| Name |
Notes |
| Iconian Gateway [1] |
Until 2365, within the Federation it was widely believed that the Iconians were a myth. They were widely known in archaeological circles as ancient "demons of air and darkness" who were able to appear at will anywhere, travelling without benefit of spacecraft. On Stardate 42597.17 Captain Donald Varley of the Galaxy class USS Yamato was given an artefact thought to be Iconian when visiting an archaeological site. He was able to translate symbols on the artefact and after correcting for 200,000 years of stellar drift he was able to determine that the location of Iconia itself was in the Romulan Neutral Zone, close to Romulan space.
Varley proceeded into the Zone and encountered an active piece of Iconian technology around Stardate 42607.95. The device scanned his ship, whereupon the Yamato began to suffer various computer malfunctions. Immobilized, Varley called Captain Picard for assistance. Unfortunately, shortly after Picard arrived the Yamato began an emergency dump of its antimatter stocks. The dump was then halted and the containment fields dropped while sufficient antimatter was still present to cause a catastrophic explosion.
The Enterprise itself then began to experience similar computer malfunctions. It was determined that the Yamato had contracted a form of computer virus from the Iconian probe, which had communicated itself to the Enterprise via the communications system when the ship had transmitted its log entries. The Enterprise was able to destroy another probe before it could cause further contamination.
On Iconia itself Picard discovered the source of many of the legends concerning the Iconians; the Iconian gateway. The gate appeared as an oblong panel in the air with various destinations displayed in it. To reach a destination one simply stepped through at the proper time, crossing light years in a moment.
Picard was able to use the gateway to escape the planet after setting the generator equipment to self-destruct so as to prevent it from falling into Romulan hands. The ship was able to clear out the Iconian program by conducting a complete shutdown and reboot of all computer systems and escaped from the area without further incident. [1]
A second Iconian gateway was discovered in the Gamma Quadrant by a force of rebel Jem'Hadar, who planned to use it to break away from the Founders and overthrow the Dominion. A joint Federation / Dominion assault force raided the location of the gate, which was protected by neutronium armour impenetrable to conventional weapons and a dampening field which rendered phasers inoperable. They joint force were able to fight their way to the gate and plant explosives to destroy it.
To date no further trace of functional Iconian technology has been discovered. [2] |
| Impulse drive [3] |
Propulsion system used for travel in the sub-warp domain. Impulse systems usually comprise a fusion reactor and a space-time driver coil. [3] |
| Impulse Engines [4] |
The basics of Impulse Engine design as employed by the United Federation of Planets, and most other major powers, have remained more or less static for almost a century now. In general, Impulse engines consist of four main components :
The fuel tank contains the reactants used within the engine. Starfleet uses simple Deuterium fuel [5] - less efficient than a Deuterium/Tritium mix, but Deuterium is far easier to produce and handle than Tritium, while using only one type of fuel eliminates the necessity for two independent sets of fuel storage and handling systems within the ship.
Once the fuel has left the tanks, it is reduced in temperature to form pellets of solid Deuterium ice of variable diameter. These are fired into the reactor where a set of fusion initiators are used to ignite the pellet whilst a magnetic field holds them in place. [6] The Deuterium atoms are fused together in part according to the equation :
Which gives the conversion of mass to energy a theoretical maximum efficiency of 0.08533% - in practice other reactions and engine design produces different efficiencies. The standard Impulse fusion reactor as used in the Galaxy class Starship is a sphere six metres in diameter, constructed of dispersion-strengthened hafnium excelinide. The reactors can be networked together, with each one passing its plasma output to another in a cascade fashion. Each of the eight Impulse engines on a Galaxy class starship has three fusion reactors connected together in this manner.
Once the Deuterium has fused successfully, the plasma stream created is passed through the next major component - the space-time driver coil. Under the Einsteinian physics which holds true for objects at sub-warp velocities it is virtually impossible for a simple fusion rocket to deliver sufficient energy to accelerate a spacecraft to near light speed - the fuel requirements rapidly increase to the point where the large majority of the vessel would be dedicated to fuel tankage. The coil avoids this situation by generating a sub-warp cochrane field around the vessel, reducing its effective mass in order to boost the acceleration.
Actual Impulse flight performance is therefore dependant not only on the specifications of the fusion reactors, but also on the capabilities of the driver coils. [6] One of the fastest ships ever fielded in terms of Impulse performance was the refit Constitution class. This ship was capable of reaching 'Full Impulse' (25% c) in a matter of seconds. At the other end of the scale the much later Ambassador class was designed to achieve a far more lowly acceleration of 10,000 ms-2, sufficient to reach Full Impulse in 125 minutes.
