Even with all the sometimes contradictory tech references throughout the run of the show, I don't recall any references saying that the dilithium crystals were in the nacelles.
TOS Engineering Layout
- Thread starter darkwing_duck1
- Start date
That's correct. Every crystal we ever saw was in an Engineering space.
But that doesn't tell you anything, since (in TOS) the purpose of the dilithium crystals was never even hinted at being anything like what we were later told that they were in TNG.
I've always seen the dilithium crystals as something quite a bit different. My idea is that it's the crystals which transform the radiation generated by the matter/antimatter annihilation reaction into usable energy.
Run the radiation generated by the reaction through a crystal and what do you get? A strong electrical potential difference along the crystalline grain structure.
Meaning... electricity.
Could the amount of power output described in the cage be transmitted remotely without superheating the air into high energy plasma?
I mean in real life physics we're talking about here.
BTW: Why didn't they just use the ships lasers and shoot at the rock surface -- the surface the hand-weapons they were using couldn't get through --from orbit?
CuttingEdge100
I mean in real life physics we're talking about here.
BTW: Why didn't they just use the ships lasers and shoot at the rock surface -- the surface the hand-weapons they were using couldn't get through --from orbit?
CuttingEdge100
darkwing_duck1
Vice Admiral
I just realized that all this talk about dilithium cyrystals "transforming" energy would tie into a TNG reference from the episode "Pen Pals". Planets were being torn apart by energy produced from layers and layers of dilithium that had formed in such a way as to produce "generator strata", taking natually occuring geothermal energy and transforming it into electromechanical energy that produced severe seismic stresses.
darkwing_duck1
Vice Admiral
I doubt it very seriously. Even the solar power sattelite transmission schemes I've heard of used microwave signals to transmit the power planetside from the collectors, and standing under one of THOSE beams woud be intstant crispy crew time...
They wanted to avoid cooking Pike and the Talosians. From orbit they would have been firing nearly straight down the elevator shaft.
The point wasn't to kill anyone, just recover the Captain.
Absolutely not... that is why the show is set several hundred years in the future.
And no, faster than light space travel doesn't exist either.
I think it might be in order to do another list of tech references from the episodes, but the last time I took a stroll down that road, the one thing that became somewhat less murky, besides the fact that they generally went out of their way to never explain anything a whole lot, especially early on, was that energy from the main reactor, wherever that was, was passed through the lithium/dilithium crystals (first reference being in "Mudd's Women"). Fast forward to "Elaan of Troyius" and we see a situation where the warp drive won't work without some new dilithium crystals, and Scotty commenting on how the shape of the crystals was effecting the energy flow. They weren't trying to run the lights, they were trying to get the warp drive working.
Seems to me that falls precisely in line with the much maligned post-TMP model, where the energy is run through the crystals and fed to the warp drive.
Certainly the simplest explanation.
Occam's Razor, and all that....
Seems to me that falls precisely in line with the much maligned post-TMP model, where the energy is run through the crystals and fed to the warp drive.
Certainly the simplest explanation.
Occam's Razor, and all that....
Well, considering that The Cage was the first Star Trek episode and technology hadn't been well established and such, and that real physics can't transmit that power through atmosphere safely, I assume dismissing this particular part.
Plus that cannon that they brought down was plenty big enough as it was and probably had some hefty battery capacity of it's own.
In either case, transmitting ships power through vacuum-ducts as pure energy isn't a bad idea...
CuttingEdge100
Plus that cannon that they brought down was plenty big enough as it was and probably had some hefty battery capacity of it's own.
In either case, transmitting ships power through vacuum-ducts as pure energy isn't a bad idea...
CuttingEdge100
I assume you'll be dismissing warp speeds also as those are more outside the realm of possibility than the transmission of energy from one point to another. And considering that the transporter is a derivative technology to the transmission of energy, you'll most likely be dismissing it too.
Maybe you should give up Star Trek altogether... it sounds like you're on your way to dismissing the whole show anyways.
darkwing_duck1
Vice Admiral
It's a TERRIBLE idea, from a safety AND reliability standpoint. Break the vaccum seal, and then where are you? Modern Trek got it wrong as well with the idea of the EPS. For that matter, the whole "touch screen" console idea is a case of "kewl over function".
The more complex the tech, the easier it is for something to go wrong.
^ Which is an excellent argument against putting the power generation in the nacelles.
(Edited to correct original supposition)...
Could it be that the differences between the Pre-TMP Era (TOS) and TMP Era-Forward (TNG), as to how the energy is supplied to the WARP ENGINES and ships functions, has something to do with the fact that the former uses Natural Dilithium Crystals and the latter uses Artificial (Man-Made) ones??
Perhaps Natural Crystals can only convert the Flow of Energy at a Very Basic Level, just enough that it can be slightly manipulated to create a Lower Energy WARP Bubble and power the ships systems of the TOS Era.
