Why didn't the Federation devise ion-powered starships not dependent on dilithum and antimatter?

[Shaka Zulu]

This has nagged me a bit about recent Star Trek shows, especially since a race with ion-powered ships came into contact with a Starfleet vessel in the 2260's. I know that the current franchise runners had to come up with a compelling plot for Starfleet Academy, but I still wonder why nobody aquired the tech from the Sigma Draconians and studied/reverse engineered it to make ion drives, and then eventually transition from antimatter/dilithuim to ion.

Thoughts?

 

[1001001]

Moving to Trek Tech.

 

[mithril]

who says that ion drives capable of propulsion levels like that ship's wouldn't also use dilithium? real world ion drives barely produce enough thrust to push a sheet of paper, they're only viable because you can afford to run them for years at a time to alter orbits and build up speed. any ion drive that is capable of producing substantial fractions of C velocities in shot periods of time, much less enable warp drive type FTL like the eymorg ship could, is going to be using principles a lot more exotic than Xenon and electrified mesh.

it's also worth noting that other examples of such high performance ion drive tech in trek exists. the Akritirian starships in VOY "the chute" used it, and they required 'paralithium' to run their drives. further suggesting that such technology would have its own logistical constraints. some sources claim that the Dominion attack ships use ion propulsion.. those same sources give said ships dilithium moderated M/AM power systems, suggesting that 'ion propulsion' might just be an alternative to using warp plasma in a normal warp engine, rather than a full on seperate drive style.

 

[Dukhat]

This has nagged me a bit about recent Star Trek shows, especially since a race with ion-powered ships came into contact with a Starfleet vessel in the 2260's. I know that the current franchise runners had to come up with a compelling plot for Starfleet Academy, but I still wonder why nobody aquired the tech from the Sigma Draconians and studied/reverse engineered it to make ion drives, and then eventually transition from antimatter/dilithuim to ion.

Thoughts?

Unfortunately, for the same reason why they never used that learning helmet for anything else: it was a plot device that never went farther than the episode it was featured in.

 

[knightgrace]

The first question to ask, is; 'Exactly what is an ion drive?'

It isn't what you think. It is not the conventional ionizing of matter. That doesn't make sense at all.

However, what does make sense is that some "low" level source of extreme energy is introduced into a reaction medium. Let's say water, or it could be NH3, or CH4...the point being something easily obtainable.

So, now about that energy source.

Fission, Fusion, Isomer. Three different nuclear reactions. Isomer is in reality the most problematic. Because it requires a gamma ray pulse to initiate. Tylium from either Battlestar Galactica, is most likely this type of reaction.

However we are talking 'Star Trek'.

So, in the early days of star flight, just how much did even one gram of antihydrogen cost???
In other words, a question of scaling for economics. Antimatter will be very expensive during the early years...

So, keeping costs low is a requirement.

So, you start out with a Fusion reaction, then add in enough Antimatter to make the higher warp factors possible. Microscopic amounts - very microscopic amounts. Enough to take a Fusion warp reactor and take it to warp factor four capability. In other words a doubling of the energy, in other words Ion power.