The Kelvin and Canon Designs

[Lazar]

IIRC, impulse drive was around for a while...

No, I mean the added subspace technology that they put into the GC impulse drive to compensate for the ship's great mass.

[Captain Seafort]

No, I mean the added subspace technology that they put into the GC impulse drive to compensate for the ship's great mass.

As La Forge said in Relics, "impulse engine design hasn't changed much in 200 years". The addition of a mass-lightening system would be quite a considerable change from previous designs.

[Foxfyre]

Yeah I would have to agree that that would be a big change in tech, granted no design changes in over 200 years allways struck me as odd.

[Lazar]

I'll have to get to my TNG TM...

[Captain Seafort]

It depends what you're comparing it to. If it's the last couple of centuries, sure. If it's the couple of centuries before that, then why not? Drake's Revenge could have served as a strong frigate at Trafalgar, and Sovereign of the Seas could have been every bit a match for Victory.

[Captain Seafort]

I'll have to get to my TNG TM...

You're accurate in your recollection of the TM (it describes the mass-lightening as being introduced to ensure the Ambassador class was capable of its it's specified acceleration), but it's contradicted by Relics. Since Relics is canon and the TM isn't, we go by Relics.

[Deepcrush]

Not sure I'd even trust anything off of the TM.

[Captain Seafort]

Given that it gives three wildly different numbers for the strength of a PT (two of which are in successive paragraphs on the same page) you're probably right.

[Deepcrush]

Seafort and I have been of similar minds as off late and I find myself getting sick...

Next, Rochey will decide he does in fact like the GCS.

Then the French will win a war.

When the end comes, there will be peace in the middle east.

[Mikey]

When the end comes, there will be peace in the middle east.

That part is true. When all the f*****s have killed each other, nobody will be left to fight - therefore, peace.

[Deepcrush]

They breed to much so I don't see them running out of babies to kill off.

[LaughingCheese]

I've seen designs with impulse engines where the cargo bay doors are on the engineering hull, but none of those are cannon I don't think....

[Graham Kennedy]

I always took the "impulse engine design hasn't changed" with a bit of a grain of salt. I could reasonably say "rocket design hasn't changed much", if I'm saying that the basic principles of rocket design are the same. I could say "Internal combusion engines are much the same as they were a hundred years ago" and I'm broadly correct. But both things have changed considerably in the details, it's only the basic operating principles that are much the same.

I take what Geordi said to mean "well it was a big mass lightening fusion rocket 200 years ago, and it still is now." But I've no doubt that the details of implementation have changed a good deal. Better materials, better control systems, better efficiency, more reliable parts, all that stuff.

[Captain Seafort]

I don't think he ever intended to imply that you could pull out the NX's engines an stick them in a GCS. Nonetheless, he clearly did intend to imply that their function and principles hadn't changed, and with a training course or two Scotty could be just as effective an engineer in the 24th century as he was in the 23rd. I also maintain that comparing modern technology to that of a century or two ago is a poor analogy for Trek - a better comparison would be comparing the technology of the Elizabethan period with that of Napoleon.

[Graham Kennedy]

It's long been a complaint of mine that the Trek universe is rather stagnant in technology terms. Whilst there's no doubt that a GCS is many times more powerful than a Connie, both use the same basic hull configuration, the same basic weapons systems, the same basic defense technology, the same basic drive systems. In fact offhand the ONLY thing I can think of on the Galaxy that is a genuinely new technology over TOS is the holodecks.