Warp Core, Nacelles and Warp Speed

[James Wright]

Is the warp core of a starship the engine and the nacelles the exhaust?
How small can a warp core be and a starship is still able attain warp 9+ (The first question is just for confirmation purposes .)

James

 

[Timo]

In the sense of TNG Tech Manual explanations, quoted almost verbatim in the last season of ENT, the warp core is the powerplant (like the boiler in a steamship) while the nacelle is the propeller (like the pistons/turbines plus gearbox, axle and screw of a steamship). Essentially, the core pumps out energetic warp plasma, like a boiler would pump out steam; it doesn't pump out motive power like an engine would.

In a more general Trek sense, it seems that "warp plasma" is fairly magical, and not just any means of getting plasma hot would suffice. Could be the core absolutely needs to use antimatter and dilithium in order to give the right type of output, and no number of fission reactors or crazed gerbils would ever suffice. Or then it's possible to power a warp engine with coal, provided you just have lots of it.

The smallest warp 9+ engine so far has been the size of a pillow (nothing bigger could have fitted in that torpedo casing with K'Ehleyr in TNG "The Emissary"). Whether this featured a core is unknown; it didn't feature standoff nacelles, but entire torps tend to glow in warp flight, so possibly the whole casing counts as a warp coil or as a nacelle, whatever the terminological preference.

A century earlier, Scotty operated a ship that fired basically the same kind of torpedo, but did not believe in "warp engines the size of a walnut", so we're probably talking absolute lower limit of size there with that pillow.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Go-Captain]

There's evidence the warp core generates a warp field, or at the very least subspace energy with less evidence of the nacelles generating the field. But the nacelles do produce the propulsive effect, so if all you had is a warp core you wouldn't go anywhere.

The weakest evidence is how the subspace field diagram we see for the Enterprise-D shows the center of the field pretty much on the warp core. In the TNG episode with the subspace ruptures, a warp core breach is used to make one large enough to be detectable. More importantly, in VOY an episode mentions the singular subspace coil in the warp core, and things such as transwarp coils and quantum slipstream modifications are all done to the core, not the warp engines/nacelles. There are also mentions of various particles and fields being generated by the warp core. DIS goes a step further and implies dilithium is critical to warp drive function, with no mention of low level, sans dilithium, warp drive. The background information of Season 3 also implies, or mentions, dilithium specifically creating warp plasma, and implying warp plasma might be plasma with a subspace component.

We know the warp nacelles are creating the propulsive effect, because in Voyager when Paris tests the Warp 10 concept the nacelles and shuttle rip apart from each other due to acceleration. There is also an instance in TNG, I think the subspace rupture episode, where they pre-charge the warp engines/nacelles with warp plasma, create a burst of warp speed, and use the pre-charge energy to drift at warp through the phenomena. If they used active engines the whole way it would energize the rupture, making it worse. It's also evidence of warp sustainers.

Regardless of the particulars, all of the energy is being made in the warp core and sent to the warp engines, much like a boiler sending steam to a steam engine. Except, with Bussard collectors it is possible the interstellar hydrogen is sent right into the warp engines to mix with warp plasma, to create additional energy right in the engines by way of fusion, but that's pure speculation based on the location of the Bussard collectors.

Contrary to the above is where in TNG a runabout is partially caught in a time phenomena which accelerates time. One of the nacelles is caught, and completely drains a month's worth of antimatter for that nacelles. Specifically, the opposite nacelles still has power. That means the runabout either has port and starboard warp cores, or the warp cores are in the nacelles, or it uses an internal annihilation engine (like internal combustion engine but with antimatter) design.

 

[RichT]

The smallest warp 9+ engine so far has been the size of a pillow (nothing bigger could have fitted in that torpedo casing with K'Ehleyr in TNG "The Emissary"). Whether this featured a core is unknown; it didn't feature standoff nacelles, but entire torps tend to glow in warp flight, so possibly the whole casing counts as a warp coil or as a nacelle, whatever the terminological preference.

If I recall correctly photon torpedoes have warp sustainer engines. They can sustain warp speed if launched at warp speed, but they're incapable of accelerating from sublight to high warp on their own, or accelerating to a faster warp factor than the one they were launched at. This is presumably related to the "transitional threshold" the TNG tech manual mentions, where breaking a warp factor barrier requires much more energy than continuing to cruise at that speed.

 

[Mytran]

If I recall correctly photon torpedoes have warp sustainer engines. They can sustain warp speed if launched at warp speed, but they're incapable of accelerating from sublight to high warp on their own, or accelerating to a faster warp factor than the one they were launched at. This is presumably related to the "transitional threshold" the TNG tech manual mentions, where breaking a warp factor barrier requires much more energy than continuing to cruise at that speed.

wasn't K'Ehleyr's transport torpedo launched from a Starbase though?
Those facilities don't tend to travel at warp!

 

[Timo]

Indeed.

Also, the bit about the sustainer is likely to be bull. We see probes launched from the E-D often enough, and they basically just swim out at a walking pace from a torpedo tube on a standstill starship. Nevertheless, they then reach distant star systems in plot time! Would torpedoes really be that different? Especially when our warp 9+ probe is a torpedo?

Contrary to the above is where in TNG a runabout is partially caught in a time phenomena which accelerates time. One of the nacelles is caught, and completely drains a month's worth of antimatter for that nacelles. Specifically, the opposite nacelles still has power. That means the runabout either has port and starboard warp cores, or the warp cores are in the nacelles, or it uses an internal annihilation engine (like internal combustion engine but with antimatter) design.

