Topic: Nacelle philosophizing.....bring yer coffee!

[Atrahasis]

It occurs to me that at the time of the first episode of TNG, 2364, that the TMP-style warp engine has been in use (and continues to be in use) on some starship classes for 96 - 99 years.......a century. By the time of "Nemesis" it's been in use for a good 115 years. Moreover, it might still be in production.

If a nacelle design can be used for that long, I think it means that there is a "plateau" that one eventually reaches with regular warp drive design, at least in the area of top speed vs mass.....that re-designing a warp engine further to get a .1 warp factor more speed becomes more of a pain in the ass than it's worth. I think this means that we shouldn't be surprised to find many races have already reached this plateau even in the "Enterprise-era". Considering the number of races that we have seen in "Enterprise", I think it's a mistake to think that they all necessarily had to have been backwards or under-developed or primitive before the humans came on the scene. In fact, it's a type of arrogance to think that. The main reason why the United Federation of Planets becomes dominant in that part of the galaxy 150 years later is not because of superior tech.......it's because of political organization, which led to greater exchange and cooperation and improved tech, but make no mistake, it's the political organization that gave them the greatest advantage. Even if at the beginning their neighbors and competing races had superior technology, they may not have had the organization and the numbers like the alliance in the UFP, which was what kept attackers out and minding their own business, allowing the UFP to grow.

Back to the nacelle thing though: the cylindrical TOS-style nacelle was in use by Starflet even before the UFP formed, right from the Phoenix, so for about 140 years. If you watch "First Contact" carefully, the Phoenix has spinning nacelles exactly like the TOS Connie.

The point: basic nacelle designs can be used for over a century, sometimes even a specific design.  

[111wallace111]

A modern equivalent might be the boiler design on many late 19th thru mid to late 20 century boilers on warships. the basic design was pretty much figured out by the civil war and modfied thru the 1880's after that the improvements were in how better to harness the power and transmit the power to the propellers. Newer systems for monitoring and controlling and firing ( wood, coal, gas, ) the boilers were developed over a long period of time but the boiler itself was pretty much the same...

My thought is that many of the systems were improved in otherwise externally minimal changes that left the basic design of the warp nacel mostly unchanged. Better warp cores, better fuel mixure ratios, better control systems, better monitoring systems, ect. but the actual warp field generator was relatively unchanged.
This could also explain the improvements in performance that were made over several  centuries.  the example being The TNG episode " Where No One Has Gone Before" The Excelcior class ship was able to improve it's performance by several percent just by setting a new intermix ratio.

I think also that since most of the designs stayed ingeneral use for so long the same thing can be said of the hulls.  most might only have been improved in ways that are not visible to the untrained eye. but it also explaines why there are so many versions of the Reliant  type ships.. Why didn't the constitution class refits fair as well?...
Maybe they were at the end of  potential upgradability. Where the Miranda's where made so that modifications would be easy to perform.

Many of the ships seem to have been in use for quite a while. The Saratoga.... Miranda class from ST IV the voyage home shows up in TNG times without the NCC-xxxxA thing going on indicating that it was actually in service for 80 plus years.

I may be wrong on that last point not being as informed as some on Trek Tivia.

But please this is a pretty good thread.  

[**DONOTDELETE**]

Hello Atrahasis,

Quote:

<snip>
The main reason why the United Federation of Planets becomes dominant in that part of the galaxy 150 years later is not because of superior tech.......it's because of political organization, which led to greater exchange and cooperation and improved tech, but make no mistake, it's the political organization that gave them the greatest advantage.

I beg to differ,
In my opinion the reason the UFP is so large is because of the Khitomer Accords of 2293 AD,
Federation/Klingon Alliance,

The Klingons and Feds have no more Neutral Zone,
Political and Economic co-operation, going toawrds integration,
and if anyone invades the other the Mutual Defense Pact,

The Feds are heavy on exploration and commerce,
the Klingons are big on Miltary starships,
Its in spite of the Federations democracy, with the backing of the Klingon Miltary,
that the UFP could grow "like a weed",


Take care,
GeneralWolfe

[Parislord]

I'd have to disagree there.  The Klingon military does not seem like a catalyst for the growth of the Fed.  IMO, it's economics, expoloration and colonization.  Having just bought and marathoned the complete 1st season of TNG on DVD, it's clear that although there is a Fed/Klink alliance, there is little cooperation or even contact.  On the other hand, Wolfe raises an excellent point:  the Klingon treaty and the Rom's not peaking out of their NZ for the last 80 years (per the season finale "The Neutral Zone") are prob. the primary reasons that the Fed are able to pursue such an aggressive campaign of peaceful expansion.

