While watching ST:TMP today (in fact, right now), I noticed that the picture of the SS Enterprise on the USS Enterprise's Rec Deck actually shows a large billow of thrust coming out of her back, apparntly from the back of the cylinder in the middle (not the rings on the outside). They appear to be some form of chemical reaction jet, very unlike a normal impulse engine (and especially unlike a warp drive). So, maybe the SS Enterprise never had warp?
------------------ "The things hollow--it goes on forever--and--oh my God!--it's full of stars!" -David Bowman's last transmission back to Earth, 2001: A Space Odyssey
Maybe. Or maybe the current form of impulse wasn't invented until after warp, and the "billowing" is an artistic rendition of some sort of ion engine used for subluminous speeds.
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Posted by Starship Freak (Member # 293) on :
I�d go with the artistic rendering. In "The art of star trek", one gets to see several pics of the "new" enterprise concepts for the upcoming movie. One of these ships shows the same thing, a sort of "gas-exhaust", for lack of a better word.
------------------ "The Starships of the Federation are the physical, tangible manifestations of Humanity�s stubborn insistence that life does indeed mean something." Spock to Leonard McCoy in "Final Frontier"