Spoilers Protostar drive system

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Which is itself a problematic concept. A protostar of 0.01 solar masses – a typical size during the early phase of collapse, though still too small to sustain fusion – would have a Schwarzchild radius of almost 30 metres. Crushing it into a sphere a couple of metres across would turn it into a black hole.

Assume the Fusion Time Period isn't long term (Geologic Time Frames) sustainable without the end user inducing Fusion to happen artificially.

And what if the "ProtoStar" or "BabyStar" was only between 0.x-9.x meters Radius in size with similar mass density?

Pick some numbers to fit Containment Modules sized appropriately for each Radius.

Just barely large enough to safely fit within the "Gravimetric ProtoStar Containment" module?

What would the mass of the "Baby Star" be at that point?

We're assuming we're not crushing the sphere to become a Black Hole, in fact, we're doing everything to make sure a Black Hole doesn't happen.

So why use a protostar in that case? If you can do that, build an array of dozens of miniaturised warp cores and let rip.

The miniaturisation in DS9: "One Little Ship" seems to proportionally reduce the energy output of the runabout too. Photon torpedoes are barely powerful enough to kill a Jem'Hadar, whereas if they'd retained their full-scale destructive power they'd blow the Defiant apart from the inside. Remember, Bashir points out to O'Brien that while miniaturised that "20 microamps of current" used in isolinear circuitry would "fry every synapse in his tiny body", even though to a full-size O'Brien this would be imperceptible.

I concur, the miniaturization doesn't make sense and isn't useful. And it's shown to be a one-off event where the UFP doesn't persue the technology.

Yes. It's hugely lower, because protostars aren't undergoing fusion. Initial phases of protostellar cloud collapse will produce temperatures of 60-100 K and radiate only in far infrared and microwave radiation. Once it becomes opaque due to hydrogen ionisation it's still only radiating at about 2000 K. Once deuterium fusion begins and the accretion process stops they become pre-main-sequence stars, rather than protostars. Before this point the protostar is dependent on continual inflow of material from the protstellar cloud at this point, or else it will just become a gas giant. It's a very inefficient way to generate energy.

That sounds awfully similar to the 2x Warp Drives feeding in a sizeable % of it's energy output into the ProtoStar Containment Module!

Ergo, priming the ProtoStar up before triggering the Fusion Reaction!

There's a flaw in the calculation here. 1.5kg of antimatter and 1.5kg of matter annihilating would be equivalent to ~128MT (the mass of both the matter and antimatter needs to be factored in, since both undergo a total conversion to energy).

If you can magically amplify energy using subspace – and thermodynamics says you really can't, no matter how conveniently magical subspace's properties might be – then why use antimatter as a fuel source at all? Why not use something safer and a handy subspace amplifier?

Deks loves to throw around that word of SubSpace amplifying everything and anything to be superior and break the laws of ThermoDynamics. Deks seems to hates the laws of ThermoDynamics and thinks all the AI algorithms combined from all the species around the UFP will figure out a way to violate the laws of ThermoDynamics.

I don't think SubSpace works that way and is even applicable to everything, only a small set of things.

As for the Photon Torpedoes hitting harder than usual given the amount of Matter/Anti-Matter reaction occuring.

I'd sum it up to the same reason why a Nuclear Explosion in Space is significantly Weaker than when it's detonated near the surface of the Earth, there's no Shockwave to enhance the blast.

I theorize that SubSpace provides some medium to create a ShockWave (Or something similar) with, ergo enhancing the effectiveness of the Matter/Anti-Matter reaction/explosion.

Warp drive isn't just a question of how much energy you pump into the nacelles though. It's not a rocket (and even if it were, a 200,000 times increase in output energy is going to cause your ship to melt).

I'd theorize that the Warp Field Emitters in the Warp Nacelles are closer to Electric Motors than a Rocket.

But instead of rotating a wheel, it Warps the Fabric of Space Time and allows you to move the space around the vessel at a rapid rate, ergo Warp Drive.

Only because they're smaller. A fusion reactor the size of a star is a star. The amount of energy per unit of fuel is the same. If you could make a fusion reactor that fused 600 million tons (about 100 Galaxy-class starships) of hydrogen into helium every second then it would have the energy output of our sun.

DS9 was purely powered by Very large Fusion Reactors, yet it's energy output and Shield output was strong enough to fight off a fleet of Klingons, Cardassians, Jem'Hadar/Dominion vessels for quite a while. Very similar to what you're talking about, a up-sized Fusion Reactor used to output more energy per second.

The bigger question is – if the ship contains a protostar inside a containment unit, how does it move? Something 1% the mass of our sun would still weigh more than the rest of the solar system combined. It wouldn't land on a planet, the planet would land on it.

And what if the ProtoStar inside the containment unit wasn't that massive?
What if it was significantly less than 1% of the mass of our sun.

If you're dependent on the Penrose process to get power out of a black hole, sure; but you can generate power with a black hole without feeding it directly by using it as a giant dynamo.

I'm going to assume it's not a AQS or Black Hole Reactor, since that's not what was discussed on screen.

But all of this is complete speculation. It makes no sense that the protostar drive would have a real protostar compressed into a tiny sphere and somehow negating its mass while simultaneously amplifying its energy output because that's more energy-efficient than a matter/antimatter reaction. To paraphrase the TNG Technical Manual – if you could do that to a protostar you wouldn't need to.

I'm making the assumption that it's a VERY SMALL chunk of a Artificially Induced ProtoStar, and no mass is being negated, it's just really tiny and the continuous Fusion Output can't be sustained for very long (Think Geologic Time Frames).

That's why I Hypothesized the operational time of the reactor's continuous Fusion Reaction to be measured in Months, not hundreds of thousands to millions of years.

And while the reactor is running, it is losing mass gradually over time if you don't feed it more matter / fuel to create more Nuclear Fusion with.

But for human usage, a time span measured in Months is good enough.

But remember what was also said in TNG when they were testing out the Soliton Wave technology? Data mentioned there is less than 2% power loss between the wave and the ship... and that this process is 450% more efficient than ENT-D means of power generation (M/AM).

