posted
Antimatter likes eating matter, so it's a good idea to feed it all the matter it wants. Otherwise, you end up with hungry antimatter floating around, looking for something else to eat, like the wall of your warp core.
The warp core has a pipe to bring in lots of deuterium from the primary tanks. This is good.
The secondary core has no such pipe. This is bad. The antimatter you inject from the bottom will not let itself go hungry.
Please, Dave... for just a hairline of pixels you can feed trillions of starving antideuterium atoms in the secondary reactor. Don't force these poor atoms to forage for duranium hull plating. Help us give them the nutritious deuterium they so desperately need.
(also... I don't think "spare warp core" is a correct name. It is a deck shorter than the main core, so it cannot be used to replace it. It has no plasma conduits to the nacelles, so it cannot propel the ship to warp. Might "Secondary M/A Reactor" be better?)
posted
I'm not really in on this, but I would just like to comment on that last post. I don't know how you've drawn in the spare core, but on the MSD it is exactly the same height as the primary. And the spare core *is* actually a spare. It does not have deuterium or antideuterium feeds and is not active as a powersource. According to that little program Captain's Chair, it is a redundant core system which requires "extensive extravehicular meneuvering for installation." It's pretty clear on the MSD that the thing is in storage and is relatively inaccessible to servicing.
So to reiterate, both cores are the same height. The spare has no fuel feeds, for matter or antimatter. And it is a SPARE core. It is not active. It is meant as a replacement should the original core be lost or destroyed or otherwise rendered unusable.
[This message has been edited by Daniel (edited March 31, 2001).]
posted
Erm, if it has no antimatter in it, it's about as useless as tossing a coffee cup out the window. You'd have to remove it from storage, install it in engineering, power it up, feed antimatter into it, and THEN eject it at the enemy. In the process of doing that, you'd have to get rid of the original core somehow.
Ejecting the existing core at the enemy would be equally useless. The amount of energy released by the resulting explosion would blow up Voyager as well. (Especially since you'd have no warp drive to escape with.)
In short, it would take a lot of effort to do something that could be accomplished just as easily with a large batch of photorps. Maybe for a long range effort or premeditated attack or something, but it wouldn't work in a quick battle.
[This message has been edited by Daniel (edited March 31, 2001).]
posted
You can't feed it "all the matter it wants." Wesley said at the academy that it's always a 1:1 ratio. Granted, the TNG TM contradicts this by saying there are different ratios for different speeds.
------------------ Never give up. Never surrender.
posted
Hmm... Makes you wonder, doesn't it? If they have a spare core, why "Day of Honor"?
------------------ Jerry: "What street are you on?" Kramer: "I'm at 1st and 1st. How can a street intersect with itself? I must be at the nexus of a parallel universe!" -Seinfeld
posted
More than just the Tech Manual says that. Leland T. Lynch orders a 25:1 ratio in Skin of Evil.
------------------ Star Trek Gamma Quadrant Average Rated 8.32 out of 10 Smileys by Fabrux (with seven eps posted) *** "Oh, yes, screw logic, let's go for a theory with no evidence!" -Omega 11:48am, Jan. 19th, 2001
Just thought I'd pop in and say a few things in defense of our group title, Strategic Design and Tactical Group.
As you all know, I was a tank driver for the United State's Army a few years back. I remember learning all about "strategy" and "tactics". They are two different things:
Strategy is WHAT you want to do. Strategy is the mission parameters and goals.
Tactics is HOW you go about doing it. Tactics is the method of attack, time, place, units to be used, and so forth.
So, strategy is the broad picture, and tactics is the zoomed in methodology.
Think of it this way: Admirality = Strategy, Tactics = ship Captains.
