I thought thrusters we're Newtonian propulsion. Impulse and warp drives are field drives.
Starship going using impulse drive in reverse
- Thread starter Bernard Guignard
- Start date
You could think of the Impulse and Warp as generating fields that reduce the amount of thrust needed to go at certain speeds. With thrusters only, the Enterprise would be very slow and run out of fuel quickly trying to accelerate. The TOS Enterprise wouldn't be able to break orbit on thrusters alone. With impulse engines, the thrusters would need a fraction of the energy to accelerate to high sublight speeds. With warp engines, the thrusters would need even less energy to accelerate to superluminal speeds. The impulse and warp engines are affected by local space terrain (like planets, stars, etc).
We know in TOS that ships and shuttles at warp leave a particle trail and that to slow down in warp, reverse thrust needs to be applied. So there is some kind of pseudo-newtonian flight model being used for impulse and warp, at least for TOS.
Later series however operate somewhat differently, IMHO.
That's an excellent point! I had excluded rectangular openings on the impulse engines because the Constellation was making 1/3 impulse without them open so I figured they were not thrusters... YMMV.
https://tos.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/2x06/doomsdaymachine_556.jpg
Okay, well, the AMT kit they knocked together in a hurry and spray painted all one color for the one episode isn't the best reference.
I think they meant reaction-control thrusters.
Another "reverse" reference: Emissary, Part 1 (DS9).
No, not if he's talking about using them to break orbit and accelerate the ship.
Pretty much how I thought about them.
Thrusters are more Newtonian based and used for manuvering and movement in general (if you have no other option and want to go really slow at sublight).
Impulse engine seems like a field drive (much like Warp drive) but for use at sublight in conjuction with Thrusters.
We know UFP ships generate low level subspace field around themselves to lower their inertial mass (Ds9 basically mentioned this in the first episode when they needed to move the station to the mouth of the wormhole in a same manner a ship would have done)... this allows incredibly fast movement on part from large ships so they behave more like fighter craft, and also grants them the ability to achieve significant portion of light speed... aka, approximately 74000 km/s (but higher sublight velocities were also mentioned - without relativistic effects).
Manipulation of said field around the ship generated by impulse engines allows a ship omnidirectional movement... since thrusters are located at critical sections on the ship's saucer (usually), they have forward thrusters which when fired with impulse drive, propel the ship backwards at impulse speeds.
Similar thing can be achieved with Warp drive.
The nacelles generate the Warp field around the ship which is in turn used with the navigational deflector and manipulated by the crew to achieve Warp speed (usually forward motion).
The only instance of using Warp backwards on a starship dates to TOS, but it should be possible for a starship in the 24th century to go backwards easily enough at Warp as the technology would have been further refined (maybe its still less efficient given that the navigational deflector usually points 'forward', but since its field manipulation, starships should be able to 'focus' the field at any point along the ship's axis.
So, thrusters can be used in conjuction with both Impulse and Warp, but its possible in the 24th century that thursters have taken a back seat for Warp.
Okay, well, the AMT kit they knocked together in a hurry and spray painted all one color for the one episode isn't the best reference.
Perhaps. But we do have visuals of the impulse ports/exhausts changing. If they can open/close as needed on the Enterprise then the Constellation could have them closed. YMMV
Perhaps. But we do have visuals of the impulse ports/exhausts changing. If they can open/close as needed on the Enterprise then the Constellation could have them closed. YMMV
The thing about things like this is that EVERYbody's mileage varies, and that's what makes it fun here.
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