Poll: Sovereign Saucer Sep

[Gepard]

I voted "blink and keep reading;" Eaves intended the ship to have such an ability, even if...

The Gored Thing said:

FleetCaptainFrost said:
[image]http://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u108/FrostRaptor/sovsep.jpg[/image]

Does that separation mode leave the secondary hull without impulse engines?

TGT

...it doesn't make any sense.

Don't think about it. Don't think about it.

 

[RyanKCR]

The Gored Thing said:

FleetCaptainFrost said:

Does that separation mode leave the secondary hull without impulse engines?

TGT

Didn't the orginal E and the Refit E also leave the secondary hull without impulse engines when they seperated?

 

[GodThingFormerly]

Captain Jack Sparrow said:
Didn't the orginal E and the Refit E also leave the secondary hull without impulse engines when they seperated?

Yes, but saucer separation on the original NCC-1701 and Refit was only intended for extreme emergencies that required the primary hull to be used as a lifeboat. The E-D, on the other hand, was specifically designed so each hull could function as an independent space vehicle, hence the impulse engines visible on both. Why would Starfleet want to revert to a more primitive configuration that reduced mission flexibility with the E-E unless John Eaves simply forgot to add the necessary red glowy bits to the secondary hull?

TGT

 

[David cgc]

The impulse engines on the engineering section could be retracted, covered, deactivated, or otherwise not apparent. There are a few cutouts on the lower part of the fantail that could be plausible impulse engines if you lit 'em up red.

 

[GodThingFormerly]

David cgc said:
The impulse engines on the engineering section could be retracted, covered, deactivated, or otherwise not apparent. There are a few cutouts on the lower part of the fantail that could be plausible impulse engines if you lit 'em up red.

I think not. In any event, why don't we consult Rick Sternbach? He apparently blueprinted the E-E from John Eaves' scribbles so the ILM model shop could have something to work from for ST:FC.

TGT

 

[Rick Sternbach]

The Gored Thing said:

David cgc said:
The impulse engines on the engineering section could be retracted, covered, deactivated, or otherwise not apparent. There are a few cutouts on the lower part of the fantail that could be plausible impulse engines if you lit 'em up red.

I think not. In any event, why don't we consult Rick Sternbach? He apparently blueprinted the E-E from John Eaves' scribbles so the ILM model shop could have something to work from for ST:FC.

TGT

When I drew the Ent-E blueprints, there were no provisions made for separation. There was nothing obvious in Eaves' sketches, and nothing verbal had been passed on to me about making any kind of sep lines. If Eaves or anyone else modified the design, it came after I had turned in my drawings.

Rick
www.spacemodelsystems.com

 

[GodThingFormerly]

^ Thank you for the lightning response, Rick. So would it be fair to say that - at least as far as your blueprints are concerned - there are no impulse engine thrusters hidden within the E-E's secondary hull?

TGT

 

[RyanKCR]

The Gored Thing said:

Captain Jack Sparrow said:
Didn't the orginal E and the Refit E also leave the secondary hull without impulse engines when they seperated?

Yes, but saucer separation on the original NCC-1701 and Refit was only intended for extreme emergencies that required the primary hull to be used as a lifeboat. The E-D, on the other hand, was specifically designed so each hull could function as an independent space vehicle, hence the impulse engines visible on both. Why would Starfleet want to revert to a more primitive configuration that reduced mission flexibility with the E-E unless John Eaves simply forgot to add the necessary red glowy bits to the secondary hull?

TGT

Actually I knew that. It was another one of the things about the D that I hated. If the ship is going to seperate and operate as two seperate entities where are the Saucer section's warp engines? And wouldn't having a ship that could seperate and re-attach be very very weak at the joint?

 

[GodThingFormerly]

Captain Jack Sparrow said:
Actually I knew that. It was another one of the things about the D that I hated. If the ship is going to seperate and operate as two seperate entities where are the Saucer section's warp engines?

Adding warp capability to the primary hull may have resulted in unacceptable mass, volume and complexity penalties that would have negatively impacted upon the performance of the entire starship system.

And wouldn't having a ship that could seperate and re-attach be very very weak at the joint?

