Warp Core: TMP and TWOK

[topcat]

The problem with the warp core in these two films can be summed up easily when you look at the older thread on forced perspective and back drop painting used to create a longer ship.

the actual warp core on all the schematics for enterprise refit and excelsior show the warp core itself stretching down from the blue warp crystal at the top of the saucer directly down the dorsal neck and ending at the antimatter pods directly on the bottom of the hull.
The spot where the warp core tube meets the level of main engineering and scottys master diagnostic panel is a large thick disk that houses the actual reaction chamber. and in the TWOK photos, the horizontal conduit tube travels from the warp reaction chamber to the exactly center of the nacelles where it branches off into the nacelle feed lines.
issues are as follows.
1. the official deck plans and movie itself has the dilythium crystal tower perhaps 30 feet away from the actual warp core tower and reaction chamber and feeder line. And absolutely no clear way to get anything between the two.
2. Early manuals show the horizontal tube as being the actual reaction chamber. WHY?
3. The slide down safety doors were meant to isolate the individual chambers but still allow the chambers to generate full warp power for the ship to survive battle.
1. issue is how does it cut the sections off from each other but still allow for plasma flow
2. How can they be called reaction chambers when the matter and anti matter has already been combined?
4. length of the horizontal conduit. In the perspective book the horizontal conduit was built from 4 foot long sections for a combined length of 53 feet. The issue is that if the distance from the warp core to the center point of the warp nacelle pylons is 53'.
1. How much of the secondary hull has to be removed in order to fit the new distance of that horizontal conduit?

5. The impulse crystal at the top of the stack. For all intents and purposes, various refit diagrams seem to show the impulse crystal as being a fusion tokomak that feeds directly into TNG style impulse reactors. My questions pertaining to that:
1. is the crystal a power tap for the warp core to feed directly INTO the impulse drive to create extra thrust for the impulse engines? In TNG Starfleet runs an anti matter line up to the impulse reactors to inject small bits of anti matter for extra impulse power/speed in an emergency. My thought has always been if this was the first attempt at doing so. But just simpler?
2. Is the impulse crystal merely a feeder line so that low grade impulse reactor plasma can be injected into the warp core to help with start up procedures for when the core is down for maintenance?
I ask because when the warp core was down on TNG, the pulsing glow was still seen coming down and up the stack into the reactor chamber.

 

[drt]

I think a lot of the discrepancies arise from two main factors: A. Trying to retcon TNG technology to what we saw in TMP/TWOK, B. Limitations in the productions themselves that forced compromises.

But to answer some of your questions:

1. "No connection to 'Dilithium chamber'": some fan produced deck plans have hypothesized a connection to the intermix tubes on the deck(s) below the chamber, might also be worth pointing out that the dialog in TWOK would imply that this is the "main energizer" (but that gets dropped since there isn't a TNG equivalent), which perhaps wouldn't require being tied into the engine tubes (note that this room wasn't part of the TMP set)
2. "horizontal tube in early manuals": not sure to which manuals you are referring, but the original intent (based on the TMP Kimble cutaway annotation) seems to be that the matter-antimatter reactor was at the base of the vertical tower, and the glowing tubes themselves being more for power transfer (Probert simply calls them the "impulse shaft" and "warp drive shaft" in his preproduction art cutaway), I'd assume for this set-up the reasoning for having the primary controls at the intersection would be so that the engineers could distribute power between the warp engines and the primary hull (impulse engines, main phasers, shields, etc.)
3. "Slide down safety doors": these were implemented so that Meyer could film on the set at angles not constrained by the forced perspective set. We'll just have to pretend that there was a hole that allowed transfer of warp plasma through the doors
4. Might want to check out some of the fan produced art in the other forum for how others have tried fitting the sets into the exterior models
5. "Impulse crystal": at the time of TMP it wasn't decided how all of these systems tied together, the novelization written by Rodenberry states that impulse power is also a matter-antimatter reaction, assumingly by having the plasma from the reaction being fed through the impulse shaft, then deflected through the crystal and out the impulse engine exhaust (perhaps there was some sort of additional reaction occurring there), by the time of TNG was it decided that impulse was now a secondary fusion-based drive.

 

[STEPhon IT]

Seems the tech people made the designs more complicated than it needed to be. The TOS engine was highly advanced and didn't require the engineering team to wear special suits. When the team has to wear those things for the movies TMP & TWOK gave the belief the technology was a step down from TOS.