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/New_Ground_(episode)

He says that there are twenty-three field coils on the planet working in concert to generate the soliton wave. The test ship will be towed to a position approximately two million kilometers from the planet. The plan is for the wave to envelop the ship and push it into warp. Picard comments, "Warp without warp drive," and Commander Riker jokes that this could put La Forge out of a job. Data asks how closely the Enterprise will need to follow the test vehicle and Ja'Dar responds that the soliton emits a great deal of subspace radio interference so they must remain within twenty kilometers in order to receive telemetry. Picard asks how the experiment will be terminated and is told that the wave is being directed at the planet Lemma II, about three light years away where their sister facility will generate a scattering field to dissipate the wave and bring the ship out of warp.

The Enterprise follows and moves to within twenty kilometers. La Forge reports that the ship's speed is warp 2.35, slightly faster than they expected. Picard asks if the wave is affecting the Enterprise's warp drive, but Data replies that it is not. La Forge reports that the power efficiency of the wave is 98 percent. Data remarks that is 450% more efficient than their own warp engines. Suddenly, the wave's power signature fluctuates and efficiency drops to 73%. Then a subspace distortion is detected and hits the Enterprise. La Forge is unable to compensate and Picard is forced to order Ensign Felton to put all stop on the engines just as the test ship explodes. The explosion ripples through the Enterprise, knocking most of the bridge crew to the deck.

Sensors and warp drive are off line and deflectors are at fifteen percent. Dr. Ja'Dar sends a message from the surface of Bilana III asking if everyone is all right. He speculates that there was a transient power imbalance and La Forge confirms this as consistent with the telemetry readings from the ship before it exploded. Though the experiment wasn't entirely successful, La Forge congratulates Ja'Dar for achieving warp without warp drive and hopes to witness the next test in person.

So the test vehicle is basically being carried by the Soliton Wave like a Surfer would ride waves in the ocean.

As for the Efficiency aspect, I think it's not a matter of efficient power generation of M/A-M reaction, but efficient conversion of the EPS to Warping Space around it to move the vessel at speficied warp speed.

For a set speed / Warp Factor, your Warp Field Emitters inside your Warp Nacelles can only be ___% efficient in converting Electro-Plasma to Warping the area of Space/SubSpace around it.

That's the efficiency that I think data is talking about. Not necessarily the power generation, but the power utilization.

Ergo @ 98% efficiency of the Soliton Wave, if it doesn't explode and kill you, the Warp Field Emitters of the Enterprise-D is only ~ 21.7…% efficient at converting Electro-Plasma into energy Warping Space/Sub-Space around it.

 

[Vale]

If you don't like my hypothesis, go speculate on your own idea of how the new drive system should work and show your work on how you came to said conclusion.

What's the point? I'd rather just wait until we found out more information. You're going to be proven wrong.

And what % of the Sun's entire volume does the PhotoSphere occupy?
You're the one bringing it up, you can do the math.

Why? I pointed out that the sun does not have uniform density, why are you asking me to calculate its volume?

And is the Sun's PhotoSphere even used to measure the radius of the Sun/Star?

Yes. What else would you use? It is by definition the visual boundary for the star.

I'm showing my work, if you don't like it, you can go create your own speculation and show your work on how you came to that conclusion.

Or since your publicly posting this I can publicly criticise what I regard as factual and logical errors in your work.

How big do you think that "Gravimetric ProtoStar Containment Module" is?

Seriously?

You can do the math, based on visual height and data.

For reference, Kate Mulgrew is 5'5" ~= 1.651 meters.

If you think a Artificial Star at 29.54 meters radius will fit in that reactor, I think you're thinking way too big.

You're either deliberately misrepresenting what I said, or you didn't understand it.

If anything of 0.01 solar massers were compressed into a region smaller than 29.54m it would collapse into a black hole.

It doesn't matter if it's a magic protostar. It doesn't matter if it's iron, or hydrogen, or Christmas pudding. That is physics.

My point was that if you have a protostar in something that small then it's no longer a protostar.

Then which unit of measurement do you prefer to use?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UY_Scuti
UY Scuti (BD-12°5055) is a red supergiant star in the constellation Scutum. It is considered one of the largest known stars by radius and is also a pulsating variable star, with a maximum brightness of magnitude 8.29 and a minimum of magnitude 10.56. It has an estimated radius of 1,708 solar radii (1.188×10^9 kilometres; 7.94 astronomical units), thus a volume nearly 5 billion times that of the Sun. It is approximately 2.9 kiloparsecs (9,500 light-years) from Earth. If placed at the center of the Solar System, its photosphere would at least engulf the orbit of Jupiter.

If you want to compare the Radius of the Largest Star with our Sun, using AU's is easier to visualize than using ##x10^## km to compare with.

Another example of you either not understanding or deliberately misrepresenting what I wrote. You specified the sun, not any star. And you still wouldn't use AUs to compare UY Scuti with the sun, but rather with the whole solar system.

If you can't see it, that's on you, not me.

If you can show me how you came to your conclusion, then go for it.

Sure. Your arguments are inconsistent, you use scientific terminology inaccurately, you're inventing your own terms, and deliberately choosing to ignore things like the canonical warp scale because you don't like it.

Explain your lines of reasoning and deducation and explain what type of reactor it is.

There is not enough evidence yet to form a meaningful conclusion.

But Radius, Volumetric Size, endurance, the nature of it's formation, all the basic measurable dimensions are different.
Ergo, the actual mass would be different due to it's size, the spin rate would probably be different since the mass is drastically different. Who knows what the charge would be like.
Objects of different size spin at different rates, especially given different input to it's formation.

The AQS that Geordi La Forge saw on the D'Deridex was puny in comparison to a real Black Hole we see in space.

This is the size of the Containment module for the AQS, that's a tricorder on the railing.
The AQS containment module is barely larger than a very large oven in the 21st century.

Again... I don't see your point. An artificial black hole of, say, 1m diameter is going to behave identically to a naturally occurring black hole of 1m diameter; it's just that presently it is extremely unlikely, though not outright impossible, that a 1m diameter natural black hole could exist. The no-hair theorem demonstrates that a black hole can be defined by only three parameters – mass, angular momentum, and electric charge – and that any black holes that share these parameters will behave identically; the nature of its formation doesn't matter. Calculating the angular momentum (spin rate, if you will) and charge of a black hole is a fairly simple task, especially if you know how it formed, and doubly especially so if you set the conditions of its creation; and a black hole conserves electrical charge. In fact if you're manufacturing artificial black holes then you might want them to be relatively highly charged, since it gives you the ability to manipulate them electrically.

