Dual Warp Cores on a Galaxy Class Starship......

[DumbDumb2007]

How would a set of Dual Warp Cores be arranged on a Galaxy Class Starship ? Side by side or one in front of the other ?
How would the power conduits be arranged ?
What other type ships could support a Dual warp Core arrangement ?

 

[Patrickivan]

Are you asking about using two at once, or one plus the spare?

If there were an advantage to using two at once, it probably would have been done. However, the warp field is generated by the warp core. So if you had two warp cores, you would have two warp fields- or who knows what would happen!

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

No, the warp core provides the raw power which is shunted directly to the nacelles. The warp coils within the nacelles produce the field.

There is no specific advantage to having two warp cores operating simultaneously on one ship, other than redundancy (and also redundancy). If it's a matter of power, then most ships just build a bigger warp core to begin with... There seems to be an advent of "multi-lobed" warp cores in more recent designs (the Defiant and Enterprise-E had these fancy cores), but both of those were smaller than a Galaxy class ship.

Only the Intrepids were known to have two warp cores, though this is not canon (and in fact it's suggested that there isn't a second core after all in the episodes where Voyager has lost her primary). Rick Sternbach has posited that there is in fact a secondary core that is stored mostly disassembled, but which could be plucked out, put tgether, and plugged into the primary core's slot. It's visible on the MSD. The idea was supposedly to provide story failsafes should Voyager ever lose her primary core in the middle of nowhere, but like the fabled aeroshuttle this was never used or mentioned.

Mark

 

[Patrickivan]

No- To date, no show has reasonably said the nacelles generate the field.

The power comes from the M/A reaction where the M/A is delivered via the warp core to the M/ARC.

Every image of a warp field shown on a display read-out shows the centre of the warp field eminating from the core. The warp coils in the nacelles are fed that raw energy and manipulate this field to provide that actual velocity- or warping of space.

Now you may argue that the M/ARC is intentionally positioned at the axis point required for the warp nacelles to generate the field. But no.

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

I'm not so sure about that, even if I can't come up with a concrete reference at this very moment. But I am fairly certain that to date, no show has reasonably said that the CORE generates the field. QED.

http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/treknology/warp3.htm

A picture on this linked page is the only one that comes to mind when talking about warp fields... And this one was copped from the TNG tech manual. The other one I can think of is some early CG graphic funk that showed the warp filed manipulations the Traveller did to the Enterprise, but that's all time and space AND thought.

Mark

 

[Dayton3]

The episode where Barclay was manipulated into becoming a super genius by the Cytherians made it pretty clear that the warp nacelles produce the warp field.

 

[FalTorPan]

I think a starship that's often supposed to be (though rarely is) the "only ship in the quadrant" ought to have a fully redundant system for powering the warp drive -- in other words, a second, fully functional warp core. Given the enormous size of a Federation starship and the relatively tiny size of its warp core, there's no reason why it couldn't have a second one.

 

[Timo]

A perfectly good reason for not having a second core is that the first one is already an immense chore. Aircraft don't have a spare set of wings, either; instead, they have lots of duplication and triplication IN the wings, to make sure that they perform their job even when damaged.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ronald Held]

I am confident that the warp coils produce the warp field.
I agree that parts for a second core should be stored, especially for ships which are so far out that they are not expected to have access to repair facilities.

 

[Deks]

I thought it was common knowledge and canonically endorsed that the nacelles contain the warp coils which are responsible for Warp field creation/manipulation among other things.

The Warp core is just that ... the main power source.

Also ... I see no reason why ships that embark on deep space exploratory assignments wouldn't be outfitted with 2 cores.

You would think that if a starship has 2 cores that function at the same time, SF would be able to modify the existing systems to draw extra power from the second core which could in effect boost the shield durability by several times.

For example ... I remember a Q episode in which Voyager had to travel into the Continuum through a supernova.
The procedure Torres did enhanced the shields by a factor of 10, but it required the Warp drive to be offline.
With 2 cores, you can repeat the procedure through a second core while leaving the primary one doing it's regular duties for powering all ship systems ... and there you have a procedure for ultra powerful shields that would be handy when fighting the Borg.

Maybe deep space vessels would be outfitted with 2 cores just in case ...
However, at the same time, 2 cores can mean twice the potential for trouble.
Then again, the core is usually in danger because of the plot.
I could think of numerous situations any SF ship in deep space could have benefited from 2 cores.

 

[Patrickivan]

It was my thought too, that the nacelles created the warp field, until I saw TNG and read all the assorted publications about the ship, when I started to change my opinion that the core not only provided the power, but in conjunction with the nacelles, created the field. With the nacelled providing the actual warping affect.

I'm just basing my opinion on my interpretation of all the stuff I've seen- primarily from TNG. I found that Voyager and Enterprise just started to throw stuff out the window. In fact, my thought that the core created the field (again, not the warp- or speed) was totally screwed up when I saw Enterprises M/arc arrangement, and pretty much said to myself, WTF is this?!

As for the topic of two cores- just for the sake of arguement, I would think there has to be a reason for only having one active core (other then my reason for the creation of the field). You would think that if it were possible, they would have more. There would probably be safety reasons for not having another.