There is an alternative interpretation, though. The starboard nacelle that got caught in accelerated time was the one that ultimately failed to propel the ship, causing an eventual clockwise spin. Perhaps "ultimately" and "eventually" are wrong here, though, and the fact that the starboard nacelle got caught in the bubble actually meant that it immediately stopped producing any propulsive effect? That is, it kept running and wasting fuel, but since it was cut off from the warp core, it achieved nothing at all.

In this scenario, if there's an antimatter tank on the starboard side, there's likely to be machinery there to move antimatter from there to the single centerline warp core. This pumping machinery will keep on working for 47 days, but it will pump the antimatter through a bleed valve into vacuum since the core won't accept the sudden surge. Simultaneously, and separately, the core will fail to pump its energies into the starboard nacelle, which thus is "running on empty" and doesn't propel the starboard side at all. Two types of flow cut off by the time differential, two types of effect (lost fuel, lost propulsion), yet no real connection between the two.

On a more general note, warp engines seem to be very robust, and discussion of their performance specifications is difficult when we note that a starship wary of exceeding warp 7 can in fact fly at warp 14+ simply by ignoring certain safety parameters. We can't look at a shuttlecraft and say "Oh, an engine that small will give you warp 4, tops". And indeed we are explicitly shown that the shuttle can in fact go infinitely fast on those very same engines, with just the powerplant part being fiddled with.

It would appear easy to argue that the propeller part, the coils and whatnot, is always inherently capable of infinite performance, there possibly being some minimal wear and tear and whatnot, but nothing that would necessarily increase catastrophically even when performance is ramped up millionfold or quintillionfold. A calculator today can deal with the addition of quintillions basically just as easily as it can with 2+2, structurally and powerwise and so forth; warp might well be more akin to such number-crunching than to jet engines.

It also seems likely that warp is tickled or catalyzed into happening, with some threshold power, and subsequently does not consume power in direct relation to the speeds achieved. However, the warp 14+ performance out of a warp 7 engine can also be explained by the ship having the ability to increase fuel feed rate thousandfold or trillionfold if need be - the regular feed rate might be mere picograms per second, after all, and a machine capable of feeding kilograms per second is in no way unimaginable to us. Yet the idea of threshold power would better fit, well, "Threshold"...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[RichT]

wasn't K'Ehleyr's transport torpedo launched from a Starbase though?
Those facilities don't tend to travel at warp!

Admiral Gromek states that she's coming from Starbase 153, which is presumably where K'Ehleyr is normally stationed at the time of this episode. It doesn't say anything about the probe being launched directly from the Starbase, only that there were no ships available to rendezvous with the Enterprise. It would have taken barely minutes for any available ship to accelerate up to warp 9 and fire K'Ehleyr's modified probe before diverting back to its original course.

 

[RichT]

Also, the bit about the sustainer is likely to be bull. We see probes launched from the E-D often enough, and they basically just swim out at a walking pace from a torpedo tube on a standstill starship. Nevertheless, they then reach distant star systems in plot time! Would torpedoes really be that different? Especially when our warp 9+ probe is a torpedo?

Can you cite a specific example of any probe launch reaching a distant star system in plot time? Normally probes are used for surprisingly short-range tasks in Star Trek, or dropped off when en route somewhere else.

 

[Timo]

"Inner Light" has our heroes stuck next to the probe that hijacked Picard's life, yet also launch from this standstill a probe that backtracks its alien counterpart's route for "over one lightyear", allowing our heroes to deduce said probe's star system of origin.

We can wriggle out of that one if need be, claiming that the Starfleet probe just sort of provided a wider base for interferometry or whatever, allowing the combined sensors to look at a distance of a lightyear even though the probe was just a lightminute to the side. But it's not that different from how torpedoes always behave: they float out of their tubes like big, glowy, slow cannonballs, and soon thereafter hit faraway targets - some 40 AU away in one version of ST:TMP, say! Likewise, Soran's little rocket covers 1 AU in 15 seconds... It just doesn't seem to be all that difficult to pack an independent warp engine in a tiny casing.

It might be different if we heard dialogue to the effect that torpedo launchers are vital in providing warp speed to projectiles, or outright that sustainers exist. But the closest we ever get is "Brothers", where the heroes try to make the Data-hijacked saucer drop out of warp, and lo, it does. But not necessarily because of any "loss of sustaining" - rather, since the heroes are onto it, and know their stuff, they achieve their goal regardless of the technicalities or realities of the situation... In other episodes like "Encounter at Farpoint" and especially "Arsenal of Freedom", the saucer appears to accelerate to warp all on its own.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[RichT]

"Inner Light" has our heroes stuck next to the probe that hijacked Picard's life, yet also launch from this standstill a probe that backtracks its alien counterpart's route for "over one lightyear", allowing our heroes to deduce said probe's star system of origin.

We can wriggle out of that one if need be, claiming that the Starfleet probe just sort of provided a wider base for interferometry or whatever, allowing the combined sensors to look at a distance of a lightyear even though the probe was just a lightminute to the side.

Interferometry and triangulation would be a very good use of probes and makes sense in this case. We know that the Enterprise-D's long-range sensors have a range of five lightyears so clearly the range alone doesn't justify a probe.

But it's not that different from how torpedoes always behave: they float out of their tubes like big, glowy, slow cannonballs, and soon thereafter hit faraway targets - some 40 AU away in one version of ST:TMP, say!

The size of the V'Ger cloud was acknowledged to be a mistake by the production team, and corrected in the director's cut.

Likewise, Soran's little rocket covers 1 AU in 15 seconds... It just doesn't seem to be all that difficult to pack an independent warp engine in a tiny casing.

