In universe reason for warp core design

[FordSVT]

Ok, I stand corrected. And I thought I had a decent idea too... *sigh*

Hey, no worries. I wasn't trying to organise a pedantry contest - it's funny how the mind works sometimes!

Your video is very interesting and similar to what I had in my head already, so that checks out.

Interestingly in the video I posted I noticed data said that the Enterprise is generating 12.75 billion gigawatts (or 12.75 exawatts). This really is a ridiculously big number!

For reference, it's several orders of magnitude more energy than all the energy from solar radiation hitting the Earth's atmosphere. The total power used by humans worldwide is somewhere in the order of 10 terawatts, which is one million times less than this number.

What are they doing with all that energy?

Incidentally, if we plug 12.75 billion gigawatts in to E = mc^2, assuming perfect annihilation of matter and antimatter, the Enterprise-D is consuming 140kg of fuel per second, 70kg of matter, and 70kg of antimatter. Not bad!

He said "12.75 billion gigawatts per...." and then was cut off. Could have been per second, per minute, per hour, we have no way of knowing.

What are they doing with all that energy?

Bending space-time to travel faster than light and powering weapons that can melt through continental plates I'd guess.

We could imagine that the future warp drive might somehow be an extension of the hypothetical Alcubierre drive, which itself is theorized to require far more energy than what you described to propel a ship across the galaxy. Even if they found a way to make it work with a fraction of the energy it would still require an absurd amount.

 

[kent]

The warp core channels the dueterium from the dorsally placed fuel tank and the antimatter from the ventrally placed antimatter pods. The antimatter travels up and the deuterium down where it meets in the center in a controlled antimatter explosion. This explosion creates warp plasma, which is pushed through the power conduits via magnetic containment. Voyager's whole warp core is a power output, making the smaller warp core it has act as a larger warp core, lending that ship pretty good power.

The reason you can see the reaction is so they can visually moniter the rate at which the power is consumed. The faster a warp core moves the more power its trying to creat. It's a fast and easy way to see this, and it allows to lessen the lighting in some parts of the room to save energy.

It's also generally accepted that the higher a warp core is the better it processes energy. In this case the defiant's antimatter and deuterium would have to be run around a few times to simulate a higher warp core before reacting.

 

[kent]

The warp core of Voyager IS the reaction chamber. the whole core is lined with a dilithium lattice, making the whole core the chamber, allowing it to act as a larger, heavier warp core. They did that because the Intrepid class was supposed to be a smaller counter part to the galaxy class, with more or less equal power.

 

[RapidNadion]

The warp core channels the dueterium from the dorsally placed fuel tank and the antimatter from the ventrally placed antimatter pods. The antimatter travels up and the deuterium down where it meets in the center in a controlled antimatter explosion. This explosion creates warp plasma, which is pushed through the power conduits via magnetic containment.

A fairly concise and accurate description.

Voyager's whole warp core is a power output, making the smaller warp core it has act as a larger warp core, lending that ship pretty good power.

We're getting a little wobbly here ...

The reason you can see the reaction is so they can visually moniter the rate at which the power is consumed. The faster a warp core moves the more power its trying to creat. It's a fast and easy way to see this, and it allows to lessen the lighting in some parts of the room to save energy.

The visual indication of the reaction rate I mentioned before. As for the power-saving, well ... LoL. Sorry, but when you're generating gigawatts of power, you're not going to be worried about keeping the 60-watts in the overhead lit.

It's also generally accepted that the higher a warp core is the better it processes energy. In this case the defiant's antimatter and deuterium would have to be run around a few times to simulate a higher warp core before reacting.

Not necessarily. Defiant's core exhibited two things we haven't seen before: one, its design incorporated both a magnetic constriction assembly and a "dilithium swirl chamber," and two, the magnetic constriction segments we saw were a unique four-lobed design. These distinctions likely played a key role in making the compact Defiant warp core more potent than similarly-sized reactor analogs of the time.

 

[kent]

Voyager's whole warp core is a power output, making the smaller warp core it has act as a larger warp core, lending that ship pretty good power.

We're getting a little wobbly here ...

The reason you can see the reaction is so they can visually moniter the rate at which the power is consumed. The faster a warp core moves the more power its trying to creat. It's a fast and easy way to see this, and it allows to lessen the lighting in some parts of the room to save energy.

