Cochrane's Phoenix - M/AM or fusion/fission?

[Praetor]

I've been doing a bit of reading around the internet regarding various interpretations of the way the Phoenix worked, and I've encountered a number of contradicting theories about the Phoenix. Since First Contact came out, I've never really given any thought to how the Phoenix was powered. It seems that the general concensus is that the ship was powered by M/AM as with later ships. However, several sources including Memory Alpha postulate that the Phoenix was not powered by matter-antimatter but by more primitive means. Memory Alpha's entry suggests fission, that Cochrane somehow turned the Titan V warhead into an engine. I'm at a loss to conclude how feasible this would be, let alone whether it would be powerful enough. The radiation that everyone had to be innoculated against in FC is rather inconclusive, but to me radiation would seem to be more in keeping with a fusion/fission power source. I understand also that in the 'Eugenics Wars' books and perhaps other books that Cochrane's experiments were said to be aided by a rich industrialist who provided him dilithium for his experiments.

Still, there is another complication. The Friendship One probe, as seen on Voyager, seems clearly powered by M/AM as indicated by the radiation poisoning inflicted on the planet. Friendship One was launched only a few years after Phoenix. (It's power is one of many implausibilities regarding the probe that I wish I could ignore.)

Personally, I'd like to think that Cochrane's ship was not powered by M/AM but by something more primitive, and that the development of matter-antimatter engines was a part of the Warp Five Program that resulted in Enterprise's creation and the breaking of the Warp Five barrier. I think this limiting factor helps explain why it took Earth Starfleet so long to break the Warp Two barrier. I think fusion is a happy compromise, but I can't find support for this anywhere. I suppose if indeed Friendship One is powered by M/AM, we could justify this as an abberation, that research was being conducted prior to WWIII into the field but that Cochrane lacked the resources or equipment to use it on the Phoenix, and that the engines would prove impractical for the next 80+ years.

I know I'm picking some serious nits here, but what do you think? Vote, and please post with your own theories!

 

[AudioBridge]

It's unlikely his team had the means or ability to produce any anti-matter, let alone enough for a sustained warp flight.

And would they even have a reactor that could utilize it? If memory serves, m/am reactors work because dilithium is there to regulate the m/am reaction, and we know he didn't have dilithium. My vote is for fusion.

Personally, I think the bigger question about the Phoenix should be "what were his warp coils made out of?" What materials currently exist on Earth that could be fashioned into something that could warp space?

 

[Praetor]

It seems like there should have been a precursor to the verterium cortenide of later coils that could have made up the Phoenix's warp coils.

 

[Bill Morris]

A type of antimatter that could well be used with a lower level of tech is positrons. They're a lot easier to produce than antiprotons, at least. In fact, if we had the hardware developed, we could have production of positrons up to the level needed for a Mars mission in a few years, with fuel cost estimated at only $250 miillion if the fuel is positrons. And, of course, no dilithium telluride is required.

Here's NASA's rap about it:

NASA: New and improved antimatter

 

[Timo]

Agreed that m/am is a real-world technology, and one that could well be a household item in the super-advanced 21st century of Star Trek. Cochrane might have had less trouble cooking up antimatter than he had scavenging for titanium.

Real-world m/am annihilation doesn't require dilithium or anything fancy like that in order to release useable energy. Cochrane could have had "real" m/am, whereas the success of the Warp Five Engine depended on it being the first to utilize dilithium in harnessing/amplifying the m/am output.

For that matter, I rather doubt the original Titan V had anything as crude as a fission warhead, either. The radiation problems after the Borg bombardment could come from multiple sources: release of fissionables from the ship or from some associated or unrelated system, residue from an antimatter release from the ship or from an associated/unrelated system, or residue from the ordnance used by the Borg. Hell, it could even be residue from the original war, and the locals had simply been working in contaminated bunkers because they had no choice. The Starfleet heroes were more skittish about it and immediately inoculated themselves as well as the dying locals.

I'd personally want to see warp as a relatively flexible technology. Cochrane could do it with m/am annihilation regulated by simple electromagnetic fields, and with copper-based warp coils; Archer would do it with primitive dilithium regulation, and fancinium coils; Kirk's ship would be robust enough to use several varietes of lithium-containing crystals, and would have mysticium coils; and LaForge would tend to engines that have recrystallized dilithium and vertenium cortenide coils. Various alien species would use assorted other materials and technologies to go with their m/am warp systems, and some might even use other power sources entirely.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Santaman]

Fusion power is to me the most likely candidate, stable and powerful enough to give the Phoenix its warp jump.

As for M/AM naw, thats a bridge too far.

 

[ancient]

Well, it is over 60 years from now in the Trek time-line, and Sleeper-ships have been around for a good 11 years now, so...in the Trek'iverse, there's no reason for it not to be M/AM. But it could be either.

 

[C.E. Evans]

I voted for fusion myself. Perhaps the first generation of Earth's warp engines were impulse-powered systems and it wasn't until Humans finally got their hands on dilithium (probably with no help from the Vulcans) that matter/antimatter could be used...

 

[Brent]

I say fusion

 

[Praetor]

Timo said:
I'd personally want to see warp as a relatively flexible technology. Cochrane could do it with m/am annihilation regulated by simple electromagnetic fields, and with copper-based warp coils; Archer would do it with primitive dilithium regulation, and fancinium coils; Kirk's ship would be robust enough to use several varietes of lithium-containing crystals, and would have mysticium coils; and LaForge would tend to engines that have recrystallized dilithium and vertenium cortenide coils. Various alien species would use assorted other materials and technologies to go with their m/am warp systems, and some might even use other power sources entirely.

