Galaxy Class Warp Design Issues

[WATCH-MAN]

In TWOK, a naecelle is destroyed, by an antimatter explosion. There is nothing talking about the warp core overloading or being unable to shut down or maybe it was just a completely different design?

That could have something to do with the fact that the warp drive of the Reliant was still inoperative and merely Impulse power was restored - as was reported by Joachim shortly before the battle in the Mutara nebula began.

[Prometheus Unbound]

In TWOK, a naecelle is destroyed, by an antimatter explosion. There is nothing talking about the warp core overloading or being unable to shut down or maybe it was just a completely different design?

That could have something to do with the fact that the warp drive of the Reliant was still inoperative and merely Impulse power was restored - as was reported by Joachim shortly before the battle in the Mutara nebula began.

There ya go.

[DaveJB]

Could it be that they have a reason for the active nature of the Galaxy's safety systems?

Imagine a passive safety system had ejecteded the warp core when the magnetic containment field started to deteriorate and a containment breach was imminent while the Enterprise was still inside the Spacedock of starbase 47 in the TNG episode "11001001".

In that particular situation it was Bynar sabotage that was causing the containment field to deteriorate - assuming that's what was actually happening, and that they weren't just outright falsifying the readings - and considering they needed the Enterprise intact and warp-capable for their own purposes, they'd likely have jury-rigged a hypothetical passive ejection system so that it wouldn't activate.

Or imagine a passive safety system had ejected the warp core when the Enterprise lost power in the orbit of Delphi Ardu IV in the TNG episode "The Last Outpost"

Likely would have made no difference since the power drain never got so bad that antimatter containment was threatened. Absolute worst case is that the Ferengi would have tried to swipe the ejected warp core before leaving, but chances are they'd have been bitchslapped by Portal for doing that.

Or imagine a passive safety system had ejected the warp core after the Enterprise was hit by the quantum filament in the TNG episode "Disaster".

Uh... that would have been a good thing, since it'd have taken the potential warp core breach out of the equation, and the crew could have focused their efforts on helping injured people and getting the ship up and running.

Or imagine a passive safety system had ejected the warp core after all main systems went down in the vicinity of the temporal distortion in the TNG episode "Cause and Effect"

...before the Bozeman showed up, meaning that the collision with the Enterprise would have only caused structural damage and not caused the warp core to explode. You seem to be picking examples that actually disprove your own argument.

Or imagine a passive safety system had ejected the warp core when the power levels dropped under a certain point in the TNG episode "Booby Trap"

Would have made no difference, by that point they'd have been dead anyway from the radiation bombardment.

Or imagine a passive safety system had ejected the warp core when the interphasic parasites contaminated a conduit causing a malfunction of the warp core in the TNG episode "Phantasms"

Why would it eject in that situation? The core didn't work, but it was never in danger of exploding, and ejecting it would have made no real difference to the episode's outcome.

Or imagine a passive safety system ejects the warp core in the middle of a battle because the ship gets a good shaking and is damaged.

You mean like in Generations? Yeah, I can imagine what would have happened: the Enterprise wouldn't have been destroyed!

Or imagine a passive safety system ejects the warp core in orbit around a inhabited planet due to any problems.

If a system is going to just eject the warp core at the slightest sign of trouble, then it's simply a poorly designed system. Active or passive doesn't even come into it. Besides, warp core breaches in planetary orbit have happened before, and not flash-fried everything on the surface. And if it did, again, it's a problem you're going to have regardless of a passive or active ejection system.

[Tribble]

IMO another design flaw (in all Fed ships not just the Galaxy) is that every single system is hooked up into a central computer, and all of them can be used to access the others. Now I'm not in the military so correct me if I am wrong, but I think its safe to assume that you can't use a toilet to hijack the USS Nimitz? As silly as it sounds that's exactly the kind of scenario we see play out in Star Trek all the time.

[Prometheus Unbound]

IMO another design flaw (in all Fed ships not just the Galaxy) is that every single system is hooked up into a central computer, and all of them can be used to access the others. Now I'm not in the military so correct me if I am wrong, but I think its safe to assume that you can't use a toilet to hijack the USS Nimitz? As silly as it sounds that's exactly the kind of scenario we see play out in Star Trek all the time.

