Actually, it was quite good. It had 'The Gallileo Seven', a very well done Spock story, and 'Spocks Brain' which is possibly the single most absurdly side-splittingly funny episode of Star Trek ever only because it so very very bad!
Kirk: "What have you done with Spock's brain!"
Ow, my sides.
Right, back to the topic. In Galileo Seven Scotty refuels the shuttle using hand phasers. Later in the episode Spock jettisons the fuel and ignites it, proving beyond reasonable doubt that the phasers must be powered by some sort of chemical fuel. On occassion throughout TOS I've spotted hand phasers which have clear transparent handles instead of the usual dark colour. I've wondered, in light of Galileo Seven, whether these were props that were originally intended to represent expended phasers that were misused on set.
In an episode of the prequel series (I can't recall which) Reed shows Hoshi how to use one of the new phase pistols (for Christ's sake, I wish they'd just called them phasers!). Reed opens the top and demonstrates the removal of a luminous cylindrical object which the scene implies must be the power source. To my mind, this could just as easily be some kind of fluorescent chemical fuel.
TNG era episodes all seem to suggest the phasers are powered by energy cells of some kind. There is a TNG episode in which Data and Laforge examine an immitation phaser made by the Romulan's. Data comments on the Romulan power cell. Hard to tell exactly what that might mean, but there is no mention of fuel or chemicals.
As far as TOS is concerned, it fits nicely into the frame of reference for such devices to utilize some kind of chemical fuel, as fuel occassionally plays an important part in the activities of the characters. For instance, Kirk is forever being assailed by nubile Yeomen who want him to sign their duty rosters or fuel consumption reports.
TNG doesn't seem to care about fuel or power reserves too much, unless it's a plot device, such as having an infant alien suckling on your fusion reactors, or on Voyager in that utterly abyssmal episode 'Demon'. I shall say no more in that regard.
Anyway, perhaps the relative attention paid to the subject is indicative of the different approaches of the two eras. The nuts and bolts of TOS v. the omnipotent gadgetry and solve-everything technobabble of TNG.
Registered: Jul 2006
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posted
Even if the phasers did have some sort of liquid fuel in them, the total volume of what they could hold would seem too little not only to get the shuttle off the ground, but to have enough left over to jettison and ignite with any noticeable effect.
Registered: Mar 1999
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Even reducing the likely mass of a TNG Type 6 shuttle by several factors, this is at least 5 metric tons that has to be put into orbit of a world which showed at least nearly Earth-normal gravity. Even the most ludicrously conservative estimate from this example would still be in the range of many hundreds of megajoules.
Even if we assume that the whole phaser is a gastank (and I'm going to ballpark it at about a liter of capacity), then something like propane would only provide a couple of dozen megajoules. Diesel can achieve almost twice that. That's nowhere near even the ludicrously conservative values required. Even our best batteries at present don't have the same kind of energy density as gasoline (though of course gas cheats by being combusted with local air supply).
A microfusion battery might be useful here, which would mean the fuel would be hydrogen. However, I doubt a phaser could carry enough hydrogen to power a shuttle to orbit, even if the shuttle was using fusion to generate the power required.
But then, we don't know the power requirements of antigrav systems. I imagine they're more efficient and less energy-intensive than old-fashioned rockets, of course, but we don't know how the things work overall. It could simply be a magic whatzit field that negates gravity near the craft, or it might require almost all the energy that one would expect a rocket to have to use to lift a craft. There's no way to know for sure.
The thing is, even a microfusion phaser power system would suffer from the same flaw Lee mentions . . . there wouldn't be a grand amount of hydrogen fuel for the burn Spock initiates. It'd be more like a puff.
Of course, this is Trek we're referring to, and there are plenty of Trek substances that have absurd energy densities. Ultritium comes immediately to mind. And in the DS9 Tech Manual there's reference to ampoules of some liquid something-or-other used to power some sort of hand weapon, though per the text the Bajorans or Dominion or whoever used it had never made an explosive weapon from the liquid.
As for me, I think Scotty pulled some sort of maneuver that allowed the phaser to fire, discharging into some sort of energy receptacle, probably one that wasn't standard shuttle equipment though there's no way to know for sure. The energy was then used to synthesize whatever sort of fuel the craft was using. Maybe the phasers powered an onboard antimatter generator, or were obtaining hydrogen or some other fuel from the air or something else on the surface, or what-have-you.
Given Scotty's descriptions and what we see that seems the most likely hypothesis.
-------------------- . . . ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
Da_bang80
A few sectors short of an Empire
Member # 528
posted
Perhaps the term "fuel" is used in those Yeoman's reports refers to the Dilithium crystals or matter-antimatter whatchamicallits that they use. I dunno, that technobabble kind of gets lost on me after a while.
