Is a navigational deflector necessary for warp drive?

Discussion in 'Trek Tech' started by Citiprime, May 30, 2022.

  1. KamenRiderBlade

    KamenRiderBlade Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Yes Subspace Fields allow you to cheat General Relativity.
    But it's been stated multiple time by other folks that you don't enter subspace on regular warp drive.

    Even the regular Warp Drive theory based on the Alcubierre Warp Drive doesn't have you enter Subspace either.

    And Erin MacDonald, the Science Consultant that works for Star Trek, explains that in her YT video on Star Trek's official YT channel. Go watch it. I already linked it above for you.

    Subspace is related, but not in the way you're thinking about.

    Entering Subspace is literally what the Borg Transwarp Conduits/Corridors/Tunnels do.

    You're conflating two different FTL methods with each other.
     
  2. C.E. Evans

    C.E. Evans Admiral Admiral

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    If anything, the opposite has been stated in Trek, that you need to enter or be encased in subspace in order to go to warp.
    Since when has that been in a factor in Trek?
    I did, it wasn't required watching or rather, it wasn't anything I haven't heard before from deGrasse Tyson or Kaku. Basically, she was just talking about the fabric of space-time and how VOY's "Threshold" was a terrible episode.
    Actually, I think it very much is. I wouldn't be talking about this if I thought otherwise.
    And warp drives seem to the same thing, but to a more limited degree. The main difference is that Transwarp Conduits go beyond subspace into transwarp space (beyond conventional warp velocities).
    Nope, because I said earlier that one was more advanced than the other.
     
  3. KamenRiderBlade

    KamenRiderBlade Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    By your theory, regular Warp Drives enter Subspace, so the ship leaves the normal realm that we're in.

    Then why on earth do they need a Navigational Deflector Dish / Meteorite sweeper to project out a Deflector Field in front to sweep away any objects that might impact the vessel?
     
  4. shapeshifter

    shapeshifter Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    :lol: Best question ever! Answer, it gives another doo-hickey to create drama with.
     
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  5. C.E. Evans

    C.E. Evans Admiral Admiral

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    Because subspace isn't entirely empty. There are subspace particles--like tetryon particles--that a ship at warp can collide with. We know from various instances of subspace distortions or ruptures that objects in normal space can effect objects in subspace (and presumably vice-versa). A deflector dish or deflector field would also be vital for a ship coming out of warp.
     
  6. KamenRiderBlade

    KamenRiderBlade Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    If that's the head canon you want to stick with, go right ahead.

    I'm sticking with the standard interpretation of Warp Drive that most people know of.


    That you're moving that bubble or volume of space.

    Transwarp Conduits/Corridors/Tunnels are the FTL method that actually enters Subspace.

    =D

    No Harm, No Foul!
     
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  7. C.E. Evans

    C.E. Evans Admiral Admiral

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    It's not "head canon," it just fits with often cited onscreen dialogue more than what people on YouTube say.
    Too bad that often isn't used in Trek.
    Through subspace, yes. It can be looked at that way too.
    And so does apparently warp drive.
    None taken, believe me. I know about theories presented by real scientists. I know about Alcubierre. But you got to admit that a lot of how warp drive works in Trek is totally made up. There's some adherence to real science, but warp drive--as presented in Trek (which is the sole position I'm coming from)--has a lot of fudge factoring involved. A real FTL drive, should such thing become reality, will probably not work remotely like it does in Trek.
     
  8. valkyrie013

    valkyrie013 Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Is the bubble permeable?
    If not then a warp bubble is the best shield EVER!
    You create a bubble is space/time around you, then you move the bubble. Nominally at FTL speeds, but you still interact with regular newtonian space. If you hit anything in front of you, from an atom of hydrogen to a small asteroid, what does impacting the front if the warp bubble do? Does it just let the object through? Or is the sheer power and gravity gradient so much that it defects off?? (Hope so! )
     
  9. KamenRiderBlade

    KamenRiderBlade Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Yes! Very much permeable

    It's not a Deflector / Defensive Bubble. It's a Warp Bubble that allows you to move at FTL.

    Nothing, it passes right on through.

