Saucer Separation

[CorporalCaptain]

@Chemahkuu:

I think it's also worth questioning whether any low-level warp field that might exist under impulse power, presumably for the purpose of mass reduction, even exists without the benefit of the stardrive section. You were pointing to glowing nacelles in TMP as evidence of the operation of a low-level warp field during the impulse burn. If the nacelles are generating that low-level warp field, then no nacelles means no low-level warp field.

As for why it might be plausible that a low-level warp field affects time dilation, consider that evidently no (extreme) time-dilation occurs at warp. If it did, we would have noticed it many times over, for one example in people on Earth aging at radically different rates than people on starships. The dialog in TMP is, as I said, an order to go to warp .5. That could be taken as an implication that the effects on the ship are similar to those when the ship is at warp, which would mean no appreciable time dilation.

 

[mos6507]

To deliberately leave the saucer section without warp drive is to make it vulnerable to attack. Why is this even in dispute?

Because I think the original idea behind saucer separation in TOS was because warp-drive was seen as highly volatile. Also the same reason for having nacelles separated from the hull. You know, matter-antimatter reactions and all that. So the most likely scenario requiring a separation would be an accident rather than combat. And even later in the TNG era there were enough core-breach events to consider warp drive still highly volatile, perhaps even enough to deliberately opt out of placing miniaturized ones in every single vehicle imaginable (like shuttles).

 

[T'Girl]

it's a big part of the plot of the Destiny novels early on.

The novel-verse is separate (increasingly separate) from the universe on the show.

In TMP when Kirk orders 0.7c

Actually, he ordered warp point five, not 0.7 cee. If we go by the old cubing of the warp number, that would be 0.125 cee.

why the saucer would need warp drive to reach Farpoint Station after separation. I'm pretty sure that I assumed it was close enough to make it on impulse without too much delay.

The saucer arrived in orbit only an hour after the drive section. Were there no saucer warp capacity, the ship at the time of separation would have had to of been right on top of Deneb Four heading toward it at warp nine point five.

As for lifeboats having warp capability and phasers? Why would they?

The life support in a lifeboat might last for months, but eventually you have to get out of them somewhere there is a suitable atmosphere, or you will die. That's why you need a warp drive.

Did they deploy the lifeboats in GEN ...

I don't think that there was time.

If the subspace driver coils can lower the mass of the saucer enough for the Impulse Engines to push the ship to 0.9c (for example) then relativistic time dilation would mean that even if it took 10 years to get home, very little time would pass on board.

That not how time dilation works, at least not at 0.9 cee.

As I understand time dilation (assuming I do), if you travel to a star system that's ten light years away at 0.9 cee, the people on board will experience four years and ten months during the course of the journey. To a outside observer the ship would have appeared to of been traveling for eleven years and one month .

There's more than a two to one advantage, but not "very little time would pass on board."

 

[MacLeod]

And the saucer must have been flying at warp speed in one episode, and supposed to accelerate to warp speed in another. Which is why we know the warp drive is there - we were smacked in the face with it, twice.

Fandom needs to learn to read between the lines. You don't have to be smacked in the face with something to know it is or isn't there. Rectonning the retconning of the slopping script or understanding of science and distance is one of the things that killed the franchise.

Yet it's the writers that are retconning here - the saucer did have warp until that point, as evidenced from all the plots involving saucer separation. (Although retconning is a bit of a misnomer, as it would call for continuity in the first place, and continuity in treknology tends to be accidental only. Thankfully, so is discontinuity...)

However, what the fans did or did not do had no impact on the franchise at any point. Or on the writers or the quality of their work. What we do here at the forum stays at the forum for the most part; whatever tiny leakage there is to the novels doesn't much affect their artistic quality, writing style or other relevant things.

Timo Saloniemi

You could even technobabble it away, by saying that the the M/AM tanks in the saucer section are usually empty and as part of the seperation sequence some M/AM is transferred from the stardrive section tanks to the saucer tanks, that procedure can be over-ridden.

 

[T'Girl]

Per the (non-canon) ST: tech manual, the saucer impulse engines each always have a antimatter bottle, to be used in conjunction with the impulse drive for extra power and speed.

Obviously the impulse engines have deuterium tanks.

No, the Sternbach blueprints always had those windows as the Arboretum. The Ed Whitefire blueprints had the empty space.

Maybe we've seen different Whitefire plans, but far from empty space he placed the casino?