For a given Fusion Reactor, the designer of said reactor is only going to allow X amount of Fusion Reactions per second.

The given size, volume, density of the Reaction chamber in each Fusion Reactor, you can only operate up to a certain level before it exceeds the safe operating parameters of said Reaction Chamber design.

The point of simulating a Baby Star is to allow more Fusion Reactions to occur in a small volume, ergo outputting more power per second. The entire point of this type of reactor is to simulate what a Star Can do, which is generate a huge amount of energy in a short amount of time.

How?

What do you call that "Gravimetric ProtoStar Containment" in the center of the Engine Room on the ship?

Dead weight?

No, I call it a plot device that hasn't been explained yet. The fact that the show hasn't explained it doesn't give you carte blanche to peddle whatever nonsense you want and then get butt-hurt when people point out the flaws.

The characters are literally talking about carrying a "Baby Star" with them.

Here's a transcript I made from the episode itself:
ZERO:
- Stop. The "ProtoStar" isn't just the name of the ship.
- The engine is a "ProtoStar"

Jankom Pog:
- Whoa, Whoa, Whoa!
- So we're carrying around a baby star inside the ship?

Rok-Tahk:
- Baby Star?!?!

Dal:
- Which means our Warp Drive has one heck of a kick.

...

Gwyn:
- Computer, Engage ProtoStar

...

Computer:
- Engaging Proto-Warp in 3, 2, 1

Traditionally, we have a Warp Core or Matter/Anti-Matter reactor that powers the Warp Field Emitters inside the Warp Nacelles.

Here, the reason I call it a "ProtoStar Reactor" is because the "Gravimetric ProtoStar Containment" is just the Containment Vessel for the "Baby Star" and is a large Reactor to generate power to feed the Warp Nacelles & Extra Warp Field Emitters that pop out when the Aft end of the vessel opens up and shows off all the extra Warp Field Emitters hidden inside the Tail structure of the ship.

Yes, I've seen it. For reasons I've already explained this can't be literally correct. Also, you're talking the words of scientifically illiterate children as the gospel truth here.

I am, if you don't like it, you can use your own terminology.

I'm using defined terminology correctly. If you're going to invent your own definitions for established terms and get annoyed when people point out that this means you make no sense, then...

Did you even watch the animation closely?
The computer called it "Proto-Warp", but all they did was move faster when they're ALREADY at Warp Speeds.
It's not like they entered a TransWarp Corridor and vanished, or disappeared and reappeared like CoAxial Warp Drive.

They literally just zoomed away from the Diviners Tractor Beam and vessel like they were "The Flash".

Ergo, they were "Moving Faster".

...With warp travel that already looked significantly different from any other warp travel we've seen in the prime timeline.

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Warp_factor#Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation
In this case, warp 1 is equivalent to c (as it was in the 23rd century scale), but above warp 9 the speed increases exponentially, approaching infinity as the warp factor approaches 10.

https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Warp_factor
Background
The production crew behind The Next Generation simply used a hand-drawn curve for decimal Warp Factors between WF 9 and 10, and thus there is no correct formula for those speeds in the TNG/DS9/Voyager era.

My personal ideas, literally ignore the TNG production crews very dumb decision to use their "Hand-Drawn Curve to Infinity" for Warp Factors 9-10.

They have a perfectly working formula from Warp Factors 1.0-9.0.

All I did was unbound the cap after 9, and ran the existing TNG era formula through MS excel spreadsheet.

I can literally give you computer calcuated accurate speeds and what distance you can travel at said Warp Factor.

That's far more useful than the BS made up numbers that the TNG era production crew for 9.9999…

If you want to cover X light years at Warp Factor #, I can give you a time frame.

Far better & more useful than the dumb ideas that the TNG era production crew decided when it came to WF 9-10.


My Personal Alternative Warp Factor Scale is just the TNG era Warp Factor scale, without the dumb "Hand-Drawn Curve to infinity" when it came to Warp Factor 9-10.

It re-uses the existing TNG era formula that the production crew used for WF 1-9.

And you can easily calculate how fast you need to go, for whatever distance, and for how long.

That's far better than what the TNG era production crew did when they were lazy to do the math with a calculator or spread sheets.

So their brilliant idea was to do that dumb compression of speed to infinity in Warp Factors 9-10.

Ergo you got the dumb problem of WF 9.99999… where you keep tacking on extra digits past the decimal to show increasing speed which was incredibly hard to gauge since they IGNORED their own formula that they made when it was inconvenient to do math.

Just do the math.

Honestly I'm just not that interested in your personal ideas; and it had nothing to do with the production team "being too lazy to do maths", and everything to do with Gene Roddenberry deciding that warp speeds would be recalibrated with warp 10 as infinite speed combined with the people on the production team not being mathematicians and needing to keep everything up to warp 9 slow enough to stop ships being able to cross the galaxy in a matter of minutes. But, as it happens, I can do the maths, and in order to model the "hand-drawn curve" you so despise you just need to include a couple of constants, a piecewise function, and a natural logarithm:

v(W) = W^(10/3)+X•A•(−logₑ(10−W))ⁿ

Where:
v(W) is the speed of the warp factor in multiples of c
W is the warp factor
X is the function {X=0 ⇒W≤9 || X=e^-1(/1000•W-9)² ⇒W>9}
A is a derived constant of 0.03658749373
e is the base of the natural logarithm

 

[Vale]

Trek isn't consistent with real science most of the time.

More's the pity, despite its reputation.

I think this might be one of those instances in which UFP shrunk the Protostar to a size of a core we saw in the show and is supposed to be a Protostar with all the energy it gives out.

The Hirogen subspace relay station used a tiny quantum singularity as a power source... about 2 cm in diameter.
Its containment field was unstable which emitted gravitational waves, and the crew sent out a shuttle to reinforce it which did stabilize it.

