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Do the number of nacelles make any difference in ship speed?

Memory Alpha isn't perfect.

And yet seemingly you are :rolleyes: What is your actual evidence against the specific point I made?

Remember when Enterprise B didn't have it's "Tractor Beam" installed when it went in to rescue Guinan and her fellow travelers who were about to get her ship ripped apart by the Nexus. The Tractor Beam was supposed to be installed by next Tuesday.

I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't have their full complement of Dilithium Crystals or Deuterium either since their initial missions of chasing the Maqui into the Badlands didn't require everything to be loaded at that time.

The Enterprise-B was at its commissioning ceremony. Voyager was commissioned on stardate 48038.5, and "Caretaker" takes place on stardate 48315.6, approximately three months later. Starfleet would be lax indeed if they hadn't completed the ship's standard equipment, weaponry, and fuel complement by the time they sent it on an actual mission, especially a dangerous and specialised one.

Remember the Aero Shuttle wasn't even installed at the time of launch.

Says who? I must have missed the episode where Paris stated this on-screen, sorry. The fact that they never used it is not evidence it was never there, especially as you can clearly see it on the underside of Voyager's saucer. It would be an unusually detailed blank plate if not.

All parts in real life on vehicles & vessels have a limited life span, nothing lasts forever, especially in the harshness of space.

Space isn't that harsh, certainly compared to the wear and tear machines would encounter in an atmosphere. Given that Voyager is mostly in interstellar space, too, there'd be remarkably little for it to interact with for the vast majority of the time.

Just like Dilithium Crystals eventually do get used up even with ReCrystallization going on or the Enterprise D needing a Baryon Sweep every so often, or Phaser Array Power Cells.

Where does it state dilithium crystals eventually get used up even with recrystallisation? The baryon sweep is a problematic and poorly described concept, since the ship's hull is mostly baryons anyway, and the only time we see phaser array power cells degrade and need replacing is on the Defiant, which is stated several times to be overpowered and prone to damaging itself.

In real life, many parts in your Car, Plane, Home, etc all have a finite life cycle before it needs to be replaced.

Star Trek should be no different.

My car, plane, home etc are mass-produced and have moving mechanical parts. Molecular replication and extensive use of force fields, repulsors, linear induction motors etc should make things last significantly longer.

It's a matter of following the technical bible vs on-screen canon, in the end, the writers choose to have Tom Paris state that line and given that Tom Paris is a damn good pilot who went through proper training initially, I'm sure his #'s are fairly accurate for the Warp Factor he's stating, otherwise, why would he lie?

"When in warp flight, no left or right" – you tell me :shrug:

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Galaxy_class
It states on the side bar that the "initial average cruise velocity" was Warp 6.

Yes, it got downgraded to warp 5 in season seven, not upgraded.

The ST:TNG Technical Manual: Section 1.1, Page 1
Warp driver coils efficiency to meet or exceed 88% at speeds up to Warp 7.0. Minimum efficiency of 52% to be maintained through Warp 9.1. Life cycle of all primary coil elements to meet or exceed 1,200,000 cochrane-hours between neutron purge refurbishment. Secondary coil elements to meet or exceed 2,000,000 cochrane-hours between neutron purge refurbishment.

The "Initial average cruise velocity" being Warp 6 and the TNG Tech manual being Warp 7 at Maximum efficiency of 88% at speeds UP TO 7.0. That means they planned to Up-Rate the Average Cruise Velocity as it get certified through testing and in practical usage to validate planned design features. You wouldn't design that kind of specs for 88% efficiency UP TO Warp 7 if you didn't want to Up Rate your Average Cruise Velocity as the engines gets fully validated with in field use.

Even in IRL flight testing, Performance envelopes gets slowly expanded as they test and gather data through IRL usage and slowly push the engines of real life Aircraft and Vessels until they feel comfortable.

Then once it's fully certified, they continue observing data as FRP (Full Rate Production) units use it as well.