There's no indication that it covers 1 AU in 15 seconds, only that it detonates the star 15 seconds after launch. We don't know the star is 1AU away from Veridian III. It could be a tiny dwarf star with planets that orbit much closer than in our own solar system, or the missile could fire an energy beam of some kind that is impossible to intercept. There's no visual indication of it going to warp – certainly no flash or warp trails – and no mention of it doing so in dialogue, where a line like "an object that small and fast would be impossible to shoot down at warp" would certainly explain why they never try to do exactly that.

Either way, Soran's missile is clearly much larger and based on very different technology from a regular photon torpedo, even if the warhead itself seems to be based on one.

It might be different if we heard dialogue to the effect that torpedo launchers are vital in providing warp speed to projectiles, or outright that sustainers exist. But the closest we ever get is "Brothers", where the heroes try to make the Data-hijacked saucer drop out of warp, and lo, it does. But not necessarily because of any "loss of sustaining" - rather, since the heroes are onto it, and know their stuff, they achieve their goal regardless of the technicalities or realities of the situation...

They never separate the saucer in "Brothers", and the Enterprise never drops out of warp until it reaches Terlina III. They do attempt to trigger a high-warp saucer separation, but Data overrides that functionality from the bridge by impersonating Picard to lock out the command codes. It should also be pointed out that Picard explicitly states that after separation the saucer should drop out of warp within two minutes and not be able to escape the stardrive section, clearly implying that the captain expects the saucer to be incapable of warp travel on its own.

In other episodes like "Encounter at Farpoint" and especially "Arsenal of Freedom", the saucer appears to accelerate to warp all on its own.

There's no such indication that the saucer accelerates to warp on its own in either episode, and visually in both episodes the saucer is definitely not travelling at warp when the stardrive section banks away to reverse course even though in "Encounter at Farpoint" it separates moments before at warp. In "EaF" the saucer is just heading for "relative safety", according to dialogue; and in "The Arsenal of Freedom" the saucer explicitly sets course for a local Starbase while the stardrive returns to Minos, but in both cases the saucer easily be messaging ahead for a warp tow from another starship while ensuring it's clear of immediate danger. The original intent in the series bible was that the Enterprise would "drop the saucer off" while the stardrive section returned to battle, then return and "pick the saucer up". We might argue that the saucer having no warp capabilities of its own while being intended to function as a semi-autonomous ship is a ridiculous design oversight, both in universe and in reality, especially in light of its much-larger-than-necessary internal volume, but that's rather a separate issue.

 

[Timo]

Interferometry and triangulation would be a very good use of probes and makes sense in this case. We know that the Enterprise-D's long-range sensors have a range of five lightyears so clearly the range alone doesn't justify a probe.

The simplest assumption is that the probe went up and personal with the alien probe's trail, though. But starship sensing procedures are sometimes pretty odd: Barclay takes a shuttle and goes outside in "The Nth Degree", say. So we do have wiggle room here.

The size of the V'Ger cloud was acknowledged to be a mistake by the production team, and corrected in the director's cut.

Which hardly affects anything, though: the Klingon torpedoes now travel 1 AU instead of 40, but still in much shorter time than the eightish minutes lightspeed travel would call for. Basically the same as in ST:GEN.

There's no indication that it covers 1 AU in 15 seconds, only that it detonates the star 15 seconds after launch.

No, the heroes firmly believe the probe will "reach the sun" in that time. Whether it actually would is immaterial: what our heroes believe in defines warp technology for projectiles of that size.

All else is speculation by us, and thus inferior to speculation by the characters. The probe is FTL and takes but eleven seconds to hit the star, the half a dozen seconds of apparent ascent from the surface either included or then not. (Again, the heroes have their expert opinion on that: Worf thinks it makes no difference whether the launch is from the surface or from the orbiting Klingon ship.)

[Either way, Soran's missile is clearly much larger and based on very different technology from a regular photon torpedo, even if the warhead itself seems to be based on one.

"Much larger"? I'll grant "barely larger", and even then I see no reason to think a threshold between "true" and "sustainer" engines should run between those two specific sizes, even if one should exist.

Warp technology in turn is warp technology: a hundred species will come up with a hundred different engines, but they all get called warp engine in the end. If Soran had something different, this is the thing that would warrant mention. Yet Worf categorically says "probe" without knowing the first thing about said probe. (If he thinks it's the same as the ones fired from Amargosa, he's obviously wrong, as the lab had probes of other shapes on the racks - indeed, it had torpedo-shaped and -sized ones. But we never learn that he would be wrong about the performance specs, or that there would be a possibility of variance due to different probe models.)

It should also be pointed out that Picard explicitly states that after separation the saucer should drop out of warp within two minutes and not be able to escape the stardrive section, clearly implying that the captain expects the saucer to be incapable of warp travel on its own.

...After the worst our heroes can throw at said saucer, is the point. We can't say it's because of some specific innate feature of the saucer when it's all about sabotaging.

There's no such indication that the saucer accelerates to warp on its own in either episode, and visually in both episodes the saucer is definitely not travelling at warp when the stardrive section banks away to reverse course even though in "Encounter at Farpoint" it separates moments before at warp.

"EaF" separation is visually confusing, and for all we know Picard did pay heed to Data's warnings and separated at impulse. The thing there is that the saucer remains at high warp, backtracking the combined ship's mad dash away from Q. Either it remains at high warp for the couple of minutes the original trip took (but then it should arrive at Deneb IV before the stardrive, not after), or then it remains at high'ish warp for a while and then crawls STL the rest of the way, or then it remains at moderate warp for hours. Or then Q does some tricks there and the heroes decide not to comment on it because they see no point in insisting that Q be realistic. The bottom line is that the saucer is capable of warp on its own, though.