Not if the mechanical couplings were correctly designed and of sufficient size. Also recall that the E-D was equipped with a "structural integrity field" mechanism that would have presumably served to reinforce the union during high-g maneuvers.

TGT

 

[Deleted 2]

The Gored Thing said:
Yes, but saucer separation on the original NCC-1701 and Refit was only intended for extreme emergencies that required the primary hull to be used as a lifeboat. The E-D, on the other hand, was specifically designed so each hull could function as an independent space vehicle, hence the impulse engines visible on both. Why would Starfleet want to revert to a more primitive configuration that reduced mission flexibility

Well, the "in-universe" explanation is that the "Battle separation" procedure never worked as expected. The Yamato was destroyed without ever having the opportunity to separate, the crew of the Enterprise-D barely survived an utterly predictable warp core breach, due to the lengthy evacuation procedures, and, undoubtedly, the time required by the reusable separation mechanism itself.

Furthermore, after the first season, we never see saucer separation used in a combat situation again, which may well indicate that Picard (and other commanders of Galaxy-class vessels) judged it, accurately or not, to be unfeasible in most combat situations.

I'm somewhat reminded of the Dutch Koploper trains, whose ingenious head-to-head coupling mechanism was judged to be unsuitable in day-to-day operation.

 

[GodThingFormerly]

^ Please don't get me wrong. I found ST:TNG's saucer-sep for battle crap almost as offensive as having families aboard the starship, which inevitably led to episode B-plots centered on MiniWorf pilfering toy dinosaurs from a classroom display. On the other hand, I reserve the right to trash John Eaves as both a speculative aerospace hardware designer and a human being whenever the occasion arises, hence my presence in this particular thread.

TGT

 

[Christopher]

Captain Jack Sparrow said:
Actually I knew that. It was another one of the things about the D that I hated. If the ship is going to seperate and operate as two seperate entities where are the Saucer section's warp engines?

The saucer wasn't meant to be a fully functional starship, just a sort of luxury lifeboat. It could "coast" on a temporarily sustained warpfield for a certain distance from the point of separation (the same way photon torpedoes travel at warp), just in order to gain a safe distance from the battle site. It's still dependent on the stardrive section -- or some other starship, if the worst happens -- to pick it up and take it safely back to base. (Although "Farpoint" itself disregarded this by having the saucer somehow manage to make it the rest of the way to Deneb IV at impulse.)

I always felt they got it wrong -- the saucer shouldn't be separated just before battle, but should be left behind at a starbase before the ship went into a potential combat situation.

And wouldn't having a ship that could seperate and re-attach be very very weak at the joint?

Typically, yes, but the Galaxy Class had a very broad surface of attachment between the hulls and a lot of locking clamps holding them together. It looks like Eaves's version of Sov separation has a pretty large contact surface as well.


As for the lack of impulse engines -- really, does a ship with warp engines even need impulse engines? Just run the warp field at less than 1000 millicochranes, and you get forward space-warp propulsion at sublight speeds. If Cochrane warp drive works anything like Alcubierre warp theory, there's no reason why the spatial distortion couldn't propel a ship forward at any sublight speed from c on down to 15 mph in a school zone. Impulse drive is probably more efficient than warp at sublight velocities, which is why it's used, but in an emergency I don't see why a warp drive couldn't have that capability. After all, as Sternbach and Okuda defined it, impulse drive itself uses a sub-warp spatial distortion to reduce the ship's inertial mass and increase its acceleration.

 

[FalTorPan]

Zero Hour said:
Well, the "in-universe" explanation is that the "Battle separation" procedure never worked as expected.

No such explanation was ever made. One might infer that from the very little evidence presented, but one might infer something else entirely.

 

[Rick Sternbach]

The Gored Thing said:
^ Thank you for the lightning response, Rick. So would it be fair to say that - at least as far as your blueprints are concerned - there are no impulse engine thrusters hidden within the E-E's secondary hull?

TGT

I didn't draw any, so they ain't there. On my blueprints.

Rick
www.spacemodelsystems.com

 

[Deleted 2]

FalTorPan said:

Zero Hour said:
Well, the "in-universe" explanation is that the "Battle separation" procedure never worked as expected.

