The Flux Chiller is a component of warp engines. What does it do?
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
It chills my flux. I always prefer to have my flux chilled if possible. Unchilled flux just doesn't have the same draw for me as a nice, crispy, chilled flux.
Mmmm... I remember when my mom used to serve icy cold chilled flux for desert on Sundays. We'd just sit on the porch, watching the neighbor get drunk and run naked in his yard, and sip on our chilled flux. Those were the days.
Posted by Styrofoaman (Member # 706) on :
Prehaps its a heat-sink of some kind? Like an intercooler?
Posted by Spike (Member # 322) on :
quote:What is a Flux Chiller?
An hommage to BTTF IIRC.
Posted by djewell (Member # 1111) on :
quote:Originally posted by Spike:
quote:What is a Flux Chiller?
An hommage to BTTF IIRC.
Wasn't that a Flux Capacitor?
Posted by Spike (Member # 322) on :
They didn't use the same name but it was intended to be an hommage AFAIR.
Posted by Warped1701 (Member # 40) on :
I don't think it could've been from Back to the Future, because if you listen to the background dialog in one of ST:TMP's engineering scenes (right before they leave dock IIRC) a crewmember is performing a checklist with the computer about the "Main Flux Chiller's port and starboard", far before Back to the Future.
Posted by Peregrinus (Member # 504) on :
Spike, Back to the Future came out in 1985. Star Trek: The Motion Picture came out in 1979. The Enterprise's "main-stage flux chillers" have nothing to do with the DeLorean's "flux capacitor".
The Enterprise's engines contained some nifty tech from the descriptions in the first two movies. We know there are "power-stage", "main-stage", and "final-stage" elements that deal with some kind of flux. The "power-stage" bits are "flux constrictors". That may be an early version of the step-down into the ship's EPS that we have in more detail in TNG. The other two are "flux chillers", and may have something to do with keeping the subspace field flux from melting down the coils.
I don't know if any of the official or fandom stuff ever got around to defining these terms. Maybe the GEC... The other major components referred to seem a bit more straightforward. The "space-energy/matter sinks" are what we know later as the Bussard collectors. And the "space matrix restoration coils" have something to do with dissipating the subspace field to drop the ship back into normal space. Dr. Crusher sure could have used one of those in "Remember Me"...
--Jonah
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
Well, no, because I imagine having a universe collapse on you wouldn't be good for your health.
Posted by djewell (Member # 1111) on :
It did wonders for my skin. Posted by Futurama Guy (Member # 968) on :
Errr, yeah...
"Cause and Effect" made mention of a flux spectrometer which was supposedly some sort of sensor device...
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
I've got one in my car (next to the overthruster) but it was there when I bought it. I think it's part of my air conditioner.
Posted by Guardian 2000 (Member # 743) on :
Makes the warp engines chill so they won't get all f1uXX0r3d?
Posted by MrNeutron (Member # 524) on :
Most likely, it's a temperature relation system related to the flux of a warp engine component. If flux is (as my science dictionary says) "the number of particles flowing per unit area in a cross section of a beam of particles", then a flux chiller would be something to reglate the beam -- maybe the way electricity superconducts the closer you get to absolute zero.
That's one possible explanation.
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
By semantics alone, a "flux chiller" could be a device chilling X by using a flux. As opposed to a device chilling X by using something else. And would tell us nothing about the nature of X. Except that it needs some chilling.
(Never mind that any chilling is bound to involve a heat flux - let's say a flux chiller uses a particulate flux to create a heat flux, while a radiator chiller involves no other flux besides heat flux.)
As for "flux capacitor", there's a TNG episode where LaForge makes a slip of the tongue, using the name "flux capacitor" for something he originally called a "flux regulator" . This was probably scripted in deliberately, as a "BTTF" homage. What was the episode, though? "Nth Degree"? "Hollow Pursuits"? I think it was a Barclay piece.
And as for "space/matter sink", that piece of technobabble probably wasn't originally intended to indicate anything like a ramscoop. The FJ material also features a "space/matter SOURCE" at the other end of the nacelle, as if the nacelles were gigantic bipolar magnets or other bipolar field devices.
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
the "flux"?
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
Winner.
Posted by MarianLH (Member # 1102) on :
The term "flux chiller" definately appears in Franz Joseph's Star Fleet Technical Manual. I expect FJ invented it, although I haven't read Whitfield and could be wrong.
As for what they *DO*, the manual doesn't shed any light. MrNeutron's or Timo's explanations are as good as any.
For what it's worth, FJ's daughter once said in an interview that FJ conceptualised the warp effect as going THROUGH the nacelles, front to back, like some kind of cosmic jet engine (This was back in the 70s, of course, long before the canon explanation).
Interesting trivia note: FJ's single-nacelle designs do have flux chillers. They're on the bottom of the nacelle.
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)