Why does the Phoenix have Bussard collectors?

[B.J.]

Regarding the reentry/recovery, they wouldn't necessarily need to have a heat shield if they were going less than Mach 5 relative to the atmosphere. The Phoenix was going nearly straight up from the Earth, not into orbit, and wouldn't need to shed any orbital speed. It's just a question of how fast they were going when they got back to Earth, and I would think, given the technology shown, that it would be fairly easy to slow down before hitting the atmosphere. So, if they did slow down enough not to need a heat shield, they could bring back the entire ship easily.

 

[JarodRussell]

Because we the viewers associate glowing red endcaps with warp nacelles

Not anymore.


btw:

Because we the viewers associate glowing red endcaps with warp nacelles - and they wanted something instantly recognizable (TOS homage) on the Phoenix.

In-universe reason? I got nothin'.

Because they think fans are dumb and so they put something recognizable as a warp drive-like thing on it. in universe, I got nothing.

Haha!

 

[Patrickivan]

Okay, how about this for an idea.

When the concept of the warp drive system as a whole was conceived, perhaps the bussard collectors were part of that system.

While it was not a practical use componant for this ship's short duration flight time, it was a critical componant of the overall warp drive system and therefore was a requirement to have on this testbed vehicle... They would have collected valuable data for future use.

 

[beamMe]

^^^
My first thought was that the cockpit/crew capsule did separate from the rest of the ship and was the only piece of the craft to make it back, with the rest burning up or being slagged beyond all recognition during reentry.

But then Picard said that the Phoenix was on display at the Smithsonian--I guess that still wouldn't preclude that he was referring only to the capsule though...

Perhaps they parked the warp-ship at the ISS and came down in capsule or lander that was already up there when Cochrane was working on his warp-project before the war.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I've always assumed that older model space craft (TOS Enterprise et al) stored the matter/antimatter reactors in those red caps and that all that heavy equipment in engineering was mainly electrical transforming equipment that turns the terawatt output from the reactors into useable power for the ship's systems and weapons. The TMP intermix shaft could be interpreted the same way.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Regarding the reentry/recovery, they wouldn't necessarily need to have a heat shield if they were going less than Mach 5 relative to the atmosphere. The Phoenix was going nearly straight up from the Earth, not into orbit, and wouldn't need to shed any orbital speed. It's just a question of how fast they were going when they got back to Earth, and I would think, given the technology shown, that it would be fairly easy to slow down before hitting the atmosphere. So, if they did slow down enough not to need a heat shield, they could bring back the entire ship easily.

But how would they LAND it? Phoenix doesn't have landing gear or wings; you take it into the atmosphere at Mach 5 and it's basically a warp-driven artillery shell.

Cochrane had been planning this flight for months, so I imagine he probably delivered the ship to a Weyland-Yutani space station, collected his pay ($800 million for the prototype and its data), and took a drop capsule back to Montana to spend his fortune.

 

[Ronald Held]

I thought the the Phoenix was fusion powered, which would be al you would need for a test flight. Also easier to engineer after WW III. Could the red caps have an earlier function which continued through TOS and their movies?

 

[Crazy Eddie]

^ It's very doubtful, considering this was just a prototype with no flight experience at all. In neither of his two appearances did Cochrane give the impression of an engineering genius who can foresee design requirements in his head without even NEEDING experience, so the cosmic similarity may be considered something of a coincidence.

How about this: the two nacelles each contained a polywell fusion reactor in the end cap with plasma ducted through a set of driver coils in the nacelle housing. The pylons contained feed lines from the ship's internal LH2 tank.

 

[Saquist]

Been a while since I watched FC. Do they explicitly say that the Phoenix used a M/AMR? If not, I don't see a need for one of those either. A short flash of warp jump might just need a big enough battery. Remember, the in-aptly named "warp core" is really just the power supply to the warp engines. The closest to official explanation in the TNG:TM would have us believe that the M/AM reactor simply generates the wattage to power these huge warp engines. The engines are the critical part to warp speed, not where the power comes from. There's nothing magical about the energy so generated, it's just happens to be the most efficient way to make that much sustained power in a ship-portable system. Enough D-cells would do the job too, if only for a short time.

Also, let's not compare these engines to a runabout's. A runabout is capable of high warp speeds sustained for weeks at a time, where the Phoenix broke light-speed for a few seconds. Hardly comparable.

--Alex

We have to assume that it is a M/AR.
Enterprise and the other ships were using M/AR's not fusion powerplants which would have made sense for the time period. The producers...(same ones on ENTERPRISE) are just taking our intelligence for granted.

Or the just had NO idea what they were doing. But it sounds like the former. Berman is a tight wad....he had no vision and that's why DS9 VOY and ENT are just the same iterations of the same form with no substance.