Near the end of the episode, VOY intentionally destabilized the containment to level the playing field with the Hirogen... eventually, the field collapsed and the singularity was exposed... and it seemed like it 'grew' in size by many times.

Yyyeeeaaahhh. It's annoying because the calculations here are not challenging. A black hole with a diameter of 2cm would have a mass of about 2¼ times that of Earth (I suspect the intent wasn't that the relay stations would have planetary masses, though it might explain how the network has managed to last for so long). However, the gravitational tides within a few hundred metres of a black hole that size would be significant. st-minutiae.com gives the estimated diameter of the relay stations to be ~2000m; 1000m away from a 2cm black hole the gravity would be ~183,000g; at 500m away, ~1.5 million g; 250m away, ~11.7 million g...

Reviewing the episode, it looks less like the black hole "suddenly expands", and more like the station collapses into an accretion disk when the shielding fails. Even the strongest matter would be shredded into superheated plasma that close to a tiny black hole.

I think the effect here was similar. Use a containment field to keep an interstellar object (like a black hole or a protostar) in a small enough spherical unit, but with the ability to emit large amounts of energy.
If the containment field goes... it would result in a full fledged protostar to form (most likely) - similar to what happened when that subspace relay station containment field collapsed.

The problem is that protostars don't emit particularly large amounts of energy, and while a black hole can quite cheerfully exist at a small size, a protostar can't.

Warp cores require dilithium for regulating M/AM reactions. Protostar in a certain sense is self-sustaining or at least in this instance SF must have seen some kind of potential for energy use so the ship can use Proto Warp.

It doesn't matter if the reaction is self-sustaining if you can't get much energy out of it. I increasingly fear that they went for "protostar" because they thought it sounded cool, without knowing or caring that protostars are a real thing.

We don't know that the energy output of the runabout was proportionally reduced. We know that photon torpedoes can be reduced in intensity to virtually nothing if needed... or just enough to kill the Jem'Hadaar for instance.

Per the TNG Technical Manual, photon torpedoes are not stored fully loaded with antimatter, but reactants are injected immediately prior to launch. You can configure a photon torpedo in the tube for a specific explosive yield (or none at all).

As for 20 microamps being deadly to a tiny body... well, its possible technology is not affected the same as biological organisms.

Scaling would affect the inorganic and organic material in the same way. There's nothing fundamentally special about biological material in that sense, certainly not at the atomic level. And the runabout was definitely proportionally reduced; I'm pretty sure the plasma exhaust from a full-size runabout would not be healthy to stand within a metre of, even if you're a Jem'Hadar.

We've had previous instances where an effect had one effect on the crew, while leaving the technology intact.

Yes, but in that case the quantum metric of the runabout was reduced consistently across everything within its volume simultaneously. There's no reason to believe that people were affected differently from the ship.

I would agree with you there... but why use a protostar in that case?
WIthin the confines of Trek universe, there has to be 'some' kind of use they can get out of it that conventional energy sources wouldn't allow.

This brings me to two related conclusions:
• I'm not convinced it is an actual protostar.
• The "protostar" itself may be more than just a power source; whatever is in the protostar gravimetric containment chamber may itself be responsible for whatever causes the Protostar to travel at ludicrous speed.

Thank for the correction... 128MT... without subspace effect... with it,the explosive yield ends up just over 100 000 times bigger (this could also explain why in the late 24th century, Federation replicators are usually always referred to as converting energy into matter - not matter into energy and then matter again).

I'm not sure I follow the relevance of the argument about replicators.

But remember what was also said in TNG when they were testing out the Soliton Wave technology? Data mentioned there is less than 2% power loss between the wave and the ship... and that this process is 450% more efficient than ENT-D means of power generation (M/AM).

Not quite. The dialogue goes:

RIKER: Mister La Forge, what is the power efficiency of the wave?
LAFORGE: Energy transfer is 98%!
RIKER: 98!?
LAFORGE: Yes, sir. There's less than a 2% energy loss between the wave and the ship.
DATA: That is 450% percent more efficient than our own warp drive.

It's confusingly worded, but Data means that the Enterprise's engines are only about 22% efficient.

As for why use antimatter as a fuel source at all... because for example, fusion reactors still won't result in greater baseload production of plasma vs what M/AM smashing would achieve coupled with dilithium crystals to regulate the reaction (even though in real life, dilithium crystals or any kind of similar substance was never mentioned that it would be necessary to regulate M/AM reactions).

And Warp drive is energy consuming system.
So, Fusion is fine for baseline power systems (and possibly achieving Warp 1 or 2)... for greater Warp speeds, you need much greater energy production capability... and for UFP, M/AM and dilithium does the trick it seems.

It depends. M/AM reactions produce about a million times more energy per unit fuel than a fusion reactor can. Theoretically you could just run a million fusion reactors in parallel to equal one M/AM reactor – but why bother when you have M/AM reactors.

Also, Subspace is what Trek uses to achieve FTL in the first place.
It doesn't exist in reality, but it exists in Trek... so, within the confines of Trek, its not 'magic'... it just allows you to get much higher energy from conventional energy sources... which is rather convenient, and allows manipulation of the space time continuum in a large enough area.

As UFP improves technology... they increase energy efficiency by modulating subspace technology (which is used by practically every major system on a SF ship).
So, its a two fold benefit here... not only would Warp cores increase in baseline power generation as time goes on (unless they don't, which would be very odd), but subspace technology is also fine tuned to increase the gains on energy you get.

Nothing you've described above shows definitively that subspace lets you get more energy out of a reaction than you should be able to without using subspace. You've described ways in which the reactions can be tuned to be more efficient, but we also don't know that these require subspace technology. If anything it seems that subspace effects are the result of highly tuned and efficient reactions.

I know that its' not a rocket or how much energy you pump into it.
Trek ships achieve sublight and FTL speeds via field manipulation (the only exception to this would be thrusters - impulse engines and Warp engines seem to operate on the principles of field manipulation which would allows the ship to use reverse full impulse in TNG and reverse warp from TOS - though neither are frequently used).
And this does make sense (at least from what we saw in Trek) because ships seem to emit a subspace field which lowers their inertial mass that also ends up resulting in them achieving at least 74 000 km/s without relativistic effects (again, subspace effect most likely) - a technique which O'Brien used to move DS9 to the mouth of the wormhole.