I wouldn't be surprised if StarFleet follows similar rigorous test procedures and slowly opens up the envelope for certification.

It's not like there were many Galaxy Classes initially since there was only a initial plan of 12 Galaxy Classes, so certification would take time as they expand the envelope, even through live in field usage.

So I can't use the production documentation as a source but you can use the TNG Technical Manual, which is derived from that production documentation, and is itself contradicted by dialogue on screen? Interesting.

"The maximum efficiency at warp 7" line doesn't indicate it's a standard cruise speed for the Enterprise-D at all. the maximum efficiency for a modern car in terms of fuel economy is around 60mph but most cars spend most of their time travelling more slowly than that. It's simply a measure of expected engine performance.

Because I made logical analysis on the initial statement made by Kathryn Janeway for the 75,000 ly trip home in 75 years to the Alpha Quadrant.

Warp 8 is 1024c which would take 73.2421875 years to get home assuming a straight line trip.
You have to account for random stops, refueling, etc, so rounding up to 75 makes sense.

Warp 9 is 1,516.38110700484c which would take ~49.4599 years to get home assuming a straight line trip.
So logically they aren't planning on going at a overall average trip speed of Warp 9

That's how I came to the conclusion of Warp 8.

There's no evidence assuming a straight-line trip. In fact Janeway would probably want to avoid the galactic core rather than cutting straight across it.
 
And yet seemingly you are :rolleyes: What is your actual evidence against the specific point I made?
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Warp_factor
The listed Warp factor vs. average speed table that you use has tons of inherent contradictions in itself.
Wf 9.975 is listed 5x with WIDELY varying Average Speeds.
Alot of Wf 9.975 average extrapolated speeds makes no sense when you compare it to the TNG era Warp Factor formula that lists Wf 9.0 = 1516.381107c; and remember, the hand drawn curve past Warp 9 to Warp 10 scales to "Infinity".

Using the TNG Era Warp Factor formula:
Wf 9.0 = 1516.381107c

Your examples of Wf 9.975:
9.975 = 1,000c = 75,000 light years in 75 years -> VOY: "Caretaker" <- Makes no sense given the Actual TNG era Wf scale
9.975 = 33c = 10 million kilometers in ~1 second -> VOY: "Parallax" <- WTF?
9.975 = 1,554 - 1,721c = 132 light years in 1 month -> VOY: "Relativity" "Friendship One" <- Wf 9.0 = 1516.381107c,
how does "Wf 9.975 = 1,554 - 1,721c" when 10 is supposed to be infinity and 9.0 = 1516.381107c?

9.975 = 2,922c = 40 light years in 5 days -> VOY: "Relativity", "Scorpion, Part II"
9.975 = 2,739c = 15 light years in 2 days -> VOY: "Hope and Fear"

None of the Wf 9.975 examples makes sense when Wf 10 = Infinity and the hand drawn curve needs to scale up to that speed.
Wf 9.9 being 21,473c makes FAR more sense when 10.0 = Infinity on the hand drawn compressed curve between 9.0 and 10.0.

Now you know why I hate the fact that the TNG era used that stupid hand drawn curve between 9.0 and 10.0

I already have a Warp Factor Scale 3.0 that takes the TNG era and deletes the stupid hand drawn curve to infinity and lets the scale naturally expand out in a Excel Spread Sheet towards Wf 65,535, anything past that, you can chuck it into excel and have it spit it out.

The Enterprise-B was at its commissioning ceremony. Voyager was commissioned on stardate 48038.5, and "Caretaker" takes place on stardate 48315.6, approximately three months later. Starfleet would be lax indeed if they hadn't completed the ship's standard equipment, weaponry, and fuel complement by the time they sent it on an actual mission, especially a dangerous and specialised one.
StarFleet was in a lax period during the TNG era, remember it just got it's butts handed to them @ Wolf 359; they're still ramping things up and First Contact hasn't happened yet, so the preperations for another big Borg encounter didn't happen till First Contact where they needed a large fleet to hold back the Borg invasion. And the Maqui Mission wasn't evaluated to be that dangerous, that's why they thought to send Janeway, a brand new Fresh Captain and former Science Officer to deal with it in a brand new ship.