"AoF" is the damning case. LaForge explicitly separates at sublight, after which the saucer is first supposed to clear the danger zone and then to reach a distant starbase. If there's a "sustainer" functionality there, LaForge will be shot dead at dawn for his murderous actions of denying the saucer that sustenance. But LaForge lives, so it seems the saucer can accelerate to interstellar speeds on its own, and furthermore will not benefit in the slightest from any sort of warp boost.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[RichT]

The simplest assumption is that the probe went up and personal with the alien probe's trail, though.

Not if you know anything about actual astronomy or triangulation.

Which hardly affects anything, though: the Klingon torpedoes now travel 1 AU instead of 40, but still in much shorter time than the eightish minutes lightspeed travel would call for. Basically the same as in ST:GEN.

What exactly are the Klingons firing? Whatever it is seems to be emitted as some form of energy rather than a physical object (which, incidentally, was the production team's intent for photon torpedoes at the time), as opposed to a Starfleet-style physical photon torpedo device as we know it. Do they definitely reach the centre of the cloud? There's no indication on screen that they do. In fact the indication from the Klingon displays is that whatever they fire vanishes as soon as it enters the perimeter of the cloud, not reaches the centre, and the Epsilon IX station explicitly states that the Klingon sensors cannot penetrate the cloud, so they would have no way of knowing how far their projectiles penetrated anyway.

No, the heroes firmly believe the probe will "reach the sun" in that time. Whether it actually would is immaterial: what our heroes believe in defines warp technology for projectiles of that size.

All else is speculation by us, and thus inferior to speculation by the characters. The probe is FTL and takes but eleven seconds to hit the star, the half a dozen seconds of apparent ascent from the surface either included or then not. (Again, the heroes have their expert opinion on that: Worf thinks it makes no difference whether the launch is from the surface or from the orbiting Klingon ship.)

That tells us nothing about how far away the star is. It's possible to model a star system around a small dwarf star with planets much closer to the parent star, and each other, than they are in our own.

"Much larger"? I'll grant "barely larger", and even then I see no reason to think a threshold between "true" and "sustainer" engines should run between those two specific sizes, even if one should exist.

Warp technology in turn is warp technology: a hundred species will come up with a hundred different engines, but they all get called warp engine in the end. If Soran had something different, this is the thing that would warrant mention. Yet Worf categorically says "probe" without knowing the first thing about said probe. (If he thinks it's the same as the ones fired from Amargosa, he's obviously wrong, as the lab had probes of other shapes on the racks - indeed, it had torpedo-shaped and -sized ones. But we never learn that he would be wrong about the performance specs, or that there would be a possibility of variance due to different probe models.)

He never mentions warp and, again, there's nothing in the film to indicate the missile ever travels FTL.

...After the worst our heroes can throw at said saucer, is the point. We can't say it's because of some specific innate feature of the saucer when it's all about sabotaging.

What are you talking about!? I repeat, the saucer is never separated. It never travels under its own power at any point in the episode. The Enterprise-D remains intact throughout. Picard's expectation is that separating the saucer alone is enough to get it to drop out of warp. There's no discussion of "sabotaging" anything aboard the saucer. Unless you think Picard doesn't understand how the saucer's engines work?

"EaF" separation is visually confusing, and for all we know Picard did pay heed to Data's warnings and separated at impulse. The thing there is that the saucer remains at high warp, backtracking the combined ship's mad dash away from Q. Either it remains at high warp for the couple of minutes the original trip took (but then it should arrive at Deneb IV before the stardrive, not after), or then it remains at high'ish warp for a while and then crawls STL the rest of the way, or then it remains at moderate warp for hours. Or then Q does some tricks there and the heroes decide not to comment on it because they see no point in insisting that Q be realistic. The bottom line is that the saucer is capable of warp on its own, though.

It really isn't, though. It's entirely believable that the saucer is dropped off at the outer edge of the Deneb system and then takes several hours at high sublight to make its way to Deneb IV. The stardrive section beats it to Deneb IV despite turning back to confront Q and taking a much less direct route to the planet.

"AoF" is the damning case. LaForge explicitly separates at sublight, after which the saucer is first supposed to clear the danger zone and then to reach a distant starbase. If there's a "sustainer" functionality there, LaForge will be shot dead at dawn for his murderous actions of denying the saucer that sustenance. But LaForge lives, so it seems the saucer can accelerate to interstellar speeds on its own, and furthermore will not benefit in the slightest from any sort of warp boost.

None of that agrees with what we see in the episode. Where is the saucer's warp core and warp engines? If warp engines are arbitrarily powerful and arbitrarily small, as you seem to want them to be a la Star Wars hyperdrives, why have prominent nacelles at all? There's nothing from Probert's original concept, the production team, or the scripts themselves, that suggest the Enterprise-D saucer is capable of independent warp travel, and several sources (like the TNG Technical Manual) that explicitly state it isn't.

 

[Timo]

Not if you know anything about actual astronomy or triangulation.

But no. We have our starship, capable of scanning to a distance of a dozen lightyears or so. We have a probe launched to study a trail to a distance of a lightyear. Pennywise crawling slightly to the side to provide a bigger telescope baseline is by far the least likely way to use a probe (they are never used that way to our knowledge!) inany situation, least of all in this specific one where the heroes launch a separate spacecraft because their own is rendered immobile.

What exactly are the Klingons firing? Whatever it is seems to be emitted as some form of energy rather than a physical object (which, incidentally, was the production team's intent for photon torpedoes at the time), as opposed to a Starfleet-style physical photon torpedo device as we know it.