    Normal objects from individual atoms & molecules to specks of dust in normal space will literally pass right through, into your warp bubble at super luminal speeds. That could be VERY bad for the integrity of your hull.

    There's a damn good reason why you need a Navigational Deflector. The shape of it doesn't matter, what matters is that the functionality is there and doing it's job.
     
  10. JesseM

    JesseM Ensign Newbie

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    What onscreen dialogue? The warp drive is sometimes said to create a subspace field, but that doesn't imply the ship itself is traveling through subspace, it could mean that the subspace fields interact with normal spacetime in a way that "warps" it (basically similar to the Alcubierre drive, but the notion of traveling by warping spacetime predates Alcubierre's paper by a lot and Trek writers were probably drawing on that sci-fi tradition, see some of the answers to this question on the sci fi stack exchange)
     
  11. Citiprime

    Citiprime Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    If it's permeable and connected to regular space, then it's significantly different from the Alcubierre Drive.

    In an Alcubierre Drive, the segment of space surrounding the ship is spatially distinct and separated from everything around it while being moved at warp. The ship doesn't move within that space, so in the Alcubierre metric, there would be no danger of impacts (or for that matter a need for inertial dampeners) on a hull because the space within the warp bubble is causally disconnected from normal space. This has been one of the objections to the Alcubierre Drive, since physicists argue there's no way (that we currently know of) to turn it off or steer from within the bubble.
     
  12. C.E. Evans

    C.E. Evans Admiral Admiral

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    Don't jump to the end of a conversation without reading the earlier posts first.

    From ENT's "Cold Front":
    TUCKER: When matter and antimatter collide it creates a whole lot of energy. We channel that energy through those conduits over there. They lead to the two large glowing cylinders you may have seen on the outside of the ship.
    SONSORRA: The nacelles.
    TUCKER: That's right.
    SONSORRA: Which contain warp coils that create the subspace displacement field...


    From VOY's "The Omega Directive":
    JANEWAY: Omega destroys subspace. A chain reaction involving a handful of molecules could devastate subspace throughout an entire Quadrant. If that were to happen, warp travel would become impossible. Space-faring civilization as we know it would cease to exist...

    Not sometimes, but frequently. If anything, a warp field and a subspace field are one and the same.
    Or it could mean that a ship sits in a subspace distortion that allows it to do the same thing. If you really look at how warp drive has been presented in Trek, there is a lot of vagueness there (and rightfully so, IMO). It's not really pinned down, and it definitely isn't pinned down to Alcubierre's theory, although it's one of the more popular ones. My position is that there's more than one way of looking at how warp drive works in Trek. You got to remember that these TV episodes really aren't written by scientists. Yes, they can have scientific consultants to help them, but it's still largely fictional.
     
  13. KamenRiderBlade

    KamenRiderBlade Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I concur, there is more than one way to look at it.

    Despite how we both differ on how it operates, we both agree that the Navigational Deflector is there to sweep away stuff to the sides. You just believe that it operates in the Subspace realm. I think it operates in the Normal Space realm.

    Regardless, Navigational Deflector is required so that you don't destroy your ship while going to FTL.

    Same with Inertial Dampeners. They're in place to prevent your body from turning into "Chunky Salsa" when accelerating towards high speeds while in STL.

     
  14. C.E. Evans

    C.E. Evans Admiral Admiral

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    I'm in total agreement there, but I actually think that all ships and shuttlecraft utilize a form of automatic "navigational shields" to push away stellar matter at either warp or impulse, but those ships with a deflector dish can really shovel some rock.
     
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  15. KamenRiderBlade

    KamenRiderBlade Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Yeah, they call it the "Navigational Deflector" =D.
    The physical shape is up to the vessel designer, but the larger Deflector Dishes could probably push aside some REALLY massive meteorites at a very far distance in front of the vessel.

    Think of it as a invisible Force Field Snow Plow in front of your StarShip.
     
  16. C.E. Evans

    C.E. Evans Admiral Admiral

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    That's it in a nutshell, but we've seen plenty of ships and other spacecraft in Trek without deflector dishes. There might be some kind of automatic navigational deflection field in place that all ships might have, but a dish might be for more industrial-level, "save my planet from the giant asteroid" work. Conversely, a small two-person shuttlepod might use its automatic deflectors for entering planetary atmospheres and do so without its hull getting remotely singed.
     
