Location of TOS Warp Core Equivalent?

[aridas sofia]

I still lean back to the crystals as the "ultimate source of power"

That was certainly the conclusion of fans for a long time. Franz Joseph treated them as a kind of power cell on the hand phaser design, I presume to accompany the power cell in the removable grip?

It's this last detail that always left me thinking the crystal was not a source of power, but rather an absolutely essential component in creating some aspect of the warp drive. After all, if the hand phaser's grip is a battery why do we need another battery? In my own admittedly scattered mind, I refer to discussions I've read and heard that hint the negative energy loop that would be necessary to keep a space warp from collapsing on itself would need to be a very precise width and size. We hear several times of negative energy in TOS, and I'm comfortable with this being a component of the warp drive. If so, the dilithium crystal might act as a prism, refractor, or collator of some kind, dimensioning the negative energy which might loop through the coils.

As a component of a phaser it might do the same thing, collating negative energy into an antigravitational sheath surrounding a beam of positive energy (the original laser beam, modified thus), focusing it and adding a massive antigravity punch in the process. The phaser thus becomes both a beam and impact weapon (remember it knocking down Dr. Crater in "The Man Trap"?)

 

[Mysterion]

I might be wrong, but my impression of dilithium crystals has always been that they were a catalyst of sorts, and not a power-source in their own right.

My thinking is more-or-less that dilithium is the key component of a warp drive that enables the thing to subvert Eninsteinian physics and let you go FTL. It does *something* with the energies and fields involved. Without it, you're just beating your head up against relativity all day long and your twin brother back home gets a lot older than you do. With it, the galaxy is your oyster and time dialation doesn't happen, etc.

 

[blssdwlf]

I still lean back to the crystals as the "ultimate source of power"

Hmm, after reading it again I think I should clarify my statement.

I lean to the crystals providing power like a super capacitor to the ship while plugged into the main energizer. The crystals' power is stored energy that is charged or amplified by the M/AM reactor(s) via the main energizer. The amount of stored crystal power probably exceeds the amount of power the ship could normally generate on its own. And as long as the crystals are charged, they can generate more M/AM fuel which is how the ship "regenerates" its power. All IMHO

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Oooo, that's cool. So you take the battery metaphor (which in the real world was why lithium was picked to begin with, according to the usual narrative) and then turn it up to eleven.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I don't know about this one, though. I think that the battery metaphor could go too far when you consider that a starship seems to have a very limited set of crystals and never carries any spares. That means the crystals are both very fault tolerant and also very effective even in small quantities.

Makes more sense if they're just using the dilithium to cheaply catalyze the conversion of antimatter, in which case the energy of the fusion reactors will suffice for regeneration (and the fusion reactors, in turn, regenerate by drawing interstellar hydrogen out of the cosmos). That would make dilithium less of a "battery" and more of a gain medium that allows the ship to build up its stores of antimatter; if anything acts as a battery on the ship, it's the antimatter pods. If the dilithium needs to be "charged" or "amplified" it's probably because the antimatter conversion process takes its toll on the crystals themselves and they have to be reconditioned to account for normal wear and tear.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Even if it doesn't stand up to scrutiny, it's still a neat idea.

From Elaan of Troyius:

SPOCK: Captain, these are crude crystals. There is no way to judge what the unusual shapes will do to the energy flow.
(...)
SCOTT: Fluctuation. It's the shape of the crystals. I was afraid of that.

This really reads like power is being channeled through the crystals, not being drawn from them.

From Mudd's Women:

SULU: Another lithium circuit. Now supplementing with battery power, sir.
(...)
SCOTT: I don't know, sir. With those three lithium crystals gone
SPOCK: It'll take longer on battery power.
(...)
SPOCK: The entire ship's power is feeding through one lithium crystal.

This reads the same way, to me, and additionally that the "battery" is something else not involved with dilithium; I'm willing to assume that whenever they said "lithium" in Mudd's Women, they meant "dilithium" [see http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Lithium].

 

[Crazy Eddie]

^ For the first quote, one could speculate that the "energy flow" and also "fluctuation" refers to the consumption end of the power train; the antimatter pods have been sabotaged and no longer useable, so they either need to regenerate more antimatter in an unaffected (because it was empty, maybe?) pod, or run the engines directly off the fresh supply coming from the dilithium chamber. Probably the former, in which case Spock is concerned that the necklace might not give them useable antimatter at all and might just flood the pods with charged particles. I say this mainly because despite the "fluctuation" from the unusual shape of the crystals, they still managed to put in warp two for a handful of seconds and power up their shields. So the fresh antimatter supply was a bit rough and inconsistent, but they got enough out of it to run the engines for a few seconds.

