Engineering -- Warp Engines?

[blssdwlf]

First of all, blssdwlf, some of your data is incorrect or misleading.

• I take issue with By Any Other Name. The Kelvans modified the engines for the 300 year trip. We can't really draw any conclusions about the endurance of pure Federation technology from this episode.

• 
  
  Yes we can. Kirk stated it,would take then thousands of years not that they would run out of fuel. What the kelvins did is independent of kirk's
  response.
  
  

  [*]Instead of The Ultimate Computer, don't you mean The Doomsday Machine?

  
  Correct, my mistake.
  
  

  [*]The warp scale used in TOS is not the same as the warp scale in TNG. This was obvious immediately to TOS fans when we viewed Encounter at Farpoint during its first broadcast. See this Memory Alpha article for more information. In other words, the effect of this recalibration is that the ships of TOS were generally slower than those of TNG+, which is illustrated in the charts in that article.

there are usable time and distance data from the series that are far more useful than arbitrary warp scales.

Second of all, ZPE has nothing to do with this or what's left.

It's the similarity to how a zpe-like system could work in tos.

 

[TIN_MAN]

I disagree that ZPE (or whatever?) is beyond fed tech. What about all those portable gadgets they use (especially in TOS) that are not plugged into anything and never seem to run out of energy or need recharging; computers, analyzers, communicators, tricorders, etc. etc. All these may or may not use dilithium, but this may be a hint to what "the transtator" circuit -said to be the basis of all (TOS) trek tech- might plausably be?

The point is, once we think "outside the box" and look with fresh eyes at what the TOS writers were actually implying regarding their understanding of how things work on a starship, we see everything starts with dilithium! It's the real source, not just a component -however vital- of the whole fuel/energy system. And furthermore, it has never been explained (especially in TOS) exactly how anti-matter is obtained, has it?

Sure the matter is obtained from space via the Bussard collectors (in TNG) but even here, it's never explained whether some of this space dust happens to be anti-matter, or if A/M is generated by some other means, or is supplied by tankers??? So, if we assume that dilithium is the fastest, most efficient means of producing anti-matter (or converting it from matter) then this would explain why its absolutely vital to federation (and Klingon) warp drive technology.

It's also occured to me that we seem to have reinvented FJ's idea where just a little anti-matter is used to start the warp drive or "seed" the collapse of a wormhole/singularity, after which the process is ongoing unless something interuptes it, either by accident or design? I don't recall whether FJ had a place for dilithium in this scheme or not, but it certainly seems to fit?

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Unless I am mistaken, distance/time/warp factor figures for TOS were only given when the Enterprise went to some crazy speed above warp 10. This chart lists only two examples from TOS, and they are of this kind. Do you have any other examples?

Furthermore, the example from By Any Other Name is ruled out, per the footnote. There is only one example left on the chart from TOS, from That Which Survives. Unless there are any other examples, the question then is how to treat this singular example.

The Memory Alpha article says:

Although formulas to calculate speeds from warp factors existed in the writer's guides, these were not always used consistently.

I assume, then, that you are giving weight to the distance/time/warp factor figures on screen, even when it is accepted that the TOS writers violated the canonical formulas.

It would be fair to take the on screen warp factor over what it should have been according to the writer's guide, but that's not what I would do. Unless there are more examples than this, I would simply say that That Which Survives contains an error, and the actual warp factor should have been much higher, about warp 91.45 on the TOS scale if I am not mistaken. Admittedly, this "sounds" way too fast, but you can fix it by making the actual distance shorter, or the travel time much longer. Take your pick.

 

[Timo]

Kirk stated it,would take then thousands of years not that they would run out of fuel.

Doesn't prove they would have had the fuel. After all, if it's impossible anyway (that is, it takes too long), why bother listing all the other things that are impossible about it?

Also, "That Which Survives" is indeed the most problematic of TOS speed references. "Bread and Circuses" is fast, but not too fast for short dashes. ST5 and "Magicks of Megas-Tu" appear to involve long distances (and the former explicitly speaks of only warp seven), but may merely involve travel towards the galactic core, not travel reaching the core. But "That Which Survives" has the ship travel across hundreds of lightyears within the very short time that the landing party spends on the alien planet (dialogue suggests one day, two at most).

Trying to reduce the distance they have to span would undermine the drama. Just accepting that warp 14 is very, very fast doesn't help any, either, because Spock was giving low estimates of arrival time even before the engines went wild, at a sedate warp 8.4.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Got it. The Bread And Circuses example is:

CHEKOV: Only one sixteenth parsec away, Captain. We should be there in seconds.

OK, that's two examples.

