The writers of those books probably got the idea from the way control rods are set up in nuclear reactors. If all the cadmium rods are present in the core, they absorb the neutrons, and the reaction is shut down. That's a bad thing in normal operations, but a good thing in emergencies. So the way it works is that the rods are held up in their channels by electromagnets; if the power fails, or someone hits the panic button, the electromagnets switch off, and the rods fall into the reactor in a process known as "scramming".
Another example of the deadman switch principle in Generation IV fission reactors: There's a big tank of water above the reactor that has a hinged gate held closed by power from the reactor. In the event of emergency, cut the power (or have the power cut on its own), and enough water to cool the reactor for three days is immediately dumped directly on it.
Another way Star Trek could make warp cores much safer would be to forget the dilithium crystals and just operate the reactor at the minimum fuel flow required to keep the reaction going. All you have to do to shut down the reactor then is shut off the fuel and wait for the chamber to cool.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Another example of the deadman switch principle in Generation IV fission reactors: There's a big tank of water above the reactor that has a hinged gate held closed by power from the reactor. In the event of emergency, cut the power (or have the power cut on its own), and enough water to cool the reactor for three days is immediately dumped directly on it.
Another way Star Trek could make warp cores much safer would be to forget the dilithium crystals and just operate the reactor at the minimum fuel flow required to keep the reaction going. All you have to do to shut down the reactor then is shut off the fuel and wait for the chamber to cool.
Or...
Cut the flow of matter and antimatter. Within minutes, the reaction would run out of fuel and cease.
To be fair, I always assumed the problem was that the coolant leak meant the reactor assembly became so hot that the holding clamps were welded in place.
Besides, maybe the battle damage made it impossible to blow the ejection hatch? No ejection hatch + the warp core's going to smash into the floor of the Stardrive and *kaboom* no more Ent-D.
In such an event, the D's Computer overrides would have locked out the ejection system to prevent accidental destruction.
Second rule of fail-safes: have fail-safes for the fail-safes for the fail-safes.
Cut the flow of matter and antimatter. Within minutes, the reaction would run out of fuel and cease.
Isn't that what I said?
The problem with the existing design is that the warp core runs with a lot more matter and antimatter in the chamber than is necessary to keep the reaction going, which by the tech books is why they need the dil (it moderates the reaction by <insert technobabble>). Reduce the amount of fuel in the chamber to the bare minimum and you eliminate the need for dil, and simultaneously make shutting off the fuel turn off the reactor almost instantaneously instead of having to wait for the fuel already in the chamber to be consumed. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) this means the writers have to work harder to justify "our ship is going to explode from the inside out in ten minutes!"
To be fair, I always assumed the problem was that the coolant leak meant the reactor assembly became so hot that the holding clamps were welded in place.
Decent possibility, but that doesn't account for all the other times the ejection system failed. "Ejection system is offline" etc. seems to indicate that, contrary to the tech books, the core ejector in at least the first-run GCS is an active system that mechanically shoves the core out (see the core ejection in ST 2009 for an example), rather than a passive system that operates as a deadman switch.
Besides, maybe the battle damage made it impossible to blow the ejection hatch? No ejection hatch + the warp core's going to smash into the floor of the Stardrive and *kaboom* no more Ent-D.
In such an event, the D's Computer overrides would have locked out the ejection system to prevent accidental destruction.
It's possible, but I don't recall us ever seeing the D-12 firing at the underside of the Enterprise (hard place to hit in a stern-chase battle). And had I designed it, there wouldn't be a hatch at all: the armor plate there would be a free-floating section welded to the bottom of the warp core. (Granted, I'm not entirely sure which deck Main Engineering is on relative to the bottom of the ship.)
Second rule of fail-safes: have fail-safes for the fail-safes for the fail-safes.
Simple = good, complicated = dead. You want safety systems to be as easy as possible to use with as few extra parts as possible that can fail, since you need to know that they'll work when you need them to (i.e. in an emergency).
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Kirk never faced the Borg and I doubt that number is correct anyways as we don't know what happen after he was reinstated as Captain after ST: IV
And Picard never faced The Doomsday Machine, V'Ger, or the Whale Probe, which all three entities have a higher kill score then the Borg. Yet, Kirk was able to bring his crew back with no losses for The Doomsday Machine and STIV TVH. In STTMP he lost a single crewman, Illia. You can't blame Decker's choice of merging with the probe as the fault of Kirk as it was his choice.