 

[drt]

In TMP the engineers only all wore the special suits the first time the warp drive was engaged since they were afraid the engines were going to blow up in their faces. Once Spock arrived most of them went back to a shirtsleeves environment - it was more TWOK-on that the engineering staff wore the suits 100% of the time.

 

[topcat]

The suits can be easily dismissed as a mere safety feature. The coolant system uses a rather highly toxic material. In TWOK it merely causes horrid burns and lung damage similar to mustard gas. In First Contact it dissolves organic material.
The only reason we would see suits worn in TMP and in TWOK is that the engine room in TOS was a separate compartment from the actual reactor, except where the reactor core protruded in for the twin triangles/dilithium crystal access. In TOS engine room, the only time you needed one was when the coolant system leaked due to reactor core problem, but in TOS the only way those gases would be injected into main engineering would be the result of a core breach and thus not going to do you any good.
I remember TOS impulse core was standard fusion reaction, no anti matter involved. And ENT impulse was just regular fusion power as well.
Impulse engines have always seemed to be the emergency power supply. And if the impulse drive is just a secondary function of the warp core, any time you had to turn the reactor core off... youd be a sitting duck for anything and everything.

 

[Christopher]

issues are as follows.
1. the official deck plans and movie itself has the dilythium crystal tower perhaps 30 feet away from the actual warp core tower and reaction chamber and feeder line. And absolutely no clear way to get anything between the two.

That's because they needed to add a chamber to the set where Spock could die, and they put it where there was room on the set rather than applying any real engineering thinking to it. I've never been able to make sense of it. My best guess is that it's the top of a conduit leading down to the lower decks where the antimatter is stored, but I don't know what exactly it would be for.

2. Early manuals show the horizontal tube as being the actual reaction chamber. WHY?

Because that's exactly what it was meant to be. It sounds like you're thinking in terms of the later TNG design where the vertical tubes were merely injector conduits and the reaction took place in the center module. That's not the principle behind the TMP engine. As Rick Sternbach explained it to me once, TNG's engine was a "pulse chamber" design where the matter and antimatter streams met in the dilithium frame in the middle, but the TMP and Voyager engines used a "swirl chamber" design where the matter-antimatter reaction proceeded throughout the length of the conduit, mediated through a vapor-deposited dilithium layer along the walls. (Although if they could vapor-deposit dilithium, then they should've been able to recrystallize it too, I'd think.)

3. The slide down safety doors were meant to isolate the individual chambers but still allow the chambers to generate full warp power for the ship to survive battle.
1. issue is how does it cut the sections off from each other but still allow for plasma flow

That's another of the many things that don't make sense about TWOK.

2. How can they be called reaction chambers when the matter and anti matter has already been combined?

They aren't. The TMP engine cylinder is called the intermix chamber, because the matter and antimatter are intermixing continuously throughout its length.

 

[topcat]

And in regards to the impulse engines being nothing but warp plasma directed up into them from the reactor core,,
The oberth was designed at the same time or slightly before the excelsior and constitution and Miranda refits. But this class from all appearance still uses the traditional fusion reactor based impulse drive. And further more two things from TWOK do much to disprove the warp core powered impulse engine.
1. If the impulse engine is merely an excellerator coil that uses plasma from the warp core,, then why is it that while scotty is desperately trying to restore WARP POWER , which in tng and voyager and some ent episodes as being getting the warp core functional again, the enterprise is limping away from the reliant at impulse power?
2. Scotty stated he couldn't get the warp drive or warp core working until he had the dilithium crystal issue taken care of. So.. that would mean that if the impulse system was powered directly from the warp core, they would not be able to move at impulse.

3. Even in TMP and TWOK, the saucer was still the escape pod for the enterprise and meant to be able to be self propelled after separation. And the standard reason for separation was always given as "warp core going to explode". So if the saucer was designed to operate away from the secondary hull, the impulse engines would have to be the traditional tos/tng fusion reactor.

 

[topcat]

then why do I see the point at which I see the vertical and horizontal tubes called the intermix chamber?

IF the vertical tube had dilithium vapor deposited into it, then why was there any need at all for a dilithium chamber/control room for spock to die in?
Its like,, picard saying "our society no longer has any need for money, but give me ten dollars or ill have worf beat you up for bothering my tea time"
And if the dilithium was vapor plated into the lining of the vertical tubes,, whatever Spock did when he fiddled with the dilithium control room would have done nothing for the ship, just given him an illogical suicide before anyone else died. And he would not have taken the time to do the katra transfer to McCoy.

