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Was the method of power conversion from M/AM reactions ever sufficiently explained in any Star Trek series?

I know that TOS was remarkably vague on the whole "warp engines make power" thing; but TNG and later trek series became ever more detailed in terms of treknobabble bullshit on the engines, and how power is delivered to every last widget on the ship by steam pipes highly explosive plasma conduits.

But how does the energy from the M/AM annihilation get converted to useable energy?

I think that the idea the writers picked up on was using the dilithium crystals as thermoelectric converters in the same manner as the RTG nuclear power packs being designed for satellites by General Electric in that time. Several of the TOS actors and writers were given a tour at a NASA facility (photos of which were printed in the Roddenberry/Whitfield book The Making Of Star Trek) and they might have become acquainted with the concept during that tour. Either that or Harvey Lynn passed the idea onto them.

This is of course how they were able to re-energize the 'inferior' klingon mined crystals in TVH by firing radioactive particles at it.

"Hey Tom, the fire's going out! Shine a light on the coal so it'll kick-start again."

The TM makes a lot of noise about moving high-energy plasma around the whole ship to be converted into useful energy at the end, but I think the show only said 'plasma goes to warp drives which make SPEED when hit by PLASMA'.

The other part of it is the energy required to create an altered state of reality around the ship in order to travel faster than light. They did this of course by channelling that energy to 'field emitters'.

Now you know.

My favourite part is that the warp coils are just some crazy metal that creates warp fields when you spray plasma on them.

It actually starts to sound like the propulsion system of the Planet Express Ship; it remains stationary and moves the universe around it. This is apparently much more efficient than the opposite.

Patrick Degan wrote:I think that the idea the writers picked up on was using the dilithium crystals as thermoelectric converters in the same manner as the RTG nuclear power packs being designed for satellites by General Electric in that time.

That makes no sense. Thermoelectric converters have hideously low efficiencies. In TOS they seem to do the duty of both fuzes and power sources "we are on full crystal power", "all the power in the ship is going through five crystals *dim lights* "four now".

MKSheppard wrote:

Patrick Degan wrote:I think that the idea the writers picked up on was using the dilithium crystals as thermoelectric converters in the same manner as the RTG nuclear power packs being designed for satellites by General Electric in that time.

That makes no sense. Thermoelectric converters have hideously low efficiencies. In TOS they seem to do the duty of both fuzes and power sources "we are on full crystal power", "all the power in the ship is going through five crystals *dim lights* "four now".

Remember that we're talking about TV writers, not scientists. They would have simply heard "special crystals take heat from reactors and turn it into electrical power" and run with it, especially as it simplifies the ship's mechanics as well as the explanations. Also, you have to remember that in TOS' earliest season, they were still literally making the show up as they went along. They hadn't even decided whether the crystals or the matter/antimatter reactor was the heart of the Enterprise's power and there was a lot of confusion through several scripts as to what the lithium or dilithium crystals actually did. I don't think it was until season three that their ideas for the plan of the ship's power circuit had settled into a definitive set of ideas.

If you're trying to analyze the problem scientifically, the real issue with a matter-antimatter reaction is converting energetic gamma rays (in the 500 keV to high MeV range) into a useful form of power. I think the "thermoelectric crystal" explanation is the best we're going to get in that case.

Stark wrote:My favourite part is that the warp coils are just some crazy metal that creates warp fields when you spray plasma on them.

I always thought it was similar to an electric current through a solenoid, inducing a magnetic field... except plasma through some exotic metal (I think the Daystrum Institute says it's a "yitterbium alloy" ) creates the (mysterious) warp field, which seperates the ship from real space. And as tim31 mentioned, "field emitters" compress space in front and expand space behind, allowing the ship to go faster then light.

It's soooo simple.



As for how annihilation is converted into power? I haven't the foggiest. Turbines, maybe?

I'm glad to see I am not the only one who ever thought of htis.. As a Kid watching the show, I knew enough about power and power generation wonder just WHAT they mean each time they talked about "Divert power from system Y to system X!" Or in one episode, some dumped "Power" from the phasers into a console during an emergency to get it to work, and Im left thinking "What power is it? How do the Phasers have power lying around??

The main thing I always wondered was what powered their ship... It's funny because As a kid I thought it simply COULDN"T Be electricity, because oyu only got electricity from turbines and generators.. Originally I thought, "Dose the AntiMatter reactor boil water? that turns Turbines? No that would be silly."

Iater one you have to assume that ship runs off "Electricity" because its the only thing the powers electronics... Off course form the show they make it seem that "Plasma" half the time is doing all the work.. And I don't know if in the WHOLE show anyone actually uses the word "Electricity" but simply "Power" or "Energy"

Crossroads Inc. wrote:The main thing I always wondered was what powered their ship... It's funny because As a kid I thought it simply COULDN"T Be electricity, because oyu only got electricity from turbines and generators.. Originally I thought, "Dose the AntiMatter reactor boil water? that turns Turbines? No that would be silly."

This actually seems to be the intention in the new Star Trek movie, given Scotty's jaunt through enormous water conduits.

McC wrote:

Crossroads Inc. wrote:The main thing I always wondered was what powered their ship... It's funny because As a kid I thought it simply COULDN"T Be electricity, because oyu only got electricity from turbines and generators.. Originally I thought, "Dose the AntiMatter reactor boil water? that turns Turbines? No that would be silly."

This actually seems to be the intention in the new Star Trek movie, given Scotty's jaunt through enormous water conduits.

The tubes are labelled "inert reactant"; they may just be (a derivative of) the "matter" part of a matter/antimatter reactor.

The turbine idea is pretty neat, though.

