Federation M/AM vs Romulan Quantum singularities

[Isolder74]

Yes the Romulons perfer subtly to strait forward attacks. Maybe that's why Klingons(TNG) hate them so much

[Lancer]

Yes the Romulons perfer subtly to strait forward attacks. Maybe that's why Klingons(TNG) hate them so much

yeah, that was one of their major issues with Shinzon after he took power(many Romulans, even in the military wanted lasting peace with the Feds after the Dominion wars, Nemisis was even supposed to have a scene where a Romulan doctor saves Worf's life, but alas, it was cut).

[Uraniun235]

Yes the Romulons perfer subtly to strait forward attacks. Maybe that's why Klingons(TNG) hate them so much

Subtlety? More like treachery and underhandedness.

[Lancer]

Yes the Romulons perfer subtly to strait forward attacks. Maybe that's why Klingons(TNG) hate them so much

Subtlety? More like treachery and underhandedness.

Depends on the attitudes of the current Romulan Government. Shinzon became Praetor and was overthrown over the course of less than a week, and the impression is that although the figurehead (the Emperor/Emperess) stays through these changes (although they only provide a ceremonial role), the Praetor is lucky to last a decade.

[Sarevok]

Yes the Romulons perfer subtly to strait forward attacks. Maybe that's why Klingons(TNG) hate them so much

Subtlety? More like treachery and underhandedness.

So that is why honorable Klingons hate them.

[Coalition]

For myself, it could be a matter of choice between the two governments:

Federation M/AM reactor:
Provides more power (or powers up faster)
Can be shut down
Requires antimatter as fuel

Romulan Quantum singularity
Can use anything as fuel
Provides less power (or powers up slower)
Cannot be shut down

Those are my basic contrasts between them. The Federation wanted an efficient design, so they went with antimatter reactors, as it gave them the power they needed.

The Romulans wanted long-duration ships, that did not need much of a supply line. So by giving them a QS, any raw material can be used to refuel the ship.

For a Romulan First Strike, they likely start to bring up the power core slowly, channeling power into the weapons (bateries/capacitors?), so they can get in the first strike, without anyone noticing too early.

[Lancer]

For myself, it could be a matter of choice between the two governments:

Federation M/AM reactor:
Provides more power (or powers up faster)
Can be shut down
Requires antimatter as fuel

Romulan Quantum singularity
Can use anything as fuel
Provides less power (or powers up slower)
Cannot be shut down

Those are my basic contrasts between them. The Federation wanted an efficient design, so they went with antimatter reactors, as it gave them the power they needed.

The Romulans wanted long-duration ships, that did not need much of a supply line. So by giving them a QS, any raw material can be used to refuel the ship.

For a Romulan First Strike, they likely start to bring up the power core slowly, channeling power into the weapons (bateries/capacitors?), so they can get in the first strike, without anyone noticing too early.

Actually, Rom QS cores are supposedly more efficent than M/AM warp cores, but cannot be shut down.

[humor]Don't ask me how you get more efficent than mc^2, the response will likely involve subspace, inverted power spikes, and a reverse-polarized tachyon field.[/humor]

[Metrion Cascade]

For myself, it could be a matter of choice between the two governments:

Federation M/AM reactor:
Provides more power (or powers up faster)
Can be shut down
Requires antimatter as fuel

Romulan Quantum singularity
Can use anything as fuel
Provides less power (or powers up slower)
Cannot be shut down

Those are my basic contrasts between them. The Federation wanted an efficient design, so they went with antimatter reactors, as it gave them the power they needed.

The Romulans wanted long-duration ships, that did not need much of a supply line. So by giving them a QS, any raw material can be used to refuel the ship.

For a Romulan First Strike, they likely start to bring up the power core slowly, channeling power into the weapons (bateries/capacitors?), so they can get in the first strike, without anyone noticing too early.