 

[topcat]

Its a well known fact not every series or movie had the same tech crew. Makes for fun problems we love.
I believe some of my issues with this topic comes from a friend years ago who lent me part of his okuda book collection. And in it, I remember reading that if anyone trained to repair the warp core or impulse engines of a galaxy class star ship could repair those same systems of any other vessel built since Cochrane designed his warp drive.
Its well known that we never SAW the actual intermix chamber before TMP. The best we ever saw was when the crew beamed onto other ships and saw THAT ships fusion or warp core, and normally that was a big sphereical object compase of frosted glass with a glowing interior.

 

[STEPhon IT]

Surely, you guys know all that Treknobabble crap were ret-cons? None of that babble was ever mentioned in TOS. Treknobabble has been the underling catalyst for Star Trek storytelling; it's just not necessary.
Anytime in a story an engine needs tweaking or else something will happen shows its not as good as the engine was in the past. Also, in the films it appeared the refit Enterprise moved slow while in the TOS the Enterprise moved quickly and efficiently. Even the transporters were not working as needed; it would seem after the TOS between the TMP their was a technological collapse. I'm talking about what was seen on-screen and not from Technical Manuals or whatever non-sense which were retroactively explained. In the TOS, or their films did any character ever mentioned escaped pods or separating the saucer for emergencies??? All that stuff were ret-cons, told in a some book, but not shown or mentioned on-screen.

 

[drt]

Some thought went into how the refit Enterprise worked in TMP, which was different from TOS, but then the TMP thinking was essentially chucked for TWOK. TNG had a completely different means of power generation which can't really be retconned onto TMP or TOS because the hardware (and verbal descriptions of how things apparantly worked in the latter) was completely different.

Any attempt to reconcile everything can be a fun mental exercise, but is ultimately futile because there was never much of an effort to make things internally consistent until TNG and its spinoffs.

 

[Timo]

Hmh? That's exactly what makes it not futile!

I'd argue retconning TNG technobabble into the TOS movies is by far the easiest and most elegant way to go. After all, in TNG, the same set elements are used but now in roles actually described in dialogue. And nothing is described in dialogue in the TOS movies!

To start with, the glowing blue tubes are "now" known as "plasma conduits", and that's the trivial assumption for ST:TMP as well. This already puts the "actual machinery" out of sight somewhere belowdecks - just as it was in TOS. It also then necessitates taking the dilithium down there with a dumbwaiter system of some sort, accessed via a pedestal on the floor - just as in TOS. And in ST6:TUC, we get to see where it goes: a "reaction chamber" we all recognize, apparently indeed belowdecks as Scotty looks up in exaltation.

Following the TNG setup solves basically all the plot-related problems, too. The blue tubes aren't essential for power production. They just convey power, and they can convey it from the main m/am reactor, or from alternate, "auxiliary" sources, as needed by the plot. They aren't something the engineers would have to manipulate directly much, so there isn't a shirtsleeves environment around them (until TNG and its ubiquitous forcefields), and people mainly go there in protective gear, as part of a test flight or a dedicated training exercise.

Really, TOS had lots of technobabble relating to things Engineering, warp and power, even if this seldom got connected with any particular set elements. The TOS movies had next to none. So when TNG established pseudo-facts, it wasn't treading on any toes, and didn't contradict anything - meaning that when ENT went the easy and unimaginative way and established the very same pseudo-facts as applying to the 22nd century, it became not just desirable but trivially simple to assume that TOS and the TOS movies would follow the pattern as well. Although nothing forces us to assume that - we also retain full liberty to think that things went from A to B and back to A for some reason.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Christopher]

Some thought went into how the refit Enterprise worked in TMP, which was different from TOS, but then the TMP thinking was essentially chucked for TWOK. TNG had a completely different means of power generation which can't really be retconned onto TMP or TOS because the hardware (and verbal descriptions of how things apparantly worked in the latter) was completely different.

That's true to an extent, but on the other hand, Rick Sternbach and Andrew Probert worked on both TMP and TNG, so there is some degree of conceptual continuity between them. The differences between TMP's and TNG's engines are more a result of refining past ideas (both in-universe and in reality) than a result of completely separate creators devising unrelated ideas.