McC wrote:

Crossroads Inc. wrote:The main thing I always wondered was what powered their ship... It's funny because As a kid I thought it simply COULDN"T Be electricity, because oyu only got electricity from turbines and generators.. Originally I thought, "Dose the AntiMatter reactor boil water? that turns Turbines? No that would be silly."

This actually seems to be the intention in the new Star Trek movie, given Scotty's jaunt through enormous water conduits.

I assumed it was cooling fluid...

If it really is water and the ship really uses turbines, they would need a crap load of water. You can make the future as efficient as you want, but you'd still need a ridiculous amount of feed water...

The very idea of steam turbines on a spaceship is patently absurd, just from the mass penalty the machinery and its support infrastructure (including the aforementioned self-contained feed water circuit and tankage) would entail.

Bounty wrote:The tubes are labelled "inert reactant"; they may just be (a derivative of) the "matter" part of a matter/antimatter reactor.

Seeing as in previously established canon it's deuterium, why can't it just be heavy water?

Patrick Degan wrote:The very idea of steam turbines on a spaceship is patently absurd, just from the mass penalty the machinery and its support infrastructure (including the aforementioned self-contained feed water circuit and tankage) would entail.

Is there another, better way to get power from a fission, fusion, or M/AM reactor? If so, why aren't we using that? Most SF seems to gloss over this, as the topic title suggests. I've seen plenty of "ah, this ship is powered by fusion" but almost no, "yes, and how are those energetic photons converted into electricity?"

McC wrote: Is there another, better way to get power from a fission, fusion, or M/AM reactor? If so, why aren't we using that? Most SF seems to gloss over this, as the topic title suggests. I've seen plenty of "ah, this ship is powered by fusion" but almost no, "yes, and how are those energetic photons converted into electricity?"

Not that i know of - planned fusion reactors still use water to capture the released neutrons.

By the way - shouldn't photons be harder to capture with water than neutrons?
That would presumably make it harder to harness the released energy, possibly making an fusion reactor better suited for power generation - perhaps even more effective.

McC wrote:

Patrick Degan wrote:The very idea of steam turbines on a spaceship is patently absurd, just from the mass penalty the machinery and its support infrastructure (including the aforementioned self-contained feed water circuit and tankage) would entail.

Is there another, better way to get power from a fission, fusion, or M/AM reactor? If so, why aren't we using that? Most SF seems to gloss over this, as the topic title suggests. I've seen plenty of "ah, this ship is powered by fusion" but almost no, "yes, and how are those energetic photons converted into electricity?"

One of these things is not like the other two. The majority of energy from a fission or fusion reactor is released in the form of neutrons or other particles of radioactivity, which release heat when absorbed by the shielding. So water absorbs infrared photons well enough, allowing the use of water steam to turn turbines. A M/AM reaction releases a great deal of gamma rays, which water does not absorb terribly effectively. While you could use water, making use of, say, molten lead to absorb the gamma radiation and transfer the heat would have the advantage of allowing you to combine the secondary/tertiary shielding (primary would be for pions and excess reactant, and probably magnetic) and the initial stage of the heat transfer system. Of course, further stages could still make use of water steam for heat transfer and cooling, and to turn turbines more efficiently than liquid lead would. This is without using any arbitrary supermaterials, of course.

McC wrote:

Patrick Degan wrote:The very idea of steam turbines on a spaceship is patently absurd, just from the mass penalty the machinery and its support infrastructure (including the aforementioned self-contained feed water circuit and tankage) would entail.

Is there another, better way to get power from a fission, fusion, or M/AM reactor? If so, why aren't we using that? Most SF seems to gloss over this, as the topic title suggests. I've seen plenty of "ah, this ship is powered by fusion" but almost no, "yes, and how are those energetic photons converted into electricity?"

IIRC, the plan for Project Daedelus involves collecting electrical power for the ship by running the fusion plasma through a series of electromagnetic coils.

McC wrote:

Patrick Degan wrote:The very idea of steam turbines on a spaceship is patently absurd, just from the mass penalty the machinery and its support infrastructure (including the aforementioned self-contained feed water circuit and tankage) would entail.

Is there another, better way to get power from a fission, fusion, or M/AM reactor? If so, why aren't we using that? Most SF seems to gloss over this, as the topic title suggests. I've seen plenty of "ah, this ship is powered by fusion" but almost no, "yes, and how are those energetic photons converted into electricity?"

Polywell Fusion. Spread the word.

It's coming to a planet near you!

Abraxas wrote:

McC wrote:

Crossroads Inc. wrote:The main thing I always wondered was what powered their ship... It's funny because As a kid I thought it simply COULDN"T Be electricity, because oyu only got electricity from turbines and generators.. Originally I thought, "Dose the AntiMatter reactor boil water? that turns Turbines? No that would be silly."

This actually seems to be the intention in the new Star Trek movie, given Scotty's jaunt through enormous water conduits.

I assumed it was cooling fluid...

If it was cooling fluid, Scotty would have been boiled alive. Despite the superficial implication of the name, cooling fluids are actually hot; that's the whole point of them.

If it really is water and the ship really uses turbines, they would need a crap load of water. You can make the future as efficient as you want, but you'd still need a ridiculous amount of feed water...

It's entirely possible that the ship simply has an onboard plumbing system for showers and drinking water, and that's what he fell into.

Darth Wong wrote:If it was cooling fluid, Scotty would have been boiled alive. Despite the superficial implication of the name, cooling fluids are actually hot; that's the whole point of them.

Assuming the ship uses closed cycle cooling and assuming he fell into the pipes after the hot stage and before the radiators. [disclaimer; haven't seen the movie]

It wasn't cooling fluid.