Galaxy X debate (renamed)

posted on August 19th, 2011, 10:21 am

Funny I missed this entire post you put up, just some food for thought to clarify on some of my assumptions. Do you remember the episode of TNG Hollow Persuits? Near the end when the Enterprise races out of control its because the matter and antimatter injectors were stuck. The core basically is just a delivery system for matter and antimatter to intermix in the articulation frame where the crystals are. So based on the conversation LaForge has with his team, with the injectors stuck they couldnt control the flow of fuel and the core was racing out of control, that episode alone helps alot in understanding how the engine might function. Basically the Enterprise throttle was stuck wide open, and with no way to curb the flow of fuel the core just kept pumping juice to the nacelles, from what we know of matter and antimatter, the more you mix together the more energy you produce. These are the types of episodes that come to mind, that while not totally explaining warp drive, give important tidbits on how it would function in CANON (of the not firing ball type). With all weve seen it shouldnt be hard to come to some logical conclusions.

Heres another thing I find interesting, generally the crew referr to the nacelles as "engines". and they make the ship go, now when the captain orders all availble power to the engines what do you think they mean? Not the warp core, the core produces the power, so the only thing left is the nacelles, and given that they only usually order all power to the warp drive when they want to go faster, that iseems to indicate the more power you dump into the warp coils the faster you go. it makes more sense when you figure the same electro plasma feeds all the other ship systems, and when they really need warp power they just divert the electro plasma to the nacelles and redice the flow to other systems.

Now we may not know exacly how the nacelles do what they do, but we know they DO make a warp field using electro plasma, and it seems likely the more electro plasma getting fed to them is what allows for faster warp factors.

Funny the more we debate about this the more it seems to make sense on how the ship would actually function, to me anyways. What do you think Myles, interested in hearing your thoughts on it.

its an interesting theory, but it assumes we know how dilithium works as well. pumping more and more m/am into the reactor could quite possibly not cause extra power to be produced, maybe dilithium has a fixed limit of how much usable energy it can work in the engine to produce in the form of EP. the dilithium is used to regulate the m/am reaction to avoid it just exploding (as it naturally wants to). we have no idea how dilithium goes about that job. maybe large amounts of m/am being in the reactor increases a different property of the warp reaction, which in turn forces the higher speeds.

to be honest if it was as simple as way too much power being produced, they could just turn all the power hogs on the ship on, and waste all the power being made. turn every holodeck on, turn all the lights on, replicate loads of emergency rations to store, fire all the weapons repeatedly, transport stuff between the transporter rooms over and over, use the deflector gun of doom from BOBW. or if we assume that EP is purely responsible for all the power, blow some conduits near the edge of the ship and dump EP into space.

the episodes where the ship races out of control were rather fun from a story point of view, and i think plot necessitated the engines being stuck on full throttle as you put it, probably wanted to capture the tension from speed.

posted on August 20th, 2011, 1:11 am

Well I could be wrong but I seem to recall there being a few episodes were they mention using the core without Dil, it just is MUCH less efficent (actually IIRC this is one of the tech aspects that Enterprise got right).

The core basically is just a delivery system for matter and antimatter to intermix in the articulation frame where the crystals are

Actually Equinox, they're all part of the same thing. As you may recall in the TNG episode where Scotty came back Scotty is examining the articulation frame when he's in enginering, which is of course located in the canter of the warp core itself (IE: the wider roundish part in the center of the set)

The 'warp core' encompasses the entire shaft, top to bottom. And yes the core IS basically just a matter/antimatter delivery system, thats why it's sometimes refered to as the Matter/Antimatter Reaction Assembly.

Funny the more we debate about this the more it seems to make sense on how the ship would actually function, to me anyways.

Gotta agree there, if you look aside the fictional aspects, it makes good sense.