As for the warp nacelle, how much has the ICE changed over a hundred years?  Quite a lot, but it still operates on the same principles and parts to at least some degree...

I raise the question, though, is it the warp nacelle design that's survived 100+ years or is it the individual starship?  The US Navy  decommissioned the USS Jason (OE-8) after 51 years of service.  The ship had, over the course of it's life, undergone numerous refittings and upgrades, which did not include it's engines which work just fine.

[Clark Kent]

I think it can be summed up in one sentance:  You don't throw something out just because it's old.
For example- many of the design principles in aircraft from WWII and even before are still used heavily today, despite the advent of much much fasterand higher flying jets.  New technology is generally expensive due mostly to the R&D costs, and often times a newer, better technology isn't worth the extra money, at least not on a large scale.  Computers are an excellent example of this.  I tend to be more on the Mac side, but generally PCs fit in to this pertty well.  I'f I were to buy a computer before the introduction of the first pentuim or PowerPC processors, I would have some usefulness, but once those two lines were revealed, computing power reached a revolutionary new level.  Unless you want to run the most advanced software in the most intensive tasks, the older computers dating back as far as say, 1996 will do just fine.  This shows on ebay, where computers that old are selling cheaply, but also quickly.  In fact, except for the now widespread use of USB over older serial and parellel type of devices, these older computers are just as useful as the day they rolled off the line.
On a more personal note, I am only buying a new computer because I want to switch back to Mac and also run a new flight sim that requires a much more top of the line processor, otherwise I would plod along with my current, much older systems.
I'm sure the same would prove true in this situation.  Most of the ships and systems would most likely go along as they were for years and years, due to the lack of corrosion, decay etc in space.  Not to mention, sometimes something that works well is produced for a long time, like my old cutlass supreme.  between the mid seventies and the 1989 the oldmobile cutlass supreme line stayed for the most part the same, only changing in minor additions or revisions, and was only changed after Oldsmobile realized these old cars weren't dying, they were too reliable, so they needed to be replaced by something flashier and less reliable at the end of the 80's.
CK

[Magnum357]

I think I agree with Clark on many of these points.

First of all, I remember reading somewhere that a Professor (can't rmember his name) came up with a theory that all technology works on an upward curve, but their are two curves in progress, not one.  His theory was that new technology would rise farily sharply on this curve, but after time would peak where progress of the new technology would not advance much and would get harder and harder for the technology to advance more.  The only way for the technology to make yet another huge advancement would be too find new radically different methods or mediums to accelerate the progress.  I have a picture of how this would work on a graph, but no way to display it on this forum.

A good example I think of this would be NASA and its so called space program.  If you think about it guys, the way we send astronaunts into space almost seems a little comical.  We strap a guy or girl, to a huge Liquid oxygen rocket and fling the person so fast in order to reach Orbital velocity.  Now granted, we might have more to develope in rocketry, but at the rate things are now, intrasystem solar system travel will only be practical probably a thousand years from now (maybe longer).  NASA needs to find other ways to get into space then this old, archaic method.  Granted, NASA was looking into doing this with some projects (like the Cancelled X33 project a few years ago) but now that NASA wants to cut back on costs and less emphisis on space travel, its going to take thousands of years to get anywhere in the cosmos in my opinoin, unless we come up with some revolutionary technology.  

Comparing examples of todays tech progress with the "Star Treks" tech might not be a totally good idea.  One of the main resaons why we see technology thrown away and not ever used again is because its goes against the thinking of a capitolist system.  You need consumers to keep "consuming" your products in order for it to run "smoothly".  If you have old products that people use that are "just fine" for what they need them for, their is less incentive for them to buy "the latest thing".  Even our modern military is somewhat plagued by this problem.  As stated earlier, an old Destroyer that was 50 years old was decomishioned because it was obsolete.  Now with our economic system as it is, that is correct, it would be a waste of money to keep a ship maintained if it was just sitting in a habor somewhere doing nothing.  But I have always been under the impression that Star Trek is in a time and place where Capitolism is not supreme and that money and greed is something that was an old childish, human limitation that kept it from really showing its true potential.  Since the economics of Earth would be radically changed after the 3rd world war (human cooperation and the drive torward helping advancing the race beyond just manipulating itself all the time) it allowed humans to focus on goals with much more powerful incentive then before then the old clumsy capitolistic system.  

