. What's the (supposed) advantage, in-universe?
Less Mass to move means it's easier to move faster/accelerate quicker with the same Thrust Impulse Engine or use a slightly smaller/lighter Impulse Engine for more efficient flight to meet the same Top Speed./ Acceleration requirements.
Easier Maintainence & in-field repair.
Hypothetically, if a Warp Nacelle is lost, you can have somebody deliver you a similar Warp Nacelle from storage and just pair it to your ship, you're back in business.
Traditionally, if a Warp Nacelle is lost, your entire ship is stuck in Dry Dock / Repair for a while.
Also, if you have to sacrifice a part of your vessel, if the Warp Nacelle takes a hit, and you have extra's in storage or nearby, it's not much of a issue to sacrifice it vs losing your people.
Also Variable Geometry Warp Fields becomes far more practical to implement instead of needing a moving pylon to reshape the field.
If you want to upgrade your Warp Nacelles to the latest model, just ship the new ones to the vessel, attach it via wireless software attachment like BlueTooth Pairing (Modern Day Reference) and you're good to go.
In the old method, you had to go to Dry Dock, remove the Warp Nacelle, attach the new one, attach all the piping & cabling. Make sure everything is locked down tight.
Test the physical connections, test alot of different things.
There's no Warp Nacelle Pylon to blow up, so that's a vulnerability that is immediately gone.
etc.
There's ALOT of logical reasons to want to seperate it, but there are other issues to consider when doing so.
1) Hacking & stealing your Warp Nacelles
2) What method are you going to use to deliver power to the Warp Nacelles, there are multiple options
3) Detached Hulls offer multiple benefits, but there are downsides as well, it might force Personal Transporters to become required. In a emergency where there's Transporter jamming, getting between parts of the vessel that are detached might become very trouble-some.
It's all about engineering trade-offs.
There is no perfect solution.
i tend to assume that for the ships designed from the start to use them, they're still connected. just not in the 3 dimensions we can perceive. sort of an outgrowth of the 'bigger on the inside" tech seen in that 31st century time pod in ENT "Future Tense". the power connections and bits that hold the parts together are routed through congruent physical dimensions, so that they seem to float loose but are actually connected and stuff like energy can be transferred between them freely.
the Discovery, having been retrofitted with the tech from a much more dimensionally limited design, had to settle for a less capable version which still required the nacelles to be docked to receive power directly for warp. thus why it has to dock its bits to use warp, but none of the other starfleet ships seen in the 32nd century seem to have to dock their bits together to do it.
the Discovery, having been retrofitted with the tech from a much more dimensionally limited design, had to settle for a less capable version which still required the nacelles to be docked to receive power directly for warp. thus why it has to dock its bits to use warp, but none of the other starfleet ships seen in the 32nd century seem to have to dock their bits together to do it.
Perhaps, but that doesn't mean they decided to individually power the nacelles in the 32nd century.
For them it could be that a ship creates a 'passive' field that ACTS as EPS conduits do (more or less - at least in terms of power transfer - meaning that even if the Warp core is centralized inside the secondary hull, 'detatched' sections will always basically have power - perhaps SF inherently made this method safer for power transfer because there are no physical conduits to damage).
Still I'm not discounting the possibility of individually powered sections. After all, they did say they will provide inner workings for SF technology in the Academy series.
Yes, I'm aware of that feature being unique to Disco... If you also recall, Booker's ship basically disassembled into smaller pieces when it activated the Spore Drive - and I doubt his vessel has individually powered sections.
Still, its' possible (for the sake of redundancy) that each vessel's detachable/reconfigurable section has its own power cells.
Aka, if you recall back to ENT and the conclusion of the TCW... Vosk (I think that was his name) mentioned power cells the size of a coin. You could technically, line the entire inner hull with these things, and place them into multiple layers a few centimetres thick, then network them to provide massive battery power when disconnected from the main core - you'd basically end up with a massively power charged hull - unless of course this approach is NOT used and the ENTIRE HULL acts as a highly efficient power capacitor of sorts (securely placed as an isolated layer and fairly safe).