Actually, Rom QS cores are supposedly more efficent than M/AM warp cores, but cannot be shut down.

[humor]Don't ask me how you get more efficent than mc^2, the response will likely involve subspace, inverted power spikes, and a reverse-polarized tachyon field.[/humor]

Maybe Fed warp cores actually manage to waste so much of that energy that what you ultimately get of the mc^2 is less than what you'd get from the same quantity of matter injected into a well-designed QS system? There have been statements about warp core efficiency, and of course efficiency can't be 100%. You get 100% out of the reaction itself, but the core can still have inefficient means of harnessing that energy.

[Lancer]

For myself, it could be a matter of choice between the two governments:

Federation M/AM reactor:
Provides more power (or powers up faster)
Can be shut down
Requires antimatter as fuel

Romulan Quantum singularity
Can use anything as fuel
Provides less power (or powers up slower)
Cannot be shut down

Those are my basic contrasts between them. The Federation wanted an efficient design, so they went with antimatter reactors, as it gave them the power they needed.

The Romulans wanted long-duration ships, that did not need much of a supply line. So by giving them a QS, any raw material can be used to refuel the ship.

For a Romulan First Strike, they likely start to bring up the power core slowly, channeling power into the weapons (bateries/capacitors?), so they can get in the first strike, without anyone noticing too early.

Actually, Rom QS cores are supposedly more efficent than M/AM warp cores, but cannot be shut down.

[humor]Don't ask me how you get more efficent than mc^2, the response will likely involve subspace, inverted power spikes, and a reverse-polarized tachyon field.[/humor]

Maybe Fed warp cores actually manage to waste so much of that energy that what you ultimately get of the mc^2 is less than what you'd get from the same quantity of matter injected into a well-designed QS system? There have been statements about warp core efficiency, and of course efficiency can't be 100%. You get 100% out of the reaction itself, but the core can still have inefficient means of harnessing that energy.

They pretty much feed all the plasma generated into the EPS grid. Otherwise, the warp core would explode from a not-so-gradual buildup of plasma.

[Ender]

[humor]Don't ask me how you get more efficent than mc^2, the response will likely involve subspace, inverted power spikes, and a reverse-polarized tachyon field.[/humor]

It's pretty easy actually, the efficiency doesn't come from the reaction itself, but from the coolant that transfers the heat to where it can be converted to electricity. Then there is the efficiency of that process itself.

[Lancer]

[humor]Don't ask me how you get more efficent than mc^2, the response will likely involve subspace, inverted power spikes, and a reverse-polarized tachyon field.[/humor]

It's pretty easy actually, the efficiency doesn't come from the reaction itself, but from the coolant that transfers the heat to where it can be converted to electricity. Then there is the efficiency of that process itself.

They don't use a heat to electricty system in the core, they utilize the plasma generated as-is and pipe it directly to systems that use the plasma.

[Metrion Cascade]

[humor]Don't ask me how you get more efficent than mc^2, the response will likely involve subspace, inverted power spikes, and a reverse-polarized tachyon field.[/humor]

It's pretty easy actually, the efficiency doesn't come from the reaction itself, but from the coolant that transfers the heat to where it can be converted to electricity. Then there is the efficiency of that process itself.

They don't use a heat to electricty system in the core, they utilize the plasma generated as-is and pipe it directly to systems that use the plasma.

Yes. But the plasma isn't created by the M/AM reaction. No matter at all is created. The plasma is heated by the reaction like steam in a fission plant. Either way, the ship's systems run on electricity. They must have some means of converting heat from the EPS grid to electricity. There should be two separate power systems, IMO, but there aren't. The stupidity of using EPS for everything (as opposed to using EPS for high-power applications and regular electricity for everything else) is about as bad as if you built a nuclear aircraft carrier, and instead of a handful of steam-powered generators in the engine room to supply electricity, every damned lightbulb or console had its own steam piping and turbine. This along with the catapults and other systems that do need steam directly. You'd have high-pressure steam everywhere. That's the situation on Fed ships with the exploding consoles. Every single console is powered as if it were a replicator or phaser bank, and they're each connected to every other system - an overheat in the shields' EPS section goes straight to the smaller systems that can't handle as much energy. Like bridge consoles.

