Backup warp reactors and engine nacelles

[westwords2020]

One great design flaw in ST is that the ships except in the case of Prometheus class all depend on a single big M/AM reactor and a pair of warp engine nacelles. The Romulans use quatumn sigularities but have only one installed per ship.
Loss of antimatter reactor/singularity reactor results in ships being limited to sublight speed although fusion powerplants driving sublight impulse propulsion systems are capable of significant combat but use a Lot of fuel compared to the antimatter/singularity 'mains'.
To solve this problem of a knocked out or irreparable failure of the single main powerplant or one or both nacelles why not have a backup main powerplant and nacelles stowed in the hull but extendable when needed like the extendable auxillary propulsion plants used on submarines and frigates in the USN.
These nacelles would be small and hidden behind hull plating that would act as a door for deployment and retraction.
They would be installed on the primary hull and secondary hull and would allow limited cruising warp and brief high speed warp though their small size would entail high fuel consumption compared to the large main nacelles.
Concealed in primary hull they would enable us to establish warp capable saucers when seperated and two sets of backup propulsion systems in twin hulled ships and a single set in single hull ships.
Fusion plants would provide most weapons/defense system power with the backup antimatter/singularity reactor providing power to propulsion only at high warp and contributing power to weapons/defense at low warp or sublight speeds.
The tradeoff here is limited power, high fuel inefficency compared to the 'mains' to having viable backup warp drives.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

Well, the nacelle thing, I think, is irrelevant. In TMP-and-later design philosophy, each nacelle is just a housing for a string of coil sets. If you loose a few coils INSIDE a nacelle, the nacelle is still marginally functional.

On the other hand, the M/ARA core issue is a big one, if you ask me. I've NEVER been comfortable with the "single point of failure" approach Sternbach and Co. came up with for TNG.

While I know Andrew Probert now subscribes to the TNG design ethos as being a "correct" version (moreso than the TMP one), I disagree. See, I've always sort of assumed that in the TMP design, the linear reactor "cores" actually had a small matter and a small antimatter injector at each "knuckle" of the shafts, and that you were reacting matter and antimatter in a UNIFORM MIXTURE in side of those elements. If you lost a segment or two, or three, or ten... you still have power generation at the other points. (This also explains how the door in TWOK could slice off the shaft and you could still have limited (That's a KEY point!) power generation.

For TNG, the dilithium crystals became the "catalyst" for the matter/antimatter reaction... which just seems SILLY to me. On the other hand, we saw dilithium crystals in "The Alternative Factor" as very specific cut crystal shapes. I've assumed that the nature of these crystals was actually ELECTRICAL POWER GENERATION... that is, you focus the high-energy gammas from the annihilation reaction through these crystals and you get a massive electrical potential difference (also explaining the "terminals" on the ends of these crystals).

You don't need 'em to generate the reaction, only to convert the energy from the reaction into a useful form, in other words.

In TWOK, we see Spock go into the "Main energizer" to do SOMETHING by hand (funny how they don't have even the most simple of robotic tools, but oh well!). I've always assumed that this was "resetting" a large dilithium crystal.

This is also somewhat consistent with TOS. In TOS, Scotty's "Bairns" were a series of cylinders... just not aligned in linear runs. With the "energizer" in a console out in front, not at the reaction points themselves (at least in the later days of the Engineering set).

So... you could argue that TOS and TMP had a LOT of smaller reactors, and it wasn't 'til TNG that we were reduced to a "single-point-of-failure" system.

I prefer multiple small reactors in series, personally, anyway. But as an engineer, I find ANY system that has a single-point-of-failure as a core design feature to be... utterly unacceptable.

There's a REASON that all but the smallest of aircraft are designed to have multiple smaller engines instead of one big one. If you lose ONE engine while over the Atlantic, you can still make it to safety. (I've dealt with that very issue more than once in my professional life.)

