Starship Reactors and Dead Man Switches

[sonofccn]

No. In short, I lost it all. In long, I went point by point, then, I hit preview. I got the log in screen. I tried to go back, but got another log in screen. I went forward to the first log in screen, signed back in and everything I had written was gone. It might have been a problem with my laptop

No the same thing happens to me. It's like a glitch in the posting system or something that if you spend to long doing nothing(ie just typing) it logs you off. Which is why I try and copy my respounce of long posts before I post and hit preview everyonce in a while to keep it from happening in the first place.

[Wyrm]

No. In short, I lost it all. In long, I went point by point, then, I hit preview. I got the log in screen. I tried to go back, but got another log in screen. I went forward to the first log in screen, signed back in and everything I had written was gone. It might have been a problem with my laptop, I don't know. I spent a while typing all my points up, as I went point by point and when I found I lost it all, I decided to summarize what I had originally typed because I didn't feel like slogging through the whole thing again.

Fine. I withdraw the accusation.

With any antimatter pod, regardless of whether it uses active ejection or the DMS mechanism, the escape of antimatter causes the pod to explode. With any antimatter pod, regardless of type, the loss of sustaining power (regardless of where the this power comes from) will lead to escape of antimatter from the pod.

And your system doesn't give the crew enough time to get the pod out because of linking when it is released and having no manual control over when it's released. I said this.

Bullocks. I've described a manual control (cutting power to the pod, for one), and I described mechanisms to let the pod remain stable long enough for the pod to get a safe distance away before it goes (small integral power cells on the pods, for one). How far is a safe distance? Ten kilometers? How fast is the pod moving after ejection? 500 m/s? Give the storage cells have enough energy to hold the field for twenty seconds!

The retaining magnet and the containment field don't have to cut out together at the same power level, you know. That's not what 'linked' means.

If my system sucks and is suicidal for this reason, then your system sucks and is suicidal for the very same reason.

Horse shit. Yours sucks because you don't have any hope of manually controlling when the pod is ejected because your design cuts off that possibility. My design doesn't have that. Therefore, that statement is inherently wrong.

Wrong. I've already explained the manual control... Oh, controlling the power grid isn't a manual control, you say? Bullocks to that.

Sure it can! If the antimatter pod door is held shut by the same electromagnet that retains the pod, it will pop open when the retaining magnet loses power, and when the pod ejects.

Your design has the added feature of phasing the antimatter pod through solid matter. You never said and that is what I was talking about. You weren't.

... Whaaat? Phasing?! You think I was talking about the pod PHASING through the hull?!! Jesus H. Christ! We're talking about SIMPLE solutions here, not overly-complicated gizmotrons!

Now I know you're not an engineer!

Do you honestly believe the situation will be any different for the standard pods? Standard pods, when ejected with the active system, will also be disconnected from the containment field when ejected.

They have an independent containment system. You could eject every one of those little fuckers with hours left before the fuel runs out of the generators. Your design won't let you.

You made that up! If an antimatter pod can float out there for hours, then why the fuck do we get these rediculous "minutes until containment breech" scenarios??!!

If my system sucks and is suicidal for this reason, then your system sucks and is suicidal for the very same reason.

Again, my design doesn't have the problems I have listed many times that yours has.

Bullocks. You've shown nothing of the kind.

I know. I don't see why that would be important.

Oh, lord. You'd need them sitting on the external hull to have your system be of any use. They'd have to be like the pods on the outside of a mon calamari cruiser. That'd be the only way, but it'd still suck even then.

Let me put a finer point on that, because the point has clearly went screaming over your head:

If the pods are sitting on the outside of the hull, then getting my mechanism to work is duck soup, though it's not necessarily a good idea to put the pods on the outside. If the pods are mounted inside the hull, there are prefectly robust mechanisms for open up the hull and let them through (blowing hatches triggered by loss of retention, ect). Either way my mechanism is in the pink. Thus, whether the pods are mounted inside or out, it's not a problem. Therefore, the point is irrelevant.

Saavy?

Yes. This is a problem because...?

Because you are wasting time. There's the answer to your question, you know it's there. Instead of asking for an answer you already see in front of you, ask one or make a statement based on what's already there. That is the adult thing to do.

I don't see how seeing the context of your answers is a disadvantage.

I find it amusing that you are nitpicking my posting habits, though.

I know Ted C said it first. I did read the thread. I read the entire fucking thread before I said a word. It bore repeating, since you didn't seem to get it the last time around.

I'm the one that said the presence of the independence was already there.

Bullocks. The way you used "independent" clearly demonstrated that you didn't understand it's meaning.

I'm the one that brought up The Last Outpost. He's the one that suggested they diverted power from life support to keep the pods from exploding, which I then said would have cost them a lot less energy, if they ejected the pod, let it blow up and then, kept life support up, so they wouldn't freeze to death. Now...tell me I didn't say that.

This is unrelated to whether you understood what "independent" means with respect to systems means, but I'll answer anyway. You're making stuff up when you said that it would have cost them a lot less energy if they ejected pods and let them blow up, and kept life support up. TWOK demonstrated that Fed ships can keep antimatter containment but can't afford to give the crew proper lighting on emergency batteries.

Please note that this is no way incompatible with Ted C's claim that starships would literally shut down life support before shutting down antimatter containment. It may be a cheap price, but it's gotta be paid.

So what? The point was that a systemwide failure (and only a systemwide failure) would cause a systemwide ejection of the pods.

The 'so what' is that it's impossible. With so many back up and back ups for the back ups, there's no way every single fucking one is gonna fail. There is only one instance off the top of my head with that kind of problem and it wasn't caused by a damn glitch. It was Cause and Effect and the distortion caused the ship to loose all it's power within a couple minutes (which would include antimatter containment power- main power was done and what they had left was being lost really fast), then a nacelle gets damaged and the ship blows.

Bullocks. You have just demonstrated that you do not understand joint probability. There are finite number of such failsafes on a Galaxy class starship, each of which has a non-zero probability of failing. The joint probability of all independent failsafes failing is always non-zero; there's always some chance that all of them will fail at once. It can be damn small, but never zero.

Also, remember that Fed ships can afford to run the antimatter containment fields off battery power. I'm sorry this is an inconvenient fact for you, but it is a fact straight from the TOS movies. Furthermore, antimatter containment would get priority one power allocation under any remotely sanely designed system, even if it is cheap.

Finally, how does any of this deny that a systemwide, catagorical failure of failure of power not also cause the appropriate systemwide response.

Show me an instance where a glitch caused that to happen and don't use Contagion because that wasn't a glitch.

I wasn't planning to. The episode I had in mind was Disaster, where the antimatter containment pods were getting dangerously close to breeching, the pods could not be ejected, and had to be stabilized by taking Data's head and having it communicate directly with the warp control systems, or somesuch. We know this is a computer glitch because nobody had to go mucking around with the hardware past connecting Data's head to the computer.

That was an alien computer virus from a more advance civilization.

You have a definition of "computer glitch" that doesn't match with mine, my friend. "Computer glitch" means any number of computer misbehavior. Contagion was certainly an example of this, especially considering that the virus that was doing the damage wasn't meant to be a hostile one.

That wasn't the point. Local failure is more likely. That's why we have the ejection system in the first place, right? However, we get robust systemic failure handling for free. The antimatter pods response to failure automatically scales to that of the energency. I'm not about to throw it away.

And if you needed to move it to make repairs for whatever reason, you can't with your design. You've made it impossible to do so.

Wrong. Drain the pod, engage a couple of maintanence locking clamps over the retention magnet assembly (and the antimatter hatch doors, if you have them), and power the pod down. Then detatch the spring plate. Voila! A free antimatter pod assembly. And no, there's no gizmotron involved.

And before you say anything, YES, DRAIN THE POD FIRST! You have perfect control of this risk. Why take stupid chances?

There are already many back ups and warnings that let the crew know with enough time.

You think that these pods wouldn't have back ups and warnings and bells and whistles? The only difference between the standard pods and the DMS pods is that we have a different failsafe system, one based on the dead man's switch principle instead of the active system used by standard pods.

... Whaaat? In order to remove an antimatter pod, you have to disconnect it from all the multipily redundant power systems that sustain the containment fields, as well as removing it from it's safety system!

Not when each pod has its own containment system. Your design, as you've said, makes each one hooked up to the power grid the rest of the systems of the ship draw power from. Mine doesn't, which is another detail you keep deliberately overlooking. Pay attention.

What do you mean, "deliberately overlooking?" Your self-contained containment system doesn't exist! If pods can remain off mains for hours on end, then why was Ro Lauren in such a hurry to shunt power to them during Disaster, minutes after everything went to hell?

You couldn't even disconnect it with your system because the computer is keeping you from doing that with your design.

The hell it is! I just described how to disconnect a pod from the system above! Also, there's no computer involved in the ejection system; it's all simple physics — no program to glitch.

That makes the pod far more dangerous, because now containment power is coming in through a flexible cord. (DON'T TRIP OVER IT!) Try ejecting a pod when the ejection system has nothing to push against.

That's because you've done something not smart and didn't give each pod its own system, which you have admitted to. My design does have independent systems that can be hooked together, like multiple computers on a network. Each one doesn't run off the same power supply.

I already answered this bull. Your self-contained containment system does not exist. And even if it did, what makes you think I can't put it on my system too for added safety?

And I ask again: Why in the world would you want to move a pod loaded with antimatter if you could at all help it?!

If you empty the pod before you move it, you can skip all that nonsense and just get on with moving the pod. It's much less risk, and furthermore, it's a risk you are in full control of (unlike an uncontrolled landing).

Youo don't have to drain everything, especially when you have antimatter pods that can survive when the ship takes a nose dive into an ice planet. The antimatter pods are not the Hindenberg.

Survived a nose dive onto an ice planet, with the SIF and IDF still working (otherwise the ship would've turned into scrap metal, and the crew into chunky sulsa), landing on ice that can fail and absorb shock.

And I stress again, unlike the Voyager nosedive, you are in full control of all risks when moving an antimatter pod. It's stupid not to take some basic, easy precautions.

If you're really hurting for pods, transfer the pods dry and install them dry, and after checking that everything's ship-shape, THEN fill them!

The thing has a self-containing system.

I'm really tired about hearing about your self containment system, especially since you make it like I can't put the same damn system on my own pods as well as you can yours. In the light of the Disaster evidence sited above, why should I believe your system even exists?

And just where are you proposing they shunt all the extra antimatter till they get an empty pod out of the rescuing ship and into the rescued one, huh? The holodeck? In the transporter's pattern buffer?

Don't be dense. The presumption that the starship in distress needs pods, implies they have been jettisoned some and want them replaced. The antimatter that these pods held would be long gone. The freshly delivered pods would be dry.

