Weapons would be powered by fusion reactors in the saucer.
Proof that TOS Enterprise could undergo saucer separation/reconnection too!
- Thread starter Skipper
- Start date
When did they ever fire aft torpedoes?
TOS Defiant, in In a Mirror, Darkly
That wasn't a change that was made until The Motion Picture.
So not TOS. Different ship on different show.
It appeared on screen, so...
Yeah, and does the TAS engine room count, too? You see the can of worms this opens up.
Yes, for the Defiant. I don't believe it's mentioned on-screen that the layout of the Defiant and the Enterprise are identical. Different Constitution-class ships were shown to have at least certain minor differences, such as a difference in the command chair. The Enterprise might not have aft torpedo launchers.
TMP made a point of saying the new design channeled phaser power from the warp engines. This was a new idea to Kirk. Apparently TOS era had different power sources for phasers.
Franz Joseph's Star Fleet Battles depicted it that the phasers could be powered from any source - batteries, auxiliary power reactors, impulse engines, and even the warp drive. Photon torpedoes did not have a casing and they were charged exclusively by the warp drive.
FJ's ideas were based upon production notes and such (maybe even conversations with powers that be?). The original intent (even if never spelled out) was the warp nacelles were like propellers on a plane. They were outboard, away from the ship to prevent radiation exposure. They could generate power that would then be stored in batteries or wherever.
ENT: IAMD depicted a lower aft phaser just above (or below?) the shuttlebay on the Defiant. Or was that a rear torpedo?
As someone who considers ENT also as an alternate reality from TOS that doesn't really help!
JB
So what could the saucer do once separated?
It couldn't really move that much - just out-of-the-way and weapons would be limited at best.
It had no shuttlecrafts.
In regards to velocity. Does Newtonian Law apply at Warp? If the saucer separated at Warp, would it still be in Warp at the same velocity. If this was the case then the saucer could be pointed in the escape direction still at Warp 5 or whatever. Otherwise Saucer separation would have to be a really desperate move as the saucer would be marooned and reasonably undefended.
It couldn't really move that much - just out-of-the-way and weapons would be limited at best.
It had no shuttlecrafts.
In regards to velocity. Does Newtonian Law apply at Warp? If the saucer separated at Warp, would it still be in Warp at the same velocity. If this was the case then the saucer could be pointed in the escape direction still at Warp 5 or whatever. Otherwise Saucer separation would have to be a really desperate move as the saucer would be marooned and reasonably undefended.
The way the show ended up (with the saucer not as a routinely detachable modular craft in its own right) then the saucer was very much a last-ditch "lifeboat" solution in a crisis, such as the catastrophic destruction of the secondary hull. However, even if it can't achieve FTL speeds the impulse reactors can still provide life support for an extended period of time and the saucer is where you have the majority of crew accommodations, recreation space, transporter rooms, science labs, not to mention phasers and shields (power permitting).
When stranded in interstellar space and given the choice between a saucer and a little boxy lifeboat, I know what I'd rather choose!
"Aft" and "midships" phasers are mentioned in dialogue or walla, but we get no real idea where those might be because there's no associated VFX or information about target bearing. The Franz Joseph guesses, about emitters on the underbelly of the secondary hull and above the shuttlebay, are reasonable enough, especially as the TMP ship was given those very emitters, no doubt on basis of the very guess. And now NCC-1764 has the shuttlebay-top emitters in evidence, with ENT style pop-up turrets to boot.
How many such turrets might pop up from the saucer is anybody's guess. The more, the merrier, is mine: four banks are referred to already when beams emerge from the usual undersaucer centerline spot in "Paradise Syndrome"... Perhaps it wouldn't be that much of a problem to have banks that only ever see use after an emergency separation? The real world doesn't offer examples of naval guns that could only be fired after the lifeboats are launched or a key superstructure lost in battle. OTOH, WWII and preceding aircraft carriers embarked fighters that could only be launched (and indeed assembled!) after the ship's normal complement had suffered losses and freed up hangar and deck space for the purpose...
Oh, I'm adamant that it counts. I mean, why not? The whole engineering section is supposed to be a vast maze, after all. All the onscreen views put together (TOS, TOS-R, TAS) still don't suffice for filling up that space. Not even if we treat every TOS Main Engineering set modification as a separate room!
Timo Saloniemi
How many such turrets might pop up from the saucer is anybody's guess. The more, the merrier, is mine: four banks are referred to already when beams emerge from the usual undersaucer centerline spot in "Paradise Syndrome"... Perhaps it wouldn't be that much of a problem to have banks that only ever see use after an emergency separation? The real world doesn't offer examples of naval guns that could only be fired after the lifeboats are launched or a key superstructure lost in battle. OTOH, WWII and preceding aircraft carriers embarked fighters that could only be launched (and indeed assembled!) after the ship's normal complement had suffered losses and freed up hangar and deck space for the purpose...
Oh, I'm adamant that it counts. I mean, why not? The whole engineering section is supposed to be a vast maze, after all. All the onscreen views put together (TOS, TOS-R, TAS) still don't suffice for filling up that space. Not even if we treat every TOS Main Engineering set modification as a separate room!
Timo Saloniemi
If you had to separate near a Class M planet and help was months away, landing might be a viable option. In interstellar space, if you separAted, overide any safeties and go As fast as possible toward a base.
When starships went missing, response times in TOS were on the order of years. But if a saucer separated and actually called for help, it might arrive much sooner - Kirk didn't spend the better part of a year responding to the Defiant crisis, even if he only stumbled onto the Exeter after half a year and had no idea where and when the Constellation had gone missing.
Or does loss of warp drive result in loss of long range comms, too? That'd be too bad in the likes of "Paradise Syndrome" where the heroes have no means of regaining warp on their own...
Timo Saloniemi
Or does loss of warp drive result in loss of long range comms, too? That'd be too bad in the likes of "Paradise Syndrome" where the heroes have no means of regaining warp on their own...
Timo Saloniemi
By the TNG era it's implicit that the saucer can achieve warp speed. Encounter at Farpoint is the first example of this. The E-D's saucer separates and arrives at Farpoint station under it's own power and quite soon after the encounter with Q. In fact, the saucer arrives only minutes after the stardrive section arrives.
It wasn't warp drive, it was that pesky Lt Uhura! Damn her evil genius...
Unless the Ent-D was already cruising through the Deneb system at the point it met Q? We've seen on other occasions that starships like to cruise through solar systems at Impulse power, and the ship didn't seem to be at warp when the episode began...
Cant see how the saucer could have travelled at Warp if it didn't have warp drive unless it was some Q 'magic'.It wasn't warp drive, it was that pesky Lt Uhura! Damn her evil genius...
Unless the Ent-D was already cruising through the Deneb system at the point it met Q? We've seen on other occasions that starships like to cruise through solar systems at Impulse power, and the ship didn't seem to be at warp when the episode began...
I didn't realise the impulse engines were at the back of the saucer. Duh So at least it can duck away from danger and take a few potshots at whoever impelled them to separate in the first place. Unlike a lifeboat on a ship which in many cases could be rowed or sailed to land, the saucer on impulse drive isn't going to make it to the next star for years. But they could call for help and maybe recycle for the time it might take them to get to the closet M planet or Starfleet post
I'm a firm believer that a ship on impulse drive plus mass nullification (from its gravity-based inertial dampening field) is an older form of low FTL flight. Not a warp drive technology, but still low FLT, perhaps is the 5-10c range. Use of this system burns fuel quickly, so, it has limited duration tied to its fuel reserves. YMMV 
.
.Similar threads
