STVoy Class 9 Warp Core Energy Generation

[AstroK32]

On 1/28/2014 at 6:31 PM,  Moontanman said: 

It is a real measure of energy? If so what can I compare it with to understand how much power it represents? I ask because I was watching Star Trek Voyager and in passing they mentioned the warp reactor produced 4 trillion terradynes of energy per second, is it just technobabble or a real measure of energy? I tried to google it but my spelling must be off because all I got was bunch of companies with the word in their names...

So I had an idea, let’s say Voyager’s warp core could run at 96% efficiency like in TNG, we could convert then that 4000 teradynes -> 40 giganewtons -> 38.4 gigawatts. Which would then power the ship’s systems and, if it works how I think it does, make a warp field. While also shooting warp plasma through the warp coils that make a warp bubble? I just thought that it was an interesting idea.

[swansont]

How are you getting from newtons of force to watts of power?

[AstroK32]

I had assumed in the episode that I had watched that the 96% efficiency meant 96% power conversion from the energy the warp core initially generated. I could be wrong, however.

[swansont]

47 minutes ago, AstroK32 said:

I had assumed in the episode that I had watched that the 96% efficiency meant 96% power conversion from the energy the warp core initially generated. I could be wrong, however.

It's not the efficiency. Newton is a unit of force. You can get to energy if you are exerting a force through a distance, and thus doing work. Do this at some speed v and you can calculate a power.

But you can't just say that something is exerting a force and directly get a power from it.

The great pyramid at Giza has a mass of over 6 billion kg, and thus exerts a force of ~60 Giganewtons on the ground, but since nothing is moving there is no work done and the power is zero.

[AstroK32]

6 hours ago, swansont said:

It's not the efficiency. Newton is a unit of force. You can get to energy if you are exerting a force through a distance, and thus doing work. Do this at some speed v and you can calculate a power.

But you can't just say that something is exerting a force and directly get a power from it.

The great pyramid at Giza has a mass of over 6 billion kg, and thus exerts a force of ~60 Giganewtons on the ground, but since nothing is moving there is no work done and the power is zero.

That is one thing I was wondering about. How exactly do they generate electricity from the warp core? Also, my apologies for the late response, I was at a funeral.

[Janus]

1 hour ago, AstroK32 said:

That is one thing I was wondering about. How exactly do they generate electricity from the warp core? Also, my apologies for the late response, I was at a funeral.

Most likely by magnetohydrodynamic generator.  Where you pass plasma through a magnetic field to generate electricity.  This seems to fit with other nomenclature in the franchise.  There are references to the EPS (electro plasma system), which seems to be how they tap energy for running ship systems from the PTC (power transfer conduit), which contains and carries plasma from the matter-antimatter reaction chamber to the warp field generator coils.

[AstroK32]

18 hours ago, Janus said:

Most likely by magnetohydrodynamic generator.  Where you pass plasma through a magnetic field to generate electricity.  This seems to fit with other nomenclature in the franchise.  There are references to the EPS (electro plasma system), which seems to be how they tap energy for running ship systems from the PTC (power transfer conduit), which contains and carries plasma from the matter-antimatter reaction chamber to the warp field generator coils.

Thank you very much! That clarifies a lot. So do you think Geordi was talking about the efficiency of the magnetohydrodynamic generator?

[swansont]

Folks, it’s fiction. Things are made up. There are attempts at continuity and they tried to not botch the science too badly, but at the end of it all, they’re telling a story.

A friend from high school spent a year as the TNG science consultant (later was on the writing staff); I complained one time about an episode’s science and he admitted he was overruled because the writers liked the story line. 

There’s an excellent chance the discussion of the efficiency was to advance the story. 

 

 

[Janus]

18 hours ago, swansont said:

Folks, it’s fiction. Things are made up. There are attempts at continuity and they tried to not botch the science too badly, but at the end of it all, they’re telling a story.

A friend from high school spent a year as the TNG science consultant (later was on the writing staff); I complained one time about an episode’s science and he admitted he was overruled because the writers liked the story line. 

There’s an excellent chance the discussion of the efficiency was to advance the story. 

 

 

Exactly, a lot of this background on " how things work" on a starship(BTW, the info I provided came from the  Star Trek The Next Generation Technical Manual by Rick Sternbach and Micheal Okuda ) are loose guidelines to maintain some continuity, but they are not allowed to get in the way of a good story line. 

[beecee]

All is explained by Star Trek technobabble! 

 

Still, I loved the show, both the original and New generation....

[StringJunky]

20 minutes ago, beecee said:

All is explained by Star Trek technobabble! 

 

Still, I loved the show, both the original and New generation....

"It's logical, Captain".

[MigL]

My favorite were the 'Heisenberg compensators' of the transporters, that allowed for the exact reconstruction of a 'beamed' person without the effects of the HUP.

[swansont]

2 hours ago, beecee said:

All is explained by Star Trek technobabble! 

One explicit avoidance of outright technobabble was the baryon sweep, which was an attempt to not just make something up

http://blogs.scienceforums.net/swansont/archives/1043