Whee, golly, some stuff. I'm-a winnow a bit...
As far as that goes, there really isn't any difference whether the window is right there beside it or just in front of it like on the Constitution Class. On most designs the Bussard collectors have to work around the saucer and are fairly close to the saucer. I really don't think there is a dangerous area around the Busard. I think the dangerous area is the warp field coils in the back.
A longer discussion could be had here about glowing-bubble version versus dark-grille version, line-of-sight, field strength and shape, distances from various structures... I feel most material depicts the glowing-bubble version (as with the
Galaxy and
Steamrunner, here) as projecting a higher-energy narrow-but-spreading field out ahead along the direction of flight to charge stray interstellar matter, and then lower-energy short-range and more lateral-flaring fields to draw the charged particles into the accumulators. So I can see hull-integrity fields being proof against that acquisition-field energy and the higher-powered fields never hit the hull... But it feels like an unnecessary risk to take, when there's no reason I can see to embed the engine structure
that thoroughly in the habitable hull. The
Saber was fine with the engines attached just a smidge more outboard, as discrete units.
It is quite clear that from NX through Excelsior and Constellation that Starfleet is after speed, but the advances after that seem to include a lot of safely. Not so much making the ship's faster (Which they are, but not by much) but increasing the efficiency and safety of the systems leading to designs where these systems no longer have to be pushed out from the hull.
The first century is characterized by getting more distance-covered-in-elapsed-time out of the engines. Bigger coils, fusion giving way to antimatter, Duotronics and other boons to navigation... The second century is characterized by by endurance and safety. By making the power-generation and -delivery, and field-generation systems more robust and reliable, they were able to roll out a class (
Intrepid) that had a sustainable
cruising speed of warp 9.975 (new scale). Once they refined the warp scale and determined the true asymptotic nature of it, better nailed down the integral warp factors, and determined a theoretical maximum set by diminishing returns... They knew they could reach warp nine easily enough, so the focus shifted to being able to hang there longer, and also see how well they could stably mount the decimals past warp 9. I feel the
Excelsior had a lot ot do with this, as did the
Constellation, and the lessons learned were applied to the
Ambassador and
Galaxy.
Now we get into terminology and perception, and I need to do a lot of word-pruning... Regarding antimatter, dilithium, and what's where:
The earliest dichotomy was off-screen, before sets were built. Matt was all about a nice, refined future-tech, with the engine pods being wholly self-contained, apart from control leads, power taps, and other ancillary systems running through the pylons, and an engineering control room more like a computer center or nuclear power plant. Gene wanted a big boiler room "belowdecks", as you'd find on an old ocean liner. Matt felt that was amazingly primitive, but Gene was the showrunner, so that's what he made, complete with the forced-perspective reactor farm in its cavernous high-bay visible out the aft grille of the set.
Maybe it's matter and antimatter fuel stores somewhere in the secondary hull, integrated somewhere near the main engineering set -- possibly in those reactors... or maybe those are the backup fusion reactors -- "tuned" through the dilithium crystals, and then the plasma carrying the energy out to the engines. Where Scotty was crawling in "TWS" was the TOS analogue of the horizontal shaft in TMP. Except.
The biggest
problem is the nacelle domes. All those neat lighting effects were meant to depict some otherworldly-powerful reaction going on that powered the engines trailing behind them. Whether Richard Datin had only heard Matt's notion of the reaction being entirely self-contained to the nacelles, I do not know.
"That Which Survives" gives us the integrator in the secondary hull, near Main Engineering. Do we know what it's integrating is matter with antimatter? I can make a lot of reasonable conjecture about needing the reaction as close to the coils as possible for a long time until containment tech improved enough that they could maintain plasma energy density all the way from the integrator to the coils by the time things like the TMP setup came along. The "reaction" in the nacelle domes needs to be explained away somehow, though.
dilithium cyrstals are now key to the mix, where in TOS and TWOK they were key to the ship's main power.
Except that that "main power" was needed for warp drive. If it was just non-warp-engine-related shipboard power, why didn't they just warp far enough away to be clear of the blast and then continue repairs? Whatever that silly pedestal was, it was added after TMP, and was necessary for warp drive. I feel like dilithium was necessary from TOS on for higher warp factors and/or better engine performance... It would still go, without, but not as fast/not as well. And that, for some reason, when that pedestal was added, something like the phaser-cutoff in TMP tripped when the crystals were knocked out of alignment that cut off warp drive.
I did have one theory that the Ent A had pioneered the new style warp core because they used the revamped TNG engine room for the Ent A engine room, but that was based on Johnson's interpretation of the Ent A systems, which Michael Okuda says were incorrect (and since he did them he should know). So I haven't figured out if moving the intermix from lower decks where in was in TOS and TMP to main engineering really impacts the warp power and speed or if it is just more efficient to monitor and adjust. Is that move part of the slowly diminishing goal of going faster or part of the start of the goal of making things more efficient?
I feel like the dilithium chamber being mounted inline with the intermix conduits, rather than separate, was an
Excelsior-class thing that was incorporated into the -A. And that aspect of it works well. They fudged the angles so the one PTC we saw was implied to be the "horizontal intermix shaft" leading back to the nacelles a la TMP, and having the TNG style reactant injection setup leaves me wondering how the -A's impulse engines are powered. Or the
Excelsior with its own impulse deflection crystal. Needed to have a vertical intermix shaft like
Voyager's. So we're left to shrug helplessly and try to rationalize it.
Sorry for the late reply. I was referring to the swapped registry number for the U.S.S. Zhukov.
