Four warp engines: Why?

[SteveG]

Hi all,

The Constellation class (and one or two other classes) had four warp engines, why do you suppose that was?

I'm looking for an in-trek need as opposed to the obvious "cool" factor.

Specifically, the Constellation class; is it a need for speed or perhaps a high speed over a protracted distance?

My thinking is that a starship with twice the amount of engines, uses twice the amount of fuel.

All those shuttle bays and a lack of an obvious navigational deflector makes me think of a ship that went from starbase to starbase delivering supplies - it looks like a cargo ship as its missing a lot of the aesthetics of most exploration ships.

Is it a tug with powerful doubled up impulse engines? It looks like a work horse.

Or is it a deep space class, the Stargazer was quite a way out in deep space to have been completely lost for so long (easily explained away by the last minute change from the refit miniature to the constellation).

What is this clunky (by comparison) looking starship, with four engines and rather a lot of shuttle/cargo bays for in your opinion........?

Steve

 

[bbjeg]

I assumed it was to stay in warp longer, not necessarily for higher speeds even though the Picard maneuver (not the shirt pull) boasts it speed. It seems to me it's a deep space surveillance vessel.

 

[Ithekro]

The name would suggest a class of exploration vessels. (both Constellation and Stargazer) It is also an old class designed around the time of Star Trek II, so slightly more advanced than the refit Constitutions and Miranda-class ships.

The large number of hangers could be for a number of shuttles and/or large cargo bays. Large cargo bays for lots of supplies for deep space missions or lots of shuttles for planetary survey work of star systems rather than use just the ships sensors and away teams beaming down somewhere. T

he number of warp nacelles could be an attempt to match the, then experimental transwarp drives on the new USS Excelsior. That or it was designed as a redundancy for extreme long term missions outside Federation space.

Picard always called it underpowered. You'd reason it would be powerful with four nacelles, but if they are still only powered by one warp core, they might not be as effective as a later starship like the Ambassador-class, or maybe even the Excelsior. It is possible that the four nacelles are to reduce ware for long term missions. It also seems to have two impulse drive units, which also points to the ship having built in redundancy.

It is suggested that Picard was in command of USS Stargazer for 22 years. That could be a lot of deep space missions aside from other interal missions. Because even though he lost that ship, he still got command of two USS Enterprises.

Hathaway was being used as something like a gunnery training ship or a target ship (one that wasn't just blow up as a test), while Victory seemed to be in service along with a few others.

 

[bbjeg]

For some in house explanation, Memory Alpha notes in TNG's "The Battle" and "The Wounded", during the early 24th century, the Constellation-class was noted for performing both deep-space exploration and defensive patrol duties.

 

[Cyke101]

I've read somewhere (not sure where) of two theories:

1. A warp field is easier to stabilize and maintain with four nacelles
2. Actually that it's just two nacelles that propel the ship, but the four nacelles alternate usage so that two engines can remain "off" and thus recharge in some way, so two "on" and two "off" during normal operations.

But whatever the case may be, it could be that Starfleet simply found the 4-nacelle design to be redundant (perhaps cost-inefficient?) and just went back to the tried-and-true 2-nacelle design.

 

[T'Girl]

All those shuttle bays and a lack of an obvious navigational deflector

Pure conjecture, the bow hanger opening is actual the deflector.

The name would suggest a class of exploration vessels.

Or the Stargazer was named after someone, there are thousands of people in America with the surname Stargazer.

It is also an old class designed around the time of Star Trek II, so slightly more advanced than the refit Constitutions and Miranda-class ships.

Or the Constellation Class dates from the time of TOS, the class being named after Matt Decker's ship. The ships originally had TOS era cylindrical engines, but were updated years later with "refit" style engines, weapons and other features.

 

[Timo]

The Hathaway was built in the late TOS movie era, and the commissioning plaque of the Stargazer suggests a similar launch date. Doesn't mean USS Constellation (with its canonically lower registry, NX-1974) couldn't have been an older vessel, though.