Yes I know they liked to animate the power transfer between the ships, but that was in the 24th century. Regardless of the relatively 'primitive' nature of tech advancement in that particular depiction of Trek future, its possible that energy transfer between the sections was made for all intents and purposes invisible.
Possible.
But the way Saru explained the reasoning behind detachable nacelles seems to imply the same approach works for all other ships in the fleet.
Its just that to me that doesn't make much sense because we know 24th century ships already did this and were more manoeuvrable by simply dropping their inertial mass (granted, this could be seen as power hungry - but given what kind of power levels a Warp core produces anyway on a regular basis, creation of a low level subspace field seems like nothing and fairly routine - but the writers of the 32nd century apparently decided to 'NOT' mention even a whiff of subspace field manipulation tech unless FTL is discussed).
In fairness, we know impulse speed mainly works on the principle of field manipulation (much like Warp drive - just sublight based) - which is probably why you can move a ship in almost ANY direction under impulse despite the 'engines' being usually placed on the back of the ship (probably for certain particle exhaust - although impulse engines don't seem to generate 'conventional' exhaust).
In this manner, you COULD install separate impulse (and thruster?) field generators into individual sections which then coordinate with the rest of the ship (this DOES increase the complexity, but maybe they found it more efficient than having to have one piece of hw doing the thing for the whole ship?).
SF seems to have been going into the direction of a ship having detachable qualities which seemed to have evolved from the ENT-D and Prometheus.
Who knows, its possible each section of a ship in the 32nd century can act independently and has its own warp core for all we know (but that just doesn't seem likely).
But if there was a any field (Passive/Active) regardless of which way you make it, it would be VERY HARD to hide the fact that you're shunting EP (Electro Plasma) since we know it glows brightly when unleashed from the EPS Conduits. We saw what Electro Plasma looks like, it's very much a Gaseous Fire sort of VFX.
And you aren't going to be trying to convince me that they waste energy on a "Cloaking Field" to hide the EPS Force Field, that would be more energy wasted.
But the other option are "Micro Worm Holes", but even in the 32nd century, they had a hard time making Worm Holes. The amount of energy needed to even make a tiny one seemed to require a large chunk of the ships reactor power generation capability, and those were for tiny ones to simulate DMA shoving things through the anomaly in a very short distance.
Hopefully it makes logical sense. Given hardware miniaturization, it should be trivial to just shove a mini dedicated Warp Reactor with limited amounts of fuel on-board and refuel as needed via Transporter or physically re-dock or connect via Programmable Matter tunnel to shove fuel over.
Actually, I think they might be all individually powered sections for basic flight manuevers.
Remember, Archer had a Anti-Grav version of a RC SpaceShip. That was all the way back in the 22nd century.
Imagine the miniaturization of Anti-Grav units and shove it in the hull of various pieces of Book's ship.
That's exactly what I'm thinking, it's the most logical / simplest solution given the available tech.
Correct!
Regardless of if it's a Capacitor or Battery, you can hide large amounts of energy inside tiny Battery Cells the size of coins and that level of tech is available in the future.
Short of using a Cloaking Field of some sort, or pocket worm hole.
Both solutions consume a significant chunk of energy to use.
Then you have to ask yourself, would that be worth it on a "Mass Production" Scale?
Spend the extra energy to hide the Energy links to the units flying adjacent to your vessel?
Or spend the resources to make the extra hardware and install it once, then it's a autonomous vehicle.
Something we're already fairly familiar IRL.
Including formation flying & autonomous flying.
Which one is more logical to you?
Remember, beyond the visibility of the power link idea; that's a fundamental vulnerability if the enemy can see it & slice it / disrupt it as well.
Yes, that it functions as a slaved autonomous flying unit that follows it's mother vessel.
