How to design a warp core

[777 geek]

We all know the warp core design is infernally bad. Well some sad nerd (http://www.freedomforfission.org.uk/app/trek.html) really spelled it out.

Can anyone think of a way around the impulse delivered when the antimatter explodes that doesn't depend on the inertial dampeners?

[Roy Batty]

Sure, they just get a whole bunch of Chronoton particles combined with some Tacychon beams & just go back, you know, 'before'.
Nice page though 777 :)

[Lord Jubjub]

This link (http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Essays/Engineering.html) at the bottom of that page leads to another very good rant about the stupidity of the Star Trek engineers.

[Roy Batty]

Aye, but let's not forget Scottie kept the infernal thing a go'in for a wee while :)

[Ronald Brak]

What worries me is how the darn thing glows and pulses and everyone in engineering just walks around as normal. If I was near a nuclear reactor let alone an antimatter reactor and it started glowing and pulsing I would get the hell out of there.

[777 geek]

Having also just attended a minimum standards safety course in preparation for going offshore, I also have a few things to say about the Jefferies Tubes. I'll make a post here a bit later.

[Roy Batty]

Having also just attended a minimum standards safety course in preparation for going offshore, I also have a few things to say about the Jefferies Tubes. I'll make a post here a bit later.
Jefferies Tubes? Oh, you mean plot device 'escape' ventilation ducts! :D

[Doodler]

Can anyone think of a way around the impulse delivered when the antimatter explodes that doesn't depend on the inertial dampeners?

No.

[777 geek]

And now onto Jefferies Tubes. I can't at the moment spin this into anything relevant to the cause of freedom for fission so I'm just doing it here.

For every job that must done, there is an element of fun. But with that comes risk and those must be assessed. These Jefferies Tubes are confined space - confined, godammnit! Don't forget they're confined. The risks are as follows:

Human kinetics

Pushing - because of the confined space, there is a need to push a lot of tools along the grating since they cannot be lifted properly or transported readily. Yes they are supposed to have antigrav lifts, but we never see them using them to transport tools and every Jefferies Tube could mitigate the risk by having some kind of transport thing to easily move tools along the length of the tube.

Pulling - ditto

Lifting - the one good thing about the confined spaces is that there isn't enough room to lift things, so that isn't a problem.

Repetitive movements - perhaps crawling qualifies because of the confined space.

Over exertion - we often see the chumps a little winded after all that crawling. The cumbersome nature of these tubes demands extra exertion.

Static posture - with little room, this is a major hazard, particularly given the need for a hunched position to fit in the tube.

Material/Chemical exposure

Inhalation - because of the confined space, the hazard of inhalation is only severely increased. The cumbersome nature of the tubes means that escape in the event of a leak is difficult thereby adding to the danger.

Absorption - PPE should protect against this, but still, because of the confined space, it only increases the probability of hazardous materials coming into contact with the body. Ditto on the dangers of difficulty of escape.

Ingestion - this isn't a major hazard, but again the confined space means the likelihood of harmful chemicals getting into your mouth only increases.

Work site

Trip hazards - because you can't stand up, there are none of those, so there is one advantage.

Fall from height - not enough room, so we're alright there as well.

Confined space - erm yes. That's what I've been saying. It makes the equipment difficult to reach, a particular problem in an emergency. It makes it difficult to flea from danger such as leaks. It also makes it difficult for medical teams to reach a worker if he's injured inside them (and don't bang on about transporters, if a leak is the most likely cause of injury, chances are the transporters won't work).

Poor lighting - this is not an inherent problem of Jefferies tubes, but they aren't the brightest passages. It makes silly accidents more likely.

Other people above, below or adjacent - of course this depends on the job, but due to the confined space, it makes it harder to be aware of them.

Blind corners - absolutely.

Waste material - depends on the job, but as noted, the confined space exacerbates the danger.

Escape routes blocked - definitely. They are cumbersome and fires could easily cut you off.

Energy source

Electricity - give the 10kV supply they use, this is a danger and if live wires come loose, it is difficult to move out of the way and harder for them to avoid you.

Gas - confined space means more potential for harm from it.

Radiation - ditto.

Dropped objects - lack of room means it is not so much of a problem.

Temperature extremes - depends on the job, but the confined space makes it harder to avoid.

Noise - depends on the job, but the confined space concentrates the noise o the hazardous is greater due to poor design.

Steam - increased danger from confined space where steam is featured.

Pressure - ditto.

Explosives - more difficult to escape, easier for an explosion to crush you.

Product escape

Leak - if there is one, there is more chance of harm.

