Captain Seafort wrote:GrahamKennedy wrote:Precisely because Voyager's warp core isn't a jack in a box. They did an actual proper ejection of the type you are poo-pooing, powered systems and all.
The reason I'm poo-pooing it is because it doesn't work half the time.
But if the choice is a system that works half the time or a system that works all the time and kills the crew or no system at all, then the system that works half the time is the way to go.
You assume that because you want to work on the assumption that the design is incompetent. I assume that it is competent and therefore assume that when they slam the core out the bottom of the ship they do so in a manner that is safe.
As do I. The problem is the long string of occasions when they try and dump the core and
can't. It's these events that demonstrate the gross incompetence of the designers.
No, it doesn't. Failure is only a proof of incompetence if success is possible. You assume that it is, but you have no real basis to do so. You just take it on faith, based on the idea that one can either rip the warp core off it's support systems at a whim or eject a whole slew of support systems of unknown size and complexity, along with whatever may or may not support those in turn.
I might as well say "those incompetent Japanese people, if it were me I would build those places so that when the coolant systems failed they automatically take the entire reactor, coolant pumps, heat exchangers, cooling towers, turbines and generators and catapult it all a thousand miles out to sea so they sink into a nice deep ocean trench." It's the sort of thing that sounds fine, IF you have absolutely no idea of the size and complexity of what you're throwing and the magnitude of how far you're trying to throw it. If you do know those things, the idea becomes utterly absurd.
Yes, and the authorisation initiates an ejection that is designed to be done in a safe manner
Safe manner? You're talking about a system that frequently prevents the ship getting rid of its power-keg warp core as it's about to explode, and you call it "safe"?
Well if leaving it there is 100% fatal when it blows, and if your system comes with a 100% probability of death to the ship because ripping the support systems off causes a multi megaton explosion, then in comparison, yes, I call what the Federation has safe.
Rather than your system of either just ripping it all apart, which likely blows the ship apart anyway (the suicide eject), or of trying to mount most of the engineering hull on an eject system.
As I've already said, the sorts of malfunctions we're talking about routinely give multi-minute countdowns, allowing plenty of time for the core to clear the ship, and as the existing systems bang the core straight out through the bottom of the hull in no time flat anyway the sort of complicated systems you posit, without any evidence whatsoever, are clearly neither exist nor are necessary.
We're talking about the eject sequence itself, not the lead up to it.
(Which, not incidentally, would also eject any crewmembers manning all those systems into space.)
Actually, I would call those deaths incidental. Would you rather lose a few dozen, maybe a couple of hundred of the crew, or over a thousand plus the ship?
False dichotomy since those aren't the options.
Give a man a fire, and you keep him warm for a day. SET a man on fire, and you will keep him warm for the rest of his life...