They were very manueverable when compared to other vessels of it's size.
But they weren't nearly as manueverable as smaller vessels like Book's ship or Shuttles/Fighters.
We all know that 32nd century StarFleet vessels can be pretty dang manueverable if they need to be.
Discovery catching up & matching the orbit of the adrift SubSpace Relay Station shows how manueverable a vessel can become.
That was impressive flying no matter how you look at it.
I'd argue that it does, otherwise why would all Impulse Thrusters be facing aft w/o any obstructions?
For Omni-Directional movement, you must be thinking of Anti-Grav systems. Those allow you to go in "Any Direction" you want, although not very fast with very weak acceleration that takes time to build up speed.
But we don't see multiple Impulse Exhausts, we generally see a standard one on the aft end of most vessels.
I think less for that purpose and more for reducing fundamental weaknesses.
The Neck / Pylons have always been a weakness.
No matter the era.
You know shuttles have "Miniaturized Warp Cores" that are far smaller than the larger ones in the parent StarShip.
The USS Defiant itself has a Warp Core that is compact, but over built for a ship much larger than itself.
So the miniaturization of Warp Cores / (Reactors) is a common thing.
We saw how small the AQS reactor unit could be, it's similar to the existing Warp Cores in size.
I wouldn't be surprised if the miniaturization of Warp Cores continues to become a thing.
The main reason for the nacelles is to generate a warp field or bubble, right? So power could be transferred wirelessly, much like we have wireless charging today, along with a low power tractor beam to keep the nacelle at the proper distance. The nacelle being detached could make it easier to alter the warp field, just move the nacelle to change the shape of the field.
Changing the shape of the field (aka, affecting its geometry) was possible without changing the location of the nacelles.
It seems to me that most of the technology which is field based (like Warp or even impulse) would necessitate the ability to alter the geometry of the said field more or less at will (aka, software based - all the nacelles really do is act as a massive field generators).
So, location of the nacelles shouldn't really matter - except that an early explanation was they need to be away from the main hull due to radiation levels.
The nacelles house the warp coils which generate the field around the ship, allowing for Warp - but the actual shape of the warp field is controlled from the bridge and likely engineering (so it can be modified).
We have no way of knowing the variable nacelles on the Intrepid for example were a product of the damage that Warp does to surrounding space... in fairness, that was never canonically established.
The only real reason behind the explanation of variable nacelles seems to be that the Intrepid class design necessitated it - but otherwise, you can pretty much 'fix' the warp damaging space problem with configuration to the Warp field, and/or mods to the nacelles to generate a specific kind of warp field.
Maybe moving the nacelles, the field generator, reduces the power needed to alter the subspace field. Or allows for more complex fields to be use as you can vary the distance of the generators from the ship. Also allows the field to be extended easier than the older fixed systems depending on how far away the nacelles can still receive power from the ship.
All the moving nacelles on the Intrepid did was move them into a position that's similar to most other pre-established starship designs if you noticed.
The only difference was that the nacelles themselves were 'rotated' to a certain angle as a result as well, but as I said, that alone shouldn't/wouldn't have an impact on the field geometry or power consumption at all, because those things are usually affected by upgrading the Warp coils and inner hardware directly (which then generate a certain type of field).
My best guess is that the the Intrepid was a different design than most other ships in the fleet (and a bit of an experiment in itself) which necessitated the nacelles be placed at the equal sides of the ship and they would only 'move' vertically to a certain angle when going to Warp - but beyond that, nothing much.
Maybe its possible the design modifications they included and the changes in hull geometry (aka, arrowhead design for the saucer) necessitated (at least at the time) the nacelles be rotated until the 'kinks' can be ironed out - and otherwise the position of the EPS conduits (or something else) wouldn't have allowed (for whatever reason) for the angled static pylons to be included from the start (maybe the design wasn't adequate to support VOY style nacelles which may have had heavier Warp coils - the ship did have an efficiency boost over ENT-D of about 30% if I'm not mistaken, meaning, it would have been able to sustain 9.75 for 12 hrs (whereas the D was limited to 9.6 for 12 hrs).