There's no "as opposed", though: torpedoes consisting of antimatter warheads or optional ambassadors inside Ray-Ban casings look exactly the same as these Klingon weapons, once they clear the launch tube.

Naturally, there could be "short range torps" and "long range torps" and "agile torps" and whatnot. This is fairly irrelevant, though, since it's the smallest casing that we see perform the warp 9+ feat in "The Emissary". A bigger torp could of course theoretically have a faster warp engine. But the small Ray-Ban casing is already maxed out: warp 9+ is as fast as they get, be they torps or starships.

Do they definitely reach the centre of the cloud? There's no indication on screen that they do.

Why would this be of interest? The difference is small at best, and the Klingons sure would be attempting to hit the center. If their weapons weren't up to it, they'd just fly closer to launch.

That tells us nothing about how far away the star is. It's possible to model a star system around a small dwarf star with planets much closer to the parent star, and each other, than they are in our own.

Sure. But why bother? You can't squeeze an eleven-lightsecond third orbit into that model no matter how hard you try, especially when you also want both that third orbit and the fourth to be in the Goldilocks zone. Broad zones work better with big stars, and you want to avoid the tidal messes of a small system anyway.

He never mentions warp and, again, there's nothing in the film to indicate the missile ever travels FTL.

Save for covering the distance from the third planet to the star in eleven seconds. While launching at a walking pace, like most Trek ordnance. Just face it, there's no real way to make the numbers work to your advantage here: FTL is FTL. And there's no particular reason to think that the missile should be banned from having a warp engine, since we already know that smaller projectiles can do better.

What are you talking about!? I repeat, the saucer is never separated. It never travels under its own power at any point in the episode. The Enterprise-D remains intact throughout.

And? The plan is what matters. The heroes believe in warp speed separation now, regardless of whether they dared do it in "EaF" or not. They also believe they can bring the saucer out of warp with their trickery. So it sort of covers both angles: the saucer can do warp on its own, and can be forced out of warp. And the debate would be on what this forcing entails, specifically.

Picard's expectation is that separating the saucer alone is enough to get it to drop out of warp. There's no discussion of "sabotaging" anything aboard the saucer. Unless you think Picard doesn't understand how the saucer's engines work?

I'm simply convinced you don't. Or me. It's Picard who does. But he is talking about sabotage and nothing else. The hero team is trying to take a working starship and make it stop working so that Data doesn't win. What is expected to happen should be a surprise to Data, rather than business as usual.

It really isn't, though. It's entirely believable that the saucer is dropped off at the outer edge of the Deneb system and then takes several hours at high sublight to make its way to Deneb IV. The stardrive section beats it to Deneb IV despite turning back to confront Q and taking a much less direct route to the planet.

So several minutes at up to warp 9.5 amounts to "outer edge of the Deneb system"? Sorry, not buying. The Galaxy isn't that crappy a piece of work.

Granted, the action no doubt begins at "inner edge": the expository dialogue is best justified if the heroes just dropped out of warp and can now start discussing their mission. But by definition the ship isn't in any sort of subspace tar pits yet if it just warped in - so warping out at ludicrous speed should really put some distance between the destination and the combined ship.

None of that agrees with what we see in the episode.

All of it does, while all your objections are based on preconceptions of what a warp engine ought to look like. And we already know that you don't know.

Where is the saucer's warp core and warp engines?

Who cares? You can't tell where the core is in most starships, and it's only with Starfleet ships that you generally can even tell the engines are where the blue glow is. The saucer of course has blue glow aplenty, on the aft dorsal surface, so there's no real problem in placing a warp engine on that particular spacecraft.

If warp engines are arbitrarily powerful and arbitrarily small, as you seem to want them to be a la Star Wars hyperdrives, why have prominent nacelles at all?

Good question, but the answer is "you don't". Most shipbuilders leave nacelles ashore, after all. Even Starfleet doesn't need standoff nacelles for all its high-warp vehicles, including its torpedoes, Defiants and a range of background ships. (Curiously, the fastest ships have the smallest nacelles, as in VGR... Perhaps that's how the tech works, since tiny torps can outrun big starships?)

There's nothing from Probert's original concept, the production team, or the scripts themselves, that suggest the Enterprise-D saucer is capable of independent warp travel, and several sources (like the TNG Technical Manual) that explicitly state it isn't.

And? None of that is there on screen, as part of Star Trek.

Writers come and go. What they fail to put on screen never exists. What they do put there is subject to interpretation by others. And the saucer flies at warp in three episodes, at least in the imaginations of the heroes ("EaF", "AoF", "Brothers"), and they are the only ones who really know. Not you, not me, not Probert, not Sternbach. That is, unless you, me, Probert or Sternbach somehow manage to slip the knowledge into Star Trek proper; there's still time...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Captain Crow]

And the saucer flies at warp in three episodes, at least in the imaginations of the heroes ("EaF", "AoF", "Brothers")

In "Encounter at Farpoint" and "The Arsenal of Freedom" the saucer was coasting at warp speed for a short period of time since the separations were done at warp speed. If they had separated to break the main bridge's control in "Brothers" the saucer again would have coasted very briefly at warp since they would have been traveling at warp when they separated.

 

[ChallengerHK]

In "Encounter at Farpoint" and "The Arsenal of Freedom" the saucer was coasting at warp speed for a short period of time since the separations were done at warp speed.

Which begs the question of whether warp drive is inertialess. At least in the Alcubierre design, it is; without the field in place there would be no movement except that which was due to impulse, and there would be no coasting.