It's really fucking stupid, and it's the rule on Fed ships.

[Patrick Degan]

The challenge in engineering such a system as the Romulan QS power core is to generate a black hole which is not so massive that the energy penalty of toting it and its sustainer-material is prohibitive, that it has an appreciable lifetime to allow sustenence with a minimum unit/sec feed of matter, and of course that its power output is balanced against the consumption of the ship's systems. This last consideration is very important, since there is no real way to "throttle" the energy output of a black hole. Essentially, once you turn it on, you're stuck with it.

The second consideration, that of balancing duration with economical sustenance, is where the trick really lies. The smallest black hole that has any appreciable lifetime —one whole second— masses 2365 metric tons. That means that in order to keep the thing around for any useable period, it would be necessary to dump 2365 mt of material into the singularity every second simply to keep it from going poof after it's initiated.

Given this, a good target mass for a QS-based starship power core would be 1500000 metric tons. A 1500000 mt black hole would have a duration of 10.7 years and could be sustained with a feed of about 444 g/sec of material —unless the Romulans figure it's worth it simply to build replacement starships every 11 years, in which case the ship has no need for refueling whatsoever throughout its operational lifetime. The power output would be fairly decent as well: assuming 65% system efficency around 4.9E14 watts.

The huge disadvantage of the QS power core is its inflexibility compared with the matter/antimatter reactor. It could well be that the reason why the Warbird- and later Valdore-class starships are so large is due to the support requirements for the black hole and the mass/energy balance equation imposed by the system. The Romulans essentially may have little choice in the design of their primary (if not sole) capital ship class(es). By contrast, the Federation and the Klingon starfleets are able to field several diverse types and classes of vessel with reactor cores designed to suit the mission requirements of each ship-type, whereas the only other Romulan ship type that we've seen in evidence is their small Scout-class vessel, which may employ a M/AM system of some sort.

This leads to the question of why the Romulans would choose such a system for their warships. The answer to this may be found by what we've observed of the Romulan Empire in Star Trek over the years.

The Romulans talk big, but they may lack the capacity to present a true power-threat to either of their rivals in the galaxy, the Federation and the Klingon Empire. In the time of TOS, the Romulans did enter into an alliance with the Klingons which involved their purchase of Klingon-built warships ("The Enterprise Incident") for their starfleet. However, it is more than obvious that this alliance ended disasterously. Also, at some point in the intervening years between Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country and their first TNG appearance in the first season episode "The Neutral Zone", some unspecified internal incident drove the Romulans into total isolation from the rest of the galaxy for 53 years (perhaps the "humiliating defeat" at the Battle of Cheron against the Federation is involved in part) before they reemerged with what appeared to be new and very powerful warships and a new and more militant posture. However, this may have been nothing more than posturing on their part.

Despite their façade of being a serious galactic power, the Romulans remain essentially isolationists. Instead of attempting to challenge the Federation and the Klingon Empire for dominance, they have opted for a destabilisation strategy to neutralise the threat posed to Romulan national survival; these efforts being centred around breaking the Federation/Klingon alliance or disrupting the internal political stability of both rival powers. During the Dominion War, they attempted to remain neutral until dragged into the conflict by Federation subterfuge and only jumping in when the war began to shift against the Dominion/Cardassian Axis.

