I'm waiting for someone fairly new to these boards to come in and ask "Why would the Phoenix be collecting buzzards anyway?"
Why does the Phoenix have Bussard collectors?
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Sure it wasn't monkeys?
Y'know, terrifyin' space monkeys?
Y'know, terrifyin' space monkeys?
Damn space eagles... it takes a ship two waves of those bastards just to get to the Phoenix wave.. then there are two of THOSE, and then you get the big freakin' mothership, which is surrounded by more space eagles.
I can still hear their screams when they die... in space...
I can still hear their screams when they die... in space...
Without their natural predator, Space Snakes bred out of control, and eventually evolved into the Cardassians.
Nice job breaking it, Cochrane.
Nice job breaking it, Cochrane.
The port nacelle should be blue, and the starboard nacelle should be hot pink.This thread seems to be going in circles...
And the blue nacelle should be played by William Shatner.
Oh wait, that's a different circular thread.
I'm not sure I would call the warping of space "vague." Counterintuitive, maybe, in the sense that it can be described mathematically but not mechanically and therefore might as well be an accurate (if mind-numbingly complex) way of modeling something relatively simple.
The problem is, we might "find" dark matter and discover it isn't really there, that the gravitational anomaly is the result of some other energy condition not properly modeled or calculated. I've seen it theorized, for example, that a continuous loop of electromagnetic radiation--laser beam in a tube of perfect reflectors, for example--would produce a gravitational field just by virtue of the energy of the light trapped in the tube. The same might be true of galaxies: the energy content of the light they emit could also be producing gravitational fields, as could their reflections off of interstellar dust clouds.
AFAIK, alpha and beta rays both have ionizing effects on living tissue. The only reason they're not considered as such is because they are very easily blocked (a simple t-shirt will usually screen them out).
I figure "theta" is a term with similar meanings as "biogenic," in that it describes radiation with a negative effect on cell structure and DNA. Alpha and beta particles can do that, as can gamma particles. Interestingly enough, so can UV radiation at higher frequencies, and this may be inferred to be responsible for the visible component of theta radiation present in NX-01's decon chamber and the TWOK's dilithium chamber.
Based on a plutonium powered reactor system:
I kinda see it being divided up like this. Four sections shown here. Section 1 would contain the main rocket nozzle for the ship's upper stage engine and four solid motor engines to separate from the booster stage. We never saw the main engine fire (presumably they did this after they deployed the nacelles) but we DID see those four smaller ones fire to jettison the booster.
Section 2 would be the reactor block. Nerva-style, but with alot of late 21st century refinements. Cochrane supposedly constructed the reactor from a nuclear warhead; this being the 21st century, we can assume a MIRV-style device with six to eight reentry vehicles. That would mean eight fuel cores with their control rods and shielding structures feeding into a common combustion chamber. It would probably look something like this.
Once the ship switches to warp flight mode, the valves feeding into the combustion chamber close (the large silver nozzle on the left in the hyperlinked picture) the superheated gas is redirected into a turbine section where it turns a generator shaft and produces electrical power. The gas then travels forward to Section 3: all eight gas streams pass through a helicon array which ionizes the hydrogen electrically. The eight ionized streams would be combined in an intermix chamber (center of Section 3). This is where things get hazy, because it has never been explained exactly what "electroplasma" is or why it has anything to do with warp drive except as a power-transfer medium. If it's only a means to channel energy, then a cathode array in the intermix chamber would charge it up to high voltage and a pair of valves in Section 4 would channel the plasma to the nacelles. If the plasma needs some sort of exotic particle mixture to affect the warp coils, then additional ions would be injected into the intermix chamber and combined with the plasma before splitting. In either case, eight streams in from the reactor/turbine section, two out to the nacelles. The rest of the body of the phoenix would probably be slush hydrogen and radiation shielding.
This is why I originally compared it to the Shenzhou, which has a diameter of 2.8 meters.
The problem I see with you description of the Phoenix's internal layout is that you don't seem to be taking into consideration the lift off/stored position of the warp nacelles. Most everything aft of the control capsule and forward of your line number two would at the time of take off be storage space for the warp nacelles. Anything else in the small remaining area of that section would likely be structural members and control runs. Once the nacelles swing out the majority of that area would be empty.