The TNG Technical Manual explicitly states that you do get relativistic effects when using the impulse drive, which is why full impulse is usually limited to 0.25c. The job of the subspace coils for impulse engines (and the reason O'Brien modified the shield emitters in DS9: "Emissary") was to reduce the effective inertia of the ship (or station in the case of Deep Space 9) and allow it to behave like a much lighter object.

The nacelles are there to generate the Warp field necessary to achieve Warp speed.

Similarly, the Proto Warp nacelle might be using a different kind of coils to generate Proto Warp. As for what 'Proto Warp' stands for... well, one of the displays on Protostar bridge said 'Trans Warp'... so, Proto Warp could simply be a different use for Trans Warp (or any speed surpassing regular Warp).

Now this is more likely, I believe.

To this effect, even Slipstream drive would fall into the category of TransWarp using a broad definition, but within Trek, they are both referred to as separate systems (incidentally, the QS v2 VOY created in Timeless is much faster than TW used by the Borg or the Voth - so it was curious that 'Prodigy' didn't decide to use that technology instead since its the closest one VOY crew got to work - next to 'infinite TW speed').

I have no issue with "transwarp" being a generic description of any "better than current warp technology" FTL drive. Quantum slipstream, the aforementioned soliton wave, arguably Discovery's spore drive. The NX-01's "warp 5 engine" was effectively the transwarp of its era.

Yeah, producing that much hydrogen every second might be a bit of a problem for UFP.
Hence why they probably create small reactors and then amplify the energy output they get using subspace field technology.

This amplification effect would be thermodynamically impossible. See above for my thoughts on subspace efficiency.

Not sure... I read something recently that a Protostar depends on gravity forces to produce radiation but that could have just been a tired brain reading things late at night.

The way a protostar emits radiation is through gravitational collapse, causing heat by compressing the core. This isn't an efficient way to produce energy though, since a protostar's self-gravitation is quite low for much of its existence.

There are different types of radiation in Trek. Its possible the Protostar (or at least the one SF contained on the USS Protostar) is emitting certain type of radiation that's useful for achieving Proto Warp.

Also, fusion seems to occur to a degree in Protostars too, if this explanation is any indication:
https://www.e-education.psu.edu/astro801/content/l5_p4.html

Here's an extract:

Much of the gas inside all protostars is hydrogen. Recall a few things about hydrogen from previous discussions:

• Hydrogen is the simplest atom with a single electron and a nucleus of a single proton.
• If the electrons in a gas of hydrogen atoms absorb enough energy, the electron can be removed from the atom, creating hydrogen ions (that is, free protons) and free electrons.

By the time a collapsing gas cloud has become a protostar, its core has reached a temperature of several million kelvin. At this temperature, the hydrogen in the core will be a plasma, a "soup" of hydrogen ions and electrons moving around at very high speed. Particles of like charge repel each other, so if you take two protons (both have the same positive charge) and try to push them together, the electrical force between them will provide resistance. Inside of a protostellar core, the temperature and density are high, so the protons are packed together very tightly and are moving very rapidly. When the temperature reaches a high enough point (about 10 million kelvin), the protons are moving so fast inside the core that the electrical repulsion cannot prevent them from colliding. Once they collide, they fuse together in a process that generates energy.

Once fusion has initiated they become pre-main-sequence stars. If it's undergoing fusion it's not a protostar any more.

This is where things get tricky. Trek has played fast and loose with these things before, so its a possibility that here, the UFP found a way to hyper compress the proverbial 'iceberg' without losing out on the energy density (the principle of something tiny being insanely energetic/powerful).

But again, maybe its not the energy itself that the Protostar gives... but it might be the radiation type that's useful for Proto Warp.

I don't know... I'm basically spitballing here with minimal information based on what was said thus far (or effectively what the kids concluded).

Its also possible a clearer explanation will become available during the show's run which could also show that Zero incorrectly described it as a Protostar... but that it might be something that exhibits similarities to a Protostar.

Yes... but my question still stands. What the heck happens to the protostar itself when the containment unit is shut down?
Does it phase out? And when the thing is on, does it phase back in?
In regards to yours, this could be one of those 'highly selective shrinkages' where the energy/radiation emitted by the Protostar isn't affected, but its size and mass are (I know, doesn't make sense, but a lot of Trek doesn't).
And maybe a careful application of a finely tuned subspace field is keeping that mass in check too (aka, lowers it to insanely low proportions - maybe SF found a way to get a bigger effect on a Protostar compared to a ship).

All questions I'd like to know the answer to as well.

Wouldn't the Penrose process generate more energy though rather than relying on the dynamo effect itself? So you occasionally 'feed' it portions of matter periodically to maintain high energy outputs.

Of course, you can do both. My point was that it is possible to generate energy from a black hole without having to feed it (essentially you're using it like a flywheel and stealing its angular momentum; conveniently black holes have a lot of angular momentum for objects their size so, while it will run down eventually, it will take a very long time).

The existence of Subspace in Trek (and other scifi) doesn't make any sense either, and yet, there it is.
Maybe this is what Isotons stand for when counting the explosive yield of Photon torpedoes. Instead of using MT, GT, TT and PT for description of explosive yields, because they use Subspace technology to radically enhance on the energy generating effects (and also get weird effects) from existing power sources, they decided to use a different description.

Again, I don't know for certain... and its still early days, so the show could explain things better.

Also, if they used that kind of process on a Protostar... why not use an actual main sequence star? Maybe containing an actual star is a worse problem compared to a Protostar?

That's rather my point – a protostar is a poor choice of power source. It wins for "rule of cool name", but that's it. You'd literally be better off with a brown dwarf.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

What's the point? I'd rather just wait until we found out more information. You're going to be proven wrong.

The whole point of this entire thread is to speculate on how the ProtoStar drive works.

Or did you not read the original post?

If I'm proven wrong with on-screen info, so be it.

Why? I pointed out that the sun does not have uniform density, why are you asking me to calculate its volume?

