Enterprise E saucer separation

[quark51]

Is there any pictures of the Enterprise E with the saucer separated?

[ikar]

I think the "D" was the only one they showed separating. The original Enterprise was suppposed to sepatate too but they never did.

[C-130CrewChief]

It's all speculation at this point..... I heard it could and could not separate. Never seen any proof that it could.

Curt

[richter111]

Hit it with enough Klingon disruptor, and I am sure the original E would separate

Muhahahahaha

[Mark M.]

I think the "D" was the only one they showed separating. The original Enterprise was suppposed to sepatate too but they never did.

The Original enterprise (at least, the 1701A refit plans) suggest it could separate, but never suggested rejoining. It also showed 4 legs that would extend. I gather this was more of an emergency save-the-crew type of thing, rather than join/rejoin as needed.

I don't think the E has this. I don't think the Excelscior class or the Ambassador class had it either. Seems something that was "lets do this, it might be cool" type of feature that was rarely used in the show. I think they scrapped it in future designs.

[David Hingtgen]

It was designed, sketched, and drawn by the ship's designer (John Eaves). Just never done in film. And the modifications done for Nemesis seemed to eliminate the possibility, as one of the new fairings went right across a separation line.

I found one of the pics online: http://www.starshipdatalink.net/art/images/dee-7.jpg You must copy-paste the link, it won't work just clicking.

Edited November 29, 2010 by David Hingtgen

[Mark M.]

Well I wouldn't put total stock into that. They may draw up a lot of "what-ifs" in the process of designing, they may brainstorm, they may bounce ideas off producers/directors/whatever, and it's really the end result they choose that matters. So unless they said "Yeah, let's do that" then a drawing is just an idea, a possibility.

Plus it's totally illogical. The cross-section at the split is totally too large. You'd have no integration between floors, between systems, etc. On the 1701D you at least had a minimal area of separation. On the 1701A it's literally a "neck" that has explosive separation points. This drawing? Practically speaking it's very impractical. Plus there's no impulse engine on the back of the neck of the 1701E. On the D you had another impulse engine mid-neck to move the separate section around. On the E the only impulse engines are left and right. Without impulse you can't move. Warp nacelles don't push the ship, they only create the warp bubble. Once formed the impulse engines still push you through that bubble.

(or something like that)

Basically if impulse is down, warp is down. I'd take that as a sign that the ship isn't meant to separate. It's too bad we'll never know. They'll never go back to her now. New timeline and all. New designs this time around.

[Oroka]

The E was designed with this capacity in mind, but never shown.

Saucer separation capability of the Sovereign-class was something that was neither seen nor mentioned on screen or in the scripts, but John Eaves went ahead and designed a detailed separation anyway. Design sketches were published in Star Trek: The Magazine Volume 3, Issue 11, page 49.

http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Sovereign_class

Eaves also took the trouble to work out exactly how the E's saucer section would separate, even though this had never been mentioned in the script. "I just knew that the saucer separation was a part of it. I figured that was something that always had to happen, and I wanted to make sure it had been worked out beforehand. So it's already been established where the separation line and the break lines would be. "I wanted the two parts of the ship to look very independent of each other and not as if they had to be together. I drew a version with the saucer off where it looks like kind of a giant retro dart. I wanted that part of the ship to look very fast but also aggressive.

http://www.ottens.co.uk/forgottentrek/tng_3.php

Edited November 30, 2010 by Oroka

[Jennings]

Um, pardon my intrusion here, but isn't the entire subject kind of a "what-if"? It's not like you can get the Detail & Scale on the Enterprise E to prove it one way or the other, is it?

:)

[Thorsten Wieking]

Um, pardon my intrusion here, but isn't the entire subject kind of a "what-if"? It's not like you can get the Detail & Scale on the Enterprise E to prove it one way or the other, is it?

:)

Well, with Star Trek and its pretty well nailed down technobabble, the Tech Manuals, Writer's Bibles, onscreen canon remarks etc. we are getting pretty close to any Detail & Scale book. ;-)

Cheers

Thorsten

[Oroka]

Um, pardon my intrusion here, but isn't the entire subject kind of a "what-if"? It's not like you can get the Detail & Scale on the Enterprise E to prove it one way or the other, is it?

:D

If John Eaves says the E-E has saucer seperation, it has it. He did kinda design the ship and all.

A good example is this model being built by a member over at Starship Modeler. The ship he is building is a early alternate design of the E-E, and was going to be used in First Contact as the USS Endeavor, but the scene got cut in favor of the scene with the USS Defiant.

