posted
Maybe there are flexible titatium junctional nodes. Or, maybe the warp conduits only come into place when the nacells fold up... i.e. they are closed off at impulse and then when the fold into the correct position, they reach the 'hole' for the plasma to flow into the naclles.
capped
I WAS IN THE FUTURE, IT WAS TOO LATE TO RSVP
Member # 709
posted
Thats the second time today someone has pointed out that Star Trek is fiction. Why dont you go outside and play with the normal kids? We're trying to figure out warp drive and engine room doors and you certainly arent helping.
-------------------- "Are you worried that your thoughts are not quite.. clear?"
Registered: Sep 2001
| IP: Logged
quote:For a prototype ship, the first to achieve Warp 5, I would expect something preferably without kinks, or with only one.
See, Bernd, I think this kind of encapsulates why I think many of your anti-NX-01 are immediate nonstarters... There is about as much evidence to suggest a kinked PTC somehow requires fancy tech as there is that turbolifts have airbags in them in case the computer messes up and two collide. With all due respect, I take incredible issue with your presupposing that you know conclusively how a fictional system must function, and your resulting logic, which seems to say that if the show that depicts said fictional system doesn't portray it how you, for lack of a better term, guess it might function, it is thereby a steaming pile of shit.
-------------------- "I was surprised by the matter-of-factness of Kafka's narration, and the subtle humor present as a result." (Sizer 2005)
posted
Hey, somebody has to argue against the status quo to get us thinking.
Personally, I think the blue dome is intimately related with the fact that warp cores AND warp nacelles tend to glow blue. Perhaps the blue glow is an unavoidable byproduct of meddling with subspace fields, and some ships (especially the TNG ones, with big nacelle radiators) channel all of it through the nacelles. Others use an auxiliary "radiator" or "spill valve" close to the main powerplant, perhaps specifically in cases where the powerplant is oversized or experimental.
In Miranda, Constitution-refit, Constellation, Sydney, and Enterprise, there's this simple dome, plus some grillwork in the nacelles. In most Galaxy-era designs, there's just the nacelle grillwork. In the Defiant, there are those eight circular thingamabobs on the top surface. The TOS Constitution is the only thing lacking blue-glowing components, really.
The "subspace spill valve" could be a simple security precaution. Or it could be the way the ships generate their mass-reducing subspace fields (I think even the Enterprise class needs one), in those cases the function isn't handled as yet another operating mode of the nacelles. It certainly won't blow up the entire ship when damaged, as we saw when the Reliant got hit. That ship could still move at impulse (but of course, there was also an undamaged ventral dome available).
OnToMars
Now on to the making of films!
Member # 621
posted
quote: With all due respect, I take incredible issue with your presupposing that you know conclusively how a fictional system must function, and your resulting logic, which seems to say that if the show that depicts said fictional system doesn't portray it how you, for lack of a better term, guess it might function, it is thereby a steaming pile of shit.
Its not that any of us think we understand how starships work or insist that our explanations are correct because they're *our* explanations. It's the most basic engineering principle out there; Keep It Simple. The less complicated any system can be and still perform its function is an inherently better design. That has been a fundamental tenent of engineering since the dawn of invention and will remain so for the rest of history.
Occam's Razor, all other things being equal, the simplest explanation is the correct one. The same holds true for engineering. All other things being equal, the simplest system to perform its function is the best.
Fewer kinks = simpler. Simpler = better.
-------------------- If God didn't want us to fly, he wouldn't have given us Bernoulli's Principle.
capped
I WAS IN THE FUTURE, IT WAS TOO LATE TO RSVP
Member # 709
posted
'The more you overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the works.'
The same rationale i tried to explain when we got new cash registers that operate on Windows95.. and getting a blue screen of death now happens about once or twice a week.. and the old cash registers worked just fine. *sigh*
-------------------- "Are you worried that your thoughts are not quite.. clear?"
posted
Somehow, I doubt that superheated plasma has any particular difficulty in going around a turn. If, for some reason, it needs to avoid slowing down at that point, magnetic accelerators can be installed, like in such warp cores as the E-D and Defiant.
If straight PTCs detract from the efficiency of some other design feature more than curved ones detract from the efficiency of the plasma flow, why wouldn't they be curved?
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