There isn't even much room for the swing arms/pylons, they're nestled in slots in the sides of the nacelles themselves, their main body pivot point would seem to be on the centerline where your line three crosses the centerline. If the intermix chamber is located within the main body, it too would have to be aft of line two along with any reactor in that section.
And despite it's shape, I'm not convinced that the large bell shaped object is a rocket engine exhaust (although is hard to see what else it might be), there doesn't seem to be room for fuel tanks for a large engine to go along with a bell of that size. Perhaps it is some kind of heat radiator?
We might have to consider that the Phoenix has double reactors (of whatever fuel type), one located in each nacelle.
Manifold?
^Ah, but the Phoenix's warp engines didn't retract all the way into the body while they were stowed. I'd say a good three quarters of their diameter was exposed in the retracted configuration.
David beat me to it, but the nacelles don't retract NEARLY that far into the body. They fit into a pair of recesses along the side, but those recesses themselves are lined with bars that protrude out a bit so I would figure that there is a 1.5 to 2 meter clearance inboard of the nacelles.
You wouldn't need ALOT of fuel, especially in a nuclear-powered device. And almost anything else you could imagine it being, it would work better if it had a different shape; a radiator would want to be expandable to a much larger size, a docking port wouldn't be bell-shaped, and a reentry heat shield would have been installed facing the opposite direction. It's in the wrong position to be a radiation shield and in the wrong direction to be a navigational deflector. It's too sharp to be a high-gain antenna and too shallow to be some kind of ion engine.
But if it does have a nuclear reactor, it might be a magnetic nozzle for a VASIMR-type engine. If Phoenix IS nuclear powered, it would have plenty of juice for it; that simple innovation might explain why Federation ships still use impulse engines two hundred years later, the practice has simply been grandfathered in.
I'd buy that. It would nicely explain what the red glowy things are on the front of the engines.
The nacelles in the retracted position would have had to fit inside the aerodynamic panels that are discarded just prior to the nacelles deployment. If the nacelles are (exactly) ten meters long, then I figure they each are one point three meters in diameter (4' 3"). The launch vehicles diameter is three meters, and allowing a couple of centimeters for the panels thickness and a small measure of clearance so that the nacelles don't actual touch anything while retracted, the nacelles will still consume a health majority of the mid section.
P.S. Your link goes nowhere.
Those panels give the Phoenix's main body plenty of space, though, it's not as if they're conformal with the outer hull.
Besides, VISUALLY, they do not and cannot slide that deep into the hull.
The big nozzle thing in the middle of the four smaller ones might be vital for that one part of the flight we don't see: the return to Earth. It seems unlikely Cochrane would risk a second warp sortie during the test flight. So some badass sublight drive (not necessarily a mere rocket, but rather some more advanced device from the 2030s that makes use of Earth's mastery of artificial gravity) would be a major component of the test rig.
The structure of the nozzle reminds me of some of those old Spaceflight Chronology drawings by Sternbach, from the 21st century chapters. Say, check out his UNSS Bonaventure, whose bell thing seems to be associated in the text with "exhaust plating" and "radiator wings". Or the Liberty class, or his 2055 warp testbed (probably cancelled by WWIII ).
Timo Saloniemi
The structure of the nozzle reminds me of some of those old Spaceflight Chronology drawings by Sternbach, from the 21st century chapters. Say, check out his UNSS Bonaventure, whose bell thing seems to be associated in the text with "exhaust plating" and "radiator wings". Or the Liberty class, or his 2055 warp testbed (probably cancelled by WWIII
).Timo Saloniemi
^Well, without doing the math, it would take about 3 days to travel from the moon to earth with today's technology. Which takes light only 1.26 seconds. So, if they traveled at warp 1 (speed of light) for 3 to 5 seconds, that would be between 9 and 15 days to return to earth with "today's technology".
^ It only takes that amount of time in a Hohman transfer orbit. A brachistochrone trajectory--accelerating all the way through the orbit--could make the same trip in about twelve hours.
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