No, Mr. Whitefire place the casino further aft, the chambers below those blue squares on his plans were labeled "PHYS-LE"

 

[Trekker4747]

Full-Impulse is .25c, again, a speed where time dilation effects are minimal. (1 sec on the ship is 1.03 seconds outside of the ship.) .25c is standard for full-impulse but it can be pushed higher. Efficiency drops dramatically after .5c, but can be pushed to .75c if needed but with the help from the saucer impulse engines. From the ST:TNG Technical Manual (considered semi-canon as it was written by those involved with the show.) This implies that the saucer engines are likely limited to .5c where they're pretty much running about as efficient as they're going to get as far as speed over fuel use. The book implies after this point the engines become more and more inefficient after .5c and require additional help from other engine systems. Which the saucer won't have the advantage of in a separated flight. (Also means the Battle Section is limited to .5c at impulse in separated flight as it wouldn't have the saucer engines to aid it in achieving higher speeds.)

On time dilation:

At .5 c this changes to 1:1.15.

At .75c it becomes 1:1.5

At .99c it becomes 1:7.

The impulse engines can reduce the mass of the ship to allow for it to be easily moved by the engines but do not impact Einsteinian physics as far as time is concerned. (I suppose it may help in length contraction.)

The Warp Drive does not move the ship faster than light it slips the ship into another dimension (subspace) where impulse speeds are more substantial or, rather, the distances between points are smaller making the "slower" speed more effective. Deeper into subspace, more power needed, higher the warp-factor. Time dilation at warp is the same as it is at full impulse, which is normally .25c.

The Tech Manual is deliberately illusive and vague on how the warp-drive works but it's generally accepted that it's not physically moving the ship at these incredible speeds but is just manipulating space and mass to allow the ship to move a slower relativistic speeds but have a movement vastly quicker while still obeying Newtonian and Einsteinian physics.

The saucer's impulse engines alone do not have the power to move the saucer section faster than .5c without help from another power source, like the warp engines/M/AM reactor or main impulse engine.

The saucer does not have warp drive. There's no reason to think it has warp drive and it's never demonstrated to HAVE warp drive.

 

[DonIago]

I think it's simply a case where things the characters say don't line up with what's actually witnessed during episodes. And this is hardly an isolated instance of that.

I think it's reasonable to assume the original intention by the in-universe designers of the ship was that the saucer would be left someplace where a) safe haven wouldn't be unreasonably far away, and b) if a force did destroy the battle section it wouldn't be able to simply do a ten-second sensor scan to find the saucer. In that regard Picard may not have been treating his ship as it was designed to be treated, as there were obviously multiple instances where separating the ship might have been warranted.

Of course, we all know the real reason the ship didn't separate more was budgetary and due to time constraints. I wonder what we might have seen if those factors were removed from the equation.

 

[Squiggy]

It's threads like this that make Star Wars the more socially acceptable franchise.

 

[T'Girl]

it slips the ship into another dimension (subspace) where impulse speeds are more substantial

Were that the case, why then when the ship slows to sublight speed does a officer order "go to impulse." or "go to impulse power," if it was the impulse that was already moving the ship?

The Tech Manual is deliberately illusive and vague on how the warp-drive works but it's generally accepted that it's not physically moving the ship at these incredible speeds

The manual forthrightly states that it's the warp fields surrounding the ship that propels the ship at faster than light speed.

The saucer does not have warp drive. There's no reason to think it has warp drive and it's never demonstrated to HAVE warp drive.

So it's like the toilets?

 

[Maurice]

It's threads like this that make Star Wars the more socially acceptable franchise.

You've clearly not seen the Star Wars tech fan discussions where they discuss the power output of the weapons of Star Destroyers vs. everything else, the size of the Imperial Fleet, etc.

 

[LMFAOschwarz]

It's threads like this that make Star Wars the more socially acceptable franchise.

You've clearly not seen the Star Wars tech fan discussions where they discuss the power output of the weapons of Star Destroyers vs. everything else, the size of the Imperial Fleet, etc.

You can say that again!

I thought Star Wars was supposed to be a science fantasy story where things just worked. I don't want to knock someone else's fun...but to me this sort of thing seemed to drain the fun right out of it. Sure, the little X-wing ships flew the distance at least equivalent of the moon's orbit around the Earth (and back), but why worry about speeds, fuel sources and such? Never did get that...

 

[Ithekro]

Yeah, that place can give one an aneurysm.

 

[Trekker4747]

Were that the case, why then when the ship slows to sublight speed does a officer order "go to impulse." or "go to impulse power," if it was the impulse that was already moving the ship?

Because there's a difference between moving at warp speed and moving at impulse speed. "Go to impulse," is just another way of saying "take us out of warp, but don't stop us. Keep us moving at impulse."

The manual forthrightly states that it's the warp fields surrounding the ship that propels the ship at faster than light speed.

Which says nothing on what is actually happening; as opposed to the section on impulse which makes it clear the ship is moving by Newtonian physics (hence the limitations on speeds to prevent Time Dilation.)

