"That Which Survives" Ship Peril Makes No Sense

[Marsden]

I thought in insurrection that they used the buzzards to scoop up the flammable gas into tanks then release it behind it..
And to release the hydrogen in that sleepless episode..
You can always use more fuel! And as insurrection showed, can scoop up other useful gasses..
Can always dive down into a gas giant for fuel as well.. Why that voyager episode running out of fuel was bullcrap.. Or newt crap...

Voyager had many kinds of crap.

Maybe every single kind.

 

[valkyrie013]

Well. U can create antimatter.. Just a fuel hog to create

 

[Christopher]

Why that voyager episode running out of fuel was bullcrap..

It was scripted as a dilithium shortage, but Berman and/or Braga changed it to deuterium because they thought the ship "running out of gas" was funny -- a lousy reason for a lousy decision.

 

[Timo]

Oh, dunno: dilithium would be a known quantity in that the heroes would know to the minute when they run out of it, supposedly. It just sort of slowly erodes when the warp core is running, or something. But deuterium expenditure would depend on how exactly the heroes use their remaining deuterium in order to search for more. The latter thus is much more plausible a plot device for getting the heroes stranded, without yet making them look incompetent.

Dilithium is dilithium. But deuterium comes in varieties: a space station may have Premium Pure on discount, while a nebula or an ocean may supply 0.000000001 Proof along with nasty contaminants if the heroes are prepared to spend five months filtering it in. So hunting for the former is a worthwhile goal, even if enough slammed doors result in the heroes having to resort to the latter in the end.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[johnnybear]

I hadn't thought of the colony ships which must have had warp capabilities or they'd never be able to reach their destinations in normal time unless they were still using cryogenic sleep tubes!!!
JB

 

[Timo]

It's belt and suspenders: in "11:59", Harry Kim relates the story of an ancestor who used to ship frozen colonists in a warpship.

Supposedly, cryosleep only went out of fashion in interplanetary applications in 2018, when better sublight engines resulted in shorter trips - and then came back when trips taking months or years came back.

Whether there would exist sublight colonizers in addition to warp ones... Well, Terra Ten probably was one. I mean, if Khan could go interstellar, why wouldn't dozens of others get the same idea / suffer the same sort of accident?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[valkyrie013]

I would suspect that some of the first voyages at warp power still had cryo tubes.. It would take months, if not most a year to reach even Alpha Centauri at warp 2, so to save on power,food, boredom.. I'd say they would still freeze the passingers, maybe a rotating crew.. I suspect that would happen with "Boomers" too.. taking 6 months to get from planet to planet..