TOS Nacelles

[Timo]

As to the plural by default, how so?

I meant that the Enterprise obviously has two engines (the big pods on the outside) - but that this provides no information on how many sources of dangerous explosion there are in the ship. Engine damage or malfunction could cause one explosion in one central location, or sixteen ones in a cascade, depending on the technological details, but not necessarily depending on the number of engines. If the m/am engines of the TOS ship got hurt, there could be a single explosion at the site of Scotty's "That Which Survives" heroics. If the same happened to the STXI ship, eight separate warp cores might blow up. With the TMP ship, perhaps the reputed vertical and horizontal intermix shafts would be the ones to go. And so forth.

The multiple engines could be fueled by antimatter, just like multiple engines on an aircraft could be fueled by gasoline. Worrying about the antimatter or the gasoline by saying "if the engines..." would be a valid approach if one treats the engine&power system as an integrated whole and blames the engines for the presence of the antimatter or the gasoline.

However, "fueling" need not mean the actual pumping of fuel to the engine. The TOS engines might instead receive the power benefits from the use of antimatter fuel the same way the TNG and ENT ones do, via plasma-based power leads. They'd still very much be matter-antimatter engines...

...As possibly opposed to the impulse ones, whose malfunction is described as a fusion explosion in "DDM", and might leave a wholly different radiation signature. Sulu would do right to speculate on the exact nature of the explosion, then, as a radiation signature would be their only means of deducing what had happened to the ship. Kirk then proceeds to use that means to exclude the possibility of either sort of engine explosion.

Also, Sulu could have another very good reason to worry about whether one or the other blew: an impulse explosion might be survivable for the landing party, while a warp explosion might already have killed them, too, via delta ray poisoning or somesuch. Kirk's swift waving of a tricorder preempts those concerns, too.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Timo]

Oops, missed one:

In context, Kirk is clearly talking about separating dead weight and "blasting out of there with the main section."

In the context of "Savage Curtain"? Not really. For a rare once, the ship isn't falling from the sky, nor does Kirk show interest in having the ship escape while leaving him behind.

All the talk is about preventing the ship from blowing up - and from the sounds of it, the Excalbians have created a situation where the ship will blow up even if Excalbia is left far behind, or phasered to rubble. The ship is badly broken and has to be fixed, and the influence of the evil aliens is a secondary concern at best.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[blssdwlf]

As to the plural by default, how so?

I meant that the Enterprise obviously has two engines (the big pods on the outside) - but that this provides no information on how many sources of dangerous explosion there are in the ship. Engine damage or malfunction could cause one explosion in one central location, or sixteen ones in a cascade, depending on the technological details, but not necessarily depending on the number of engines. If the m/am engines of the TOS ship got hurt, there could be a single explosion at the site of Scotty's "That Which Survives" heroics.

You stopped short on completing that thought: "If the m/am engines (plural) of the TOS ship got hurt, there could be a single explosion at the site of Scotty's "That Which Survives" heroics or one from the m/am engines in the pods as in "The Savage Curtain", "By Any Other Name" etc.

It seems far more reasonable to conclude that Sulu was referring to specifically the "matter-antimatter engines" as the pods (nacelles) which have been described in other episodes as having antimatter and also as engines.

In later incarnations of Trek, the phrase "warp engines" are used (without mention of antimatter in the nacelles) so your argument that the fuel could be separated would work there. But in TOS terms, I don't think it would work, IMHO.

 

[Captain Robert April]

At this late date, you really can't separate TOS from the rest of the franchise.

 

[blssdwlf]

So how does Kirk die again? At this late date the franchise is already fractured and has their own continuities.

 

[Captain Robert April]

So, how soon does the Anti-Monitor show up?

 

[blssdwlf]

Tuesday

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Yeah, Newtype, you're clearly misunderstanding what I was saying, because you're using logic which is central to my own argument as though it's an argument against my position.

Yes and no. Like I said, it's the same premises to start with but a different possible conclusion.

Okay, then.... this one point is a small bone of contention... insofar as I consider the dilithium to be at the core of what makes the conversion of large amounts of energy from EITHER energy source into USEABLE energy possible.

But if that were true, then NO power would have been available without the dilithium crystals (as in "Mudd's Women") and auxiliary power would be barely adequate. As it stands, Enterprise had enough power to maintain partial shields and maneuver a bit even without dilithium.

This implies, to me, that the ship's power is being extracted--directly or indirectly--from the warp engines themselves, NOT from the dilithium chamber.

Is it possible to have "warp drive" without dilithium? I think so, but dilithium makes it more practical.

