Narada Tech Specs

[Crazy Eddie]

Narada was a simple bad guy ship, big powerful and menacing. there was really no design to it.

I think it was designed by the same people who developed the Kill-o-zap blaster pistol. To paraphrase:

"The designer of the Narada had clearly not been instructed to beat about the bush. 'Make it evil,' he'd been told. 'Make it totally clear that this ship has a right end and a wrong end. Make it totally clear to anyone standing at the wrong end that things are going badly for them. If that means sticking all sort of spikes and prongs and blackened bits all over it then so be it. This is not a ship for exploring strange new worlds, it is a ship for going out and making people miserable with.'"

 

[Vincent Law]

You really can't tell the difference between a rocket engine and a glow? Have you ever waved a torch around in a dark room? Did that create "flames" too?

If by torch you mean something like a blowtorch or a stick with an ignited rag on the end of it. I know what I saw, so attempting to claim otherwise is indeed pointless.

For instance, here is the "Jellyfish" with a visible plume of blue flame shooting out the back of it. [url=http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/xihd/trekxihd0237.jpg]Here's the Kelvin going to full afterburner. A comparison. Another comparison. Another comparison. Another comparison. Another comparison. The best part is that the Kelvin clearly actually has an impulse engine, but it's like the VFX artist has forgotten that. Even on the other ships just during normal flight, I couldn't help but be reminded of the flame holders in an afterburner.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Here's the Kelvin going to full afterburner.

That's called "lens flare" dude.

The best part is that the Kelvin clearly actually has an impulse engine, but it's like the VFX artist has forgotten that.

He obviously didn't forget it since he bothered to render the engine in the first place. Moreover, the impulse engine SHUTS DOWN on the Enterprise a few seconds before it goes to warp.

 

[AriesIV]

The impulse drive could have been damaged leaving them to fly on "warp exhaust thrust." Be very inefficient to burn matter and antimatter and dump the resulting exhaust overboard like that.

Or maybe he was attempting to get some warp-mojo going for more impactive-ness?

 

[Vincent Law]

Here's the Kelvin going to full afterburner.

That's called "lens flare" dude.

There's lens flare there, like in every other part of the movie, but it isn't entirely lens flare. Nor is that the case for all the other instances I mentioned.

He obviously didn't forget it since he bothered to render the engine in the first place. Moreover, the impulse engine SHUTS DOWN on the Enterprise a few seconds before it goes to warp.

Apparently he or she forgot what it was for when it came to the Kelvin. If the ship had gone into overdrive under impulse power then nothing on the warp nacelle should've done anything, the impulse drive should've done something. But apparently someone though that a rocket plume looked more dramatic, like a jet under fill afterburner.

The impulse drive could have been damaged leaving them to fly on "warp exhaust thrust." Be very inefficient to burn matter and antimatter and dump the resulting exhaust overboard like that.

Or maybe he was attempting to get some warp-mojo going for more impactive-ness?

The warp drive doesn't produce thrust in the Newtonian sense, it manipulates space by forming a warp field around the ship.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Here's the Kelvin going to full afterburner.

That's called "lens flare" dude.

There's lens flare there, like in every other part of the movie, but it isn't entirely lens flare.

Yes it is. I have the scene playing in a separate window right now. There's no visible "plume" as such, just a lens flare element that is basically symmetrical regardless of how the engine is angled.

Apparently he or she forgot what it was for when it came to the Kelvin.

Apparently not. See above.

The warp drive doesn't produce thrust in the Newtonian sense, it manipulates space by forming a warp field around the ship.

The thing is, we know from TNG that is can also produce ACCELERATION, both in normal operations and when pulsed in a specific pattern. If George Kirk needed a sudden burst of speed more than the impulse engines could have given him, he would have jury rigged a (considerably less safe) version of the Enterprises' warp pulse from "Force of Nature."

 

[AriesIV]

The warp drive doesn't produce thrust in the Newtonian sense, it manipulates space by forming a warp field around the ship.

I know that... I am well versed in technobabble. I am also an engineer with much knowings of engines and things nuclear and general "engineering" in general.

Follow my design logic for a moment.

These are older generation warp engines. In order to scale up the NX engines it was necessary to use a brute-force approach. While the NX was able to recycle warp-plasma for the most part... larger ships required more plasma. Technology wasn't up to the task of "recycling" the plasma on this scale yet.

What we see on these ships very simple: It's the exhaust-pipe Uhura spoke of.

When we cycle the engines up to power more plasma is generated and exhausted overboard. The design of the nozzle disperses the plasma as best it can so it DOES NOT impart a Newtonian trust to the ship.

Enterprising captains (heh) discovered that by adjusting the configuration of the exhaust nozzle you could get an additional bit of thrust... and there were even stories circulating about how ships who lost their impulse drives used the "rocket thrust" of the plasma-exhaust to limp to safety.


Later on... a tech generation or two ahead of this one... look at the end-caps on the TOS Enterprise nacelles. A method was developed to recycle and reuse said plasma. This reduced the trail that Starfleet ships left behind and eliminated the toxic "plasma contamination" issues some well-traveled space-ports and starbases were facing.

 

[Vincent Law]

Yes it is. I have the scene playing in a separate window right now. There's no visible "plume" as such, just a lens flare element that is basically symmetrical regardless of how the engine is angled.