Why do some ships in the real world have four propellers while others have three, two or one? It's a matter of translating the power from the powerplant to motion in the most efficient manner possible. More propellers generally mean bigger powerplants, and are generally associated with bigger ships, not faster ships, because ship speed really isn't all that easy to change (it's a matter of hull shape, not of engine power, unless you're building a hydrofoil or a planing speedboat).

Trek could similarly feature some "physical" limitations on how fast a starship can cruise, more engine power being of no help there. The Constellation is a big ship, though, and perhaps requires four nacelles just to keep all that mass and bulk moving - the Constitution refit may always have been under-endowed, and should have been given a third nacelle if not for the expenses.

Since the Constellation does appear to be a very late product of the era that gave us the "LN-64" warp engine, it could well be that piling up those existing engines was simply the cheapest and most efficient way to channel the greater power of more modern powerplants. Then the next generation of nacelles was introduced, and those could again start with just two. (And we do eventually get a three-naceller of the Excelsior generation, too, as a DS9 kitbash. But then a new generation was again introduced, and again, and again...)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[SWHouston]

I've always thought of them as being like 4 Wheel Drive, or
having the capacity of continuing at Warp with two, while the
other two "rested/were maintained".

 

[C.E. Evans]

I've viewed the number of nacelles a ship has is based on what just works best for that particular design in the sense of balancing out various things (power generation, system efficiency, warp field stability, etc). A ship with two or more nacelles may not always be faster or have a longer range than another ship with just one, IMO. Some designs could better utilize its power with more nacelles while others could be better with fewer nacelles.

 

[diankra]

FWIW, back in '88 it looked to me as if there were two light sources in the nacelle tips of the Enterprise-D, so I speculated that maybe the four nacelle approach of the Stargazer had become standard, but with a pair in each of the two nacelle casings (note that the Ent-D nacelles are much wider than than their height). Of course the later technical manuals pretty much contradicted that.

 

[BillJ]

Probably only use two at a time. With four, they can alternate and use higher warp speeds for a longer period of time.

 

[Irishman]

Hi all,

The Constellation class (and one or two other classes) had four warp engines, why do you suppose that was?

I'm looking for an in-trek need as opposed to the obvious "cool" factor.

Specifically, the Constellation class; is it a need for speed or perhaps a high speed over a protracted distance?

My thinking is that a starship with twice the amount of engines, uses twice the amount of fuel.

All those shuttle bays and a lack of an obvious navigational deflector makes me think of a ship that went from starbase to starbase delivering supplies - it looks like a cargo ship as its missing a lot of the aesthetics of most exploration ships.

Is it a tug with powerful doubled up impulse engines? It looks like a work horse.

Or is it a deep space class, the Stargazer was quite a way out in deep space to have been completely lost for so long (easily explained away by the last minute change from the refit miniature to the constellation).

What is this clunky (by comparison) looking starship, with four engines and rather a lot of shuttle/cargo bays for in your opinion........?

Steve

I've always imagined that Starships with more than 2 nacelles had them for one of two reasons:

1) Redundancy. If you're a frontier vessel, or out of effective support range if you have catastrophic engine problems, having backups makes sense, from the "oh my God, can I get my people back home?" standpoint.

2) An analogy that I've always liked is that of subwoofers in a home theater environment. One is good and is the minimum required. Two smoothes out the response in the room. Four smoothes it out even more, and allows higher output. Imagining that warp fields involve some sorts of frequency emissions that can be effectively tuned by having multiple nacelles, the subwoofer analogy is a good one in my mind.

YMMV.

 

[Ronald Held]

My impression was they used only two at a time for longer cruising durations and time between nacelle major maintainable.