 

[westwords2020]

The single point of failure mode always bothered me. It always seemed that two reactor/enginerooms made sense but that was not the way it played out on screen although published sources like the TNG magazine of the time indicated an emergency antimatter reactor on deck 42? of the Enterprise D.
Losing a nacelle pylon would be drastic and represents another single point of failure.
The new UK carrier has it's generators located fore and aft and one each under the two islands thus making a single hit mission kill of ship's power impossible. The layout buries the main cruise diesels in the hull for protection against antiship missiles and the above the waterline gas turbine generators immune to torpedo hits so you have redundant power supplies.
It has been proposed to have auxillary propulsors/dispersed propulsors admidships so a Bismark type single point of failure in the rudder taking a torpedo hit that knocked out steering wouldn't happen again. A ship with stern/midships propulsion units in pods could lose her stern and still be able to get home.
Submarine retractable 'outboard' motors will have a slow speed of under five knots, I think, and USN frigates can make six knots on emergency electric retractable propulsors compared to 28 knots on main shaft.
Concealment behind the hull of retractable warp engine nacelles allows one to solve the problem of the saucer section seemingly manage warp speeds without a technobabble explanation for Encounter at Farpoint and Arsenal of Freedom as well as manage in Where No Man Has Gone Before to get home in years rather than millennia.

 

[FalTorPan]

Franz Joseph's concept for warp drive involved each nacelle being an independently operating entity, much like a jet engine. If one nacelle were to fail, then the ship could continue to fly -- albeit not very efficiently -- with the other.

I see nothing "fanboyish" about having a completely operational, backup matter/antimatter reactor aboard the ship, mostly because the main reactor takes up so little space.

 

[aridas sofia]

^ The concept of the two self-contained warp engines was Matt Jefferies' idea, that Franz Joseph picked up on (possibly based on his meetings with him). Jefferies expressed the belief that the incredibly powerful engines would need to be kept far away from the habitable parts of the ship because of their potential danger. Importantly, the redundancy of his scheme was central to the aerospace mentality he brought to the design process.

Of course, Franz Joseph's work exhibited a similar thinking, likely because of his own professional experience as a technical illustrator. For both of them, the form had to reflect some underlying function.

 

[westwords2020]

I see no reason why the reactor has to vertical. It could be a linear design in modules as put forth in this thread or a combined vertical/linear powerplant.

 

[jayrath]

The reason why they don't take along an extra reactor and nacelles is probably the same reason why submarines or aircraft carriers don't carry around extra nuclear reactors, drive shafts, gear trains, etc.

There's only so much extra you can or need to carry. And anyway, the reason why warp reactors go blooey is because the writers need them to. If the ships become invulnerable, where's the drama?

 

[westwords2020]

Submarines have only one reactor generally, the Russian have two reactor plants in many of their boats. Aircraft carriers have two reactor plants in USN so though they don't have spares they do have the advantage of having a second plant not only for double the power output but also if one breaks down they can continue somewhat limited operations with the other.
Most USN ships except for frigates have two enginerooms and propeller sets so if one is down or disabled by enemy fire they can continue operations on the other engineroom/shaft/propeller.
Royal Navy carriers to be constructed use a two shaft plant and distributed power for their electric drives. To kill all the power on a Queen Elisabeth carrier, you have to hit all four generator sets which are widely dispersed.
Multiple generator/engine sets are just good engineering practice for a ship that goes in harms' way.

 

[FalTorPan]

westwords2020 said:
Multiple generator/engine sets are just good engineering practice for a ship that goes in harms' way.

Especially when you consider how small a warp reactor is compared to the size of the entire ship. The Enterprise-D, for instance, could easily house at least two in the Battle Section alone.

 

[bryce]

I am pretty sure that Voyager was designed with an aux warp reactor, but
they ignored it in the series.

Maybe it wasn't supposed to be installed until next Tuesday.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

jayrath said:
The reason why they don't take along an extra reactor and nacelles is probably the same reason why submarines or aircraft carriers don't carry around extra nuclear reactors, drive shafts, gear trains, etc.

And by saying that, you've just demonstrated that you don't really get what's being discussed.

Every ship has a backup power system and a backup propulsion system of some form. NO INDEPENDENT-OPERATION NAVAL VESSEL IS IN SERVICE WITH THE US MILITARY TODAY THAT HAS "SINGLE-POINT-OF-FAILURE" POWER OR PROPULSION SYSTEMS. NOT ONE. Okay, skiffs and other small support craft may have that limitation. But none of the major craft.

A submarine doesn't carry along "extra reactors" but they sure as hell do carry around a backup generator, even if it's not nuclear. (Plus batteries, of course... )

There's only so much extra you can or need to carry.

You're missing the point completely. So let me restate it again.

