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Well to be fair, while Federation engineering does tend to be a touch volitile, only the early Galaxys (inculding the Ent-D) had the problem of warp cores exploding if you looked at them the wrong way.

True. Its a good thing I didn't list exploding warp cores then.

A quantum singularity is a black hole.

Did no one do physics here?

I make no effort to hide the fact that my entire knowledge of physics consists of; 'apple falls down.'

Rochey wrote:

Well to be fair, while Federation engineering does tend to be a touch volitile, only the early Galaxys (inculding the Ent-D) had the problem of warp cores exploding if you looked at them the wrong way.

True. Its a good thing I didn't list exploding warp cores then.

My apologies, I should probably have quoted your point about the "Cause and Effect" nacelle hit instead.

No problem. And yes, they do thankfully seem to have corrected that screw up. How they ever commisioned those ships in the first place...

Rochey wrote:No problem. And yes, they do thankfully seem to have corrected that screw up. How they ever commisioned those ships in the first place...

Screwups happen - U.S. WW2 era aircraft carriers had a habit of blowing up due to avgas leaks, and one of the main causes of the loss of HMS Sheffield in the Falklands War was that she only had one water main, which the Exocet severed.

Except this is far more dangerous. We've seen that a low velocity impact to the nacelles is enough to destroy the ship! Every time we've seen the pylons or nacelles get damaged leads to the destruction of the entire vessel. Even a collision which looks like it could barely breach the hull caused a catastrophic explosion. I'd rather risk the ocasional crewman getting immolated by a plasma related accident than risk the whole ship going up.

You might but apprarently Starfleet does not. Rather, let me say that they take the (misguided) view of planning for the everyday to the exclusion of the possible, or even the probable.

A quantum singularity is a black hole.
Did no one do physics here?

It can be a true black hole if its on board a ship - for extraordinarlily obvious reasons, any point aboard a ship CANNOT have a Chandrashekar (sp.?) limit. No, Chandrashekar limit, no black hole. Besides, "black hole" is the term applied to a singularity resulting from the collapse of a star.

It can be ...

oops. I meant CAN"T be...

Mikey wrote:

A quantum singularity is a black hole.
Did no one do physics here?

It can be a true black hole if its on board a ship - for extraordinarlily obvious reasons, any point aboard a ship CANNOT have a Chandrashekar (sp.?) limit. No, Chandrashekar limit, no black hole. Besides, "black hole" is the term applied to a singularity resulting from the collapse of a star.

Oh to be mr pedantic.
Fine, a black hole is a quantum singularity, as opposed to vice versa, even though there is for all intents no difference. A place of infinite density, and finite mass.

Captain Seafort wrote:
Screwups happen - U.S. WW2 era aircraft carriers had a habit of blowing up due to avgas leaks, and one of the main causes of the loss of HMS Sheffield in the Falklands War was that she only had one water main, which the Exocet severed.

That and the extensive use of aluminum in the superstructure, which burned from the left over Exocet fuel. That's one reason why modern warships don't use much aluminum anymore.

Rochey wrote: http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb17 ... ptkirk.jpg

My background now =)

To be honest the Sovereign class, I don't really like it. It's just that you could easily build a small squadren of ships with equal abilities. Now if you had the squad you could have multiple ships to handle multiple situations. With the Sovereign, you're stuck with all that in a single place. If you need the a fraction of the firepower to deal with a situation in one system but need even more firepower in another system a Sov could only deal with one at a time, but a squadren could deal with both at once. You should never put all your eggs in one basket. But it is beautiful in apperence so it's not all bad.

I think the reason for the larger number of smaller phaser arrays is to give a wide range of fire power. For all we know phaser arrays take up very little space so long as there is the inner workings somewhere in the ship. So long as you have the main bits somewhere close by to might not take much spae at all to add aditional arrays.

The size thing is a bit iffy for me. I would of liked to seen it bigger but then I don't want the Enterprise K to be over a Kilometer long.

Maybe this is what they have decided is the upper range for practical size.

Cpl Kendall wrote:

Captain Seafort wrote:
Screwups happen - U.S. WW2 era aircraft carriers had a habit of blowing up due to avgas leaks, and one of the main causes of the loss of HMS Sheffield in the Falklands War was that she only had one water main, which the Exocet severed.

That and the extensive use of aluminum in the superstructure, which burned from the left over Exocet fuel. That's one reason why modern warships don't use much aluminum anymore.

I didn't think Sheffield had that big of an aluminium problem - the Type 21s, yes, but not the 42s.

EDIT: According to this site aluminum wasn't a problem in the Falklands, owing to the Type 42s being steel built, and Ardent and Antelope being so badly hit they'd have sunk whatever their construction.

I didn't think Sheffield had that big of an aluminium problem - the Type 21s, yes, but not the 42s.

EDIT: According to this site aluminum wasn't a problem in the Falklands, owing to the Type 42s being steel built, and Ardent and Antelope being so badly hit they'd have sunk whatever their construction.

True, but the ensuing fire is what led to the disuse of aluminum in warships. Anyway,

To be honest the Sovereign class, I don't really like it. It's just that you could easily build a small squadren of ships with equal abilities. Now if you had the squad you could have multiple ships to handle multiple situations. With the Sovereign, you're stuck with all that in a single place. If you need the a fraction of the firepower to deal with a situation in one system but need even more firepower in another system a Sov could only deal with one at a time, but a squadren could deal with both at once. You should never put all your eggs in one basket. But it is beautiful in apperence so it's not all bad.

We've seen time and again that with the Starfleet starship design ethic, bigger is better. Sure, you could build a squadron of ships with equivalent total firepower, but each ship would have considerably weaker shields; weaker SIF; less ammo capacity for torps; less available auxiliary craft and certainly no captain's yacht; less crew facilities; less crew capacity in general which could lead to overworked crews via longer emergency duty shifts; less raw replicator material; less impulse fuel; less AM storage; etc., etc.

Plus, she was the U.S.S. Enterprise - she HAD to be a big honking mother.

Maybe this is what they have decided is the upper range for practical size.

Its possible that this is the limit of Federation engineering.

Rochey wrote:

Maybe this is what they have decided is the upper range for practical size.

Its possible that this is the limit of Federation engineering.

Well, not the absolute limit, given the size of starbases like Spacedock and Starbase 74, but likely the limit of their shipbuilding capability, seeing as even the future ships we've seen have all been smaller than the Galaxy.