Of course, over time, upgrades would have negated these changes across different classes - but its likely SF implements different designs to test them out in themselves before rolling out upgrade cycles to every ship in the fleet.
If you noticed, the USS Prometheus (one seen from Message in a Bottle) had a similar arrowhead design like VOY, but its nacelles were already placed into a vertical position like most other ships statically - and it was able to achieve and maintain a speed of Warp 9.9 effortlessly (whereas VOY's computer warned that hull collapse would ensue in about 45 seconds at this velocity).
And then there's the USS Equinox which was only capable of Warp 6 (Warp 8 being its top speed) which was also an arrowhead design like VOY, so its possible the higher warp speeds were not possible for that class at the time - but then again, that ship had a whole different mission profile (planetary surveys, while the Intrepids had their own).
Heavy Warp coils on VOY (for that kind of class of ship) may have needed thicker pylons and certain type of power transfer to them that could maybe in 2371 be achieved by rotating the nacelles upwards (and other time, the nacelles would be lowered).
It wasn't until about 3 and a half years later that the Prometheus was seen and it was able to do far better.
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I think the Variable Geometry Pylons showing up only 1x time is similar to how modern IRL Aviation used "Variable Geometry Wing" configurations for a short period of time in modern Aviation History.
It was largely a "Transitional Design", designed to test that concept of "Variable Geometry Warp Nacelles".
But as we've seen, newer fixed Geometry Warp Nacelles accomplish largely the same thing.
And we know that in the 32nd century, Detached Warp Nacelles will take over as the dominant design.
Now all the major benefits have been regained through new Wing Geometry with Trapezoidal Wing Configurations & New Wing Cross Section designs to accomplish most of the same effects if not more.
And accomplishing improved stealth signatures at the same time.
Fun Fact, while everybody thought the Variable Geometry wings for the F-14 was going to be the biggest headache, it was largely the other systems that required far more maintenance that caused its early retirement.
The WingBox & Swing Wing system was so well engineered, that it was the other components that became a bigger problem for maintainence crews.
But eventually, newer generations of Aircraft like the F-18 Super Hornet were chosen due to the more modern foundational designs of the F-18 platform.
The F-14 was a 1960's fighter while the F-18 was largely a product of the 1980's.
Even though there was some lobbying efforts by Boeing to get the Super Hornet into mass production despite it not being a direct upgrade from the original F-18 Hornets and more of a real clean sheet design than what Boeing led congress to believe. The Super Hornet was only superficially similar, but alot of the structure was changed dramatically & the aircraft was enlarged that it might as well have been a new clean sheet design.
That kind of skullduggery to fool congress is why the Super Hornets legacy will always be somewhat tainted in the eyes of congress due to what Boeing lied about when they proposed the package.
The same kind of lying happend during the JSF where the Boeing Design that was shown during the test, and what they planned to manufacture was actually quite different.
Where as Lockheed Martin basically gave them a good design from the start and only need tweeks to bring it into mass production.
But what happens afterwards is a different story since Congress is always the ones who like to play "Changing Targets" with it's vendors which never leads to good results.
Luckily things are set with a good program now and the F-35 is well on it's way to become the dominant fighter in all Western Air Forces.
The UK & US both use the F-35 JSF.
Pretty much how I saw it.
There is 0 canonical data that shows the rotating nacelles on the Intrepid were used to negate the effects of Warp drive on local space (that was pure fan speculation that was never recognized in canon, and when you think about it, it really doesn't make much sense because it wouldn't matter a small change in the position of the warp coils would have such a drastic effect - its more likely the system was needed due to unique nature of the Intrepid class, but otherwise had no effect on Warp field as a whole - and the whole issue was hopefully fixed by the time VOY was released into active service by simply issuing software mods that would allow for a slightly different configuration of a Warp field that wouldn't have the same damaging effect - so, same internal hw, just an alteration to the Warp field bubble - which SF demonstrated they can control to a fairly decent degree).