I agree. And I think in TOS terms, the REASON for this is dilithium removes the need to store huge amounts of antimatter on board when you could convert ordinary matter directly into antimatter as a precursor to its annihilation.

Antimatter storage pods as "heat exchangers?"

In a pressurized water reactor, heat is transferred from superheated (still liquid) water into lower pressure water that, during heat transfer, flashes into high pressure steam. In this case, raw antimatter from the dilithium chamber is transferred to the antimatter pods where it can then be injected into a reaction chamber under controlled conditions. Much like how modern reactors don't pump irradiated water directly into the turbines, modern warp engines don't channel fresh antimatter directly into the nacelles.

That is very likely, and is in agreement with my own perspective. Prior to installing that little cut-gemstone crystal, they're limited to only a small fraction of the total available energy output, even of the fusion reactors, and would have pretty much no ability to use energy created by m/am annihilation.

The ONLY disagreement we seem to have, other than a few linguistic (but not conceptual) issues, is the role that dilithium plays in this arrangement.

Pretty much, yeah. The real issue here is that the reaction products of a fusion reactor are similar to the reaction products of an annihilation reaction. In both cases the output is a mess of charged particles and ionizing radiation, and there are varieties of products depending on exactly what you put into it. If dilithium is necessary to convert energy from the annihilation reaction, it would be necessary for fusion too.

And your statement about a crystal being a "really big molecule" is also entirely incorrect.

Semantics. You clearly get the point that the crystaline structure of a diamond is relevant enough that "diamond" is considered to be a distinct type of substance with distinct physical properties despite the fact that it is little more than carbon. The same is probably true of dilithium.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Oops, missed one:

In context, Kirk is clearly talking about separating dead weight and "blasting out of there with the main section."

In the context of "Savage Curtain"?

No, "the apple." But either way, in "Savage Curtain" the line "disengage nacelles, jettison if possible" explicitly refers to the nacelles.

 

[Patrickivan]

These quotes from many episodes is exactly what I was hoping to see. It really seems to support m/arc's being located in the nacelles.

 

[Captain Robert April]

Fifty vague and sometimes contradictory references to the nacelles vs. a few very specific references to the workings being inside the hull.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

Fifty vague and sometimes contradictory references to the nacelles vs. a few very specific references to the workings being inside the hull.

Except that THIS IS NOT TRUE.

You personally, see the stuff that supports your preferred position as being "very specific" and that which does NOT support your preferred position as being "vague and contradictory."

But this is not the case, at all. You're simply seeing the entire argument through your own preconceptions.

Many of us see things exactly opposite. For me, I see a great many indicators of the engines being the source of power, and only one which contradicts that at any real level.

 

[Captain Robert April]

And how is that not "seeing the entire argument through your own preconceptions"?

 

[Cary L. Brown]

And how is that not "seeing the entire argument through your own preconceptions"?

Because I'm stating what I prefer to believe, while you are stating that everyone else is "wrong" because they don't agree with you. Maybe that's not your intention, but it IS your tone.

We all know that you prefer the "automotive" model. That's just fine. Many others prefer the "aviation" model, and that's just fine too.

It's all fiction, after all, and this ship doesn't exist.

But you seem to have no "flexibility." You state, in very firm terms, that what you believe is the only "correct" conclusion, and say some fairly derogatory things about the belief of those who disagree with you. I can't recall anyone here saying that what you believe is wrong in some belittling form but you do seem to be taking that tact.

We're all used to being "the expert" on this, in our real-life circles... because most people couldn't care less about where the fictional power source is on a fictional space ship.

But when we come here, we're among people who care about this trivial nonsense every bit as much as we do. That's GOOD... insofar as it gives us people to talk with about this stuff. But it's also bad, because we don't get to be "the subject matter expert" either.

You need to back off, a bit, in your tendency to claim that anyone who disagrees with you about purely fictional aspects of this is wrong. You can pick apart the logic of an argument as much as you want, and that's perfectly OK. But it's NOT ok to make unsupported and unsupportable claims (like saying that "the other side is vague and contradictory") when the facts provide no such evidence.

You have your own biases. You do. And you're pretty inflexible about your biases. That's fine. But you really need to just admit that it's a personal bias, rather than saying things which infer that those who disagree with your preferences are... well, "stupid."

We know that there is dialogue that supports what you believe in TOS, and that there is dialogue which supports the other model in TOS. This is because different writers had different ideas.

We know what the designer of the Enterprise had in mind. We know that many of the writers on Trek followed along with that philosophy.