You can't make a warp ship out TITAN II missle with 21 century Technology of Star Trek. That's why Trek made the transition from sci fi to Fantasy under Berman

(and Yes I generally blame everything on Berman)

 

[ProwlAlpha]

I never really thought that the Phoenix was a warp ship, more like a warp demonstrator to show that the technology is feasible and then his investors would give more money for a better designed ship.

 

[Vance]

the warp core requires a matter/antimatter reaction.

I can't remember, did FC mention a warp core for the Phoenix? That would be a bit of a continuity rift there. That was supposed to be new tech for the Galaxy and onwards - it just keeps getting retconned back to TOS, though it shouldn't be.

Anyway, on the similar tangent, M/AM was also supposed to be relatively new tech for the TOS era, with most ships relying on fusion (technically, 'hard fusion') engines. This is why anything NOT a starship is damn slow, or has fuel issues, etc. The Enterprise was supposed to be the tech-equivalent of the then-new nuclear carriers in the US Navy.

Either way, it seems more likely that Cochrane was salvaging a fusion-system of some sort for the power core. I have no idea how he could manage to have a high-energy ECM container for AM planet-side.

Keep in mind, this is another issue where TOS explicitly said Earth did not have the nuclear holocaust. WWIII happened, but not with nukes. Makes it even more of a mess, doesn't it?

As for the presence of the bussards? No idea there. Cochrane may have thought to capture deuterium once the launch was underway, I suppose. The bussards don't have to get anti-deuterium. The plan old normal isotope will do quite fine for a fusion furnace.

 

[ProwlAlpha]

They did talk about the intermix chamber and that is a major component in the warp core of the Phoenix. A computer graphic does describe the Phoenix's warp drive as a space warp generator, maybe thats a pre-warp engine thing.

 

[Vance]

They did talk about the intermix chamber and that is a major component in the warp core of the Phoenix. A computer graphic does describe the Phoenix's warp drive as a space warp generator, maybe thats a pre-warp engine thing.

The intermix chamber is a TMP invention, as far as the name goes. They would have to have one in TOS too, of course, since that's just the place where the matter and anti-matter collides. It would be the biggest part of the generator, of course, since that's where your power comes from.

Of course, if the Phoenix had an intermix chamber, then it had to be a M/AM reactor... which makes no sense.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Unless it wasn't matter and antimatter being combined. The intermix chamber could have served as a regulator to balance something else.

 

[B.J.]

Regarding the reentry/recovery, they wouldn't necessarily need to have a heat shield if they were going less than Mach 5 relative to the atmosphere. The Phoenix was going nearly straight up from the Earth, not into orbit, and wouldn't need to shed any orbital speed. It's just a question of how fast they were going when they got back to Earth, and I would think, given the technology shown, that it would be fairly easy to slow down before hitting the atmosphere. So, if they did slow down enough not to need a heat shield, they could bring back the entire ship easily.

But how would they LAND it? Phoenix doesn't have landing gear or wings; you take it into the atmosphere at Mach 5 and it's basically a warp-driven artillery shell.

Easy - parachute. You can easily send out a drogue chute to slow your descent, and then deploy a fully steerable parafoil for the landing. The X-38 proved the second part is possible. As for it not having landing gear, it's not completely necessary, especially for a one-shot deal. If you land in water, you deploy some air bags.

 

[ProwlAlpha]

Unless it wasn't matter and antimatter being combined. The intermix chamber could have served as a regulator to balance something else.

Unless the Phoenix was completely radical from what Federation vessels use in the future, by the way Geordi and his team worked on it, I think it that the Phoenix's M/AM is an extremely simple one or two shot warp trip.

It would be like placing a jet engine on a prop plane to show that the jet engine works.

 

[Search4]

I happen to believe the Phoenix is fusion powered... for a short jump. Its not a practical exploration ship, after all. However, some of the auxiliary drawings indicate M/AM, like the blow-up chart that was made at time of the movie release. I will try to get a clear image of that. Not 'canon' but that's what someone was thinking.

Part of the ship - the booster, the four covers - clearly were abandoned and would have had to be recovered or remade if Picard had seen this in the Smithsonian. However the 'bottom' of the capsule is scored with lines that resemble shuttle heat resistant tiles. So, parachutes / re-entry seems quite possible for the capsule, with the main ship body remaining in orbit or possibly burning up on re-entry.

I can deliver some detailed pics if anyone is interested.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Unless it wasn't matter and antimatter being combined. The intermix chamber could have served as a regulator to balance something else.

