I was wondering about Bussard collectors. Is it necessary that they have to be located at the end of a nacelle? Do they have anything else to do with the nacelle? Couldn't they be put on a different section of the ship?
Back in TOS, were they thought to have anything to do with deuterium collection?
The E-B was seen to have Blue bussard collectors... what actually creates the colours?
Andrew
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
"Back in TOS, were they thought to have anything to do with deuterium collection?"
Well, since a Bussard ramscoop is a hydrogen collector, I would hope so. Unless the TOS nacelle caps weren't intended to be Bussard collectors at all. I don't know about that.
As for location, they could technically be locate anywhere. However, according to the TNGTM, as I recall, they're supposed to use the warp field to increase their capabilities, so they are located on the nacelle tips for a reason.
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
Another question: are ramscoops really necessary for nacelles? From what I read in the TNGTM, they only collect hydrogen for emergency backup reasons.
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
It's unclear what Matt Jeffries originally intended those reddish hemispheres to be. But in the version of the ship that was ultimately used in the TV show, the nacelles had a red hemisphere up front and a grey one at the aft end of each nacelle. Franz Joseph in his tech manual interpreted these as the two poles of a giant magnetlike apparatus - the "sink" and "source" of a field emitter of some sort.
However, the terminology used by FJ was perhaps misinterpreted by Andrew Probert, who included the "sink" in his TMP Enterprise but not the "source", probably thinking that the "sink" was some sort of a gigantic Hoover sucking in space gas for fuel. Or then Shane Johnson (who drew up the annotated blueprints of that ship for our benefit) slapped that FJ label on the nacelle front end but not the corresponding "source" label on the aft end, and Probert didn't give the components any names or functions at all...
Okuda and Sternbach probably worked from the assumption that Probert or SJ or FJ or even MJ had designed the front ends as ramscoops. Or then they thought this would be a nice way to twist FJ's original terminology, even if they believed FJ didn't mean the same thing they meant.
In any case, since only the ultimate TV version of the TOS ship had both the "sink" and the "source", but the pilot versions did not, and since all later ships lack the "source" part, we can probalby safely ignore the "two-poled magnet" interpretation, and pretend that the domes were always intended to be ramscoops...
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by Peregrinus (Member # 504) on :
Electromagnetism - or something very like it - was intended from the getgo, if not as a principle aspect of propulsion, then at least a byproduct. The only commentary about it comes from "the nacelles are away from the ship because the propulsive field produces an enormous electromagnetic field close to the engines" and need to be kept away from the habitable volume of the ship.
It would have been quite easy to harness this to collect the stray Hydrogen in deep space.