Says who? I must have missed the episode where Paris stated this on-screen, sorry. The fact that they never used it is not evidence it was never there, especially as you can clearly see it on the underside of Voyager's saucer. It would be an unusually detailed blank plate if not.
The fact that it was never used, mentioned, or even referenced other than BtS (Behind the Scenes) speaks volumes.
Yes, detailed blank plates can easily exist in the 24th century, hell modern 3D printing would allow cheapo replica's in plastic, imagine what they can do with Industrial Replicators in the future.

Space isn't that harsh, certainly compared to the wear and tear machines would encounter in an atmosphere. Given that Voyager is mostly in interstellar space, too, there'd be remarkably little for it to interact with for the vast majority of the time.
Except all the times it gets battered by strange anomaly's, gets shot at, goes within the atmosphere, enters unusually dense nebulas. Enter the atmosphere of a planet, etc.

Where does it state dilithium crystals eventually get used up even with recrystallisation?
Dilithium Crystals were always a resource that gets depleted, since the TOS era. The only difference is the speed / rate of depletion.

The baryon sweep is a problematic and poorly described concept, since the ship's hull is mostly baryons anyway, and the only time we see phaser array power cells degrade and need replacing is on the Defiant, which is stated several times to be overpowered and prone to damaging itself.
Yet the Baryon Sweep is still an issue that happens if you travel at High Warp for long enough.
Just because the Defiant consumes Phaser Array power cells at an accelerated rate doesn't mean regular Phaser Arrays don't consume it a slower rate.

Just like modern day battery's degrade with use and age, it's only a matter of time and usage before it needs to be replaced.

We saw how many ship battles Voyager got into, doesn't mean they couldn't have replaced the Phaser Array Power Cells off screen.

Yes, it got downgraded to warp 5 in season seven, not upgraded.
Yes, by artificial regulation to protect the spacial environment because of the Eco Messaging allegory that the story wanted to portray. It's limitation by regulation only, not a technical limit.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Speed_limit
In all the Background Info:
  • In Captains' Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages, page 294, Brannon Braga noted that in his opinion "when you limit warp drive, the rug is being pulled out from under Star Trek." And, according to Star Trek Encyclopedia (2nd ed., p. 187), since starships used speeds above warp 5 after 2370, a solution was presumably found to the problem, even though it was not mentioned on-screen.
  • According to the Star Trek: Voyager series bible, Voyager could exceed the warp speed limit without polluting the space continuum due to its improved warp drive system.
  • According to the unpublished VOY Season 1 edition of the Star Trek: Voyager Technical Guide, by Rick Sternbach and Michael Okuda, it is suggested that because of the variable geometry pylons used on Voyager, the generated warp fields might no longer have a negative impact on habitable worlds as established in "Force of Nature".
So nobody really worries about that issue anymore since they found a way to implement Warp Drive without damaging Space.

My car, plane, home etc are mass-produced and have moving mechanical parts. Molecular replication and extensive use of force fields, repulsors, linear induction motors etc should make things last significantly longer.
And that just makes the end users push the equipment to a higher limit, and shortening the life span of those parts. Why else do you have such a large engineering staff on board most StarFleet ships to repair and replace parts? It's because they get pushed FAR harder than the "High Longevity" level usage would allow region over to "Short Longevity / High Performance" levels. I'm not surprised that StarFleet would do such things, when you can just replicate and have staff replace parts, it's not that big of a deal.

"When in warp flight, no left or right" – you tell me
How often do you make sudden Left Turns at high speeds? IRL, the faster you fly, the wider the turning radius you have to perform. Imagine how wide your turning radius would be at Warp Speeds, it would be relatively minor in end user perception and only allow super wide turns vs trying to turn at super low sub light speeds.

