Warp speed and Nacelle size

[Omega_Glory]

Modern Trek tech books suggest....

Modern Trek Tech books Timo?

Which ones am I supposed to throw away for the modern editon?

 

[Captain Robert April]

Didn't you get the memo?

 

[Omega_Glory]

Memo?

What memo?

Lemme see. Not in there....maybe....nope....how about....hmmmm....could be...ah...in the cookie jar....wait, nope thats the grocery list.

It would appear Captain, that I did not get the memo.

 

[shipfisher]

Regarding the Ambassador engine design, it might be noteworthy that she's the first major starship to lack the prominent blue dome or domes next to the impulse engines since the TOS Constitution. The dome was later/earlier seen on the NX class of starships, where designer intent (albeit noncanon) was for it to manipulate the main warp field. And elsewhere technobabble establishes (canonically, even) that subspace fields can reduce the inertial mass of an object.

I'd thus like to argue along the lines of Shipfisher: that impulse propulsion was made possible by the manipulation of main warp fields for inertia reduction in those ships that have the blue dome(s), and by the use of dedicated subspace field generators in the impulse engines themselves in those ships that lack the domes.

But of course, the reverse could also be true: the ships with the domes are the ones to exhibit the blue glow usually associated with subspace fields in a location close to the impulse engines, so perhaps they are the ones not requiring the main warp field for impulse movement. Instead, the ones that lack the blue glow at the impulse engine area are the ones that have to manipulate the blue glow from the main engines in order to move at impulse. This goes somewhat against Drexler's ideas on the NX-01, but is perhaps better in line with canon cues.

One wonders if the Excelsior might be going for a belt-and-suspenders approach: she has the dome or sometimes two, but she also has these fancy warp engines where there's both the glowing side trench and the occasionally glowing upper "window". In the Ambassador, that top window might be what gives the impulse field (although in the Sovereign which has the top window but not the side ones, it probably gives the warp field), while the Excelsior would have multiple ways of reducing her inertial mass. The Akira would have the cute little windows close to the forward ends of her nacelles for the impulse field, while the larger, longer ones in the main body of the nacelle would be for warp.

100% speculation, of course...

Timo Saloniemi

To keep the speculation going, perhaps NX type subspace field governor/regulator pods became obsolete with the development (pre-TOS) of engines capable of cranking out high performance drive fields without the need for external stabilization. A version of the NX tech may have been resurrected as the TMP refit "blue dome" on the impulse drive, though now being used to somehow enhance its interaction with the fields from the main engines (instead of replacing the mains altogether, which doesn't happen until the NX-10521 according to the TNG Tech manual)

It's interesting that the first use of the new impulse drive in ST:TMP was initiated with Kirk's command "Ahead warp .5" suggesting a new, possibly closer tie with the mains. Perhaps fractional warp factors specified a certain level of inertial mass reduction during the first years the new impulse units were in use, with standard commands later returning to just "Ahead 1/2 impulse" etc.

I think the TNG Tech Manual stated something along the lines of the new impulse driver coils being required to help maintain impulse drive performance despite the increased mass of the Ambassador class prototype relative to earlier ship types, which is somewhat at odds with the contention that previous impulse drives also utilized subspace fields for extra shove.

I still prefer the idea that the new driver coils freed-up the mains to specialize in FTL drive field generation, and the new, increased warp-grunt nacelles became chunkier as a result, thus relating this somewhat tangential post back to the original thread topic.