If you're going to perform pod maintanence, then presumably the facility you're docked at has the equipment to drain off your antimatter, would it not?

In your system, you couldn't even do that because the lock is tied to the containment field.

Your scenario is unrealistic. My system doesn't have to work for unrealistic scenarios.

Besides, I can always overboard the antimatter if I really needed that pod empty, and if I can't simply transfer the antimatter to other pods and top them off.

With nowhere to put the antimatter, you can't create the condition of the pod decreasing the field naturally, as it would when it runs out of fuel.

More of your made-up self-containment bullocks! Prove it exists! For that matter, prove that it runs on antimatter! Then put it on my system, and it'll work just as well as yours.

What cost have I added above the standard active eject system?

The cost of not being able to eject the pod when you want to.

It never seemed to work anyway... why should I consider it a loss?

Your statement is bullocks anyway. I already suggested several ways to manually eject my system.

What benefit have I eliminated from the standard active system in my design?

The benefit of being able to remove the pod manually when the situation demands it, the greater chance of surviving the containment failure of a pod, etc. All the shit I have talked about and then some.

Bullocks! You can eject my pods manually if you wanted to. And any system you can put on your pods to increase survivability, I can put on mine.

How is having each pod responsible for it's own ejection increasing centralization?

You have made a computer link between the locking mechanism and the containment field. You and Ted C have designed the pods to draw its power supply from the main power grid and saying the independence comes in back ups.

Standard pods also draw power from the main power grid, if you haven't noticed. And no, don't give me your self-contained power supply bullocks; it doesn't hold up in the face of Disaster.

And why do you keep calling it a "locking" mechanism? It's a retention mechanism! It's just like an ejection system, except it has the opposite sense. Even if there was a computer linkage to affect manual ejection, how is it any more centralized than yours?

If you had read my original post you would have noticed that I have not taken away ANY redundancy that was part of the standard system.

You've screwed with the redundency by doing things, such as linking the containment field with the locking mechanism.

Bullocks! That you're calling this thing a "locking mechanism" shows you don't understand how it works. There's not a single redundancy you can put on your pods that I can't put on mine!

Unlike your hypotheticals, these are known problems with the Galaxy class antimatter safety systems!

Like your attempts to spin, these statements are not true. They are not problems that are inherent to the safety system. That's a bold face lie. They are unique circumstances.

You seem to think that being a "unique circumstance" somehow magically makes them not "known problems".

As far as Disaster, there was a problem with power overall. What they needed was access to a terminal to prevent containment loss.

And escaped destruction by the skin of their teeth. Twice.

And now you've just disproved your self-contained containment pod nonsense. If the pods' containment fields are self-contained, especially if they use their own antimatter for fuel, why should the crew even care about supplying power to the pods? Hmmm?

In a normal circumstance, they would have been alerted to the problem and fixed it after one of the back ups kicked up, if it had to get that far at all.

Name some circumstances where pods have been ejected.

But, go ahead. Tell how your design would have been able to have survived when the Enterprise was hit by the quantum filament.

Sure.

Design 1: The pods encounter drop in power. The retention magnets lose power, but the containment fields have yet to decay. A spring, gas pressure, or magnetic coupling forces the pods away from the ship at a pretty good clip, with sufficient speed such that when the containment fields decay to the point where a breech occurs and the pods explode. The ship is stranded without antimatter fuel, but everyone's alive and the ship is mostly intact.

Design 2: The pods encounter a drop in power. The containment fields switch over to integral power cells, but the retention magnets lose power. A spring, gas pressure, or magnetic coupling forces the pods away from the ship at a pretty good clip, with sufficient speed such that when the containment fields decay to the point where a breech occurs and the pods explode. The ship is stranded without antimatter fuel, but everyone's alive and the ship is mostly intact.

Tell how even the hatch door that opens to let the pod out would have continued to work with your design. I want to know how.

Easy.

Design 1: Doors in the floor leading out to space. The pods are released. Release of the pods breaks a circuit in the retention plate, and the doors unlock. Atmospheric pressure blows the doors open.

Design 2: As above, but the pods push their way through the doors. (You did say these pods could stand a few shocks.)

As for Contagion, that was an alien computer virus from an advanced civilization. Tell me how the hell your design would have protected that. Tell me of the design of a computer that gets so advanced that even more advanced civilzations with more advanced computer tech than this computer couldn't be able to defeat this computer of a less advanced civilization. I want to know what it is.

It's simplicity itself. The Enterprise restored computer function by shutting down and restoring from protected archives. This strongly indicates that there exists storage with this less advanced civilization that the Iconians cannot overwrite.

What form would these protected archives take? Perhaps the isolinear equivalent to ROM. So we just dedicate warp control to a dedicated computer system that runs the warp control software from this ROM. (Warp control software is not something you want to alter on the fly, anyway.)

It's the price of a robust system. I never said this system came without cost.

Here's another cost to add to the list of bad things your design does.

I have therefore added substatial benefits to the system with little cost.

What you have done is pointless and overcomplicating things.

"Overcomplicate things?" What's the procedure for ejecting pods under the active system? The computer monitors the field-strength inside the pods. When the field strength weakens to a preset point, the computer blows the doors, and ejects the pod. That's exactly what my system does, except we cut out the computer intervention entirely. That way, a total computer system failure will not knock out the system. Furthermore, the system works by simple physical principles rather than complicated programming.

What you have suggested is the equivilent of adding a second door knob on the side of the door the hinges are fastened into. It's utterly, completely pointless.

Nuts to your analogy. The closer analogy is the CANDU system used in reactors.

Your insistance on it being robust, as an excuse to have it is ridiculous. Not everything needs to operate under all conditions.

No, but you want it to do the Right Thing under as many conditions as possible.

In fact, that's what you're trying to do with arguing for this design, but it isn't working.

No. You're not arguing that MY design isn't working. You're arguing that a STRAWMAN of my design is not working. I know your arguing against a strawman, because you constantly refer to a "locking mechanism" on my pods. There is no such mechanism on my pods. To put it in terms you understand, my mechanism is exactly like yours, except (a) the sense is reversed (as long as the mechanism receives a signal, it doesn't blow), and (b) it doesn't need a computer to tell it to fire at a preset level, it's physically configured to fire at that level. You have not explained how this mechanism doesn't work. Wanna start trying?

You don't even have to cut ALL the power to the pod, just enough of the power so that the retainer magnet cuts out but the containment field is still fine, but then the pod ejects and the pod loses containment power anyway.

First, containment retention is based upon the locking mechanism, which you both have said.

No, that's not what we said. There's nothing locking the pod in place. The pod is kept in place by a powered electromagnet countering some opposing force from the plate, such as a spring. When the electromagnet loses power, the springs drive the pod away.

Second, if you don't have to destroy your power source, why the fuck would you do something so stupid, as destroy the pod? That is what you have to do each and every time you release a pod.

Ejection of the pods are not based on losing power. They're based on losing containment fields. One of the main causes of this is losing power.

Now, if you're about to lose the contanment field, you're going to lose the pod. Period. You're only choice in this matter is this: are you going to be holding onto the pod when that happens?

You'd be lucky if you could get the damn thing out because, if the batteries kick in to maintain field containment, the locking mechanism kicks back in and the pod stays put.

It's the retention mechanism, dammit! There's no locking involved. But if the retention mechanism is still holding the pod in place, then the containment fields are still robust, which means... YOU'RE NOT GOING TO LOSE THE POD!! For one thing, it's not going to blow up in your face!

I don't see my mechanism doing the wrong thing here, GStone! If you want me to think my mechanism is inferior to yours, you have to show me a failure mode where my mechanism makes the wrong choice, and yours makes the right one.

I've already dealt with that reasonable.

Nope. Batteries kick in in your design, locking mechanism reattaches. You can't have one without the other, remember?

Strawman of my mechanism. Get a new line.

Because dead man switches are used in real systems.

Show me a real life example of a matter/antimatter power generation system that's based in space, not in the atmo of a planet and on the fucking ground.

O.O R U SIRIUS?!

The CANDU system, used in real fission power reactors, is a dead man's switch. The safety kickback break of a chainsaw is a dead man's switch. The power switches on power tools are dead man switches (if you release 'em, like you've just dropped dead, the power tool shuts off). DEAD MAN SWITCHES ARE EVERYWHERE!!

Which has jack shit to do with a matter/antimatter system onboard an object in space. Different environmental factors, different equipment, etc. etc.

>.< U R Sirius.

Seeing how we're lacking a real matter/antimatter system to examine, and therefore cannot deduce whether such a thing would have a dead man's switch, why don't you try finding me a real system where the dead man's switch principle doesn't work.

Show me a real life power generator that uses matter/antimatter collision for fuel that's in an object in fucking outer space and I'll show you where having a dead power/man switch in the generator is a space born Hindenberg.

Don't be dense. We can't design a matter/antimatter reactor as a power source, either with a dead man's switch or without one. Don't pretend you know the specifics of M/AM reactor design, because you don't.

As for Mike Wong's qualifications, it's actaully trivially easy to verify if he's an accredited engineer: call the University of Waterloo and ask. Easy as pie!

I don't have to to get an idea of how much he learned, if he really went. The stuff he posts on the web speaks for itself.

Yes... It does... 9_9

[Cpl Kendall]

I don't have to to get an idea of how much he learned, if he really went. The stuff he posts on the web speaks for itself.

Wow you'll just resort to any sort of contortions to justify your position won't you? You guys remind me of alcoholics only instead of being obsessed with alcohol your obsessed with Mike Wong and SDN.

[Who is like God arbour]

Alright, I'll attempt to pick up where Ted C left off.

That's OK with me. But I have the impression, you have not read, what were already written. Some of you arguments were already adressed.

First off, I'll define what a "failure mode" is, because you'll see a lot of that term from me. A failure mode is an engineering term that describes the process in which a device fails, and unlike a mere description of the symtoms, a failure mode is a rather complete description of the failure process. This includes the preconditions of the failure, the ultimate and proximate causes, the way a device was being used, and all subsidiary and resulting failures.

OK, till now, I agree.

When you design a system, you also (by implication) design its failure modes. The "dead man's switch" is a design philosophy (not a special gizmo) such that as much as possible failure modes should result in the least amount of harm to surrounding structures and personnel, all without active intervention.

But now, I don't agree. That's either not a correct definiton of the dead man's switch principle or you should have adressed the elaboration in this post:

• • The death man's switch is intended to stop a machine in case the human operator becomes incapacitated to prevent an accident because the operator is not able to control said machine anymore. This fail-safe system is released even if the machine itself has no malfunction. And such a system is not always released automatical anymore. The example with the throttle on a train, which Ted C has given, ...

