Think about OUR reality, if they filmed the Enterprise in a correct turn the screen it was shown on would be a mile wide and the Enterprise would be 1/4" long. The ships must be able to manuver in the space allowed which means screen space not outer space.
A friend of mine would say that we are using today’s physics to explain something two to 400 years in the future. Think of someone in the 1600s explaining how an airplane flys and how impossible it is.
Yea, it’s interesting what some people will put in a book.
But I already ignored “today’s physics” knowing that there is always some theory being disproved. Don’t forget Einstein’s Theory of Reletivity is just a Theory.
Then again, about the insanity that is Trek, why would you put the bridge of a ship on the very top? I mean that would be the easiest place to hit and should be the focus for every attack. But Rodenberry wanted the bridge in a place for the audience to see, so the Genre continuted with it.
…where was I again?
Sorry about that, hit the wrong button.
WARNING!!: FANBOY TREKKER TECHNO-BABBLE AHEAD!! [:D]
Okay, referring to “Mr. Scott’s Guide to the Enterprise…”
The warp drive produces no thrust. It creates a field, similar to gravity combined with electromagnetism, that effectively “shrinks” ( warps ) the space immediately around the ship so that in its local space the ship is traveling at sublight speed, but an observer outside the field would clock it at several times the speed of light. This system, as well as the weapons and shields is powered by the warp core, the shimmering vertical shaft in the engine room. Matter comes down the upper part and antimatter comes up from the lower part of the column. The center is the intermix chamber where the two meet and create energy.
From there, some of the energy is routed to the weapons and other systems while the majority of the power is routed to the warp engines. If you look at almost any post-Original-Series ( starting with the first movie ) engine room you’ll see a horizontal shaft running to the aft of the ship that splits into 2 upward-slanting shafts, or just the two shafts going directly from the intermix chamber. Those continue out to the engines and the excess plasma/energy venting from the warp engine is what causes the glow ( blue on Fed ships, green on the Romulans’, etc. )
The Impuse drive is a fusion reactor that also acts as a backup power source for critical systems. This is the only source of thrust for a ship aside from the RCS (Maneuvering thrusters ). The fusion reactor superheats reaction mass well beyond what you have in a conventional rocket and routes it out the back to provide thrust, producing more power with less fuel. Though the ship carries a reserve of matter for this and the warp system, most of the matter used while the ship is moving is collected by the Bussard Ramscoops ( the front part of the warp engines where you usually see the red glow ). These use a magnetic field to draw in intertellar gas and dust that is stored for later use.
As for the potential power of antimatter, the only rough figure I’ve heard of from scientists is that it has several hundred times the energy potential of an equal amount of nuclear fuel. The prequel to the novel “The DaVinci Code” quoted it as 25 kilotons of explosive force per gram of antimatter. Given the amount of plutonium needed to get the same power and the fact that the author had a long list of consultants, I’d say that should be about right. The ships in Star Trek usually have several tons of the stuff so I don’t think inertia would be too much of an obstacle.
Counter Point:
Impulse engines used for slower than light travel. These use nuclear fusion (same reactions that drives the sun by turning hydrogen into helium). In fusion reactions, about 1% of the available mass is converted into energy. The helium atoms produced can come streaming out the rocket at 1/8th the speed of light. Using this, one can calculate the amount of fuel needed to accelerate the Enterprise to half the speed of light. Each time the Enterprise accelerates to half the speed of light, it must burn 81 times its entire mass in Hydrogen fuel. The Enterprise weighs about 4 million metric tonnes, therefore needs over 300 million metric tonnes of fuel to accelerate to half light speed. If one used a matter-antimatter drive, one would only need twice the mass of the ship in fuel to reach that acceleration.
BUT, wait! It gets worse…
That’s to accelerate. Once you get to your destination, you have to bring the ship to a halt. This would require the same factor of 81 times its mass in fuel. This means that to go somewhere at half light speed and stop once you got there would require 81x81 = 6561 times the entire ship’s mass. Suppose, you want to achieve this acceleration in a few hours (with inertial dampers active), the power radiated as propellant by the engines would then be about 10^22 watts (1 with 22 zeros after it), or about a billion times the total average power presently produced and used by all human activity on earth.
What if you could collect the fuel as you fly along? Why not sweep up the hydrogen necessary as you travel through space? The average density of matter in the universe is 1 hydrogen atom per cubic centimeter. To sweep up one gram of hydrogen, (even traveling at half light speed) would require you to deploy collection panels with a diameter of over 25 miles. Even then, this would provide you with only a hundred-millionth of the needed propulsion power.
The above was written by someone who is way smarter and with a lot more time on their hands than me…[:D]
Unless of coarse that person wasn’t as smart as he thought he was. Everything is based on what we think MUST be beyond our solar system. Nothing man made has gone beyond our solar system. Until someone gets out there and says “yup everything is spread out just as we thought it should be” I will still think of it as just more science fiction.