A 747 could, theoretically, have one single massive engine capable of propelling the aircraft by itself. This, in fact, would be a much less expensive way to build an aircraft. So why don't they do that? Why does a 747 have four underslung engine nacelles (plus an APU in the tail)?

Note that these individual engines are less powerful than the "one engine" you'd need to move the aircraft by itself. Each can, in theory, keep the aircraft aloft at altitude by itself but you can't climb, much less take off, with just one.

The reason is that it's not impossible, or even UNCOMMON, for an engine to fail during operation. And the aircraft must be able to continue to operate with only three operating engines with no significant impact on flight operation. This happens more often than you might realize.

Not long ago I was made aware of an aircraft failure in a transatlantic trip where not one but TWO engines failed. Yet the passengers made it to their destination safely and unharmed. Interesting, that, huh? Why? Because the failures occurred at cruise altitude and the aircraft was able to maintain that altitude and complete its mission with only two operating engines.

THIS IS WHAT WE ARE TALKING ABOUT. You don't "get it?" Fine... just remind me never to let you design anything in real life.

What we're talking about is eliminating the "uber-massive warp core" and replacing it with multiple SMALLER cores that, together, do the same job.

Make sense?

And anyway, the reason why warp reactors go blooey is because the writers need them to. If the ships become invulnerable, where's the drama?

You weren't on the writing staff for TNG or Voyager were you?

GIVE ME A BREAK. You're right, of course... this was a standard tactic used by the BAD WRITERS on TNG and VOY. This sort of "technobabblish bullshit writing formula cheat" is what drove so many fans away from the shows.

THE DRAMA DOESN'T COME FROM THE WARP CORE BREACH OF THE WEEK. It comes from ... gasp... GOOD STORYTELLING, about interesting PEOPLE doing interesting things in interesting situations.

By the time TNG came to an end, the concept of the "Warp Core Breach" had ceased to be a threat and had become a JOKE.

 

[westwords2020]

The Borg have multiple dispersed power generation in their cubes so there is no reason not to have multiple small cores and an Engineroom that instead of the big warp core acts as a central distribution point for all that power with the engineeing computer located there also. Naturally, the computer would be backed up as well with either a second core or multiple small cores.
A Prometheus type ship starts with three main cores but there is no reason why each seperate/seperated section could not have multiple small backups.
A thought, for visual impact you could have a main core in engineering and multiple secondary units dispersed throughout the ship to gain the power output space/volume efficency of a main powerplant and the surviabillity of smaller less efficent for size in power density than the main.
However, two enginerooms per hull makes more sense to me and I agree, get rid of the warp core breach business.
Auxillary/backup retractable nacelles allow backup warp propulsion without destroying the 'look' of the classic Fed starship since they are on visible when primary engine nacelles fail or are shot off their pylons or other massive damage.

 

[candida]

Isn't the real point of vulnerability not the reactor core but the antimatter storage ? I have never understood why it's at the belly of the ship marked with a big decal. It almost says "Target Suicide Run Here". And while the location isn't sensible (after all, if you lose containment then you're all toast whether the antimatter bottles are at the bottom of deck 42 or in the middle of deck 10 in the saucer) then it does make sense to have a single point of antimatter storage, given the power requirements to hold the stuff and, again, the fact that if it goes, you blow, whether it's a large bottle or one of many smaller ones. Piping antimatter to lots of reactors is just going to have many power-intensive bends in transfer conduits. So perhaps the answer is - might as well have one, as they blow so often it's just a waste of dilithium to put in a stack of redundant cores that will go with the first.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

candida said:
Isn't the real point of vulnerability not the reactor core but the antimatter storage ? I have never understood why it's at the belly of the ship marked with a big decal. It almost says "Target Suicide Run Here". And while the location isn't sensible (after all, if you lose containment then you're all toast whether the antimatter bottles are at the bottom of deck 42 or in the middle of deck 10 in the saucer) then it does make sense to have a single point of antimatter storage, given the power requirements to hold the stuff and, again, the fact that if it goes, you blow, whether it's a large bottle or one of many smaller ones. Piping antimatter to lots of reactors is just going to have many power-intensive bends in transfer conduits. So perhaps the answer is - might as well have one, as they blow so often it's just a waste of dilithium to put in a stack of redundant cores that will go with the first.

Well, c'mon, now.. think like a problem solver, not a problem-SEEKER.