Spill - depends if there is anything to spill, but you have less room to run away.

Overflow - ditto.

Mechanical

Crushing - less space would exacerbate the threat if any crushing devices were present.

Shearing - ditto.

Cutting - ditto.

Entanglement - absolutely if a bundle of optical fibre came loose. You couldn't just walk around them.

Impact - less room for avoidance.

Stabbing - ditto.

Friction - there is less room to dissipate the heat and the cramped conditions make it more likely to come into contact with a surface of a mechanical device heated by friction.

Vibration - definitely made worse by the cramped conditions.

[korjik]

normally I am all for a discussion of sci-fi tech, but star trek has gotten way too far in the technobabble realm to have a really good discussion. EVERYTHING is a possible plot device, in any way possible, at any time.

That being said.....

The main problem I can see is that in a warship, the reactor and tankage have to be as deep in the hull as possible, to keep weapons fire from breaching the reactor. In that case, generally by the time you need to eject the core, the ship is too badly damaged to do it. In Insurrection the relatively undamaged Enterprise ejected its core in only a second, whereas the Enterprise in Generations and the Yamato in the series both were destroyed when the ship was in bad shape. So, in my opinion, the reactor breach problem is an unsolvable engineering tradoff, not a design flaw.

As for the specific question of the OP. I dont think there is any reason not to use the inertal dampeners and a shield system for control of the fuel in an emergency. Just run those failsafes off of a secondary power source, say a capacitor bank (or its ST analog). It only has to last long enough to get the warp core out to a survivable distance before the core detonates.

[BigDon]

I read the rant that the bottom of the page links to. Can you say, "Whiney engineer nerds run amok?" Both sites get a lot of milage out of that one episode, "Contageon". Out of how many seasons? but they do have a point about passive systems for anti-matter contanment. But the point of the show was adventure not engineering excellence.

Hell I had a bigger problem with the biology of Startrek. It allows for any ol' combination of species. Even those with radically different body chemistries. Iron based with copper based blood, puh-leese. Ever hear of chemo-toxicity? All that seems to be required is sapience. It just lets emo kids at conventions claim to be Klingon/Vulcan/Horta hybrids with an oh so tragic and dark backstory.

[Moose]

Work site

You forgot the alien critters inevitably hiding in the ductwork. Some of those critters bite when approached.

...Not to mention the allergies. :p

[Ronald Brak]

normally I am all for a discussion of sci-fi tech, but star trek has gotten way too far in the technobabble realm to have a really good discussion. EVERYTHING is a possible plot device, in any way possible, at any time.

I respect both Doctor Who and Red Dwarf for completely ignoring vast amounts of what Star Trek calls "cannon" material. Of course, with all the time travelling that goes on in those series it's not exactly surprising that the past doesn't match the future.

[ToSeek]

I respect both Doctor Who and Red Dwarf for completely ignoring vast amounts of what Star Trek calls "cannon" material. Of course, with all the time travelling that goes on in those series it's not exactly surprising that the past doesn't match the future.

Didn't Red Dwarf do some sort of warp-factor-speed scrolling text where all the continuity changes between one season and the next were explained, but only if you had a VCR or DVD player that could slow the text down enough to make it readable?

[Ronald Brak]

Didn't Red Dwarf do some sort of warp-factor-speed scrolling text where all the continuity changes between one season and the next were explained, but only if you had a VCR or DVD player that could slow the text down enough to make it readable?

Yeah, and in the episode where they went to a universe where time traveled backwards one of the natives of that universe says, "I'm talking to you! Yeah you! The sad git who is sitting there playing this backwards so they can understand what I'm saying!"

[cjbirch]

Didn't Red Dwarf do some sort of warp-factor-speed scrolling text where all the continuity changes between one season and the next were explained, but only if you had a VCR or DVD player that could slow the text down enough to make it readable?

The opening moments of Red Dwarf III spoofed the scrolling text of Star Wars - although a production error meant that the final line 'and now the saga continuums' appeared on-screen twice.

http://www.reddwarf.co.uk/deck05/series_3/production.html

CJ

[Donnie B.]

Should it not be inertial dampers, not dampeners?

Perhaps this is the way the Trek writers had it, but to me an inertial dampener is something that gets inertia wet.

A damper, on the other hand, is something that reduces the amplitude of something. Which seems like the right thing to do to that nasty old inertia.

[TrAI]

I figure the Jefferies Tubes are not really that far fetched as an idea, they are like a merger of a few commonly used architectural elements, namely dropped ceilings/raised floorings and utility tunnels. that would mean they are but utility tunnels housed in the spaces between decks/rooms of the ship. Modern dropped ceilings, for example would not be very well suited for use on a Trek like starship, having the engineer standing around on ladders, acoustic tiling dropping down, and plasma leaking down from the ceiling every time the ship took a hit would not be good at all.

