Why not? That's what is being done in the real world, after all.
Many vessels, but especially warships, have two sets of engines: cruising engines, and then booster engines for combat dashes. Typically, this means diesels plus gas turbines, or sometimes gas turbines plus gas turbines. The ship isn't equipped with just the "best possible" engines, but with a variety of engines, each of which is optimized for a specific role and performs poorly in another. The diesels can't do 30 knots, but the gas turbines can't do 6,000 nautical miles.
Perhaps more relevant are the fishing boats (and minesweepers) that feature cruising engines for getting to the target area, and then trolling engines for moving around quietly and efficiently. The trolling engines are teeny weeny things compared with the cruising engines, yet they, too, are capable of moving the boat.
In the Galaxy case, the specific, dissimilar tasks of the warp engines would be obvious. The big set propels the entire ship at combat speeds and between stars. The small set propels the saucer on those extremely rare occasions when the saucer has to move independently. It would be stupid to equip the saucer with full-sized engines when those virtually never see use; better give her "emergency" engines that can do what they did in "Farpoint" and "Arsenal" but no more.
Really, if the saucer were given full-sized engines, there would be no point in docking her with the stardrive section ever again. But there'd be no point in not giving the saucer an emergency set of compact, economical, low-performance warp engines when the UFP evidently is capable of building such things.
Just fold it in two, or bend it so that the ends meet; those glowing areas are donut-shaped after all. Warp engines have come in all sorts of sizes and shapes in other starships.
Oh, that was never said.
And "most advanced" is meaningless if one doesn't specify application. There could be engines that are far more compact than the Galaxy ones, or far more efficient, or far more quiet, or far cheaper, or far faster to build, even if the Galaxy ones are the best buy when one wants a giant starship to go fast for a long time.
By your reasoning, Starfleet is braindead when equipping it shuttlecraft with warp engines that aren't of the Galaxy model!
Of course there is. One could fit a thousand shuttlecraft warp engines in their entirety (fuel tanks, control consoles and comfy operator chairs included) in the space allotted. And perhaps half a starship warp engine. What I propose is there is one (pair of) saucer warp engine(s), a piece of machinery smaller than a starship warp drive but larger than a shuttlecraft one.
Nothing in Trek suggests that the big nacelles would be the minimum size of engine needed to move a starship-sized object. To the contrary, we have seen a tiny runabout towing a mighty Cardassian cruiser in "Emissary", and an equally tiny Starfleet-labeled tug towing an Excelsior in "Time to Stand". Slowly, to be sure - but towing at medium warp would still be better than no towing at all.
But nobody ever listened to that old fool. (Although of course, the Galaxy saucer does have a pair of those glowing areas...)
That doesn't make it "true" in the Trek universe, though. The Voyager was given the "little extra" that she could land on a planet - but it was never established that she would have been the first design capable of that. All sorts of starships began sprouting landing legs in their MSD diagrams at that time, including those predating the Voyager.
Nope - there's nothing different there. The situation is identical in that there is a rigid joint between two starship sections that can be coupled and decoupled multiple times.
Try www.chakoteya.net.
In "Encounter", the case is clear: the joined ship heads for a destination but is somewhat short of it (still warping towards it) when Q stops her. She turns 180 degrees around and flees at extreme warp, for a duration of several onscreen minutes, and then separates the saucer (at warp). Stardrive section then does another 180 degrees, has a brief adventure, and resumes course towards the destination at warp. She arrives there, Riker more or immediately boards her, and is informed that the saucer will be arriving in 51 minutes.
There are only three possible interpretations: either the saucer is capable of relatively high warp, so that she can backtrack the initial extreme-warp flight away from Q's cosmic chain mail in reasonable time; or Picard told O'Brien to fly the stardrive section to the destination at impulse speed; or Q messed with time, space and the minds of the heroes (not to mention the audience).
The first interpretation is wholly in keeping with all onscreen evidence preceding or following this episode. The second interpretation makes no sense, as Picard has no reason to crawl, and Riker does not feel that Picard would be arriving any later than originally planned. The third interpretation is up to your personal tastes. Did Q give the saucer a magic boost (even though Worf was in command, and not in friendly terms with Q, yet never commented on such a thing happening)?
"Arsenal of Freedom" in turn shows our heroes sending the saucer across an interstellar distance without giving her a warp boost with the stardrive section. If we follow "Farpoint" precedent, then giving such a boost would have been possible, and would have allowed the saucer to cross interstellar distances fairly quickly. But LaForge did not give that boost. Again we have three options: LaForge was a sadist; LaForge was an idiot; or the saucer can attain reasonable warp speeds all on her own.
In reverse, there's absolutely no indication anywhere in this show or others that the saucer would be incapable of warp, either boosted or on her own.
Starships in general are capable of warp. If they are not stated to be incapable of it, why should we start thinking that such an incapacity would exist?
Or it might be like launching a SLBM. Nobody has actually killed a city with one yet, but there exist automated procedures for doing so, and then emergency procedures where lesser or greater manual involvement is called for. A bitch of a captain might well ask his XO to conduct an emergency launch procedure instead of a standard automated one the very first time a submarine launches a SLBM in anger...
...Of course, that would be a life-or-megadeath situation, whereas saucer redocking would be essentially harmless, and thus a much more likely "bitchy captain" scenario. The first redocking in the history of the universe, and Picard not only wants it conducted manually, he's also extremely stingy with his compliments...
Picard does say "a fairly routine maneuver", of course. It's up to us to decide if he was being an absolute bitch (Stewart played the character that way through the rest of the pilot episode) or his usual laid-back self and totally honest about this sort of thing happening basically every week.
Timo Saloniemi