It doesn't even look symmetrical in the screencap. And I remember what I saw in that movie - even during normal sublight flight the effect was not unlike that used for Galactica's massive rocket engines.

Apparently not. See above.

Nothing about what you said above explains why anything happened with the warp engine nacelle and not the impulse engine.

The thing is, we know from TNG that is can also produce ACCELERATION, both in normal operations and when pulsed in a specific pattern. If George Kirk needed a sudden burst of speed more than the impulse engines could have given him, he would have jury rigged a (considerably less safe) version of the Enterprises' warp pulse from "Force of Nature."

Except that in this case it looked like a jet going on full afterburner and nothing in the dialog suggests or supports this.

We can go back and forth all you want, but nothing you or others here have argued will change what I saw and heard for myself when I saw the movie. I would be surprised at the defense of essentially even the smallest aspects of what is, at the end of the day, a bad movie, but then even the Star Wars prequels have die-hard defenders to this day.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Yes it is. I have the scene playing in a separate window right now. There's no visible "plume" as such, just a lens flare element that is basically symmetrical regardless of how the engine is angled.

It doesn't even look symmetrical in the screencap.

I repeat: I have the scene right in front of me. I don't need to "remember" what it looked like, I'm looking right at it. It's a lens flare, not an exhaust plume.

Except that in this case it looked like a jet going on full afterburner

Nope. Just a glow, and the sudden movement of the ship.

Hell, it's even symmetrical in the screencaps; notice in this one in particular, the diagonal streak from upper left to lower right crosses directly through the blur you keep calling an "afterburner." Watching that in live action, it doesn't look like anything except a slightly obscured light source.

Note that this cap is from about two seconds BEFORE the Kelvin's burst of acceleration. The effect is still present after the burst, seen here, here and especially here, where we see that no matter how the ship turns the direction of the lens flare is always horizontal within the camera's line of sight.

It's a lens flare, dude.

We can go back and forth all you want, but nothing you or others here have argued will change what I saw and heard for myself when I saw the movie.

Given the general trend of your posts related to STXI, it seems apparent you weren't paying that close attention.

 

[Saquist]

I know I couldn't tell if the Nacelle was the warp engine or the impulse engine on the Kelvin...

Well...He says the next one will be smarter....

 

[Vincent Law]

If the impulse engine is on the back of the warp nacelle, then what is the glowing red object located where the impulse engine typically would be?

 

[Vance]

Ares, the main problem is that you're trying to apply 'tech' to a ship that was never anything more than a prop. It had no thought in its design other than to be the 'evil ship', period. Trying to point out the greeblies on her and assigning canon functions seems to me to be an exercise in futility.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Who says warp engines can't be used at sublight speeds?

Ares, the main problem is that you're trying to apply 'tech' to a ship that was never anything more than a prop. It had no thought in its design other than to be the 'evil ship', period. Trying to point out the greeblies on her and assigning canon functions seems to me to be an exercise in futility.

Like all Trek ships, looks came first.

However, stuff like the hanger door, the missile racks, the engines (primary and secondary, pointed out on the bluray and some concept art) the drill bay and dozens of antennae can be spotted on the Narada CG model.

Just because you don't like it doesn't make it a worthless jaunt for everyone else.

 

[Vincent Law]

Who says warp engines can't be used at sublight speeds?

That they're defined as being the FTL drive of the Star Trek franchise.

 

[Vance]

Who says warp engines can't be used at sublight speeds?

That they're defined as being the FTL drive of the Star Trek franchise.

Actually, warp engines are explicitly shown being in use at sublight speeds in every iteration of Star Trek. It's one of those issues that gets a little blurred since TNG mentions, from time time, that this CANNOT be done... before promptly doing it.

 

[Vincent Law]

When? And what would it have to do with what happened in this scene? Nothing about it makes much sense, from a technical aspect or otherwise. For instance, the ship's computer is so damaged that it can't be used to guide the ship on a collision course by itself, yet all George Kirk did was set a course and engage the ship on it, then sit back in the big chair and watch the ship move in a straight line toward the other ship until it collided. Oh, and the same computer which was so damaged it couldn't fly in a straight line by itself, like say after some delay to allow the ship to be abandoned, was still able to calculate exactly when the collision would take place, and control all the little point defense phasers (which have never been seen on even older ships, let alone TOS era ships) so precisely that it was able to take out missiles even in close proximity to the escaping shuttles without even accidentally hitting any of those shuttles. So while they were at it, they simply forgot where the impulse drive was on that ship and instead had the ship's warp nacelle go to full afterburner.

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

If the impulse engine is on the back of the warp nacelle, then what is the glowing red object located where the impulse engine typically would be?

Brake light.

 

[Vincent Law]

Okay, that got a chuckle out of me.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

So while they were at it, they simply forgot where the impulse drive was on that ship and instead had the ship's warp nacelle go to full afterburner.

It's not an afterburner. It's a lens flare.

 

[Vincent Law]

Looks like flame to me. Maybe they shouldn't have gone so overboard on the lens flare after all, then we could actually see what was going on better. Of course you still seem to be ignoring that whole impulse vs. warp engine matter in you attempt to defend the rocket engine by saying that it isn't a rocket engine. You're also ignoring all the other examples, like the "Jellyfish."