So we can know what percentage of the PhotoSphere layer will have X average density and what the rest of it will have Y average density wise.

Yes. What else would you use? It is by definition the visual boundary for the star.

Just want to make sure we're all measuring things using the same methods.

Or since your publicly posting this I can publicly criticise what I regard as factual and logical errors in your work.

Go ahead, but why don't you do more than criticize; come up with your own ideas as to how it works, or are you so lazy that you only rely on what the show runners / creators give you?

You're either deliberately misrepresenting what I said, or you didn't understand it.

If anything of 0.01 solar massers were compressed into a region smaller than 29.54m it would collapse into a black hole.

It doesn't matter if it's a magic protostar. It doesn't matter if it's iron, or hydrogen, or Christmas pudding. That is physics.

My point was that if you have a protostar in something that small then it's no longer a protostar.

I've been telling you that it ISN'T a real natural ProtoStar, that would be WAY too big.

I'm saying that the reactor operates like a "Artificially created ProtoStar in a smaller area / volume of space".

And I'm telling you that that the mass is < 0.01 Solar Masses, MUCH LESS!

None of it's "compressed" into a region smaller than 29.54m, ergo the density doesn't go up and you don't have to worry about a Black Hole.

It's just less mass that exists in a smaller sphere that isn't dense enough to induce a Black Hole.

Another example of you either not understanding or deliberately misrepresenting what I wrote. You specified the sun, not any star. And you still wouldn't use AUs to compare UY Scuti with the sun, but rather with the whole solar system.

The Sun is a reference point. You can use AU's as a form of measurement for relative comparison because that's the units of measurement that I want to use.

Dealing with ##x10^## km is annoying.

And that's how I choose to compare things since it's easier to visualize the numbers when you talk about the size of objects right next to each other.

Sure. Your arguments are inconsistent, you use scientific terminology inaccurately, you're inventing your own terms, and deliberately choosing to ignore things like the canonical warp scale because you don't like it.

Mines are very consistent to me.
Then fix the areas where I screwed up if you think they're wrong, I'll adjust my #'s then.
I'm using terms that make sense on relative scaling.
I'm fixing the warp scale because the production staff did something incredibly stupid like cramming Wf 9-10 by hand drawing a curve to infinity.

There is not enough evidence yet to form a meaningful conclusion.

Wow, you lack imagination or you really just don't want to speculate.

Again... I don't see your point. An artificial black hole of, say, 1m diameter is going to behave identically to a naturally occurring black hole of 1m diameter; it's just that presently it is extremely unlikely, though not outright impossible, that a 1m diameter natural black hole could exist. The no-hair theorem demonstrates that a black hole can be defined by only three parameters – mass, angular momentum, and electric charge – and that any black holes that share these parameters will behave identically; the nature of its formation doesn't matter. Calculating the angular momentum (spin rate, if you will) and charge of a black hole is a fairly simple task, especially if you know how it formed, and doubly especially so if you set the conditions of its creation; and a black hole conserves electrical charge. In fact if you're manufacturing artificial black holes then you might want them to be relatively highly charged, since it gives you the ability to manipulate them electrically.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-hair_theorem
There is still no rigorous mathematical proof of a general no-hair theorem, and mathematicians refer to it as the no-hair conjecture. Even in the case of gravity alone (i.e., zero electric fields), the conjecture has only been partially resolved by results of Stephen Hawking, Brandon Carter, and David C. Robinson, under the additional hypothesis of non-degenerate event horizons and the technical, restrictive and difficult-to-justify assumption of real analyticity of the space-time continuum.

The LIGO results provide some experimental evidence consistent with the uniqueness of the no-hair theorem.[10][11] This observation is consistent with Stephen Hawking's theoretical work on black holes in the 1970s

Has there been any Black Holes that are 1 meter in diameter that has been observed?

One of the answers from here states that the smallest possible Black Hole has a radius of 1.4 km

Every other answer that I've seen for smallest Black Hole has the Black Hole being significantly larger than 1 meter diameter.

We don't know what would happen if a artificially generated Black Hole that is 1 meter in diameter is made and used as the power source in a reactor.

Obviously, the Romulans got it to work.

No, I call it a plot device that hasn't been explained yet. The fact that the show hasn't explained it doesn't give you carte blanche to peddle whatever nonsense you want and then get butt-hurt when people point out the flaws.

So basically, you're telling me to shut up because I want to speculate on how a New Drive works in a thread that's all about speculation. And you don't like the fact that other people want to speculate on things.

This entire Trek Tech forum is based on speculation on how the tech might work, but you're upset that I'm speculating with the information given and that I should shut-up because there isn't enough info.

Yes, I've seen it. For reasons I've already explained this can't be literally correct. Also, you're talking the words of scientifically illiterate children as the gospel truth here.

If they're scientifically illiterate, how would these children even understand how these things work, much less be able to even discuss it? How would they even know about it? These children must have some basic science education, otherwise they would be asking about more basic questions.

I'm using defined terminology correctly. If you're going to invent your own definitions for established terms and get annoyed when people point out that this means you make no sense, then...

What is it about the Metric Prefix that annoys you?
Did I use "Nano-" incorrectly?

...With warp travel that already looked significantly different from any other warp travel we've seen in the prime timeline.

And outside of Berman-Braga era Trek & Lower Decks; all the different Kurtzmen Works seem to render Warp Travel differently, even amongst DISCO & Prodigy & Picard. There's no internal VFX consistency with any of the major previous works like Berman-Braga era or TOS era.

Honestly I'm just not that interested in your personal ideas; and it had nothing to do with the production team "being too lazy to do maths", and everything to do with Gene Roddenberry deciding that warp speeds would be recalibrated with warp 10 as infinite speed combined with the people on the production team not being mathematicians and needing to keep everything up to warp 9 slow enough to stop ships being able to cross the galaxy in a matter of minutes. But, as it happens, I can do the maths, and in order to model the "hand-drawn curve" you so despise you just need to include a couple of constants, a piecewise function, and a natural logarithm:

v(W) = W^(10/3)+X•A•(−logₑ(10−W))ⁿ

Where:
v(W) is the speed of the warp factor in multiples of c
W is the warp factor
X is the function {X=0 ⇒W≤9 || X=e^-1(/1000•W-9)² ⇒W>9}
A is a derived constant of 0.03658749373
e is the base of the natural logarithm

Good, then you can use your new more complicated formula to calculate speed.

