Galaxy Class "Warp Core" problems?

[Captain Seafort]

Voyager? ("Day of Honor [sic]" for one, although luckily for them, the ejection system seemed to be in a good mood that day.

Exactly - the safety systems worked and the core didn't blow up, unlike the GCS.

Several shuttles?

Good point.

Enterprise in "TMP" (not a warp core breach, as such, but a serious problem with a "warp core imbalance")

I don't recall the ship ever being in danger of blowing up, merely tha the phasers went off-line.

I state that it's not the warp cores themselves that are the problem. It's the software behind them and/or the ejection systems that are the problem.

The Warp Cores themselves never randomly go "boom". When they do explode, there's always a reason - software deleted, containment failure (due to software or something else) etc.

It's not the actual core, rather than the machinery around the core that's the problem.

You can't divorce the core from its supporting equipment and software. That's like saying (for example) that it was the reactor control rods that were at fault at Chernobyl, not the reactor. If any part of the system is badly designed then the system as a whole is badly designed.

[Weyoun the Dancing Borg]

But surely that's more of a computer security / firewall problem than the warp core?

The warp core in Contagion was not the problem. It was the software that let them down.

The very fact that they were relying on the computer to eject the core demonstrates the stupidity of the design. It relies on everthing working perfectly, or the ship will blow up. Safety systems should be triggered by a malfunction, not disabled.

yes but if it's the safety systems that go offline ("Yamato", "Disaster") etc, what's a ship to do?

It's like saying that if you remove the water from a nuclear power plant, it's a bad design because it fails. Or more accurately, if you remove the programming that feeds the water into the system. At any point where you have physical (mechanical) and software that interfaces, if one breaks down, it will affect the other. It's unavoidable.

Again, it's not the warp core (matter/anti matter injection system) that's the problem. It's the computer that controls it.

[Captain Seafort]

See above - you're trying to divorce parts of a system from the whole. If the cooling system of a reactor is badly designed, then the reactor as a whole is badly designed.

[Weyoun the Dancing Borg]

Voyager? ("Day of Honor [sic]" for one, although luckily for them, the ejection system seemed to be in a good mood that day.

Exactly - the safety systems worked and the core didn't blow up, unlike the GCS.
Good point.
I don't recall the ship ever being in danger of blowing up, merely tha the phasers went off-line.
You can't divorce the core from its supporting equipment and software. That's like saying (for example) that it was the reactor control rods that were at fault at Chernobyl, not the reactor. If any part of the system is badly designed then the system as a whole is badly designed.

But that just loops you round to my earlier statement that this happens in all of scifi.

Take the Death Star I and II. Is it a bad design because it had a 2m hole that you could put a torpedo through? (ok yes on the first one), but the second?

What about B5 - are Minbari ships badly designed because you can open a hyperspace window on top of them if their jamming isn't working properly?

I don't wish to argue, and thank you for not being hostile - debates are often fun - But I must stress, I am not advocating that the entire ship is faultless.

The control systems have their problems, when put in a specific set of circumstances, but overall they seem fine. The joke that you "sneeze" at a GCS warp core and it blow ups does annoy me. It's not true.

In every instance that a warp core on a GCS has been in danger / has breached has come with very specific circumstances - either the software removed, or a torpedo to the coolant system - or Q fking about for shits and giggles. The core itself has never gone "ooo, you know, today, I'm gonna go BOOM."

Hyperbole, I know :p

But still, I hope you understand my point.

And yes, you can argue, and to an extent I can agree that the integrated systems (shut-down, ejection) are part of the actual core, however the core itself - the matter-antimatter chamber on a galaxy class starship has never spontaneously exploded, nor has it exploded out of no where.

The three recorded events have been, again:

1) (Technically) unshielded hits to the coolant systems, overheating it and it detonating (no different than turning off cooling systems in any power station today - and you wouldn't say they were "badly designed") - GENERATIONS

2) Removal / disabling of the computer systems that maintain the warp core containment fields. I will admit though - it would be a good idea to have a fail-safe or something more than the computer handling it. that said, it wasn't the actual warp core, it was a problem with it's fail safes being... "removed". IIRC Geordi said it was "impossible" because of the fail safes? Obviously not as fail safe as we thought. But not the actual physicalwarp core.

3) Having another ship hit it, directly.

I can see the quibbles on one and two - I assume you're not arguing the Odyssey? (unshielded, being rammed etc).

[Captain Seafort]

1) (Technically) unshielded hits to the coolant systems, overheating it and it detonating (no different than turning off cooling systems in any power station today - and you wouldn't say they were "badly designed") - GENERATIONS

If a modern nuclear reactor started to overheat, the control rods would drop and scram the reacation. No explosion.

2) Removal / disabling of the computer systems that maintain the warp core containment fields. I will admit though - it would be a good idea to have a fail-safe or something more than the computer handling it. that said, it wasn't the actual warp core, it was a problem with it's fail safes being... "removed". IIRC Geordi said it was "impossible" because of the fail safes? Obviously not as fail safe as we thought. But not the actual physicalwarp core.

The fact that they rely on active safety systems is stupid, and I see no reason to divorce the equipment/software that stops the core blowing up from the core itself.

3) Having another ship hit it, directly.

I can see the quibbles on one and two - I assume you're not arguing the Odyssey? (unshielded, being rammed etc).

