Aerodynamics of Borg cube?

[picardo]

While I'm not an engineer, I understand that spaceships, airplanes and marine vessels are built with aerodynamics in mind, by this I mean the shape that must assume wings (and overall the shape of an aircraft) so that, to quote wikipedia, it "deflects the oncoming air, resulting in a force on the airfoil in the direction opposite to the deflection. This force is known as aerodynamic force".

Has the Borg cube been designed with aerodynamics in mind?

The Borg are supposed to be much more technologically advanced than us, but how can a square box be capable of warp speed, and, in general how can it move swiftly across distances, outmanoeuvring opponents?

 

[Bad Thoughts]

Aerodynamics don't matter in space. There is no air.

 

[picardo]

I know, perhaps not the most appropriate term, but wasn't this ill conceived? Isn't this ship sturdy and impractical to maneuver? How can it achieve warp speed, isn't the design inefficient in terms of fuel consumption for example?

As I said in my post I'm not an expert in the field and I ignore the adequate scientific vocabulary, reason why I post here (to learn) isn't this ship just completely impractical?

 

[ZapBrannigan]

The idea of creating a "warp field" and traveling through "subspace" to side-step the law of relativity-- all that stuff is made up, as you know. This enables the show to make up its own rules in much that way that Samantha's magic was governed on Bewitched. In other words, there are rules, but they aren't science-based.

In-universe, I think Borg ships just had so much power that they didn't have to worry about having an efficient shape. The warp field bubble around the ship had to be huge and wasteful to encompass a cube, but they had the juice. A spherical ship like the Fesarius is much more practical, containing the volume you want but needing a much smaller warp bubble to travel in.

In that sense, the very shape of a Borg ship implied vast power, which makes them intimidating the second the drop out of warp (not that Borg designers would have to care about playing head games).

 

[picardo]

In-universe, I think the Borg ships just had so much power that they didn't have to worry about having an efficient shape.

So they claim to be "perfect" and yet they're inefficient..?

And if I recall correctly the Borg cube entered earth's atmosphere in that episode/movie where they wanted to conquer the planet, so aerodynamics do matter!!

 

[C.E. Evans]

IMO, with a powerful enough subspace field, the ship probably weighs next to nothing when in flight and can push air easily out of its way with navigational deflectors (or something similar the Borg might use). It'd likely become a really big brick without them, though.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

So they claim to be "perfect" and yet they're inefficient..?

Yeah, you wouldn't expect the Borg to light their cigars with $100 bills, but in terms of power usage, that's what they seem to be doing. TNG probably feared that if the original Borg ship were spherical, fans would call it a knock-off of the Fesarius. Or the Death Star.

 

[Uncle Sol]

There was an episode of Voyager where 7 explains how a Borg cube enters slipstream or transwarp. I can't remember the exact details though.

 

[Cyke101]

In-universe, I think the Borg ships just had so much power that they didn't have to worry about having an efficient shape.

So they claim to be "perfect" and yet they're inefficient..?

And if I recall correctly the Borg cube entered earth's atmosphere in that episode/movie where they wanted to conquer the planet, so aerodynamics do matter!!

It's important to note, though, that despite the shape of the Cube, it's still fast enough to outrun the most streamlined of warp-capable ships. And if they wanted to conquer a planet, they could always bomb from above or send down a sphere, or do it much more subtly by beaming drones down.

However, one thing to note about its cube design, as pointed out in Q Who, is that since all sides are equal, there are theoretically no apparent weaknesses whatsoever. Compare that with the bridge of most Starfleet ships or the necks of Klingon ships, both of which are prime for targeting. An even cube offers equal defense on all sides, and if each side has the same number of weapon placements, then it's an even offense as well. No offensive/defensive blindspots.

Also, we don't know the full capabilities of a Borg Cube; for all we know, the ship doesn't need to be "aerodynamic" because it could perhaps shape any sort of forcefield for its purposes, should it come to any shearing force -- transwarp conduits come to mind, for example.

 

[Count]

One of the EU books theorized that the shape of the cube was a subconscious part on the part of the collective to show it's power in a subtle way.

The most perfect object in the universe is the sphere, but to create a perfectly symmetrical cube shape and keep it stable without warping due to gravity would take an enormous amount of power and engineering.

But that's the EU, so take it as you will...

 

[Bad Thoughts]

You should rewatch the Enterprise episode, Divergence, which probably shows best how warp drive works. The ship travels inside a protective bubble, the warp field, and it is that bubble that is riding on top of warped space. What matters is the shape of the bubble, not the shape of the ship. Indeed, a cube might be a better shape because it might fill up all the space inside the warp field, whereas the Federation ships have a lot of negative space within their warp fields. Thus it would be the Borg cubes that are more efficient.

