Apple Question

[Christopher]

Physics-wise, a warp field would have no effect on a ship's momentum; it would come out of warp with the same velocity (speed and direction) it had going in. Which can be a problem, since your destination planet may be moving through space on a very different trajectory from the planet you started from. So there's going to have to be some maneuvering at impulse to "catch up" with whatever you're aiming for. A good starship pilot will probably choose their initial warp-entry trajectory to approximate that of their target, if they have that navigational data available.

Also, it's established by the TNGTM that impulse engines do reduce a ship's effective inertial mass, allowing it to accelerate faster, turn on a dime, etc. despite its enormous mass. Momentum equals mass times velocity, and the momentum of a body that isn't under thrust is a conserved quantity; so if you increase an object's mass, its velocity will decrease in direct proportion. So if your impulse engines have reduced your effective mass by a factor of a thousand and you're traveling at 75,000 km/s (about 1/4 lightspeed), then shutting off your impulse engines and returning your ship to its full mass should reduce your velocity to 75 km/s just like that.

It's meaningless to talk about "coming to a halt" or "anchoring" yourself in space, because there is no absolute reference frame. Everything in space is moving along some kind of trajectory, whether orbital or parabolic or hyperbolic. The only way you can define "standing still" is relative to some other specific object, but that really means just matching that object's own motion. Maybe you can define being stationary relative to the cosmic background radiation -- i.e. observing no redshift or blueshift in the CBR in any direction -- but that would be pretty useless so long as the nearby planets and stars and whatnot are still whipping by in their orbits around the center of the galaxy. Thinking about "halting" in space is as misguided as thinking about constant speeds in space. These are Earthbound assumptions, and they need to be unlearned before you can speak meaningfully about space travel.

 

[Timo]

Physics-wise, a warp field would have no effect on a ship's momentum; it would come out of warp with the same velocity (speed and direction) it had going in. Which can be a problem, since your destination planet may be moving through space on a very different trajectory from the planet you started from. So there's going to have to be some maneuvering at impulse to "catch up" with whatever you're aiming for.

This happens a lot with Larry Niven's hyperdrives. But it doesn't appear to happen in Star Trek, so it's difficult to tell whether the same rules would apply.

shutting off your impulse engines and returning your ship to its full mass should reduce your velocity to 75 km/s just like that.

Possibly so. But you're relying on conservation laws while describing a machine that explicitly violates the known ones; it shouldn't automatically follow that momentum would be conserved in the case of impulse engine operations.

It's meaningless to talk about "coming to a halt" or "anchoring" yourself in space, because there is no absolute reference frame.

Except perhaps in Star Trek. Its star travel often deals with absolutes, and is justified in doing so thanks to introducing a bit of magic to the equation: while one can't anchor oneself to space, one might be able to anchor oneself to subspace.

The only way you can define "standing still" is relative to some other specific object, but that really means just matching that object's own motion.

But the point here is that in Trek, that happens in a split second. If a starship wants to come to a halt next to the Mysterious Object, she drops out of warp or shuts down the impulse engines, and immediately has matched velocities down to a tee.

This undermines the concept that warp would merely give and take FTL velocities, after which you have to do STL (we cannot assume that every Mysterious Object would automatically be at the exact same state of motion as the starship was when she last engaged warp).

It also shows either that impulse engines are capable of accelerations of millions and zillions of gee (and raises the question of why these abilities never see combat use) or that there exists a "braking parachute" unrelated to impulse engines and incapable of adding to velocity in a tactically meaningful way. The latter tech is incidentally also used by Larry Niven to cope with his hyperdrive physics (see Flatlander).

Would the Trek anchor need to be powered? Today's anchors aren't - you don't need a working minisub to pull the anchor to the bottom, and you don't need a swarm of minicopters to spread out your drag chute, or a running engine to apply the brakes on a heavy truck. Physics has been harnessed to make the deployment automatic and energetically advantageous. For all we know, the "subspace field suppressing inertia is shut down" trick is indeed used for braking, but separately from impulse propulsion, there being a "reservoir" of inertia kept in storage for braking.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ithekro]

Relative stop is the likely answer, with the relative object being the galaxy.

 

[Mytran]

With regard to the TOS saucer detaching from the Engineering Hull and performing routine maneivers, it's probably worth checking out the original series bible:

http://leethomson.myzen.co.uk/Star_Trek/1_Original_Series/Star_Trek_TOS_Writer's_Guide.pdf

On PDF page 48 (the second p.15) there is the following passage:

WHAT ABOUT THE SHIP'S MAIN SAUCER-LIKE SECTION?

This is the portion of the shop in which we will be and which we will use most. It contains at the very top the ship's bridge and general operation facilities. This "saucer" is approximately twenty stories thick at its widest spot, containing also primary ship's departments, living accommodations, recreational facilities, laboratories, and is in fact a completely self-sustaining unit which can detach itself from the galaxy drive units and operate on atomic impulse power for short-range solar system exploration.