Warp core works by feeding matter and antimatter into a containment vessel designed to contain the explosion and channel it, aided by the dilithium crystals somehow.
using  the Ent-D as an example, the two orangish tubes leading horizontally away from the intermix chamber are the main EPS taps, the electro plasma is (I would assume) basically sucked into those (which would work with the occasional refrences of the Dil crystals being used to angle the output of the reaction), and somewhere past there that plasma is siphoned off to other tubes (but not the internet kinda tube!) to power other systems, as well as main lines leading to the warp nacelles, phasers, shields, etc. The REAL question is HOW is that electro plasma converted into the energy the ship uses, which I would assume is some form of electricity. My guess is that both the impulse engines and the warp core feed some plasma into a system that uses that heat to superheat some fluid or gas like in any type of system that heats a substence to spin a turbine, that or the 'EPS taps' they always mentiion could just be some other 'trek tech' that does something else to directly convert the plasma to electricity.

In the case of the warp nacelles I seem to recall that often they'll mention the plasma pressure in a nacelle dropping, so that could indicate that the nacelle is (in large part) intended to be a giant pressure vessel for plasma, an while in the nacelle that pressurized plasma is used to do whatever it does to feed massive ammounts of power directly to the warp coils also located inside of the nacelle.

its an interesting theory, but it assumes we know how dilithium works as well. pumping more and more m/am into the reactor could quite possibly not cause extra power to be produced, maybe dilithium has a fixed limit of how much usable energy it can work in the engine to produce in the form of EP.

Well myles its more just taking what we DO know of the mechanics and keeping any supposition as simple as possible (or just going OH THEY USE TREK TECH(tm) TO TAKE CARE OF THAT PART, and purposly leave unexplained parts blank)

On that note, ignore the Dil. We know it's used in SOMETHING in the core, and a core that uses Dil (usually) cant run without it (but having scotty can sometimes override that) without some reconfiguring first.

The core produces plasma, referred to as electro plasma, because one would assume it is used to produce electricity for the vessel (that or it has a massive electric charge, but that seems a tad odd and negates any need to have that dangerous plasma going thru the ship in tubes)

maybe large amounts of m/am being in the reactor increases a different property of the warp reaction, which in turn forces the higher speeds.

Well TNG pretty much visualy explains this whenever they go to high warp, as the lights in the warp core (which appear to show the location of each batch of matter/antimatter as the core feeds them into the intermix chamber) go from very slow to very fast as they use more power, combined with that sound of something banging very quietly when the lights reach the chamber, that would imply that the explosion DOES occur, just in a controlled fashion, and since Enterprise lacked Dilithium, that would imply that Dilithium is not required to prevent that.

posted on August 20th, 2011, 2:58 am

Well I could be wrong but I seem to recall there being a few episodes were they mention using the core without Dil, it just is MUCH less efficent (actually IIRC this is one of the tech aspects that Enterprise got right).
Actually Equinox, they're all part of the same thing. As you may recall in the TNG episode where Scotty came back Scotty is examining the articulation frame when he's in enginering, which is of course located in the canter of the warp core itself (IE: the wider roundish part in the center of the set)

The 'warp core' encompasses the entire shaft, top to bottom. And yes the core IS basically just a matter/antimatter delivery system, thats why it's sometimes refered to as the Matter/Antimatter Reaction Assembly.

Gotta agree there, if you look aside the fictional aspects, it makes good sense.

Warp core works by feeding matter and antimatter into a containment vessel designed to contain the explosion and channel it, aided by the dilithium crystals somehow.
using  the Ent-D as an example, the two orangish tubes leading horizontally away from the intermix chamber are the main EPS taps, the electro plasma is (I would assume) basically sucked into those (which would work with the occasional refrences of the Dil crystals being used to angle the output of the reaction), and somewhere past there that plasma is siphoned off to other tubes (but not the internet kinda tube!) to power other systems, as well as main lines leading to the warp nacelles, phasers, shields, etc. The REAL question is HOW is that electro plasma converted into the energy the ship uses, which I would assume is some form of electricity. My guess is that both the impulse engines and the warp core feed some plasma into a system that uses that heat to superheat some fluid or gas like in any type of system that heats a substence to spin a turbine, that or the 'EPS taps' they always mentiion could just be some other 'trek tech' that does something else to directly convert the plasma to electricity.