    Another example might be the throttle on a train, which the engineer is supposed to be holding at all times. If the engineer is incapacitated, he can no longer hold the throttle open and the train stops.

    ... is good to evaluate this. Today, a train conductor doesn't have to hold a throttle all the time. Today, he is supposed to push a button or a pedal in certain intervalls. A computer monitored, that this is done. If it is once not done, the computer usually asks the train conductor, before he brings the train to a stop, if he doesn't get an answer. I would even bet, that the computer is programmed to decide, when and how to brake, so that it doesn't initiate a full service application of the brake in an unfavorable block, e.g. on a bridge, in a tunnel or in a bend, where the train could be carried out of its rails. That is a death man's switch, or rather a dead-man's vigilance device, an advancement of the basic dead man's switchs. (There were accidents despite a basic dead man's switch because the train conductor has fallen asleep and has lain on the dead man's switch button or is fallen on the dead man's switch button pedal.)
    
    
    But the fail-safe system as it is described in my example and in "Engineering and Star Trek" has a totally other premise. That system is released automatical, if there is a malfunction in the machine or a factor, which could be dangerous for the safe functioning of the machine, e.g. an earth quake, an energy boost or energy drop or to high temperatures or similar factors - but not the absence of an human operator.
    Such a fail-safe system is released through an as simple mechanism as possible, mostly due simple physical reactions.

    • • For example, due to an energy boost, a fuse is opened and the electromagnet from the electromagnetically above the reactor suspended shut-off rods fails and the rods will fall due to gravity, thus shutting the reactor down.
        The same happens, if there is an energy drop. But then, there is no need for an open fuse. Due to the energy drop, the electromagnetically above the reactor suspended shut-off rods fails and the rods will fall due to gravity, thus shutting the reactor down.
        Something similiar could happen, if the temperatur increased above a certain magnitude. A bimetal relay could open the fuse and the electromagnet from the electromagnetically above the reactor suspended shut-off rods fails and the rods will fall due to gravity, thus shutting the reactor down.
        For an ejection system, the gravitation is replaced by constant ejection pressure (perhaps driven by springs, gas pressure, or magnetic repulsion).

    One could say, that through such a failure condition a chain reaction (not nuclear) is induced. If there is such a fail-safe system (and that allone would be dependable and there would be no need for monitoring or maintaining other systems), there wouldn't be a need for an human operator, respectivly its constant monitoring. The human operator or computer wouldn't even be able to prevent that such a fail-safe system is released, if they notice, that the fail-safe system itself is defect.
    
    That's why I think, that both fail-safe systems, the death man's switch and the fail-safe system, as it is described in my example and in "Engineering and Star Trek", are not the same systems. There are to many differences and the similarities are the same as in the most other fail-safe systems too.
    
    For lack of a better technical term, I call the fail-safe system, as it is described in my example and in "Engineering and Star Trek" an automatical CR fail-safe system, or short, a CR fail-safe system.

    • • It is important, that we agree about what exactly we debate. All fail-safe systems, regardless on which principle they are based, how they are build or work, should minimize harm and danger to other devices or personnel [1]. That's not unique for a "dead man's switch" [2].

The "dead man's switch" (DMS) principle, for instance, would dictate that, given two designs under a certain failure condition where one design explodes in your face and kills you, and the other stalls and shuts down, that you choose the design that stalls over the one that explodes. Please note that the solutions are not one-size-fits-all, as failure modes (and mechanisms employing "dead man's switch" principles) are particular to the system involved.

No. If you don't use a "dead man's switch" or "CR fail-safe system", you could still use other fail-safe systems. Neither a "dead man's switch" nor a "CR fail-safe system" are optimal for all circumstances. The example with the train, I have given, is good to demonstrate this. Imagine the following situation: The train is not damaged but the train conductor has an heart attack and is incapacitated. The train is on the brink of a bridge and would, if a full service application of the brake would be automatically initiated, stop on the bridge. That would be disadvantageous because it would be really dangerous for the passengers, if they would leave the train on the bridge and because it is difficult to reach the train on the bridge for a new train conductor and the medics for the unsound train conductor. It would be better, if a computer would decide, to bring the train to a stop not until it has reached the end of the bridge. But that premises, that there is no such thing like a "CR fail-safe system".

Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you cannot eliminate all harmful failure modes. This is where cost/benefit analysis comes in. In C/B analysis, you choose failure modes that minimizes cost and maximizes benefits in all conceivable situations. This includes costs of repair and recovery, cost in human lives, and benefits of retaining equipment.

I agree.

Competent engineers would have designed the antimatter tanks so that they must be retained against a constant ejection pressure (perhaps driven by springs, gas pressure, or magnetic repulsion), thus utilizing the "dead man's switch" principle. If the containment magnets are connected in series with the tank retainer magnets, the tanks will be blown free as soon as the fields begin to weaken.

Please note carefully what is being said: it is not possible to cut the tank retainer fields without also cutting the containment fields, and vice versa. So long as the containment fields are powered up above some threshold, the retainer magnets retain the pod. If the containment fields fall below that threshold, chosen by C/B analysis, then the retainer fields lose power first and the pod is ejected, in time such that the containment fields fail completely when the pod is at some safe distance. Each pod has its own independent ejection system; that pod ejects only when its particular containment field drops below the chosen threshold. It doesn't even know whether other pods have been ejected. Each pod has it's own independent circuit on the ship's main power grid; the power condition of any other system or pod is irrelevant to the power condition of this one. Furthermore, the failure of main power automatically switches in a battery to supply the containment (and retention) fields for a time.

That's not what I have understood. He says, that "if the containment magnets are connected in series with the tank retainer magnets, the tanks will be blown free as soon as the fields begin to weaken." That means, as far as I understand it, that the pods will be blown free as soon as the energy supply to the containment field, through the retainer magnets is disrupted. Such a system can't considerate the integrity of the remaining containment field, which is still hold up by batteries in the tank, unless these batteries from the tank supply the retainer magnets with energy. But that would be stupid, because you would spend energy from these batteries, which could uphold the containment field, for the retainer magnets.
Such a system is also not able to detect a loss of integrity of the containment field, which not always has nothing to do with the energy supply, for example an damaged field emitter, which still use energy (from the ship or from the batteries from the tank) but don't create a containment field anymore. Or a radiation, which is weakening the containment field like in the TNG episode "The Bonding".
That's why I think, it would be better, if there is an active fail safe system, which is monitoring the integrity of the containment field and decides to eject an anti-matter tank, when the field is collapsed under a certain threshold.
There would active components be necessary anyway because it is not enough to blow the anti matter tank free. The tank is connected with the ship in at least two points: the energy supply and the anti-matter pipes, which lead the anti-matter to the warp core. Both connections, especially the anti-matter connection, have to be sealed to prevent other damages to the ship. But such connections aren't closeable as easily as a water tap, especially the anti-matter connection, which has to be sealed with a new containment field.
And a hole through the hull has to be opened before the anti-matter tank is blown free. And this hole has to be closed again, after the anti-matter tank is away. Unless one is willing to accept a hole in the armour, through which the ship is very vulnerable, which is especially bad for a warship?

Is there any situation where these DMS-principle pods would have a failure mode that is less desirable than the standard pods? Quite frankly, it's hard to think of one. Because the failure of one pod's contaiment field only affects that particular pod's retention field, only that particular pod will be ejected in that failure mode.

When will all the pods be ejected? When and only when each and every pod suffers containment failure. (And in that case, they shouldn't be retained anyway.)

No, if the electro-plasma distribution network to the tanks is interrupted, all anti matter tanks don’t get energy from the ship anymore and all will be blown free. That is not unlikely in a battle, but could also happen every time, the power of a ship is shut down, for example when it is in a dock to maintenance.

Is it possible to make a DMS pod that you can save by correct crew action? Yes, by having the retaining magnet tuned such that it loses retaining pressure ONLY when the containment field decays to some threshold, and never before. (If it takes minutes for a containment field to decay to that point, then the pod is retained until that time.) Besides which, we have an emergency battery to extend the life of the fields and to handle any power dips (for a time).

And how would you construct the retaining magnet, that it is monitoring the containment field? You can connect the retaining magnet in series with the containment field generator. That would be no problem. If the containment field generator doesn’t get energy, the retaining magnet wouldn’t get energy too and the tanks are blow free. But I don’t see how you will connect the retaining magnet with the containment field. That’s no device, to which something could be connected.



But this whole post is useless in my opinion. There were never ever any problems with the anti-matter tanks, as far as I know.

• • Antimatter pod
    Antimatter pod are special magnetized self-contained storage units which contain un-reacted antimatter fuel for a starship. Antimatter pods use an antimatter containment field to isolate the fuel within from contact with normal matter which would cause it to be annihilated with catastrophic ramifications. (Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual)
    
    Incidents
    In 2365 the USS Yamato's antimatter containment field in their antimatter pods failed, causing the destruction of the ship. (TNG: "Contagion")
    
    In 2366 the non-corporeal Koinonians drained antimatter from the containment pods to use it as energy to create their replica of Marla Aster. This was stopped by increasing the shield harmonics to match the antimatter containment effectively severing the Koinonian beam. (TNG: "The Bonding")
    
    Later that year, radiation that had leaked from Doctor Nel Apgars station in orbit of Tanuga IV threatened the Enterprises antimatter pod. If the radiation had surged in or near them, it would have destroyed the ship. (TNG: "A Matter of Perspective")
    
    In 2369, Commander Benjamin Sisko ejected the antimatter pod of the USS Yangtzee Kiang just before the runabout crashed on a planet in the Gamma Quadrant. (DS9: "Battle Lines")
    
    Later that year, while traveling back to the Enterprise by Runabout, the starboard antimatter pod has been completely drained, despite the fact that there was no leak and all of the other engine systems were fully operational. It turned out that the runabout had entered a region of temporal fragments that made the antimatter pod work longer then the rest of the shuttle had. (TNG: "Timescape")
    
    In 2372, while Captain Janeway and Commander Chakotay were trapped on a planet, Lieutenant Commander Tuvok had to fight off several Vidiian ships. To do so, he released an antimatter pod and let it get close to the ships, and then fire a photon torpedo at it. (VOY: "Resolutions")
    
    Antimatter pods are self-contained units, their containment fields continuing to function even after being ejected from the starship. (VOY: "Resolutions")
    
    Background
    We can assume that antimatter pods are self-contained and survive some sorts of disasters aboard starships -- such as the destruction of the starship, uncontrolled entry into an atmosphere etc. This is because vehicles in the Star Trek universe do not consistently explode on every single occasion a vessel is catastrophically damaged. It is probably safe to assume that each pod has its own battery, other power source to maintain the containment field, or some kind of post-exhaustion flush method. This way, it is believable that a free floating antimatter pod from a destroyed starship, or a pod remaining in a derelict hulk, could remain intact until such a time as all of the antimatter within was expended.