Why have the bottles near the skin? Simple... so if a bottle starts to look "iffy" you can dump it BEFORE it goes.

That also gives you a VERY good reason for multiple bottles. If you have one go bad and have to dump it, you've still got all the rest.

I went a step further in my own ship design... the bottles aren't even behind skin panels. They're basically quick-release devices, almost like lifeboats. This lets you eject a failing bottle VERY quickly, and also allows you to "hot swap" bottles at a base facility, which would definitely speed up refueling operations.

As for retractable "spare nacelles"... I DID do something like that as well. I thought it was really silly to use the primary hull as a "lifeboat" if everyone onboard will simply die of old age before it can make it to an inhabitable system, so I figured that the p-hull NEEDS its own FTL system.





See... retractable nacelles done long before this discussion.

The trick is... they're not there as spares for the full ship... they're there for times that the p-hull is in independent operation. You'll also note that the s-hull and the p-hull both have impulse drives... but that they're designed to function together when the ship is in the standard "joined" mode.

In this case, each of the "emergency primary hull nacelles" has a single antimatter bottle and a small reactor which taps into the impulse fuel stores. This will allow the primary hull to travel at about warp 5, max... more than sufficient to allow the survivors aboard the primary hull to make a safe harbor, but nowhere nearly as powerful as the main warp drive system.

 

[FalTorPan]

Cary L. Brown said:
I went a step further in my own ship design... the bottles aren't even behind skin panels. They're basically quick-release devices, almost like lifeboats. This lets you eject a failing bottle VERY quickly, and also allows you to "hot swap" bottles at a base facility, which would definitely speed up refueling operations.

What would happen if an opponent were to inflict the "wrath of Khan" on the upper surface of the engineering hull? On second thought, I suppose that if the deflector shields were down, then the antimatter would be just as vulnerable if it were stored deep within the engineering hull.

 

[Timo]

Basically, the entire ship is always a single failure point. Blow it up and the game is over.

Whether it is worthwhile to duplicate some systems aboard that ship thus depends entirely on whether the survival of the duplicate is helpful in extending the survivability of the ship. Putting two gun turrets on the forecastle is useless if a hit on one will always take out the other as well. Better just put the two barrels in the same turret, especially if they won't fire on two different targets anyway, or if they have a slowish rate of fire that allows a single turning turret to cover all the desired targets.

Should a starship have two active warp cores? Probably not. A hit on one will already completely destroy the ship, so there is no joy from the other. Distributing something across the mere couple of hundred meters of starship hull is no protection when the minimum practical separation, as per blast radius, is in the order of thousands of kilometers. Far better to build two separate ships, both with a single reactor.

Should a starship have auxiliary power systems? Sure, and all known examples do. But if a system is powerful enough to drive the ship to warp, it is apparently also powerful enough to kill everybody if fatally hit. So by all means have fusion reactors driving the shields or the impulse drive, but do not store extra self-destruct potential aboard in the form of useless additional warp cores.

Should a starship have multiple nacelles? If the nacelles are just the means of translating the produced power into warp motion, then this is pretty much analogous to the number of propellers on today's warships. One is cheap, and sometimes cheap is better than survivable. One may also be good for special applications, such as stealthy, slow-turning submarine props. But two is redundancy, and flexibility, and probably allows for differential thrust as well, for steering. Any number above two is more redundancy, and probably necessary for translating a lot of power into correspondingly good motion, but the expenses also mount. And ten nacelles won't enjoy any better a survivability through separation than three would - quite the contrary, actually.

Ultimately, stasrships will always remain vulnerable to something or other. Everything will. Doctrines in different eras, acknowledging different technologies, have emphasized different aspects of the threat scenario and shrugged impotently at others. Today, warships are unarmored against shellfire, mines, torpedoes or missiles. They accept the fact that shellfire will destroy them with impunity, so they stay out of its way; they try to operate in areas devoid of mines, too; they have some countermeasures for fooling torpedoes or, in the rare case, for sinking them, but still generally just try to stay out of the way of torpedo attackers; but they dedicate lots of resources for jamming, fooling, or shooting down missiles (and manned aircraft), because these are considered the prime threat. Warships of yesterday or tomorrow would operate under a different doctrine and attempt a different combination of active and passive protection and evasion.