 

[CuttingEdge100]

It's possible the advantages could be multiple

-The Constellation Class was a large ship and the solution is to build either 2 huge engines or four little ones: Four little ones might have been easier to do

-The fact that the warp-engine arrangement may or may not have allowed one pair to be shut off and still keep the ship going would be a useful advantage for survivability in combat as well as the ability to conduct maintenance on the dead engines

 

[Ithekro]

If they had cetain engine types avalible when USS Constitution was launched, than they options would seem to be something based on the Constitution's nacelles...or the Excelsior's. There doesn't seem to be many other larger (modern) ships in Starfleet at that time that we are aware. I could take into account USS Kelvin, but by the time the Constellation-class would be coming along, the old Kelvin style engines would be horribly outdated (regardless of how fast they can actually go).

The Excelsior nacelles are really big for a ship like Constellation. Also they were probably not ready when Constellation was launched, so the Constitution's nacelle's are a logical solution. Modified to fit the new hull. Since the Constitution-class USS Constellation was lost not too long before the USS Enterprise was refit, I would assume that the new Constellation would have been designed to take into account the new engine styling from conception, or at least by the time it was launched.

 

[SteveG]

Thank you all for the replies, that's what I like about trekBBS, its such a great resource for this sort of thing.

I hadn't thought about the duel Bussard collector elements in the engines for the 1701D as twin engines on each side, is an interesting concept but also its a logical step up in the scale and power depiction by the designer.


Re: the forward bay being the deflector, do we get to see any Constellation classes properly under their own steam and not in a mothballed condition or in less than operational state?

On the flip side of the coin and focusing on the "cool factor", I wonder what the designers had in mind? Is it a case of USS Fanboy thinking (just missing the usual 42 phaser banks and 28 torpedo launchers )?

I've always loved the design, the ships got character.

Steve

 

[Timo]

Re: the forward bay being the deflector, do we get to see any Constellation classes properly under their own steam and not in a mothballed condition or in less than operational state?

Only four ships of the class are seen. The Stargazer is a derelict, the dark photography making it unlikely that anybody would spot the big "1" stenciled on the forward door and thus perhaps disprove the deflector theory. The Victory (stock footage of the former) is seen at low speed / stationkeeping only, and the bow deflector might be shut down and shuttered at such times. The Hathaway is reactivated and seen well illuminated, though, and while we still don't spot the stenciled "1" without major effort, we might expect to see the deflector shutters opened at some point. The fourth, unnamed ship from the "Redemption" fleet is only seen from aft angles.

If we can accept that the deflector could be behind shutters that say "1", then there are no snags there: the only time a TOS movie era deflector would need to be cranked up to full blue glow and unshuttered is when the Hathaway very briefly jumps to warp in the climax of "Peak Performance", and it's a plot point that we don't actually see this jump happen. Riker would be motivated to keep the shutters on till the last split second, and might even leave them on, trusting that a two-second jump won't kill them even with nav deflectors down.

Edit: This, I guess, is the only time we get to see the bow square in any detail:

http://tng.trekcore.com/hd/albums/2x21/peakperformance_hd_322.jpg

As for what the artists were thinking when creating this ship, I trust the general idea was "TOS movie era, but slightly bigger and badder", which you achieve by adding more of the same. Doesn't mean the ship would be more powerful in-universe: "more of the same" might simply compensate for the overall weakness of the old technology, rather than elevate it to actual heights.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Unicron]

The HD versions of TNG do offer a bit better detail of the Stargazer's bow section, which has a label of 4 (the starboard bays are labeled 1-3). It's still pretty dark, but I imagine far more visible than it would have been in the original version. Truthfully, I'd never noticed before that the Constellation model had all those bays along the saucer rim.

Stargazer bow detail
Bow detail sans viewscreen

 

[Ithekro]

Got to have something in place of the window insets on the Constitution model they used to craft the Constellation-class. At least on the sides of the saucer. The front on the other hand, that's new.

 

[Timo]

I don't see the window insert issue arising - the Constitution saucer top halves would be those smoothly curving things at the center of the hull, while the outer rim would be all-new, both in the original kitbashed tabletop model and this custom-built larger model.

I do like the use of detail on the model. Not just mindless greebling such as in Star Wars, but "naval-looking" add-ons resembling degaussing cabling and the like.

Timo Saloniemi