Kirk: "Are you ok?"
Scotty: "My head's spinning, I'm soaked, and I think I pissed myself in there, but I'll be fine."
----
Enterprise Crew Quarters
Ensign Cupcake: "Boy, the water sure is fresh and tasty on this ship!"
OMFG MASSIVE SPOLIERS: NeoTrek Engine Musings
- Thread starter Plecostomus
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Kirk: "Are you ok?"
Scotty: "My head's spinning, I'm soaked, and I think I pissed myself in there, but I'll be fine."
----
Enterprise Crew Quarters
Ensign Cupcake: "Boy, the water sure is fresh and tasty on this ship!"
It still sort of bugs me that Scotty goes to the desperate length of ejecting several reactor components of the warp core just to generate a very large explosion. Wouldn't he just eject the antimatter containers and save a perfectly working reactor?
Unless....
Perhaps newCanon antimatter containment technology isn't so advanced. It might be too dangerous to transport antimatter around a ship, so maybe they build little standalone matter/antimatter reactors that have their supplies of antimatter sealed inside. It'd be like the way current-day nuclear subs have their uranium sealed in their reactors.
So a starship would be powered by several of these reactors, the exact number of which would depend mostly on the ship's power requirements and range -- as well as a variety of safety, availability, and serviceability factors. These little warp reactors and their supporting hardware would be collectively referred to as the warp core. (or maybe now it's "warp corps"?)
I'd like to imagine that at this stage, they know how to use dilithium to store antimatter safely for long periods of time, but they haven't quite figured out how to use it to control a M/AM reaction yet. The M/AM reaction in a newCanon ship would be far less controlled and efficient than it'd be in the dilithium chamber of an oldCanon ship. It'd generate a lot more wasted heat and require much more extensive cooling. Which, naturally, would mean a lot of plumbing. All this excessive heat would be turned to plain old electricity, carried throughout the ship on superconducting cables inside yet more piping.
Man, I hope one of J.J.A.'s writers is paying at least as much attention to this as I am.
Unless....
Perhaps newCanon antimatter containment technology isn't so advanced. It might be too dangerous to transport antimatter around a ship, so maybe they build little standalone matter/antimatter reactors that have their supplies of antimatter sealed inside. It'd be like the way current-day nuclear subs have their uranium sealed in their reactors.
So a starship would be powered by several of these reactors, the exact number of which would depend mostly on the ship's power requirements and range -- as well as a variety of safety, availability, and serviceability factors. These little warp reactors and their supporting hardware would be collectively referred to as the warp core. (or maybe now it's "warp corps"?)
I'd like to imagine that at this stage, they know how to use dilithium to store antimatter safely for long periods of time, but they haven't quite figured out how to use it to control a M/AM reaction yet. The M/AM reaction in a newCanon ship would be far less controlled and efficient than it'd be in the dilithium chamber of an oldCanon ship. It'd generate a lot more wasted heat and require much more extensive cooling. Which, naturally, would mean a lot of plumbing. All this excessive heat would be turned to plain old electricity, carried throughout the ship on superconducting cables inside yet more piping.
Man, I hope one of J.J.A.'s writers is paying at least as much attention to this as I am.
ST-One
Vice Admiral
Well, the labels on the pipes clearly state 'Inert Reactant' (we can see this even with the camera moving around).
Perhaps they store as heavy water because it's safer that way, and only extract the necessary heavy hydrogen when needed. The same probably goes for the extraction of the anti-hydrogen.
Spice it up with some technobabble and it would work
trevanian
Rear Admiral
Well, the labels on the pipes clearly state 'Inert Reactant' (we can see this even with the camera moving around).
[snip]
Spice it up with some technobabble and it would work
We've seen labels in trek that have UP arrows on lift doors set on THE BRIDGE, so I don't think we can invest too much in the signage, do you?
And when you invoke the word technobabble, shouldn't the phrase preceding its usage be 'dumb it down' rather than 'spice it up'?
ST-One
Vice Admiral
Umm, where? Or do you mean the generic turbolift signs that have arrows pointing in four directions no matter where the sign?