I don't even really want to get into exactly where she's off to in ST:V or TAS:TMOM-T, or exactly where the energy barrier is in WNMHGB, BAON, and ITITNB, how many light years the TOS Enterprise travels in her five year mission, and so forth. She's going to come up going way too slow to accomplish everything, according to the writer's guide formula, I'm sure.

Warp factor numbers is one thing they botched the first time around, and that was one reason Gene Roddenberry changed the scale for TNG. But it's ludicrous to think that the ENT-D does not go faster than the TOS Enterprise.

 

[Wingsley]

CorporalCaptain, there has long been a rift in TREK fandom over certain technical pronouncements made by Gene Roddenberry and others in Paramount. One concern was the meaning of warp velocity. In the publication STAR TREK MAPS (Bantam, 1980), author Geoffrey Mandel put forth an expanded meaning of TOS warp technology with seemed to bridge the continuity throughout TOS, including TAS and TMP. The specifics of this publication tied into technical advice Roddenberry et al. received from NASA manager Jesco von Puttkamer, as published in THE MAKING OF STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE.

A booklet included in MAPS entitled "Introduction to Navigation: Star Fleet Command" listed all the worlds explored by the U.S.S. Enterprise during TOS, as well as other key worlds mentioned in TREK. The booklet also provided a detailed monograph on the history and technical workings of warp drive. Part of this monograph included a detailed table based on Cochrane's Formula for calculating real-space FTL velocities based on warp factor that included a heretofore unheard of element: Cochrane's variable. Cochrane's variable, indicated by the use of the Greek letter chi (looks like an italicized "x") which enhanced warp speeds based on environmental factors.

Cochrane's formula formed a basis for logically explaining how warp velocity could be so incredibly fast in some situations (traveling over 1,000 light-years in a day; "Obsession", "That Which Survives") but then warp speeds seem to drop to their "ideal" values (chi = 1.0) in others. When TNG started up, Roddenberry et al., put in place the anti-FJ rules, and MAPS became a "canon" casualty. Oddly enough, there are examples of TNG warp speeds resembling the same variations as what MAPS tried to capitalizes on in TOS/TAS/TMP (off the top of my head "Conspiracy", "Where Silence Has Lease", "Tin Man", "Transfigurations" and "The Best of Both Worlds" seem to fit) but Roddenberry and company refused to acknowledge the issue. Fans of MAPS who picked up on Richard Arnold's pronouncements of certified "Star Trek fact", another way to saying what's canon and wit isn't, were a little miffed.

So if you put Mandel's notion of warp drive and velocity to work on TOS, TOS velocities can, in some circumstances, appear faster than the Roddenberryan TNG Warp 9.999 asymptotic curve approach. If, on the other hand, you retcon Mandel's approach onto TNG and later series, you can make the argument that warp velocities are more fluid, like sailing ships calculating trade winds.

 

[Wingsley]

Added note: just upthread, blssdwlf suggested that Kirk told Rojan in "By Any Other Name" that the Enterprise would run out of fuel. I do not recall Kirk or anyone else mentioning fuel consumption in that episode as an issue. In fact, the only mention of matter-antimatter at all was when Spock and Scott hatched a scheme to blow up the ship.

 

[blssdwlf]

@wingsley - I had mentioned that fuel was not an issue, but time was

now it would be interesting to know what kind of automated ships were sent to andromeda.

 

[Wingsley]

I had always wondered how the Federation could design and power a robot ship to successfully reach the Kelvan homeworld. This discussion turns the fuel issue on its ear!

 

[Albertese]

Yeah, this fits in rather well actually. Perhaps the "charging" of the crystals is precisely via the initial "two anti-kilos" of anti-matter required to "prime" the reactor and start the whole system?

By the way, in real science, we haven't yet collected enough anti-matter to study and see if it has ant-gravitational properties or not, but if it does, then "anti-kilos" would be an apropriate term?

Maybe. "Kilogram" is a measure of mass, not weight. So an "anti-kilo" would more likely be a measurement of negative mass. So, if anti-matter has the properties of negative mass, then I suppose that might make sense. So what is negative mass? Would it exhibit gravitational repulsion instead of attraction? Would it have that same effect in relation to positive gravity that it would in relation to negative mass? If two objects of positive mass are attracted to each other, should that mead that two objects of negative mass would repel? So what about an object of negative mass and an object of positive mass? Would they interact at all, or would the two forces tend to cancel each other out? What an interesting idea, I never thought of anti-kilo's before....

--Alex

BTW, I don't recall a reference to needing two anti-kilos of anything for any reason, what's that a reference to?

 

[blssdwlf]

Kirk stated it,would take then thousands of years not that they would run out of fuel.

Doesn't prove they would have had the fuel. After all, if it's impossible anyway (that is, it takes too long), why bother listing all the other things that are impossible about it?