Real life utility tunnels do face many of the same problems, they are cramped, full of potentially dangerous equipment, dark and dusty. Of course the lamentable quality of the Trek tech does make the Jefferies tubes much more dangerous, if you hit your head on some tube in a real tunnel, you will probably just get your head hurt, while in a Trek ship you'd probably take out some plasma conduit, powercoupling or something at the same time...

It would probably be better if they used every n'th deck for this purpose, for example, if every third deck was an engineering deck they could directly supply the deck above and below with power and tubing, you would have the engineering functions evenly spaced throughout the ship, any "normal" deck would always have a deck above or below that was supplied from a separate system, and the short distances would make life support and power redundancy to each deck much easier. And, they would have lots of space for redundant systems.

As for the antimatter... distribute it to separate warp pylons, one core for each of them. That way you can just sever the pylons to get rid of it, no flow of antimatter into the main body of the ship. A passive system, with spring, gas or magnets to separate the parts, and an active system opposing this is good, though I would prefer having something more, perhaps something that could explosively cut the pylon. Thirdly, design the core/tank system so that if everything else failed, the explosion would be shaped so that neither the plume of the explosion or the direction of thrust caused by it to face the ship. Design the pylons to shear under this condition...

I wonder, would it be possible to design a storage for antimatter on similar principles to the ones used in diamagnetic levitation? Something that at least could buy some time if the active systems fail?

[ggremlin]

Would an insulation layer of "Dark Matter" work? The stuff must be good for something.

[Doodler]

I figure the Jefferies Tubes are not really that far fetched as an idea, they are like a merger of a few commonly used architectural elements, namely dropped ceilings/raised floorings and utility tunnels. that would mean they are but utility tunnels housed in the spaces between decks/rooms of the ship. Modern dropped ceilings, for example would not be very well suited for use on a Trek like starship, having the engineer standing around on ladders, acoustic tiling dropping down, and plasma leaking down from the ceiling every time the ship took a hit would not be good at all.

Real life utility tunnels do face many of the same problems, they are cramped, full of potentially dangerous equipment, dark and dusty. Of course the lamentable quality of the Trek tech does make the Jefferies tubes much more dangerous, if you hit your head on some tube in a real tunnel, you will probably just get your head hurt, while in a Trek ship you'd probably take out some plasma conduit, powercoupling or something at the same time...

It would probably be better if they used every n'th deck for this purpose, for example, if every third deck was an engineering deck they could directly supply the deck above and below with power and tubing, you would have the engineering functions evenly spaced throughout the ship, any "normal" deck would always have a deck above or below that was supplied from a separate system, and the short distances would make life support and power redundancy to each deck much easier. And, they would have lots of space for redundant systems.

As for the antimatter... distribute it to separate warp pylons, one core for each of them. That way you can just sever the pylons to get rid of it, no flow of antimatter into the main body of the ship. A passive system, with spring, gas or magnets to separate the parts, and an active system opposing this is good, though I would prefer having something more, perhaps something that could explosively cut the pylon. Thirdly, design the core/tank system so that if everything else failed, the explosion would be shaped so that neither the plume of the explosion or the direction of thrust caused by it to face the ship. Design the pylons to shear under this condition...

I wonder, would it be possible to design a storage for antimatter on similar principles to the ones used in diamagnetic levitation? Something that at least could buy some time if the active systems fail?

Apparently, somewhere between TOS and TNG, they decided to open things up a bit. From what I recall about every scene with the Enterprise-D's and E's utility spaces, they were rather open.

[Roy Batty]

Apparently, somewhere between TOS and TNG, they decided to open things up a bit. From what I recall about every scene with the Enterprise-D's and E's utility spaces, they were rather open.

They're dead good acoustically for playing musical instruments in ....

[Tobin Dax]

I only skimmed the article, but I wanted to point out something I saw: they do use magnetic containment for the antimatter. The TNG Tech Manual says that, though I don't think they've ever specified that the containment field is a magnetic field onscreen.

(See, you're not as sad of a geek as I am. :D)

[korjik]

Should it not be inertial dampers, not dampeners?

Perhaps this is the way the Trek writers had it, but to me an inertial dampener is something that gets inertia wet.

A damper, on the other hand, is something that reduces the amplitude of something. Which seems like the right thing to do to that nasty old inertia.

maybe I just like my inertia wet :)