Starships rely massively on their shields. If those go down, there's no point in continuing the fight. The next shot will mean the end anyway, whether the ship has clever internal partitionings or one reactor room made of balsa wood. In this environment, a doctrine of multiple warp drives seems senseless. But in the environment of the next spinoff, it might be that "Endgame" armor or even DS9 ablative armor makes it plausible to fight shields down, and then a different breed of starships should indeed be built.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Cary L. Brown]

Timo said:Basically, the entire ship is always a single failure point. Blow it up and the game is over.

Totally missing the point, though. Yes, and by that argument the universe is also a "single point of failure" system. Blow up the whole universe and the whole universe is gone.

A true statement, but not really one worth making.

Whether it is worthwhile to duplicate some systems aboard that ship thus depends entirely on whether the survival of the duplicate is helpful in extending the survivability of the ship. Putting two gun turrets on the forecastle is useless if a hit on one will always take out the other as well. Better just put the two barrels in the same turret, especially if they won't fire on two different targets anyway, or if they have a slowish rate of fire that allows a single turning turret to cover all the desired targets.

All true, though the argument of having a double-barreled cannon is actually countered by your own point, here. Meaning... with two systems, you CAN fire at two targets if you have a need to do so, or at one... but with a single double-barreled system, you don't have that flexibility.

Should a starship have two active warp cores? Probably not. A hit on one will already completely destroy the ship, so there is no joy from the other. Distributing something across the mere couple of hundred meters of starship hull is no protection when the minimum practical separation, as per blast radius, is in the order of thousands of kilometers. Far better to build two separate ships, both with a single reactor.

VERY MYOPIC.

You're so totally focused on "shooting" that you're overlooking ANY other scenario. Example: What if one system needs to be shut down for ROUTINE MAINTENANCE?

You have a choice, in that case, of shutting down the whole ship, or of running it 'til you get to some equivalent of a "service station."

What if you have damage to one that isn't going to cause it to immediately explode... but which could eventually result in that if you keep using that system without repair?

You have a choice, in that case, with only one reactor of either shutting down entirely (making yourself vulnerable) or of running the damaged system at-risk.

You seem not to have read my "aircraft engine" analogy at all. Or else you simply discount it as being "stoopid."

Ya'ever see what happens when a big jumbo-jet engine EXPLODES when it's in operation? It takes out the whole aircraft. That's why they SHUT THEM DOWN BEFORE THEY EXPLODE!!!

SHEESH!

Should a starship have auxiliary power systems? Sure, and all known examples do. But if a system is powerful enough to drive the ship to warp, it is apparently also powerful enough to kill everybody if fatally hit. So by all means have fusion reactors driving the shields or the impulse drive, but do not store extra self-destruct potential aboard in the form of useless additional warp cores.

Ummm... Timo... do you know what a "fusion reactor" is?

Substitute for "auxiliary fusion reactor" the term "hydrogen bomb" and you start to get the picture.

Blow up a fusion reactor and you've destroyed your ship just as effectively as if you pop an annihilation reaction system.

Bottom line... ANY power generation system capable of the outputs that Treknology requires, if gone "haywire" would result in the death of everyone aboard.

Which means that you have safety factors built in. In specific, you have shutdown and ejection capabilities so that if a system like that looks like it MIGHT explode, you can prevent it from doing so without totally crippling the ship in the process.

Should a starship have multiple nacelles? If the nacelles are just the means of translating the produced power into warp motion, then this is pretty much analogous to the number of propellers on today's warships. One is cheap, and sometimes cheap is better than survivable. One may also be good for special applications, such as stealthy, slow-turning submarine props. But two is redundancy, and flexibility, and probably allows for differential thrust as well, for steering. Any number above two is more redundancy, and probably necessary for translating a lot of power into correspondingly good motion, but the expenses also mount. And ten nacelles won't enjoy any better a survivability through separation than three would - quite the contrary, actually.

All a nacelle is, is a HOUSING.

Discussing a "nacelle" as though it is, in itself, a piece of hardware is silly and senseless. It's the housing in which some hardware is enclosed and supported, that's all.

The real issue is how many subspace field generators you have.

We actually know how many coils there are in each Galaxy-class nacelle. There are two row per nacelle, one top and one bottom, meaning you have four rows of coils. I seem to recall there being 14 coils in series in each row, but that's purely from memory so I could be wrong. But let's assume that I'm not. That means that the Galaxy class has 56 primary subspace field generator coils. I'm assuming that the aft end of the nacelle, described as some sort of "field manipulation" system, is also a field generator of sorts, but we'll ignore that, as we'll also ignore the driver coils associated with the impulse decks.

