Reconciliation - Exploring the Possible

[Wingsley]

I'd like to open up a discussion to see if it's possible to reconcile certain apparent contradictions between TOS and subsequent TREKs.

It has been suggested that in TOS the actual matter-antimatter fusion takes place in the nacelles, apart from the two "main" hulls of the Enterprise. By contrast, from TMP forward it seemed that M/AM fusion to taking place in the secondary hull, in either part of all of that tube (or in a chamber off to the side that is somehow connected to that tube). TNG seemed to extend that TMP analogy, making the fusion reactor look like a big, pot-bellied stove. ENT seemed to "steam punk" the TNG analogy by making the "stove" look like an old steam locomotive engine.

Is there any way to reconcile the original "pods" concept with the "tube"/"stove" concept to unify these various ideas into something more coherent?

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

A few possibilities:

-Extra antimatter supplies were kept in the nacelles.
-The nacelles had a system for siphoning some sort of ambient energy from space.
-The current model of Constitution class seen in TOS had a pair of small M/AM reactors of lesser power than the main one to give the ship a bit of a power boost. This cold probably be the modification that bumped up the ships maximum speed.
-The nacelles WERE the M/AM reactors, but for whatever reason, this system was centralized. The idea of nacelles as a power source was a technological dead end for some reason, and Starfleet went back to the single reactor setup.

 

[JNG]

Is there any way to reconcile the original "pods" concept with the "tube"/"stove" concept to unify these various ideas into something more coherent?

Several, and Jitty has already suggested some. The matter/antimatter integrator making an appearance in a version of TOS Main Engineering means that the antimatter is not confined to the nacelles, so the setups are not totally different. I have imagined a kind of "racetrack" system where reactions take place both there and in the nacelles, but it is also easily possible to envision that integrator and perhaps some of what we saw on TAS as evolving analogues to the "warp cores" seen on most later ships. Ultimately, it can all be made to work together surprisingly well.

There was a long thread years ago on this that became really ugly at some point, but also eventually reached a pleasant conclusion when posters really put their heads together to reconcile the references.

 

[Praetor]

A few possibilities:

-Extra antimatter supplies were kept in the nacelles.
-The nacelles had a system for siphoning some sort of ambient energy from space.
-The current model of Constitution class seen in TOS had a pair of small M/AM reactors of lesser power than the main one to give the ship a bit of a power boost. This cold probably be the modification that bumped up the ships maximum speed.
-The nacelles WERE the M/AM reactors, but for whatever reason, this system was centralized. The idea of nacelles as a power source was a technological dead end for some reason, and Starfleet went back to the single reactor setup.

All of these are good theories. I'm personally one to believe, given what we have now, that it's possible that there were at least three reactors on the ship - one in the hull and one in each nacelle - reactor here being defined as the thing where the dilithium crystals are. I think this would be due to the loss of inherent energy that the warp plasma would undergo as it is transferred to the engines... perhaps something discovered in the post-'Enterprise' era? I would imagine each nacelle would produce 1/2 the energy that the 'main' hull reactor would, and would function something like an afterburner, injecting miniscule amounts of fresh matter and antimatter into a reaction chamber, then mixing this with the 'old' plasma through dilithium as a way of reenergizing the plasma. In some ways this could also be the descendant of the NX-class setup. I think also that this 'interconnectivity' would be what led to the later TMP design, which in turn led to the complete centralization. I think Excelsior-onward reactors would have tighter magnetic constriction, overcoming the energy lost from the plasma as the energy is transferred, and eliminating a need for the secondary reactors.

JNG, you type faster than me.

 

[Wingsley]

What if the scenario Praetor outlined was a possibility, but in reverse?

What if there were three reactors (or 3 sets of reactors), one in the secondary hull and one in each of the nacelles, with the nacelle reactors being the "main" powerhouses? Let's say that the tube we've seen from TMP on isn't the intermix chamber, but rather the plasma conduit between reactors and the warp coils. Let's assume that any one reactor could power the entire ship at warp speed, but that this triple-reactor setup allows for essentially a kind of "three phase" power, where each reactor hits its peak 120º out of phase with the other reactors, allowing for much of the benefits of old-fashioned three-phase electrical circuits. In three-phase electricity, if a circuit delivers its peak power at 60 Hz and each of the three phases delivers its peak in alternation, the combined effect is enhanced. (Hence, three-phase power is preferred by industry.) Now if a starship uses three-phase reactors, (or reactors in sets aligned in three phases) it would be fairly easy to power down (or rev up) the ship's power smoothly if the reactors were all interconnected.

In fact, I don't see anything in the TNG era (correct me if I'm wrong) to refute that a setup like this could still be in use. We just didn't see the reactor(s) in the nacelles.

This setup would also seem to jibe with Scotty's emergency surgery in "That Which Survives".

And what if the majority of the power comes from the reactors in the nacelles, not the central one in the ship? What if the ship reactor is the "booster" or "control reactor"? What if that pulsating luminaria in the front of the TOS nacelles is actually a reactor (or set of them) at work?

 

[Praetor]

That all actually makes more sense methinks. I also like there being reactor 'sets.' Your knowledge of electrical circuits seems to lend credence to the notion as well. I would still think that by TNG such a setup would have been replaced by a central system.

 

[Captain Robert April]

From where I sit, the tech references went one of two ways, depending on how important the engine malfunction, and its resolution, had to do with the plot.

If the major plot point hinged upon Scotty actually fixing what was wrong with the engines, the references point towards a central reactor feeding power to the rest of the ship.

If the major plot thingie that's threatening to blow up the ship could only be resolved by Kirk doing something planetside, like talking a computer into blowing itself up, the references tended towards some sort of technobabble involving the most visible indicator of the ship's power, the nacelles. These references are also the most contradictory with each other.

This is why I laid out a fairly detailed internal reactor setup, and, as a compromise to the nacelle-generator crowd, fairly simple emergency backup reactors in each nacelle, between the Bussard collectors and the primary warp plasma injectors (no dilithium crystals, just a simple reactor, giving the ship an emergency getaway capability of about Warp 2).

 

[Wingsley]

^ Interesting.

What I was proposing was similar, but from the opposite direction.

I'm saying that there would be reactors in the nacelles and in the secondary hull, all part of a network. Keep in mind that "Day of the Dove" suggested that there were at least three reactors in the saucer as well, when Spock begins tracking the non-corporeal intruder. This would seem to jibe with "The Alternative Factor", when Lazarus raids the mini-engine room (also presumably in the saucer) for its dilithium crystals; I always presumed that since a fire occurred in the crystal room and they weren't using the warp drive in orbit, this set of crystals must've been used for impulse power. Again, at least three mini-reactors in the saucer (or perhaps three sets scattered throughout the saucer?) would supply power in three phases for the ship's EPS conduits while the warp drive could be idled or taken offline.

I'm assuming the saucer's reactors could be used to restart the warp drive or vice versa (we saw Spock and Scotty fast-track a restart after everything had been shut down "cold", and the intermix would result in time travel. ("The Naked Time")

 

[TIN_MAN]

You guys aren't thinking fourth dimesionally, it's possible for such systems to be 'quantum entangled' so that what happens in one place automaticly happens somewhere else. this explains how Scotty, in 'That Which Survives' could be in the matter/anti-matter entergrator of one nacelle and any adjustments he made automaticly effected the other!

 

[Captain Robert April]

Don't make me hurt you.