 

[RichT]

Pennywise crawling slightly to the side to provide a bigger telescope baseline is by far the least likely way to use a probe (they are never used that way to our knowledge!) inany situation

And yet we do that now, combining telescopes that are at most separated by a linear distance of 12,700km to massively increase the effective aperture through astronomical interferometry. If you're trying to more accurately map the path of a probe while not moving, its a perfect use of a probe.

There's no "as opposed", though: torpedoes consisting of antimatter warheads or optional ambassadors inside Ray-Ban casings look exactly the same as these Klingon weapons, once they clear the launch tube.

Who said anything about antimatter? We don't know anything about the projectiles the Klingons launched.

Naturally, there could be "short range torps" and "long range torps" and "agile torps" and whatnot. This is fairly irrelevant, though, since it's the smallest casing that we see perform the warp 9+ feat in "The Emissary". A bigger torp could of course theoretically have a faster warp engine. But the small Ray-Ban casing is already maxed out: warp 9+ is as fast as they get, be they torps or starships.

I repeat, we don't know anything about the projectiles the Klingons launched. We don't even know if they're a physical object at all.

Why would this be of interest? The difference is small at best, and the Klingons sure would be attempting to hit the center. If their weapons weren't up to it, they'd just fly closer to launch.

Why? Have you not heard of "firing across someone's bows" to provoke them?

And? The plan is what matters. The heroes believe in warp speed separation now, regardless of whether they dared do it in "EaF" or not. They also believe they can bring the saucer out of warp with their trickery. So it sort of covers both angles: the saucer can do warp on its own, and can be forced out of warp. And the debate would be on what this forcing entails, specifically.

I'm simply convinced you don't. Or me. It's Picard who does. But he is talking about sabotage and nothing else. The hero team is trying to take a working starship and make it stop working so that Data doesn't win. What is expected to happen should be a surprise to Data, rather than business as usual.

There's literally no discussion of any sort of sneaky sabotage to the saucer in any way.

PICARD: Mister La Forge, prepare for saucer separation.
WESLEY: Sir, we're at Warp nine-point-three.
PICARD: I am aware of the risks, Ensign. When the umbilical splits, we should regain primary control, do you agree?
LAFORGE: Yes, sir.
PICARD: The saucer module should fall out of warp in two minutes. Be prepared to sweep back. Pull it in with a tractor beam.
WORF: Aye, sir.
PICARD: Initiate auto sequence.

Indeed, the dialogue suggests they are doing nothing beyond regaining control of the ship's warp drive – its only warp drive – by separating the saucer and thereby releasing Data's command lockouts. Again, the script clearly indicates that Picard believes the saucer cannot travel at warp on its own.

So several minutes at up to warp 9.5 amounts to "outer edge of the Deneb system"? Sorry, not buying. The Galaxy isn't that crappy a piece of work.

Granted, the action no doubt begins at "inner edge": the expository dialogue is best justified if the heroes just dropped out of warp and can now start discussing their mission. But by definition the ship isn't in any sort of subspace tar pits yet if it just warped in - so warping out at ludicrous speed should really put some distance between the destination and the combined ship.

I genuinely don't understand what you're trying to say here.

Who cares? You can't tell where the core is in most starships,

It's very obvious on MSDs, and we've seen the MSD for the Enterprise-D's saucer countless times on screen. There is no warp core. There's many times when the ship having a second warp core would have been a useful advantage even ignoring that the saucer

and it's only with Starfleet ships that you generally can even tell the engines are where the blue glow is. The saucer of course has blue glow aplenty, on the aft dorsal surface, so there's no real problem in placing a warp engine on that particular spacecraft.

You mean... you're honestly arguing that they hid warp engine exhausts in the saucer's windows?

Good question, but the answer is "you don't". Most shipbuilders leave nacelles ashore, after all. Even Starfleet doesn't need standoff nacelles for all its high-warp vehicles, including its torpedoes, Defiants and a range of background ships. (Curiously, the fastest ships have the smallest nacelles, as in VGR... Perhaps that's how the tech works, since tiny torps can outrun big starships?)

So your argument here is that smaller warp engines are more powerful than bigger ones? What sort of nonsense is that? Why bother having giant external nacelles at all when by your argument a tiny nondescript box stuffed away in a cargo bay somewhere would apparently be much more efficient!?

And? None of that is there on screen, as part of Star Trek.

Writers come and go. What they fail to put on screen never exists. What they do put there is subject to interpretation by others. And the saucer flies at warp in three episodes, at least in the imaginations of the heroes ("EaF", "AoF", "Brothers"), and they are the only ones who really know. Not you, not me, not Probert, not Sternbach. That is, unless you, me, Probert or Sternbach somehow manage to slip the knowledge into Star Trek proper; there's still time...

Strange how you seem to be ignoring an awful lot of what's on screen to further your own argument when it suits you.

 

[Timo]

In "Encounter at Farpoint" and "The Arsenal of Freedom" the saucer was coasting at warp speed for a short period of time since the separations were done at warp speed.

Uh, no. The separation in "Arsenal" was very explicitly at standstill, which is the very reason we now need to believe the saucer can accelerate to warp all on its own.

The other half of the equation is that we have no real reason to think the saucer couldn't do that. Warp engines are easily bolted onto random mining rigs and whatnot. Why would the saucer lack one? Especially since it's never said to lack one.

And yet we do that now, combining telescopes that are at most separated by a linear distance of 12,700km to massively increase the effective aperture through astronomical interferometry. If you're trying to more accurately map the path of a probe while not moving, its a perfect use of a probe.

Which then begs the question of why probes are never used that way.

Assuming that this episode is our one and only instance of baseline extension happening in the entire Trek universe is one way to go. The other is much, much simpler: the heroes had to stand still, so they sent a probe to go places.