Now, assume that you loose ten coil segments, evenly distributed. You can almost certainly still create a warp field, although probably not a particularly fast or efficient one.

Ultimately, stasrships will always remain vulnerable to something or other. Everything will. Doctrines in different eras, acknowledging different technologies, have emphasized different aspects of the threat scenario and shrugged impotently at others. Today, warships are unarmored against shellfire, mines, torpedoes or missiles. They accept the fact that shellfire will destroy them with impunity, so they stay out of its way; they try to operate in areas devoid of mines, too; they have some countermeasures for fooling torpedoes or, in the rare case, for sinking them, but still generally just try to stay out of the way of torpedo attackers; but they dedicate lots of resources for jamming, fooling, or shooting down missiles (and manned aircraft), because these are considered the prime threat. Warships of yesterday or tomorrow would operate under a different doctrine and attempt a different combination of active and passive protection and evasion.

By and large I think you're right about that, though I seriously question the "no protection against certain threats" argument. Can you support that? They may not have six-foot-thick armor plating all around (as you'd need to defend against most modern anti-ship weapons!) but they do have a fair amount of armor anyway, don't they?

Starships rely massively on their shields. If those go down, there's no point in continuing the fight. The next shot will mean the end anyway, whether the ship has clever internal partitionings or one reactor room made of balsa wood.

Absolutely correct... but you're thinking in absolutes again. You're only looking at one possible situation.

If the ship is in combat and shields go down, you're absolutely correct... a phaser beam will cut through the entire hull like a blowtorch through a pad of butter.

But you are totally ignoring the possibility, for instance, of partial damage... of overloads... of mechanical failures... of whatever? Using the aircraft engine analogy... what if you simply lose lubrication in one engine and the bearings start to seize up? (That's the most common form of failure in a real jet turbine, by the way.)

If you have just one system, and you have to shut it down of else it's going to fail... well, you might as well just let it fail because, in a hostile situation, you're going to die anyway!

If you have multiple distributed systems, and one has to be shut down, you can continue to be an operational starship and stand at least a FIGHTING chance at survival.

In this environment, a doctrine of multiple warp drives seems senseless. But in the environment of the next spinoff, it might be that "Endgame" armor or even DS9 ablative armor makes it plausible to fight shields down, and then a different breed of starships should indeed be built.

Seriously... your argument makes sense... but ONLY if you assume that there's never any chance of failure except for absolute and instantaneous breach during combat scenarios.

THAT is unrealistic... both from a "real world sensibilities" standpoint and from an "as seen on the show" standpoint.

 

[Chaos Descending]

westwords2020 said:
Aircraft carriers have two reactor plants in USN so though they don't have spares they do have the advantage of having a second plant not only for double the power output but also if one breaks down they can continue somewhat limited operations with the other.

You are wrong about that point.

The reactors are not there to "double the power", they are in fact there strictly for redundancy.

Each Reactor Plant (there are two) on a Nimitz Class Carrier can provide 100% of the ships power needs.

They run both at the same time so that if one goes down, they can seamlessly switch to the remaining one without losing any continuity of power at all.

And FYI, each Nimitz class carrier has four main shafts, four main engines, and four turbine generators for power.

 

[Timo]

Hmm, perhaps I should have been more obvious.

My point (and I feel a much more relevant point than yours) is that redundancy is not a positive thing, any more than freedom or warmth or security is. It is only beneficial in moderation. And circumstances always dictate the degree of moderation required for a positive rather than negative effect.

For example, to be able to aim at two targets can be a definite weakness, one that e.g. sunk the Graf Spee. Military hardware is not a wish list, it is the physical incarnation of a doctrine, this in turn both moderated and driven by economics and technology.

Sure, it would be fantastic to have two engines to each car, and a platform for a mechanic to stand on so that repairs could be performed on the run. But the doctrine of automobile use is strongly against this. We have yet to see if there could exist a doctrine that necessitates running a starship at warp 24/7/365, but obviously the one doctrine in use during the shows favors periodic slowdowns that facilitate repairs.