:-)
Lance
------------------ TheTrekker's Officer's Bible: A Concise Review of the Starfleet http://thetrekker.homestead.com
posted
Quite possibly, Fabrux, because they no longer have one. I'd say it's a good bet that the back-up core has long since been cannibalized in order to keep the main core running, and perhaps to build things like the Delta Flyers.
posted
Just to elaborate... Read the Technical Manual again. The ratio is set at 25:1 for idling conditions. The extra Deuteriam is what constitutes the "warp plasma" used to transfer the energy to the warp coils. The ratio is adjusted to 10:1 for power generation, and is the base ratio for entering warp. The proportions get closer to equalizing until they reach a 1:1 ratio at warp 8 and up.
--Jonah
------------------ "It's obvious I'm dealing with a moron..."
--Col. Edwards, ROBOTECH
[This message has been edited by Peregrinus (edited April 02, 2001).]
posted
I seem to recall reading that the backup warp core is more a collection of spare parts one could use to build a new warp core, but it would take quite a while to do so ("some assembly required"). In the context of "Day of Honor", I would suggest that rebuilding the warp core would take so long that they really needed to retrieve their original one.
Registered: Feb 2001
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posted
If the extra deuterium left over at a 25:1 ratio is warp plasma, then at a ratio at 1:1 when you'd figure you need the most of it, there theoretically is none. So what's going to the nacelles? Invisible magic plasma? And what is the energy created by the M/AM annhiliation reactions being turned into? The known mythical properties of dilithium only allow for *regulation* of reactions, not what the reaction products are going to be. Is it EM radiation? If so, how is it focused? In what range? How is it tapped? How does a starship refine this raw energy for use? And according to our sources, it somehow becomes integrated with plasma, correct? How, and why?
Registered: Nov 2000
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posted
It's been a long time since I saw it, but wasn't Wesley's comment somewhere along the lines of "That's easy. It's always 1:1." If this was what he said, this would be on-screen canon and would invalidate the TM. Again.
As for what constitutes the plasma, maybe it's literally electroplasma. The deuterium is whole atoms by its definition. Meanwhile, the only way to magnetically contain antideuterium is to strip it of its positron, thus giving it a net charge. That makes it actually antideuterons. Without positrons, there's nothing to annihilate electrons. The remaining electrons might form electroplasma in the dilithium.
[This message has been edited by Tech Sergeant Chen (edited April 02, 2001).]
posted
The reactants are Deuterium and anti-Hydrogen (not anti-Deuterium). However it is arrived at, the excess Deuterium is the warp plasma. As for why the ratio drops off, the plasma itself isn't "pumped" at the warp coils. It serves as a "conduit" for the energy. The reaction chamber and power transfer conduits are kept at pressure. At idle, the extra Deuterium is needed to keep the pressure up. Notice that the segments sequence faster and faster at the higher warp factors. The TM also mentions that above warp 8, even though the ratio stays the same, the amounts injected increase. The injector firing rate increases to provide more energy (dependent upon the antimatter), but can you imagine the overpressure if the matter kept coming at the same ratio at that frequency? By the time it reaches 1:1, the system is at peak operating pressure, and the m/am reaction is going solely into power generation for the warp coils.
I no longer have "Coming of Age" on tape, due to an error on my part, so I can't quote the exchange between Mordock and Wes regarding intermix ratios...
--Jonah
------------------ "It's obvious I'm dealing with a moron..."
In any case, it seems likely that what Wesley said was an oversimplification. These were supposed to be the best and brightest kids in the universe, so Starfleet probably wouldn't ask them trivially easy questions. Most likely, the question was very complex and went something like "Given conditions X and Y, what should the intermix ratio of a warp engine be in situation Z at speed A in temperature B when the engineer has eaten breakfast C?". Wesley would then realize that only the parameters X, Z, B and C were crucial to the answer, and parameters Y and A did not matter at all. THAT was the "trick question" part which Mordock failed to catch.
However, if parameters X, Z, B and C were altered, then the answer would no longer be 1:1. Say, parameter Z could have been "The ship is cruising in interstellar space of subspace density 3.443 nc", and parameter B could have read "six million degrees" so even a moron would have noticed that the question did not apply to acceleration phase, but only to a high speed cruise phase where all the necessary warp plasma has already been generated and no matter excess production is required...
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