-------------------- Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. The courage to change the things I cannot accept. And the wisdom to hide the bodies of all the people I had to kill today because they pissed me off.
posted
Lee? Dammit, I haven't even contributed yet! And to be confused with Nix, of all people. . .
I simply view it thus: Shuttles must have some form of anti-gravity to be able to manoeuvre the way they do within a gravity well. They're not aerodynamic enough to glide, and they take off without huge plumes of exhaust. This system must use some sort of field-generation technology, and since we know that phasers can emit force fields, it stands to reason that they could use the same power source. THAT is what the phaser power packs were used for - to get the shuttle back into orbit.
Once there, though, they were stuffed. No power for warp drive (if TOS shuttles had it at all? I can't remember, but to make a shuttle capable of pursuing a starship in "The Menagerie" then surely they must?), so no way to get closer to the Enterprise; likewise, no power to communicate with her (or was it the ionisation effects of the local stellar environment? Again, can't remember).
So, Spock flushes the fuel from the thrusters (used for manoeuvring, and orbit-maintaining) and ignited them. We know that ships still use chemical thrusters for such purposes - you know, plasma, ionised gas (ST6). He knew that they couldn't remain in orbit indefinitely, life-support would give out and they'd run out of that same fuel to maintain their orbit, long before they could reasonably expect the ship to return.
(or, maybe the fuel came from the Impulse engine system, which eh also knew wasn't enough to get them anywhere a ship about to warp off to another star system?)
posted
There are multiple meanings for "fuel" in spaceflight, and we might use those to wriggle out of this nonsense...
"Fuel" can refer to the source of power for a starship, a shuttle, a phaser. Antimatter is fuel for starships. Something-or-other stored in sarium krellide is fuel for TNG phasers. Electricity in batteries is fuel for flashlights. In strictest terms, all these are misuses of the original meaning of "fuel", which specified combustion - but that meaning is already outdated today.
"Fuel" can also refer to the source of motion for vehicles. In reaction engines, the correct term would be "propellant" - but most rockets use a substance that is both fuel AND propellant. Some modern rockets do not: the ion engine of SMART-1 used sunlight as fuel and xenon as propellant. But according to the TNG Tech Manual, Trek starships use deuterium both as fusion fuel and as propellant mass (spiced with some fused helium, of course) in their impulse engines. So it would be pretty natural for Starfleeters not to bother with separate words for "fuel" and "propellant"...
Scotty does say he will drain the phasers for their "energy" specifically, so when he calls them "substitute fuel", he is using that word in its first meaning. Also, at no point is it established that the shuttle would actually expel its fuel in a "propellant" sort of way. Jettisoning fuel is considered a nonstandard maneuver!
So, my take on "The Galileo Seven": the shuttle uses a "field drive" of some sort for propelling itself around, and that drive has to be energized using some sort of fuel. Various fuels can do: some sort of a substance is normally used, and can leak out of pipes accidentally, but "sheer energy" from sarium krellide batteries is a workable substitute.
The shuttle also has "boosters" that work from separate tanks. The boosters cannot lift the shuttle from planets if the main drive is not working, hence the name... And hence their dismissal during the first half of the episode. Their fuel did not leak out either in the original accident or when the pipes burst. Much of their fuel was spent when the shuttle struggled free of the humanoid barnacles, but 15 lb/si remained after the shuttle reached space, and Spock jettisoned and "ignited" this (although probably not in any chemical sense). At that point, the "fuel" (energy) for the main drive had all been used up already.
posted
Altnernative meanings for the use of the word 'fuel' is definately a valid approach. An obvious contemporary example of the use of an alternative, or common name, in this regard is the American custom of referring to liquid petroleum as 'gas' or 'gasoline', a usage which continues to catch me out to this day. The first thing that occurs to me is natural gas, which leads to images of American highways filled with vehicles fitted with huge, billowing bags of gas on their roofs. The British term is petrol, but I've heard owners of diesel engined family cars use 'petrol' to refer to filling their tank with diesel. Only drivers of lorrys, vans, plant machinery etc. seem to use the word 'diesel' in this context. And then we have those who use alternative fuels, such as vegetable oil or alcohol mixes and who refer to alternative fuels as exactly that, fuel.
So, basically, I'm agreeing with this idea. From a canon point of view I particularly liked the suggestion that Scotty was draining the phasers by discharging them into a recepticle rather than emptying a liquid from them, as this would jibe well with what we see Scotty doing with the phasers in the episode. Good replies. I think we safely say this matter is settled!
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