NX Class

Post by **Teaos** » Wed Oct 17, 2007 1:00 am

Railguns would have no significant recoil, as there is nothing to cause an opposite effect, the round is accellerated magnetically, not chemically, therefor causing no explosion. in which to cause backwards firing.. ect..

Wouldnt the laws of motion mean there had to be recoil? If its puching the projectile foward it would push the rails back. Equal and opposite and all that jazz.

Post by **Mikey** » Wed Oct 17, 2007 1:04 am

If the round were fired while actually touching anything connected to the firing platform, then yes. But in this case, it is not.

Post by **Teaos** » Wed Oct 17, 2007 1:10 am

The round does touch the rail though doesnt it? It completes a circuit to make the force thats why they need to replace the rails all the time.

Even if it didnt wouldnt the magnetic force still push back on the rail.

Its like a fridge magnet. The fridge pulls the magnet towards it but the magnet also pulls the fridge towards it. Its just that the fridge is bigger so it doesnt move.

Post by **Mikey** » Wed Oct 17, 2007 1:37 am

I don't claim to be an expert on mil-spec EM tech, but I don't believe that the round actually touches the rails/coils once the primary electromagnet is powered. If there is an reactionary force on the rails, though, your refrigerator example is a good one - just imagine a fridge 100x more massive than the door.

I believe the short lifespan of the rails is more due to the materials' capacity for the amount of electricty used. Remember, those rails are creating a field - they don't need to be in contact or complete a circuit between them.

Jim · Post by **Jim** » Wed Oct 17, 2007 1:03 pm

Mikey wrote:
ChakatBlackstar wrote:Anyway, wouldn't Railguns/coilguns have some sort of recoil? They're moving a mass and depending on the speed they're firing, there has to be some sort of recoil.
Not exactly. Your dedication to Newton's law is admirable, but the rail gun is not actually moving anything except an EM field. Although the tolerances are much smaller than we like to envision, imagine the slug suspended between the rails (or in the tube of coils) and being forced forward by successive powerings of electromagnets. There would be a small amount of air displacement, but that would nominal at most.

But wouldn't the same EM force moving the slug forward actually push backward on the emmiters/barrel? Meaning, if the slug had a higher mass than the gun/ship friring it, the ship would actually move and the slug would remain relatively in place?

Post by **Mikey** » Wed Oct 17, 2007 11:53 pm

Jim wrote:if the slug had a higher mass than the gun/ship friring it, the ship would actually move and the slug would remain relatively in place?

Perhaps. But one of the desirable features of a rail/coil gun is the fact that the projectile requires so little mass relative to a conventional round at the same lethality.

DarkOmen · Post by **DarkOmen** » Sat Nov 10, 2007 6:56 am

This is from one of Bernd Shnieder's (Ex-astris-scientia creator) sites Cannon Fodder where people submit possible reasons for discontinuities, and is proabably the best explanation I have ever heard as to why the NX clas is so out of place...

Cannon Fodder wrote: The NX Class
Based off a starship design glimpsed from the future by Zefram Cochrane during the First Contact temporal incident, thus allowing him to design a more subspace-dynamic vessel by chance then should have currently been allowed due to the poor understanding of warp field geometries of the time. This in turn helped the NX-01 achieve higher warp speeds with greater efficiency in cooperation with the new experimental warp 5 engine, however, at the time this was unknown.

if you think about the brief view that Zefram got of the bottom side of the E-E throught the telescope, you can sort of see how the NX could be extrapolated from that.... maybe...

From HERE

Post by **Mikey** » Sat Nov 10, 2007 6:59 am

It's as good an explanation as any. I still maintain, though, if that were the case then the show should have mentioned it.

Sionnach Glic · Post by **Sionnach Glic** » Sat Nov 10, 2007 2:54 pm

It's possible, I suppose. But its still stupid to think that Starfleet wouldn't notice the major drop in effeciency when they switched to a different design.

Then again, it is Starfleet...

Post by **Mikey** » Sat Nov 10, 2007 3:39 pm

I had always imagined that the more incongruously modern design elements of the NX were really due to lucky engineering guesses - since they worked, they were continued in later designs.

Post by **Captain Seafort** » Sat Nov 10, 2007 4:05 pm

Rochey wrote:It's possible, I suppose. But its still stupid to think that Starfleet wouldn't notice the major drop in effeciency when they switched to a different design.

Then again, it is Starfleet...

It's TOS Starfleet though - complete with ergonomic handguns, heavy fire support, mortars, and a distinct lack of exploding warp cores.

As the "starship design from the future", I always assumed that was speculating that Lilly spotted an Akira schematic and mentioned it to Cochrane.

Sionnach Glic · Post by **Sionnach Glic** » Sat Nov 10, 2007 4:43 pm

It's TOS Starfleet though - complete with ergonomic handguns, heavy fire support, mortars, and a distinct lack of exploding warp cores.

Damn, you're right. Now I don't know what to think.

Deepcrush · Post by **Deepcrush** » Sat Nov 10, 2007 8:21 pm

Rochey wrote:
It's TOS Starfleet though - complete with ergonomic handguns, heavy fire support, mortars, and a distinct lack of exploding warp cores.
Damn, you're right. Now I don't know what to think.

And this is new how?

Sionnach Glic · Post by **Sionnach Glic** » Sat Nov 10, 2007 8:54 pm

Blackstar the Chakat · Sat Nov 10, 2007 10:04 pm

DarkOmen wrote:This is from one of Bernd Shnieder's (Ex-astris-scientia creator) sites Cannon Fodder where people submit possible reasons for discontinuities, and is proabably the best explanation I have ever heard as to why the NX clas is so out of place...

Cannon Fodder wrote: The NX Class
Based off a starship design glimpsed from the future by Zefram Cochrane during the First Contact temporal incident, thus allowing him to design a more subspace-dynamic vessel by chance then should have currently been allowed due to the poor understanding of warp field geometries of the time. This in turn helped the NX-01 achieve higher warp speeds with greater efficiency in cooperation with the new experimental warp 5 engine, however, at the time this was unknown.
if you think about the brief view that Zefram got of the bottom side of the E-E throught the telescope, you can sort of see how the NX could be extrapolated from that.... maybe...

From HERE

It's as good an explanation as any. I still maintain, though, if that were the case then the show should have mentioned it.

Well, the show mentioned that Zefrem began talking about the incident with the borg but was laughed at for it. It's possible that he decided not to mention where he got his inspiration after that. Then he took off to the unknown and no one ever learned where the NX-01's inspiration came from.

oh and: Hey, Rochey, Need some ice for that burn?

[/quote]