If I were told that I was being forced to pilot a boat from California to Australia and I knew I'd run out of fuel in the trip I'd mention that "we don't have the fuel!" first instead of saying, "it'll take weeks!"

Also, "That Which Survives" is indeed the most problematic of TOS speed references. "Bread and Circuses" is fast, but not too fast for short dashes.

And there is also "Obsession" where the "round trip" from Enterprise's current position to Tychos (over 1,000 LY away) and then to rendezvous with another ship was 1.7 days.

For CorporalCaptain - One thing also about TOS warp speeds is that it is consistently:

• <5c when operating in system from the 3rd planet orbit towards the system star ("Tomorrow Is Yesterday", "Operation: Annihilate!", possibly "The Paradise Syndrome", arguably "The Doomsday Machine")
• 1000 LY/day range outside of systems (or at least past the 4th planet) ("Obsession", "That Which Survives", "Obsession")
• but going between galaxies it's originally slower (pre-Kelvin mods) but with Kelvin mods comparable to TNG speeds ("By Any Other Name" vs "Where No One Has Gone Before").

TNG+ at least "standardized" the speeds to what appears to be consistent at all points in space but their speeds are slower than TOS accept when warping in system.

 

[TIN_MAN]

Yeah, this fits in rather well actually. Perhaps the "charging" of the crystals is precisely via the initial "two anti-kilos" of anti-matter required to "prime" the reactor and start the whole system?

By the way, in real science, we haven't yet collected enough anti-matter to study and see if it has ant-gravitational properties or not, but if it does, then "anti-kilos" would be an apropriate term?

Maybe. "Kilogram" is a measure of mass, not weight. So an "anti-kilo" would more likely be a measurement of negative mass. So, if anti-matter has the properties of negative mass, then I suppose that might make sense. So what is negative mass? Would it exhibit gravitational repulsion instead of attraction? Would it have that same effect in relation to positive gravity that it would in relation to negative mass? If two objects of positive mass are attracted to each other, should that mead that two objects of negative mass would repel? So what about an object of negative mass and an object of positive mass? Would they interact at all, or would the two forces tend to cancel each other out? What an interesting idea, I never thought of anti-kilo's before....

--Alex

BTW, I don't recall a reference to needing two anti-kilos of anything for any reason, what's that a reference to?

The two anti-kilos reference is from the post previous to mine that you quoted above, it's from a TAS ep. Here's the relevent snippit.

SCOTT: "But if the indicator goes below two anti-kilos, the engines won't regenerate."


At the risk of boring everyone with alternative/fringe science, there are theories that suggest there are two kinds of anti-matter, the "normal" kind with +mass/+time and another kind with -mass/-time? And yes, the latter kind would indeed "sum-to-zero" upon contact with ordinary matter, meaning it would "vanish" (implode?) rather than cause explosive anihilation, like the former?

 

[Captain Robert April]

Gene Roddenberry was pretty specific when setting up the concept of how the ship got around: Warp drive, powered by matter/antimatter annihilation. Apparently, all those technical people that GR talked to either never mentioned ZPE, or dismissed it as inadequate (or both) and therefore has no bearing whatsoever with regard to what the writers were thinking when they were writing their scripts (as described more than once upthread, unless the solution to a given problem actually involved fixing what was wrong with the engines, very little thought was given to technical consistency).

 

[Albertese]

...


The two anti-kilos reference is from the post previous to mine that you quoted above, it's from a TAS ep. Here's the relevent snippit.

SCOTT: "But if the indicator goes below two anti-kilos, the engines won't regenerate."

...

Thanks. I had assumed it was a TAS episode. I have the DVD's but unfortunately have only been through them once or twice.

--Alex

 

[CorporalCaptain]

CorporalCaptain, there has long been a rift in TREK fandom over certain technical pronouncements made by Gene Roddenberry and others in Paramount. One concern was the meaning of warp velocity. In the publication STAR TREK MAPS (Bantam, 1980), author Geoffrey Mandel put forth an expanded meaning of TOS warp technology with seemed to bridge the continuity throughout TOS, including TAS and TMP. The specifics of this publication tied into technical advice Roddenberry et al. received from NASA manager Jesco von Puttkamer, as published in THE MAKING OF STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE.

A booklet included in MAPS entitled "Introduction to Navigation: Star Fleet Command" listed all the worlds explored by the U.S.S. Enterprise during TOS, as well as other key worlds mentioned in TREK. The booklet also provided a detailed monograph on the history and technical workings of warp drive. Part of this monograph included a detailed table based on Cochrane's Formula for calculating real-space FTL velocities based on warp factor that included a heretofore unheard of element: Cochrane's variable. Cochrane's variable, indicated by the use of the Greek letter chi (looks like an italicized "x") which enhanced warp speeds based on environmental factors.

