How Plausible IS Fusion-Powered Warp Drive?

[Vance]

It will work, if we can generate the power and figure out how to build a machine that will actually bend space-time in the manner needed. Raw power (reactor) isn't enough - you have to have the mechanism (nacelles).

I think that's one issue people run into. It may NOT take a whole lot of power, relatively, to deliver the basic effect of warp, and a highly-advanced fusion plant maybe quite sufficient for the pre-TOS era that we're discussing. The mechanism may just require a charge into the material used in the nacelles, and it's the MATERIAL that does the magic.

We're talking really 'pie in the sky' at this point, so arguing definitives seems silly.

 

[Ronald Held]

I have no problem with low warp factor ships being powered by fusion plants.

 

[Myasishchev]

^True. It's funny, they're desperate for dilithium, which according to the TMs does nothing more than a magnet. You'd think it was whatever is in the warp coils that would drive them mad.

The Alcubierre warp drive is a neat, if likely bogus, mathematical proposition.

My personal theory about warp drive arises from two propositions:

1)gravity propagates faster than light, which is almost certainly not the case;
2)mass or energy may be converted completely into gravity, generating the spacetime distortion of a Jupiter but needing only energy of a few kilograms, and this is pretty definitely not the case to the best of my knowledge

Back to the thread topic: fusion to my mind must be either a very weak warp drive, or the theoretical limits of matter/antimatter powered warp drive are far, far from being reached. It's more likely to be the former option, because we've seen fusion-powered craft (the RBoP) with order-of-magnitude-close performance to a definitely M/A-powered vessel, which simply couldn't be if the M/A-powered vessel were using its power source to its full, theoretical capacity. We see them get closer to this theoretical limit, of course, in TNG.

I like to think that the RBoP has the best fusion warp drive ever built, while the Constitution (pre-refit) class has the first or second generation of M/A reactors, and the power transmission system isn't there to give us really high warp (Galaxy or Intrepid, or even second- or third-generation Excelsior "transwarp" levels) yet.

 

[yellowdingo]

Not that this doesn't come up every six months, but here goes again.

I had long thought that early warp vessels might have been powered by fusion, as keeping with the 'simple' nature of the Romulan bird-of-prey's propulsion systems from 'Balance of Terror.' When 'Enterprise' rolled around, I also thought that perhaps part of what made the NX series so revolutionary and fast/long ranged was that they were the first Earth-built ships with matter/antimatter reactors.

How plausible do my fellow Trek Techs find this notion and what are your takes on it?

And for fun a poll.

Fusion is only now becomming unrealistic as they begin work on the early experiment reactors. It has a flaw - Neutron Radiation corrodes the reactor casing rather quicker than expected. This makes the expense vs benifit unviable.

You want cold fusion, build a super conducting Container as a Naecell, let Neutrinos decellerate and capture across the superconducting boundary until there is a cloud in the container so thick it looks like a Neutrino green Plasma cloud (where nuclear bonds depolarize and allow Proton coalesence) and then apply an intense magnetic field to the forming Proton Mass...

 

[JuanBolio]

Neutrino green plasma cloud? I was under the impression that neutrinos where theoretical particles that interact with nothing - that they could travel through a light-year of solid lead without slowing down. I doubt they'd show up on the visible spectrum.

 

[Myasishchev]

Maybe he means neutrino green, the color. Like cherry red, or gluon white, or gamma ray black (so black it's all you see for the rest of your life).

 

[DRACO]

Well, it wouldn't really be warp drive if it wasn't powered by a matter/anti-matter reaction, now would it? I'd be fusion drive.

No, it would still be warp drive.

The key to warp drive isn't the power source, but the warp coils within the nacelles. As long as you've got something powerful enough to energize those warp coils, warp drive is possible regardless of the power source.

A matter/antimatter reaction seems to be the most common power source for a warp drive, but the Romulans use a quantum singularity and who knows what other non-Federation races use. The bottom line, however, is that they are merely the power sources for the electroplasma (or warp plasma) that are really used to energize the nacelles.

Which is all well and good, but whenever we've seen other energy sources for those coils, the drive systems have been given a different name. We've heard the Romulan system referred to as a quantum singularity drive, for instance, which is what makes me think that the very name "warp drive" implies an M/AM reaction.

did you ever think it could be called both?

a Warp Drive works by the warping of space, that Romulan drive is a Warp Drive

a Quantum Singularity Drive, in the terminology point here, is a drive powered by a quantum singularity so...

it is both, you could call it a Quantum Singularity Warp Drive

ust like Fed Ships use a Matter/Antimatter Reaction Warp Drive

they are two different types of term, one is powersource and one is the actual FTL component....