Once the plasma stream has passed through the driver coil assembly, it reaches the exhaust port and passes into space. If the coil itself is not engaged, the Impulse Engine reverts to behaving like a simple Newtonian fusion rocket with a performance thousands of times less than its normal capabilities. Under these circumstances the exhaust system is designed to vector the thrust of the engine in order to correct for unusual mass distributions or provide off-axis thrust for enhanced agility.
At velocities which are an appreciable fraction of that of light, time dilation becomes a factor for Starship crews. When a ship travels very near to the velocity of light, this effect can become very significant. For example, at the 92% c which is the maximum velocity of the Galaxy class Starship over 2.5 days would pass for a stationary observer for each day which passed for the crew. In order to keep these effects below a 3.5% time differential, the Federation has long imposed a ban on Impulse flight above velocities of 0.25 c - so called "Full Impulse" - on all normal missions. While this restriction is not applicable during combat operations, the effects of time dilation can have extremely adverse effects on a vessel in these conditions - a crew can find themselves in a position where their reaction time will be greatly reduced compared to an enemy because of the difference in velocities between them. High relativistic speeds are therefore generally avoided altogether by Starships. [6]
Early space vessels had to mount so called "retro-rockets" in order to slow themselves down as they approached their destination, or else turn their craft backwards and use the main engines to slow down. One further advantage of utilizing the driver coil in an Impulse engine is that this rather cumbersome requirement is removed. The driver coil essentially allows the ship to reduce its mass in order to allow a - relatively - small amount of kinetic energy to create a great deal of velocity. Once the coil is discharged, the ship returns rapidly to its normal mass. The kinetic energy remains constant, so the velocity is vastly reduced without any need to use the engines thrust.
In theory, the coil alone could be used to drive the ship by simply adjusting the mass so that the velocity reaches the desired level. In practice, however, it is not that simple. The coil cannot be simply turned up and down as required, but is rather discharged and then recharged by the flow of plasma through it - essentially, by the normal operation of the impulse engine. It is thus not possible to 'tune' a ships mass up and down as required. Overcoming this limitation has been the holy grail of Impulse engine designers for well over a century, but as yet no progress has been made. |
| Impulse speed [7] |
Term which is used to refer to any speed lower than that of light. "Full Impulse" is 25% of the speed of light, a restriction imposed to limit the effects of temporal dilation. If necessary ships are capable of exceeding full impulse significantly. [7] |
| Induction coil [8] |
Part of the communications system of the shuttlepods carried by the NX class starship. [8] |
| Induction modulator [9] |
Device used aboard Federation starships. Chief Al Lorenzo traded an induction modulator to Nog for the loan of Captain Sisko's desk in 2375. [9] |
| Inertial Damping Field [10] |
Inertial Damping Field, a field which permeates a spacecraft and prevents the occupants from feeling the effects of acceleration. IDF fields are almost perfect when counteracting forces from the ships own systems, but there is a degree of 'leakage' when attempting to compensate for external forces such as weapon impacts. [10] |
| Inertial micro-damper [11] |
Device which was in use aboard NX class starships. The inertial micro-damper could stop internal components from experiencing vibration or shaking effects; sadly these were rarely if ever employed on chairs. [11] |
| Injector flare [12] |
Problem which prevented antimatter compression being used to reduce field fluctuations in the warp field of an NX class starship. Injector flare was caused when nucleonic particles flooded the manifolds. [12] |
| Interphase generator [13] |
A form of cloaking device which adjusts matter so that it is out of phase with normal space. This renders the object both invisible and capable of passing through objects without resistance. [13] |
| Interphasic Compensator [14] |
A device used by Starfleet engineers. Chief O'Brien used an interphasic compensator during his efforts to bring down the forcefields surrounding Dominion sabotage devices on the Defiant in 2371. [14] |
| Intra-molecular processors [15] |
Element of Borg nanoprobes. The intra-molecular processors are vulnerable to omicron particles. [15] |
| Ion matrix [16] |
Element of the drive system of Xyrillian ships. [16] |
| Ion Storm [17] |
Dangerous phenomena which drifts through space and can be a serious threat to Starships. [17] |
| Ionized pyrosulfates [18] |
Substance which could disable the warp drive of an NX class starship if it was mixed with Dilithium hydroxls and sent into the plasma vents. [18] |
| Isolation matrix [19] |
Element of computer systems intended to prevent access by unauthorised personnel. [19] |
| Isolinear chip [20] |
A computer processing and memory device used in 24th century computers. Isolinear chips have been superseded in some respects by bioneural gel packs. [20] |
| Isolinear rod [21] |
A Cardassian computer device similar in function to the Isolinear chip. [21] |
| Isolytic energy [22] |
Form of energy which was used by the alien repair station the NX-01 used in 2152. An Isolytic shock could be fatal to Humans. [22] |
| Isolytic plasma [23] |
Substance to be found in the ring system of some planets. [23] |
| Isoton [24] |
A unit used to measure mass or the explosive yield of a weapon. [24] |