As for the Warp engine question, I could easily see these old +140 year warp engines being used.  I would have to imagine that starships would have to made EXTREMELY durable and built with materials much more advanced then just simple metals and such.  The would have to be, if a ship is cut off from where it was built, it would need to be very durable and versitile.  As long as the warp design is able to be maintained by the wear and tear of space travel, and the design was easily rapairable after damage was taken, I could see Trek tech lasting a long time if needed.

[Clark Kent]

I think you're right there magnum.  When we talk about capitolism, I tend to think of a virus; if it's not growing, it's dying.  There is no place for homeostasis there, and no desire to obtain it.  The problem is, we live in a very finite world, with finite resources and finite space and treat it in a way that assumes infinite resources and space.  That's not to put other systems above capitolism, but it's sad that the problems of those assumptions are staring us in the face and no one of any serious power is taking them seriously.  The simplest solution is intrasystem travel- allowing the use of resources throughout the solar system to sustain us, rather than exhausting what we have on this little planet.  Instead of encouraging people to have babies forcing the population exponentially higher, we should be encouraging people to be more responsiblewith how many children they have.  I mean, if every couple had only a single baby, we'd cut the population in half to a much more managable number after a generation.  But that goes along with the capitolist idea, assume infinite growth.  On that subject, I heard of a study once, where someone added rats to a cage every so often, until the cage was full, but he didn't stop, he just kept adding them.  As the numbers grew, their ability to get along dropped fast until they becamemore and more violent and even homicidal.  Strangely enough, that's exactly what our world is doing to itself.
I think that helps explain why people can get so intense about star trek.  it portrays a world where ethics and morality playu a pivitol role in life, instead of what actually happens in our society, where ethics and morality are only impedences.  Of course, there are many solutions, that have been discussed and worked out since as far back as the time of Plato and Socrates.  But then again, Socrates was executed...
CK

[Captain KoraH]

As always, I feel compelled to remind everyone that the thigns we see in the TV shows and movies are often the way they are for real world reasons that have little to do with the Trek-nology involved. A producer of a TV show episode that is supposed to depict an "older fed starship" will pick out the TMP or TOS connie nacelles and slap them on a ship just because the average viewer will see them and think "that's old, it was on that old ship, so it must be old" and there is no real "reason" why the nacelle is there 150 years after it's first appearance on screen other than that.

However, as I sometimes like these "coffee cup discussions" of Trek stuff, this is one I'd like to get into.

My opinion of the nacelles is that perhaps the outer looks of them have changed little, but remember that a "Warp Engine" is more than just a nacelle. It include a reactor and various other parts that are deep inside the hull of the ship, not on the nacelles. I personally think the nacelles are much more like tires on our cars today. While the tires on the very first Chevy in 1912 are really not much different looking from the tires on a 2004 Corvette, they are both driven by an internal combustion engine, and they both have a drive train and wheels with rubber tires attached. But the similarities are mainly only superficial. The engine in the Corvette is a LOT different from the 1912 Chevy.


1912 Chevy Vs 2004 Corvette Vs TOS Enterprise Vs Enterprise E


1912 Chevy*
-Internal combustion engine
-Drive train
-Wheels with rubber tires
- 2 Cylinder 2 stroke engine top speed: 34mph

2004 Corvette*
-Internal combustion engine
-Anti lock brakes and  4 wheel steering traction control with advanced suspension
-Wheels with steel belted radial tires using advanced road hugging traction cutting
-10 Cylinder super turbocharged engine top speed: 215mph


But the main thing here is that they both have wheels with rubber tires, and the Connie and Enterprise D both have very similar, yet different warp nacelles, which are again only a portion of the whole warp drive.






*These are totally ficticious facts made up by me to make a point because i didnt feel like researching Chevies at 11:20pm.  

[ActiveX]

Actually KoraH, I think you have the basic jist of it...

Hehe...

I theorized on the FTCB about warp cores acting as subspace anchors to explain why impulse was a constant thrust propulsion system...

I figure the nacelles prolly have an impact on that to a degree...

I dunno...hehe...

We all could write a Tech Manual on this...

[James Formo]

I like Korahs' tire analolgy as well. Does this mean the nacels get rotated every 7,000 miles?  hehe at warp 9 , they would need to stop and rotate every .000376 seconds  

Then theres times that the producers are on a budget and use magic markers for nacels.