Shik
Starship database: completed; History of Starfleet: done; website: probably never
Member # 343
posted
I'm watching "Eye Of The Beholder" right now (S7 TNG where Troi relives the murder empathically & the guy jumped into the plasma stream)...
A scene just played where Troi, Geordi, & Data were examining the "crime scene" in the nacelle. The WPS was obviously shut down because there was no plasma flowing from the injectors. As they moved to a wall, we saw Troi framed by the warp coils & the exterior grill.
The grill itself was still blue even without the plasma flowing. So.
-------------------- "The French have a saying: 'mise en place'—keep everything in its fucking place!"
posted
Well, the warp field grilles are blue on the interior when the plasma stream is powered down. However, the exterior seems to be a grayish to copperish color. "Contagion," "Unification," and "10010101" all showed scenes where the Enterprise powered down her nacelles and the grilles turned into the aforementioned color.
On a side note, I used to own a die cast Enterprise-D toy that allowed saucer separation. The warp field grilles on the nacelles were painted copper instead of blue.
-------------------- The philosopher's stone. Those who possess it are no longer bound by the laws of equivalent exchange in alchemy. They gain without sacrifice and create without equal exchange. We searched for it, and we found it.
posted
Maybe those electroplasma really like floating around those nacelles, even when the injector is shut off. There was that time when the Ent-D lost all her subspace equipement due to that brother and sister duo, they spoke of 'saturating the nacelles'. I guess those things holds electroplasma really well. Perhaps they need to completely purge the nacelles to get rid of the blue glow.
-------------------- "God's in his heaven. All's right with the world."
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
First of all, the blue glow in the warp engines, even while not in use, are glowing, because "the engines are being kept warm" so the ship can go to warp quickly. Secondly, while at warp speeds, the star ship "turns" by the plasma flow into one nacelle being more than that of the other nacelle. For example, if the Enterprise was at warp 5, and Captain Picard ordered the ship to go left, after the nameless ensign piloting the ship inputted the command into the helm computer, the computer would route more warp plasma the the port (left) warp nacelle, than to the right nacelle, thus producing a heavier warp field on the left side of the ship than on the right side. This would cause the Enterprise to go left, and when the desired course had been achieved, the computer would equalize the plasma flow to both nacelles, causing the Enterprise to go straight. Third, and lastly, the fusion reactors that power the impulse engines in Federation star ships produce an energetic plasma, that is then passed through a subspace accerator coil, which produces a non-propulsive subspace field, that lowers its ships' apparent mass, making the impulse engines' job somewhat easier.
-------------------- Fry- How will we get out of this? George Takei's head- Maybe we can use some kind of auto-destruct code like one-A, two-B, three-C... (Bender's head blows up) Bender- Now everybody knows! -Futurama's obligatory Star Trek episode
Registered: Aug 2001
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Da_bang80
A few sectors short of an Empire
Member # 528
posted
how does that thing lower the mass of the ship? try to dumb it down a little too. i'm not that good at understanding this technical star trek stuff
-------------------- Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. The courage to change the things I cannot accept. And the wisdom to hide the bodies of all the people I had to kill today because they pissed me off.
posted
For a minute explination, see the 1/2001 issue of Star Trek: The Magazine and read the stuff on page 43 (no, I mean 47. na, i'm just kidding.)
quote:The future is the past, the past is the future; Temporal paradoxes give me headaches. Capt. Kathryn Janeway
-------------------- Fry- How will we get out of this? George Takei's head- Maybe we can use some kind of auto-destruct code like one-A, two-B, three-C... (Bender's head blows up) Bender- Now everybody knows! -Futurama's obligatory Star Trek episode
Registered: Aug 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Da_bang80: how does that thing lower the mass of the ship? try to dumb it down a little too. i'm not that good at understanding this technical star trek stuff
We don't know how it lowers the mass... if we did, we'd build one in real life.
That said, it probably "hides" part of the mass in subspace, so that that only a fraction remains in realspace to be pushed around the old fashioned way. Bob Mercer and I, along with others at various times, have figured it would have to lower the mass by a factor of several million in order to not expend the ship's entire fuel supply in one 0.25 c jaunt.
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