  17. KamenRiderBlade

    KamenRiderBlade Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Go look at the StarFleet Shuttles, their Navigational Deflector Dishes are "TINY" in comparison to how big the rest of the Shuttle's body is, much less a full blown StarShip Deflector Dish.

    The Navigational Deflector Dish on the Delta Flyer is puny in surface area compared to the rest of the Shuttle's body.
    [​IMG]
    It's so tiny and adorable in it's foreward nose mount.

    Imagine if you tried to compare Voyager's Navigational Deflector Dish to-scale against the Delta Flyer's Navigational Deflector Dish. It'd be ridiculous how much larger in size and area that Voyager's Deflector Dish is.
     
    Last edited: Jun 1, 2022
  18. JesseM

    JesseM Ensign Newbie

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    Sorry, I had read the whole thread, but when I got to your later statement I didn't remember those quotes.
    Sure, I agree this is true in the TNG era onward (in the TOS era they didn't talk about a warp 'field' or use subspace for anything besides communication and sensors). But none of those quotes you mentioned say that the ship actually travels through subspace as another dimension (which I took to be implied by your statement in the post I was responding to that they need the deflector dish because 'subspace isn't entirely empty. There are subspace particles--like tetryon particles--that a ship at warp can collide with.'). They just say that a subspace field has to be created for the ship to travel at warp. Like I said, this is consistent with the idea that subspace fields exist in some higher dimension called "subspace", and that manipulating these fields has a feedback on the curvature of regular space adjacent to the altered fields, causing it to "warp" in a way that allows for faster than light travel.
    I agree they weren't thinking in terms of anything as specific as the Alcubierre solution in general relativity, but like I said, if you look at old science fiction from before the original Star Trek, there are plenty of authors that know the general idea that Einstein's theory allows for the "warping" of space, and they use this justify the idea of faster-than-light travel by manipulating space in some new way. And Gene Roddenberry's original 1964 pitch document for Star Trek referred on p. 9 to the "space-warp" drive, suggesting he was drawing on this sci fi tradition. When Sternbach and Okuda tried to come up with a more consistent imaginary physics for Star Trek, they seem to have imagined subspace fields were involved with distortions to our own spacetime continuum--for example, p. 54 of the TNG Technical Manual discusses Zefram Cochrane's early discoveries:
    Page 40 of the TNG writer/director's guide also mentions that subspace is imagined as a different dimension, with the comment "Fortunately, we have subspace radio which operates through another dimension of space." But earlier on p. 38-39 they described the navigational deflectors in a way that made clear they were needed to deflect matter that exists in ordinary space, not special subspace particles:
    P. 87 of the TNG Technical Manual likewise describes using the deflector shields to "deflect the stray hydrogen atoms of the interstellar medium". And there was also a bit of onscreen evidence in "The Best of Both Worlds, Part 2" that ships moving at warp can collide with objects in ordinary space--after the Borg cube halts its approach to Earth to engage the Enterprise, and the Enterprise's weapons aren't working against them, Riker says "Mister Crusher, ready a collision course with the Borg ship", and then says "Mister La Forge, prepare to go to warp power." This wouldn't seem to make sense if warp took the ship to another dimension where it would no longer be able to collide with ordinary matter not moving at warp speed.
     
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  19. C.E. Evans

    C.E. Evans Admiral Admiral

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    I said early on that objects in subspace can affect objects in normal space and presumably vice-versa. As depicted in Trek (and keeping it to Trek seems to be the problem here) subspace isn't entirely separate from normal space. It allows for faster-than-light travel and communications--and if you go by that TNG Technical Manual, a whole lot more--but it co-exists with normal space while at the same time having its own set of physics.

    As far as "Best of Both Worlds, part 2," Riker was planning to turn the Enterprise into one giant photon torpedo at the Borg. One could argue that because Riker specifically requested "warp power" rather than "warp speed," he was simply asking for every last bit of energy the ship had, but even if we don't go that route, it's not like the Enterprise was going very far in any event.
     
  20. KamenRiderBlade

    KamenRiderBlade Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Could that have been the first ever on-screen example of Warp Speed ramming being planned?