No, it's always been tapping into the network, usually on the bridge or engineering.

In fact they tried to use a classroom computer to do it once and it wouldn't let them.

[Elheru Aran]

Classroom computers specifically would have been isolated, I think, because the danger of hacking from those would be fairly obvious. Some kid thinks it's the most awesome thing to make the fire sprinklers let loose so they can have a foam party in the corridors of the whole ship? No.

On the other hand, holodecks seem to be fair game. Moriarty and Reg Barclay, anybody?

[Prometheus Unbound]

Well technically that was the computer hacking the computer from within the computer.


And Barclay rewired stuff, is an engineer and had an iq of over 800 at the time. Not any old person using a toilet.

[Baffalo]

Classroom computers specifically would have been isolated, I think, because the danger of hacking from those would be fairly obvious. Some kid thinks it's the most awesome thing to make the fire sprinklers let loose so they can have a foam party in the corridors of the whole ship? No.

On the other hand, holodecks seem to be fair game. Moriarty and Reg Barclay, anybody?

From what I understand, it was Moriarty using very elaborate tricks to get Picard to give authorization from within the Holodeck. It was his authorization, so the computer accepted it. However, being able to actually give commands from within the holodeck... well, I'm not so sure that's the best of ideas. I don't want to be on duty when the ship makes a hard left, and when I ask about it, it was because Commander Riker was giving some very interesting commands to a holodeck callgirl.

[Terralthra]

The problem with the "passive ejection" system is obvious: any sort of passive ejection system which automatically triggers the warp core to be ejected would strand the Enterprise wherever she is. In several cases, that just makes the explosive annihilation death they previously faced into a slower death by thirst, starvation, suffocation, or freezing. If you're going to build an ejection system and automate it, it has to be literally the last possible chance for survival for the crew.

By definition, that means that in any number of circumstances, it will be too slow to save the ship from a warp core breach, since breaches can occur catastrophically fast. If it's not the last possible chance, if it triggers at all early, you potentially doom the crew to death when they might've been able to handle the imminent core breach themselves (as in Disaster, e.g.).

[Tribble]

The problem with the "passive ejection" system is obvious: any sort of passive ejection system which automatically triggers the warp core to be ejected would strand the Enterprise wherever she is. In several cases, that just makes the explosive annihilation death they previously faced into a slower death by thirst, starvation, suffocation, or freezing. If you're going to build an ejection system and automate it, it has to be literally the last possible chance for survival for the crew.

By definition, that means that in any number of circumstances, it will be too slow to save the ship from a warp core breach, since breaches can occur catastrophically fast. If it's not the last possible chance, if it triggers at all early, you potentially doom the crew to death when they might've been able to handle the imminent core breach themselves (as in Disaster, e.g.).

While breaches can occur catastrophically fast, almost every instance I can think of is the result of combat. If the warp core takes a direct hit from a weapon or is rammed like the case of the Odyssey, I don't think any kind of ejection system would be able to react in time. However, in the vast majority of warp core breach scenarios there was plenty of time for an ejection system to work.

Most Fed ships operate in Fed territory, where help is at most weeks away. In most core breach scenarios that we see, ejecting the warp core would not have lead to people dying due to lack of provisions. For example, had the warp core and anti-matter pods been ejected in "Disaster," the E-D itself would have remained intact and the crew could have focused on restoring auxiliary power and other ship systems. Sure, it might have been inconvenient and perhaps embarrassing for the E-D crew to wait for a tow, but they certainly weren't at any real risk of starving/freezing/suffocating etc.

If the ship is well outside Fed territory such as Voyager, then ya a warp core ejection can be very bad for the crew. That being said, it never actually stopped the Voyager crew from ejecting the core anyways on a few occasions - they preferred a slim chance of survival to none at all.