Star Trek: Majestic producer, writer, set designer, and other hats.
But thanks to temporal loops and other anomalies, he's destroyed the Ent-D at least 34 times.
With that in mind, I suppose you could say that Kirk not only lost the Enterprise, but the entire Federation in City on the Edge of Forever. He did manage to recover all eventually, though.
With that in mind, I suppose you could say that Kirk not only lost the Enterprise, but the entire Federation in City on the Edge of Forever. He did manage to recover all eventually, though.
Well, technically it was McCoy that destroyed the entire Federation; Kirk was actually instrumental in its recovery.
My favorite episode, and containing my favorite scene...
I blame several of the main characters suddenly becoming incompetent, and Leah Brahms' design team for more general incompetence in the design of the Enterprise's failsafe systems.
Picard states earlier in the movie that the D-12 the Duras sisters are flying is no match for a GCS. Lursa and B'etor (I'm sure I'm mispelling that but I can't be bothered to check) use Soran's hacking of Geordi's visor to get the big E's shield frequencies so they can fire straight through to even the odds. As you pointed out, mistake number one? The most common way in Star Trek to fire through shields is to match shield frequencies, so Worf gets a black mark for not immediately setting the shields to random modulation as if they were fighting the Borg. Even if the Duras sisters can keep up, the torpedoes will be launched to match one frequency and hit against a different frequency.
Next, Riker gets a black mark for not ordering gunnery control to "FIRE EVERYTHING!" If, as Picard stated earlier, their D-12 is no match for a GCS, then an alpha strike from the Enterprise should've obliterated it or at least caused severe damage. Instead, we get one shot from one phaser strip, then them technobabbling their way out because the scriptwriter didn't think critically about what he wrote four pages ago.
Third comes after the battle. The big E develops a warp coolant leak from battle damage and the core is going critical. If Leah Brahms and her team had done their freaking jobs properly when the Enterprise was in the shipyard and designed the core ejection systems to operate on a deadman switch principle*, the problem would consist of probable shockwave damage to the ship's underside, followed by them calling in another vessel to bring over a replacement warp core. Instead, having learned from previous experience that the ejector is a lemon, Geordi can only request an abandon ship order and run for the saucer.
Fourth, having Deanna Troi, a psychologist, take the conn instead of Riker, who is known to be a competent enough helmsman to fly the ship on manual control. Another black mark to Riker, for giving the order. Troi does surprisingly well despite having half the controls out from the stardrive blowing up -- it's not her fault the impulse engines weren't powerful enough to get the saucer to minimum safe distance in time -- but "surprisingly well" in this case means she somehow managed a relatively controlled crash landing, as opposed to turning the saucer into a meteorite. Troi (and Data, for getting the stabilizers back online) should've gotten a commendation, and Riker should've been busted down to lieutenant for complete and utter ****ing incompetence.
* As stated in the tech books, in fact: the ejection systems are supposed to be actually anti-ejection systems consisting of electromagnets holding the core in place. Ejection thereby consists of turning off the power and letting the core fall out the bottom of the ship from the artificial gravity; the core's inertia gets it the rest of the way. Rule #1 for designing failsafe systems: simple = good, complicated = dead.
No fatalities in that crash landing, we all dread troi at the helm, but in generations her piloting and excellent teamwork with data saved the lives of the Enterprise crew
"The meaning of victory is not to merely defeat your enemy but to destroy him, to completely eradicate him from living memory, to leave no remnant of his endeavours, to crush utterly his achievement and remove from all record his every trace of existence. From that defeat no enemy can ever recover. That is the meaning of victory."
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
Helm controls were disabled by the shockwave - the crash was uncontrolled. Troi and Data's contribution to the ship's survival ended with not attaining safe distance from the stardrive section, everything else is a testament to the saucer's impressive aerodynamic fall ratio.
And there were fatalities - there was at least one body on the bridge after the crash and deleted scenes established casualties at 18 in the crash and "several" who never made it out of the stardrive section.
No fatalities in that crash landing, we all dread troi at the helm, but in generations her piloting and excellent teamwork with data saved the lives of the Enterprise crew
Memory Alpha states that casualties were "light" both in the battle and in the crash. People died during the crash, but no one has put a number to it. Still, Picard has had a lot more people die under his command than Kirk.
Star Trek: Majestic producer, writer, set designer, and other hats.