The visual indication of the reaction rate I mentioned before. As for the power-saving, well ... LoL. Sorry, but when you're generating gigawatts of power, you're not going to be worried about keeping the 60-watts in the overhead lit.




See i don't think it's that wobbly. You don't see any place to access the main chamber, indicating that the whole thing is the main chamber. Also, the defiant has a swirl chamber...which is what the Intrepid class could have as well, albeit a more advanced version of it encompassing the whole core itself. It makes sense that if you can use less resourses in building a huge warp core build a smaller one with big output.

 

[RapidNadion]

^ I just wasn't sure of your meaning - your wording tripped me up a bit. I think you're making the point that Voyager's swirl chamber could conceivably pack more punch per square inch than a Galaxy warp core, maybe due to increased reaction surface area. I'll buy that.

 

[Mytran]

What I don't understand is; if the whole tube thing in Voyager's engine room is the warp core (dilithium crystal lattice reaction chamber) then where is the equivalent of the E-D matter / antimatter pipes that lead into it? And the conduits that take the warp plasma out of it?

 

[Verteron]

He said "12.75 billion gigawatts per...." and then was cut off. Could have been per second, per minute, per hour, we have no way of knowing.

A watt is a measure of energy per second - one watt indicates an energy conversion rate of one joule per second. Saying "one watt per hour" doesn't make any sense at all (except as a rate of change of power level), so Data couldn't possibly have been able to say "per second", it must've been "per something else", not sure what, but maybe "per Galaxy class operating directive 433217, idle power consumption rates", which would certainly explain why he got cut off!

Bending space-time to travel faster than light and powering weapons that can melt through continental plates I'd guess.

Yup... I guess so!

 

[FordSVT]

He said "12.75 billion gigawatts per...." and then was cut off. Could have been per second, per minute, per hour, we have no way of knowing.

A watt is a measure of energy per second - one watt indicates an energy conversion rate of one joule per second. Saying "one watt per hour" doesn't make any sense at all (except as a rate of change of power level), so Data couldn't possibly have been able to say "per second", it must've been "per something else", not sure what, but maybe "per Galaxy class operating directive 433217, idle power consumption rates", which would certainly explain why he got cut off!

Bending space-time to travel faster than light and powering weapons that can melt through continental plates I'd guess.

Yup... I guess so!

I'm an electrical engineer so I know what a Watt is.

We only vary rarely hear them quantify anything in Star Trek that we can directly relate to modern units of engineering. When I was younger and watching it for the first time I felt from the flow of the conversation that it was apparent that the writers most likely meant for him to allude to a unit of time so that's the blank I still fill in. Though you are correct that it doesn't compute. Maybe warp engines and physics use a form of math and notation that seems nonsensical to us.

Blame them for not calling their technical advisors when they wrote that scene.

 

[Myasishchev]

^ I personally still hold to that idea, though. The alternate in-universe theory is that the warp core actually PRODUCES antimatter and then pumps it up to the nacelles to be burned as fuel. That would explain why the core consists of a pair of magnetic constructors eight stories high: it's actually a particle accelerator firing a particle beam at a dilithium target, the result of which produces a stream of antimatter that is trapped and channeled up to the nacelles.

What powers the accelerator, then?

 

[Crazy Eddie]

^ I personally still hold to that idea, though. The alternate in-universe theory is that the warp core actually PRODUCES antimatter and then pumps it up to the nacelles to be burned as fuel. That would explain why the core consists of a pair of magnetic constructors eight stories high: it's actually a particle accelerator firing a particle beam at a dilithium target, the result of which produces a stream of antimatter that is trapped and channeled up to the nacelles.

What powers the accelerator, then?

Power recovered from the EPS taps.

Dilithium becomes the technobabble element that makes it possible in this case; charged particles striking a gold or iron target would produce only a small amount of antiparticles and other radiation, while high-speed collision with dilithium does some kind of science-babble phase change to protons and electrons (or better yet, just the protons!) that flips them into anti-particles. This explains why the output of a warp core is "electroplasma," which is exactly what you would NOT get from a m/am reaction.

 

[Myasishchev]

It would be a lossy system, though. After an initial charge it would wind down and probably pretty fast. I mean, you're using your warp core to power the machine that powers your warp core?