[clarification snipped]
Ah, right, that. I set that aside mentally, years ago, to deal with later, and never got back to it. Did we ever get pics of the
Rigel class model Greg built for the
Zhukov? My preference would be to go with that.
Since they thought the original Rigel class registry number was too high for an Ambassador, they swapped the first two numbers. However, in my opinion that made the registry too low, considering there were already Excelsiors on that list with higher registries.
As yotsuya said, that's not a factor. Post-NCC-2500, there's only a few things to be gleaned from the registries: Roughly when Flight I and Flight II
Ambassadors were launched, roughly when batches of
Excelsiors were ordered to build up the fleet, and roughly when some classes stopped being built in quantity. 62136 is definitely outside the generally accepted range for an
Ambassador, whereas the swapped registry fits nicely in the Flight II
Ambassadors. Never mind what
Excelsior numbers are doing.
And I think the registry can be changed once a ship has been put in storage. So reactivating it might give it a higher registry.
I highly doubt it. The only indications of revising the hull number of an extant vessel have been slapping a replica of an older registry on it (
Enterprises and
Defiant).
If they were chronological, no Excelsior should have a registry higher than 10xxx.
...Why? If it's just a matter of when they were built, and Starfleet decided they wanted some well into the 2330s, why wouldn't the hull numbers reflect that?
If you look at the earlier drafts, the intention was always that the action take place in one of the nacelles. The earliest draft below is more vague but the second nails it (
extracts provided by Alchemist)
Here's how the Revised Story Outline for "Survival" (August 8, 1968) describes the situation:
The matter-antimatter control is inoperative; it has been inexplicably and totally destroyed. Scott can fix it, if he begins now... but he might not have enough time. The area where he must work is tight and cramped -- room for just one man. Scott scrambles in and gets to work. The uncontrolled matter-antimatter mixture that provides warp power is almost out of control and will explode in ten minutes -- more or less. At this point, it's impossible to tell -- and just one man can do the job: Scott. Kirk clears the entire "disposable" warp nacelle area, moving all personnel into the saucer section. If they must jettison the nacelles, it is understood by both Scott and Kirk that Scott might not have the time to get out before the thing blows.
And here's how the relevant part appears in the First Draft of "That Which Survives" (September 9, 1968):
INT. CRAWLWAY - CLOSE - SCOTT
SCOTT
All right, Mr. Spock, I'm now opening the access panel to the magnetic flow valve itself. Keep your eye on the dial. If there's a jump in magnetic flow you must jettison me and the entire matter-antimatter nacelle immediately. It will blow in two seconds after the rupture of the magnetic field.
In the final episode they replaced the term "nacelle" with "pod" but those names were used interchangeably throughout TOS anyway.
It's only later versions of Trek where "pod" came to be associated with antimatter storage.
I think you're missing something. In "The Apple", the way the line is written implies that when Kirk orders Scotty to "jettison the nacelles", he's including the secondary hull in that. In the draft you quoted, Kirk is moving all personnel into the saucer in case they have to jettison the nacelles. Why, if the secondary hull would still be there? And, later, the draft references the "entire matter-antimatter nacelle". Singular. He's not crawling around in one of the outrigger engines. He's crawling around in what we consider the secondary hull. At this point in the show, at least some people apparently are still thinking of it as a nacelle, dependent from the main hull of the saucer, and with the engine pods standing off from
it.
You are quite right that pods often referred to the nacelles in TOS.
Scott is working on the malfunctioning matter/antimatter integrator and has set up an explosives to blast him clear of the ship in case of emergency, but Spock already has a "pod jettison system" button in place on the Bridge.
All this leans towards Scott being stuck in a single nacelle and using the earlier drafts as further guidance it is pretty clear that this is what the intention was.
Or... Spock is ready to blow the engines clear if Scotty can't stop it, or if he ruptures the magnetic bottle and
those unrelated explosive charges need to be detonated. The engines are referred to as pods and nacelles inconsistently. From the setpieces, they seem to be "pods" as far as official shipboard nomenclature. Also from the draft and from this and other episodes, the engineering hull is referred to never as that in TOS, but when it's referred to at all, it's as a "nacelle". We only ever see "pod" applied to the engines themselves (not counting the specifically-named "ion pod" from "Court Martial"), we only ever see the secondary hull called a "nacelle", and we sometimes hear all three
referred to, separately or collectively, as "nacelles", but should not take dialogue as technically correct, as one or another character may be using verbal shorthand or be speaking in error or misinterpretation.
Scotty was near Main Engineering in "TWS", ready for the reactant-injection subassembly he was in to be explosively ejected in case of catastrophic breach. And, meanwhile, Spock was ready on the bridge to blow the engines clear if the runaway warp reaction couldn't be stopped. Logically, the
chance of the vessel being destroyed if he did that was better than the
certainty if its uncontrolled flight were allowed to continue. That was the contingency in case Scott failed.
Cochrane managed warp 1 in 2063. Two hundred years later, the Constitution class was rated for warp 8, but the Enterprise managed faster than that on several occasions. If progress was anything resembling logarithmic, the halfway point would see the time period of Enterprise doing well to have made it to warp 3 and be pushing for warp 4. But not in a ship nearly the size of TOS' NCC-1701 of a century later (and not considering no one batted an eye at seeing an NX-01-A named Dauntless rather than Enterprise). There are a few hills I'll die on, and one is that I don't care how much The Powers That Be insist they are: Enterprise, Discovery, and Picard are not part of the timeline we saw from 1966 through mid-2001.