 

[STEPhon IT]

Basically, meaning ret-conning it to the point the tech is defined by one voice. That's terrible. Not a fan of JJ Abrams movies but after hearing you guys talk such bad religion on stuff you've read not seen I'm glad he altered a lot of the trekno-garbage. There was no need to alter what was done on Star Trek, and only a few cares about that crap. Then implementing this same jargon on Star Trek Enterprise hurts it from being a true prequel because at some point the techniques were changed in the 23rd century.
So on Star Trek, the engines and the tech-lingo was translated like working on a car or a train; simplified. After the series, it's all that Sternbach and Probert non-sense--as if this stuff would really happen. It's really silly for an audience member to know lingo - and praise continuity when all of this is make pretend.

 

[topcat]

didn't Barclay or geordi say the phoenix was just like the enterprise, just more simplistic?

 

[Timo]

So on Star Trek, the engines and the tech-lingo was translated like working on a car or a train; simplified. After the series, it's all that Sternbach and Probert non-sense

I really have no idea what you are ranting about. TOS had no rhyme or reason to its technogarbage - the writers inserted random pseudowords as befitted the episode at hand, and paid no attention to what had been mentioned in a preceding episode. There was no working theory on how the starship flew between stars, other than antimatter and (di)lithium being vaguely involved somehow, sometimes. And even those two elements could not be handled consistently from episode to episode.

Any illusion that TOS had a system going is purely the work of fans interpreting the sum total of the random data after the series folded. And amusingly enough, the contributions of Sternbach and Okuda fall solidly in that category...

Professional, that is, paid contribution to the design of the TOS starship ended with Jeffries and pals finishing the exterior on one hand (with certain implicit ideas about how it worked, wasted as none of it reached the actual episodes), and the string of set designers and directors assigning functions to set pieces on the other hand (but this really didn't happen much - most names didn't get a set piece, most set pieces didn't get a name, and even those that did either weren't used enough to assign a functionality to them, or were later reused completely differently from their earlier appearance). The result, predictably, was a disorganized pile of material nobody had a professional interest in organizing. So, cue fans and their weird ideas of it all somehow describing a "working whole"...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

One issue I notice with the warp core in TWOK in in the first battle with the Reliant. Engineering is hit and the "blast door" just behind the vertical section begins to close, presumably to keep any explosions contained and prevent dangerous radiation away from the rest of the engineering compartment.

However, as it closes it looks like the only way it can be sealed is to bisect the horizontal core which, I'm fairly certain though not a warp engineer, would cause even more problems for the ship and engineering crew.

 

[Timo]

Then again, the tubes are made of very distinct segments. For all we know, they aren't physical structures at all, but forcefields (as especially befits the theory where they are warp cores, rather than plasma conduits). Bisecting would then be a non-issue: the bit of forcefield tubing that blocks the blast door descent path would be shut down and the tube sealed with a transverse forcefield.

Since the ship later regains warp drive while the door remains down, we further need to postulate that the forcefield can later be reactivated, burning through the door material. Or then the door is already transparent to whatever needs to get through to make the warp drive work.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Christopher]

One issue I notice with the warp core in TWOK in in the first battle with the Reliant. Engineering is hit and the "blast door" just behind the vertical section begins to close, presumably to keep any explosions contained and prevent dangerous radiation away from the rest of the engineering compartment.

However, as it closes it looks like the only way it can be sealed is to bisect the horizontal core which, I'm fairly certain though not a warp engineer, would cause even more problems for the ship and engineering crew.

That's the difference between TMP and TWOK. TMP's makers had some concern for plausibility and internal logic, while TWOK's makers did not. So their additions to the engine room make no sense.

Although, granted, TMP's designs aren't perfect. What gets me about the intermix chamber is that its only connections to anything outside itself are to the reactant tanks at the base, the impulse deflection crystal at the top, and the warp engines at the rear. There are no discernible connections between the intermix shaft and the ship's power systems. So how does it power the phasers, or the deflector dish, or the ship in general?

 

[Timo]

Well, again, the design basically goes unseen - of the vast engineering hull, only a ridiculously tiny attic is ever shown. There should be no real difficulty in fitting everything one could ever imagine needing (based on TOS dialogue or backstage concepts) inside the rest of that hull, and still leaving enough room for the cargo hold.

Timo Saloniemi