For the second quote it's actually simpler:

"The entire ship's power is feeding through one lithium crystal..." could be read to mean that the powerplant is being fed through one lithium crystal. It would be a bit like someone on the space shuttle saying "We've got all of our thrusters feeding through one leaky fuel line." The wording is a bit awkward, but it doesn't necessarily mean that THRUST is going through that line, but the fuel that is used to produce it.

I think the power outage with the loss of the last crystal reflects the fact that the central reactor in the ship itself requires a certain amount of antimatter and spins to zero when that supply is cutoff (of course, any way you slice it, Enterprise should have auxiliary power from the fusion reactors and the loss of that crystal shouldn't be that much of a problem).

 

[aridas sofia]

For what it's worth, lithium is seen as a likely component of future fusion reactors due to its characteristic as a tritium producer.

Lithium-7 is also used as a moderator in some molten salt reactors.

In other words, there was a contemporary and hypothetical use in reactors, as a moderator and as a source of fuel. Whether this influenced why it was employed as an essential component of power production in Star Trek is unknown. If it was, it might have been seen as a necessary moderator or coolant. I don't think it's is a role seen for lithium in hypothetical m/am reactors today, but it is a role in nuclear reactors.

 

[Timo]

I'm willing to assume that whenever they said "lithium" in Mudd's Women, they meant "dilithium"

Or paralithium, or monolithium or whatever. It seems there's a whole family of lithium-themed (lithium-containing?) crystals out there, and dilithium is the "high octane" variant that might have the drawback of not being easily available. And most Starfleet engines might be "multifuel" in this respect, leading the engineers to using 'lithium crystal as the catchall term, even if Scotty's newest bairns only digest dilithium. Scotty would quickly grow out of it, of course.

If (di)lithium indeed plays a regulatory or focusing role, then we might consider it in some ways analogous to a transistor: in order to regulate the massive flow of power from "source/collector" to "drain/emitter", one feeds a humbler type of power to the "gate/base". That is, dilithium only allows power through when it is properly energized itself, which is what the fuss in "The Alternative Factor" is all about.

Although a further possibility for analogy presents itself: if large lumps of dilithium are so darn difficult to come by, possibly Starfleet relies on large arrays of "industrial" microcrystals whenever it can - the same way the cutting and grinding industry copes with diamond scarcity. These are the flat paddles we see whenever we don't see fist-sized faceted gems. But in order to imitate the monocrystal effect with the thousands of tiny shards, one has to align them perfectly, and realign them every time they get out of alignment - a process referred to as "energizing", and possibly analogous to what is being done by magnetic fields in MRI machines. When macroscopic crystals become more abundant and ultimately synthetic, energizing goes out of fashion.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[blssdwlf]

Oooo, that's cool. So you take the battery metaphor (which in the real world was why lithium was picked to begin with, according to the usual narrative) and then turn it up to eleven.

Well not a battery but a capacitor. I think of the crystals more like super capacitors that can charge/discharge large amounts of energy at once which is useful for firing full phasers while the emergency batteries have a slower and lower discharge rate.

In addition to "Elaan of Troyius" and "Mudd's Women", lithium/dilithium is mentioned in "Where No Man Has Gone Before", "Mirror,Mirror", "The Alternative Factor", "The Day of the Dove" and "The Paradise Syndrome". Taken as a whole, it just seems to me that the crystals store energy as well as deliver energy rapidly via the energizers. And taking an idea from "The Alternative Factor", can create more M/AM fuel when energized. This would then fit nicely in the references to the Enterprise having unlimited range and can regenerate it's engines/power. I'll apologize ahead of time for my long-winded reply


In "Mudd's Women" we see that the batteries start supplementing the ship's power after the loss of 2 crystals.

SULU: We're overloading, Captain. Engine temperatures climbing.
CREWMAN: This is the Engine room. Temperatures are passing the danger line.
FARRELL Our deflector screen's weakening, sir. We can't protect them much longer.
SULU: That was one of our lithium crystal circuits, sir.
...
SULU: Another circuit, sir.
...
SULU: Another lithium circuit. Now supplementing with battery power, sir.
...
SCOTT: I don't know, sir. With those three lithium crystals gone
SPOCK: It'll take longer on battery power.
​

And with 3 crystals gone, Kirk is already concerned about the power situation.

KIRK: Deflector screen down, Mister Farrell. Save the power.
​

Which leads to the converter assembly having a bypass so without the crystals they could still draw power from the central M/AM reactor although they would not be able to operate at the equivalent of "full crystal power" or regenerate more M/AM fuel, IMHO. In this case with the assembly blown and burned out, a bypass was not possible.

On one crystal, yes, they were pulling the entire ship's power but we know from the previous dialog that the power was already cutback to the point that batteries had to supplement the difference.