In the case of the warp nacelles I seem to recall that often they'll mention the plasma pressure in a nacelle dropping, so that could indicate that the nacelle is (in large part) intended to be a giant pressure vessel for plasma, an while in the nacelle that pressurized plasma is used to do whatever it does to feed massive ammounts of power directly to the warp coils also located inside of the nacelle.

Well myles its more just taking what we DO know of the mechanics and keeping any supposition as simple as possible (or just going OH THEY USE TREK TECH(tm) TO TAKE CARE OF THAT PART, and purposly leave unexplained parts blank)

On that note, ignore the Dil. We know it's used in SOMETHING in the core, and a core that uses Dil (usually) cant run without it (but having scotty can sometimes override that) without some reconfiguring first.

The core produces plasma, referred to as electro plasma, because one would assume it is used to produce electricity for the vessel (that or it has a massive electric charge, but that seems a tad odd and negates any need to have that dangerous plasma going thru the ship in tubes)

Well TNG pretty much visualy explains this whenever they go to high warp, as the lights in the warp core (which appear to show the location of each batch of matter/antimatter as the core feeds them into the intermix chamber) go from very slow to very fast as they use more power, combined with that sound of something banging very quietly when the lights reach the chamber, that would imply that the explosion DOES occur, just in a controlled fashion, and since Enterprise lacked Dilithium, that would imply that Dilithium is not required to prevent that.

Yeah I know the articulation frame is in the reaction chamber on the core, I was just trying to point out the largest parts of the core are pretty much for delivering matter and antimatter. And that the core itself wasnt really considered the "engine" of the ship. And as far as I know Enterprise DID use dilithium in the warp core.

As far as the ships power, I would assume that you would have main line EPS conduits and basically EPS "substations" that would convert and reduce mainline electro plasma to lower useable levels of electricity for other systems. From my understanding and EPS tap is just like an outlet where you can plug things into the ships power grid. Now as far as electro plasma in the nacelle, in one episode we see the plasma injector and the long line of plasma flowing down the length of the nacelle between the warp coils, I would think that the high energy plasma "charges" those coils in some fashion creating your warp field.

And Myles about the episode Hallows Persuit, I had wondered the same thing about using othe systems to keep all that excess energy from going to the warp drive and a couple thoughts came to mind. I would guess they would try to avoid blowing out EPS conduits while at high warp considering the ships SIF was getting near its maximum limit, they wouldnt want to risk causing breaches that might overwhelm the ships SIF. As far as turning everything else on, well I would guess that even with all other systems active the majority of the cores power would still be going to the engines, might buy a little time, but those engines seem like the would use more power then most of the other ship systems combined, save for maybe shields and deflectors. When you look at those main line EPS conduits comming off the warp core they go streight to the nacelles and you dont see any branching off on any schimatics, so while im sure some smaller EPS lines tap off those big ones, I think the warp engines get the lions share of power. And as as far as power hungry systems LaForge says in BobW that the main deflector is one of the only things on the ship that could handle a large amount power like the engines. But it also took him several hours to rig that up, and it blew out the deflector. And we all know how bad it would be NOT having a deflector flying at warp 9. 

posted on August 20th, 2011, 10:33 am

Well TNG pretty much visualy explains this whenever they go to high warp, as the lights in the warp core (which appear to show the location of each batch of matter/antimatter as the core feeds them into the intermix chamber) go from very slow to very fast as they use more power,

actually that doesnt explain it, seeing as when they are in battle, the warp core is giving loads of power to shields and guns but not warp engines. but the core still doesnt flash faster. so obviously more power doesnt necessarily mean core flashes faster.

posted on August 20th, 2011, 3:35 pm

actually that doesnt explain it, seeing as when they are in battle, the warp core is giving loads of power to shields and guns but not warp engines. but the core still doesnt flash faster. so obviously more power doesnt necessarily mean core flashes faster.

Yes unfortunately in TNG theres alot of discrepency with how the vore visually appears. The majoity of the time the only time the core goes faster its usually becasue they are at high warp and even then its erratic at best. For example in Hollows Persuits the core is shown going fast when the ship starts accelerating (which indicates that it has a link to the warp engines) but later when they are flying at warp 9 you can see the core in engineering just looking perfectly normal.