And of course, there is an option of last resort. If the crew were completely stranded with communications down, no hope of rescue and no habitable star system nearby, they could use the impulse engines to try to accelerate as close to light speed as possible. If I'm not mistaken, if a ship can travel close to light speed it would be able to cover fairly large distances in a short amount of time relative to the crew right? Of course, the problem with that is that they would be effectively traveling forwards in time, and may not get to see their friends/ relatives again should they survive the event.

[DaveJB]

The problem with the "passive ejection" system is obvious: any sort of passive ejection system which automatically triggers the warp core to be ejected would strand the Enterprise wherever she is. In several cases, that just makes the explosive annihilation death they previously faced into a slower death by thirst, starvation, suffocation, or freezing. If you're going to build an ejection system and automate it, it has to be literally the last possible chance for survival for the crew.

By definition, that means that in any number of circumstances, it will be too slow to save the ship from a warp core breach, since breaches can occur catastrophically fast. If it's not the last possible chance, if it triggers at all early, you potentially doom the crew to death when they might've been able to handle the imminent core breach themselves (as in Disaster, e.g.).

The warp core isn't the only power source for the ship; Voyager ejected its warp core on at least two occasions that I can think of ("Cathexis" and "Day of Honor"), and the vast majority of the ship's functions carried on working just fine. The Enterprise also seemed to operate without any widespread disruption to the ship's operations in the aftermath of the dilithium hatch explosion in "The Drumhead," which temporarily took the warp core out of commission; hell, they even had enough time and spare power to put J'Dan on trial for the incident!

[Baffalo]

Tribble,

Since I think the cap on Star Trek was a max impulse of .25c to prevent messing around too too bad with time dilation. Even going that fast, you're experiencing a dilation of 1.0328. When you get up to the "theoretical" max of the Enterprise (for some reason I found it listed as .75c), that's a dilation of 1.5119. But... just out of curiosity, I'm going to calculate how long it would take Voyager to get home at their theoretical max impulse.

So, we take the theoretical cruising speed (Warp 7.5) and use the equation from memory alpha to get velocity: v = wf10/3 * c, giving us 2.4774 x 1011 m/s. Calculated over 70 years (the estimated time to get home), that's a rough distance of 7.8127 x 1018 meters.

So if the maximum impulse as listed in the ACTD is correct at 0.8c, then we would be looking at 3.2553 x 1010 seconds, or around 1032.2405 years. But, there's time dilation to factor in with the handy formula, γ = 1 / Sqrt[ 1 - (v2 / c2) ]

If we run those numbers, then we get a time dilation for 0.8c of 1.6667. If that's the case, then it will only FEEL like 619.3319 years!

[Elheru Aran]

Well technically that was the computer hacking the computer from within the computer.

Which is simply silly. A holodeck, like educational units, should be carefully isolated from the rest of the highly important shipboard computing systems, precisely because of the wide variety of programs and capabilities therein. That it is not, is a serious flaw, as is permitting it to run sentient AI's capable of deceiving a Starfleet Captain.

I always figured that a good deal of the day-to-day operating power on starships came from the impulse reactors, rather than the warp core. Sure, the core is highly important-- can't have warp without it-- but on occasions when it's turned off or nonfunctional, the ship still has enough power at least to run atmosphere, lights, computers and what not. I don't recall any occasions when the entire ship went completely dark. Of course the M/AM reactor probably supplies a *lot* of the power, but in cases when it's turned off, another circuit using the impulse reactors is turned on. That's my thoughts on that, anyway.

There are also emergency batteries as well, though I think I got that from the TNG TM. Should really have not sold that one at Mckay's...

[WATCH-MAN]

Ejecting the warp core is not in each situation a death sentence.

As we have seen, Voyager ejected its warp core at least three times: in the episodes "Cathexis", "Day of Honor" and in "Renaissance Man".

And the Enterprise ejected its warp core in "Star Trek: Insurrection"

In all those instances, the ship still had enough energy for life support and other systems.

But in other situations, loosing main power could prove to be fatal.

In the TNG episode "The Last Outpost" Enterprise was trapped in a energy field, suffering a power system failure, becoming immobilized with phasers and shields off-line and life support failing. The crew barely survived because their energy lasted long enough to enable them to find a solution. If the warp core had been ejected, they hadn't had the additional power of the warp core and they had died much sooner.

