Perusing the ST:TNG Tech. Manual...

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359
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Perusing the ST:TNG Tech. Manual...

Post by 359 » Wed Feb 06, 2019 12:16 pm

The book has an interesting insight into the technical designer's thoughts. Although it has its issues it's still a fun read, and in fact it gave me an idea about a long questioned quote:

TNG: "True Q":
Data: "Imagination is not necessary. The scale is readily quantifiable. We are presently generating twelve point seven five billion gigawatts per..."


The obvious and easy conclusion to the sentence (from a purely fill-in-the-blank perspective) is "per second," which would, of course, be a baffling measurement to announce since watts/power is already measured across time. But one thing that they do bring up a couple times talking about the M/ARA is how the energy stream coming out of the reaction chamber is split into two power transfer conduits; one heading to each warp nacelle.

A couple notes mention how the writing staff would put 'insert jargon here' into the script, which would then be filled by these people. So I don't think it would be unreasonable to say a possible interpretation of that line is "We are presently generating [Insert Jargon Here]" where 'Insert Jargon Here' becomes 'X power per feature:[reactant injector, PTC, EPS tap, etc... pick one]'.

359
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Re: Perusing the ST:TNG Tech. Manual...

Post by 359 » Wed Feb 06, 2019 12:18 pm

...or it could just be someone didn't know or care to differentiate energy and power. But that's no fun ;)

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Re: Perusing the ST:TNG Tech. Manual...

Post by 2046 » Wed Feb 06, 2019 2:21 pm

The only issue with using power transfer conduits or what-have-you is that we end up with the core generating even more of a metric gigacrapload of energy, at seeming idle.

Thus, the goal seemed to be to figure out a way to reduce the number, whereas any division by parts would only increase the total being generated.

According to Wikipedia, Canadian power consumption averages about 1700 watts per person, the highest I saw near the top of the list (higher than the US, even). Data's 12,750,000,000,000,000,000 watts would thus provide for a population of 7,500,000,000,000,000 early 21st Century Canadians, give or take . . . that's 7.5 quadrillion. Or, put another way, if all Earth was Canada, then a million Earths could be powered.

I'm all for high tech and stuff, but that seems crazy high, to me.

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Re: Perusing the ST:TNG Tech. Manual...

Post by 359 » Thu Feb 07, 2019 7:34 am

It is quite a large figure however you cut it. So it seems a bit insubstantial to worry about a factor of 2 either direction, or even a single order of magnitude. But then again, we are talking about a "ship of the line" on the scale of a small city produced by a civilization travels by bending space itself, can breach dimensions, phase matter, and 'freely' convert mass and energy. So are such magnitudes of power truly the ridiculous part?

In any case, what "value" the scene results in cannot be considered relevant when analyzing it, to do otherwise is inherently unscientific and introduces a significant bias.

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Re: Perusing the ST:TNG Tech. Manual...

Post by 2046 » Fri Feb 08, 2019 2:18 pm

359 wrote:
Thu Feb 07, 2019 7:34 am
In any case, what "value" the scene results in cannot be considered relevant when analyzing it, to do otherwise is inherently unscientific and introduces a significant bias.
I was going to plead guilty and throw myself on the mercy of the court, begging for leniency based on my merely trying to avoid inflationist-style wankery.

However, given that we have a partial result, here, with the per-what question, I think aiming for consistency with reason and other examples is actually a good thing.

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Re: Perusing the ST:TNG Tech. Manual...

Post by 359 » Sun Feb 10, 2019 9:19 am

Fair enough

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Re: Perusing the ST:TNG Tech. Manual...

Post by Picard578 » Mon Feb 18, 2019 12:04 pm

2046 wrote:
Wed Feb 06, 2019 2:21 pm
The only issue with using power transfer conduits or what-have-you is that we end up with the core generating even more of a metric gigacrapload of energy, at seeming idle.

Thus, the goal seemed to be to figure out a way to reduce the number, whereas any division by parts would only increase the total being generated.

According to Wikipedia, Canadian power consumption averages about 1700 watts per person, the highest I saw near the top of the list (higher than the US, even). Data's 12,750,000,000,000,000,000 watts would thus provide for a population of 7,500,000,000,000,000 early 21st Century Canadians, give or take . . . that's 7.5 quadrillion. Or, put another way, if all Earth was Canada, then a million Earths could be powered.

I'm all for high tech and stuff, but that seems crazy high, to me.
Or else it is "per pulse", which would lead to 4,25 billion gigawatts.

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Re: Perusing the ST:TNG Tech. Manual...

Post by 2046 » Wed Feb 20, 2019 6:32 pm

Meaning counting as around three seconds the woom-woom of the warp core?

Honestly, that’s probably the least arguable approach.

Well, until you watch WNMHGB when they put it on high-speed woomwoomwoomwoometcetera. ;-)

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Re: Perusing the ST:TNG Tech. Manual...

Post by Picard578 » Fri Feb 22, 2019 10:39 am

2046 wrote:
Wed Feb 20, 2019 6:32 pm
Meaning counting as around three seconds the woom-woom of the warp core?

Honestly, that’s probably the least arguable approach.

Well, until you watch WNMHGB when they put it on high-speed woomwoomwoomwoometcetera. ;-)
Yes. I counted the pulses as having twice as much time between them as each pulse had, so actual power = quoted / 3. Of course, as you mentioned, there are situations where pulses go crazy fast, and what about Voyager's warp core which apparently doesn't pulse? But yeah, it seemed least out-there to me.

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Re: Perusing the ST:TNG Tech. Manual...

Post by MarkusTay » Wed May 18, 2022 10:54 pm

I think you guys just figured out Warp is actually the number of WhoomWhooms per second your engines can do.

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