Even if 100% availability were desirable, duplication of the entire system would seldom be the proper way to go. No vehicle I know of has such a system; ships equipped with multiple boilers, reactors or turbines have drastically reduced capabilities if some of those are out for service, and the preferred way to operate if one element is damaged is to use the remaining ones for reaching a dockyard layover. This even when operating under commercial pressures and tight schedules.

A 747 may have four engines, but it doesn't have any spare wings or even an auxiliary fuel system. There is redundancy only to a relevant degree, after which redundancy would become a major economy- and safety-reducing liability. The 747 operates in a narrow niche that dictates its structure and the redundancy therein; other aircraft have limited or increased redundancies for their different niches.

Ummm... Timo... do you know what a "fusion reactor" is?

Only in the sense of what it is in the real world or in the new-Trek technical manuals. I am not aware of any canonical details.

In the sense of real fusion reactors or Tech Manual writeups, you are flat wrong. Those things cannot explode (apparently unlike their Babylon 5 counterparts!) and obviously are not regarded as a safety risk aboard starships. If they malfunction, the worst they can do is give the engineers really bad burns and displace the oxygen in the room with fusion fuel.

How Kirk could make an impulse engine explode within the Doomsday Machine must then depend on some quality other than fusionreactorness in the impulse system.

All a nacelle is, is a HOUSING.

And also nice Trek shorthand for a Starfleet set of warp coils, because those inhabit these nacelle things (or cowlings on the Defiant, for a better word).

Discussing a "nacelle" as though it is, in itself, a piece of hardware is silly and senseless. It's the housing in which some hardware is enclosed and supported, that's all.

Oh, come on. Discussing a boiler as though it is a piece of hardware isn't silly and senseless even though it depends on what is inside - how many steam pipes, of which diameter and material and layout. Redundancy in the number of nacelles is a relevant issue when discussing starship design, if for no other reason, then because it is the topic of this thread. And because obviously Starfleet does strike balances between nacelle numbers.

Now, assume that you loose ten coil segments, evenly distributed. You can almost certainly still create a warp field, although probably not a particularly fast or efficient one.

That's interesting speculation as such, but what does it have to do with redundancy? There is no indication that those coils are installed in excess numbers to account for unavailability, or that they could exist in any other configuration than the one shown and still perform their intended role. Aircraft jet engines have lots and lots of turbine blades, and can theoretically stand to lose a few, but that's not redundancy. Redundancy is having multiple jet engines, that is, multiple... Uh, nacelles, literally.

...but they do have a fair amount of armor anyway, don't they?

(Just as an aside, and because we aren't actually getting our facts wrong, just using opposite interpretations, the fact of this matter is that current naval vessels are built to withstand their own structural stresses and would not stop a revolver bullet. Except in those locations where a pounding wave requires so much protection as to also incidentally stop revolver bullets. There are strong steel bulkheads within, but the superstructures are usually paper-thin aluminum sheeting or its less expensive stainless steel equivalent. Huddling behind armor is a doctrinally outdated concept, just like giving parachutes to commercial aircraft passengers is. And any effort spent on armoring today's warships, save perhaps for the amphibious assault craft, would be detrimental to the ship's ability to survive - say, the CIWS system would then afford less ammo.)

You're only looking at one possible situation.

That, too, is my point. The builders of starships would also concentrate on the essentials, and shrug dismissively at a number of threat scenarios (military or otherwise) because preparing against those would detract from the important things.

For example, old battleships were built to withstand very specific types of attack - at the deliberate expense of being virtually unnavigable, providing a working environment that quickly made the crews uncombatworthy, and costing kingdoms to maintain. They were doctrinally perfect, however, and derived their survivability and operability from this.

Starfleet would not prepare chiefly against all-out capital ship combat, but that in fact is a point for total reliance on shields. By choosing that option, Starfleet creates the minimum limitations and complications within the ship, and maximizes usefulness in regular duty, while still maintaining the ability to fight most battles. It would be a very natural doctrinal choice for Starfleet to make, even when building ace-of-all-trades ships.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Chaos Descending]

Timo said:
*snip

ships equipped with multiple boilers, reactors or turbines have drastically reduced capabilities if some of those are out for service, and the preferred way to operate if one element is damaged is to use the remaining ones for reaching a dockyard layover.

*snip*

Timo Saloniemi

As I said in the post previous to yours, this is not completely true.

Aircraft carrier power plants are designed such that ONE will perform the entire range of function needed by the ship. The second one is added for redundancy.