SCOTT: One lithium crystal left, and that with a hairline split at the base.
SPOCK: Better rig a by-pass circuit.
SCOTT: Can't. We blew the whole converter assembly.
...
SPOCK: The entire ship's power is feeding through one lithium crystal.
KIRK: Well, switch to by-pass circuits.
SCOTT: We burned them all out when we super-heated.
​

And when the last crystal is gone, batteries take over while the impulse engines carry them there on the last 14 hour leg of the journey to orbit. Interestingly, when Spock estimated the travel time it was still with 1 crystal and presumably warp available. Did the final 14 hours on impulse still occur at FTL? I think it did...

SCOTT: Our last crystal, sir. It's gone.
SULU: Captain Kirk, engineering section reports our entire life-support system is now on batteries.
...
Captain's log-- Stardate 1330.1. Position, fourteen hours out of Rigel 12. We're on auxiliary impulse engines. Fuel low, barely sufficient to achieve orbit over the planet. Lithium replacements are now imperative.
​

For orbit they were on batteries only. This would suggest that the Enterprise has no capability to replenish her impulse engine fuel. We see this problem come up again in "The Doomsday Machine" as well.

KIRK: That's the last time I'm giving an order twice, gentlemen. We're down to battery power, and we're low on that.
SCOTT: It'll get us to Rigel 12, sir, but it'll be a shaky orbit.
KIRK: Just hang us in long enough to get six crystals, Scotty. That's all we need.
SCOTT: I'll get you there.
...
SULU: Power curve still dropping, Captain.
FARRELL: We'll make orbit, sir. A temporary one.
KIRK: Lay in. Computer?
SPOCK: We can sustain this orbit for three days, seven hours.
KIRK: More than enough time. Communications, have a representative of the Rigel 12 miners meet us here to discuss our needs. Beam him up first pass over their camp.
...
SPOCK: Conserving batteries, sir. Half power.
MUDD: I'm told they have only three days of orbit left before they start spiraling in.
​

Of course Kirk gets the crystals with 40-some minutes of battery power left.


In "The Alternative Factor" the crystals can be charged and drained of power.

MASTERS: Whatever that phenomenon was, it drained almost all of our crystals completely. It could mean trouble.
KIRK: You have a talent for understatement, Lieutenant. Without full crystal power, our orbit will begin to decay in ten hours. Re-amplify immediately.
​

Plus, they are useful in locating out-of-universe phenomena from an antimatter universe

SPOCK: Source of radiation, Captain.
KIRK: How is it the scanners didn't pick it up before?
SPOCK: Because it is not there.
KIRK: Another riddle? First Doctor McCoy, then you?
SPOCK: What I mean, Captain, is that according to our usual scanning procedures, there is nothing there that could be causing that effect.
KIRK: But it is there.
SPOCK: Affirmative. I confess I am somewhat at a loss for words. It may be described, though loosely and inaccurately, as a rip in our universe.
KIRK: A what?
SPOCK: A kind of physical warp, Captain, in which none of our established physical laws apply with any regularity. However, with the dilithium crystals, I was able to localise it.
LAZARUS: Yes! That's it! The dilithium crystals. With their power we could do it.
...
KIRK: What do the crystals have to do with it? All they show us the point of radiation.
LAZARUS: That's just it, that's the key. That's the way to trap him. That's the solution. Captain, I beg of you. I plead, I demand. Give me the crystals.
KIRK: Out of the question. Those crystals are the very heart of the power of my ship.
​

In this request, it sounds like Kirk is requesting all the crystals to be fully charged and pulled for use in an experiment:

KIRK: Lieutenant, can you prepare an experimentation chamber in ten minutes? All dilithium crystals, full power.
MASTERS: I'll check, sir.
​

And in Kirk's log, he notes that the ship is unable to function at full power with missing crystals. This is inline with "Mudd's Women" where the gradual loss of crystals has the ship supplementing automatically with auxiliary and battery power. If the ship were to lose all crystals, it would just operate on auxiliary and battery power as needed.

Captain's log, stardate 3088.7. We are no closer to finding an answer to the strange phenomenon than we were at the beginning. Not only have two of my crewmen been attacked, two of our dilithium crystals are missing, and without them the Enterprise cannot operate at full power. They must be found.
​

And another reference to crystals holding energy that can be charged and discharged (rapidly in one shot, like a capacitor):

LAZARUS: That's very bad, Captain. If he comes through at a time of his own choosing. But I think if we hurry and you will
help me, he can yet still be stopped. There's little time left. He meant to come through. When you accidentally passed through, it drained his crystals. It'll take him about ten minutes to re-energise with the equipment aboard his ship. That should give us enough time.
​

Moving on to "Elaan of Troyius". Whatever Kryton's bomb and/or sabotage did involved the fusing of the converter assembly and it's crystals. This conveniently prevents the damaged/sabotaged crystals from being bypassed. In my thinking, the sabotaged crystals would've created M/AM fuel at the wrong temperature or configuration that would've caused a catastrophic explosion ala "The Naked Time" when used in the antimatter engines aka antimatter pods.