It seems to me, that they are safe as they are and that there is no need to change them. It is enough, if the computer is monitoring them and ejects them if the containment field has collapsed under a certain threshold.

The real problem in this debate - as far as I was concerned - was the ejection system of the warp core and not of the anti matter tanks.

[Jedi Master Spock]

A sharp reminder to all of you to stay courteous to one another. This board's purpose is constructive discourse, not to enable the virtual equivalent of two people shouting at each other inside a closed cell.

I don't have to to get an idea of how much he learned, if he really went. The stuff he posts on the web speaks for itself.

Wow you'll just resort to any sort of contortions to justify your position won't you? You guys remind me of alcoholics only instead of being obsessed with alcohol your obsessed with Mike Wong and SDN.

Save all this and related material for the thread about Wong, please.

[Wyrm]

That's OK with me. But I have the impression, you have not read, what were already written. Some of you arguments were already adressed.

I did read, but Ted C's points were not addressed. Strawmen of Ted C's points were addressed, you people tried to address Ted C's points with fallacies, but Ted C's points were not actually addressed.

The death man's switch is intended to stop a machine in case the human operator becomes incapacitated to prevent an accident because the operator is not able to control said machine anymore.

<ker-snip of explanation of how the failsafe described by Mike is not a physical dead-man's switch>

You missed the italicied part of my quote, didn't you? Here it is again. I'll even underline the relevant phrase to underscore it:

The "dead man's switch" is a design philosophy (not a special gizmo)

Here, I am naming a design philosophy in engineering, thereby making clear that hereon whenever I use the phrase "dead man's switch", I am NOT necessarily referring to an actual, physical switch that is intended to activate when the operator becomes incapacitated. I then went on to define the design philosophy. Even if my definition is wrong, that is how I will use the phrase, and it is this principle that I expect you to argue against, not some physical switch. Your little semantics games do not impress me.

Imagine the following situation: The train is not damaged but the train conductor has an heart attack and is incapacitated. The train is on the brink of a bridge and would, if a full service application of the brake would be automatically initiated, stop on the bridge. That would be disadvantageous because it would be really dangerous for the passengers, if they would leave the train on the bridge and because it is difficult to reach the train on the bridge for a new train conductor and the medics for the unsound train conductor. It would be better, if a computer would decide, to bring the train to a stop not until it has reached the end of the bridge.

That failsafe follows the design philosophy I have called the dead man's switch, dearheart. It's a failure mode that results in the least amount of damage to the train, passengers and crew, without active intervention by the operator. Therefore, the failsafe you have described is following the principle I call a "dead man's switch"! Argue against my points, not some equivocation of my words.

That's not what I have understood. He says, that "if the containment magnets are connected in series with the tank retainer magnets, the tanks will be blown free as soon as the fields begin to weaken." That means, as far as I understand it, that the pods will be blown free as soon as the energy supply to the containment field, through the retainer magnets is disrupted. Such a system can't considerate the integrity of the remaining containment field, which is still hold up by batteries in the tank, unless these batteries from the tank supply the retainer magnets with energy. But that would be stupid, because you would spend energy from these batteries, which could uphold the containment field, for the retainer magnets.

How much power do you think an electromagnet takes to maintain an unchanging magnetic field? If the state of the retention system doesn't change, and only a little energy is emerging as heat, there must also only be a little power going into the system. This waste heat can be made very small by choosing the correct design, so the power that the electromagnet actually draws can be made very small. First Law of Thermodynamics, Bee!

The power to the retention system can be made very small. The electromagnet just has to stick to the housing. The containment system isn't so lucky. It has to keep the antimatter away from the walls, but such a process would inevidably heat up the antimatter and requiring cooling (the antihydrogen is in a slurry) — that means heat is going into the system (consuming power) and heat is being pumped out of the system (consuming power). Furthermore, the pod is large, yet has to respond quickly to changes in the slurry (so the processes involved are highly irreversible). All these are Second Law of Thermodynamics, Bee! All will require work input, whereas for the same technology level, the work input for the electromagnet can be made very small.

Such a system is also not able to detect a loss of integrity of the containment field, which not always has nothing to do with the energy supply, for example an damaged field emitter, which still use energy (from the ship or from the batteries from the tank) but don't create a containment field anymore. Or a radiation, which is weakening the containment field like in the TNG episode "The Bonding".

Bullocks. Damaged systems don't draw power like normally-functioning systems. The impedence of a shorting coil will drop, which will show up as an current spike, for example. We know of no radiation that affects magnetic fields themselves, but radiation certainly affects MATTER, such as coils. By Occam's Razor, the most likely mechanism for which radiation can weaken containment fields is to change the impedence of the coils. This, again, will cause changes in the way the coil draws power. A well-designed system will detect these anomallies and take the appropriate action. We have systems today that do this.

That's why I think, it would be better, if there is an active fail safe system, which is monitoring the integrity of the containment field and decides to eject an anti-matter tank, when the field is collapsed under a certain threshold.

Okay, suppose I were to accept that you would need some kind of specialized sensor to monitor field strength. What is the operational difference between having a computer monitor the field strength, blowing the pod when field strength drops below a threshold; and an integral op-amp circuit connected to that same sensor, such that when field strength falls below that same threshold, the circuit triggers and cuts out the retention electromagnet, causing the pod to blow itself? Since both failure modes have the same conditions (containment field strength falling below a threshold) and ultimate state (blowing the pod), the operational difference is nothing. The difference is that the op-amp circuit is immune to software failure and viruses, there's no control or sensor linkages to cut (the pod and its failsafe are a single, compact unit) so it's immune to damage and sabotage not involving the pod directly, and total power failures (and subsequent loss of containment field integrity) and the failure of the safety system itself cause the system to do the Right Thing. (And when I say total power failure, I clearly mean the total loss of all power from all sources, including all backups.)

I'm not seeing a downside here.

There would active components be necessary anyway because it is not enough to blow the anti matter tank free. The tank is connected with the ship in at least two points: the energy supply and the anti-matter pipes, which lead the anti-matter to the warp core. Both connections, especially the anti-matter connection, have to be sealed to prevent other damages to the ship.

True, but you imagine that somehow this demands active control in all situations, instead of perhaps one active control, plus a few passive ones.

But such connections aren't closeable as easily as a water tap, especially the anti-matter connection, which has to be sealed with a new containment field.

Sure they are, if you design 'em right!

Antimatter and energy connections should be safed whenever the pod is disconnected. It doesn't matter what causes the disconnection, so this is a perfect candidate for a self-safing mechanism. For the antimatter line, a containment field is nothing but a fancily configured magnetic field. Therefore, when you have the feed plug withdraw a little from its socket, magnetic irises kick in and choke off the flow. No computer assistance is needed, as the action was triggered by withdrawing the plug a little. As the plug is withdrawn completely from the socket, dust baffles slide into place, all triggered by simple mechanical action. And voila! The plug is free, and there's nothing leaking. Same story with the power supply, which uses plasma as a carrier. Because the cutoff process is local, the computer doesn't need to know about it (though it would be a nice thing to know, so go ahead and put in a sensor). So if a plug is accidentally pulled, the system does the Right Thing.

I'm not seeing a downside here.

And a hole through the hull has to be opened before the anti-matter tank is blown free.

Did you read my designs? Okay, here they are again, with a few more ideas:

Design 1: The retaining electromagnet and the lock for the doors are on the same circuit. When the retaining magnet cuts out (causing the pod's ejecting), the doors are unlocked. Atmospheric pressure blows open the doors.

Design 2: As above, but the pod battering-rams its way out as it passes. The doors, being lightweight, are simply slapped out of the way, and the pods are designed to take some minor knocks.

Design 3: The doors is actually a lid, like you find on pop-top cans. They're hard to pry open or penetrate from the outside, but a strong smack from the inside (like from an ejecting pod) makes them pop out of their seating.

Design 4: There's a wedge on the bottom of the pod (or the pod itself is shaped like a wedge). The pod simply slices through the hull on its way out.

None of these require computer intervention.

And this hole has to be closed again, after the anti-matter tank is away. Unless one is willing to accept a hole in the armour, through which the ship is very vulnerable, which is especially bad for a warship?

1. Why? The Galaxy class didn't open doors for pods to leave; it blew a hatchplate open. The designers obviously weren't too concerned about closing the hole back up again.

2. What armor? Shields are the principle defense of a Federation ship. Except for the Defiant class, Fed ships have no armor to speak of.

3. If you're situation is dire enough for you to be ejecting pods, why are you worried about a few hundred square feet of hull when you're likely to be down to bare spaceframe in many places?

4. What makes you think the Galaxy class is a warship, when it clearly isn't? It's more like an ark.

5. So long as you don't choose design 3 or 4, what makes you think the doors need to be closed by the same mechanism that opens them? It's not as if you fail to close the doors after the pod's already gone, that you'll be faced with an antimatter matter explosion right in the keel, like you would if the doors fail to open when ejecting a pod.

No, if the electro-plasma distribution network to the tanks is interrupted, all anti matter tanks don’t get energy from the ship anymore and all will be blown free.

Correction. This only happens if an emergency backup power supply doesn't kick in to make up for the power.

I keep telling you people: the ejection system is designed to blow the pod when the pod's containment fields are no longer receiving power or are otherwise comprimised. If the pod's containment fields are no longer receiving power, then the pod is about to go boom! and should be blown. If the the pod's containment fields are still receiving power and are in good condition, then the pod will not go boom! and need not be blown.

That is not unlikely in a battle, but could also happen every time, the power of a ship is shut down, for example when it is in a dock to maintenance.

Jesus H. Christ! When the ship is docked for maintanence, is it not receiving power from the docking bay? Wouldn't some of this power make it to the antimatter pods? Wouldn't this power energize the pods' containment fields? And therefore the retention electromagnets? As long as that retention electromagnets are receiving power, will they not keep the pods in place? So why would pods start ejecting, Sport?

And how would you construct the retaining magnet, that it is monitoring the containment field? You can connect the retaining magnet in series with the containment field generator. That would be no problem. If the containment field generator doesn’t get energy, the retaining magnet wouldn’t get energy too and the tanks are blow free. But I don’t see how you will connect the retaining magnet with the containment field. That’s no device, to which something could be connected.

Don't be dense. Of course I meant the containment field generator. The retaining magnet consists of a normal electromagnet with very little field loss, a gate turn-off thyristor, and an op-amp circuit, connected to a field monitoring sensor if you have one. Very simple, and almost foolproof.

