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It doesn't matter if you don't know what you're doing as long as you look good doing it.
[This message has been edited by fructose1 (edited June 16, 2000).]
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Cigar Girl- "Would you like to check my figures?"
James Bond- "I'm sure that they are very well rounded..."
The World is Not Enough
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Sisko: "We run alright, run right at them."
Smiley: "Ah, Pattern Suicide."
Federation Starship Datalink - On that annoying Tripod server.
Conserving it would be easy. Run the fusion reactors at near 100% all the time and use them to power as much as possible. Then only take as little power as necessary off the warp core to power what the fusion reactors can't handle. I'd say at best they could make it last twice as long that way.
Then you've got to make some. The Ent-D has an antimatter generator on it. It's very energy intensive, but antimatter will get you farther on warp than deuterium on impulse, so it's worth it. But you need deuterium to make it and run the fusion generators, so that's why they are always sucking in deuterium.
Of course in a battle, they power up the core to max and use whatever they need to survive the fight. It seem reasonable to me. Any objections?
As for holodecks and lights, well, you need moral high. Good lighting makes people work better and efficiency is important to saving power. And the holodecks help people have a little fun. That's also important if you want them to work well. But if you took either one away, then people would quickly start to whine, complain, and not work as well, costing more energy and loosing a lot more than if you just kept the lights on and ran the holodecks. And besides, they are coming up with new types of lights that use much less energy than either incandescent or fluorescent light, so I bet by then, they have lights that hardly use any energy at all.
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It doesn't matter if you don't know what you're doing as long as you look good doing it.
As for antimatter, I get the feeling that Voyager probably trades for it whenever they're in a relatively advanced and populated region. The stuff is a pretty universal fuel, and it would be cheaper to trade several crates of self-sealing stembolts for a pod or two than to expend the energy necessary to make it for themselves.
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"Twentieth century go and sleep.
Really deep. We won't blink
Your eyes are burning holes through me.
I'm not scared I'm outta here.
I'm not scared. I'm outta here.
--
R.E.M.
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Read chapter one of "Dirk Tungsten in...The Disappearing Planet"! Please?