I must confess: being someone who appreciates starships and their designs - I’m currently very excited about these 32nd century upgrades / adaptations / stylings! I’m still getting my head around detached nacelles as a concept - especially with the Discovery - however, I’m glad the nacelles also remain attached in some configuration / mode. Would love to see more pics of the Discovery refit - especially a top view!
The trailer for Episode 7 shows the nacelles attached, so they're not deatched all the time, so Eaglemoss can just sell it that way. Though that could easily be the angle of the shot making them look that way.
It's the angle of the shot. As the scene fades into the next you can see the nacelles are detached as Discovery moves away from the camera.
I'm rather confused how 32nd century starships can have free-floating nacelles (do the nacelles each have an internal warp core? Is there some whizzo warp plasma wormhole conduit? What keeps them in position? How does having them detached make the ship "more manoeuvrable"?), but apparently still rely on boring old Newtonian impulse engines. The technology seems somewhat of a hodgepodge.
Well, if it can do same thing that Books ship can (break into peaces and rearrange itself) and some spoilers say it now can do it, then I suppose it “is” more maneuverable that way. Though it wouldn’t hurt for the writers to watch B5 or SAAB, or even more modern The Expanse on how ships can maneuver in space.
I agree with this. There is no Discovery A, but the 1031A. The reason is also simple. For administration purpose. Because 1031 has been labeled as "Destroyed" in Starfleet Database. So in term of numbering / administration purpose, the very same 1031 that rejoin the fleet in 32th century is different from the same 1031 that was destroyed in 23rd Century. If you think about A, B, C, D, etc numbering, think about Defiant. Why USS Defiant in DS9 has no A in it's numbering or name. It simply because there is no Enterprise A, B, C, or D. But only 1701-A. So basically Starfleet can has a lot of ships with the name of "Discovery" in it's history, but there is only one 1031 registry in their list. Which status has been labeled as "Destroyed".
I would imagine that the power transfer to the nacelles (to generate the warp field) is done wirelessly for one thing (unless the warp cores are now inside the nacelles). Also, I don't think you'd need continuous energy to keep the nacelles in position (while detached) because it may be possible they work along the lines of maglev (Which is far more efficient and less likely to break or require maintenance due to having no moving parts compared to regular trains [but since nacelles don't really have any moving parts either, it makes it more difficult to justify/imagine] - interestingly, the maglev in itself requires very little energy for levitation - and its still 50 - 100 times more efficient than regular trains... not to mention faster). So it may be the 'maglev' of the 32nd century for hull and nacelles (especially when combined with programmable matter). Furthermore, you may just need to energize the hull once (once the retrofit is done, or you're ready to depart) and it will set the hull for the nacelles into a a specific mode which will continue to keep them locked in place by establishing a self-sustaining force of sorts (so, even if you suddenly lose power or there's generally speaking catastrophic power loss, the nacelles wouldn't detach, they'd be kept in place regardless). We also know that the nacelles are extremely heavy... as heavy if not heavier than the rest of the ship... but we also know that in the 24th century (and possibly the 23rd), Starfleet had to establish a low level subspace field around the ship to lower its mass (which also allowed a starship to move like a fighter craft at sublight and achieve at least 75 000 km/s - or 1 quarter of speed of light). My thinking is that technology evolved to the point where wireless power transfer to the nacelles is actually more efficient than wired one and better controlled (if the warp core is still inside the main hull), and programmable matter does simplify things for energy transfer - its now fully integrated into Discovery. Furthermore, as I mentioned above, it may be just that the new hull naturally exhibits a 'repulsor force' of some kind in combination with the warp nacelles which keeps them firmly in place just a bit away from the hull and will continue to keep them in place regardless of what happens. Its also possible that in the event of catastrophic failure, the nacelles snap back and reconnect to the hull automatically. We know very little of full 32nd century technological capabilities to make a proper assessment... and they are not just 1189 years ahead of us. The Federation had the benefit of over 350 alien species (at its peak) sharing knowledge, technology, science and resources freely for a significant amount of time (not to mention the knowledge of more advanced alien species such as the Cytherians from TNG, various encounters of more advanced technologies and stuff Voyager brought back too)... a single species might take 350x longer (at least) to get to that same level of matter/energy control (even with exponential advancements) in the Trek universe... but I'm only speculating. The Federation/Starfleet probably wouldn't detach the nacelles unless this configuration proved to be superior and safe compared to having the nacelles attached.
The whole maneuverability in Star Trek at sublight was actually explained in pilot DS9 episode. Ships create a low level subspace field around themselves to lower their mass, which also gives them access to incredible speeds under impulse (at least 75 000 km/s, and we've seen them going faster - WITHOUT relativistic effects) allows them to maneuver like fighter craft. Federation ships of 23rd and 24th centuries are likely FASTER than B5 or Expanse ships because Trek has more advanced methods of dealing with ship's mass control of speed/maneuverability. Plus, B5 ships heavily rely on jump gates to get around from what I understand (at least for the most part). Expanse Human ships don't have ANY kind of FTL capability, and their only means of getting to other star systems is via the Protomatter gate. Obviously, Discovery predates the 24th century by at least 100 years... or its possible that this was done in the 23rd century too, just with less efficiency/refinement. Programmable matter can now probably create 32nd century version of weapons ports etc. wherever on the ship they may be needed to cover it from all angles easily. And power transfer is obviously done wirelessly and/or via programmable matter that can now reshape the ship (or at least to a significant degree).
I'd like to think that the detached Warp Nacelles have tiny Defiant sized Warp Cores in each unit and it's own supply of Matter/Anti-Matter while the ship has it's own Warp Core. This way you have more redundancy and let's say your ship's Floating Warp Nacelle is destroyed, but it doesn't affect the rest of your vessel, a nearby ship can drag a spare one and give it to your vessel, then you just put in the authorization codes and pair them to your vessel and boom you're back at FTL. Having the floating Warp Nacelle follow along the vessel isn't hard for local Subspace Radio/Light based communications when the transmitters and receivers are < 1 km away from each other. Even trying to jam those signals from outside would be hard given how close they are and how strong your signal would be. Then there's the bonus to STL manueverability by having each unit move itself instead of having everything attached as one. There will be less mass because you cut out the existence of the Pylon or reduced Pylon stress in the case of Discovery with no Nacelle attached to it.
Given the changes to USS Discovery, they're going to have a hard time making Calypso fit within the show.
When the Disco hit the anomaly in the wormhole, it was split into 2. One ends up in S3, the other is in Calypso.
Looking forward to seeing model makers try to get those floating nacelles working with their model kit builds...
Easy ... a strip of smoked plastic to duplicate the energy between the ship and the nacelles and just really thin wire run along the edges of the plastic strip.