Probably some Starfleet Engineer got tired of hearing about Starfleet Captains using both warp and impulse at the same time and decided only one propulsion mode at a time. You can see this philosophy on Voyager as the impulse engine AND the warp nacelle are on the pylon part that swings. AFAIK, Voyager is unable to use impulse with the pylon swung up and unable to use warp with the pylon swung down. It would be funny if it was the same engineer that advocated for "faster than light, no left or right" 
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Having nacelles as giant missiles might work…Say you had a wormhole back to Earth and were about to be pursued by some…thing…leave one nacelles behind…as your ship exits, have the remaining nacelle fly into the wormhole—both hitting the entity or at least sealing it up.
My thoughts on the detachable nacelles (and other ship parts like Voyager-J's primary and secondary hulls) are they're a physics cheat similar to warp drive. I got the impression from the season 3 finale that there was some sort of spatial manipulation at play where inside is always connected and you could walk directly to the nacelle from the secondary hull while an outside observer would see the 2 parts as separated.
This way it could be thought that the impulse engines only need to push the mass they appear to be physically attached to while whatever spatial reconfiguration tech they're using drags the internally attached components along for the ride for reduced, little, or no additional cost. Presumably there would be some sort of restriction in place where it only works where the impulse engines are generating movement from the part of the internally attached/externally detached assembly that has the most mass. That way you couldn't get a super maneuverable craft by having an impulse assembly with RCS thrusters be it's own detached part. This might also explain why the Voyager-J has that clipped out part on the aft section of the secondary hull - it needed to lose some weight so the primary hull with its impulse engines would have higher mass than the secondary hull.
I don't remember if they show whether nacelles on ships other than the refit Discovery appear to attach for warp. If they don't, I would imagine the reason they seemingly attach ('seemingly' because they could just be coming in and butting up against where they used to be attached) is because the ship was designed with the nacelles being in a specific place in mind for a viable warp field that efficiently (and completely) covers a Crossfield's specific hull geometry.
A lot of personal headcanon but I think it fits with the little evidence and explanation we get on screen.
This way it could be thought that the impulse engines only need to push the mass they appear to be physically attached to while whatever spatial reconfiguration tech they're using drags the internally attached components along for the ride for reduced, little, or no additional cost. Presumably there would be some sort of restriction in place where it only works where the impulse engines are generating movement from the part of the internally attached/externally detached assembly that has the most mass. That way you couldn't get a super maneuverable craft by having an impulse assembly with RCS thrusters be it's own detached part. This might also explain why the Voyager-J has that clipped out part on the aft section of the secondary hull - it needed to lose some weight so the primary hull with its impulse engines would have higher mass than the secondary hull.
I don't remember if they show whether nacelles on ships other than the refit Discovery appear to attach for warp. If they don't, I would imagine the reason they seemingly attach ('seemingly' because they could just be coming in and butting up against where they used to be attached) is because the ship was designed with the nacelles being in a specific place in mind for a viable warp field that efficiently (and completely) covers a Crossfield's specific hull geometry.
A lot of personal headcanon but I think it fits with the little evidence and explanation we get on screen.
Discovery was the only one that needs the Warp Nacelles to re-attach to go to warp, everybody else doesn't need to.
Or their newer systems were designed to have their own mini Warp cores inside each Warp Nacelle along with STL systems like Impulse, Anti-Grav, RCS.
Given miniaturization of tech, that would be very believable IMO.
Then you only need to give each Warp Nacelle some fuel every now and then from the main vessel to keep it going.
The pooster in question explained it in 8 words. So far you've run into the thousands in this thread. So who's overcomplicating exactly?
