When Voyager goes into warp, its nacelles cant upward. TMK, no other Star Trek starship does this.
Aside from ‘Ooh, it looks cool!’, why do Voyager’s nacelles do that? It seems to serve no purpose (‘GNDN’ ) and introduces structural issues.
As for the landing gear, it seems that would take an enormous amount of space in the hull when they are retracted. The ‘saucer section’ sticks way out to the front, so it should present a balance problem – as would the narrow stance of the landing gear, laterally.
When the show first started, I was told that the nacelles changed position depending on speed, like variable-sweep-winged aircraft today, so that the geometry would always be ideal for the warp factor they were at.
Of course, the actual show had them move into the same position every time they were at warp, no matter how fast or slow the ship was going. Maybe it was controlled by the “Bio-Neural Gel Packs” that they promptly stopped talking about in season 2.
As for the balance over the landing gear, I assume the stuff in the secondary hull (warp core, main computer, deflector dish) is just a hell of a lot heavier than the stuff in the saucer section. Also structural integrity fields, anti-gravity, and all of the usual star trek hand waving.
One TNG ep dealt with the idea that warp drive damaged space. (A little environmental allegory.) The variable configuration of Voaygers nacelles was supposed to address that. Don’t ask me how.
Here’s what Memory Alpha has to say on the subject:
Personally, I’ve always thought Voyager’s landing capability to be a bunch of hooey that demonstrated the correctness of Roddenberry’s decision to nix it. “Inertia dampeners on full,” indeed!
As an aside, the next time you watch “The Corbomite Maneuver,” watch how McCoy’s uniform changes when he’s on the bridge and Balok appears on the screen.
I’m not sure why Voyager would have to waste space on all that stuff. Why not just replicate them into place when needed, and then dematerialize them when no longer needed? Or if that’s too energy intensive, apparently transporters aren’t intensive. Keep them in ship’s stores, and transport them into place when needed. It seems silly to add a heavy mechanical system to a starship.
fanwank: perhaps Voyager is mostly travelling at high-enough speeds to warrant the tilted nacelles? They’re trying to complete a very long trip as quickly as possible after all…
Speaking of, this is related to one of my nitpicks as well… Why would they ever go slower than warp 7? Seems like it’s just wasting time they don’t have! One can probably site references to the Starfleet engines needing more maintenance/repair when travelling at ‘high warp’ for long periods of time… but what exactly constitutes ‘high warp’ is left a little vague as well. Still, with the different warp levels, an increase of 1 (say, warp 6 to warp 7) is supposed to be an order of magnitude increase, i wonder why they would ever limp along at warp 5…
Voyager was designed for policing the ‘badlands’ which may have very different requirements than getting the hell home across the galaxy. Stealth may be part of it, even at the expense of inefficiencies. It may also allow something like degaussing them, which would explain why Captain Janeway never ordered those things welded in place.
Presumably, fuel consumption isn’t linear. You can’t just stop by the Antares Shell station to top off if you’ve spent too much time zipping around at Warp 7…
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I should think they’re better off traveling at moderate warp speed to ensure engine life, regardless of the distance involved.
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This. They are not travelling at the speed that gets them to the next star system fastest. They are travelling at the speed that gets them back to federation space fastest. Especially knowing they are not guaranteed of access to any kind of maintenance facilities they are almost certainly balancing raw speed against wear and tear on the engines.
But commercial jetliners don’t decide that today they are only going to fly at 200 mph, then tomorrow 600, then 350. They go as fast as they can, and the plane is designed to take it. They can fly all day until their fuel runs out at the designed speed.
The speeds in ST are slow, and space is YUUGE! Using the original cubed power rule, warp 4 is 64 C and warp 6 is 216 C. The difference in travel time for a 20 light year trip is 114 days at warp 4 vs 33 days at warp 6*. Do you really want to dawdle along like a rowboat in the Atlantic for an additional 11 and a half weeks if you don’t have to? If the ship can’t run at warp 6 indefinitely, then send it back to the drawing board, because it’s useless for its intended purpose.
*yes, those values were not only totally unrealistic, but contradicted by actual dialog. And at warp 1 that 20 lt year trip takes…20 years. At warp 6, the edge of the galaxy is a mere 39 YEARS away.:eek:
Are you sure they can? They’ve never shown a very big replicator at all. Some people assume the Federation can replicate starships, yet that doesn’t happen either. And they don’t transport anything much bigger than a human being.
) and introduces structural issues.
