posted
KO: I'm not sure why you're presenting Bradbury as an example of a pulling ship. The nacelles are in the back as in most ships. Maybe the left pointing orientation has confused you?
As far as why Fed ships always have rear or mid-mounted nacelles, it's just a convention, as is having a neck or a primary hull disk. I suspect that there must be some marginal advantage to having these layouts, but the fact that other races' ships look different suggests that the Fed way is not the only way. These other ways must have other advantages, which Earth ships choose not to make use of. Earth warp ships might have explored many different layouts in the early days (like early jet-powered aircraft), but eventually settled down to the standard layouts we have now. I've sketched out some early ships with unusual nacelle placements (such as various hammerheads with two, three, or four nacelles; various types of midline nacelles), but they look too weird (not for public viewing).
Registered: Oct 1999
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The Defiant
Ex-Member
posted
I could take a gander at them...
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From my understanding of all the Treknologies involved, nacelle placement is a secondary engineering artifact. That is, they could happily be anywhere on the ship for their primary function, but other considerations tend to keep them in the positions we're accustomed to seeing.
Grante dthis only applies to Federation ship construction tech -- and, given what we've seen of some Vulcan design aesthetics, maybe even more of a Terran engineering bias.
First of all, warp travel is indeed non-Newtonian. THere is no inertia, no 'pushing' or 'pulling' the ship, but simply the direction in which the space/time continuum slips by, based on the warp coils' firing sequence and rate (or something very like that).
Mass and inertia do, however, play a role in sublight propulsion and maneuvering. Granted, the warp and impulse engines do create an apparant-mass-reducing subspace field around the ship to facilitate acceleration and maneuvering, but the ship's volume and density remain the same, and this will effect the stresses placed on the structural elements. The structural integrity field would help, but designing and building a ship to work with these stresses, rather than against them, is still your best bet, especially as the ships (and specifically the engines) become larger and more massive. Remembver, the average mass ratio is for the warp coils to comprise some 40% of the ship's total mass.
All this begs the question 'well, why build the ships with the nacelles out on those pylons, then?'... According to Matt Jeffries, and those who came after, a side effect of the engines operating (whether propulsively or just idling) is a tremendous electromagnetic field, which we've known for a long time is harmful to living beings. As propulsion technology improved to the degree that ships no longer needed to accelerate from the warp threshold (the speed of light) to their cruising velocity, but could instead 'jump' from a standstill to their target speed, the energy needed to initially tunnel the ship into subspace rose dramatically. Hence the really damn bright flash of the Galaxy class jumping to warp.
Granted, we have the field and shielding technology to protect the occupants of aship from this radiation, but it's still safer to keep the engines out away from the habitable volume to minimize risk of exposure in the event of shielding failure. This was one of the initial objections I had to the Defiant and Steamrunner classes, but I've since grumblingly accepted that they're more concerned with protecting the engines in combat than ensuring the safety and health of the crew.
So... have I rambled on long enough?
--Jonah
-------------------- "That's what I like about these high school girls, I keep getting older, they stay the same age."
--David "Woody" Wooderson, Dazed and Confused
Registered: Feb 2001
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posted
hey Peregrinus, u've rambled on long enough, hopefully the newbies listen to ya and shut up. respect Peregrinus, he's got the right answer!
Buzz
-------------------- "Tom is Canadian. He thereby uses advanced humour tecniques, such as 'irony', 'sarcasm', and werid shit'. If you are not qualified in any of these, it will be risky for you to attempt to decipher what he means. Just smile and carry on." - PsyLiam; 16th June
Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
Ok I am getting really fucking tired of the MIB bullshit. The Defiant has PMed me a few times asking me why Snay is calling him MIB. I for one do not think The Defiant is not MIB. MIB is dead, let him die.
As for the topic itself, it really doesn't matter where the nacelles are placed. We have seen midline, rear, imbedded, single internal (BoP), but none of them i have yet to see or remember had nacelles placed in front.
-------------------- Matrix If you say so If you want so Then do so
Registered: Jul 2000
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The Defiant
Ex-Member
posted
I would be cool to see them in the front, and besides, Koy asked a good question, and even though we (4 buisiness days=40 years) had the answer, it gave us something to talk about.
But didn't Jefferies say that electromagnetism gave them warp speed?
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No one reads, apparently. Toadkiller, do yourself a favor and figure out when the last time I brought the "matter" up, m'kay?
Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
The closest thing to a forward-nacelled Federation vessel would probably be the original Probert shuttle design that was axed from TNG. Those forward prongs probably held the subspace coils of that craft. (We can safely assume the craft would have been capable of warp or at least of subspace-augmented impulse - the writers would have ignored any suggestion that this be a sub-impulse vessel!)
The Ferengi shuttle has similar prongs, and possibly mounts warp engines in those...
posted
Peregrinus, I work on MRI's and to reduce the size of the magnetic field, we employ an active shielding arround the magnetic core. As you could understand a strong magnetic field in a hospital could cause all sorts of problems and since most hosp. were not built to house an MRI then shielding is important. Could the fed. have found a way to provide active shielding of the strong EM field for use in the defiant class ships. It could be too massive to employ on large necelles, or not nessarry seeing as the the pylon method works. But given the size restraints of the defiant class it might have been useful.
-------------------- "and none of your usual boobery." M. Burns
Registered: Oct 2001
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Shik
Starship database: completed; History of Starfleet: done; website: probably never
Member # 343
posted
In the same vein, the Vulcan warpshuttle. Oh, & regarding the "dangerous EM fields," they couldn't have been that dangerous or maybe the shielding was better by TNG if we had daily duty posts IN the nacelle itself. Or maybe SOP for that post is a trusty ol' radiation inoculation every week. (as he hears Bernd's heart seize from across the Atlantic...)
[ June 04, 2002, 08:58: Message edited by: Shik ]
-------------------- "The French have a saying: 'mise en place'—keep everything in its fucking place!"
Registered: Jun 2000
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capped
I WAS IN THE FUTURE, IT WAS TOO LATE TO RSVP
Member # 709
posted
Jefferies of course didnt come up with the warp coil or the warp field.. he said, like Roddenberry, that the future science should be vague (since it wasnt the star of the show, the people were). He simply stated that he imagined the nacelle acted like two giant magnets, suspended away from the ship, with the field interacting between them (hence the empty space). That was why nacelles were always supposed to be in pairs, and always supposed to have nothing in between them. Most of the other rules of 'Jefferies/Roddenberry warp physics' remain followed today (that nacelles should alway be at least partially visible in the forward view [i.e. nothing in front of them]), and that they be suspended away from the body of the ship. The ships with inboard nacelles are of course possible, but it almost looks like they disregarded the 'empty space between them' rule (to be fair, the nacelles on the Steamrunner, Defiant and Delta Flyer all curve below the axis of the ships hull to have empty space between them, so they are departures but not violations, as the Cardassian Galor is. And of course we know the ships that violate the paired rule: Freedom and the Galaxy refit. (and of course the Hermes, Saladin and Federation, but fans want to explain that away so badly...). This 'interaction' was slated to be shown, as energy arcing between the nacelles' inner surfaces in TMP, but was later dropped.
-------------------- "Are you worried that your thoughts are not quite.. clear?"
Registered: Sep 2001
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posted
Are we not counting the Saber Class as a ship with forward nacelles? I mean, the things are attached to the front of the ship. Or are speaking strictly of ships whose nacelles extend forward of the hull proper?
posted
I think they mean nacelles extending out ahead of the ship.... like in I think at least one of the TNG TM designs [canon or not that's the closest thing I can think of].
Reverse Warp is possible all the same. If you reverse the firing sequence of the plasma injectors you'll reverse the field dynamic [instead of being "squeezed" forward, you'll be "squeezed" backwards]. The real question in this though is if the field can adapt to the change in geometry. The field must be in a completely different shape for this to work. If you look at the diagrams of the GCS' warp field you'll note that from the top or side perspective the warp field is smaller in back and larger in front. This is partly because the ship is built that way, but it is also necessary for the peristaltic action [subspace isn't entirely newtonian but we can say that if the forces involved are imbalanced there will be a reaction]. The GCS isn't built for reverse warp, so the warp field would have to be modified to a severe degree IMO. In fact it seems to me that to reverse at Warp 1 is going to be much more costly than forward at Warp 1, at least in power and efficiency. --- The Defiant does have an advantage in this though, it's warp field doesn't appear to need modification because the ship's hull is fairly regular [the Sabre, Akira, & Steamrunner may also have this advantage].
---This says nothing for modifying the SIF and IDF for reverse Warp.
[ June 04, 2002, 12:35: Message edited by: J ]
-------------------- Later, J _ _ _ _ _ ___ _ _ _ _ _ The Last Person to post in the late Voyager Forum. Bashing both Voyager, Enterprise, and "The Bun" in one glorious post.
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