Anyway STXI seems to confirm that there's plenty of room at the top, above the bridge, so...
Timo Saloniemi
Why can't we just "assume" that even though Scotty said "core" he really just meant "anti-matter pods"? You know, dumb it down for the non-engineering types on the bridge. Wouldn't that simplify things?
I still don't see why the "Core" can't have multiple reaction chambers. I rather liked that departure, and it makes the new core in TMP (yes, yes, I know, different universe, but not the point!
) seem more advanced.I don't know if this has been addressed or not. But I saw the debate was going on, thought I'd toss in my two cents.
Scotty did say "core" but that could just as easily be a way of saying the element that powers the engines. For the sake of argument, lets say that the ship works the same way as we're used to. Deuterium (the matter) is injected tino a chamber while Dilithium (anti-matter) isinjected into the same chamber, however that's done. they react, the "go juice" travels to the nacelles, the nacells do all the warping of sapcetime, ship goes fast.
So assuming that and figuring that Deuterium, probably isn't terribly volatile and Dilithium is, I speculate that Scotty ejected the anti-matter containment bottles. The most explosive part of the reactor assembly.
Of course, I may have some of my treknology wrong on how it all works, don't have my manuals in front of me
But suffice to say that I think Scotty ejected the anti-matter and made it go boom. Deuterium is still on board, dilithium crystals are still on board, the warp core, wherever it's hidden (I am gonna say it's horizontal and hidden below decks somewhere, just like I have for years with the TOS core) is still on board. They're just out of anti-matter. They probably have spare containers around somewhere so all they'd have to do is plug them in and make some new anti-matter.
Sound reasonable?
Scotty did say "core" but that could just as easily be a way of saying the element that powers the engines. For the sake of argument, lets say that the ship works the same way as we're used to. Deuterium (the matter) is injected tino a chamber while Dilithium (anti-matter) isinjected into the same chamber, however that's done. they react, the "go juice" travels to the nacelles, the nacells do all the warping of sapcetime, ship goes fast.
So assuming that and figuring that Deuterium, probably isn't terribly volatile and Dilithium is, I speculate that Scotty ejected the anti-matter containment bottles. The most explosive part of the reactor assembly.
Of course, I may have some of my treknology wrong on how it all works, don't have my manuals in front of me
But suffice to say that I think Scotty ejected the anti-matter and made it go boom. Deuterium is still on board, dilithium crystals are still on board, the warp core, wherever it's hidden (I am gonna say it's horizontal and hidden below decks somewhere, just like I have for years with the TOS core) is still on board. They're just out of anti-matter. They probably have spare containers around somewhere so all they'd have to do is plug them in and make some new anti-matter.Sound reasonable?
trevanian
Rear Admiral
Umm, where? Or do you mean the generic turbolift signs that have arrows pointing in four directions no matter where the sign?
Anyway STXI seems to confirm that there's plenty of room at the top, above the bridge, so...
Timo Saloniemi
Bridge is deck 1, and that graphic was in a universe where there wasn't extra room above the bridge so far as I know.
And I don't buy 'generic' ... the thing about those graphics is that they are supposed to be comprehensible to all sorts of critters, so having an arrow going up on a spot where there is no up is just not cool, unless you're just into messing with their bulbous heads.
Dilithium isn't antimatter.
I think the antimatter they use in the old canon is anti-hydrogen, but I could be wrong. In any case, it's not dilithium. Dilithium is only used to control the matter/antimatter reaction.
When they energize a dilithium crystal, anti-hydrogen atoms will travel within the crystalline structure without touching it. They inject a tiny stream of anti-hydrogen into one side of a carefully shaped crystal and a stream of deuterium into the other. The reaction takes place within the crystal and plasma shoots out of it and down the EPS conduits.
The molecular structure of the dilithium crystal deteriorates over time, so they had to keep replacing it in TOS. By TNG, they had technology to recrystallize it and it was no longer an issue.
Some elevators have "up" buttons on the top floor. Make of that what you will.
