Torpedo magazine questions

[Crazy Eddie]

(1) Where are the torpedo magazines in the Miranda and Constitution-refit-class ships?

Ship's library. E-deck, just past the bowling alley.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

"Little Boy" that was exploded over Hiroshima was 100% reliable. That's why they didn't need to test it. All they needed was for the two non critical masses of Uranium to come together and become super critical. As for the Plutonium bomb used at Nagasaki. They tested it first at Trinity in New Mexico to make sure the implosion mechanism would function properly. Which it did.
If you have a warhead containing a tiny amount of antimatter. You would want all of the antimatter to come into contact with matter at the same time. An implosion device seems like a good candidate. Or possibly an injection mechanism. With matter being injected into the core of the warhead hitting all sides of the antimatter at the same time. Still taking the shape of a sphere.

Two problems with this

#1: Matter and antimatter react by producing charged particles and a lot of radiation. The very first reactions produce this energy which will be immediately absorbed by whatever is around it -- namely, the rest of the matter and antimatter. It isn't like an atomic device where the reactions feed into the rest of the fuel material (chain reaction) or a thermonuclear device where multiple reactions feed on and boost each other (fission into fusion). This is like taking a very angry cat and a very angry dog and trying to stuff them both into the same shoebox.

#2: Particle only annihilate with their corresponding antiparticle. Because they have opposite charges, this isn't really that much of a problem since they'll have a tendency to "find" each other when floating around in a cloud... but a proton will only react with an antiproton and an electron will only react with a positron. Even if you bring them into physical contact, there's no way to control how individual molecules and particle/antiparticle pairs will line up. You may have entire chunks of antimatter being blown out of the warhead just because most of the initial reaction was taken up by electron-position reactions in the nanoseconds before the two masses even touched.

There's probably a good reason why starships regulate that reaction with dilithium crystals; I would bet the reaction is too hard to control otherwise, with matter/antimatter plasma being bounced around all over the place, incomplete and inconsistent reactions, secondary products (neutrinos, quarks, gluons, etc) that might otherwise siphon energy from the engines. If you need to quickly collide a mass of matter with a mass of antimatter, dilithium crystals are the only reliable way of doing that... and that is, more than likely, what is at the core of a photon torpedo warhead.

 

[topcat]

Ive always agreed with the manual definition of how photon torpedoes work. Sure the whole tale of matter suspended inside magnetic field inside a cloud of anti matter held inside its own magnetic field is hoaky.. but workable.

One person, once came up with a nicer working idea of the actual warhead, two spheres one matter and one antimatter, that on impact inject into each other like a warp core..

I remember in a few books, maybe a episode of a trek series that it was to dangerous to beam a photon torpedo into the ships armoury, to unstable even when its "dead". Hence the torpedo loading hatches on the refit.
But that raises the old debate, if a deactivated torpedo is unsafe to beam into the ships armoury, then how can it be safe to beam a live one onto an enemy ship and blow it up?

 

[Timo]

I don't recall onscreen suggestion that beaming of torpedoes would be dangerous. Between warheads being stolen via transporter in "Tribunal", and a live torpedo delivered to target via transporter in "Dark Frontier", it would seem the practice is safe enough to be done even in non-optimal conditions.

Torpedo loading hatches? Probert doesn't appear to have marked such things on his design, although admittedly there are all sorts of details around the torpedo launchers that could be interpreted this way. Bringing torpedoes aboard was never depicted in detail: in ST:ID, they are already onboard in the shuttle handling area that lacks obvious transporters, but that doesn't mean they would have arrived via shuttle because

a) that's where they were going ultimately - the launch chutes are there, and
b) we don't see the arrival, which could and probably should take place via transporter at the other end only.

Beaming of properly contained antimatter shouldn't be all that different from beaming properly contained blood. If there's an inherent breakdown of containment involved in transporting, then torpedoes should blow up, but people should also bleed to death. In that respect, it's nice that we see and hear people move and talk while in transport, indicating they continue to exist as functional wholes (even if phased into a different form of existence).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Captain Rob]

On my ship design there's dedicated weapons loading elevators/turbolifts going from the shuttle landing bays to the weapons storage lockers. And between torpedo bays. Because you'd want all of those locations shielded against illicit transporter activity. You don't want someone trying to steal one or more of your torpedoes. Or try and beam in an active torpedo that's set to go off.
If I ever win the lottery/Powerball and build my personal starship simulator that's some of the areas I'd build. I even made a list of all of the cool areas I'd think every fan would like to visit.