(Thus the simple containment chamber in the middle of one of the TOS engineering rooms.)
Whereas the Artificial Crystals can be manipulated at a much finer level which creates a Higher Energy WARP Bubble and a lot more power for much larger ships as well as the power needed for creating small amounts of Antimatter in the later Era's.
(Thus the rather Large Articulated Rack/Chamber that has become the main focus of the Engineering Team.)
It could explain the different WARP Scales and also why from TMP on, the chamber holding the crystals appears to be more in a direct line from the M/AM storage units to the Nacelles.
<disregard>(Instead of IN the Nacelles as it appears occasionally in TOS.)<disregard>
My bad, I was confusing what I remembered reading once about The Motion Picture Nacelles (the large glow on the top front), with TOS Nacelles.
What I probably should have posted is...Instead of poking out of the middle of the room with a less apparent direct-line connection from the M/AM to the nacelles.
If I remember correctly, this seems to hold up even to the NX-01's engineering arrangement (where they would presumably be using Natural Crystals) as the conversion chamber was huge and it appeared that the crystals were not really in alignment of the stream but just stuck into the chamber at one end?
It seemed like the Crystals in that case were there, to mainly keep the M/AM reaction from running wild by absorbing and converting a lot (if not most) of the plasma to electrical energy for the ships systems.
Does any of my corrected supposition sound remotely reasonable??
Could it be that the differences between the Pre-TMP Era (TOS) and TMP Era-Forward (TNG), as to how the energy is supplied to the WARP ENGINES and ships functions, has something to do with the fact that the former uses Natural Dilithium Crystals and the latter uses Artificial (Man-Made) ones??
Perhaps Natural Crystals can only convert the Flow of Energy at a Very Basic Level, just enough that it can be slightly manipulated to create a Lower Energy WARP Bubble and power the ships systems of the TOS Era.
(Thus the simple containment chamber in the middle of one of the TOS engineering rooms.)
Whereas the Artificial Crystals can be manipulated at a much finer level which creates a Higher Energy WARP Bubble and a lot more power for much larger ships as well as the power needed for creating small amounts of Antimatter in the later Era's.
(Thus the rather Large Articulated Rack/Chamber that has become the main focus of the Engineering Team.)
It could explain the different WARP Scales and also why from TMP on, the chamber holding the crystals appears to be more in a direct line from the M/AM storage units to the Nacelles.
<disregard>(Instead of IN the Nacelles as it appears occasionally in TOS.)<disregard>
My bad, I was confusing what I remembered reading once about The Motion Picture Nacelles (the large glow on the top front), with TOS Nacelles.
What I probably should have posted is...Instead of poking out of the middle of the room with a less apparent direct-line connection from the M/AM to the nacelles.
If I remember correctly, this seems to hold up even to the NX-01's engineering arrangement (where they would presumably be using Natural Crystals) as the conversion chamber was huge and it appeared that the crystals were not really in alignment of the stream but just stuck into the chamber at one end?
It seemed like the Crystals in that case were there, to mainly keep the M/AM reaction from running wild by absorbing and converting a lot (if not most) of the plasma to electrical energy for the ships systems.
Does any of my corrected supposition sound remotely reasonable??
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The nature of the crystals, and the ability to recrystalize them, would certainly have an effect of how tightly you could focus that energy stream, and therefore how high a warp factor you could reach, but other than that, no. The basic mechanics of the process remain the same, matter + antimatter = really big boom, channeling that big boom through warp coils produces a warp field, and putting a dilithium crystal in between those two parts makes the big boom even bigger, thus a bigger warp field.
...At least that's what many of the backstage sources consistently say, nowadays.
The onscreen material throws a wrench or two in that. For one thing, "warp plasma" is supposedly an energetic and complex substance all by itself, its exact makeup a crucial detail in warp performance (say, VOY "Fair Trade"). Possibly the plasma isn't only and purely an energy-conducting medium, and the role of the antimatter reactions and dilithium not only or purely one of pumping electromagnetic or thermal energy into that plasma. It might rather be that the energy is in fact primarily being pumped into the dilithium, which converts it into some sort of magic effect (not electric or thermal) that propagates along the plasma and then hits the warp coils.
Both these interpretations currently remain possible, and further ones can be devised. It's up to us or to future writers to lock on to a specific theory and make it the primary, perhaps explicit one.
Timo Saloniemi
The onscreen material throws a wrench or two in that. For one thing, "warp plasma" is supposedly an energetic and complex substance all by itself, its exact makeup a crucial detail in warp performance (say, VOY "Fair Trade"). Possibly the plasma isn't only and purely an energy-conducting medium, and the role of the antimatter reactions and dilithium not only or purely one of pumping electromagnetic or thermal energy into that plasma. It might rather be that the energy is in fact primarily being pumped into the dilithium, which converts it into some sort of magic effect (not electric or thermal) that propagates along the plasma and then hits the warp coils.