Incidents
In 2365 the USS Yamato's antimatter containment field in their antimatter pods failed, causing the destruction of the ship. (TNG: "Contagion")

In 2366 the non-corporeal Koinonians drained antimatter from the containment pods to use it as energy to create their replica of Marla Aster. This was stopped by increasing the shield harmonics to match the antimatter containment effectively severing the Koinonian beam. (TNG: "The Bonding")

Later that year, radiation that had leaked from Doctor Nel Apgars station in orbit of Tanuga IV threatened the Enterprises antimatter pod. If the radiation had surged in or near them, it would have destroyed the ship. (TNG: "A Matter of Perspective")

In 2369, Commander Benjamin Sisko ejected the antimatter pod of the USS Yangtzee Kiang just before the runabout crashed on a planet in the Gamma Quadrant. (DS9: "Battle Lines")

Later that year, while traveling back to the Enterprise by Runabout, the starboard antimatter pod has been completely drained, despite the fact that there was no leak and all of the other engine systems were fully operational. It turned out that the runabout had entered a region of temporal fragments that made the antimatter pod work longer then the rest of the shuttle had. (TNG: "Timescape")

In 2372, while Captain Janeway and Commander Chakotay were trapped on a planet, Lieutenant Commander Tuvok had to fight off several Vidiian ships. To do so, he released an antimatter pod and let it get close to the ships, and then fire a photon torpedo at it. (VOY: "Resolutions")

Antimatter pods are self-contained units, their containment fields continuing to function even after being ejected from the starship. (VOY: "Resolutions")

First, I notice "Disaster" is NOT there, where the antimatter pods ALMOST BLEW from not being spoonfed power from the ship, either from the mains or from some emergency power supply. Ensign Ro had to reroute power (which had to come from smoewhere else, and not from the pods) to prevent an imminent catastrophic explosion. It required Riker and Data Headroom getting to Engineering, noticing that the antimatter pods were in a dire state and Riker using Data's head (quite literally) to fix the problem, which was basically a software problem as there was no actual mucking about with hardware directly related to antimatter containment. Obviously, they were using a different design from the pods from "Resolutions".

Secondly, if your "Resolutions" pod can mount a power supply that can sustain a pod for hours, so can I for added safety. The operation of my pod is not impared in any way by such a generation system, for the cutout for the retation electromagnet is linked to the containment field! (Don't argue semantics — argue points. Yes, WILGA, I'm looking at you!) If the onboard backup is powering the containment field, it's also powering the retention magnet.

PS, GStone, I see now where the self-powered pods come in (or perhaps they just have a long integral backup battery life), but it still doesn't remove my point that I can mount these exact same systems on my own pods, and they will work exactly as well.

Thirdly, if you really want to be able to do cute tricks like ejecting pods purposefully in battle, there's nothing preventing you putting an active ejection system atop the passive one. The passive eject is designed specifically to guard against catatonic computers, cut control linkages and whatnot. Performing cute pod tricks is entirely the domain of an active system, but don't pretend it's a safety system: it's bells and whistles — when it fails (and it will — it already has), you'll be glad you had the passive system.

Furthermore, because the feature of being able to eject the pod manually is irrelevant to the passive safety system, it's employing the "dead man's switch" philosophy: should the active (manual) system fail, the passive system is not impared, and so this failure mode causes no harm.

The real problem in this debate - as far as I was concerned - was the ejection system of the warp core and not of the anti matter tanks.

I disagree. The argument was against the entirety of "Engineering and Star Trek", of which antimatter pods is one of the cited examples for improvement.

Quite frankly, if you're having trouble understanding the pods — and you clearly are — I don't see how discussing Wong's changes to the warp core will help matters, as it adds several factors atop the ones raised in the pod debate.

[SailorSaturn13]

Point 1: If containment fails, pod expoldes IMMEDIATELY - within nanoseconds

Point 2: because of this, a pod while being ejected, NEEDS an internal supply and an internal containment field generators. This also means container generator magnets must be internal, and can NOT be linked to any external system, such as retaining system.

Competent engineers would have designed the antimatter tanks so that they must be retained against a constant ejection pressure (perhaps driven by springs, gas pressure, or magnetic repulsion), thus utilizing the "dead man's switch" principle. If the containment magnets are connected in series with the tank retainer magnets, the tanks will be blown free as soon as the fields begin to weaken.



Please note carefully what is being said: it is not possible to cut the tank retainer fields without also cutting the containment fields, and vice versa. So long as the contaiment fields are powered up above some threshold, the retainer magnets retain the pod. If the containment fields fall below that threshold, chosen by C/B analysis, then the retainer fields lose power first and the pod is ejected, in time such that the containment fields fail completely when the pod is at some safe distance. Each pod has it's own independent ejection system; that pod ejects only when it's particular containment field drops below the chosen threshold. It doesn't even know whether other pods have been ejected. Each pod has it's own independent circuit on the ship's main power grid; the power condition of any other system or pod is irrelevant to the power condition of this one. Furthermore, the failure of main power automatically switches in a battery to supply the containment (and retention) fields for a time.

Containment can fail even if power is online - if magnets lost functioning. So the system does not work properly.

We've got a problem. The quantum
resonance of the filament caused
a polarity shift in the antimatter
containment field.

Troi just looks at her: What the hell does that mean?
O'Brien hastens to explain.

O'BRIEN
When the filament hit us, the
ship was momentarily charged...
as if it had... come into
contact with a live electrical
wire.

RO
That weakened the containment
field surrounding the antimatter
pods. The field strength is down
to forty percent and it's still
falling.

O'BRIEN
(ominously)
If it falls to fifteen percent...
the field will collapse and
there'll be a containment breach.

See? POWER is normal, field strength is not.

They needed EXTRA POWER for it. Therefore they couldn't eject them - they needed ship's addon power just to gold on.

We should separate the saucer
now, and put as much distance as
possible between us and the drive
section.

Separation probably was considered a viable option.

Yes... but my readings indicate
there's no power down there.
They don't even have monitors to
tell them there's a problem.

See, robust design: engineering has NO power, but containment fields have.

(thinks)
I have a connection.
(beat)
I am now stabilizing the
containment field.

The problem was not POWER - which cannot be restored in such a way - but the algorithm of containment generation.

Hencefore - internal containment generators feeded from AM could not save situation - they simply didn't have required energy GIVEN the falling effectivity.

Can a computer glitch cause the loss of the pods? Yes, but only by cutting containment power to the pods, which means they shouldn't be retained anyway (after the battery(ies) runs down).

A computer glitch can force internal batteries to disconnect. Then, when the pod begins being ejected, it explodes while just centimeters from its place.

When will all the pods be ejected? When and only when each and every pod suffers containment failure. (And in that case, they shouldn't be retained anyway.)

Or if the wire holding energy is damaged. Internal containment generators would contain AM for hours under normal conditions.

I read the entire fucking thread before I said a word.

Not shown

If you empty the pod before you move it, you can skip all that nonsense and just get on with moving the pod. It's much less risk, and furthermore, it's a risk you are in full control of (unlike an uncontrolled landing).

Problem is, HOW DO YOU TRANSFER ANTIMARTTER, IF NOT IN THE POD? We don't want pod transferred, we want AM transferred!

if the Federation starships can afford to run antimatter containment off batteries but not the regular lights, it's obviously not a very big cost.

Point was their main power grid was drained, along the plasma lines most likely, so life support was drained too. The internal containment generator feed on AM directly, bypassing nplasma lines. So they weren't affected.

When you design a system, you also (by implication) design its failure modes. The "dead man's switch" is a design philosophy (not a special gizmo) such that as much as possible failure modes should result in the least amount of harm to surrounding structures and personnel, all without active intervention. The "dead man's switch" (DMS) principle, for instance, would dictate that, given two designs under a certain failure condition where one design explodes in your face and kills you, and the other stalls and shuts down, that you choose the design that stalls over the one that explodes. Please note that the solutions are not one-size-fits-all, as failure modes (and mechanisms employing "dead man's switch" principles) are particular to the system involved.

You can't foresee anything. Therefore the more you freedom options you are giving to the crew, the better.

[SailorSaturn13]

I disagree. The argument was against the entirety of "Engineering and Star Trek", of which antimatter pods is one of the cited examples for improvement.

Quite frankly, if you're having trouble understanding the pods — and you clearly are — I don't see how discussing Wong's changes to the warp core will help matters, as it adds several factors atop the ones raised in the pod debate.

The problem is that pod are very sturdy and only cause problems under extraordinary circumstances. And we do have a pretty well understanding how they work.

Secondly, if your "Resolutions" pod can mount a power supply that can sustain a pod for hours, so can I for added safety. The operation of my pod is not impared in any way by such a generation system, for the cutout for the retation electromagnet is linked to the containment field! (Don't argue semantics — argue points. Yes, WILGA, I'm looking at you!) If the onboard backup is powering the containment field, it's also powering the retention magnet.

Which means you cannot eject the pod without stopping the containment field. And then it blows up inside. No, the internal generators are NOT linked to retention magnets.

Nope. Batteries kick in in your design, locking mechanism reattaches. You can't have one without the other, remember?

Strawman of my mechanism. Get a new line.

And yet , "If the onboard backup is powering the containment field, it's also powering the retention magnet."
So what WILGA said is correct.

First, I notice "Disaster" is NOT there, where the antimatter pods ALMOST BLEW from not being spoonfed power from the ship, either from the mains or from some emergency power supply. Ensign Ro had to reroute power (which had to come from smoewhere else, and not from the pods) to prevent an imminent catastrophic explosion. It required Riker and Data Headroom getting to Engineering, noticing that the antimatter pods were in a dire state and Riker using Data's head (quite literally) to fix the problem, which was basically a software problem as there was no actual mucking about with hardware directly related to antimatter containment. Obviously, they were using a different design from the pods from "Resolutions".

Power was reruoted to ENGINEERING so they could see the problem. Pods needed extra power because of effectivity problems.

True, but you imagine that somehow this demands active control in all situations, instead of perhaps one active control, plus a few passive ones.

Active and passive systems don't mix. What if passive system pod, but the active fails to seal everything? BOOM!

Okay, suppose I were to accept that you would need some kind of specialized sensor to monitor field strength. What is the operational difference between having a computer monitor the field strength, blowing the pod when field strength drops below a threshold; and an integral op-amp circuit connected to that same sensor, such that when field strength falls below that same threshold, the circuit triggers and cuts out the retention electromagnet, causing the pod to blow itself? Since both failure modes have the same conditions (containment field strength falling below a threshold) and ultimate state (blowing the pod), the operational difference is nothing. The difference is that the op-amp circuit is immune to software failure and viruses, there's no control or sensor linkages to cut (the pod and its failsafe are a single, compact unit) so it's immune to damage and sabotage not involving the pod directly, and total power failures (and subsequent loss of containment field integrity) and the failure of the safety system itself cause the system to do the Right Thing. (And when I say total power failure, I clearly mean the total loss of all power from all sources, including all backups.)

