Symmeterical warp governor
- Thread starter Mr Pointy Ears
- Start date
The impression of that system, as I remember it being described on Drexler's old site was that it was using to balance the warp field to maintain higher warp speeds the new engine as able to put out. This system was eventually replaced by the time of the Constitution-class as indicated in the first pilot (The Cage) as defined as breaking the "Time Barrier". Perhaps there was some sort of temporal variance or a problem in keeping the timing of the warp fields together or phased correctly which is why they and other races in the region couldn't make past Warp Factor 7 for about a century. "The Time Barrier" eventually becoming the shorthand explaination for whatever the problem was blocking the transition to Warp Factor 8+ travel.
The device on Enterprise (NX-01) being a less effective way of allowing Warp Factor 5 travel than later drive systems, but it did work. As Earth and later the Federation got more experiance, and technical advice from all the member races started to be shifted around, the Federation warp drives started to follow more along Earth lines, the paired nacelles, generally cyclinders. Somehow this became the design that was the fastest in local space. By the 2280s, USS Enterprise (NCC-1701) held the speed records in Starfleet it seems (since that seemed to be the starship to beat for USS Excelsior's new transwarp drives).
The device on Enterprise (NX-01) being a less effective way of allowing Warp Factor 5 travel than later drive systems, but it did work. As Earth and later the Federation got more experiance, and technical advice from all the member races started to be shifted around, the Federation warp drives started to follow more along Earth lines, the paired nacelles, generally cyclinders. Somehow this became the design that was the fastest in local space. By the 2280s, USS Enterprise (NCC-1701) held the speed records in Starfleet it seems (since that seemed to be the starship to beat for USS Excelsior's new transwarp drives).
And you definitely don't want your warp field to be out of shape.
I like your explination for "breaking the Time Barrier".
As for the twinn nacelles reasoning, this is a nice explanation for the Fed ships byt what about something like the Klingon BOP which has the warp coils inside the aft end. I'm also interested in the Vulcan design for warp engines, their single "Ring". There must be several different ways to generate a warp field based on these examples. Kinda like we have 2-stroke and 4-stroke and rotary engines in cars now.
The NX design was a lift from the Akira which had a weapons pod in that position. They flipped the nacelles down and centered the pod. I guess they had to call it something else since it's new position would only allow it to fire to the rear and they were downplaying the armament.
In the Hayes Klingon BOP manual they describe the aft section as an impulse drive and the warp nacelles are a series of flat plates in the wings. As far as I know there is no canon description of the that ships drive systems so that makes as much sense as anything else...
In the Hayes Klingon BOP manual they describe the aft section as an impulse drive and the warp nacelles are a series of flat plates in the wings. As far as I know there is no canon description of the that ships drive systems so that makes as much sense as anything else...
Interesting that the doohickey is largely maintained in the refit version of the ship we see, albeit moved down into a notch on the new secondary hull. I wonder if the designers of that refit had any thoughts around what the doohickey actually did.
http://www.modelermagic.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/KG_DREX_NX-01_REFIT_002.jpg
Mark
http://www.modelermagic.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/KG_DREX_NX-01_REFIT_002.jpg
Mark
Is that Schwarzenegger?
No that would be the Warp Field Governator.
Considering the designer of the refit was Doug Drexler, who was part of the team that designed the NX-01 for the show, I think he woud have an idea of what that thing was suppose to do and why it would be retained in the refit.
Considering the designer of the refit was Doug Drexler, who was part of the team that designed the NX-01 for the show, I think he woud have an idea of what that thing was suppose to do and why it would be retained in the refit.
Or maybe he was only concerned with aesthetic matters.
Bingo.
You have won this thread!
Is that Schwarzenegger?
Yep
Interesting.
I like the bussard collectors. I don't know what they are useful for but the name sounds funny.
