Bussard Collectors

[Crazy Eddie]

You have to collect it faster than you consume it.

Not necessarily - only if you want to ride forever on free gas. If you collect slower than you consume, you merely get fewer extra lightyears out of it, but you still get some.

Timo Saloniemi

I think what was being said is that going at warp 6, collecting that much gas, that there should be no possible way to consume faster than you collect.

I crunched the numbers on this a while ago. The conclusion we came to was that, depending on how much energy is required in a warp reaction (say, a few milligrams per second) you would need a forcefield several thousand kilometers in diameter in order to collect more hydrogen per second than you are consuming. This at velocities up and around warp seven, where the ship is moving fast enough to collect that hydrogen at sufficient density.

While it's true that space isn't entirely empty, one atom per cubic meter just isn't what you'd call "abundant" by engineering standards. Even in the more dense regions of space, it's like trying to fill a bathtub by collecting snowflakes in your hat.

 

[Myasishchev]

Given how sparse the gas is, I don't think you could collect enough a sublight speeds to make it worth your while. But at warp six (216 c), even with a collector field only a single mile across, you're gathering over forty million cubic miles of material per second. You have to collect it faster than you consume it.

I crunched the numbers on this a while ago. The conclusion we came to was that, depending on how much energy is required in a warp reaction (say, a few milligrams per second) you would need a forcefield several thousand kilometers in diameter in order to collect more hydrogen per second than you are consuming. This at velocities up and around warp seven, where the ship is moving fast enough to collect that hydrogen at sufficient density.

Indeed. My issue with this is that while it might work for a single starship, it may not adequately explain the presence of bussards on tens of thousands of them, usually traveling the very same spacelanes, millions of times in the aggregate over hundreds or thousands of years.

Of course there is also the possiblity of taking the Enterprise through the upper atmosphere of a gas giant or even the upper atmosphere of any class M world. Earth's upper layer is mostly hydrogen and helium.

This makes good sense--even if you could process interstellar hydrogen at high multiples of c, why bother? You already need to be able to travel between star systems to get the hydrogen, so you can get to the next star, and star systems appear to generally have gas giants.

I'm also not convinced that an atom of hydrogen hitting a ship would be a problem just because that ship's at warp. Even if there is actually some kind of physically implausible faster-than-light momentum attributed to the impact, the light from outside the warp bubble would be a much bigger and more omnipresent problem. It would also be impervious to any magnetic field and difficult to control with any gravitational (or, for sake of argument, antigravitational) field. If some weird FTL momentum is actually imparted to objects at warp, FTL is virtually impossible, because blueshift effects would mean anytime you traveled anywhere, you'd get slammed with gamma rays for the entire duration of the trip.

That's why I think the navigational deflector is for cis-stellar asteroids and other assorted crap in uncharted, alien Kupier Belts and Oort Clouds and such--in other words, things it would hurt to run into even if you were hardly moving at all in relation.

 

[Mytran]

And I again submit the possibility that the NACELLES is a retarded place to put the collectors in the first place since the ship's fuel is being stored in the primary hull, not in the nacelles, and it is better to place that collection hardware close to the bulk of the machinery that is going to process and utilize that incoming matter (namely, the fuel lab, warp core, impulse engines, whatever else) instead of having to pipe it all the way down from the nacelles just to process it, react it, and then send drive plasma back up TO the nacelles along parallel lines.

Somebody else thought so too - and wrote a very interesting essay on it:

http://www.fastcopyinc.com/orionpress/articles/power_for_the_warp_drive.htm

 

[strikefalcon]

I always thought the two half-globes on the sides of the top of the Miranda saucer were her navigational deflection system. Like in the following picture: http://web.ukonline.co.uk/dsalpha/miranda.gif

And then the deflector for the Oberth class was simply hidden under the bow plate of the secondary hull?

 

[Crazy Eddie]

That's possible, but those same features on the Miranda appear on the Constitution too, but not as deflectors. As for the Oberth... I am not entirely convinced that the "secondary hull" is a hull at all and I think it makes more design sense as one fraking huge warp nacelle (where the two things on the side of the primary hull would be, instead, sensor pods and probe launchers).

Since apparently this is not a new sentiment, I'll again agree that "deflectors" make more sense if they're integrated into the warp nacelles, where a huge quantity of ship's power is being channeled (or produced) anyway.