Cochrane's formula formed a basis for logically explaining how warp velocity could be so incredibly fast in some situations (traveling over 1,000 light-years in a day; "Obsession", "That Which Survives") but then warp speeds seem to drop to their "ideal" values (chi = 1.0) in others. When TNG started up, Roddenberry et al., put in place the anti-FJ rules, and MAPS became a "canon" casualty. Oddly enough, there are examples of TNG warp speeds resembling the same variations as what MAPS tried to capitalizes on in TOS/TAS/TMP (off the top of my head "Conspiracy", "Where Silence Has Lease", "Tin Man", "Transfigurations" and "The Best of Both Worlds" seem to fit) but Roddenberry and company refused to acknowledge the issue. Fans of MAPS who picked up on Richard Arnold's pronouncements of certified "Star Trek fact", another way to saying what's canon and wit isn't, were a little miffed.

So if you put Mandel's notion of warp drive and velocity to work on TOS, TOS velocities can, in some circumstances, appear faster than the Roddenberryan TNG Warp 9.999 asymptotic curve approach. If, on the other hand, you retcon Mandel's approach onto TNG and later series, you can make the argument that warp velocities are more fluid, like sailing ships calculating trade winds.

Thanks! This was very informative, and explains a lot.

I agree: try as they might, warp speeds could not be used consistently in TNG either. If the story demanded that they return to Earth now, get from the Neutral Zone to any other place now, then that's just what they did. The fundamental problem is that the galaxy is much bigger than anything that makes Star Trek feasible, probably even by the 23rd century.

 

[blssdwlf]

It's also occured to me that we seem to have reinvented FJ's idea where just a little anti-matter is used to start the warp drive or "seed" the collapse of a wormhole/singularity, after which the process is ongoing unless something interuptes it, either by accident or design? I don't recall whether FJ had a place for dilithium in this scheme or not, but it certainly seems to fit?

Perhaps not dilithium, but when you mentioned FJ, I pulled up my copies of the Enterprise blueprints for both TOS (tech manual) and TMP and there are "Space Energy/Matter Sink (Acquisition)" equipment on the front of the nacelles. Could there have been the idea of grabbing space energy for perpetual power as a piece of the puzzle before a name could be properly attached to it like "black star" vs what we now call as a "black hole"? They had the idea, but not the concept name?

 

[CorporalCaptain]

And there is also "Obsession" where the "round trip" from Enterprise's current position to Tychos (over 1,000 LY away) and then to rendezvous with another ship was 1.7 days.

Right. Thanks for coming up with some examples. Now I recall groaning when I saw them. I think I must have suppressed these painful experiences.

Again, this was not a detail that was considered significant when the episodes originally aired. And whenever ENT-D needed to get around to tell a story TNG had decided to tell, "obeying the formulas" was not considered a significant detail either. I groaned just as much when ENT-D decided to pop in for a visit to Earth in TNG: Conspiracy.

Anyway, I am now appreciating why some of you are claiming that the TOS Ent outran the TNG Ent, but I don't agree with this conclusion. IMO, a better conclusion is that in TNG they paid more attention to these details than they did when making TOS. And, despite the improvements, there were still lapses.

By the way, Geoffrey Mandel did a TOS warp nacelle plan that originally appeared in one of the Star Trek Giant Poster Books. When I saw that I remember thinking that he might be suggesting that the TAS:One of Our Planets Is Missing segment took place inside one of the warp nacelles.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I pulled up my copies of the Enterprise blueprints for both TOS (tech manual) and TMP and there are "Space Energy/Matter Sink (Acquisition)" equipment on the front of the nacelles. Could there have been the idea of grabbing space energy for perpetual power as a piece of the puzzle before a name could be properly attached to it like "black star" vs what we now call as a "black hole"? They had the idea, but not the concept name?

Yes, it's pretty clear that this idea was refined and called a Bussard collector on the ENT-D, which is perhaps a more appropriate name. Whether FJ was responsible for the idea, I do not know.

 

[blssdwlf]

I think of the speed differences simply as different universes (like DC's multiverse). In TOS's version of the Ent-D, it would be even faster. In TNG's version of Kirk's Ent, it would be slower

As to the Space Energy / Matter Sink (Acquisition), it could also be interpreted as "Space Energy" as "Vacuum Energy" (or even "subSpace Energy") and "Matter" as "Bussard" fitting dual-purposes.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I think of the speed differences simply as different universes (like DC's multiverse). In TOS's version of the Ent-D, it would be even faster. In TNG's version of Kirk's Ent, it would be slower

This is the way it really has to be. The DC multiverse really was a brilliant conception. And ZPE warp drives occupy another.