I don't assume, however, that Starfleet would let just any old bulbous headed critter operate a turbolift on the bridge; the ones that would, presumably, have Starfleet training and I'd hate to think they'd be so easily befuddled by an arrow.
trevanian
Rear Admiral
Just goin' by what GR said to Lee Cole, the graphics designer. But of course, she is the one who put Enterprise-Class on the simulator in TWOK to indicate that the refit is Enteprise-Class, something most of you won't accept either.
Well, good then. The graphics show that turbolifts go up from the bridge and that the Enterprise is Enterprise-class, and we can consider both of them equally wrong.
It isn't actually wiped out, the movie is set in an alternate timeline.
trevanian
Rear Admiral
If Spock is so out of character as to not spend the rest of his days trying to restore/get back into his own timeline (his loyalty should be to his Kirk, just as the mirror universe seemed to find his loyalty with our TOS Kirk), then it is as good as or as bad as being wiped out rather than being an 'alternate' ...
trevanian
Rear Admiral
Well, good then. The graphics show that turbolifts go up from the bridge and that the Enterprise is Enterprise-class, and we can consider both of them equally wrong.
She didn't put the one on the bridge, silly. We'll need to go on a witchhunt for that, just like they did with the guy who airbrushed Nimoy's ears on the original promo brochure. I'm sure an innocent will be punished, but that's tradition as well ...
Well, there are several mindsets on what reality really is... and we know that on occasion Trek played with the "parallel realities" approach. However, there's not a lick of real science in support of that, and if you really think about what a "dimension" is (just another "direction of travel" within a common reality)... it seems unlikely to me and to many others.
I'm of the opinion, rather, that "every instant, technically, already exists." That is, although we only perceive time one instant at a time, and our perception of time is "sliding down a slope" at a particular rate... all time already exists, just like all X, Y, and Z coordinates already exist, even if you're at only one particular location when measured.
If that perspective is accurate, well... any change in the past destroys what "might have been"... every choice has ultimate consequences.
I find any other perspective to be silly fantasy, seemingly to infer that no choice has any real consequence, because all choices have been made and all consequences have been faced, in an infinite number of "parallel existences." It sounds like wishful thinking to me, not science. Like something a scriptwriter would come up with, not a physicist. (And yes, I know that there are a few people who practice science who've posited this sort of thing... but they're engaging in fantasy, not hard science, when they do it.)
SO... from my worldview... this movie destroyed all previous "Star Trek." It erased it, except in the memory of a single anomaly who existed in a "loop of time" which has been closed and deleted. The Abrams-verse is the "real" universe now... the previous one has been, in essence, destroyed. That "Spock-Prime" remembers it (or that we can go back and rewatch our old "memories" of it) is irrelevant. From a "future stories" standpoint, this is all that there is. The rest is done... completed... gone. Nothing but memories.
I had been hopeful that this movie would have ended with Kirk and Co somehow managing to deploy the "red matter" into the star which, in the future, would destroy Romulus... perhaps instead of having the "big final battle" (which is such a cliche, anyway).
My version of this movie would have had the "nuTrek" crew on the "nuTrek" Enterprise engaging Nero, at the cost of their ship and their lives, to allow "Spock Prime" (or heck, even nuSpock) to pre-empt the future event... prevent Hobus from going "hypernova"... and suddenly, all is as it ought to have been, with the final scene in the movie being Spock doing a "pass the baton" bit with his protege... a non-tatooed Romulan named Nero.
That would have been a "Trek-style" ending. I'm just sick of "let's blow up lots of stuff and kill the mustache-twirling villain." That's not what Trek used to be.
By this argument... "The Squire of Gothos" would have ended with the Enterprise blowing up Trelane. "Arena" would have ended with Kirk wiping out the Gorn and the "higher powers" as well. "Errand of Mercy" would have ended with a massive battle. And on and on...
Trek was never about "blowin' up stuff real good" nor was it about one-dimensional villains. Yes, Nero has a great backstory... shame it wasn't in the movie and you have to read a comic book to get it. As far as the flick is concerned... Nero's a classic cheesy one-dimensional baddie.
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