So the question remains, why the QS power core and why such large starships are required? The answer may be dilithium. The matter/antimatter power system relies upon the dilithium-focus to make it truly effective. The Federation and the Klingon Empire apparently are both rich in dilithium reserves. It could well be that this is not so in the Romulan Empire. They could have considerably fewer planets rich in dilithium within their territory as compared to the Federation and the Klingon Empire. As a result, the Romulans would be unable to either field a first-class fleet relying upon M/AM-based ships whose reactors would lack the dilithium-focus, or they would essentially be forced to import dilithium from their rivals to sustain such ships in the field, which would seriously compromise Romulan economic and military independence. In either case, they evidently are not able to sustain the sort of logistical refueling network which form the backbone of the Federation and Klingon starfleets, so this forces the Romulans to adopt the "live off the land" philosophy and to design ships which essentially require little to no refueling support; also to devise an alternative to the matter/antimatter/dilithium-based warp core to provide a power source comparable to the standard for their rivals.

The Quantum Singularity power core solves these problems: it enables the Romulans to field warships of roughly the same quality and firepower as the starfleets of their major enemies and a warfleet essentially free of the requirement of a refueling support structure they cannot build and sustain for lack of resources within their territory. And these considerations would be more than enough to outweigh any disadvantages to such a system.

[Metrion Cascade]

Why do the Romulans mine dilithium? If they have enough that the entire Reman industrial base has been built around dilithium mining, then it must not be a shortage of dilithium that caused them to choose QS drives.

Praxis was, for many years, the main supply of dilithium in the Klingon empire, and it was a small moon. I'd imagine that the Romulans actually have more dilithium available than the Klingons.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

The challenge in engineering such a system as the Romulan QS power core is to generate a black hole which is not so massive that the energy penalty of toting it and its sustainer-material is prohibitive, that it has an appreciable lifetime to allow sustenence with a minimum unit/sec feed of matter, and of course that its power output is balanced against the consumption of the ship's systems. This last consideration is very important, since there is no real way to "throttle" the energy output of a black hole. Essentially, once you turn it on, you're stuck with it.

Could the QS core be in a contained unit which is ejected after a fixed period of time, and an entirely new unit placed in the ship?

[Patrick Degan]

Why do the Romulans mine dilithium? If they have enough that the entire Reman industrial base has been built around dilithium mining, then it must not be a shortage of dilithium that caused them to choose QS drives.

My idea is that the Romulans have very few planets rich in dilithium reserves compared to the rival powers they face, not that they totally lack any supply of the mineral, and Remus would be one of the few dilithium-rich worlds in Romulan territory. Although they may not use dilithium as a primary component in their power generation assemblies, they might still utilise it for important secondary applications —perhaps in the manufacture of black holes for starship power cores— in which what reserves they do have would not be consumed at the same rate as imposed by the refuelling requirements for a starfleet.

Praxis was, for many years, the main supply of dilithium in the Klingon empire, and it was a small moon. I'd imagine that the Romulans actually have more dilithium available than the Klingons.

No, Praxis was their "key energy production facility" —which means that it may have been where antimatter was manufactured, among other possibilities. The prison planet Rura Penthe was a major dilithium mining operation as well.

[Sarevok]

The challenge in engineering such a system as the Romulan QS power core is to generate a black hole which is not so massive that the energy penalty of toting it and its sustainer-material is prohibitive, that it has an appreciable lifetime to allow sustenence with a minimum unit/sec feed of matter, and of course that its power output is balanced against the consumption of the ship's systems. This last consideration is very important, since there is no real way to "throttle" the energy output of a black hole. Essentially, once you turn it on, you're stuck with it.

Could the QS core be in a contained unit which is ejected after a fixed period of time, and an entirely new unit placed in the ship?

The quantum singularity found in Romulan warp cores is essentialy a small black hole. Getting rid of it would require exotic technology.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

The quantum singularity found in Romulan warp cores is essentialy a small black hole. Getting rid of it would require exotic technology.

Not getting rid of it, just ejecting a contained engineering section from the ship which includes it, and letting that blow up on some disposal range when it runs out.

