The Vulcan Warp Sled or shuttle from Star Trek: TMP. Obviously since the shuttle detaches from the warp drive section, it isn't warp powered.
So, where in that little sled attachment did they put the warp core?
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
The nacelles. That, or they tap energy from a power source in the shuttle itself.
Mark
Posted by J (Member # 608) on :
Remember that M/AR's aren't the only way to power a warp drive.
Posted by MarianLH (Member # 1102) on :
Yes, the warp sled could be old enough to still be using lithium.
Marian
Posted by J (Member # 608) on :
No, lithium is an M/AR variant of the kind we are used to. There is the quantum sigularity drive, ala Romulans. There is also the cheap, fusion powered warp drive. Anyway you can get a significant amount of power to the warp field coils so they can create a warp field [including all the specifics about energizing them in order, timing, etc] you'll have a warp drive.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
There is a detail on the sled's underside which could conceivably be a flat swirl M/AM intermix chamber. Although there are almost certainly fusion reactors in the nacelles themselves to power the impulse engines at the rear.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
quote:Originally posted by MarianLH: Yes, the warp sled could be old enough to still be using lithium.
Marian
Or the writers were.
Posted by Cpt. Kyle Amasov (Member # 742) on :
Are the Vulcan vessels from Enterprise M/AM-powered? If so, why exactly do they use these ring nacelles? If they found a more efficient way to power a starship (for example putting their version of the warp core into the ring itself to reduce the power loss when using the EPS conduit to transfer the energy from the reaction chamber to the nacelle, something like that) it's hard to imagine they would not use that technology a century later, too. So the core-inside-the-nacelle-theory could be absolutely plausible.
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
Then again, TNG-era Vulcan ships do use ring engines. That is, assuming that the ships seen in "Unification" and "For the Cause" were truly TNG-era vessels and not centuries- or millennia-old relics.
Perhaps the Vulcan shuttle from TMP was Made In Earth, and thus used nacelles? That would fit with the pod having a docking system that is compatible with an Earth starship, whereas such commonality is exceedingly rare anywhere else in Trek.
The ENT-era shuttles seem to use rings or partial rings, so the reason for the nacelles cannot lie in problems with scaling down the ring technology to shuttlecraft size.
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by HerbShrump (Member # 1230) on :
It's referred to as a Warp Sled, but I always took it to be starndard Federation/Starfleet equipment and not limited to just Vulcan or Vulcan technology.
My reasoning behind this is the shuttle is the same design as the shuttle seen in the bay of the Enterprise .
So the sled is Starfleet/Federation or at least compatible with their modular designs.
In the real world we know the designers from ST:TMP weren't concerned with warp cores, etc... These concepts probably hadn't been fully fleshed out (yes, we saw the core on the Enterprise, but how much thought was put into it with regards the rest of the fleet?).
Struck me as interesting when contrasting the Warp Sled with the Runabouts, warp shuttles and Delta Flyer types from 100 years or so later.
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
The shuttle seems to be originally designed as a 'new' Starfleet shuttle, before some guy decided it was a purely Vulcan thing.
The docking ring is obviously compatible with Starfleet standards. What good would a shuttle be if you can't interface with the Starfleet family? That's illogical, captain!
And why would Vulcans be restricted to warp-rings? They have an entire Federation full of contractors and shipyards at their fingertips.
Posted by HerbShrump (Member # 1230) on :
Someone mentioned different methods of warp travel. At the time of TOS/TMP, none of the various methods had been mentioned. Now, does that mean they hadn't been invented/discovered yet or simply that in 3 seasons and 1 movie we weren't given enough time to explore other methods that already existed in the 23rd century?
Posted by MrNeutron (Member # 524) on :
Another possibility is that the shuttle has two different Matter/Antimatter reactors, one in each nacelle. Just cause some ships have one engine code doesn't mean they all have to.
Posted by Captain Boh (Member # 1282) on :
I don't know if this makes a difference on weather the sled is Starfleet or just Vulcan, but
'and then, wanting to suggest a Vulcan design influence, changed the engines' cross-section to the shape of the ceremonial gong that was seen on Vulcan in the original series episode: "Amok Time".' (From Probert's website)
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
...Later to be known as Ronthorntonagon, and overutilized in visual science fiction throughout the eighties and nineties.
There's something of a "pointed ear" motif to those spiky nacelles, too. Whether wholly intentional or not, the design does look "alien" overall, both in the Trek context (it looks like a close relative of the Klingon cruisers!) and in more general scifi terms.
![[Smile]](smile.gif)