SCOTT: The antimatter pods are rigged to blow up the moment we go into warp drive.
...
SCOTT: I've got bad news, Captain. The entire dilithium crystal converter assembly is fused. No chance of repair.
SCOTT: It's completely unusable.
KIRK: No chance of restoring warp drive?
SCOTT: Not without dilithium crystals. We can't even generate enough power to fire our weapons.

​

I don't think the central M/AM reactor is turned off because it would then mean a 26-30 minute wait time to restart the reactor which didn't happen in the episode. So during the battle, the central M/AM reactor likely just sat idle because the crystals were sabotaged and the converter assembly couldn't be bypassed.

SCOTT: Our shields will hold for a few passes, but without the matter-antimatter reactor, we've no chance. Captain, can you not call Starfleet on this emergency?
​

The "energy flow" doesn't give us enough information by itself to determine whether it is the energy flow from the crystals or through the crystals. But we are told the energy output could just as easily cause bad things to happen downstream.

SPOCK: Captain, these are crude crystals. There is no way to judge what the unusual shapes will do to the energy flow.
SCOTT: Aye, that could blow us up just as effectively as
KIRK: Let me know when it's in place. Open a hailing frequency.

​

In "The Paradise Syndrome", we see the ship unable to maintain full power with one of the crystals ejected for examination.

CHEKOV: Power dropping, sir.
SPOCK: Engineering, maintain full power. Full power.
SCOTT: Dilithium crystal circuit's failing, sir. We'll have to replace it.
​

And lastly in "The Day of the Dove" we once again see that if the crystals fail they would no longer have engine power. They appear to be both deteriorating and discharging at the same time.

SCOTT: The ship's dilithium crystals are deteriorating. We can't stop the process.
KIRK: Time factor?
SCOTT: In twelve minutes, we'll be totally without engine power.
...
SCOTT: There's no change, Captain. The dilithium crystals are discharging.
SPOCK: There's nothing we can do about it.

​

One more - there is a line in "The Tholian Web" which I interpret as having something to do with charging the crystals back up again. I don't think it refers to the M/AM reactors as they would not need to have their power level percentage "built up" over time. The crystals on the other hand, do appear to need time to charge back up.

SCOTT: Spock, that hit from the Tholians has fused our power supply converters.
...
SCOTT: That'll be about twenty minutes. Aye, she'll be back together. But we'll only have about eighty percent power built up.
​

I've pondered why then the Enterprise doesn't just have more crystals installed to increase more power available. I figure that is due to a combination of economics and rarity of the crystals at that time and also a practical size on M/AM reactor+energizer systems. Thus, a 4 crystal powered ship might be considered a very powerful and expensive ship compared to a ship with less crystals. All IMHO

 

[Donovan Loucks]

I just came across the following in Richard E. Mandel's very non-canonical Federation Spaceflight Chronology, Volume 11:

It took several more years and two more design iterations before Leeding was ready to submit a new linear warp engine to Starfleet for field testing. Their final solution to the LN-40’s decay issues was quite radical; however, it worked. It removed the dilithium converter assemblies from the engines and made it a single, separate assembly within the hull of the starship itself. A massive matter/antimatter intermix chamber fed the converted energy into the warp engine(s). This system was also linked into a redesigned impulse engine system, whereby each system could tap off of the other for power. The obvious advantage to this was that the impulse deck could be used to “cold start” the warp engines, a feature that had never been available on a Class I starship until now. Likewise, power from the warp drive could be used to jump-start the impulse deck. Both systems now worked together instead of separately, and both could be operated from each other’s control systems. Making the impulse deck part of the warp power assembly also had an added benefit, one that was vital to Leeding’s new warp engine design. In the past, impulse power was not normally used during faster-than-light travel. The impulse engines were allowed to idle or power auxiliary systems in order to keep their reactors running. This was necessary but ultimately wasteful. Leeding’s new design used this excess impulse power to reinforce the flux capacitors in the new unified dilithium converter assembly. This prevented the rapid dilithium decay of the LN-40 design by repeatedly reversing the polarity of the neutron flow, setting up a constant interference field to prevent decay from ever starting in the first place. It was an engineering kludge, admittedly, but it worked, and that was all that mattered. The final form of this design was termed the Leeding LN-64 linear warp engine. It would go on to become the namesake of a whole new generation of Federation starships.
​

"Flux capacitors"...

Anyway, this quote, along with all the accompanying information regarding the development of warp nacelles, indicates that, prior to TMP, the nacelles themselves actually generated their own power. Thus, both matter and antimatter are stored in the nacelles, the matter/antimatter reactor is housed in the nacelles, and even the dilithium crystals are installed within the nacelles. Again, this isn't canon, but it sounds reasonable and seems to agree with what several folks have already said here.