nuny@bid.nes
2016-11-09 08:07:18 UTC
One of the (many) real-world space travel issues Star Trek ignores (as opposed to addressing and getting wrong) is heat buildup in starships. Spacecraft have internal heat sources and must radiate it into space or eventually melt, and space accepts heat from spacecraft by radiation very poorly. The Enterprise D and alien ships of roughly similar capabilities must generate terawatts to power their warp drives and other systems, and even given near-magical 99.99% efficiency for EVERY piece of machinery aboard, they'd rapidly bake their crews from the accumulating waste heat, and then eventually melt.
Since the ships don't melt and the crews don't get baked, they must have some way to dump waste heat, but it's never addressed on screen or in the TMs (I don't read the non canon books). The most we get are mentions that certain subsystems like TOS phasers and TNG movie warp cores use coolant, but no mention of where they dump their heat.
I have a half-assed idea about that, that requires little handwaving (compared to the usual level of handwaving in Trek).
Ever notice the impulse exhausts and the warp nacelles glow even on orbiting ships not actively using either system?
The impulse engines are also used to supplement main power from the MAMR so they have an excuse to glow fulltime with "non-propulsive exhaust", but not the nacelles. Yes, the MAMR running at idle produces bunches of energy but I gauge those nacelles to be radiating megawatts of blue light. I think that glow includes waste heat collected from the whole ship being dumped overboard.
(It's blue because heat flows from hotter radiators better than from cooler ones, and their color temperature when the warp coils are energized indicates they're designed to run that hot.)
AFAIK there's absolutely no canon to back me up, but it makes sense to me.
How does heat get collected and piped to the nacelles? Plumbing of one Treknobabble sort or another.
How does low-grade heat get converted to high-energy blue photons? Damfino, but it probably involves Treknomagical crystals.
Plausible?
Obvious flaw I missed?
Mark L. Fergerson
Since the ships don't melt and the crews don't get baked, they must have some way to dump waste heat, but it's never addressed on screen or in the TMs (I don't read the non canon books). The most we get are mentions that certain subsystems like TOS phasers and TNG movie warp cores use coolant, but no mention of where they dump their heat.
I have a half-assed idea about that, that requires little handwaving (compared to the usual level of handwaving in Trek).
Ever notice the impulse exhausts and the warp nacelles glow even on orbiting ships not actively using either system?
The impulse engines are also used to supplement main power from the MAMR so they have an excuse to glow fulltime with "non-propulsive exhaust", but not the nacelles. Yes, the MAMR running at idle produces bunches of energy but I gauge those nacelles to be radiating megawatts of blue light. I think that glow includes waste heat collected from the whole ship being dumped overboard.
(It's blue because heat flows from hotter radiators better than from cooler ones, and their color temperature when the warp coils are energized indicates they're designed to run that hot.)
AFAIK there's absolutely no canon to back me up, but it makes sense to me.
How does heat get collected and piped to the nacelles? Plumbing of one Treknobabble sort or another.
How does low-grade heat get converted to high-energy blue photons? Damfino, but it probably involves Treknomagical crystals.
Plausible?
Obvious flaw I missed?
Mark L. Fergerson