 

[T'Girl]

You've clearly not seen the Star Wars tech fan discussions where they discuss the power output of the weapons of Star Destroyers vs. everything else, the size of the Imperial Fleet, etc.

The Fleet is infinitely larger, infinitely faster and infinitely more powerful.

Because there's a difference between moving at warp speed and moving at impulse speed.

Oh yes, with one FTL propulsion is through the interaction of the warp fields generated by the warp drive, and with the other slower than light propulsion is the result of the impulse engines.

 

[Robert Comsol]

Maybe some of you will find this information useful: Here is a close-up of Andrew Probert's Enterprise-C saucer section, rendered by Tobias Richter:

I vaguely recall (from comments on Doug Drexler's website that featured the same images) that the angled-in plates behind the bridge cover extendable emergency warp engines for the saucer section.

While this might be a late retcon rationalization, I think that if the Enterprise-C has such a feature, the Enterprise-D probably does have the same (but we hadn't yet learned about it).

Bob

 

[T'Girl]

Given warp engine designs like the Ferengi Marauder, the saucer's warp drive wouldn't automatically have to include extendable nacelles. It could be internal.

 

[Shat Happens]

I hate to join this discussion, but consider that ship in VOY that separated in 3 parts. Each of the rear parts got warp nacelles, and the front part (not so much a saucer as more like a pointy shape) produced a 5th nacelle for itself from some port.

There's where canon fucked things up. They obviously thought they needed to include that because the pointy could not function without a warp nacelle, therefore doing away with any and all theories the Enterprise saucer had some warp engines inside it.

In other words those squares must be windows to the arboretum indeed. And the occupants of the saucer are royally screwed. Either the battle section wins the battle then comes back to pick the saucer or everybody dies.

The Enterprise must have been designed by the same shitheads that put an exhaust port directly above the Death Star main reactor.

 

[Timo]

There's no point in arguing that warp engines must have standoff nacelles when 90% of ships in Star Trek ah so arrogantly go to warp without standoff nacelles...

Also, there's no point in arguing that the E-D saucer cannot do warp when warp is evident in "Farpoint".

What the argument should be about is why things are so different from episode to episode (an artifact of the writers not really caring that much), and there it massively helps if we drop unnecessary ballast such as novelizations, tech manuals and speculation on author intent.

So far, the only time the saucer could not do warp on its own was in "Brothers", and we cannot ignore the fact that it was the aim of our combined force of heroes to prevent the saucer from doing warp there. The heroes are a resourceful bunch, so there's no fault as such if they make the saucer in "Brothers" behave differently from the saucer in "Farpoint". The Excelsior could not go to warp, let alone transwarp, in ST3. Does that mean she lacked warp engines?

(As for the "arboretum" theory, why would the poor plants need to be exposed to intense blue glare? We never see intense blue glare associated with the various arboretum interiors, whereas it's often a feature of warp drive components.)

Is the saucer a lifeboat? Is it a separate attack module, since it carries the ship's biggest and baddest phasers? Is it an atmospheric maneuvering vehicle, as per its suggestive shape? We don't know, as dialogue doesn't touch upon the role of the saucer as such, merely mentioning its potential as an evacuation unit in various situations. What we do know are the demonstrated capabilities of the saucer: the ability to sustain warp drive for at least several hours and across considerable interstellar distances, the ability to fire weapons even when separated, the ability to survive atmospheric entry even when caught "pants down" rather than prepared for the job, and the ability to be forced out of warp when remotely commanded from Main Engineering. Perhaps Starfleet ideas on saucer use are based on these capabilities; perhaps they rely on other, so far undemonstrated abilities. Perhaps most of what we see is fluff and only one or two characteristics (say, the phasers, or the shape, or the warp drive, or the dolphin tanks) really matter.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ithekro]

USS Prometheum actually has six warp nacelles. Two for each section (the fifth and sixth is extended after seperation). The sixth in in the underside of the saucer in the gap that attaches to the rest of the sections. It is a blink and you missed it sort of placement.

I figure it needs the nacelles due to all sections of the ship being needed to maintain high warp speed and combat efficiency at warp speeds. Meanwhile the Galaxy-class saucer does not need this ability as it seemed to be designed for reasons other than high speed combat. It could get away with something other than extended nacelles or even viable nacelles. It just needs the ability to move at warp speed.

 

[Kemaiku]

The Prometheus was also meant to be three completely independent combat capable starships that resided in one complete form when not in combat.

Each one needed it's own core, nacelles, weapons and amenities from the start, and was designed that way.

The Galaxy class was meant to be a "peaceful explorer" the way the rest somehow are, it's separation being an emergency procedure, that the stardrive would somehow take care of the problem while it moved away, to be recovered later.

Neither really make any sense, but that's how they're portrayed.