You do not need a SENSOR, you need an array and a POWEERFUL COMPUTER to analize data and interpret it into failture probability!

Bullocks. Damaged systems don't draw power like normally-functioning systems. The impedence of a shorting coil will drop, which will show up as an current spike, for example


A well-designed system will detect these anomallies and take the appropriate action. We have systems today that do this.

They can take more , less or the same power output. For example, what if magnet reverses polarity and pushes AM outwards instead of inwards?

Design 1: The pods encounter drop in power. The retention magnets lose power, but the

containment fields have yet to decay. A spring, gas pressure, or magnetic coupling forces the

pods away from the ship at a pretty good clip, with sufficient speed such that when the

containment fields decay to the point where a breech occurs and the pods explode. The ship is

stranded without antimatter fuel, but everyone's alive and the ship is mostly intact.

Design 2: The pods encounter a drop in power. The containment fields switch over to integral

power cells, but the retention magnets lose power. A spring, gas pressure, or magnetic

coupling forces the pods away from the ship at a pretty good clip, with sufficient speed such

that when the containment fields decay to the point where a breech occurs and the pods

explode. The ship is stranded without antimatter fuel, but everyone's alive and the ship is

mostly intact.

And if the enemy has deformed hull so the hatch won't open? If an enemy fired at and melted hatch into place? KABOOM! Happened in ANH actually.
Also, enemy can lock at the place where pod will emerge and destroy it meters away from hull.

An active system has a virtue of checking this all first - AND allowing ship to selfdestruct if needed. How could your system allow this?

Bullocks. You have just demonstrated that you do not understand joint probability. There are

finite number of such failsafes on a Galaxy class starship, each of which has a non-zero

probability of failing. The joint probability of all independent failsafes failing is always

non-zero; there's always some chance that all of them will fail at once. It can be damn small,

but never zero.

Well there is also a non-zero probability that Enegry fluctuation will appear out of nowhere and blast the ship. Guess which is bigger...

[GStone]

Bullocks. I've described a manual control (cutting power to the pod, for one), and I described mechanisms to let the pod remain stable long enough for the pod to get a safe distance away before it goes (small integral power cells on the pods, for one). How far is a safe distance? Ten kilometers? How fast is the pod moving after ejection? 500 m/s? Give the storage cells have enough energy to hold the field for twenty seconds!

But, when the containment field is reestablished, the locking mechanism resets. What you are attempting to explain means that you have to really hurry and hope and pray that you've gotten the pod far enough away, so that it won't lock back in place before you let any antimatter escape the containment field.

You couldn't get this design past OSHA. This is what you'd be telling them:

"In this design, there are many ways we can cause a meltdown. We think it's all right to use one of these ways...just so we can disconnect a containment pod from its position...and we are hoping that we don't accidentally let go of any speck of antimatter before we get it far enough for the generator to kick back in and not have the pod move back to where we want to take it from.'

That is dangerous for your ship and a ridiculous design when you can make them independent of each other and you don't have to worry about the batteries kicking in in time. What about a glitch in the batteries, huh?

The retaining magnet and the containment field don't have to cut out together at the same power level, you know. That's not what 'linked' means.

And, if you can't have one without the other, you're screwed. When the pod gets empty, you have to keep the pod from ejecting because there'd be no reason to have the containment field up in an empty pod. You'll cause more wear and tear in the mechanisms and make the pod need to be replaced sooner.

The wastefulness of this design is appalling.

Wrong. I've already explained the manual control... Oh, controlling the power grid isn't a manual control, you say? Bullocks to that.

The whole point of the discussion is that my design and yours work differently. My design is the one already in place in the canon. You are proposing a different one.

You're blaming the faults of your design on mine when they don't even exist in my design to begin with.

... Whaaat? Phasing?! You think I was talking about the pod PHASING through the hull?!! Jesus H. Christ! We're talking about SIMPLE solutions here, not overly-complicated gizmotrons!

What the hell did you think I was talking about when I said passing through solid matter without touching a thing? That it was just gonna jump out of a ship?

Don't fake ignorance now. I just said that that wasn't what you were talking about, but what I was talking about.

Pay more attention and I won't have to keep showing you're glossing over things right in front of you.

You made that up! If an antimatter pod can float out there for hours, then why the fuck do we get these rediculous "minutes until containment breech" scenarios??!!

The containment field of antimatter pods in the canon is independent of any external power source. I have shown this. This means, they will continue to keep the containment field up for a long time when left alone, which, when given enough fuel, can be hours. This is not making anything up. This is called logic.

We get these types of scenarios when something goes wrong with containment, either in the warp core itself or any or all of the antimatter pods. Maintenance of containment in the current system is not linked to whether it is locked in place, which is a necessity of your design.

If the pods are sitting on the outside of the hull, then getting my mechanism to work is duck soup, though it's not necessarily a good idea to put the pods on the outside. If the pods are mounted inside the hull, there are prefectly robust mechanisms for open up the hull and let them through (blowing hatches triggered by loss of retention, ect). Either way my mechanism is in the pink.

When you unlock the pod, you're praying you can get it far enough away from its connection point that the locking mechanism won't reattach the pod. And you have to turn off the containment field generator to do that. You have set off a bomb and you're trying to juggle with an active explosive. That is suicide. That will not let you get this design past OSHA.

You are lucky if you can get it to move far enough, so that when power is restored to the contianment field that it is far enough away that it doesn't lock back in place. If you haven't gotten it far enough away, you gotta do it all over again and waste more time.

More to the point...why the fuck would you deliberately turn off a contianment field for antimatter when you go on and on about how volitile it supposedly is while the field generator is active, even though they remain intact when a starship takes a nose dive into an ice planet with the current system?

Thus, whether the pods are mounted inside or out, it's not a problem. Therefore, the point is irrelevant.

Not relevent? If they're on the outside, your opponent focuses its fire on that area and gets through your shields and destroys it, taking you with it. If it's inside, you are deliberately turning off the containment field and risking blowing it up to move it when it's stable with the current system when the starship takes a nose dive into an ice planet.

Irrelevent, my ass.

I don't see how seeing the context of your answers is a disadvantage.

Because it's a childish way to act and not as efficient as the mature way of doing it.

I find it amusing that you are nitpicking my posting habits, though.

And this is how Vympel used to be, acting like he couldn't be bothered to go back to an earlier part of his post before he even posted it. I'm pointing out the ridiculousness of your behavior, so that you will stop doing it.

It's better all around if you just go back to an earlier part of your post and change a question/statement because you have now learned what my response would be to your question/statement.

I'm trying to help you out. Forget any accusations anyone would ever make about your spin doctoring the words of others. The act alone I'm talking of here hurts your credibility to a degree, but the slate isn't wiped clean after each post. A history of doing this builds upon itself, decreasing your credibility and you don't want that to happen.

Bullocks. The way you used "independent" clearly demonstrated that you didn't understand it's meaning.

Main power goes off line, antimatter pods don't blow up. Therefore, they don't work off the same power grid. Therefore, the power generators are not the same thing. Even the back ups for each pod would be independent from the main source of power for the pods. How the fuck is this not independence?

Ted C linked the same power sources together in direct opposition to canon, increasing centralization and dependence.

This is unrelated to whether you understood what "independent" means with respect to systems means, but I'll answer anyway. You're making stuff up when you said that it would have cost them a lot less energy if they ejected pods and let them blow up, and kept life support up. TWOK demonstrated that Fed ships can keep antimatter containment but can't afford to give the crew proper lighting on emergency batteries.

Also, remember that Fed ships can afford to run the antimatter containment fields off battery power. I'm sorry this is an inconvenient fact for you, but it is a fact straight from the TOS movies. Furthermore, antimatter containment would get priority one power allocation under any remotely sanely designed system, even if it is cheap.

Was Kirk and crew freezing to death when on emergency batteries? No. Was Picard and crew and civilians, including children? Yes.

Different situations. Ted C suggested that they sacrificed being able to keep everyone fron freezing to death so they could keep the containment field up. If it was really such a low amount of power, as you claim with the Kirk example, why are the freezing to death in the Picard example?

The answer is that no one would be stupid enough to take power from the life support system for an extended period of time and sentence everyone on board to a slow death by freezing when you could keep everyone warm by not siphoning energy from life support over the long term and maybe take just a little from life support, so you could eject the pod and let it blow up, if you even needed to take it from life support.

This is the superior argument that I'm not getting? That's insane. The cost of killing both crew and civilians, including children, does not outway the cost of shooting out the pod and letting it blow up.

However, since the idea of siphoning power from life support because it wold have been needed to keep the containment fields up is contrary to canon, it is moot, so I'm moving on.

It may be a cheap price, but it's gotta be paid.

Horse shit. It's a price that doesn't have to be paid at all with the current system. You are adding costs with your design, such as this cost. Moving on.

The joint probability of all independent failsafes failing is always non-zero; there's always some chance that all of them will fail at once. It can be damn small, but never zero.

And I told you not to give me a 'it could still happen' response. With the level of independence, an event that would circumvent every single one is so unlikely that it won't happen.

But, in your view...I could wake up tomorrow and find I've turned into a coherent and conscious form of plasma that can cause big ass thunderstorms. The likelihood is so small that it probably won't happen...but it might because there's still a chance. In my view, the odds of that happening are so small, that is won't happen. Wanna bet 50 bucks on it? How confident are you I'm gonna turn into a living plasma cloud by tomorrow morning?

I shouldn't need to explain this type of thing to you.

Finally, how does any of this deny that a systemwide, catagorical failure of failure of power not also cause the appropriate systemwide response.

Something you need to ask yourself. You design couldn't have prevented the iconian virus from effecting it.

quote]

Show me an instance where a glitch caused that to happen and don't use Contagion because that wasn't a glitch.

I wasn't planning to.[/quote]

Yes, you did. You say below that a ' "Computer glitch" means any number of computer misbehavior. Contagion was certainly an example of this, especially considering that the virus that was doing the damage wasn't meant to be a hostile one.'

The post of yours I quoted in my last post talked about Contagion. What happened with Contagion was more than a computer glitch. It was a gradual, ship wide failure. That is not a glitch. There is a limit to what could rationally be categorized as a glitch.

A glitch is a minor malfunction, not everything that could go wrong, including meltdown and destruction of the generator.

The episode I had in mind was Disaster, where the antimatter containment pods were getting dangerously close to breeching, the pods could not be ejected, and had to be stabilized by taking Data's head and having it communicate directly with the warp control systems, or somesuch. We know this is a computer glitch because nobody had to go mucking around with the hardware past connecting Data's head to the computer.