 

[Timo]

...those same features on the Miranda appear on the Constitution too, but not as deflectors.

We don't really know that, though. Quite possibly the grey half-domes or quarter-spheres are the main deflector system of the Constitution, and the blue disk in the middle is "just" a sensor.

If we really want objective support for the idea that the disk is the deflector and the grey domes are something else, we'll have to move over to the Excelsior class. That one features the blue disk, virtually identical to the Constitution one, but doesn't feature the grey domes - and dialogue establishes that the deflector is doing stuff when the blue disk of the Enterprise-B shoots out a beam in ST:GEN.

As for the Oberth... I am not entirely convinced that the "secondary hull" is a hull

TNG "Hero Worship" is unambiguous on this. LaForge shows and tells us that the Vico of Oberth class has primary and secondary hulls, and the secondary hull (the ventral pod) is shown having multiple habitable decks, and in addition containing a "core" which appears to be the warp core of the vessel.

Of course we may argue that a 2360s Oberth is internally different from a 2280s one. And it certainly isn't implausible that a ship that began as a primary hull plus a virtually empty ventral pod would "grow" so that inhabitable spaces would expand into the pod. It is even possible that an original warp powerplant in the primary hull was later replaced by a larger and more powerful one that had to be installed "outboard", in the pod. Similar major repositionings of power systems have happened in naval history, especially when ships were converted from coal to oil firing.

Since apparently this is not a new sentiment, I'll again agree that "deflectors" make more sense if they're integrated into the warp nacelles, where a huge quantity of ship's power is being channeled (or produced) anyway.

Agreed. However, terminologically we cannot abandon the "main deflector dish" in front of the secondary hull of many starships, because its role, designation and function is multiply confirmed by dialogue and visuals. The Bussard domes may well feature in the deflector system, but they have never earned the designation or status of a central element in that system.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mytran]

We don't really know that, though. Quite possibly the grey half-domes or quarter-spheres are the main deflector system of the Constitution, and the blue disk in the middle is "just" a sensor.

If we really want objective support for the idea that the disk is the deflector and the grey domes are something else, we'll have to move over to the Excelsior class. That one features the blue disk, virtually identical to the Constitution one, but doesn't feature the grey domes - and dialogue establishes that the deflector is doing stuff when the blue disk of the Enterprise-B shoots out a beam in ST:GEN.

That's not really a problem however, since the Excelsior is a more advanced model that the refit-E. It is possible that the sensor and "domes" deflectors started off as separate pieces of equipment, but by the time of the Excelsior class had been integrated into a single, multifunction unit.

 

[Timo]

True enough.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Hatchet2k4]

Going back to the bussard collector topic, personally I don't think they would ever be used to collect hydrogen from space while at warp. That just seems far too inefficient to possibly be practical. In addition the one time we see them used is in Insurrection while inside a thick nebula. I think that although they are collectors, they are supposed to be used in nebulas or possibly gas giants where there is enough gas around to be useful without expending so much energy just to collect it.

As for why even ships as early as the Phoenix have them.. My only other guess is they are multi function, or that the collectors weren't originally collectors at all but an integral part of the warp drive. Maybe they help shape the field generated by the warp coils? And also in later versions use that field to as more like a wide field tractor beam to suck particles in? Just some speculation here.

 

[Tiberius]

To be sure, no onscreen source ever tells us what the ramscoops do.

I may be wrong, but didn't O'Brien mention them and describe what they do when he was talking with tosk? And Tosk's versions were called Arva nodes.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

The Bussard domes may well feature in the deflector system, but they have never earned the designation or status of a central element in that system.

Well, there is the graphic from Descent ptII where the metaphasic shield is implied to be generated from somewhere on the front end of the nacelles. This may be why the big dish is the MAIN deflector dish; the big glowy domes might be known in official (but seldom used) parlance as "tactical deflectors" that can cover the ship in an omnidirectional field instead of unidirectional/beaming field.

At the very least, both the terms "main deflector" and "navigational deflector" have appeared in canon, but nothing has ever established those terms as referring to the same system. Since even the Phoenix is equipped with a pair of big glowy domes, I think it's likely that "navigational deflectors" describes whatever part of the nacelles is designed to transfer warp energy into a defensive forcefield.

 

[Timo]

Fair enough.

I may be wrong, but didn't O'Brien mention them and describe what they do when he was talking with tosk? And Tosk's versions were called Arva nodes.