So I can't use the production documentation as a source but you can use the TNG Technical Manual, which is derived from that production documentation, and is itself contradicted by dialogue on screen? Interesting.
You can use it, but how often does your production documentation line up with what's shown or spoken on screen?
How often does it contradict with other more concrete stuff like the TNG era Warp Factor formula?

"The maximum efficiency at warp 7" line doesn't indicate it's a standard cruise speed for the Enterprise-D at all. the maximum efficiency for a modern car in terms of fuel economy is around 60mph but most cars spend most of their time travelling more slowly than that. It's simply a measure of expected engine performance.
Why would you have your, "Maximum Efficiency" point of your engines be at Warp 7.0 if that wasn't the design intention in the TNG technical manual? Why else would you label "Initial Cruise Velocity" if you weren't going to certify it for something else later? Why not "Standard Cruise Velocity"?

As far as cars, the efficiency point at around 60 mph is a design choice based on the roads we have and the amount of FWY we expect people to use when traveling vast distances between cities and towns.
The reason we spend more time below 60 mph is because of the Urban Sprawl we live in limits us to speeds below 60 mph with all the Signals slowing us down and putting speed limits below 60 due to short intervals between Signal Lights.
That's just a reality of how our modern society is designed.

There's no evidence assuming a straight-line trip. In fact Janeway would probably want to avoid the galactic core rather than cutting straight across it.
Regardless of it being a true "Straight-Line" or relatively straight while making slight detours around certain things like the large black hole in the center of our galaxy, the shortest route possible back to Earth was calculated at 75,000 ly distance covered in 75 years for a average travel speed/trip speed of ~1,000 c which is closer to Wf 8.0 which is 1024c
 
My idea for 4 nacelle ships is that you really only need two to create the warp field but at some point the nacelles might need a rest and having a second set means you can change over mid-flight, which might be good for long distance travel. This was specifically relating to the Constellation-class and I sort of came around to this idea while thinking up this animation I wanted to do where the Stargazer does a bunch of rapid warp jumps around a planet, attacking a bunch of targets in rapid succession and alternating between using the upper and lower nacelles, but ultimately ends up burning out the warp coils because it was doing something it wasn't really designed to do.
 
My idea for 4 nacelle ships is that you really only need two to create the warp field but at some point the nacelles might need a rest and having a second set means you can change over mid-flight, which might be good for long distance travel. This was specifically relating to the Constellation-class and I sort of came around to this idea while thinking up this animation I wanted to do where the Stargazer does a bunch of rapid warp jumps around a planet, attacking a bunch of targets in rapid succession and alternating between using the upper and lower nacelles, but ultimately ends up burning out the warp coils because it was doing something it wasn't really designed to do.
Commander Cockings from TrekYards had a similar idea, but he did that with 2x big nacelles and many smaller ones attached.

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But Commander Cockings got Rick Sternbach to help with his design to make it authentic to the Voyager era look.
 
It sorta looks like one of 'em early experiments with ship-rigged paddle-wheelers that had screws... While simultaneously and wholly incidentally looking cool.

The diddle about "no left and right" is obviously something a pilot is supposed to forget about: "the first thing" taught generally is. It establishes the basics, such as "taking off is optional, but it makes landing mandatory", but there is no use for the basics in practice. Yet this is the perfect place for Paris to remind his captain about the infantile rhyme: for an extremely rare once, it actually matters, because the ship is required to do turns sharp enough that there will actually be consequences.

Timo Saloniemi
 
Commander Cockings from TrekYards had a similar idea, but he did that with 2x big nacelles and many smaller ones attached.
That is lovely!
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But Commander Cockings got Rick Sternbach to help with his design to make it authentic to the Voyager era look.
 
I think that depends largely on how you game it. In a literal sense. The old Zachi Star Fleet battles more nacelles meant more energy. I believe the same for the Armadillo Star Fleet Battles as well. FASA did not tie nacelles to energy production, and no game since has. In canon that got moved to the warp core inside the ship.