It's the same in the TNG episode "Booby Trap". Without the power of the warp core, they hadn't survived the booby trap as they needed the last bit energy to leave the asteroid field. That's why Geordi attempted to increase the efficiency of the warp core. Insofar it would have made a difference.

In the episode "Cause and Effect" all Power levels were dropping rapidly. Without the power of the warp core - if it had been ejected already by a passive safety system - they may not have had enough energy to use the tractor beam to alter the other ship's trajectory and to open the main shuttle-bay doors. The Bozeman would have collided frontal with the Enterprise. It's dubious that the Enterprise could have survived such a head-on collision. It surly would have caused more than only structural damage.

In the episodes "Disaster" and "Phantasms" they had problem with the warp core. But they were able to repair it in time. If the warp core had been ejected, they could not have repaired it.

In the episode "11001001" the computer showed problems with the warp core. Had a passive safety system ejected the warp core, the space-dock of starbase 74 would have been destroyed.

Maybe the Bynars, in their attempt to steal the Enterprise, would have jury-rigged the passive safety system. Maybe not. As a passive safety system is not controlled by the computer of the Enterprise the Bynars may not know about it, may not be able to manipulate it or may fail in their attempt to manipulate it and therewith causing the ejection of the warp core.

But that's not the point. The point is that such problems can occur while a ship is docked. Not ejecting the warp core gives time to fly the ship away, as was tried in the episode. They had enough time to set the autopilot of the Enterprise to put the maximum distance possible between the Enterprise and any inhabited area. Automatically ejecting the warp core while the ship is in a space-dock or in orbit of a planet can have fatal consequences.

In Generations they had enough time to evacuate the star-drive section when they noted that they can not stabilise the warp core. As Picard said after the crash of the saucer secton: Their casualties were light. But would have happened, if the warp core would have been automatically ejected in the middle of the battle? Enterprise would have lost main power, could not defended itself anymore and would have been destroyed by the Duras sisters.

Maybe - as the Bird of Prey was so outdated, Enterprise would have won the fight even without main power. But - and this it the point - against another foe, one with more powerful ships, to loose main power in a battle can make the difference between survival or death - especially as you need main power to withdraw if that becomes necessary.

And it seems impossible to design a passive safety system that acty in each situation exactly as you want it. When is it too early to eject the warp core? When is it too late? If you want to have complex algorithm to decide when the warp core can be ejected, you won't get a passive safety system.

[Elheru Aran]

...OK, I think you need to work on your writing. I have no idea what you are endorsing here. Are you FOR ejecting the warp core, or AGAINST it?

[WATCH-MAN]

Well technically that was the computer hacking the computer from within the computer.

Which is simply silly. A holodeck, like educational units, should be carefully isolated from the rest of the highly important shipboard computing systems, precisely because of the wide variety of programs and capabilities therein. That it is not, is a serious flaw, as is permitting it to run sentient AI's capable of deceiving a Starfleet Captain.

[...]

With the same logic you can demand that the internet is abolished.

Computers on this planet are connected via the internet. Even the most important computers are connected. That won't change in the future.

[Eternal_Freedom]

When the E-E ejected it's warp core in Insurrection, the ship was still able to manouvre, power shields and (I think) weapons, it certainly didn't seem to be a major impediment to combat. Indeed, Geordi's only comment afterwards was "we're fresh out of warp cores" is the Son'a tried the subspace weapon again, not a warning of "we're kinda screwed for power."

I think it's clear that the warp core isn't the primary source of power for most ship systems. Obviously you would need some restrictions in place for a passive ejection system - not being enabled when the ship is in dock for instance, but other than that I can't see why they don't have one.

[Darth Tanner]

With the same logic you can demand that the internet is abolished.

Computers on this planet are connected via the internet. Even the most important computers are connected. That won't change in the future.

Computers are connected to the internet but anything controlling essential machinery like nuclear power stations, air traffic controls ect should be air gapped as in no internet connection or indeed no external connections.