 

[Crazy Eddie]

It would be a lossy system, though. After an initial charge it would wind down and probably pretty fast. I mean, you're using your warp core to power the machine that powers your warp core?

Technically, yes. In this scheme the warp core becomes a component of a power conversion system like any other engine:
Step1: Insert Fuel
Step2: <Engine does stuff>
Step3: Extract power

If we take it as a given that some of the output of the warp core is extracted for immediate use as energy, then it's a self-sustaining process as long as you have fuel to feed into it. Not unlike, for example, an ordinary internal combustion engine where the fuel is burned in the cylinders to turn the gears that turn the alternator which provides electricity to the spark plugs that ignites the fuel that pushes the cylinder that turns the gears...

It would indeed be a pretty lossy system, but when you're talking about power outputs in the terrawatt range, it only needs to be efficient enough to meet the minimum requirements of the warp drives.

 

[Longinus]

What powers the accelerator, then?

The hamster wheel, of course.

 

[Mytran]

What powers the accelerator, then?

The hamster wheel, of course.

Batteries. Lots and lots of 'em!

 

[Kaziarl]

What powers the accelerator, then?

The hamster wheel, of course.

Batteries. Lots and lots of 'em!

Two magnets, really big, and not moving whatsoever.

 

[Myasishchev]

Well, that's just the thing. If you can create tons of antimatter, why not use a natural power source (a sun, an x-ray binary, whatever) to make it in bulk and then store it for use, basically as a ~40-50% per mass efficient battery? (Well ~80-100% efficient if you add in the mass of the regular matter, because you don't have to take pains to make ordinary protium.) This would run down much slower than building antimatter in situ, and not require a big particle accelerator. And you're not going to waste half of the ship's primary energy stores (at least) on making regular matter that you could pick up anywhere.

I could get on board with the idea that there are facilities on board (maybe the phasers) to produce antimatter in a pinch using available resources, though, probably fusing hydrogen from gas giants and needing days or weeks on site to get even kilograms of fuel that's requisitely intense in joules/second output to drive a warp engine. I'd assume colliders of the future are somewhat more efficient, but the colliders of today are ridiculously inefficient at making antiprotons... indeed, this probably isn't what you built your ship to spend its time doing.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Well, that's just the thing. If you can create tons of antimatter, why not use a natural power source (a sun, an x-ray binary, whatever) to make it in bulk and then store it for use, basically as a ~40-50% per mass efficient battery? (Well ~80-100% efficient if you add in the mass of the regular matter, because you don't have to take pains to make ordinary protium.) This would run down much slower than building antimatter in situ, and not require a big particle accelerator. And you're not going to waste half of the ship's primary energy stores (at least) on making regular matter that you could pick up anywhere.

Because first of all "tons of antimatter" is a very dangerous thing to store and transport, plus it's also a very easy thing to steal as a cheap WMD.

Second of all, the ship already HAS a giant particle accelerator, so you're not saving much room by storing it in bulk. It would actually be a little more efficient to just create it in-situ using all that hardware and then pipe it to the warp drives where it's needed. In this case, antimatter is just a temporary byproduct of a matter-conversion engine.

 

[Myasishchev]

The point is you are not going to get as much rest mass as energy you put in.

So why use the antimatter when you already have an energy source that is capable of driving a particle accelerator? Why not just use the energy source for the drive?

 

[Crazy Eddie]

The point is you are not going to get as much rest mass as energy you put in.

Yes you are, since some of the rest energy is coming from the mass of the particles themselves.

Basically, it's the same problem with fusion reactors: it takes alot of energy to compress and confine the reactants in the first place, so there's a "Break even" point where the fusion reaction produces more energy than it consumes. The same would be true of a warp core in this case, where the use of dilithium nicely reduces the energy requirement for your particle accelerator since it allows a lower-energy particle to be used in pair production. In other words, dilithium becomes an antimatter catalyst, maybe stimulating hawking radiation or virtual particle production or some technobabble crap like that.

So why use the antimatter when you already have an energy source that is capable of driving a particle accelerator? Why not just use the energy source for the drive?

Because in this case, thanks to the inclusion of dilithium, the particle accelerator (i.e. the warp core) actually requires less energy than the warp drive. Furthermore, the same question would apply to the "traditional" view, where the warp core is a particle accelerator ANYWAY, except it accelerates matter and antimatter particles towards each other at high velocities.