[Patrick Degan]

The challenge in engineering such a system as the Romulan QS power core is to generate a black hole which is not so massive that the energy penalty of toting it and its sustainer-material is prohibitive, that it has an appreciable lifetime to allow sustenence with a minimum unit/sec feed of matter, and of course that its power output is balanced against the consumption of the ship's systems. This last consideration is very important, since there is no real way to "throttle" the energy output of a black hole. Essentially, once you turn it on, you're stuck with it.

Could the QS core be in a contained unit which is ejected after a fixed period of time, and an entirely new unit placed in the ship?

The quantum singularity found in Romulan warp cores is essentialy a small black hole. Getting rid of it would require exotic technology.

One possibility is that the entire power core complex could be, as the Duchess suggests, removeable from the ship. From my somewhat lengthy post:

Given this, a good target mass for a QS-based starship power core would be 1500000 metric tons. A 1500000 mt black hole would have a duration of 10.7 years and could be sustained with a feed of about 444 g/sec of material —unless the Romulans figure it's worth it simply to build replacement starships every 11 years, in which case the ship has no need for refueling whatsoever throughout its operational lifetime. The power output would be fairly decent as well: assuming 65% system efficency around 4.9E14 watts.

If the Romulans design their ships with a detatchable power module, the operation would involve simply removing this module from the rest of the spaceframe before the QS is due to evaporate completely and towing it to a site where it would be allowed to expire. If Romulan ships are built with the power cores integrated right into the spaceframe, then the ship is simply decomissioned and towed —after stripdown— to the disposal site.

[Sarevok]

So QS power sources are a lot like nuclear powerplants. They are more powerful but generate dangerous waste that is difficult to dispose. Perhaps this would explain why the Federation does not use QS based power sources.

[Patrick Degan]

So QS power sources are a lot like nuclear powerplants. They are more powerful but generate dangerous waste that is difficult to dispose. Perhaps this would explain why the Federation does not use QS based power sources.

No, they do not generate waste. The hazard comes when the hypermass shrinks due to Hawking evaporation until it reaches the point when it expires in a final, highly energetic burst of gamma radiation.

[Metrion Cascade]

Why do the Romulans mine dilithium? If they have enough that the entire Reman industrial base has been built around dilithium mining, then it must not be a shortage of dilithium that caused them to choose QS drives.

My idea is that the Romulans have very few planets rich in dilithium reserves compared to the rival powers they face, not that they totally lack any supply of the mineral, and Remus would be one of the few dilithium-rich worlds in Romulan territory. Although they may not use dilithium as a primary component in their power generation assemblies, they might still utilise it for important secondary applications —perhaps in the manufacture of black holes for starship power cores— in which what reserves they do have would not be consumed at the same rate as imposed by the refuelling requirements for a starfleet.

I'd assume they sell it, or use it for M/AM reactors on ship classes other than the D'Deridex. Scouts, shuttles, etc. I can't imagine a use for dilithium in a QS core. Its usefulness is that it can be made porous to antimatter.

Praxis was, for many years, the main supply of dilithium in the Klingon empire, and it was a small moon. I'd imagine that the Romulans actually have more dilithium available than the Klingons.

No, Praxis was their "key energy production facility" —which means that it may have been where antimatter was manufactured, among other possibilities. The prison planet Rura Penthe was a major dilithium mining operation as well.

Touche.

[Ender]

[humor]Don't ask me how you get more efficent than mc^2, the response will likely involve subspace, inverted power spikes, and a reverse-polarized tachyon field.[/humor]

It's pretty easy actually, the efficiency doesn't come from the reaction itself, but from the coolant that transfers the heat to where it can be converted to electricity. Then there is the efficiency of that process itself.

They don't use a heat to electricty system in the core, they utilize the plasma generated as-is and pipe it directly to systems that use the plasma.

Wow, nitpicking that does nothing to deal with my point: that the inefficiency is in the secondary and heat trandfer systems instead of the reaction itself.