We also know that some other Trek writers didn't follow this approach at all.

So, what this REALLY means is that "Star Trek is vague and often contradictory" insofar as the overall ship design is concerned, and about this in particular.

I don't think you're "stupid" for preferring what you prefer. But you sure do seem to be saying that about those who disagree with you.

 

[Patrickivan]

Looking back on ST: Enterprise, a show I had hopes for, as I liked Bakula as Captain, there were many things that really irked me (as far as TV can irk me)...

First of course was the Akira being too heavily infused into the design. I don't mind the idea of the design being used, as much as it looked way too much like the future ship.

Secondly was engineering having the prominant M/arc. It really could have added so much to have had (much) larger more primitive warp nacelles with the m/arcs of some sort in them.

The ship would have been a little slower. Especially getting to warp speed! There would have been distance limitations due to fuel and energy provisions.

All the things that a newly exploring and expanding society would go through. The growing pains of becoming the UFP.

But they really wanted to write in all the tech too fast. Make it fit. And really mess up TOS in a way. There could have been things that would explain and work into TOS a whole lot more conducively but instead just made us have headaches over trying to figure stuff out.

I mean for me, it really seems more reasonable then not, that the nacelles had the m/arcs in them. Engineering would have had quite the task ensuring they're both running in balance and harmony with each other. As well as using energy for the rest of the ship. Then there would be other sources of power and energy storage... ST: Enterprise just made that tech work way too well and way too much like TNG.

And everything was too small considering the energy being altered and manipulated.

Not that I wanted ST E to focus on boring everyone with techy stuff every episode, I just don't see why they had to completely ignore it really.

 

[Albertese]

As far as Enterprise goes, It seems to me that it was a prequel to post Star Trek: First Contact TNG, and not a prequel to TOS at all. The forth season tried to prequel TOS, but the damage had already been done.

However, it can tie into both TOS and TNG without too much fuss. Suppose the NX-01 is powered by one central reactor that feeds electrical power to both warp 5 engines. Let us further suppose that the warp engine technology advanced more quickly than the reactor technology to power it. Therefore, by the time NCC-1701 was built, the warp 8 engines were much more powerful, but the reactors hadn't really caught up, so each engine requires a dedicated power source (it's own M/Am reactor) and the ship has a third one that is critical in synchronizing the other two. Reactor development proceeds apace and by the time NCC-1701 is being refit for TMP, a whole new power/warp drive set up is installed wherein the engines are onto a third model (different even from the NX-01 setup) which has everything powered from one more powerful central reactor again. The TNG set-up on NCC-1701-D, while it bears some superficial resplendence to NX-01's, is not doubt quite different in execution.

It does make sense that the various technologies of the overall system would be developed at different paces and wind up being shuffled into a number of configurations given the state of any given component at any given time.

--Alex

 

[blssdwlf]

Question about TNG and onwards - when their engineers look admiringly at the warp core reactor / reaction chamber in action, do they look at the reactor or do they look at the top of the energy shaft?

I only ask this because in TMP and TUC, Scotty is looking to the top of the shaft. (Spock also looks up in TMP.)

 

[Albertese]

Looks to me as though Geordie and company look at the knob in the middle which contains the reactor. That's where the dilithium lies (we've seen so on numerous occasions.) Also it's understood that the "matter" comes down the top shaft and the "anti-matter" rises up from the bottom and meet at the dilithium, react, and shoots down the tubes to the engines. More or less.

But then, the TOS movies are almost certainly using a different engine set-up than the E-D.

--Alex

 

[Timo]

...Although they might use the very same system easily enough, only with the reaction chamber located on a level above or below the one where Scotty most typically is seen. The glowing shafts of the TMP ship are the same as the shafts accompanying the reactor upper and lower fuel injection tubes, after all - and TNG identifies those as plasma conduits for the outgoing power. The TMP setup could hide the reactor and fuel injection systems in a better radiation-protected space, while the plasma conduits would still be visible; and the TOS system could hide even more of the machinery from sight, without the machinery actually being much different. We'd be seeing exotic shapes and relative positions of the various tubes involved, that's all.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[CorporalCaptain]

FWIW, I have zero interest it retconning TOS to fit in between ENT and TNG. ENT was was conceived as a prequel for TOS only to a limited degree. One of the reasons was that so much time had elapsed between 1969 and 2001; the estimation of what the future would look like and the expectation of how the tech would work changed in that time.

My enjoyment of Star Trek does not depend on getting everything to fit together. Attempts to do that by retconning TOS actually make me enjoy it less.