Horse shit, this wouldn't be categorized as a glitch. Glitches are minor or temporary.

They needed access to the computer part that controlled fixing the containment field permanently. Any terminal that could connect to it could do it. They couldn't from the bridge. They could by connecting Data's head in. That was the point of taking Data's head.

You have a definition of "computer glitch" that doesn't match with mine, my friend. "Computer glitch" means any number of computer misbehavior. Contagion was certainly an example of this, especially considering that the virus that was doing the damage wasn't meant to be a hostile one.

Glitches are minor or temporary. Check out the damn definition. It isn't anything that could go wrong.

Wrong. Drain the pod, engage a couple of maintanence locking clamps over the retention magnet assembly (and the antimatter hatch doors, if you have them), and power the pod down. Then detatch the spring plate. Voila! A free antimatter pod assembly. And no, there's no gizmotron involved.

And before you say anything, YES, DRAIN THE POD FIRST! You have perfect control of this risk. Why take stupid chances If you're going to perform pod maintanence, then presumably the facility you're docked at has the equipment to drain off your antimatter, would it not?

I'm asking when you aren't docked at a station or anything like that. You've got nowhere else to put it and there are limits to how much can be crammed into other pods.

You think that these pods wouldn't have back ups and warnings and bells and whistles? The only difference between the standard pods and the DMS pods is that we have a different failsafe system, one based on the dead man's switch principle instead of the active system used by standard pods.

And you keep insisting that the same problems in the current system are the ones in your system, even though you go on about eliminating things.

What do you mean, "deliberately overlooking?" Your self-contained containment system doesn't exist! If pods can remain off mains for hours on end, then why was Ro Lauren in such a hurry to shunt power to them during Disaster, minutes after everything went to hell? And now you've just disproved your self-contained containment pod nonsense. If the pods' containment fields are self-contained, especially if they use their own antimatter for fuel, why should the crew even care about supplying power to the pods? Hmmm Name some circumstances where pods have been ejected.

The Last Outpost, much of main power won't work, antimatter pods are not an issue. Disaster, quantum filament hits the ship, causing damage to most of the systems on the ship, which includes the antimatter containment. Timeless, Voyager takes a nose dive onto an ice planet. Gets found buried under ice, the ship hasn't suffered the level of damage multiple or single antimatter pod containment field collapsing would cause.

In Resolutions, a Tuvok commanded Voyager is fighting Vidiians. The plan to get away involves ejecting an antimatter pod. Then, they fire a torpedo at it to detonate it (consequently, if there was no independently powered containment field, using a torpedo wouldn't have been necessary; a FTL traveling computer signal would work, like a wireless modem and you save a torpedo) and then, they run.

Therefore, antimatter containment field generation runs on an independent power supply. If nothing else, Resolutions shows it exists.

It's not my fault you can't handle the canon. MO.

I just described how to disconnect a pod from the system above!

You described active bomb juggling, which couldn't get past OSHA standards.

I already answered this bull. Your self-contained containment system does not exist. And even if it did, what makes you think I can't put it on my system too for added safety?

It would be antithetical to the design you describe. It gets power from the main power grid for the main field generator. My design, the current one, doesn't need the main power grid at all. You can't have both of these. Besides, you keep saying your back up battery is independent anyway, so why are you bothering with this line of argument?

And I ask again: Why in the world would you want to move a pod loaded with antimatter if you could at all help it?!

If you need to move the pod (for whatever sufficient reason you yourself would need to want to move it), why would you risk blowing the pod up by taking down the field, so that doing that would allow you to disconnect it?

Survived a nose dive onto an ice planet, with the SIF and IDF still working (otherwise the ship would've turned into scrap metal, and the crew into chunky sulsa), landing on ice that can fail and absorb shock.

And yet, the crew died. The SIF and the IDF didn't help them survive. Moving on.

And I stress again, unlike the Voyager nosedive, you are in full control of all risks when moving an antimatter pod. It's stupid not to take some basic, easy precautions.

You are adding risk by needing to turn the field generator off, even for an instant while there's antimatter still in the pod.

Your scenario is unrealistic. My system doesn't have to work for unrealistic scenarios.

My scenario was coming to the aid of another starship and giving them a pod with antimatter. You're the one that started talking about it being emptied first before you mvoe it and then, refill it. Don't blame me for your argument switching. MO.

More of your made-up self-containment bullocks! Prove it exists! For that matter, prove that it runs on antimatter! Then put it on my system, and it'll work just as well as yours.

I don't have to prove what its fuel source is, much to your demanding that I do. I have shown that it exists. Could it run on matter/antimatter reactions? Maybe, but it might not have to.

It never seemed to work anyway... why should I consider it a loss?

Oh, lord. The scenario I gave of loaning a pod to a ship in need of one, for starters.

And why do you keep calling it a "locking" mechanism? It's a retention mechanism!

In the words of Ted C, a retention field keeps it in place. Which I took to mean that there was some kind of energy field locking....this is an important word here that you should pay attention to...and keeps it from moving. Therefore, it's a locking...mechanism.

Even if there was a computer linkage to affect manual ejection, how is it any more centralized than yours?

The computer part that disconnects the pod from its place inside the ship is tied to the containment field. You propose a battery will help keep the containment field online, so no antimatter escapes. But, that means there is no loss of the containment field. Containment field loss causes a release. Contianment field loss means loss of antimatter, which means explosions inside the pod, releasing the rest of the antimatter.

You seem to think that being a "unique circumstance" somehow magically makes them not "known problems".

Another spin attempt defeated, MO.

In a normal circumstance, they would have been alerted to the problem and fixed it after one of the back ups kicked up, if it had to get that far at all.

Design 1: The pods encounter drop in power. The retention magnets lose power, but the containment fields have yet to decay.

I'm gonna stop you right there. All along, as has been argued by Ted C, the containment field loss is linked to the 'retention field' (if you're gonna get anal about the name). He has specifically said that you can't have a loss in the retention field strength to loose the pod, if you still have containment up and vis versa. And you have yet to tell me that all the systems in your antimatter pod design wouldn't have been effected by the quantum filament and this includes the back ups. I'd like to hear about this anti-quantum filament buffer.

It's simplicity itself. ...

And I'm talking without having to do much of anything, such as shutting down and rebooting.

If you need to shut down and reboot from other fiules, the computer has been effected. They had to wipe clean the files and replace them. I am asking you of a computer from a less advanced civilization that didn't need to do that at all.

Nuts to your analogy. The closer analogy is the CANDU system used in reactors.

Your insistance is irrelevent. The analogy fits and stands. MO.

Show me a real life example of a matter/antimatter power generation system that's based in space, not in the atmo of a planet and on the fucking ground.

O.O R U SIRIUS?!

Most of what would be required already exists in the real world in a less advanced form: antimatter, magnetic force fields, magnetic accelerators, power lines that carry energy, etc. More advanced forms of these, along with a few other things we don't have, would make it work.

DEAD MAN SWITCHES ARE EVERYWHERE!!

Yes, everywhere, but are not wanted when you are talking of a matter/antimatter power source within an object in space. It's an entirely separate environment.

Seeing how we're lacking a real matter/antimatter system to examine, and therefore cannot deduce whether such a thing would have a dead man's switch, why don't you try finding me a real system where the dead man's switch principle doesn't work.

What is required for me to do is show that a dead man/power switch is bad for a matter/antimatter reactor that's within an object in outer space. I've been doing that for pages and pages.

Don't be dense. We can't design a matter/antimatter reactor as a power source, either with a dead man's switch or without one. Don't pretend you know the specifics of M/AM reactor design, because you don't.

And, since you say you can't design one with a dead man/power switch, this discussion is over for me and I am claiming victory over you in this particular debate. I see no reason to discuss it any longer.

[Wyrm]

Point 1: If containment fails, pod expoldes IMMEDIATELY - within nanoseconds.

Yes. But there's a difference between the containment field losing field strength, and losing containment. Do I have to explain the difference?

Point 2: because of this, a pod while being ejected, NEEDS an internal supply and an internal containment field generators.

Wrong. It needs a integral power supply, but it's not necessarily a generator. It can be a capacitor (or the electroplasma equivalent thereof). It only needs to last long enough for the field to get to a safe distance, but a margin is always nice.

And I'm sure I've pointed this out before... Lessee... ah, yes, HERE:

I've described a manual control (cutting power to the pod, for one), and I described mechanisms to let the pod remain stable long enough for the pod to get a safe distance away before it goes (small integral power cells on the pods, for one). How far is a safe distance? Ten kilometers? How fast is the pod moving after ejection? 500 m/s? Give the storage cells have enough energy to hold the field for twenty seconds!

Hell, because magnetic fields don't decay instantly, if we're really clever we can just extend the field decay curve of the magnetic field to give us a few extra seconds.

This also means container generator magnets must be internal, and can NOT be linked to any external system, such as retaining system.

Obviously false. If the coils can be linked to no external system, it can't be linked to the ship's mains. Or auxilliary power supply. Backup power supply. Or any power supply. Boom.

Containment can fail even if power is online - if magnets lost functioning. So the system does not work properly.

RO
That weakened the containment
field surrounding the antimatter
pods. The field strength is down
to forty percent and it's still
falling.

O'BRIEN
(ominously)
If it falls to fifteen percent...
the field will collapse and
there'll be a containment breach.

See? POWER is normal, field strength is not.

It's dark throughout the ship, many systems are offline, and power is normal?!?!

Anyway, given that they can detect the falling field strength all the way from the bridge. That means you can tie whatever sensor they use to monitor field strength into some local pod electronics. I'm certain I addressed this before. Lessee... OH YES!

Bullocks. Damaged systems don't draw power like normally-functioning systems. The impedence of a shorting coil will drop, which will show up as an current spike, for example. We know of no radiation that affects magnetic fields themselves, but radiation certainly affects MATTER, such as coils. By Occam's Razor, the most likely mechanism for which radiation can weaken containment fields is to change the impedence of the coils. This, again, will cause changes in the way the coil draws power. A well-designed system will detect these anomallies and take the appropriate action. We have systems today that do this.

Presumably, any and all pod electronics would be well-shielded. Anything serious enough to fuck up the pod electronics would also cause the retaining magnets to cut out.

Result: The pods eject. The Enterprise is without fuel, but everyone's alive.

Yes... but my readings indicate
there's no power down there.
They don't even have monitors to
tell them there's a problem.

See, robust design: engineering has NO power, but containment fields have.

You have a funny definition of robust design. They can't eject pods filled with volitile antimatter that they KNOW are going to explode, based on readings they can get all the way from the bridge! Why don't the pods themselves detect this fault, and initiate their own ejection, especially since they can't get an "I'm alive" response from the bridge (because, presumably, the command pathways are severed!).