For story telling proposes? I do not. More nacelles means longer duration. You swap off what you use. AISI, the four nacelle designs are intended as long range scouts. The Prometheus was a horse of a different color.
I'm more than touch eye rolly over that.

We see that there are a number of different warp geometries as well. Take that treknically as you will. I don't sweat it.
 
It all comes down to the warp field generated. How strong is it and how fast can the ship go with it. Ships are designed with a number of nacelles that meets their design requirements. We have see few ships with something other than 2 nacelles. Because of the 2009 movie, 1 nacelle is canon. We have 1, 2, 3, and 4 nacelle designs. The 1 nacelle designs tend to be smaller in scale to the nacelle. So my take on it is that it controls the size and stability of the warp field.

May assume the Excelsior Transwarp experiment failed, but did it? When we get to TNG they are using a new scale. No canon source every says the Transwarp experiment failed. But in a short span we have 3 designs that all have something to offer in terms of speed increases. We have the Excelsior with her Transwarp engines. We have Constellation with 4 nacelles. And we have Enterprise B, with those ridiculous extra and oversized impulse engines. I think all three designs are trying to boost speeds and I think as these designs got adopted they found the need to change the warp factor scale. Excelsior has relatively large nacelles and constellation's are small, but it has 4. Both of these designs are in use into the new scale. Picard's comments probably relate to the Constellation design being an older model rather than it being underpowered for its day.

But I see no real benefit of any number but 2 nacelles except in terms of power and size of the field. The Federation class 3 nacelles makes sense because it means the saucer can operate at warp speeds when separated. The Galaxy Glass seen in All Good Things doesn't make as much sense because it is connected to the Engineering section unless it is for extra power or higher warp speeds, or possibly as a backup in battle. Similarly the Prometheus class has 4 nacelles because it has two sections that when split have warp power. Each section needs a smaller warp field when separated and a larger one when together.

So I think the number of nacelles (and the size of the nacelles) relates to the size of the ship and the power of the warp field. The larger the ship, the larger the nacelles. We also see in TNG/Voyager era that Nacelles are generally smaller so there has been a technology upgrade that has shrunk the size of the nacelles vs. how large a warp field they can produce.
 
We also see in TNG/Voyager era that Nacelles are generally smaller so there has been a technology upgrade that has shrunk the size of the nacelles vs. how large a warp field they can produce.

I think that StarFleet Engineers have realized that within the space of your "Warp Bubble" / Ovaloid, that having your Nacelles be so long and and far away from the center of your vessel would create a needlessly large "Warp Bubble" volume to Warp/Move the vessel about.

The smaller & more compact your Warp Bubble Volume, the less energy needed since your Bubble is smaller.

Look at 23rd century design where the Nacelles are so far away from center of the StarDrive / Center of Mass

Once it came to 24th Century, the most famous ships have really compact body's where the Warp Nacelles are tucked in relatively close to the frame and the overall size of the Warp Field Bubble is smaller.

Galaxy Class has the Nacelle's located pretty close to the StarDrive where the aft of the StarDrive is pretty close to being inline with the Warp nacelles from a side Orthographic Perspective

The Defiant Class had the Warp Nacelles built into the hull with what must be incredible radiation shielding and the Warp Nacelle Grilles pointing towards a common point of space in the aft section

The Intrepid Class had the Warp Nacelles slightly ahead of the aft section of the StarDrive portion.

Even the Nebula Class had the Warp Nacelles tucked into be close to the StarDrive section.

Moving to the 31st century, some vessels have their Warp Nacelles to the side of the StarDrive / Body with the aft of the StarDrive pointing past the aft of the Warp nacelles.

Heck, even Zefram Cochranes Phoenix had the warp Nacelles along the center of the body from a side orthographic perspective.

So it seems like making vessels more compact where the Warp Nacelles aren't placed far away from the core of the body allows for less warp nacelle mass / volume / size and potentially lower Warp Field size requirements, ergo lower power consumption for a given Warp Speed.
 
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