The sphere in ST:FC was in orbit, not in the atmosphere.

 

[PicardSpeedo]

The drag coefficient is meaningless in a vacuum.

Also, Borg vessels were often shown using transwarp conduits to move from place-to-place, an entirety different principle than a self-contained warp drive unit. While Borg cubes are indeed shown to be capable of travelling at enormous speed under their own warp power, this is by no means their sole method of propulsion. The most likely reason for the tradeoff between smaller warp bubble and more efficient defensible area (ie, the 'cube' shape) lies in the purpose of the vessel in question - a Borg cube is a siege vessel first and foremost. It is intended to capture territory and hold it, not zip about the universe doing the work of smaller and more specialized vessels. The Borg themselves have shown that they have other craft which are used for these purposes.

 

[trekker670]

Aerodynamics don't matter in space. There is no air.

True, aerodynamics don't matter in a vacuum, because it's defined as how an object moves through air, but there are a whole other set of set of issues one would have to worry while traveling through space, such as fluid mechanics, which is more of what I believe the OP was intending to discuss.

 

[Bad Thoughts]

Aerodynamics don't matter in space. There is no air.

True, aerodynamics don't matter in a vacuum, because it's defined as how an object moves through air, but there are a whole other set of set of issues one would have to worry while traveling through space, such as fluid mechanics, which is more of what I believe the OP was intending to discuss.

Please read my second response to the OP.

 

[PicardSpeedo]

Aerodynamics don't matter in space. There is no air.

True, aerodynamics don't matter in a vacuum, because it's defined as how an object moves through air, but there are a whole other set of set of issues one would have to worry while traveling through space, such as fluid mechanics, which is more of what I believe the OP was intending to discuss.

Aerodynamics =/= Hydrodynamics

 

[Bad Thoughts]

Aerodynamics don't matter in space. There is no air.

True, aerodynamics don't matter in a vacuum, because it's defined as how an object moves through air, but there are a whole other set of set of issues one would have to worry while traveling through space, such as fluid mechanics, which is more of what I believe the OP was intending to discuss.

Aerodynamics =/= Hydrodynamics

I think this is a point in which a fictional depiction is meeting a fictional problem. Except perhaps around something like a supermassive black hole (which would be difficult to navigate around, regardless of circumstances), space is neither as dense or as energetic as Star Trek portrays it. Nevertheless, Star Trek has a device to take care of it: the deflector dish.

 

[Kemaiku]

There was an episode of Voyager where 7 explains how a Borg cube enters slipstream or transwarp. I can't remember the exact details though.

Yup, she even shows an animated sequence showing how a Borg Cube projects a multi-layered field of significant size in a conical shape ahead of it that can move it through Warp, Transwarp and protect the ship from multi-dimensional and temporal discrepancies.

As someone else said, the ships have so much power that they can create huge shaped fields, which in themselves are more dynamic for high speed travel, even if the ship isn't.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

In the original conception of Borg cubes, all systems are equally distributed throughout the ship. The main design consideration is so every part of the ship is the same the ship can be fully functional when most of it is destroyed. First Contact and Voyager kind of went back on that by giving it specialized areas and 'weak points', and independently thinking queens. But I believe since the Borg do most of their traveling in space and not in atmospheres, they considered aerodynamics a much smaller concern than maintaining that property.

Anyway, efficient design is never a huge concern in Trekverse ships. A single shot to the nacelles makes the ship explode. Romulan warbirds have these looped wings that leave big gaps in the center of their design, increasing their volume and vulnerable area with no apparent practical gain. The submarine designs in BSG are way more efficient, but less beautiful to look at. I don't think any of the major ship designs we see do much to minimize surface area.

 

[Angry Fanboy]

Angry Fanboy

I suppose you can go down the line that the Borg (prior to being portrayed as having transwarp) utilise a different means of warp propulsion that allows cubes to travel faster-than-light - for instance they have no outboard nacelles to generate warp-fields yet this appears to be one of the tenets 'conventional' warp propulsion.

Until the appearance of the Borg all Star Trek vessels (as far as I'm aware) have had some sort of aerodynamic shape, so unless this is purely an aesthetic choice repeated across most of known space it must be necessary to generate efficient warp-fields using 'conventional' technology.

Although when all is said and done, we all know the Borg ship is a cube because it needed to look unfamiliar and intimidating and Starfleet ships are streamlined because they need to look pretty!

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Absolutely. The cube shape is more characteristic of the borg's robotic, characterless nature than it is designed for efficiency. It looks like the vessel of an undifferentiated army.