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Mr Sternbach/Okuda: Why did you decide to preburn the deuterium in the Galaxy's warp core

F

feld

Ensign
Red Shirt
I know this is really going for the wayback machine here but do the authors (or anyone else) know why the Galaxy class as described in the TNG:TM has a fusion preburner in the matter reactant injector (MRI)? The text at page 57 specifically points out that they fuse the deuterium-deuterium in the MRI but there's no mention of the similar fusion taking place on the antimatter side nor fusion preburners in the (always awesome) schematics of same.

That means (assuming they're not changing the nuclear physics) that what's really reacting at the dilithium crystal is a bunch of anti-deuterons with tritium ions, helium ions, neutrons and protons and random electrons.

I'm asking Mr. Sternbach because I know from a previous thread that he had and has great contacts in the actual space nuclear propulsion field so, whenever he writes something I don't understand, I sense an opportunity to expand my imagination!

Thanks and Very Respectfully,
feld
 
Probably because the deuterium is cryo-slushed, so it's being warmed for use. Antimatter is mag-bottled, not cryo-slushed, so there's no need to heat.
 
Yeah…you don’t need nuclear fusion to heat a few kg of slush hydrogen a second. Waste heat from the life support system would do it…
 
Possibly to account for lines such as these (from The Naked Time):

SCOTT: Captain, you can't mix matter and antimatter cold. We'd go up in the biggest explosion since-

It's a bit vague but does suggest a certain amount of heat is required for a successful reaction. How much heat? Well...
 
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In real life, some rockets did pre-heat kerosene fuel for more energy. Others chilled theirs to pack more in. Always fill up at the pump when it is coldest and most dense. Two different philosophies.
 
You need a source of plasma for the constriction segments to feed into the crystal. The pre-burner begins the fusion process which continues in a main "combustion chamber" or reaction segment before being pumped downwards into the crystal.

Below, the antimatter is extracted from the magnetic bottles as particles/ions/individual atomic units and injected upwards to interact with the crystal and the plasma from above.

Going on memory I don't have my manuals handy, but it struck me that the warp-core is basically a giant particle accelerator and the crystal is simply a focus or target crystal. Through whatever handwaveum (EM and microwave interactions and insulation stuff from the manual) that allows the plasma to superheat, which is fed to the warp coils. Those coils resemble some resonator coils I've seen in high-frequency work, and yeah a plasma input would result in some interesting reactions I bet. Handwave that away, you have super hot highly energetic plasma driving these enormous resonator coils which give off a field that distorts/curves/warps space-time.

...

That explains why the ship continued to accelerate with the antimatter injector stuck open. Even with the matter stream throttled way back the antimatter was still superheating the plasma, which was still being pumped into the nacelles... Only by shutting them both off was it possible to slow the ship down.

As much as I enjoy technobabble I like to keep it as simple as possible and base it off of stuff I can relate to. If you put too much magic into it, it stops being Sci Fi and becomes Star Wars. ;)
 
MATTER AND ANTI-MATTER will annihilate... on contact. Even if it's cold as an eskimo's lips... It can be pre-heated and usually is as a gas because gases are easier.
Warp core is a giant magnetic, engine cylinder except they have no piston they have a magnetic diffuser to Shoot particle exhausts in a given direction. "Warp Plasma" is not specified what it composition.
Plasma is a state of matter in which an ionized substance becomes highly electrically conductive to the point that long-range electric and magnetic fields dominate its behaviour, in essence a cloud of gaseous matter surrounded by distant electrons.

Injection of additional deuterium, even mild quantities produces a plasma with high energy contact, on other hand, why waste deuterium when simple hydrogen (Protium), Simple hydrogen is 6500x more abundant and only small amounts onboard needed to be used as a generated plasma feedstock. So added hydrogen is injected during matter/anti-matter initial sequence, since the process is continuous...
While the "reaction" ratio is always the same 1:1, the input ratio can be.... 1.3 to 1 or 2 to 1........who knows.

"Pre-burning" is warming up...
 
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