A rather... startling... discovery

[359]

Watts per [prefix]hertz is a valid measure.

Yes, it is decibels. I have never quite made sense of them, however from what I understand they still are not applicable to measuring power output, that is what watts are for. Either way they still do not make as much sense as a non-unit would.

[Lucky]

There's a use of "per" that nobody in the VS debate seems to have noticed, that makes perfect sense in this context:

"Per normal operating parameters."
"Per standard idle rate."
"Per regulations."

Under no circumstances does a barely-heard "per" at the end of the line - I seem to recall this is one of the cases where the script and the line onscreen are reported differently - really impact the line. There's not really any meaningful thing that we'd use for "per" in terms of units except for "number of warp cores," or "percent of warp core safe maximum," or something similarly silly. Unless you're engaging in absurdity, take it or leave it at 12.75 exawatts.

As I've pointed out before, the things the Enterprise does do at times require that amount of effective power. The rate of change of gravitational potential energy involved in moving quickly from point A to point B are significant when point A is right next to a star or singularity (TNG: "Half a Life," TNG: "Relics," TNG: "Descent," ENT: "Singularity," to name a few), and when aliens modify the Enterprise's own warp system to travel outside the galaxy in moments, the requirements are similarly quite high (TOS: "Day of the Dove," TNG: "Where None Have Gone Before," to name a couple) - presumably, the aliens haven't installed a free energy conduit somewhere, they've just made the warp core more efficient in some fashion and able to run at maximum levels for much longer.

It's also a power level that makes sense for an antimatter-based power system; it's too high for you to conveniently manage with fusion, but low enough that you're not chugging through significant quantities of your fuel reserve per second. Two Homer Simpsons per second - or twenty - is actually a pretty reasonable flux of matter when you're at an absurdly high temperature and pressure, as warp cores are.

You get a little more trouble with fuel storage; if you're burning 2 m^3 of frozen fuel per second on the E-D, you get about a day per percent of the total volume of the ship dedicated to fuel storage. So unless you're refueling along the way, with those Bussards that the ship is supposed to have, or storing the fuel in a compressed form, you could be in trouble.

I did this all before, so I'll stop typing and quote myself:

In "Allegiance," Geordi states that operating engine efficiency is 93%. This is improved during the episode to 96%. In a notably similar example in "New Ground," Data notes that the low energy loss of the soliton wave (<2%) makes it 450% more efficient than the warp drive of the Enterprise. This could refer to the efficiency of the warp engines at either a bit over 91%, which would lie closely in line with the above figures, although it could also be interpreted as placing warp drive efficiency at ~21.8%. In "Chains of Command," Jellico demands a 15% increase in warp coil efficiency, suggesting engine efficiency below 85%. The highest efficiency figure mentioned in the series is 99%.

These efficiencies are too high to allow a single order of magnitude's gap between base system output and use... and too low to be the entire story.

Assuming efficiency between 80-99% and a normal generation level of 12.75 exawatts, this means the Enterprise must annihilate 143-177 kg of matter per second normally, and produce 0.13-3.2 exawatts of waste heat normally. This also means the Enterprise must somehow sink or radiate waste heat/energy at a rate comparable to a world-wide nuclear war while the warp core is in operation - dozens to hundreds of megatons every second.

We may suggest that this waste energy is somehow recycled into another form, e.g., trilithium, which is known to be highly volatile and a waste product of the Enterprise's warp drive, as noted in "Starship Mine;" it is also possible that some portion of this represents energy loss through the generation of neutrinos while converting matter into energy or back into matter. The ability of cloaked ships to remain undetected at warp while ships have sensitive neutrino detectors suggests this is not a significant source of energy loss.

The problem of fuel capacity is easier to solve. The Enterprise has, after all, Bussard ramscoops that can be used to suck interstellar hydrogen; if these may be operated at warp speed, the 10-21 kg/m3 of interstellar hydrogen typically present can be taken partial advantage of. By reconverting energy gained from matter/antimatter reactions back into antimatter, the Enterprise can breed its own antimatter stores from collected matter.

A ramscoop with a cross section roughly equal to the Enterprise's front end would need to travel roughly 10 billion times the speed of light. In order to avoid consuming fuel too quickly, the ramscoop would need to be extended tens or hundreds of kilometers outward. As this does not exceed the limits to which the deflectors can be extended, it is quite possible that the Enterprise is largely self-sustaining so long as it can keep cruising peacefully.