 

[C.E. Evans]

Originally Posted by Sci
Well, it wouldn't really be warp drive if it wasn't powered by a matter/anti-matter reaction, now would it? I'd be fusion drive

No, it would still be warp drive.

The key to warp drive isn't the power source, but the warp coils within the nacelles. As long as you've got something powerful enough to energize those warp coils, warp drive is possible regardless of the power source.

A matter/antimatter reaction seems to be the most common power source for a warp drive, but the Romulans use a quantum singularity and who knows what other non-Federation races use. The bottom line, however, is that they are merely the power sources for the electroplasma (or warp plasma) that are really used to energize the nacelles.

Which is all well and good, but whenever we've seen other energy sources for those coils, the drive systems have been given a different name. We've heard the Romulan system referred to as a quantum singularity drive, for instance, which is what makes me think that the very name "warp drive" implies an M/AM reaction.

did you ever think it could be called both?

a Warp Drive works by the warping of space, that Romulan drive is a Warp Drive

a Quantum Singularity Drive, in the terminology point here, is a drive powered by a quantum singularity so...

it is both, you could call it a Quantum Singularity Warp Drive

ust like Fed Ships use a Matter/Antimatter Reaction Warp Drive

Why not just call 'em both simply warp drives?

 

[Vance]

If it's the primary thing that makes a ship go to warp.. it's warp drive.

The M/AM reactor, fusion reactor, quantum singularity, plot-device plant, are all ENGINES, not the entire drive.

 

[Praetor]

^Bingo.

 

[Ronald Held]

Isn't warp drive a class of propulsion methods?

 

[Vance]

Isn't warp drive a class of propulsion methods?

Yes. But you're conflating the propulsion method with the engine. They're usually related, but not always... A submarine, for instance, can be coal, oil, diesel, or nuclear powered, but they all use propeller-based propulsion.

 

[JuanBolio]

Isn't warp drive a class of propulsion methods?

Yes. But you're conflating the propulsion method with the engine. They're usually related, but not always... A submarine, for instance, can be coal, oil, diesel, or nuclear powered, but they all use propeller-based propulsion.

Exactly. The reactor, or "warp core" if you prefer, just provides the raw energy. Its what the nacelles do with that energy that drives the ship. Just like an internal combustion engine provides power to turn the wheels on a car, or a nuclear reactor provides power to the screws of aircraft carriers and submarines.

A car that uses an electric engine is still propelled by wheels, and a carrier/sub that runs on fossil fuels still uses screws.

 

[Vance]

You can tell I've been married a long time, I forgot the word 'screw'. :P

 

[JuanBolio]

 

[shipfisher]

Who remembers the Diane Carey novel about the first voyage of the 1701, as commanded by Robert April and featuring the exploits of one George Kirk, father of James Tiberius?

I ask this because of the reference in the story to an impulse (ie. Internally Metered Pulse) drive powered by a multi-stage fusion reaction, hammering hydrogen isotopes into ever larger product nuclei. I've always liked this idea, though I think the useable energy output of the reactions involving the larger nuclei is questionable.

Still, some fancy, multi-phase, pure deuterium fusion reactor could be just as capable of powering a warp drive (to the lower factors at least) as any other sci-fi powerplant. Why not? Good old user friendly deuterium-helium3 fusion would probably have the kick too (we'll assume the more easily sparked deuterium-tritium reaction is off the table with all the neutron radiation being better dealt with in heavy, shielded, ground based plants). I'm even happy with a gas-core fission plant hauling the phoenix up to warp 1 briefly in 2063, allowing for what might best fit into a vehicle of that size at the time. Has anyone ever heard of or seen a canon value for the energy output required to generate "1 cochrane" of subspace/warp field stress?

The problem here for interstellar apps is fuel consumption, which probably dictated the switch to more energy dense M:AM powered drives as soon as "proof of concept" unmanned rigs like Friendship 1 showed that containment tech was up to the challenge.

 

[JNG]

Has anyone ever heard of or seen a canon value for the energy output required to generate "1 cochrane" of subspace/warp field stress?

My impression is that your warp mileage may vary with the quality/purity/density/other unknown characteristics of the handwavium material (various cortenide composites, cobalt n'garbemide if you are a Rom, whatever) that is the final stage in actually turning the juice into a subspace field.

For fun, there's this here thing at EAS. (It said megajoules per cochrane in the Tech Manual... )