Unless the Phoenix was completely radical from what Federation vessels use in the future, by the way Geordi and his team worked on it, I think it that the Phoenix's M/AM is an extremely simple one or two shot warp trip.

It could have been a primitive, fusion-powered system instead.

Rather than using antimatter, the Phoenix could have used multiple fusion cells instead and the intermix chamber regulated the energy plasma to the nacelles. It would be a much more low-powered and simplified version of the later engines Geordi and his staff normally worked on.

A dilithium crystal-controlled matter/antimatter reaction is the ideal power source for generating energy plasma for high-speed or long-range warp vessels, but for a short-range test craft like the Phoenix, fusion would probably be sufficient--and perhaps the only thing Cochrane could get his hands on during the post-atomic horror era, IMO. Cochrane may not even have heard of dilithium crystals before until after first contact with the Vulcans...

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Regarding the reentry/recovery, they wouldn't necessarily need to have a heat shield if they were going less than Mach 5 relative to the atmosphere. The Phoenix was going nearly straight up from the Earth, not into orbit, and wouldn't need to shed any orbital speed. It's just a question of how fast they were going when they got back to Earth, and I would think, given the technology shown, that it would be fairly easy to slow down before hitting the atmosphere. So, if they did slow down enough not to need a heat shield, they could bring back the entire ship easily.

But how would they LAND it? Phoenix doesn't have landing gear or wings; you take it into the atmosphere at Mach 5 and it's basically a warp-driven artillery shell.

Easy - parachute. You can easily send out a drogue chute to slow your descent, and then deploy a fully steerable parafoil for the landing. The X-38 proved the second part is possible. As for it not having landing gear, it's not completely necessary, especially for a one-shot deal. If you land in water, you deploy some air bags.

There are major corporations who have blown millions of dollars and multiple test flights trying to figure out how to recover a rocket stage at sea in the manner you describe. All of these organizations have far greater resources than Cochrane's team, more money, more infrastructure, and every one of them depends on the cooperation of NASA--using their tracking network and recovery ships--for the recovery effort to be even SLIGHTLY feasible. To this day, they still haven't been able to do it successfully, and this with a simple liquid-fueled rocket stage that consists of nothing more than a rocket engine and some tankage.

This is one of those things that's a HELL of a lot easier said than done, and Cochrane is an alcoholic warp drive hobbyist in the middle of Montana, which is about the farthest possible point from any major bodies of water.

All realistic considerations intact, the Phoenix did NOT enter the atmosphere or land anywhere. Of course, like most things in First Contact, this particular aspect of the mission got totally handwaved right out of the space time continuum and we're stuck wondering how the hell Cochrane managed to get back to his missile complex just a couple of hours after his space flight. I suppose Berman/Braga assumed he just BEAMED back down using the Phoenix' "transportator," which is basically a transporter that can only beam one person at a time and takes 10 seconds to materialize someone on the surface (instead of the usual 5).

I never really thought that the Phoenix was a warp ship, more like a warp demonstrator to show that the technology is feasible and then his investors would give more money for a better designed ship.

There's no particular reason for that demonstrator to be a manned spacecraft, though. If it was simply a technology demonstrator, Cochrane would have launched a robot spacecraft with a simple test program, something that bore a close resemblance to Friendship One (as it stands, that design may have been one of the Cochrane team's very first paying projects).

 

[Bill Morris]

The Phoenix wouldn't have used fusion (lots of power but too slow, since even the best reactor would have to produce power little by little) but rather antimatter (all its power already on tap), probably in the form of positrons stored in a magnetic bottle, which pack the same punch per gram as antideuterium or any other other kind of antimatter (as per Einstein's most famous formula), are the easiest kind to produce and certainly the first kind of antimatter to be used as fuel for spacecraft, and might well have been in use before WWIII.

As for the Bussard collectors, remember that in FC Cochrane mentioned Star Trek and built his prototype in Bozeman, Montana, the birthplace of Brannon Braga, where there might have been a Star Trek museum housing mock-ups, including one with flashing red nacelle caps lit by LEDS or whatever, from which he scrounged whatever he could use, including possibly the entire nacelle housings, after the tragic destruction of the museum in the war--meaning they were fake Bussard collectors that he didn't bother to change or remove. If not a Trek mock-up, the nacelles still could have been from something else with existing caps that resembled Bussard collectors.

By the way, what the Bussard collectors take in (and they don't even do it at warp) is protons. Astrophysicists deny the existence of H2 molecules (the most stable form of hydrogen) in space. Unlike H2, atomic hydrogen and free protons in space are fairly easy to detect, while H2 is too stable and quiet to detect if it's out there. Calculations of the red shift leading to theories like the Big Bang and expanding universe take free protons in space into account but allow for not even the tiniest amount of H2.