No such explanation was ever made. One might infer that from the very little evidence presented, but one might infer something else entirely.

True. I should have (and intended to) insert a 'probably' there to indicate the speculative nature of my claims.

Another thing that struck me this evening is the sheer number of children that had to be evacuated in Generations. Which makes you wonder what children were doing in the 'business end' of a starship to begin with, and why they weren't evacuated to the saucer before the Enterprise even entered the Veridian star system.

 

[GodThingFormerly]

Rick Sternbach said:
I didn't draw any, so they ain't there. On my blueprints.

Understood. Thanks again, Rick.

Zero Hour said:
Another thing that struck me this evening is the sheer number of children that had to be evacuated in Generations. Which makes you wonder what children were doing in the 'business end' of a starship to begin with, and why they weren't evacuated to the saucer before the Enterprise even entered the Veridian star system.

It may be that they were simply being moved from the peripheral sections of the primary hull (i.e., the "crumple zones") to the inner compartments in the event of an exceptionally rough landing.

TGT

 

[cardinal biggles]

^Except that you have Geordi and one of his subordinates helping to move the kids along before he closes the Jefferies tube hatch to the saucer with that big hand lever.

It's not unprecedented that the kids might be in the stardrive section, though; the classroom where Alexander went to rescue the lizard was in that neck of the woods, IIRC.

 

[The Old Mixer]

The Gored Thing said:
Why would Starfleet want to revert to a more primitive configuration that reduced mission flexibility with the E-E unless John Eaves simply forgot to add the necessary red glowy bits to the secondary hull?

Old-school emergency-only saucer separation beats none at all. As far as we know, the Galaxy was the only vessel designed with saucer separation that was reusable in the field.

Zero Hour said:
Furthermore, after the first season, we never see saucer separation used in a combat situation again

"Best of Both Worlds, Part II". Granted, it was a twist.

 

[Christopher]

The Old Mixer said:

The Gored Thing said:
Why would Starfleet want to revert to a more primitive configuration that reduced mission flexibility with the E-E unless John Eaves simply forgot to add the necessary red glowy bits to the secondary hull?

Old-school emergency-only saucer separation beats none at all. As far as we know, the Galaxy was the only vessel designed with saucer separation that was reusable in the field.

Also, keep in mind that the G-Class was given that saucer separation capability as a way of protecting the civilians onboard. The idea was that this would be a long-term exploration vessel carrying hundreds of civilian scientists and operating far from any starbase for up to 15 years at a time (which was why it had families, because you'd never get civilians -- or even officers -- to join up if they had to leave their families for over a decade). It was meant to be essentially a mobile university town-cum-research institution for which combat was a last-ditch emergency option rather than a principal mission (although TNG promptly abandoned this concept and kept the ship in mostly familiar territory for seven years -- understandably, I guess, because seven years of research missions wouldn't have been as entertaining to a general audience). The battle section was the part of the ship that would defend the "university town" when it came under threat from nasty aliens.

But the Sovereign Class doesn't carry civilians or families, and the underlying assumption is that it was designed for more combat-oriented purposes in the post-Wolf 359 environment. So it doesn't have the same need for a separation function; presumably its separation would only serve the emergency-evac function that the original Connie separation did, a way of using the saucer as an impulse-driven lifeboat as a way of escaping a core breach. Of course, the novel Resistance showed the E-E undergoing a reversible saucer-sep, but maybe that reversibility was left in as a sort of holdover to broaden the possible uses of the s-s ability just in case. Still, without families and civilian researchers aboard, there just isn't as much incentive for a mechanism that routinely separates the ship into "combatant" and "noncombatant" portions.

 

[Manticore]

The Old Mixer said:

The Gored Thing said:
Why would Starfleet want to revert to a more primitive configuration that reduced mission flexibility with the E-E unless John Eaves simply forgot to add the necessary red glowy bits to the secondary hull?

Old-school emergency-only saucer separation beats none at all. As far as we know, the Galaxy was the only vessel designed with saucer separation that was reusable in the field.

The Prometheus managed to pull it off too, with an extra hull as well.