[Mark M.]

Well, with Star Trek and its pretty well nailed down technobabble, the Tech Manuals, Writer's Bibles, onscreen canon remarks etc. we are getting pretty close to any Detail & Scale book. ;-)

Cheers

Thorsten

They're not infallible.... Remember the entire "Warp 10" debacle?

Warp 10, so they pulled outta their... "hats"... in TNG was the limit of WARP technology, because as you approach the speed of light you gain more mass and require more fuel until the point you require infinite mass and infinite fuel to push said mass.

Only, from the beginning of Trek, Warp technology itself was the ability to travel faster than the speed of light (that's what WARP 1 is) and the science behind it is that this infinite requirement is bypassed by altering subspace around the ship with the warp bubble, thus allowing you to travel faster than light speed without gaining infinite mass and without requiring infinite fuel...

TNG really kinda screwed things up by monkeying with the speeds/standards that way. It was really stupid. Heck, even the Starfleet badges they tapped every day to communicate were designed off the principle of bypassing the hurdles of the speed of light. the upper curve being the sharply increasing requirements, the lower angle being the actual reduced requirements with warp speed, and the star in the center represents some sweet spot or point where you break the speed of light with warp 1 while using warp engines.

They just kinda forgot their heritage with that one, but made it cannon nonetheless. Irked me to NO end.

[spejic]

They're not infallible.... Remember the entire "Warp 10" debacle?

Warp 10, so they pulled outta their... "hats"... in TNG was the limit of WARP technology, because as you approach the speed of light you gain more mass and require more fuel until the point you require infinite mass and infinite fuel to push said mass.

Only, from the beginning of Trek, Warp technology itself was the ability to travel faster than the speed of light (that's what WARP 1 is) and the science behind it is that this infinite requirement is bypassed by altering subspace around the ship with the warp bubble, thus allowing you to travel faster than light speed without gaining infinite mass and without requiring infinite fuel...

I think you misunderstand. They are two totally different limits, and the limit of warp speed does not have anything to do with the limits imposed by traveling near the speed of light. You don't get more massive traveling at high warp speeds. What happens is that the curve between energy required and cochranes (that is, unit of subspace field stress) produced is not linear, but a power curve with an asymptote. In the TNG time frame they called that asymptote "warp 10" . And that makes perfect sense to make it a curve like that - nothing in nature is linear. It's like stretching a rubber band. The more you stretch it, the harder it is to stretch it more, and eventually you reach a limit of how much you can stretch. You can put infinite energy into stretching the band, but all you get is a broken band, not infinite stretching.

If you want to go faster that what is possible using warp drives, you need to use some other form of technology instead of warp. There have been a few races in Star Trek with that level of technology.

[0viking0]

Enterprise D - Galaxy class...

In Star Trek Armada II - only Galaxy class had saucer separation. Enterprise E (Sovereign class) couldn't do it.

Edited December 2, 2010 by 0viking0

[ReccePhreak]

Um, pardon my intrusion here, but isn't the entire subject kind of a "what-if"? It's not like you can get the Detail & Scale on the Enterprise E to prove it one way or the other, is it?

:)

If that's the case, them why bother even building any science fiction models, RIGHT? <_<

And why bother doing "what-if" profiles, since they did not exist?

Larry

Edited December 2, 2010 by ReccePhreak

[Mark M.]

I think you misunderstand. They are two totally different limits, and the limit of warp speed does not have anything to do with the limits imposed by traveling near the speed of light.

That's one argument. I think THEY (the folks after Roddenberry) got confused with themselves. They've mentioned this infinite mass, infinite fuel thing many times with warp10 in all forms of novels, books (picture or otherwise), and so on. You look at how fast they say warp 9 or warp 8 is and it's all over the charts. One really stupid thing about ST: VOY is the fact that with WARP speeds they'd be back home in very short time.

To quote http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Warp_factor

"Warp 8.4 would appear to be much faster than warp 9.9 or even warp 11. In fact, given the cited speed of warp 8.4, the Voyager crew (having some 70,000 light years to travel) should have made it home in approximately 33 days, not 75 years. And at Warp 9.9, at the above cited speed, Voyager should have been able to reach home in a little over 3 years."

So I chalk it up to people not giving a crap about the science behind it after TOS. They at least tried back then, which I think comes through and is appreciated by fans. I enjoyed TNG, watched it with a passion, but the physics and science were "weak" compared to other shows and to TOS.

[Mark M.]

