posted
Has anyone ever mentioned why there have been starships with four nacelles, in the Trek universe I mean?
There don't seem to be any advantages. One might think that they would be more powerful perhaps, but on-screen evidence rather suggests the contrary.
The Constellation class ships were known to be "underpowered", at least that's what Picard said about the Stargazer. And the Cheyenne class is also not known for being a very powerful ship - or for being a very feasible design in the first place, for that matter.
Any ideas?
-------------------- Lister: Don't give me the "Star Trek" crap! It's too early in the morning. - Red Dwarf "The Last Day"
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posted
The first Four-Nacelled ship to be designed was the Constellation Class, right? Or was there a four-nacelled study version of the Excelsior made for Trek 3?
Anyway...at the time the first four-naceller was built, I doubt anyone had really worked out the physics of it. They probably just did it because it looked cool (arguably).
The Prommie has four (or six actually) because it seperates into warp capable sections.
You could argue that the Constellation has four due to a different kind of engine design.
I suppose it's also possible that four nacelles generates a more efficient warp field. May not make the ship more powerful (in fact it may even draw extra power for the other two sets of coils) but may give it an advantage on speed or engine efficiency.
capped
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posted
Well you see the curved space-phase inhibitors work better because of the duocchrane distortions created by the sublinear plasma flux compositors you can provide by having the multi-subspace inverters facing the multistate mass compositors.
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posted
There has to be some advantage the design gives, otherwise why use it? Since it doesn't seem to provide any notable speed advantage, I think it may be one of two possibilities:
1) Redundancy: For ships on long-term missions, it gives the ship back-up capacity in case of engine failure. (Not that good a reason, in my opinion)
2) Maneuverability: The extra warp coils may allow the ship to accelerate faster. They also may be able to distort the warp field more precisely, thus giving the vessel better turning ability than twin-nacelle designs.
As for Picard's line about the Stargazer being underpowered, remember, he took command of her when the ship was nearly 50 years old (assuming that the Constellation class dates from the early 2280s). I think it's safe to assume she would be underpowered when compared to the Ambassadors and other current designs.
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posted
I liked the idea of the redundancy of the other two nacelles.
Anyway - we do see all four nacelles light up on the Hathaway. Maybe splitting the plasma four ways - reduces the 'load' on the nacelles - leading to a reduced burn out - as per "The Chase" and all the "warping" that Picard said the E-D had been doing over those last few days.
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posted
Exactly - endurance. Sternbach has said that using alternating pairs of nacelles can really help, with his quad-nacelled Nova/Pathfinder idea as mentioned in the DS9TM. For the Constellation, I'm guessing that this could be true (plus the redundancy) for the time it was created, as it was supposed to be a deep-space explorer according to most fan speculation. Later advances in nacelle design (Excelsior and later) could have eliminated the need for this redundancy and been more efficient at higher-speed endurance. This leaves the more recent designs (Cheyenne, Prometheus) to come back to the endurance/speed idea. The Prommie was supposed to be the fastest ship in the fleet, after all.
In order to generate a warp field, a ship channels plasma through nacelles which contain fancy-metal warp coils.
Most starships contain only two nacelles, but the Constellation-class has four.
Now, wouldn't it follow that a ship requires a certain amount of plasma to channel through the warp coils to generate the warp field? If plasma is required on a per-nacelle basis, then a four-nacelle design would automatically require twice as much plasma (translation: power) from the warp core as normal two-nacelle ships.
Now, there's probably a trade-off. Four nacelles may be able to generate a stronger (translation: faster) warp field than just two nacelles, resulting in a net increase in speed. However, that requires an overall net power LOSS. (I think.)
So the ship can get greater burst speeds thanks to its four nacelles, but it requires more power from the warp core to generate that speed.
The alternative, running only two nacelles at a time, also helps reduce wear-n-tear on the nacelles for long-term cruising.
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posted
Well that or have an advance warp core that can handle running 4 or more nacelles at a time. I guess you could alternate between two sets of nacelles but that would require dropping out of warp to do it.
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posted
By the way, how many warp cores does the Prommie have? Three?
-------------------- Lister: Don't give me the "Star Trek" crap! It's too early in the morning. - Red Dwarf "The Last Day"
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I think you're right. I have to dig up the MSD though to have a look at it again.
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I remember Rick Sternbach saying that the prommie's saucer section didn't have a warp core as such, in that it had a 'warp sustaining generator' or something along those lines... So I doubt the saucer section can jump to warp itself...
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posted
He said it had a "pancake" core. The impression I got is that it was fully functional, but of a radically different design than traditional warp cores. (Or, perhaps, said core is a scaled up version of that used on warp-capable shuttlecraft and runabouts, which would hardly seem to have room for lengthy intermix tubes.)
Registered: Mar 1999
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Ok, how many decks are on the saucer section of the Promethes versus the deck count of a Defiant Class.
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capped
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That's like comparing apples and oranges.. when you have no idea how many decks are in the apple and the producers of the orange keep changing the number of decks in the orange
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