No real ship has ever been lost to being rammed by a ship smaller than itself (Japanese human-torpedoes aside). As an example KMS Hipper (a heavy cruiser, ~ 14,000 tons) was rammed by HMS Glowworm (a destroyer, ~1400 tons) off Norway in April 1940. Though damaged, Hipper survived and did not explode. According to this data the Galaxy has a volume of close to 6 million cubic metres, while the bug has a volume of around 40 thousand cubic metres. Despite being far larger than Hipper in proportion to its attacker, the GCS fared far worse.

[Captain Seafort]

And with that, I'm off to get some sleep. I'll resume in the morning.

[Weyoun the Dancing Borg]

1) (Technically) unshielded hits to the coolant systems, overheating it and it detonating (no different than turning off cooling systems in any power station today - and you wouldn't say they were "badly designed") - GENERATIONS

If a modern nuclear reactor started to overheat, the control rods would drop and scram the reacation. No explosion.

Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Windscale...

2) Removal / disabling of the computer systems that maintain the warp core containment fields. I will admit though - it would be a good idea to have a fail-safe or something more than the computer handling it. that said, it wasn't the actual warp core, it was a problem with it's fail safes being... "removed". IIRC Geordi said it was "impossible" because of the fail safes? Obviously not as fail safe as we thought. But not the actual physicalwarp core.

The fact that they rely on active safety systems is stupid,

Agreed. Entirely.

and I see no reason to divorce the equipment/software that stops the core blowing up from the core itself.

Well, I do

3) Having another ship hit it, directly.

I can see the quibbles on one and two - I assume you're not arguing the Odyssey? (unshielded, being rammed etc).

No real ship has ever been lost to being rammed by a ship smaller than itself (Japanese human-torpedoes aside). As an example KMS Hipper (a heavy cruiser, ~ 14,000 tons) was rammed by HMS Glowworm (a destroyer, ~1400 tons) off Norway in April 1940. Though damaged, Hipper survived and did not explode. According to this data the Galaxy has a volume of close to 6 million cubic metres, while the bug has a volume of around 40 thousand cubic metres. Despite being far larger than Hipper in proportion to its attacker, the GCS fared far worse.

None of them are powered by antimatter though. Breach that containment, and boom. As someone said, it's one of the hazards of FTL travel, in Trek.

[Weyoun the Dancing Borg]

And with that, I'm off to get some sleep. I'll resume in the morning.

RGR that, it's past midnight here

[Blackstar the Chakat]

I like to think it is just a problem you get when you start building really large warp cores. Thats why we havent seen bigger ships. Infact all the new ships are smaller.

Everything we've seen/heard suggests that the Sovereign class is more powerful than the Galaxy, but it doesn't seem to have the same problems. Indeed, in Nemesis, the E-E was struck on the nacelle by a lump of Warbird, apparently a lot harder than the E-D was in "Cause and Effect", and didn't blow up.

To be fair, the E-E still had it's sheilds. The E-D was having issues because of the same anamaly that sent the Bozeman at them. The E-D was defenseless when the Bozeman struck.

[Mikey]

A system is only as good as its weakest component, whether that be the containment itself or the failsafes/software protecting it. We can say that the core itself isn't that fragile, but if the failsafes are, then the matter is academic - either way, the ship blows up from its own system far too easily.

[Captain Seafort]

Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Windscale...

Hence my use of the word "modern". My knowledge of TMI is limited, but Chernobyl was caused by poor design (the tips of the control rods accelerated the reaction due to their makeup) and Windscale was due to stupid modifications (the cooling fins on the fuel rods had been cut down to make the reactor run hotter). None of them could in any sense be considered safe designs - and they still didn't produce a multi-kiloton bang, as would likely happened if the Feds had designed them.

None of them are powered by antimatter though. Breach that containment, and boom. As someone said, it's one of the hazards of FTL travel, in Trek.

So? The fact that the fuel is inherently far more dangerous than anything we use should be an incentive to take a great deal of care over making sure that it doesn't blow the ship up, not to sgrug your shoulders and say "ah well, shit happens". The Soviets took that approach we their early nuclear submarines, and soon found that it was a bad idea (K-19 being the best-known incident).

[Graham Kennedy]

I think you can argue about whether one particular design seems more inherently prone to failure than another, for sure. My personal view is that the Galaxy doesn't suffer from some terrible core weakness in this respect, it's just had a bit of a run of bad luck combined with being put in harm's way more than most.

But what you can't argue is that a matter/antimatter power system is inherently dangerous. It's not a fail safe system. No matter what you do, no matter how many safety doodads you put on it, the simple fact is that the containment systems have to run with 100% effectiveness throughout their entire life. And if they don't, if they fail even once, for one single second, that's the death of your ship.

Starfleet does a pretty good job, considering, I think. But It's certainly not the ideal power system. I imagine it's only the fact that it puts out more energy than anything else for the size of reactor that ever got them using it.

[Captain Seafort]

It does seem to ubiquitous probably, as you say, because of the energy density of a M/AM reaction. The only species that don't use it are the Romulans, with their singularities, and possibly the Cardassians. Since Terok Nor was powered by fusion reactors, and could take on entire fleets (per "Way of the Warrior" and "Call to Arms"), I wonder if the Cardassians use fusion reactors on their ships as well.

[Mikey]

I imagine that fusion reactors are more viable for stations because they don't require any substantive amount of propulsion, and because enough space can be dedicated to them. To match the power of a M/AM reactor, a fusion reactor would need to be phenomenally large.

And IIRC, Three Mile Island was due to a contaminated waste (steam) containment problem, not the reaction chamber itself. I may be wrong on this, however.

[Captain Seafort]

DS9's fusion reactors can match the output of an entire fleet of starships, otherwise it wouldn't have been able to hold off the Klingons or the Cardassian/Jem'Hadar attacks.