(thinks)
I have a connection.
(beat)
I am now stabilizing the
containment field.

The problem was not POWER - which cannot be restored in such a way - but the algorithm of containment generation.

Sounds like a computer glitch by another name.

Can a computer glitch cause the loss of the pods? Yes, but only by cutting containment power to the pods, which means they shouldn't be retained anyway (after the battery(ies) runs down).

A computer glitch can force internal batteries to disconnect. Then, when the pod begins being ejected, it explodes while just centimeters from its place.

... Whaaat? NO! What keeps the containment field alive is a combination of physics and integral power cells that the computer cannot touch. (Plus carful containment field design.) The battery I described was a backup battery, like in TWOK, that keeps the entire system purring along in an emergency. "Purring along" = running like nothing happened.

When will all the pods be ejected? When and only when each and every pod suffers containment failure. (And in that case, they shouldn't be retained anyway.)

Or if the wire holding energy is damaged.

Since you can't damage the wire to the electromagnet without damaging the pod, it's probably a good idea to dump the pod anyway. Why trust a damaged pod?

Internal containment generators would contain AM for hours under normal conditions.

The same would be true of the passive eject pod. The pod's integral backup power supply (which you have called the "internal containment generators" but I see no proof that they are generators per se) counts as a backup system. If that integral backup power supply is still active, then power is still being supplied to the containment fields, and therefore to the retention system.

Hmm, come to think of it, that means that an entire shipwide power failure will not cause the passive eject pods to eject, if they indeed have this system. WIN!

I read the entire fucking thread before I said a word.

Not shown

Given that you haven't shown that you've understood a word that I've said, I'll take that statement for exactly what it's worth.

If you empty the pod before you move it, you can skip all that nonsense and just get on with moving the pod. It's much less risk, and furthermore, it's a risk you are in full control of (unlike an uncontrolled landing).

Problem is, HOW DO YOU TRANSFER ANTIMARTTER, IF NOT IN THE POD? We don't want pod transferred, we want AM transferred!

Don't make stuff up. Do you have crew carting pods to and from the bottom of the M/AM reactor and connect up pods to the injector? Is the bottom of the Enterprise popped open every time they make a fuel transfer? Obviously not. Antimatter is transferred mainly through conduit. There's even an antimatter fill port at the bottom of Galaxy class starships.

if the Federation starships can afford to run antimatter containment off batteries but not the regular lights, it's obviously not a very big cost.

Point was their main power grid was drained, along the plasma lines most likely, so life support was drained too. The internal containment generator feed on AM directly, bypassing nplasma lines. So they weren't affected.

So why couldn't they just employ these small AM generators as auxilliary power supplies for general ship use? And generation from AM implies they need a matter feed, too, or they won't work. Unless these AM generators canabalize themselves, in which case you'd better not rely on them for too long!

See, I think you're making this AM generator stuff up. Even if a pod can survive a long time without outside power, this behavior can be explained by long-lived integral backup batteries. Batteries! But batteries powered the Enterprise when Reliant knocked out her mains in TWOK, and they couldn't afford to run anything but the emergency lights. If they can't afford to run the main lights on the batteries, when they have more freedom of how big to make them, what does this say about the integral batteries on the pods?

My argument still stands.

When you design a system, you also (by implication) design its failure modes. The "dead man's switch" is a design philosophy (not a special gizmo) such that as much as possible failure modes should result in the least amount of harm to surrounding structures and personnel, all without active intervention. The "dead man's switch" (DMS) principle, for instance, would dictate that, given two designs under a certain failure condition where one design explodes in your face and kills you, and the other stalls and shuts down, that you choose the design that stalls over the one that explodes. Please note that the solutions are not one-size-fits-all, as failure modes (and mechanisms employing "dead man's switch" principles) are particular to the system involved.

You can't foresee anything. Therefore the more you freedom options you are giving to the crew, the better.

Bullocks. You can forsee a lot of possible failures, especially if your ship is modularized. And freedom is overrated. Too much freedom, especially in emergency situations, leads to confusion and ultimately death. People have to practice emergency procedures where time is at the essence.

I disagree. The argument was against the entirety of "Engineering and Star Trek", of which antimatter pods is one of the cited examples for improvement.

Quite frankly, if you're having trouble understanding the pods — and you clearly are — I don't see how discussing Wong's changes to the warp core will help matters, as it adds several factors atop the ones raised in the pod debate.

The problem is that pod are very sturdy and only cause problems under extraordinary circumstances. And we do have a pretty well understanding how they work.

These circumstances that are entirely foreseeable. Do you think an engineer wouldn't think of a failure mode involving severing command links to active ejection systems on pods? A writer for a TV series did.

Secondly, if your "Resolutions" pod can mount a power supply that can sustain a pod for hours, so can I for added safety. The operation of my pod is not impared in any way by such a generation system, for the cutout for the retation electromagnet is linked to the containment field! (Don't argue semantics — argue points. Yes, WILGA, I'm looking at you!) If the onboard backup is powering the containment field, it's also powering the retention magnet.

Which means you cannot eject the pod without stopping the containment field. And then it blows up inside.

*sigh* No. That's not how I defined the system. Let me put it a different way.

DESIGN POINT 1. We design system A of the pod, containing the containment field coils, to keep sufficient antimatter containment field integrity for at least X seconds after having power cut off and after field strength drops below a certain threshold Y. We achieve this by using small power cells that power the system for these X seconds, a length of time sufficient for the pod to get a safe distance from the ship.

With me so far? Right.

DESIGN POINT 2. Subsystem B of the pod is the retention system. It consists of the retention electromagnet and the accompanying electronics. The electronics are designed to detect faults in the system, and to monitor field strength. If field strength falls below threshold Y, then the electromagnet cuts out. If serious faults are detected in the containment system, the electromagnet cuts out. The electronics are goverened by physical law, not computer programming. When the electromagnets cut out, the pod is ejected. Cutting off power to subsystem B causes the electromagnet to cut out.

DESIGN POINT 3. Subsystem A and B share the same power feed. Cutting off power to one cuts off power to both. This power feed is connected to all other power systems that would supply a standard pod's containment field power.

Because of 1, the containment field does not cut out when the electromagnet cuts out. The containment field remains active by design for at least long enough for the pod to float away to a safe distance, even if power is totally cut off to system A (containing the containment fields).

Furthermore, did you even read the paragraph almost immediately following this one?

Thirdly, if you really want to be able to do cute tricks like ejecting pods purposefully in battle, there's nothing preventing you putting an active ejection system atop the passive one. The passive eject is designed specifically to guard against catatonic computers, cut control linkages and whatnot. Performing cute pod tricks is entirely the domain of an active system, but don't pretend it's a safety system: it's bells and whistles — when it fails (and it will — it already has), you'll be glad you had the passive system.

That means that, yes, you are free to install a manual ejection system separate from the retention system if you want to. Indeed, if it makes you feel happy, I encourage it.

No, the internal generators are NOT linked to retention magnets.

Bullocks. See design points 2 and 3 above. The retention system is powered by the same feed as the containment fields, and the retention system's electronics monitor faults in the contanment field. They are linked by any sane definition of the word.

Nope. Batteries kick in in your design, locking mechanism reattaches. You can't have one without the other, remember?

Strawman of my mechanism. Get a new line.

And yet , "If the onboard backup is powering the containment field, it's also powering the retention magnet."
So what WILGA said is correct.

It's still a strawman of my mechanism. He makes it sound like he can't built an active ejection system atop the passive one.

Let me ask you, what is the retention magnet sticking TO? It's a retention plate, by default mounted to the ship's structure. Well, you can mount the retention plate on an assembly designed to eject the whole lot: pod and the retention plate the magnet is sticking to.

WILGA's making it sound like powered retention magnet => pod still in the ship. It does not follow.

Power was reruoted to ENGINEERING so they could see the problem. Pods needed extra power because of effectivity problems.

So the pods were basically misbehaving. By design point 2, the retention system would detect such a fault. After all, the bridge could detect the fault, and it was on the other side of the ship! The magnets would then cut out, and the pods would be ejected.

True, but you imagine that somehow this demands active control in all situations, instead of perhaps one active control, plus a few passive ones.

Active and passive systems don't mix. What if passive system pod, but the active fails to seal everything? BOOM!

Yes, they do mix, but only if you do them right. See, you not only have a passive system on the pod, but also on the linkage. No BOOM!

Thank you for missing the discussion of how that would work in the next section. I really appreciate it.

You do not need a SENSOR, you need an array and a POWEERFUL COMPUTER to analize data and interpret it into failture probability!

Bullocks. You don't need a powerful computer to analyze field strength. You just measure it. And the thresholds for automatic ejection are set in terms of field strength!

Yes, powerful computers help set the OPERATIONAL RULES, but once you have the RULES, they are easily implemented by simple circuits.

They can take more , less or the same power output.

They would be expected to have some redundancy, redundancy that would be used, presumably, to get the pod the hell away from the ship.

For example, what if magnet reverses polarity and pushes AM outwards instead of inwards?

Such a condition would mean that the pod has totally lost containment. Remember, 'containment' means that the AM is being pushed in. If the AM is being pushed out, then it's obviously not contained. By your argument, the pod explodes within nanoseconds. This fault has no remedy. At all.

And if the enemy has deformed hull so the hatch won't open? If an enemy fired at and melted hatch into place? KABOOM! Happened in ANH actually.

You can design doors that pop off when their frame is deformed. It ruins the nice lines, but we're going for functionality, not beauty.

Also, enemy can lock at the place where pod will emerge and destroy it meters away from hull.
Also, enemy can lock at the place where pod will emerge and destroy it meters away from hull.

An active system has a virtue of checking this all first

Since when have we seen such a tactic?

- AND allowing ship to selfdestruct if needed. How could your system allow this?

Oh, that's good. One of the documented features of your power system is that it will destroy your ship.

You know, maybe you can just use a set of ordinance packages to destroy your ship in a controlled way?

Well there is also a non-zero probability that Enegry fluctuation will appear out of nowhere and blast the ship. Guess which is bigger...

You don't know which is bigger. Besides which, my system handles that error gracefully.

[Wyrm]

Don't be dense. We can't design a matter/antimatter reactor as a power source, either with a dead man's switch or without one. Don't pretend you know the specifics of M/AM reactor design, because you don't.

And, since you say you can't design one with a dead man/power switch, this discussion is over for me and I am claiming victory over you in this particular debate. I see no reason to discuss it any longer.

... Whaaat? (Reads that part again.) Yeah. Sure. Whatever. Because claiming victory actually makes you victorious. 9_9

[GStone]

For those that were wondering what happened...I did not turn into a plasma cloud that could control thunderstorms by the next morning, as I had proposed the possibility. That was a couple days ago and I still haven't transubstantiated.