They're named for Robert W Bussard. The notion behind them is that interstellar rockets would become practical if they didn't have to carry their fuel onboard, and could just collect hydrogen atoms from the interstellar medium, to use as power and propellant. They became quite popular in science fiction in the 1960s and 1970s as a way of overcoming the rocket problem and its sad conclusions about how tiny a payload you can deliver at speed. T A Heppenheimer showed in 1978 that the mathematics of Bussard ramjets doesn't work out, even if you pretend you have an energy-producing source of fusion, but that hasn't hurt their popularity in science fiction any.
(In fairness, there are various clever attempts to get around the problems with Bussard-collector interstellar ramjets, but I'm not aware of any that have gotten to the state of being plausible-on-paper, even if we grant the magic wand of solving energy-producing fusion.)
They got pulled into Star Trek in one of the occasional fits the franchise has of dragging real-world science terms in. But since Bussard collectors are a way around the problems of rockets that obey Newtonian mechanics, and Star Trek propulsion has never taken even a passing glance at Newtonian mechanics, it's a pretty silly fit.
Two things worth pointing out there:
1) The real-world problems with ramscoops relate to transfer of momentum and kinetic energy. Trek has these inertia-negating doohickeys; if they need hydrogen scooped aboard, they can ignore the drag the scooping creates. Unless they want to have it for some reason (drag chutes!), in which case they can opt to multiply it at will, too. That's sort of taking it to the next level beyond merely being allowed to skip the Newtonian problems of the rocket equation.
2) In-universe, we have no idea what these Bussard ramscoops are supposed to achieve. They are never used for fuel replenishment, although their ability to scoop in volatiles is demonstrated once and their ability to spit it out twice. Perhaps they are supposed to work as cowcatchers or snow plows instead, normally moving hydrogen out of the way of the ship, with the further but rarely exercised option of sucking in some of it?
Timo Saloniemi
1) The real-world problems with ramscoops relate to transfer of momentum and kinetic energy. Trek has these inertia-negating doohickeys; if they need hydrogen scooped aboard, they can ignore the drag the scooping creates. Unless they want to have it for some reason (drag chutes!), in which case they can opt to multiply it at will, too. That's sort of taking it to the next level beyond merely being allowed to skip the Newtonian problems of the rocket equation.
2) In-universe, we have no idea what these Bussard ramscoops are supposed to achieve. They are never used for fuel replenishment, although their ability to scoop in volatiles is demonstrated once and their ability to spit it out twice. Perhaps they are supposed to work as cowcatchers or snow plows instead, normally moving hydrogen out of the way of the ship, with the further but rarely exercised option of sucking in some of it?
Timo Saloniemi
I like the bussard collectors. I don't know what they are useful for but the name sounds funny.
They're named for Robert W Bussard. The notion behind them is that interstellar rockets would become practical if they didn't have to carry their fuel onboard, and could just collect hydrogen atoms from the interstellar medium, to use as power and propellant. They became quite popular in science fiction in the 1960s and 1970s as a way of overcoming the rocket problem and its sad conclusions about how tiny a payload you can deliver at speed. T A Heppenheimer showed in 1978 that the mathematics of Bussard ramjets doesn't work out, even if you pretend you have an energy-producing source of fusion, but that hasn't hurt their popularity in science fiction any.
(In fairness, there are various clever attempts to get around the problems with Bussard-collector interstellar ramjets, but I'm not aware of any that have gotten to the state of being plausible-on-paper, even if we grant the magic wand of solving energy-producing fusion.)
They got pulled into Star Trek in one of the occasional fits the franchise has of dragging real-world science terms in. But since Bussard collectors are a way around the problems of rockets that obey Newtonian mechanics, and Star Trek propulsion has never taken even a passing glance at Newtonian mechanics, it's a pretty silly fit.
Yes, it's pretty silly. They just use the term regardless of what it actually means, which btw is what they do most of the time.
Yup, imagine driving a car with the entire left sides park brakes permanently partly on. If you don't end up crashing you're going to burn out your brakes and your tires skidding everywhere. Figure the warp generator does the same thing, symmetry doesn't necessarily mean on all axis. Remember, the governor is not in the middle of the nacelles on any other axis except horizontally.
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