posted
What are you talking about? Last time I checked, there was a (albeit smallish) impulse engine on the back of the "neck."
Though looking over Pedro's (sadly in need of updating ) site, it appears that I am wrong.
EDIT (again): Looking at EAS, there appears to be two small grills underneath the "equator" of the saucer (look here), right above the pylons. Could these be the impulse engines?
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quote:Originally posted by Harry: In the beginning. Kirk orders Warp 0.5 (or something), and slowly rises to Warp 1.0, causing a wormhole effect.
Not exactly...
After leaving the drydock, Kirk order "Impusle power Mr. Sulu Ahead warp point 5." And the impulse engines visibly come on and ZZZZZOOM
1.8 hours later (according to the log) they try to go to warp. The order is "Warp drive, Mr. Scott. Ahead warp one, Mr. Sulu." Sulu replies, "Accelerating to warp one, sir. Warp point six. Point seven. Point eight..." At which point we cut to the outside of the ship and see that a) the impulse engines are off, and b) the warp nacelles are now lit up. A second later, WHOOSH. Warp speed.
Indicates that the acceleration from warp .5 to 1 was done by the warp engines, so clearly the warp drive can move the ship at sublight velocity at least to some limited degree.
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Registered: Feb 2001
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posted
Didnt we essentially see the same thing in FC when the Phoenix was going to warp? It wasn't: *BAM* "We are at Warp 1"...They worked up to it from 0 via the warp engines.
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posted
Don't go there with the 'official' Defiant impulse engine!
Man! In the 'official' cutaway, the real impulse engine, that appropriately glows red, they have it marked for a three-escape pod ejection tube!
To quote Data from Conspiracy, "Stafleet's right hand did not know what it's left hand was doing."
The designer and the modeler of the Defiant knew where it was, but the cutaway artist apparently didn't.
(Maybe the same folks who drew up the official cutaway of the Oberth and plkaced regular decks thoughout the void between the pylons on the centerline...)
quote:Originally posted by Manticore: Maybe impulse refers to a specific type of fusion reactor, possibly the most efficient form possible? Someone at SCN proposed that it was an acronym, I'll see if I can look up what for.
In Diane Carey's novel Final Frontier it's suggested that the term was originally "internally metered pulse drive," or "I. M. Pulse Drive" for short. The novel is set before TOS, when Robert April takes the as-yet unnamed, uncommissioned Enterprise out to rescue some colonists, and already the engineers are referring to it as "impulse" in casual conversation. By TNG likely only a historian would even know it was ever an acronym.
The novel has the following explanation of how it works:
quote:"Okay. Impulse engines are powered by high-eneergy fusion, got it? The fusion is created by a pulsed laser array, mounted all around a fuel tablet. The first pulse causes a fusion reaction which ignites the tablet, which results in a heavier element."
"A heavier series of elements, really," Wood interrupted.
"Which we then hit with another high-energy laser pulse, and we get the second-stage fusion reaction. That releases a hundred twenty percent more energy than the first reaction. Then the pulse hits again, and again--"
"All within a microsecond," Graff contributed, ignoring Drake's expression of abject terror.
"That's where the term 'impulse' comes from," Saffire went on. "Internally Metered Pulse Drive."
"So simple," Drake murmered. "I should have been an engineer."
Notice they're talking about producing energy. Maybe the Romulan ship in TOS: "Balance Of Terror" used something similar to produce power, even for its warp drive, while later TMP and 24th century Federation ships, while using more advanced forms of sublight propulsion, carried over the term "impulse" as a synonym for sublight drive. The transference of meaning by association has happened in real world linguistics often enough.
quote:Originally posted by MarianLH: In Diane Carey's novel Final Frontier it's suggested that the term was originally "internally metered pulse drive," or "I. M. Pulse Drive" for short. The novel is set before TOS, when Robert April takes the as-yet unnamed, uncommissioned Enterprise out to rescue some colonists, and already the engineers are referring to it as "impulse" in casual conversation. By TNG likely only a historian would even know it was ever an acronym.
I doubt that. People don't just "forget" that things are acronyms. Sure, people in casual conversation might not be aware, but I doubt that engineers wouldn't know that "impulse" used to stand for something.
It's not like people have forgotten that "eta" stands for something, and that has to have been around for at least a century.
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posted
A lot of people take AWOL as a word, not the acronym for absent without leave.
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posted
Yes, but "eta" is rather obvious as an acronym because phoenetically it doesn't sound like a word. But what about "scuba" or "radar" or even "laser"?
As you say, people in fields directly related to the above terms still are aware of them as acronyms, but for the general public they are just words. And they're all rather recent.
-MMoM
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Registered: Jun 2001
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quote:Originally posted by PsyLiam: It's not like people have forgotten that "eta" stands for something, and that has to have been around for at least a century.
That's hardly a fair counterexample. "ETA" is still used as an acronym. People say "ee tee ay," not "eh-ta." At least, not that I've ever heard.
Besides, even if most people remember it's an acronym, or even if it wasn't an acronym, that doesn't mean the word "impulse" couldn't have evolved from something specific to a generic term for sublight propulsion, which was my main point.
Marian
PS: for many years I didn't know that "snafu" was an acronym.
Makes me wonder where "LoL" will be a century from now.
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I forgot about laser, so fair enough. I still say though that while the general populace will be unaware of it's status as an acronym, scientists (and smarty pants) will still know. It's not like there'll be a worldwide cull on dictionaries printing out what the word stands for.
I do agree that impulse could very well mean something completely different to what it used to. But Geordi says in "Relics" that impulse engine design hasn't really changed in a century, which throws out any ideas that it's different from what it was in "Final Frontier" (if you want to use that). It could be different from the impulse engines on the Enterprise-NX though.
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
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quote:Originally posted by Harry: - We have a MACO male called Richards. And another Corporal was named, but I didn't quite catch it. Forrester (the female MACO from the Western episode) is injured in the assault.
The other Corporal was named O'Malley.
quote:Originally posted by Kazeite: That was S. Money, and Archer calls her "Parsons". Weird.
No weirder than, say, Eddie Paskey playing several different NCC-1701 personnel on TOS, including Rizzo and Leslie in the same episode. ("Obsession")
-MMoM
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Registered: Jun 2001
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