But for the sake of drama, the creators had to be able to limit the power of these ships. Otherwise they would have unlimited resources.

 

[RyanKCR]

Uh, the nacelles create the warp field and manipulate it. All the core does is mix matter and antimatter and feed that plama to the nacelles which take that raw power to manipulate subspace. It's one of the explainations for the wormhole in TMP. I've read that the imbalance mentioned is one nacelle getting more power then the other causeing the spiral effect that creates the wormhole.

 

[Patrickivan]

Yes- the nacelle gets more power then the other, and the warp manipulation is imbalanced... Is it just a coincidence that the warp field centre axis seems to run through the warp core? And is it a coincidence that the core has been referred to as the Warp Core? It's all an interconnected system.

I would say that we're straying from the posted topic, however I think that if you have a warp core that will produce a warp field, then you couldn't have a second warp core in use at the same time. Though you could have a M/ARC of some form, to produce that extra specific power. Of course your fuel consumption will increase.

I think if it could be done, they would have mentioned it by now. Think of how many times the E-D's warp core went off line- they could have switched to the back up core. Sure they had back up generators/ batteries, but nothing that could be used for warp capabilities. And surely, if the Galaxy Class, top of the line, massive ships they are, didn't have them, what would? Starfleet had abot 300 years of warp experience, and not one time did we ever hear about a back up core coming on line- or being used in conjunction with an existing one.

I have a head-ache

 

[Deks]

No that's just the writers not being able to use the technology in universe to it's fullest potential without dumbing it down for the drama.
If they wanted to get serious properly, they would have adjusted the drama to fit the established technological capabilities.

As for Warp drive ...
The warp core is simply a main energy source needed to power the warp engines.
The engines are located in the nacelles essentially because the coils create a subspace field in combination with the navigational deflector.
The deflector is the one manipulating the subspace field, but the core is the only thing that can generate Warp plasma.
I don't think warp plasma comes from fusion reactors.

 

[Timo]

We do hear mention of "reactors", plural, in TOS. Just because a single core is par for the course in the 2270s-2370s doesn't mean that this was always so. Naval designers have been fluctuating between a single centralized machine room and several distributed ones as long as self-powered warships have existed.

During the World Wars, big ships were likely to have highly centralized power systems, without much duplication, so that they could fit behind the central "citadel" armor - while small, unarmored vessels went for distributed, redundant arrangements. Currently, distributed systems are in mild disfavor, mainly because gas turbine power can easily be built in a modular manner but requires massive trunkage for air intake and exhaust - you don't want to duplicate or triplicate that if you can manage with a single air trunk.

The "current" style of warp cores might similarly be dependent on some space-intensive or cost-intensive resource that the designers would hate to duplicate or triplicate, even if the core itself could be built in as many numbers as needed.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Vanyel]

I would think that a second warp core should be on a long range or extended missions, one where it would years away from a starbase or other another ship. I always wanted there to be a second fully operational warp core, one that is hooked up to the ships power relays and fuel supplies.

This core could be, in times of battle, put on hot stand by, the matter and antimatter ready to injected and the core up and running in a under 5 minutes. So if during a battle the first core, if damaged and going to breach, could ejected and used like a big antimatter bomb while the second core takes over as the ships main power source.

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

I agree that a second core would be useful on long-duration flights, but I dont' know about maintaining two in a ready-to-use configuration. Most starships perpetually have their engineering peons doing SOMETHING with the warp core in every shot we see it in; it stands to reason that keeping ONE going is a fairly encompassing job. Would a starship meant for efficient, long-duration space cruising detail that many MORE engineers to keep the second engine ready to go? Personally, I prefer the Voyager idea of having PARTS for one ready to plug'n'play, but still having the primary core the more efficient, more advanced piece of equipment. The secondary core would be smaller and less powerful, but at least it would let them get to Bespin.

Also, IN GENERAL the TNG tech manual suggests that a GCS warp core is used pretty much ONLY for the warp drive; everything else is run on fusion power. The idea is that the warp core is the only thing that can provide enough power, for the only thing that NEEDS that much power - the warp drive. Everything else, phasers, life support, whatever, is run off of fusion power. The only limits for things like phaser power is therefore not the enrgy available to use them, but the physical limitation of the hardware that can use it. You can shunt all the warp power you want through the phaser arrays, but why bother if you blow them out before they can even fire?

Of course, this would not necessarily apply to other starship designs, such as the E-refit's phasers which shunt power from the warp drive. THAT would be a case of using warp power to supplement fusion power to fire a weapon system that can handle more power than the fusion generators alone can provide, in that era. Give and take, really.

Mark

 

[Vanyel]

I was thinking that the second core would be in a room behind the main warp core. It would be "off", for lack of a better word. It would be hooked up to the ships powers systems. In an emergency or battle situation, the doors to the 2nd core would open, it can be put on hot standby, things like the antimatter containment fields turned on and the injectors primed (assuming they need to be).

Then if needed, the first core could flush its fuel, and turn "off"; if it is too damaged it could be ejected. The reactants would then be shunted to the 2nd core which would start taking over once it starts producing the plasma the nacelles need.

Make sense? I ask, because sometimes I don't.