[Elheru Aran]

Well technically that was the computer hacking the computer from within the computer.

Which is simply silly. A holodeck, like educational units, should be carefully isolated from the rest of the highly important shipboard computing systems, precisely because of the wide variety of programs and capabilities therein. That it is not, is a serious flaw, as is permitting it to run sentient AI's capable of deceiving a Starfleet Captain.

[...]

With the same logic you can demand that the internet is abolished.

Computers on this planet are connected via the internet. Even the most important computers are connected. That won't change in the future.

Sure, but the Internet isn't *in* the computers (per se). Rather, the computers are independent units that connect *to* the Internet. They can be severed at any time should the user wish to do so simply by pulling a few cables. In Star Trek, on the other hand, some days it's almost like the whole ship is a bloody computer. A holodeck program being able to control the Enterprise is like a RAM chip taking control of a desktop. It's absurd, and in a starship, dangerous.

Holodecks should be physically isolated from shipboard computers. Sure, this might limit the range and scope of programs that can be run on the deck... but frankly, I don't think that's a major issue for Trek computers. There should be no way for a holodeck program to be able to access ship programs. If someone's stuck in the holodeck because a program won't let them go, crew should be able to manually turn off the holodeck simply by pressing a few buttons or pulling a literal plug.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Given that on Voyager at least Holodecks have their own independent power sources (whihc are apparently totally incompatible with the main power grid) they really should have their own isolated computers. If nothing else it would be a privacy issue, you don't want anyone with enough clearence being able to see what you're up to from anywhere else on the ship.

[SilverDragonRed]

Thinking about the Bynar episode; why was the warp core still active while they were in 'dry-dock'? Why wasn't the fuel siphoned off the ship, or at least had the core shut down? Why wasn't the Enterprise running power from the starbase?

[Tribble]

Tribble,

Since I think the cap on Star Trek was a max impulse of .25c to prevent messing around too too bad with time dilation. Even going that fast, you're experiencing a dilation of 1.0328. When you get up to the "theoretical" max of the Enterprise (for some reason I found it listed as .75c), that's a dilation of 1.5119. But... just out of curiosity, I'm going to calculate how long it would take Voyager to get home at their theoretical max impulse.

So, we take the theoretical cruising speed (Warp 7.5) and use the equation from memory alpha to get velocity: v = wf10/3 * c, giving us 2.4774 x 1011 m/s. Calculated over 70 years (the estimated time to get home), that's a rough distance of 7.8127 x 1018 meters.

So if the maximum impulse as listed in the ACTD is correct at 0.8c, then we would be looking at 3.2553 x 1010 seconds, or around 1032.2405 years. But, there's time dilation to factor in with the handy formula, γ = 1 / Sqrt[ 1 - (v2 / c2) ]

If we run those numbers, then we get a time dilation for 0.8c of 1.6667. If that's the case, then it will only FEEL like 619.3319 years!

Obviously traveling across the Delta Quadrant is not an option. However, IMO it could make the difference between reaching a habitable star system or not.

I was thinking of a novel where the NX-Columbia was forced to travel to another planet at near light speed. The journey relative to the planet lasted 12 years, while for the Columbia crew it lasted 63 days. Though I'm terrible at math, I presume that would require the Columbia to be traveling well in excess of 0.9c?

Of course, both ACTD and the novel are non-canon... what was the fastest canon speed that a ship has achieved via impulse engines?

@ WATCHMAN

In "The Last Outpost" I don't believe there any risk of a core breach. In fact this is one of the few instances which showed some semblance of intelligent design - given the choice between powering the life support or powering the anti-matter containment fields, the containment fields still take priority. The warp core would have only been ejected when the containment fields themselves were about to collapse.

In "Booby Trap" there was no risk of a warp core breach occurring, the risk was that the crew would die of radiation exposure before they could escape.