Okay, so Gene himself had a hand in it, I find:

"The 24th century scale was created at the start of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Gene Roddenberry stated that he wanted to avoid the ever-increasing warp factors used in the original series to force added tension to the story, and so imposed the limit of warp 10 as infinite speed."

Weak excuse -- to make a plot device.

[Oroka]

In Star Trek Armada II - only Galaxy class had saucer separation. Enterprise E (Sovereign class) couldn't do it.

John Eaves (aka guy who created the Sovereign class) designed this capacity into the ship. Regardless of what some hired game programmer put in a mediocre Star Trek game (I know, I bought it), it was designed into the ship. Not every Trekkie knows about it.

Here is a video visualizing how and where it separates.

[spejic]

That's one argument. I think THEY (the folks after Roddenberry) got confused with themselves. They've mentioned this infinite mass, infinite fuel thing many times with warp10 in all forms of novels, books (picture or otherwise), and so on.

The novels are not canon, and writers (particularly Peter David, who is not among my favorites) have lots of horrible misunderstandings that they would even admit to later. You shouldn't take any of those, particularly the pre-Nemesis novels, too seriously.

But I think the technical crew behind TNG, particularly Michael Okuda, have a very firm idea of how this stuff should work out. Better than Roddenberry himself. Haven't you seen the Star Trek TNG Technical Manual? All that information and more was provided for the writers and editors of the show. The TNG warp chart with energy requirements and an asymptote at warp 10 was a master stroke at making warp fit into the world we know and in making distance meaningful.

You look at how fast they say warp 9 or warp 8 is and it's all over the charts.

In terms of the writer's guides for the TNG generation, it really isn't. Sometimes travel time to particular places was too quick for dramatic purposes, but that doesn't change the underlying core they usually stuck to.

One really stupid thing about ST: VOY is the fact that with WARP speeds they'd be back home in very short time.

To quote http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Warp_factor

"Warp 8.4 would appear to be much faster than warp 9.9 or even warp 11. In fact, given the cited speed of warp 8.4, the Voyager crew (having some 70,000 light years to travel) should have made it home in approximately 33 days, not 75 years. And at Warp 9.9, at the above cited speed, Voyager should have been able to reach home in a little over 3 years."

The problem is that this is quoting TOS scales against TNG scales, and the two are totally different. And the TOS scales are far more inconsistent than the TNG ones. They go from Federation Space to the outer rim ("Where No One Has Gone Before") or the inner rim ("Star Trek V") in trivially short trips when in TNG those would be impossibly large undertakings, and the only way they could undertake such a journey would be through completely different means of propulsion ("The Nth Degree"). TOS even had warp-incapable ships in interstellar travel ("Balance of Terror").

So I chalk it up to people not giving a crap about the science behind it after TOS.

No, I think it is actually the complete opposite. TNG was far more consistent and far better thought out than TOS, and included things like relativistic effects.

[Mark M.]

I disagree with your analysis...

VOY, based on the math, says that warp 9.6 = 933c (c = speed of light)

Whereas the new warp system laid out in TNG says that Warp 9 = 1516.38c

Not even counting Warp 9.975 and whatnot.

So, even WITH the revised warp listings and their arbitrary plot device nature, VOY still is based on an absurd premise (again, just a plot point) and isn't even consistent.

The entire show was just badly done, but overall I hated how it didn't even try to hide how they just made it up --

"We can't get home"

"Why not?"

"Just because."

[MarkW]

You are kind of making the point that getting hung up on "physics" that aren't real in the first place and completely subject to the whims of plot devices and budget (getting back to why the TOS saucer never operated, and why a frustrated Roddenberry had a completely pointless saucer separation in "Farpoint") is a bit silly at best. The Ent E absolutely cannot separate ever ever until a movie is made where it does.

And oh by the way, to the OP I'd have the auxiliary impulse engines visible only after separation.

[pastafarian]

Maybe the trip odometer and speedometer on Voyager were broken, so they had an inaccurate idea of how far they had to go and how fast they were moving.

Honestly though, some of you Trekkie folks really impress me with your grasp of this stuff. I find it pretty interesting, but I just can't dedicate the time to grapple with it.

John

[Felinoid]

Just to - In the original series episode That Which Survives, Lee Meriwether sabotaged the engines and the Enterprise warped out of control, reaching at least Warp 11 (maybe faster, I don't recall exactly) before Scotty jammed a magnetic thingie into the warp field generator.

Just my $.02.

[C-130CrewChief]

That was the old warp scale.

Curt

[C-130CrewChief]

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