It fits pretty neatly, which is surprising when you consider that the people writing the show generally didn't know very much about science. We do run into a bit of trouble in terms of starships running out of fuel in a matter of weeks or months at "normal" operating rates, but if you can use warp cores / replicators / transporters / et cetera to "breed" antimatter back out of matter, it's fairly easy to pick up enough hydrogen somewhere. If you're not scooping up interstellar hydrogen, there's always the option of taking a quick pass through the outer atmosphere of a gas giant.

On the other hand, if we use a low level of power generation, now we have to explain where all the free energy comes from; and in the extreme cases, e.g., the Saxtonites' preferred "terawatt" figures on SDN, you have to ask why they don't just use fusion power rather than antimatter; it's a great deal safer and more convenient.

You may want to look into the role of Dilithium in the WarpCore. In Pen Pals we find out that Dilithium will generate vast amounts of energy when exposed to heat and pressure, and in Voyager they state a warpcore is a pressure vessele, and repeatedly refer to dilithium as the actual fuel.

[Lucky]

Watts per [prefix]hertz is a valid measure.

Yes, it is decibels. I have never quite made sense of them, however from what I understand they still are not applicable to measuring power output, that is what watts are for. Either way they still do not make as much sense as a non-unit would.

The script as I understand it states Data was suppose to say "per second". That could mean the output of the warpcore was increasing, or that Data was suppose to misspeak. Both are valid possibilities. Data has a habit of doing things to make himself appear less capable then he is. He often loses things he should easily win. The fact the warpcore inexplicably explodes for no reason makes a sudden increase in output seem reasonable.

If we ignore the script there is no reason to assume the Per has anything to do with the output of the Warpcore. In the context of the scene Data could have been asking Amanda if she would like a tour of Engineering. There are a lot of words that start with the syllable per.

[Mike DiCenso]

The fact the warpcore inexplicably explodes for no reason makes a sudden increase in output seem reasonable.

Not really, since in that scene Data was not looking at any instruments at the time, just at the warp core itself, and he indicated nothing unsual about that much power. Furthermore, and most importantly for context, we learn later on that Q made the warp core breach to test Amanda by forcing her to use her powers:


Q: Telekinesis? Teleportation? Spontaneous combustion of someone you didn't like? That sort of thing.

PICARD: Amanda, what Q is asking is have you ever deliberately used your abilities?

AMANDA: Not until I came here. The first time it happened was when the container almost fell on Commander Riker.

Q: And you handled that very well. That's .
why I gave you a greater challenge. The warp core breach

So as you can see, it was not because they were doing something outrageously out of spec with the warp core, but an act of Q.
-Mike

[Lucky]

The fact the warpcore inexplicably explodes for no reason makes a sudden increase in output seem reasonable.

Not really, since in that scene Data was not looking at any instruments at the time, just at the warp core itself, and he indicated nothing unsual about that much power. Furthermore, and most importantly for context, we learn later on that Q made the warp core breach to test Amanda by forcing her to use her powers:


Q: Telekinesis? Teleportation? Spontaneous combustion of someone you didn't like? That sort of thing.

PICARD: Amanda, what Q is asking is have you ever deliberately used your abilities?

AMANDA: Not until I came here. The first time it happened was when the container almost fell on Commander Riker.

Q: And you handled that very well. That's .
why I gave you a greater challenge. The warp core breach

So as you can see, it was not because they were doing something outrageously out of spec with the warp core, but an act of Q.
-Mike

Q made the warpcore explode, but he does not say how he did it. Causing the output to exceed safe limits is a possibility.

Data was reading a display in Engineering at least when Amanda entered. Given that he and Laforge start working on those termanils when things go wrong i think we can assume Data was working on the warpcore for some reason.

I suggest you take a look: http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/thumbna ... 131&page=2

[Mike DiCenso]

Q made the warpcore explode, but he does not say how he did it. Causing the output to exceed safe limits is a possibility.

No, it's not. Not in the context of the scene, or the later admission by Q for having caused it. If the core were pumping out more power than was normal, Data would have reacted far sooner, and a very different set of events would have occurred leading up to the breech. But Data's conversation with Amanda about the warp core power was, by all indications, routine.

In fact, going over the transcript here's the final proof of that:

PICARD: Commander, have you been able to determine the cause of the warp breach?