There being nothing wrong with it and all, since compact warp engines are a thing, being the point here. A probe that travels a lightyear in what looks like perhaps half an hour is merely, and exactly, what we expect of treknology. Effort spent trying to explain this away is IMHO wasted; I only preemptively mentioned how the effort could be made, but what incentive would we have here?

Perhaps a more relevant argument could be that we never quite see the probe the heroes launch. Might be it's the size of the saucer section and this is its excuse of being able to cover a light year in plot time? But again, we don't need to speculate that when we simply see small things in warp action. And if need be, we can argue that the probes that are seen launched by the E-D, with those Vulcan-style rings, might be just a tad larger than photon torpedoes. (And perhaps propelled by ring drives?)

Who said anything about antimatter? We don't know anything about the projectiles the Klingons launched.

We know plenty: they look like photon torpedoes in flight and cross an AU or forty in plot time at FTL speeds. Which, again, is exactly what we would expect.

There's literally no discussion of any sort of sneaky sabotage to the saucer in any way.

Except for the entirety of it. It is all about sabotaging Data's efforts to fly the ship at warp to an unwanted destination.

I genuinely don't understand what you're trying to say here.

The combined ship flies in one direction at its best possible speed for minutes. The saucer does the reverse journey in hours. The saucer thus is basically as good as the combined ship when it comes to warp - otherwise, the reverse trip ought to take months or years.

Our only way to wiggle out of that might be to note that warp drives are sometimes extremely slow close to stars, indeed slower than light (heck, we can see with our own eyes how slow it gets in those time travel eps and movies). Perhaps if the adventure were all deep inside the Deneb system, a sublight-only saucer might stand a chance? But it is highly unlikely to be inside the system.

It's very obvious on MSDs, and we've seen the MSD for the Enterprise-D's saucer countless times on screen. There is no warp core.

See, this I can't accept - you pretending to know how things work and what they look like, when you really don't.

The saucer doing FTL is established. Having a warp core for that would be nice (but perhaps not mandatory), and the MSD certainly isn't an obstacle there. The one on NCC-74656 had what looked like two cores, when there was only one aboard; this is merely us misreading the graphics the other way around.

You mean... you're honestly arguing that they hid warp engine exhausts in the saucer's windows?

Much like they hide it in the nacelles' windows, yes.

Although you have a funny definition of a window there. What I see is oddly patterned blue-glowing things, on a ship that otherwise sports small yellow ovoids for portholes. Since there's no competing explanation for the glow, I say warp drive, just like elsewhere in Trek.

So your argument here is that smaller warp engines are more powerful than bigger ones?

It's not an argument - it's merely the stating of a fact. (Or, if you read carefully, it actually goes "faster ships have smaller nacelles". Aka, go watch TNG, and then watch VGR...)

"Argument" starts when we try to invent a rationale for why this might be. Care to try?

(It's not all that difficult, I guess. In the real world, bullets are faster than planes, and small planes are faster than large ones, as a first approximation. It's a funny world, is all.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[RichT]

Uh, no. The separation in "Arsenal" was very explicitly at standstill, which is the very reason we now need to believe the saucer can accelerate to warp all on its own.

Except we see the ship coasting at impulse immediately prior to and after separation. There's no discussion of the saucer going to warp. There is discussion of the stardrive section going to warp. There is a perfectly good explanation of what's happening without assuming the saucer has magic warp capabilities. And if the saucer has warp capability, why does it not come back its own, and the stardrive section has to go pick it up at the end?

The other half of the equation is that we have no real reason to think the saucer couldn't do that. Warp engines are easily bolted onto random mining rigs and whatnot. Why would the saucer lack one? Especially since it's never said to lack one.

Data's never said to lack one but to claim he has one is crazy.

Which then begs the question of why probes are never used that way.

...That you're aware of. Just to confirm here, your arguments are "the saucer is never explicitly said to lack a warp drive, therefore it has one", but "probes are never shown to be used that way, therefore they can't be"... could you perhaps aim for some logical consistency?

Assuming that this episode is our one and only instance of baseline extension happening in the entire Trek universe is one way to go. The other is much, much simpler: the heroes had to stand still, so they sent a probe to go places.

There being nothing wrong with it and all, since compact warp engines are a thing, being the point here. A probe that travels a lightyear in what looks like perhaps half an hour is merely, and exactly, what we expect of treknology. Effort spent trying to explain this away is IMHO wasted; I only preemptively mentioned how the effort could be made, but what incentive would we have here?

So my effort to explain things is "wasted"; your making shit up wildly at variance with what we see on screen is "sensible". Got it. Incidentally, travelling a lightyear in half an hour would be far beyond Federation technology, requiring a sustained speed of warp 9.9975.

We know plenty: they look like photon torpedoes in flight and cross an AU or forty in plot time at FTL speeds. Which, again, is exactly what we would expect.

LOOK like. Not necessarily ARE.

Except for the entirety of it. It is all about sabotaging Data's efforts to fly the ship at warp to an unwanted destination.

Have you even watched the episode!? They're talking explicitly about getting the ship back under control and then trying to figure out what's happening, not "sabotaging" anything!

The saucer doing FTL is established.

It really isn't.

Having a warp core for that would be nice (but perhaps not mandatory), and the MSD certainly isn't an obstacle there. The one on NCC-74656 had what looked like two cores, when there was only one aboard; this is merely us misreading the graphics the other way around.

And yet Sternbach explicitly designed it that way, with a secondary warp core. Voyager has a history of forgetting features the ship obviously has, most infamously the aeroshuttle, but see also, for example, the secondary navigational deflector in "Collective".