I'll use the existing TNG era Formula, and just expand it (Uncap it) towards infinity as the Warp Factor #'s goes up.

You do your thing, I'll do my thing. How does that sound?

 

[Vale]

The whole point of this entire thread is to speculate on how the ProtoStar drive works.

Or did you not read the original post?

If I'm proven wrong with on-screen info, so be it.

Speculate with something that doesn't amount to "this is magic" then, and don't bitch at people when they don't like your baseless supposition.

So we can know what percentage of the PhotoSphere layer will have X average density and what the rest of it will have Y average density wise.

What relevance does that have?

Just want to make sure we're all measuring things using the same methods.

Go ahead, but why don't you do more than criticize; come up with your own ideas as to how it works, or are you so lazy that you only rely on what the show runners / creators give you?[/quote]

No, I just don't want to waste my time.

I've been telling you that it ISN'T a real natural ProtoStar, that would be WAY too big.

I'm saying that the reactor operates like a "Artificially created ProtoStar in a smaller area / volume of space".

And I'm telling you that that the mass is < 0.01 Solar Masses, MUCH LESS!

None of it's "compressed" into a region smaller than 29.54m, ergo the density doesn't go up and you don't have to worry about a Black Hole.

It's just less mass that exists in a smaller sphere that isn't dense enough to induce a Black Hole.

A tiny protostar is literally a tank full of hydrogen. What possible use is that? A full-size protostar is a terrible way to generate power. A tiny protostar would be more useful as a fuel tank than a power source.

The Sun is a reference point. You can use AU's as a form of measurement for relative comparison because that's the units of measurement that I want to use.

Dealing with ##x10^## km is annoying.

And that's how I choose to compare things since it's easier to visualize the numbers when you talk about the size of objects right next to each other.

Dealing with scientific notation is annoying? Wow. You stick with getting 40 rods to the hogshead then.

Mines are very consistent to me.
Then fix the areas where I screwed up if you think they're wrong, I'll adjust my #'s then.
I'm using terms that make sense on relative scaling.
I'm fixing the warp scale because the production staff did something incredibly stupid like cramming Wf 9-10 by hand drawing a curve to infinity.

I'm not doing your maths for you; and I find it hilarious that you regard your own ideas as beyond reproach, but continually attack something that's been canonical since the 1980s because you think it's "incredibly stupid".

Wow, you lack imagination or you really just don't want to speculate.

I don't respond to ad hominems.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-hair_theorem
There is still no rigorous mathematical proof of a general no-hair theorem, and mathematicians refer to it as the no-hair conjecture. Even in the case of gravity alone (i.e., zero electric fields), the conjecture has only been partially resolved by results of Stephen Hawking, Brandon Carter, and David C. Robinson, under the additional hypothesis of non-degenerate event horizons and the technical, restrictive and difficult-to-justify assumption of real analyticity of the space-time continuum.

The LIGO results provide some experimental evidence consistent with the uniqueness of the no-hair theorem.[10][11] This observation is consistent with Stephen Hawking's theoretical work on black holes in the 1970s

Now explain that without relying on your Wikipedia-fu skills.

Has there been any Black Holes that are 1 meter in diameter that has been observed?

Oh, so now you're only interested in direct observation? Are you honestly attempting to argue that we can't know anything without direct observation?

One of the answers from here states that the smallest possible Black Hole has a radius of 1.4 km

Every other answer that I've seen for smallest Black Hole has the Black Hole being significantly larger than 1 meter diameter.

This isn't the smallest possible black hole. This is the smallest black hole that could form naturally from stellar collapse. Primordial black holes formed during the big bang could still exist with atomic diameters. Hawking radiation will lead to black holes in the future that are far below stellar mass and have much smaller diameters – but not for ~10⁷⁰ years.

We don't know what would happen if a artificially generated Black Hole that is 1 meter in diameter is made and used as the power source in a reactor.

Actually we can model it mathematically quite well. You've conflated artificial and natural black holes. You might as well argue that we can't calculate the power output of a matter-antimatter reaction since we've never sustained one.

So basically, you're telling me to shut up because I want to speculate on how a New Drive works in a thread that's all about speculation. And you don't like the fact that other people want to speculate on things.

This entire Trek Tech forum is based on speculation on how the tech might work, but you're upset that I'm speculating with the information given and that I should shut-up because there isn't enough info.

No, I think your ideas are poor and badly explained, and you are insisting as trying to pass them off as the truth.

If they're scientifically illiterate, how would these children even understand how these things work, much less be able to even discuss it? How would they even know about it? These children must have some basic science education, otherwise they would be asking about more basic questions.

What are you basing that on? Ever worked in education?

Good, then you can use your new more complicated formula to calculate speed.

I'll use the existing TNG era Formula, and just expand it (Uncap it) towards infinity as the Warp Factor #'s goes up.

You do your thing, I'll do my thing. How does that sound?

And you'll carry on being wrong. But I suppose you'd rather be happy and wrong than right and able to do maths?

This is a very boring conversation.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Speculate with something that doesn't amount to "this is magic" then, and don't bitch at people when they don't like your baseless supposition.

If you think "this is magic" then, why don't you create a new supposition that could work in the space of a device that is called the Gravimetric ProtoStar Containment.

What relevance does that have?

It affects the overall density of the object and how much mass a smaller version of said object would have.

No, I just don't want to waste my time.

And yet you waste your time on this forum critiquing other people's speculation.

A tiny protostar is literally a tank full of hydrogen. What possible use is that? A full-size protostar is a terrible way to generate power. A tiny protostar would be more useful as a fuel tank than a power source.

::shrugs::

Then what happens when they engaged the ProtoStar Drive, the "Gravimetric ProtoStar Containment" lights up and they zip off like "The Flash".

I'm open to ideas, you seem incredibly smart. Come up with a new Drive System that does that.

Dealing with scientific notation is annoying? Wow. You stick with getting 40 rods to the hogshead then.

I'm guessing you hate the US Customary Units of measurement as well, eh?