Bear in mind that this is an earlier version of the series bible (the later one is PDF pages 1-33). It would also indicate that the ship was originally imagined as nearly twice as long as the "official" 947 feet (the length is not mentioned, just the crew compliment). Other dialogue in this early bible would suggest that the weekly action would be confined entirely to the saucer, with the secondary hull just dealing with engineering and cargo (presumably left behind as the saucer flies off into their adventure of the week). However, the concept of the transporter (AKA matter-energy scrambler) had already been developed (PDF pages 47-48)

 

[Christopher]

^Well, of course the transporter had already been conceived, since it's the first-season bible mentioning Kirk and Rand and McCoy and so on, so it was written after the pilots.

Thanks for the link, though. I got the '64 format and the '67 edition of the bible ages ago from Lincoln Enterprises, but I've never seen the first-season bible before.

 

[Maurice]

http://leethomson.myzen.co.uk/Star_Trek/1_Original_Series/Star_Trek_TOS_Writer's_Guide.pdf

...This "saucer" is approximately twenty stories thick at its widest spot...

...It would also indicate that the ship was originally imagined as nearly twice as long as the "official" 947 feet (the length is not mentioned, just the crew compliment).

Nah. Gene's just engaging in shorthand "it's huge" talk here, not actually describing any sort of scale. There's stiff like this all through the production documents.

Besides, where is the "widest spot" on a disc?

 

[Marsden]

In Star Fleet Battles lore the U.S.S. Hood, in a battle with Klingons was nearly destroyed, but managed to separate the saucer and land it under the ocean of a nearby planet. The Klingons couldn't find it, and after they left the area, the Hood Saucer rose up from the water and managed to return to Federation space on impulse power, taking three years to do so. (I suppose their radio was busted too.)

They must have been awfully close to Federation space to be able to get back in only three years without FTL travel.

Assuming that full impulse is 1/4 the speed of light as has been proposed elsewhere, if they maintained that speed the whole time, then they travelled 3/4 of a light year at most. And I think at that speed there would be issues with time dilation.

As to the topic of saucer separation... yes, I have also read that it would be possible in an emergency situation.

Kor

Well, they were in Federation space, towards but not directly on the Klingon/Federation border when the Klingon Fleet invaded the UFP all across the border with the Romulans also invading simultaneously. The Federation lost a lot of ships and bases that day.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

I think the two long triangles on the underside of the saucer were originally conceived as landing gear hatches.

http://tos.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/2x02/WhoMournsForAdonais0467.jpg

http://tos.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/2x02/WhoMournsForAdonais0539.jpg

In any case, they give a nice sense of added surface detail without over-doing it.

 

[Mytran]

The triangles may have been a holdover from a much earlier concept of the ship, where it land Forbidden Planet style each week.

The lengths don't quite work though, without some interesting dorsal pylon disconnection points...

http://www.cygnus-x1.net/links/lcar...l/USS-Enterprise-Officers-Manual_Page_038.jpg

 

[Christopher]

The triangles may have been a holdover from a much earlier concept of the ship, where it land Forbidden Planet style each week.

I covered that already. The documentation shows that, not only did the very first thing ever written about the premise establish that the ship "rarely" landed on a planet, but the landing idea had been abandoned altogether as too expensive before the pilot script was even written, and therefore well before the ship itself was actually designed. As far as we know, there was never a point at which the ship was intended to land regularly, and all the design work was done under the assumption that the ship would never land, except perhaps as a last-ditch emergency measure.

 

[Timo]

This assumes the design work proceeded in terms set out by those establishing the premise, though. Would Jeffries even have known what Roddenberry really wanted, in sufficient detail to eliminate landing gear? He didn't eliminate the shuttle hangar, even though the transporter premise ought to have made that unattractive.

Once the design would get approved, there'd be no point in eliminating some of its features on basis of fictional functionality: it had been chosen because it looked good the way it was...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Albertese]

I do not have documentation to back this up, but I recall somewhere that the gray triangles were intended by Jefferies to be landing gear -- exactly for last ditch landings. And that he assumed a third leg would be either revealed by dropping the interconnecting dorsal or else the dorsal would stay and be the third leg (as is seen in the Mandell Enterprise Officer's Manual). And that, further, Probert knew this (possibly from Jefferies?) and included four landing legs on the underside of the TMP saucer.

Maybe that was it.... some special feature or something concerning the design of the TMP ship? I really can't recall my source for this, but my impression was that it was more something MJ thought up and included rather than something indicated by GR.

--Alex

 

[Christopher]

^That sounds right. Jefferies thought through the design on a very practical level, so I'm sure he would've considered such factors as emergency procedures. But it most likely had nothing to do with the original "rarely lands on a planet" idea from Roddenberry's pitch.