Although you have a funny definition of a window there. What I see is oddly patterned blue-glowing things, on a ship that otherwise sports small yellow ovoids for portholes. Since there's no competing explanation for the glow, I say warp drive, just like elsewhere in Trek.

Andrew Probert, who designed the damn ship, says they're the windows for the arboretum and "low-light viewing lounges".

It's not an argument - it's merely the stating of a fact. (Or, if you read carefully, it actually goes "faster ships have smaller nacelles". Aka, go watch TNG, and then watch VGR...)

The Excelsior and Enterprise-E think this is cute.

 

[matthunter]

The saucer dropping out of warp does not imply it has a warp drive that will be "sabotaged" by separation any moreso than the fact a train carriage disconnected from the engine car gradually slowing to a halt means it had its own motive capabilities that you've now "sabotaged".

 

[Timo]

Except we see the ship coasting at impulse immediately prior to and after separation. There's no discussion of the saucer going to warp.

Which establishes all we need to know: the saucer is proceeding to the starbase at warp (because it really can't do that at impulse), and it did that when launching from a ship that is coasting at impulse.

Anything beyond that takes extra levels of establishing. Sure, LaForge could have jumped to warp briefly to give the boost. We can postulate this, based on our preferences. The idea of the saucer moving to the starbase at warp is not for us to postulate or not, based on preferences, though: impulse travel won't suffice by the general rules of Trek.

There is discussion of the stardrive section going to warp. There is a perfectly good explanation of what's happening without assuming the saucer has magic warp capabilities.

Now that's not a layer of speculation we have to add: nothing about warp capabilities is "magic". There is no onscreen reason for the saucer to lack this mundane technology.

And if the saucer has warp capability, why does it not come back its own, and the stardrive section has to go pick it up at the end?

There's gonna be a "rendezvous". For all we know, the saucer is at warp in order to make that rendezvous, just like it was at warp in order to make the rendezvous at Deneb IV. Nothing worth extra dialogue there.

Data's never said to lack one but to claim he has one is crazy.

Yet Data is not a spacecraft. The saucer is a spacecraft. All Trek spacecraft have warp drive unless otherwise stated for plot purposes. This including shuttles, probes and photon torpedoes - so why not saucers?

...That you're aware of. Just to confirm here, your arguments are "the saucer is never explicitly said to lack a warp drive, therefore it has one", but "probes are never shown to be used that way, therefore they can't be"... could you perhaps aim for some logical consistency?

I go by default. Your extraordinary claims about lack of warp drive in a spacecraft call for evidence. Nothing hinges on probes being used for long baseline interferometry or not, but it's still extraordinary to claim such practice in Star Trek specifically. The Trek universe has warp drives. It doesn't have very large antennas. Removing the former and adding the latter takes active effort on top of default.

Incidentally, travelling a lightyear in half an hour would be far beyond Federation technology, requiring a sustained speed of warp 9.9975.

Bullshit - none of the purported warp scales hold true to what is on screen, and hero ships easily do a lightyear in a matter of minutes when the action calls for that. Say, the Voyager in "Scorpion" when five lightyears to the site of Species 8472/Borg mayhem are spanned in simple plot time at a cautious warp two.

We've yet to hear a warp scale established on screen. But the ones that fail to account for onscreen events just plain don't count.

LOOK like. Not necessarily ARE.

Who cares? You're again vainly struggling against default: Star Trek is the show where glowing things coming out of torpedo tubes fly at warp to targets at distances varying from dangerously close dozens of km to lightseconds and here in TMP to astronomical units. I'm awaiting for extraordinary evidence, not undue hesitation.

Have you even watched the episode!? They're talking explicitly about getting the ship back under control and then trying to figure out what's happening, not "sabotaging" anything!

Hmh? They know Data is a bad guy now. They want to break their own ship so that the connection from the bridge gets severed and the stardrive section can regain control of warp (aka sabotage). They then add that the saucer should fall out of warp.

Now, we have two paths here. One, believe the noncanon Tech Manual that says the saucer drops out of warp on its own no matter what after separation. Two, believe the reaction is the result of hero action. And since we had the saucer nicely manage a significant distance in reasonable time in the pilot episode, we already know it can do better than two warp-minutes, invalidating the TM, so the choice isn't all that difficult.

And yet Sternbach explicitly designed it that way, with a secondary warp core.

Thus establishing a key thing we have to understand about Star Trek: the creators' word really isn't worth much. No real point in bringing it up in these discussions, then.

Andrew Probert, who designed the damn ship, says they're the windows for the arboretum and "low-light viewing lounges".

Which never made an ounce of sense. We know what starship arboretums look like, and they sure don't glow blue from the inside. Indeed, it would be insane to put windows on them: trees don't want to gaze at darkness for 99% of the time, or get exposed to harmful levels of glare 1% of the time, and humans go to those places to forget they are in space.

Instead, warp engines glow blue. (Those, and primitive or broken impulse engines, but this non-primitive ship has red 'uns elsewhere.)

The Excelsior and Enterprise-E think this is cute.

The latter is never suggested to be particularly fast; ships with small nacelles (Intrepid, Prometheus) are the ones said to be flying rings around this sort of competition. And the former got succeeded by ships with shorter nacelles in basically every category, including the next two Enterprises; perhaps it's a school-of-thought thing, and that particular class never is particularly popular.

Really, not only does nacelle size not relate to speed in Star Trek - the presence of nacelles isn't required, either. It just isn't legit to insist on this presence, again by default. Branches off to derivative universes or headcanon are their own thing; this argument here is mainly about exploring what's possible within the rules of existing Trek.

Timo Saloniemi