Always a Warp Core Breach, Never Antimatter Containment Pod Failure?
Posted by l008com@reddit | TNG | View on Reddit | 10 comments
Ok, not "never", I'm pretty sure there were some instances of impending antimatter containment pod failure. But for the most part, its always a warp core breach that might destroy the ship. But that doesn't make sense to me. Unless you are actively traveling AT warp speed, there won't be any antimatter in the warp core? Doesn't the ship's non-propulsion power come from fusion reactors, except when the plot requires connecting the main deflector or the phaser emitters or the whatever, directly to warp power?
And ok, even if during normal operation, excess warp drive power does go to the rest of the ship, then unless the antimatter injectors are frozen open (and somehow they never thought to put a backup "valve" on the storage pods themselves), then just shut down the core and switch to fusion backup reactors.
When they're in a fight, it should be the containment pods that are threatening to explode, not the core.
OhNoIBoffedIt@reddit
Well, I always figured the matter/ antimatter are a very particular type of matter/ antimatter. So while a containment pod failure would go boom, it wouldn't be nearly as catastrophic if it's interacting with normal air particles. Its most powerful reaction is going to be in the intermix chamber. And I think warp core breaches typically happen when the matter /antimatter injectors are fused open so you basically have a constant stream of energy pumping into the warp core until the containment breaches.
A better question is why they don't have an emergency manual override that basically drops a giant slab to shut off the flow of matter/ antimatter in case the injectors fail.
Kendrakirai2532@reddit
Part of the containment for antimatter is magnetic fields powered in part by the stored antimatter, along with extremely heavily armored pods.
As for injector failure, all dropping a slab or something would do is give the antimatter something to splash against, along with imbalancing the amount of matter or antimatter in the core. So you either have the core filled with cryogenic deuterium slush, or antideuterium filling it (assuming the constrictor fields remain active) and if the injectors are stuck open, the core will quickly become pressurized with these incredibly dangerous substances.
That's assuming the imbalance doesn't just cause the engine to destroy itself outright.
QualifiedApathetic@reddit
It doesn't make a significant difference what type of matter or antimatter meet from what I understand. As soon as the positron shell of an antiatom meets the electron shell of an atom, the particles will react with their antiparticles and they'll annihilate each other. If antihydrogen meets iron, for example, the negatrons and positrons ought not to have trouble finding electrons in the electron sea and protons under that.
But even with a significant loss of efficiency, a gram of matter reacting with a gram of antimatter would produce four times the energy of the Hiroshima bomb. That seems catastrophic enough.
That-Cover-3326@reddit
The warp core is always active, it's the ships primary power source even not at warp and the average startup time is between 30-60 minutes and if you need to warp immediately you are fucked if you need to wait so long. And for the fusion reactors being the primary sublight power source is wrong they are only for extra need power or as backup or when the core is offline
l008com@reddit (OP)
So when they walk about "rerouting power directly from the warp core to the xyz system", what does that mean, if thats how things are always run in the first place?
That-Cover-3326@reddit
The energized plasma from the warp core goes into the warp plasma conduits that run directly into the nacelles the wpc has eps conduits branches from where the energy flows into the eps grid conduits, powering everything on the ship. When they say to directly route power they probably mean to directly let the highly energized warp plasma (that what has more energy than standard eps plasma) directly run into the wished system giving it a power boost and maybe even damaging the power grid
froot_loop_dingus_@reddit
The warp core can’t just be flicked on, it’s like a nuclear reactor and is kept running at all times
evocativename@reddit
The pods are designed to be self-contained storage devices that keep the antimatter the fuck away from anything else, with just a connection to supply a controlled feed of antimatter. You probably have to actually breach the physical integrity of the pod to cause problems.
The warp core is designed to allow matter and antimatter to react, and then to control that reaction and resulting energy.
Losing control of that process means you have an uncontrolled matter-antimatter reaction. And even if you shut off the antimatter feed to the core, when the ship is generating who-knows-how-many Terawatts of power, it's extremely easy for a containment breach to release enough to wreck the whole ship (and probably set off the antimatter storage...) just from the residual amount left over in the chamber due to the normal feed rate.
sicarius254@reddit
I feel like on the warp core it’s less stable than in a storage pod which is why it’s easier to breach the core than the pods?
watanabe0@reddit
In TNG it's 50/50 of containment failure/breaches.