Talks about numbers of screws/propellers (no comments Monkey) in a ways that seem like we could adapt to nacelles on ST ships. Perhaps even the funky Vulcan ships.
I suppose anything adapted would better fit in the creative forum - but we can start here can't we?
[ May 14, 2002, 04:21: Message edited by: Toadkiller ]
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So far all we have seen on Vulcan ships is a single ring perhaps thick or thin, on each ship. I wonder why the Vulcans perfer the ring nacelle better than the single 'rod' nacelle that most species use.
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Maybe it's just the first one they thought up, so they stuck w/ it.
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Mirror Bashir
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quote:Originally posted by Matrix: So far all we have seen on Vulcan ships is a single ring perhaps thick or thin, on each ship. I wonder why the Vulcans perfer the ring nacelle better than the single 'rod' nacelle that most species use.
Perhaps the nacelle is the Trek equivalent of a paddle wheel, and the ring is the screw propeller. The former can be invented with minimal research, and has inherently low efficiency. The latter requires more research or innovation, but can be refined to better ultimate performance.
Except that in the case of warp drives, the properties of "paddle wheel" and "screw propeller" are reversed in one crucial respect: the former is inherently resilient to combat damage, while the latter is highly vulnerable. So the peaceful Vulcans are the only ones to persist with the more efficient "screw" ring, while the more warlike races are more inclined to refine their primitive but durable "wheel" nacelles.
The Borg, of course, have the superior "screw" type drive, housed in the big "First Contact" -style torus inside their nigh-invulnerable ships...
posted
Do we have any valuable theories as to what is going on in the ringwarp engines, anyway?
I see but a few easy possibilities:
1. Extremely large field coils, of the sort one might find in the Galaxy Class, but on a tremendous scale, with analogs to the upper and lower pairs of coils extending all the way around the upper and lower halves of the ring.
2. Numerous pairs of coils, not too different perhaps than even the NX class coils, rigged so that each pair is turned laterally about X degrees from the next pair, all around the ring.
3. Larger curved coils than #2, but in the same basic vein.
4. Some sort of freak-nasty Vulcan coils that are actually entire rings, evidently allowing higher speeds than warp four, but presumably inefficient in some respect (technologically or tactically) beyond a certain warp speed. If nothing else, I'd imagine coil swap-out would be a bitch, since it would involve dismantling the entire ring.
Any other ideas?
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quote: If nothing else, I'd imagine coil swap-out would be a bitch, since it would involve dismantling the entire ring.
This strikes me as being a very interesting approach. Regardless of the internal composition of Vulcan warp coils, the idea that they are much harder to repair would be a good reason for the early Federation to choose the less efficient but (presumably) more easily repaired human/other design. Of course, by the "modern" era, that is, the 23rd and 24th centuries, those efficiency problems will have been solved.
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posted
But - as mentioned above the Vulcans are still using something similiar in the TNG/DS9 era.
Another wild theory might be that there is a difference in acceleration. The ring may provide for a very efficient "smooth" ride but take longer to reach speed and maybe even to stop - OK in a survey/science ship that can map its movements out well in advance. SF (Earth) ships are designed with nacelles which allow them to accelerate more quickly - more important in a ship that plays a more tactical role.
Of course the "combat cruiser" has the rings too but I somehow don't think the Vulcan's really call it that, or optimize their ships solely for combat.
Nacelles must be easier to build as all the primitive ships we've seen have them. The real rub is why the advanced ships like Intrepid class still do....
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I'm thinking that the ring nacelle's physical shape has its limits, and probably doesn't do that well above Warp 7-8. The rod nacelle could have been a new concept in the 22nd century, and at its curent state of refinement did not match the efficiency of the Vulcan rings. Given a century ot two though, it eventually became the better choice.
posted
Pardon my ignorance (DS9 and Voy were unavailable in my area beginning in '96 or so), but besides the three surplus Vulcan ships seen in "Unification", have we seen any other Vulcan ships in the 24th Century? Those three were never observed going very fast at all (though, granted, the situation didn't call for it).
Also, we do perhaps see some evolutionary steps toward the ring-warp system, in regards to the "Darth Maul Infiltrator"-Class Vulcan ship from "Fusion". The partial rings aboard that ship may indicate a warp engine design lineage for the Vulcans.
Perhaps it merely started from ultra-thin nacelles (as compared to the roughly-cylindrical nacelles we're used to). There is precedent for ultra-thin nacelles, given that the Klingons had extremely thin nacelles on the D-7 and K't'inga Class.
((Perhaps one could even posit a technology transfer (intentional or not) between the Klingons and Vulcans at some early date.))
((This, by the way, led to a thought that makes me feel a little better about the portrayal of the Klingons as technologically superior in Enterprise. After all, in TOS the Klingon/Romulan D-7s weren't that much slower than the Enterprise at warp, despite the fact that the Klingon engines were comparatively tiny. Granted, they were pushing less ship to begin with, but I'm fairly certain the ratio of engine-to-ship was substantially superior for the D-7s, though obviously Starfleet had managed to acquire more of the all-important "How to Blow the Hell out of Stuff" knowledge.))
Anyway, back to the point . . . if you stuff enough flat nacelles together, you can get a ring. 3.14159 it ain't, but it's a ring all the same. Or, if you stretch them out and curve them, you get the engines off of the Darth Vulcan class.
The problem with the ring-warp engines may simply rest with the fact that they can't possibly be as cheap to build as a cylindrical nacelle. To make a ring-warp engine, you have to plate the entire inner and outer surface of the thing . . . for the same amount of hull materials, you can make several cylindrical warp engines, which (evidently) will catch up to any engine efficiency gains of the ring-warp system.
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