Timo Saloniemi

As always, Timo, brilliant. I quite like that progression. It seems to fit well with what we've seen. I'm still not 100 % sold on Cochrane having M/AM but still as a theory it seems to hold more water that trying to say there was no m/am until NX-01.

 

[Ronald Held]

I would think fusion, because after WW III, the resources to produce and store A-M would be too large to acquire.

 

[Anthony]

Oh, a wild guess...fusion.

 

[Grandpa]

Fusion. TOS "Balance of Terror" suggests that m/am tech came later. It's probable that the Romulan ship in that episode was fusion powered - hence Scotty's line about their POWER being simple impulse.

 

[Sec31Mike]

I go with fusion, it would be like child's play in 2053. Readily available parts, lots of hydrogen. In FC Reg was told by Geordi to reinforce the copper coils with a nano-polymer to fashion them into plasma conduits.

I don't know where exactly, but some reference material I read a while back stated we didn't get M/AM tech until we had run into the Romulans.

 

[bryce]

Sec31Mike said:
I go with fusion, it would be like child's play in 2053. Readily available parts, lots of hydrogen. In FC Reg was told by Geordi to reinforce the copper coils with a nano-polymer to fashion them into plasma conduits.

I don't know where exactly, but some reference material I read a while back stated we didn't get M/AM tech until we had run into the Romulans.

Didn't Geordi also tell 'ol Zeph that his design for a warpcore remained virtually unchanged from his time until the 23rd century?

That part always bugged me. Where would Cochrane get dilithium crystals & antimatter???

Where low-yield A/M weapons used in WWIII????

What about the dilithium???

 

[Sec31Mike]

bryce said:

Sec31Mike said:
I go with fusion, it would be like child's play in 2053. Readily available parts, lots of hydrogen. In FC Reg was told by Geordi to reinforce the copper coils with a nano-polymer to fashion them into plasma conduits.

I don't know where exactly, but some reference material I read a while back stated we didn't get M/AM tech until we had run into the Romulans.

Didn't Geordi also tell 'ol Zeph that his design for a warpcore remained virtually unchanged from his time until the 23rd century?

That part always bugged me. Where would Cochrane get dilithium crystals & antimatter???

Where low-yield A/M weapons used in WWIII????

What about the dilithium???

I believe he said that to Scotty in "Relics"

 

[Timo]

The "Relics" line was about impulse engines staying more or less the same for the 200 years prior to that late 2360s episode - that is, roughly since the founding of the Federation.

I can't recall what LaForge said to Zeppy in the movie, but I don't think it was anything as definite as "warp cores have stayed the same". Probably more like "I studied your blueprints at the Academy".

Technological and continuity concerns aside, it sounds dramatically satisfactory that Cochrane would use antimatter and dilithium. Availability of the former, a real-world substance, would nicely show off the fact that this is the near future. And existence of the latter, probably through laboratory synthesis in microscopic (and later industrially useless) scale, would echo that of enriched uranium used in the first atomic weapons.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Bill Morris]

GEORDI: The nacelles are charged . . . nuclear warhead standing by. We're ready to ignite the warp drive.

The above quote is from a first-draft script of the entire movie:

Star Trek: First Contact, script at IMSDb

 

[Wingsley]

There are alot of things that bugged me about the "First Contact" movie, and its credibility in the STAR TREK universe timeline. Forget that James Crowell's portrayal of Cochrane bears little resemblance to Glenn Corbett's portrayal in "Metamorphosis". It's hard to imagine that in a world weakened and impoverished by a third world war, that some recluse scientist is going a build a prototype warp-driven spaceship from a hollowed-out 20th century ICBM nuke. And the whole thing about Riker, Geordi and Troi readying the launch for him made the whole thing seem like a farce.

I guess the thing that really bothered me the most is that Cochrane and company could not have done it without help from the future. It was entertaining in a dumb, action-adventure way, but the plot was just too convoluted. Picard being able to kill Borg drones with holographic bullets seemed a propos.

Setting all that aside, the Phoenix itself was at least semi-believeable. The cockpit and effects seemed too much like a cramped Federation shuttlecraft, though. I didn't even get the impression that Cochrane, Riker and Geordi were weightless.

The notions in this thread about the Phoenix using M/AM power are intriguing, but revisiting this subject brought up another thorny issue. Can a manned space vessel with warp capability be practical without advanced environmental controls, such as inertial dampening and artificial gravity? Think about it. Would humans in the cockpit of that bird survive going to warp without some kind of inertial protection? If so, how advanced does a warp ship have to be to house a human crew?

 

[Timo]

Even the kind of sublight travel that our heroes routinely perform would be impossible (or at least lethal) without said advanced environmental controls.

So probably those controls were invented first. We actually already know that by the mid-1990s, the first spaceships equipped with artificial gravity were being taken out of production for being outdated! Mastery of gravity and inertia was probably achieved in the 1980s, with space applications emerging towards the end of that decade, and with consumer applications commonplace in the 21st century (hovercars and such). Cochrane would have had no more difficulty accessing those technologies than Joe Average today would have accessing jet engines - that is, a month's salary and a month's wait, either from army surplus or mail order, would already give him a lower-end product.

Cochrane's little testbed was no doubt extremely primitive as far as 2060s spacecraft went - just like the earliest experimental jet planes were far less capable than the piston props of the era, insofar as agility, armament, avionics and things of that nature are considered. If not for the war, Cochrane could perhaps have used his family transatmospheric sedan as the basis of the test rig...

Timo Saloniemi