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kostmayer wrote:
What would need to be transferred between ships for refuelling - other then antimatter? Did we ever get a concencus on wether or not Torpedoes could be replicated?

Nothing. The bussard collectors are used to collect what will be used for fuel. I'd assume they would even manufacture (if that is the right word) they're own anti-matter. As for torps, a consensus has nothing to do with it. Whether or not the DITL agrees with it or not, a ship CAN make its own torps as we've seen in Voyager. But for the record, I don't find that hard to accept. Even if you can't replicate one ready to fire, you can replicate the components and construct it yourself (hell, they built entire ships that way).

Also. would it be possible to physically attacth a Defiant to a Galaxy class and have the Warp Field of the Galaxy Class ship encompass both ships? I seem to remember a Warp Field being extended, but I couldn't say in what episode.

While I'm sure it would be "possible" you'd have to be VERY careful how you did it. You'd have to attach them at multiple points in the hull to spread out the stress, likely redesign the SIF and the IDF, and so many other things, at would be completely impractical.

In The Wounded, Picard threatens to tow the Phoenix back to dock (IMO, he should have relieved the entire command crew and sent a crew from the Enterprise to bring the Phoenix back, but thats by the by). This suggests to me that tractoring at warp is possible - would that be a safer method or keeping 2 ships stationary relative to each other, or would simply matching Warp Speed be better.

In Season 1 The Battle its mentioned that they can only tow at impulse, but that is completely absurd. How would you EVER get a damaged ship ANYWHERE in ANYONE'S lifetime? Tractoring at warp would almost HAVE to be possible. I'm more inclined to believe that it's an undesirable thing to do though, as it would lower the speed of the towing ship, increase its fuel consumption, and so forth. Using a tractor to keep two ships at the same speed is a BAD idea. Much better to just match course and speed, and trust your pilots.

Again, I can't remember the episode, but I'm sure we've seen energy being trasferred by beam between two ships in TNG. Granted, transferring Anti Matter is a different matter indeed.

Transferring energy between ships should be easy, hell.........we can transfer energy between our cars today with the help of cables.

Mark wrote:Using a tractor to keep two ships at the same speed is a BAD idea. Much better to just match course and speed, and trust your pilots.

Or slave the ships navigation systems together, and have one control them both.

Even better......THAT would reduce the margin of error the most i'd imagine.

Reliant121 wrote: Bear in mind that the Technical manuals are not canon material.

Uh, yeah I know. But the fact is the figures I quoted are the only official (or not) figures we have for the Galaxy class on this subject.

While they are the only figures we have, there is nothing to stop us from discounting them. Unfortunately, The Tech Manuals can either be seen as a stopgap figure or completely useless.

Reliant121 wrote:While they are the only figures we have, there is nothing to stop us from discounting them. Unfortunately, The Tech Manuals can either be seen as a stopgap figure or completely useless.

True. But the figures are not that unreasonable.

McAvoy wrote:True. But the figures are not that unreasonable.

Unfortunately, reasonable or not, they're still non-canon.

That's the problem with reference material like that. It's great, but at the same time, strictly speaking, it's meaningless.

Mark wrote:While I'm sure it would be "possible" you'd have to be VERY careful how you did it. You'd have to attach them at multiple points in the hull to spread out the stress, likely redesign the SIF and the IDF, and so many other things, at would be completely impractical.

Not to mention the fact that 'Trek seems to place so much importance on the nebulous idea of "warp field dynamics," which changing the geometry as much as strapping on another ship would likely ruin.

Which would likely reduce the effectiveness of the warp drive beyond any useful measure, if a stable warp field could even be MAINTAINED for any length of time.