Galaxy Class "Warp Core" problems?

[Thorin]

Because the AM pods are on decks 40 and 41, which are a prime spot to be blasted (I have the blueprint set).

And I was thinking 70KG/second is gas guzzling because it works out to 181440 metric tonnes every 30 days, which is 3.66% of the ship's mass. I suppose in retrospect that's a pretty good fuel:ship ratio, but it still feels like a pretty high consumption rate for an exploration ship, particularly because I don't remember the E-D stopping in for more AM anytime.

Most things are made for transport today will have a lot of their weight in fuel - planes are an obvious one. The 12.75 billion gigawatt figure may well be a peak value, meaning that the warpcore isn't always giving off that much energy and so I suppose 70kg/s travelling through the warpcore may only be when the ship is travelling at maximum warp or when it is doing something very energy intensive. This would mean that the ship when at cruising warp/low warp may only use 10kg/s. Voyager also does a lot of refueling, so if the 12.75 figure is actually an average or not a peak, it's possible the E-D does do a lot of refuelling, it may just be there are designated points to refuel (nebulas are an obvious one for deuterium or planets). It's seen to not be very hard aswell, just open up the bussard collectors...

Also, the pods are in a prime spot to be blasted - but that's not really to do with warp core problems. We would only hear them being required to be ejected during a fight where a) warp travel would not be needed in the immediate future, and where b) the enemy ship far outguns yours. So them being in a vulnerable spot is pretty separate to the warpcore's problems.

[Thorin]

I'd say the starship is a whole lot less gas guzzling than the car!

You might still expect that a ship would need to replenish it's anitmatter stores now and then (ESPECIALLY in Voyager - they were facing a journey of 70 years and worried about Deuterium, which is far more abundant, before antimatter). Another error!

Well, as I've just said - 70KG/s may be a peak figure, but the other point - Voyager does refuel. We've seen it in a few episodes, actually, where they've been collecting deuterium.
Deuterium isn't far more abundant than anti-matter, in the technical sense at least, because anti-matter is deuterium, or, rather, anti-deuterium, so they clearly get normally deuterium then convert it to it's anti-particle.

[Jordanis]

70 KG/s sounds fine for a peak usage figure, I just thought it added up to a lot. Obviously, the core must have variable power output (which means variable fuel input) since there's all this business about sustaining high warp for a limited time. Presumably, the core can only take that peak power output for that limited time.

As far as Voyager goes, rationalizing that series usually makes me throw my hands in the air before too long.

[Thorin]

As far as Voyager goes, rationalizing that series usually makes me throw my hands in the air before too long.

Then you'll fit in just fine round here

[Jordanis]

As far as Voyager goes, rationalizing that series usually makes me throw my hands in the air before too long.

Then you'll fit in just fine round here

Yeah. I watched the ENT pilot and never caught another episode... VOY and ENT make me so sad.

[Captain Picard's Hair]

The Federation must have permanent magnets quite a bit more powerful than ours if they trust their antimatter storage to it (but they're so far in advance in every other area, so it's not a stretch). They've got a lot of trust in those magnets, and I'd imagine they have a good factor of safety in the containment, as well.

[Mikey]

Right - make it an automatic system - many of the ejection problems seemed to occur at the point between the active crew command to eject and the system's response. And armor it all you like... this is an uncontrolled M/AM annihilation we're talking about. It doesn't matter if you armor it with two meters of the wierdest alloy known to 'Trek, or with 2 mm of toilet tissue. If that thing goes while inside your ship, you're going with it.

[Jordanis]

And armor it all you like... this is an uncontrolled M/AM annihilation we're talking about. It doesn't matter if you armor it with two meters of the wierdest alloy known to 'Trek, or with 2 mm of toilet tissue. If that thing goes while inside your ship, you're going with it.

Which is why you're armoring it so that by the time enough energy has been poured that deep into the hull to hit the antimatter or warp core, your ship has probably already been pounded to pieces.

[kostmayer]

Howabout a horizontal ejection system, maybe out of the back of the ship. If its gonna blow, it might as well take out a couple of pursuing enemy ships while its at it.

[Teaos]

It doesnt really matter what side a warp core ejects from. Your talking a difference of a few hundred feet when the explosion is thousends of miles wide.

[Mikey]

Which is why you're armoring it so that by the time enough energy has been poured that deep into the hull to hit the antimatter or warp core, your ship has probably already been pounded to pieces.

I understand you better, now - I had thought you were talking about armoring the rest of the ship from its own core. However, the problem is that we often see warp core breaches resulting from attacks that do not penetrate to and directly hit the core, but rather from ones which impact remote locations and secondarily affect the core. We've talked ad nauseam about damage to systems from non-local damage; it's worth bringing up here, though, because armoring the core will not help prevent this type of damage.

[Thorin]

I understand you better, now - I had thought you were talking about armoring the rest of the ship from its own core. However, the problem is that we often see warp core breaches resulting from attacks that do not penetrate to and directly hit the core, but rather from ones which impact remote locations and secondarily affect the core. We've talked ad nauseam about damage to systems from non-local damage; it's worth bringing up here, though, because armoring the core will not help prevent this type of damage.

Which is why he said they should be protected by isolated systems - so that damage to a phaser array on the saucer section, doesn't cause feedback to cause anti-matter containment to fail, or something similar. The only way to get the warpcore to explode would be a direct hit to the hull where the warpcore is, and even then, the extra armour surrounding the warpcore would take up some of the firepower. Armouring the core stops weapons causing direct damage to it. Localising the systems stops a hit to anywhere other than the core causing damage/problems with the core.

[Mikey]

Jordanis - it's certainly a tremendous sight better than the Fed systems are now, and I appreciate the thought process, but just to play devil's advocate and pick your brain a bit:

It appears that not all of the "wandering damage" is transmitted via the computer itself, although the isolated computer systems would certainly solve the problem of the ejection system always being unavailable a/o broken. Hoever, that damage may also travel through the ODN lines (which may or may not benefit from that same isolation, depending on the necessity for bridge access) or power relays, which I would think you can't avoid having communicate with the core - that's kind of its whole purpose.

I'm not knocking your idea by any stretch - I merely wonder if you have an idea for these circumstances as well.

[Captain Picard's Hair]

As I stated in my "fix your ships" thread, it would be smart to add some kind of safety system on top of the EPS grid to prevent the kind of surges that give people walking the decks serious plasma burns and blow up the bridge. We've seen no on-screen evidence that ANY kind of surge protection system is in place, which given the preponderance of damage we've seen directly caused by plasma, looks incredibly dumb. Surely such a system should make the core at least a bit safer. Even our own real-life power grid has more safeties of this kind (and circuits that shut off a power plant from the grid in case things go really bad) than we've ever seen from Trek - whose systems channel far greater amounts of power.

[Thorin]

All they'd need is one circuit breaker...