Rodenberry had to have something that defied our physics. What kind of show would there be if it was all about living a cylinder that approached the speed of light then had to turn around to slow down to its destination or the like.
found this on a search and had to somment, starships in the star trek univers dont use matter/antimatter for impulse navigation, they burn a fuel called deuterium, so they have a chemical engine that required suel much like the space shuttle, i may be wrong in this but many years ago i read about it in the enterprise tech manual
Interesting thread, but if you want sci-fi with real physics, you’ll probably have skip any combat related films and watch 2001, 2010, or Silent Running (BTW, the FX are good, but the story hasn’t aged real well). They are much more energy and fuel conscious than any other film I’ve seen. If you want to know what space combat would be like, I’d suggest watching Das Boot, Run Silent Run Deep or the Enemy Below (which was the motivator/inspiration behind TOS episode The Balance of Terror). For what it’s worth, submarines are probably the closest things to combat space ships we’ve can relate to and they fight the way a star ship probably would, fighting with nothing but sensors, trying to stay hidden until they can strike first, extremely aware of things like fuel, energy/fuel, ammo, air, and requiring a special crew to deal with the psychology of deep space or the deep sea.
Doug
Someone mentioned the starships maneuvering with a very “aircraft-like” set of moves, I would think right off the top of my head, at least at high relative sublight, or even warp speed moves, this would have to be because they need the navigational deflector to do it’s thing.
We all know,(with the exception of the Miranda class) starships are equipped with one usually on the front of the secondary hull.(Constitution, Galaxy, Ambassador classes or example). Without the navigational deflector, even a small particle of dust could rip a hole in the hull at high speeds. (In theory). They have to keep the deflector primarily pointed forward to be effective. An exception to this rule would be in the original series episode “Balance of Terror” where Kirk ordered “Full Astern! Emergency Warp Speed!!” Now, I’m not sure about you, but warp 9 in reverse wouldn’t get much benefit from a forward facing navigational deflector.
You’d think if the warp engines really “warp” space around the ship, they’d warp everything, dust included. So, we are looking at high sublight speeds where the navigational deflector works best. At least I read all this in a book about it somewhere a longtime ago. Come to think about it, I’m not sure where Klingon Nav deflectors are, nor Romulan for that matter…
Only thing I can chalk it up to is “Creative License”, and just plain good story writing.[:)]
It’s best to just accept Trek as sci-fi/fantasy and let it entertain.
One thing that always amused me is an unshielded ship getting hit with a Photo Torpedo that has an anti-matter warhead and only getting a fairly small hole blown in it.
If space combat is your thing, Star Fleet Battles the board game or Star Fleet Command the PC game are excellent. While the games might not be realistic etc because Trek isn’t they are good tactical simulation games.
I believe the real “critics” call Star Trek a “Space Western”, still no idea how they come to that idea though. C’mon Little Joe…
Fun games both - though to be honest I find it amusing that in Starfleet Command, no matter what, I always seem to wind up in “flat scissors” with the other ship (at least the original release - I haven’t played any of the other ones on line to see if they’ll let me use the vertical)
[:)]
this is how I understood it worked. You can’t apply what you know about physics to those ships becasue they don’t operate in this time and space. the ship never moves faster than about .90 light and that would be really going fast. The ship creats a “warp field” around it that allows it to drop into another layer to time/space. In this new place time is no longer a constant and distance is not the same. For example moving a foot in trans space would be like moving a million miles in our space and time. as far as maneuvering they also use gravity type drive produced by the warp engines. this is why they don’t do flying against the rear bulkhead and get smashed during acceleration and when that approch suns as such, gravitational pull has little effect. this same force is used to slow, speed up, and maneuver the ship. this is also way the primary hull doesn’t just break off the secondary hull having that large mass attached by that single member, little or no real forces are acting on it. the ship creates it’s own gravity fields which allows it to attract and repel from plantary bodies and such. the ship is desinged around trans warp dyanamics and with out all of it’s support fields in place it can be easily damaged. Why does it move like it does? becasue like a modern aircraft it’s completely computer controlled. All the crew does is tell it where they want to go and the computer factors in about a million things that are happening around it in the unverse and then maneuvers the ship in a safe efficent manner. They do use the impulse engines for powered foward motion but this is assited by the gravity (warp engins) helping it to steer, pull and stop the ship with undue stress on the ship.
If you notice when there shield and structural integrity fields fail those torpedos ripe through it like a paper mache but when active have little effect. the whole ship exist in several magentic bubbles that hold it together, maneuver it, protect it and allow it to slip into another place and time for shot periods to travel over great distances without having to go that fast in out reality.
that was the infamous “inertial damper” system they ‘created’. it is as improbable as a transporter system with no ‘receiving platform’ on the planet. 
All Startrek ships maneuvor like fighter planes etc.the size of the ship is relevant to how long they take to turn etc.generally the idea is to alway keep your front of your ship turned towards the enemy.Movement is always in 3 diminesions.the main weapons are generally facinf forward.ie photons and phasers.
Ships will be turned to give different parts of the ship to the enemy if a shield is weakened.There is the cochrane deceleration maneovour. which slows u down fast.Most combat in star trek is done at ranges of thousands of km and beyond.
I hope this helps u out.