LAFORGE: No, sir. Everything was normal and then suddenly it's like the laws of physics went right out the window.

Q: And why shouldn't they? They're so inconvenient.

So everything was within spec and normal until Q did what he did.
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

Watts per [prefix]hertz is a valid measure.

Yes, it is decibels. I have never quite made sense of them, however from what I understand they still are not applicable to measuring power output, that is what watts are for. Either way they still do not make as much sense as a non-unit would.

In a show where the crew of the E-nil used decibels to measure the firepower of a ground-to-orbit weapon?

[Mr. Oragahn]

Regarding the advantage of antimatter versus fusion fuel, the preference of using antimatter doesn't need to support a massively superior input of overall power.

First of all because we know for sure that the UFP can store antimatter very safely. It's so asininely easy that they even allow teenagers to carry some around a spaceship, transported within a glorified fish bowl. Enough antimatter to actually allow a ship to complete a short ranged FTL maneuver.

So the question of safety obviously becomes irrelevant because we have to accept that the UFP managed to deal with the inherent dangers of antimatter a long time ago.
If antimatter is stored in separate tanks, we can even observe that warp core breaches are more recurring than storage leaks.

The advantage of antimatter is that it does provide more power, but it also allows to provide about as much power as fusion for a much smaller reactor core.
The other obvious advantage of using antimatter is that it's much more potent when used as a weapon, and we know that they tap the E-D's stock of antimatter to load the empty warheads before launch.

[Lucky]

Q made the warpcore explode, but he does not say how he did it. Causing the output to exceed safe limits is a possibility.

No, it's not. Not in the context of the scene, or the later admission by Q for having caused it. If the core were pumping out more power than was normal, Data would have reacted far sooner, and a very different set of events would have occurred leading up to the breech. But Data's conversation with Amanda about the warp core power was, by all indications, routine.

In fact, going over the transcript here's the final proof of that:

PICARD: Commander, have you been able to determine the cause of the warp breach?

LAFORGE: No, sir. Everything was normal and then suddenly it's like the laws of physics went right out the window.

Q: And why shouldn't they? They're so inconvenient.

So everything was within spec and normal until Q did what he did.
-Mike

I concede that point.

[Praeothmin]

Watts per [prefix]hertz is a valid measure.

Yes, it is decibels. I have never quite made sense of them, however from what I understand they still are not applicable to measuring power output, that is what watts are for. Either way they still do not make as much sense as a non-unit would.

In a show where the crew of the E-nil used decibels to measure the firepower of a ground-to-orbit weapon?

Actually, Decibels are used to measure laser power in network equipment transmitters...
What didn't work in this case was that they measured dB of sound... In Space!
If they'd measured a laser's power, then it would have been valid, but at the power level they measured, I think even the DS would be hard-pressed to compete... :)

[Mike DiCenso]

Well, another way to interpret the dialog from that scene is if you assume that it was a description of the planetary defense weapons' effects once they hit a target. After all, DePaul makes that statement within the context of if the shields weren't up the Enterprise would have been totally destroyed via complete disruption.
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

The magnitude of the figure in dB is just retarded, so nothing will work.

[Praeothmin]

The magnitude of the figure in dB is just retarded, so nothing will work.

Of course, especially since the dB scale is logarithmic, and when calculating power, every 10dB means 10 times the power... :)

[Mith]

Regarding the advantage of antimatter versus fusion fuel, the preference of using antimatter doesn't need to support a massively superior input of overall power.

First of all because we know for sure that the UFP can store antimatter very safely. It's so asininely easy that they even allow teenagers to carry some around a spaceship, transported within a glorified fish bowl. Enough antimatter to actually allow a ship to complete a short ranged FTL maneuver.

To be fair, if we look at the TNG TM, it only takes about 20 gigajoules to create a warp field that pushes a ship to warp 1 and you only need 200 megajoules to maintain that field. The ship made that jump...what, once or twice? That' still enough for like a 10-ton bomb though.

[359]

But that is the technical manual, so it doesn't count for much (if anything). Whereas we have examples in several episodes placing the output of a warp core in the billions of gigawatts range. And because the impulse fusion reactors have a noticeable, if somewhat small, output next to the warp core and still can not propell a starship to warp, one can firmly conclude that it requires more energy then several gigajoules to engage the warp engines.