Both these interpretations currently remain possible, and further ones can be devised. It's up to us or to future writers to lock on to a specific theory and make it the primary, perhaps explicit one.
Timo Saloniemi
That was the biggest mistake made in Star Trek... and it was the type of mistake that might not hurt the show that much at the time, but does damage to it in the long run.
I'm a fan of Star Trek, and watch most of the shows. But when it comes to Trek Tech, the third season of TOS is about where I draw the line. Why? Because after TOS people made the mistake of being to explicit in how stuff hundreds of years from now works... and it dates the shows quite a bit faster.
What is worse (from my perspective) is that the mistakes of the later shows haunt TOS when people attempt to apply what those shows made explicit to what TOS went out of it's way to keep vague.
Fans are fans, and we are going to come up with whatever ideas we can... and that is fine, we're fans after all. But when the shows writers and producers attempt to get explicit about things that have no real explanation today, what you end up with is corny shows years from now when we actually have some of that technology at hand.
TOS is awesome (when looked at by itself) because everything is based on a black box view of technology. Most of you have no idea how your computers work or how processes that once required 30 tons of equipment is now done thousands of times faster in a handheld device. But it works, it follows a logical input-output pattern that makes sense and you go about your daily lives with this stuff.
When TOS was under development it was explicitly stated that the characters were not to worry about how their laser guns (and other devices) worked, only that they had a logical set of functions and that the characters were familiar with their operation.
Technobabble is the worst thing to happen to Trek ever. I don't blame those who started it because it didn't start showing it's flaws for a few years, but it has forever dated elements of Trek. TOS mostly avoided this and frankly I think it should be divorced (technology wise) from the rest of Trek.
Shaw,
I suppose you make good points. Especially when you consider that during transports a containment field surrounds the person so as to avoid the enormous energies from doing any harm. Watch TMP and you'll see that there's a cylinder of energy that surrounds the crew during transport.
I suppose if you could do that you could do that with a beam of energy and simply not change it back to matter at the other end and simply use it to power a weapon.
However a transporter beam is engaged for just a couple of seconds. The weapons firing was like a minute probably. Would this system be effective on a constant use basis though? Keep in mind you are transmitting enormous amounts of power (even more than the amount used by that laser in The Cage) to the warp-engines and nav-deflector on a continuous-basis for days or weeks sometimes (at least when at warp)
Regarding your comment about computer processing capability, that is a good point, and for a long time I have expressed dislike in the computer core of the USS Enterprise being so big. You could put all sorts of stuff in that space. A bowling alley, a swimming pool... hehe
darkwing_duck1,
Not entirely in fact it sounds far safer than pumping highly energetic plasma at tremendously high pressures through ducts in the ship. That is a terrible idea from a safety standpoint -- The pressure differential is way higher, and thus more dangerous than a vacuum duct.
Although from what you said you didn't like the idea of the EPS system either...
I actually agree with that. Touch-screens do look awesomely cool and such but really they aren't practical as it's too easy to accidentally hit the wrong button. Not to mention when the crew get flung all over the place, one guy landed on the engineering console who knows, they could end up blowing up the whole ship.
I suppose some touch sensor buttons could be useful for functions that are not vital to the ship's safety or existance though...
That is generally correct.
CuttingEdge100
I suppose you make good points. Especially when you consider that during transports a containment field surrounds the person so as to avoid the enormous energies from doing any harm. Watch TMP and you'll see that there's a cylinder of energy that surrounds the crew during transport.
I suppose if you could do that you could do that with a beam of energy and simply not change it back to matter at the other end and simply use it to power a weapon.
However a transporter beam is engaged for just a couple of seconds. The weapons firing was like a minute probably. Would this system be effective on a constant use basis though? Keep in mind you are transmitting enormous amounts of power (even more than the amount used by that laser in The Cage) to the warp-engines and nav-deflector on a continuous-basis for days or weeks sometimes (at least when at warp)
Regarding your comment about computer processing capability, that is a good point, and for a long time I have expressed dislike in the computer core of the USS Enterprise being so big. You could put all sorts of stuff in that space. A bowling alley, a swimming pool... hehe
darkwing_duck1,
Not entirely in fact it sounds far safer than pumping highly energetic plasma at tremendously high pressures through ducts in the ship. That is a terrible idea from a safety standpoint -- The pressure differential is way higher, and thus more dangerous than a vacuum duct.
Although from what you said you didn't like the idea of the EPS system either...
I actually agree with that. Touch-screens do look awesomely cool and such but really they aren't practical as it's too easy to accidentally hit the wrong button. Not to mention when the crew get flung all over the place, one guy landed on the engineering console who knows, they could end up blowing up the whole ship.
I suppose some touch sensor buttons could be useful for functions that are not vital to the ship's safety or existance though...
That is generally correct.
CuttingEdge100
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