Damn, that's right.

O'Brien: "What are they? Some kind of high-energy magnetic coils?"
Tosk: "For fuel replenishment. Fuel?"
O'Brien: "Like a ramscoop."
Tosk: "Ramscoop?"
O'Brien: "To capture stellar gases and convert them into usable fuel."
Tosk: "Yes! The arva nodes convert space matter into fuel."

So the ramscoops O'Brien is familiar with are at least "like" devices that replenish fuel, and more exactly are "to" capture stellar gases and turn them to fuel.

Not all that much ambiguity there. Although we can argue about the exact meaning of "stellar gases", and whether "space matter" is the same thing or whether there is a difference between arva nodes and ramscoops in that respect... Certainly it would make more sense to capture stellar than interstellar gases.

Another point perhaps worth mention: as far as the dialogue goes, the ramscoops O'Brien describes here are not really connected to the Bussard collectors mentioned elsewhere. We can't really tell if those are the same technology, or whether ramscoops (also mentioned and used in ST:INS) collect stellar gases whereas Bussard collectors (mentioned and used in "Samaritan Snare" and "Night Terrors") do something else altogether, and also have the option of spitting out hydrogen as shown in those two episodes.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Vektor]

Personally, I never liked the idea of the glowy things on the fronts of the nacelles being bussard collectors. I have often referred to them as such myself but only by convention; normally I choose to regard them as apocryphal or in reference to some other component in the same general vicinity, most likely the grills or "intakes" that are present at or near the front of most nacelle designs.

I believe it was Franz Joseph who originally identified the glowing nacelle caps on the TOS Enterprise as "space matter/energy sinks" (or something similar; I don't have the Tech Manual in front of me at the moment). Something like that makes a lot more sense to me as a component of a "warp drive nacelle" than a bussard collector does.

 

[Mytran]

A "space/matter energy sink" sounds a lot like something that sucks in stuff (stuff in this case being the fabric of the universe, in my interpretation).

A "bussard collector" is something that sucks in stuff. It's not hard to see why people (either deliberately or not) decided that one should also be the other.

Personally, I think using the grills as hydrogen intake vents makes a lot more sense. It also ties in nicely with the TMP refit engines.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Well, yes and no. Starships are explicitly described as using deuterium for the warp drive. 99.9% of the hydrogen in the interstellar medium is ordinary hydrogen. You can't run the warp drive on that kind of system, but you can "recharge" your impulse engines and fusion reactors if the thing they're using for fuel is ordinary hydrogen.

 

[Mytran]

We don't know what sort of matter was used in TOS and TMP. Deuterium only popped up for the first time in TNG.

Just out of curiosity, is there is definite advantage to using deuterium over hydrogen? In terms of availability, hydrogen's certainly a lot more abundant!

 

[Myasishchev]

Well, yes and no. Starships are explicitly described as using deuterium for the warp drive. 99.9% of the hydrogen in the interstellar medium is ordinary hydrogen. You can't run the warp drive on that kind of system, but you can "recharge" your impulse engines and fusion reactors if the thing they're using for fuel is ordinary hydrogen.

Which means that, somewhere, they have fusion reactors for their antimatter. Talk about missing the point.

Although if you're of the mind that they use anti-iron magnets or at least an anti-carbon solid to contain the anti-hydrogen, it might make some sense that they'd wind up with a lot of deuterium in the process.

Just out of curiosity, is there is definite advantage to using deuterium over hydrogen?

Iirc--and only iirc--the mutual repulsion between nuclei is lower with deuterium (and lower still with tritium). This has no advantage whatsoever in a deuterium-antideuterium reaction.

 

[Ronald Held]

Deuterium is more plentiful in the universe and should give more energy per unit mass in a fusion reaction than much higher atomic numbers elements.
Also, why take the trouble/energy to create any higher atomic numbered antiatoms instead of antideuterium for your matter/antimatter reactions?

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Because ordinary hydrogen is MORE abundant in the universe, and and somewhat easier to obtain from the bussard collectors (where deuterium would require a starship moving at warp nine for several days just to collect a few grams of it).

 

[Ronald Held]

Ordinary hydrogen is more plentiful than deuterium but harder to fuse.
How often in any Trek episode are the Collecters used to gather matter of their fusion reactors or for the warp core?