Deflector?

[Crazy Eddie]

Orange is the rough overall impression we get from the multicolored TOS ramscoops, too. Perhaps "ramscoop" and "deflector" are more or less the same thing - a vital path-sweeping device? Redshifted rather than blueshifted because of the suck-not-blow function?

That's actually a much more logical place to PUT a ramscoop -- or at least some kind of gas intake for siphoning fuel from the atmosphere of gas giants -- since it's actually relatively close to both the main reactor (where that fuel is really consumed) and whatever hardware the ship might have for converting matter into antimatter prior to its consumption. For that matter, it also has much better forward clearance than the nacelles and is in a better place overall to BE a ramscoop than a deflector.

Still, I doubt the dish actually has anything to do with "deflecting" at all. It's probably just a big radiotelescope for scanning ahead (like its real-world counterpart). If the ship has any sort of gas intake it's either attached to the base of the deflector or built into the nacelles for skimming atmo as the ship moves through it.

 

[Timo]

If ramscoops are supposed to clear the path (and then do nothing much with the gas they swept in or aside), then putting them in front of the nacelles is as good an idea as any. If they suck in gas for later use, we need to learn what that use might be. Once we see the gas sucked in for use as a smokescreen, once as a minefield. But in both cases, the maneuver is treated as exceptional. Alas, we never learn what the standard use is supposed to be.

If the idea is to get more fusion fuel aboard, then a location close to the main tanks would be nice. If the idea is to replenish warp plasma, then any point in the supposed closed loop (but preferably far away from the actual reactor!) would do.

FWIW, Sternbach tended to systematically designate the yellow ribbing around the nacelle tip, just aft of the (optional - not there in Type 6 shuttles!) red forward dome, as the sucking part of the TNG ramscoop. Whether this idea made its way into any onscreen Okudagrams, I don't know. The red dome was left unexplained.

On the TOS ship, the dome was unexplained, too, until FJ designated it as the "intake" or "sink pole" of a "warp jet engine" or a "pole magnet", making the opaque sphere at the other end the "exhaust" or the "source pole". That never carried over to the later interpretations, though. Doug Drexler's art for the Captain's Chair CD-ROM eventually became a canon graphic in ENT "IaMD", without the text that places a "field impeller" at the forward end of the nacelle, but with the TAS-inspired imagery of a round of cones right where TNG had the yellow ribbings.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Shark]

Yeah, I always figured all that stuff on the outside of the Reliant could be part of the Deflector system. One thing I found interesting about the Galaxy class is that it has an actual dish sticking out like the Constitution class; an homage.

 

[Rick Sternbach]

Any good runabout blueprints around? Could those be heat dissipators rather than deflectors, especially with the color?

Actually, this drawing says those areas are impulse engines, though no other ship has forward facing impulse engines or even intakes.

On this drawing, the label about the impulse engine was simply a general pointing at the engine, not to say that this was an exhaust nozzle. That's in the back. Most impulse engines had atmospheric intakes to allow for heated-air augmented exhaust, and that's the grille in the front.

Rick

 

[JES]

Any good runabout blueprints around? Could those be heat dissipators rather than deflectors, especially with the color?

Actually, this drawing says those areas are impulse engines, though no other ship has forward facing impulse engines or even intakes.

On this drawing, the label about the impulse engine was simply a general pointing at the engine, not to say that this was an exhaust nozzle. That's in the back. Most impulse engines had atmospheric intakes to allow for heated-air augmented exhaust, and that's the grille in the front.

Rick

That's interesting, because I always assumed that the vents/grills on the Danube were just that: impulse intakes.

I forget, wasn't the Defiant designed by someone else, making the similar appearance of the vents and nose-mounted navigational deflector more of a coincidence/artistic choice?

 

[EnSin]

If ramscoops are supposed to clear the path (and then do nothing much with the gas they swept in or aside), then putting them in front of the nacelles is as good an idea as any. If they suck in gas for later use, we need to learn what that use might be. Once we see the gas sucked in for use as a smokescreen, once as a minefield. But in both cases, the maneuver is treated as exceptional. Alas, we never learn what the standard use is supposed to be.

It's almost as if each scriptwriter is making it up as they go.

 

[Timo]

impulse intakes

What would need to be taken in?

It's interesting that impulse would need boosting within atmospheres. It sounds a bit like boosting a jet fighter by equipping the engine with a tube into which the pilot can blow for extra hot air - but then there is DS9 "The Siege" which implies impulse-propelled craft are at an inherent disadvantage against "sub-impulse" craft in atmospheric flight. Might be there are fundamental problems with using a hypervelocity rocket exhaust or a subspace field in dense fluids, and an engine relying on those for its multi-thousand-gee, millions-of-miles-per-hour performance needs all the help it can get in order to be a match for an ordinary jet.

Timo Saloniemi