When I first watched the 2009 Star Trek reboot, I got miffed when I saw Kirk's dad set the Kelvin on a collision course with the Naruda at full thrust, and instead of showing the red impulse engines flare up, they showed stuff coming out of the back of the warp nacelle, like it was some big rocket. And I know in some old late 60's/early 70's Star Trek illustrations, they showed flames or whatever coming out of the back of the warp nacelles like they were rockets. And this just reinforced that misunderstand of how Star Trek ships work.
And likely, the behind-the-scenes explanation for that scene in Trek '09 was that the folks making the movie really didn't really understand how Trek ships work, beyond memorizing some terms like "warp drive".
But since it happened on screen, my brain tried to find an explanation for the venting out the nacelle causing the ship to accelerate. So I asked myself, what use were those vents for anyway? Well, the warp nacelles are powered by plasma channeled from the warp core. And so somehow that expended plasma and it's byproducts of that plasma probably have to be vented somewhere when it's used up. (It's doesn't just vanish into a black hole.)
Hence the vents.
And other times, those vents could be used as a pressure valve to vent off excess warp plasma when necessary.
And in space, when you push something out of the back of a ship, the ship moves in the opposite direction.
Since the warp drive in the Kelvin was offline, Kirk would have used conventional impulse thrusters to fly the Kelvin into the Naruda. So the warp nacelle shouldn't have come into it at all, since they weren't using warp.
Except in Kirk wanted to ram the Naruda as hard as possible, he would need all the push he could muster. Alll the thrust he could generate. So since that warp plasma wasn't being used for anything else, it would make sense to just vent that stuff out of the back of the nacelles in a big burst, using the nacelle as an extra thruster, to give the Naruda an extra component of velocity to ram the Naruda with.
Just like that one time when Data blew out the pressurized cargo bay to push the Enterprise out of the way when that ship from the past was gonna hit the E-D.
And that is my rationalization for why the Kelvin warp nacelle was depicted as some sort of thruster when Kirk was about to ram the Kelvin into the Naruda in Trek '09.
And also for what those vents are on the back of some nacelles.
In fact, now it makes me think that all starships should have those vents instead of those silly dome shaped thingies on the back of the nacelles. Though I kinda used to really like those little domes on the end of the nacelles instead of the vents, because they looked more futuristic...now I think the vents are more practical.
It's funny because the NX-01 in the 22nd century had those little round balls on the end of it's nacelles, but the pilot and the first episode of TO Shad vents. And the Discovery era pre-TOS Enterprise has vents. Then the TOS era has those half ball domes again. I just imagine that the vents and the domes are two different competing technological solution to handling venting warp plasma, and sometimes designers prefer one over the other for some reason. By the TMP era, there were no obvious vents or domes at all on any nacelles. So maybe the engines are more efficient, and somehow excess warp plasma is recycled or something. Channeled through that swirl intermix chamber and re-energized, and any small excess is vented off in some other way. Maybe out of the sides of the nacelles somewhere.
Or not.
And likely, the behind-the-scenes explanation for that scene in Trek '09 was that the folks making the movie really didn't really understand how Trek ships work, beyond memorizing some terms like "warp drive".
But since it happened on screen, my brain tried to find an explanation for the venting out the nacelle causing the ship to accelerate. So I asked myself, what use were those vents for anyway? Well, the warp nacelles are powered by plasma channeled from the warp core. And so somehow that expended plasma and it's byproducts of that plasma probably have to be vented somewhere when it's used up. (It's doesn't just vanish into a black hole.)
Hence the vents.
And other times, those vents could be used as a pressure valve to vent off excess warp plasma when necessary.
And in space, when you push something out of the back of a ship, the ship moves in the opposite direction.
Since the warp drive in the Kelvin was offline, Kirk would have used conventional impulse thrusters to fly the Kelvin into the Naruda. So the warp nacelle shouldn't have come into it at all, since they weren't using warp.
Except in Kirk wanted to ram the Naruda as hard as possible, he would need all the push he could muster. Alll the thrust he could generate. So since that warp plasma wasn't being used for anything else, it would make sense to just vent that stuff out of the back of the nacelles in a big burst, using the nacelle as an extra thruster, to give the Naruda an extra component of velocity to ram the Naruda with.
Just like that one time when Data blew out the pressurized cargo bay to push the Enterprise out of the way when that ship from the past was gonna hit the E-D.
And that is my rationalization for why the Kelvin warp nacelle was depicted as some sort of thruster when Kirk was about to ram the Kelvin into the Naruda in Trek '09.
And also for what those vents are on the back of some nacelles.
In fact, now it makes me think that all starships should have those vents instead of those silly dome shaped thingies on the back of the nacelles. Though I kinda used to really like those little domes on the end of the nacelles instead of the vents, because they looked more futuristic...now I think the vents are more practical.
It's funny because the NX-01 in the 22nd century had those little round balls on the end of it's nacelles, but the pilot and the first episode of TO Shad vents. And the Discovery era pre-TOS Enterprise has vents. Then the TOS era has those half ball domes again. I just imagine that the vents and the domes are two different competing technological solution to handling venting warp plasma, and sometimes designers prefer one over the other for some reason. By the TMP era, there were no obvious vents or domes at all on any nacelles. So maybe the engines are more efficient, and somehow excess warp plasma is recycled or something. Channeled through that swirl intermix chamber and re-energized, and any small excess is vented off in some other way. Maybe out of the sides of the nacelles somewhere.
Or not.