Helm controls were disabled by the shockwave - the crash was uncontrolled. Troi and Data's contribution to the ship's survival ended with not attaining safe distance from the stardrive section, everything else is a testament to the saucer's impressive aerodynamic fall ratio.
Ok, I'll give you the helm controls thing (haven't watched the movie in a while), but I recall a line right before the saucer hit dirt that Data had managed to use the thrusters to level them out so that they crash-landed in a long skid instead of knifing into the ground and blowing up.
And there were fatalities - there was at least one body on the bridge after the crash and deleted scenes established casualties at 18 in the crash and "several" who never made it out of the stardrive section.
18 and "several" out of over a thousand crew and passengers. That's peanuts.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Comments
Another example of the deadman switch principle in Generation IV fission reactors: There's a big tank of water above the reactor that has a hinged gate held closed by power from the reactor. In the event of emergency, cut the power (or have the power cut on its own), and enough water to cool the reactor for three days is immediately dumped directly on it.
Another way Star Trek could make warp cores much safer would be to forget the dilithium crystals and just operate the reactor at the minimum fuel flow required to keep the reaction going. All you have to do to shut down the reactor then is shut off the fuel and wait for the chamber to cool.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
Or...
Cut the flow of matter and antimatter. Within minutes, the reaction would run out of fuel and cease.
To be fair, I always assumed the problem was that the coolant leak meant the reactor assembly became so hot that the holding clamps were welded in place.
Besides, maybe the battle damage made it impossible to blow the ejection hatch? No ejection hatch + the warp core's going to smash into the floor of the Stardrive and *kaboom* no more Ent-D.
In such an event, the D's Computer overrides would have locked out the ejection system to prevent accidental destruction.
Second rule of fail-safes: have fail-safes for the fail-safes for the fail-safes.
Trials of Blood and Fire
Moving On Parts 1-3 - Part 4
In Cold Blood
The problem with the existing design is that the warp core runs with a lot more matter and antimatter in the chamber than is necessary to keep the reaction going, which by the tech books is why they need the dil (it moderates the reaction by <insert technobabble>). Reduce the amount of fuel in the chamber to the bare minimum and you eliminate the need for dil, and simultaneously make shutting off the fuel turn off the reactor almost instantaneously instead of having to wait for the fuel already in the chamber to be consumed. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) this means the writers have to work harder to justify "our ship is going to explode from the inside out in ten minutes!"
Decent possibility, but that doesn't account for all the other times the ejection system failed. "Ejection system is offline" etc. seems to indicate that, contrary to the tech books, the core ejector in at least the first-run GCS is an active system that mechanically shoves the core out (see the core ejection in ST 2009 for an example), rather than a passive system that operates as a deadman switch.
It's possible, but I don't recall us ever seeing the D-12 firing at the underside of the Enterprise (hard place to hit in a stern-chase battle). And had I designed it, there wouldn't be a hatch at all: the armor plate there would be a free-floating section welded to the bottom of the warp core. (Granted, I'm not entirely sure which deck Main Engineering is on relative to the bottom of the ship.)
Simple = good, complicated = dead. You want safety systems to be as easy as possible to use with as few extra parts as possible that can fail, since you need to know that they'll work when you need them to (i.e. in an emergency).
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
And Picard never faced The Doomsday Machine, V'Ger, or the Whale Probe, which all three entities have a higher kill score then the Borg. Yet, Kirk was able to bring his crew back with no losses for The Doomsday Machine and STIV TVH. In STTMP he lost a single crewman, Illia. You can't blame Decker's choice of merging with the probe as the fault of Kirk as it was his choice.
With that in mind, I suppose you could say that Kirk not only lost the Enterprise, but the entire Federation in City on the Edge of Forever. He did manage to recover all eventually, though.
My favorite episode, and containing my favorite scene...
No fatalities in that crash landing, we all dread troi at the helm, but in generations her piloting and excellent teamwork with data saved the lives of the Enterprise crew
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
And there were fatalities - there was at least one body on the bridge after the crash and deleted scenes established casualties at 18 in the crash and "several" who never made it out of the stardrive section.
Memory Alpha states that casualties were "light" both in the battle and in the crash. People died during the crash, but no one has put a number to it. Still, Picard has had a lot more people die under his command than Kirk.
18 and "several" out of over a thousand crew and passengers. That's peanuts.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/