In "Cause and Effect" there was no risk of a core breach prior to the Bozeman hitting the nacelle, so the warp core wouldn't have been ejected in any event. The problem was after the Bozeman hit the nacelle. As Darth Wong noted, this incident exposed some fundamental flaws with the warp engines:

a pressure loss in the warp plasma system requires an emergency core shut down, which means that the system can't simply throttle back to half power and shut down one of its two feeds (so that it only runs to the undamaged nacelle).

Furthermore, the core shutdown doesn't work, and you may notice that they have no secondary shutdown system to try. Naturally, the core ejection system doesn't work either, and of course, there's no secondary core ejection system.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: no engineer in his right mind would design such an incredibly volatile system with such a shocking lack of redundancy and diversity in its emergency systems.

In "Disaster" and "Phantasms" the crew should have never been in serious risk of dying due to a core breach in the first place. In "Disaster" it was stated that should the field strength drop to 15%, the field will collapse. Fine, so how hard would it have been to program a safety system where in the event the field strength falls to a critical level (e.g. 15.5%), the core and anti-matter pods eject? That would have given them virtually the same amount of time to repair the systems without risking them all dying due to a core breach.

As the Bynars "11001001" were clever enough to fake an imminent core breach, they clearly knew the systems of the E-D quite well. Chances are the only reasons they were able to try and pull off a scheme like this was because of the active safety system on board. If all Fed ships had passive safety systems the Bynars would have almost certainly been aware of that fact and wouldn't have even attempted the steal the E-D in that fashion.

In "Generations" it was the last shot by the BoP which was critical. Even then the situation seemed to have been under control until that random power spike. The crew had several minutes in which to eject the core safely, but apparently nobody thought about it. If the warp core had been ejected, the E-D would have been saved.

Designing passive safety systems would have been pretty straight forward. The warp core / antimatter storage pod ejection system should have been built with this in mind:

Assuming the ship is completely disabled and unable to maneuver, what is the minimum safe distance and minimum time required to eject the warp core / anti-matter storage pods?

So say for example it takes 10 seconds for the entire ejection process to get the warp core to a safe distance. Add in a few seconds for a margin of error, and make it 15 seconds. Up until that point in time, the crew is free to try and repair the core, or do whatever the situation warrants, such as continuing to use the power of the core during a battle. However, when the computer for the ejection system (which would be entirely separate from the E-D's main computer) detects that a core breach is 15 seconds away it automatically ejects the warp core because at that point the failure to do so would guarantee the destruction of the ship. Given that most irreversible warp core breaches are detected several minutes in advance, I don't see major problems resulting fro this type of setup.

EDIT: Of course that kind of setup in itself has another built in margin of error - it assumes worst case scenario in that the ship is totally disabled. If the ship is still able to maneuver with thrusters / impulse they'll have more time to escape.

[Baffalo]

Obviously traveling across the Delta Quadrant is not an option. However, IMO it could make the difference between reaching a habitable star system or not.

I was thinking of a novel where the NX-Columbia was forced to travel to another planet at near light speed. The journey relative to the planet lasted 12 years, while for the Columbia crew it lasted 63 days. Though I'm terrible at math, I presume that would require the Columbia to be traveling well in excess of 0.9c?

Of course, both ACTD and the novel are non-canon... what was the fastest canon speed that a ship has achieved via impulse engines?

63 days is 0.1726 years.

Experienced Time x γ = Relative Time

So 0.1726 years * γ = 12 years

γ = 12/0.1726 = 69.5238

γ = 1 / Sqrt[ 1 - (v2 / c2) ]

69.5238 = 1 / Sqrt[ 1 - (v2 / c2) ]

69.5238 * Sqrt[1 - (v2 / c2 ) ] = 1

4833.5601 * (1 - (v2 / c2 ) ) = 1

1 - (v2 / c2) = 2.0689E-4

v2 / c2 = 0.9998

v / c = 0.99989655122639

Yeah they're bookin it dude. They're extremely close to the speed of light to pull that off.

[Simon_Jester]

Hm. The ship had no warp capability whatsoever?

[Batman]

Not having read the book I'm speculating of course but presumably none worth using. We're talking 63 days vs 12 years. They'd need to be able to go faster than 69c to shorten the trip from the crew's perspective.