I'm not doing your maths for you; and I find it hilarious that you regard your own ideas as beyond reproach, but continually attack something that's been canonical since the 1980s because you think it's "incredibly stupid".

I've never said my ideas were beyond reproach, you put those words in my mouth.
I'm only attacking the area between Warp Factor 9<->10 because they literally used a "Hand-Drawn Curve to Infinity" instead of using the existing formula that they created.

I don't respond to ad hominems.

Or you just are lazy and not wanting to respond.

Now explain that without relying on your Wikipedia-fu skills.

That's the limit of my understanding, I didn't go to school for Astro Physics. So that's not my area of specialty.

Oh, so now you're only interested in direct observation? Are you honestly attempting to argue that we can't know anything without direct observation?

We can know many things, but direct observation helps validate any theory you come up with.

This isn't the smallest possible black hole. This is the smallest black hole that could form naturally from stellar collapse. Primordial black holes formed during the big bang could still exist with atomic diameters. Hawking radiation will lead to black holes in the future that are far below stellar mass and have much smaller diameters – but not for ~10⁷⁰ years.

Have we even found 1 sample of said Primordial Black Hole?

Actually we can model it mathematically quite well. You've conflated artificial and natural black holes. You might as well argue that we can't calculate the power output of a matter-antimatter reaction since we've never sustained one.

We have created Anti-Matter in the labs, so I'm sure they can calculate the power output of Matter/Anti-Matter reactions.

No, I think your ideas are poor and badly explained, and you are insisting as trying to pass them off as the truth.

I never stated they were truth. Where in any of my postings did I say I'm the arbiter of truth?

I'm speculating just like everybody else.

Deks is speculating just like me and anybody else that comes up with ideas on how said ProtoStar Drive system works.

That's the entire point of this thread.

What are you basing that on? Ever worked in education?

The dialogue that we see at hand.

No, I haven't worked in education.

And you'll carry on being wrong. But I suppose you'd rather be happy and wrong than right and able to do maths?

I'd rather make a new version of the Warp Factor scale just like the production staff did when they went from TOS -> TNG.

The only difference is that my changes are very minimal and easy to calculate for everybody since it re-uses the TNG era formula.

I don't need a secondary formula for Warp Factor 9<->10, because the production staff made a Hand Drawn Curve to Infinity.

This is a very boring conversation.

If you want to end it, that's on you.

I'm more than happy to go on without you.

That's the point of the entire Trek Tech section of TrekBBS.

It's to speculate on all the various technological topics.

 

[fireproof78]

This is a very boring conversation.

While i can appreciate the sentiment this is probably not the forum for you. It is a lot of speculation.

 

[matthunter]

As a scientist, I will state at this point that Randomly capitalising words In Sentences (and Adding abbreviations) does not mean That Pseudo-scientific Waffle (PSW) is More or less Valid than Any Given FaceBook Post (AGFBP).

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

As a scientist, I will state at this point that Randomly capitalising words In Sentences (and Adding abbreviations) does not mean That Pseudo-scientific Waffle (PSW) is More or less Valid than Any Given FaceBook Post (AGFBP).

Why would it? The PSW (Pseudo-Scientific Waffle) is just stylized typing to make reading text easier.

That shouldn't affect the content of the message.

 

[matthunter]

Why would it? The PSW (Pseudo-Scientific Waffle) is just stylized typing to make reading text easier.

That shouldn't affect the content of the message.

I was reading an intent into the practice that wasn't there. I apologise. You weren't trying to make your words sound big and important, as I assumed. You were arguing with the conventions of the English language itself.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

I was reading an intent into the practice that wasn't there. I apologise. You weren't trying to make your words sound big and important, as I assumed. You were arguing with the conventions of the English language itself.

I don't always agree with every aspect of the rules to traditional "English Capitalization" and even how acronyms are written.

I sometimes do things that I personally agree with and don't follow all the traditions.

e.g. PSW (Pseudo-Scientific Waffle) vs Pseudo-scientific Waffle (PSW)

I believe that the Short-Hand Acronym shold come first, before the explanation.

You do things the opposite way. And I prefer to capitalize the "-Scientific" where as you don't.

 

[matthunter]

Well, I don't "prefer" to do anything. Rules are rules. And really, it's "pseudo-scientific waffle" because the rules are that capitals belong at the start of sentences or proper nouns. I was only doing otherwise to make my point.

When I see random caps (as I often do with my own students), it's usually an attempt to make the word sound important and sciencey. A grave sin, but not as much as deciding the rules of English writing are yours to decide.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Well, I don't "prefer" to do anything. Rules are rules. And really, it's "pseudo-scientific waffle" because the rules are that capitals belong at the start of sentences or proper nouns. I was only doing otherwise to make my point.

That's perfectly fine. You want to follow every rule of traditional english grammer, more power to you.

I'm going to do my thing. If that means I "Capitalize" when I feel like it, so be it.

 

[matthunter]

That's perfectly fine. You want to follow every rule of traditional english grammer, more power to you.

I'm going to do my thing. If that means I "Capitalize" when I feel like it, so be it.

Fair play. You do you.

Spell "grammar" wrong if you want. Go for it!

Now we all know you're doing it out of ego rather than an attempt to make your posts seem backed by actual scientific theory, that's fine.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Spell "grammar" wrong if you want. Go for it!

I don't have "Spell Check" on, so I didn't notice it when I was typing.

I never claimed to be backed by "Scientific Rigor".

I don't know where people get that assumption, but I've never stated that, ever!

Just look at my posts. Everything is speculation in Trek Tech.

We're talking about Star Trek tech, where most of it is speculated on.

If we even got a fraction of Star Trek's advanced tech working IRL, we would change society over night.

 

[Ronald Held]

Was there a power rating given for that reactor?

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Was there a power rating given for that reactor?

Nope, not yet.

 

[saddestmoon]

 

[Vale]

While i can appreciate the sentiment this is probably not the forum for you. It is a lot of speculation.

Speculation I'm absolutely fine with. Complete nonsense I'm rather less fine with.

 

[fireproof78]

Speculation I'm absolutely fine with. Complete nonsense I'm rather less fine with.

Here it blends a lot.