Galaxy Class "Warp Core" problems?

[Blackstar the Chakat]

Excelsior has a crew of around 700! On a ship that small? How would you figure it, also slave systems were mixed back then, watch ST3. The ships 'weren't built for slave control'.

Did you call the Excelsior small? And that it has a big crew? It's bigger then a modern day carrier which often have crews of over 5000 people. 700 is more then reasonable. Then again I could be not understanding what you're saying and making myself look like an idiot.

[Thorin]

I agree; the point that I, and I believe Seafort, was trying to make is that you can't ignore the associated systems when you discuss the fragility and lack of common sense of the warp core design.

Of course - a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.
I was saying the it isn't the entire of the warp core that is dangerous, just aspects of it which are dangerous and then cause the entire of the warp core to be dangerous.
A nuclear bomb isn't dangerous, but if you blow it up it is.

[Deepcrush]

Excelsior has a crew of around 700! On a ship that small? How would you figure it, also slave systems were mixed back then, watch ST3. The ships 'weren't built for slave control'.

Did you call the Excelsior small? And that it has a big crew? It's bigger then a modern day carrier which often have crews of over 5000 people. 700 is more then reasonable. Then again I could be not understanding what you're saying and making myself look like an idiot.

The crews in star trek don't really follow modern crew standards so I think you'd be best off comparing to the show standard and not real life.

[Captain Peabody]

Well, in all fairness to the designers, I don't think getting all systems knocked off-line by a 'temporal anomaly,' and then getting a starship shot at them, was exactly the kind of thing you can prepare for.... but I'd agree a few more safety systems might be in order. For instance, have you noticed that every darn time the core is about to explode, the ejection systems are always somehow 'frozen,' or disabled? You kind of get the impression that the only time they would be able to eject the core was if there was no problem to begin with...

[Thorin]

Dumbest thing I've seen on Trek... Obviously Nemesis.

Picard: "Activate self destruct"
Computer: "Self destruct system offline"
Picard: "Damn, if only we had abundant supply of anti-matter, explosive materials, or even a warp core to shoot at that would blow up the ship"

I mean, what the hell? If he wanted to self-destruct it isn't that hard.

Though no shuttle-transporters comes a close second. Also in Nemesis.

[Sionnach Glic]

That whole film was like a black hole of stupidity.

[Captain Seafort]

Don't forget "destroys organic matter at the subatomic level"

[Thorin]

Don't forget "destroys organic matter at the subatomic level"

That was another impressive one - in fact probably more so than the others, but also more forgivable due to the fact that most wouldn't get it.
The fact that;
a) Sub-atomic destruction would be separating the atom and create a nuclear blast with absolutely no chain reaction (!)
b) Organic matter doesn't exist on the sub-atomic level.
EDIT: Or even the atomic, or even the molecular level, for that matter!

[Mikey]

That would certainly be the ultimate "clean" bomb, wouldn't it? A subatomic destruction effect that could pick out and exclusively target the subatomic particles in carbon-based molecules...

I'm sure that's what the writers were thinking...

[Thorin]

That would certainly be the ultimate "clean" bomb, wouldn't it? A subatomic destruction effect that could pick out and exclusively target the subatomic particles in carbon-based molecules...

I'm sure that's what the writers were thinking...

The fact it can cause nuclear fission in every organic body on a planet means that, if the mass of all the organic tissue was fissioned (as it clearly is, as it's broken down on the subatomic) with today's effeciency, it could probably explode the planet. Technically, that should actually happen.

[Mikey]

No - a subatomic destructive effect shouldn't technically be able to target the subatomic connections exclusively in carbon-based molecules at all.

[Thorin]

No - a subatomic destructive effect shouldn't technically be able to target the subatomic connections exclusively in carbon-based molecules at all.

Yes... I think you completely missed the joke we were having.

[Jordanis]

I'm going to have to agree that the GCS warp core is an inordinately fragile system, but the thing is, the GCS is built more like a destroyer writ large than like a battleship.

Relying on ejection to save the ship from warp core damage is terrifyingly dangerous. What happens when the hit is more severe? Well, we've seen what. The ship explodes because too much antimatter flash-annihilates before anyone can hit the panic button. If you want a truly robust design, you have to accept an inability to eject the core, because ejection ports are a dangerous chink in the armor.

So, try this. Deep inside the engineering hull is a secondary hull. It's an armored capsule with walls perhaps two meters thick. Inside is the antimatter containment (with three redundant 24-hour battery power backups). The containment itself is shielded with half a meter of armor as a protection against casual sabotage. The containment is managed by a triple-redundant isolated computer system.

At the center of this armored capsule is the warp core. It also has completely isolated redundant control computers. It has antimatter injectors built of a material that expands when not in the presence of coolant, causing them to iris shut in the event of a coolant failure.

The main EPS conduit passes out of the armored capsule before splitting, and is admittedly the weakest link in the protections. It does have magnetic gates that snap shut in the event of a power surge, which ought to protect against most core damage introduced in that fashion.

Now THAT is how you build a robust MAR/A.

[Thorin]

Most of that seems okay - but there is a rather gaping fatal flaw - the armour would have to be unfeasibly thick - there are tonnes of anti-matter in the warp core, and a blast is enough to be felt several hundred thousand kilometres away (such as when the delta flyer's warpcore explodes in 'Drive', and that's a relatively tiny warpcore). The amount of energy released when the anti-matter in the warpcore reacts with any matter is just huge - no internal system could possibly contain that, the only way is a reliable injection system - both where an accident occurs the anti-matter injectors instantly stop, and several active systems keep the warpcore in the ship, so if any problems occur (such as powerloss), the warpcore would be immediately ejected.

[Captain Seafort]

That's one way to do it. An alternative would to rely on passive ejection systems triggered by a failure mode. For example, have the entire system, including both the warp core and the antimatter pods, as part of a "plug" inside the engineering hull, with an air gap at the top overpressured to the extent that it would blast the entire plug out of the ship unless it were held in place by electromagnets. Those electromagnets would be connected in series with the antimatter containtment fields, so if they began to fail, the magnets would go first and the entire contraption would be blasted clear.

Note that this isn't my idea - it's a re-writing in my own words of an example I once read by Michael Wong of SDN.