View Single Post
  #990  
Old 12-01-2021, 03:35 AM
Nate the Great's Avatar
Nate the Great Nate the Great is offline
You just activated his Trek card
Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Posts: 4,859
Default

I found myself pondering Scotty's statement in The Voyage Home that the time travel "drained" the Klingon dilithium crystals.


PNQ: Opinions?


In TOS they were all over the map regarding what dilithium actually was or did in the engines. I don't think the modern concept of matter/antimatter reaction transformed by dilithium into warp plasma existed in final form until TNG.



It's true that in STIV the crystals weren't explicitly called "dilithium", but for the sake of argument let's say that they are, as all Alpha/Beta quadrant powers other than the Romulans operate on the traditional matter/antimatter technology.


Spock speaks of recrystallization. Scotty was concerned about fracture in the E-D crystals.



As an aside, the novel How Much For Just The Planet (which I highly recommend) goes into a bit of depth about how dilithium works. Dilithium crystals extend past the standard three dimensions into the higher realms, which is essential for matter/antimatter reaction. Presumably the portion of crystals lying in the higher dimensions can't interact with matter OR antimatter and in fact deflects the streams away from the portion in standard space. Thus if matter is "twisted" in one way and antimatter in another, perhaps regulated matter/antimatter collisions are even more powerful than the ordinary kind because they've been focused. Like how ordinary crystals disperse a light-beam into a full spectrum or condense a spectrum into a single white light beam.



Furthermore, let's consider how in TOS they're always looking for dilithium. The tech isn't good enough for a full match on the focused streams, you end up with a lot of excess energy that must be contained and then expelled as "exhaust". Furthermore, it could be that the extra unfocused energy is the part that decrystallizes the dilithium.



Think of it like a filter that gets gunked up. In TOS the gunk eventually makes the crystals unusable. In TNG we know how to prefilter the fuel AND create "backwash" to remove the gunk.



Furthermore, suppose that Klingon crystal tech is less advanced than the Federation. They need raw dilithium even more than our heroes because the gunk builds up faster. Furthermore, suppose that their supply is smaller than ours, so they have to build their ships to handle lower-quality dilithium. Plus, y'now, you have to imagine that they run their engines hotter than our heroes because of the need to be battle-ready 24/7 (or whatever the Klingon version of that expression is).
__________________
mudshark: Nate's just being...Nate.
Zeke: It comes nateurally to him.

mudshark: I don't expect Nate to make sense, really -- it's just a bad idea.

Sa'ar Chasm on the 5M.net forum: Sit back, relax, and revel in the insanity.

Adam Savage: I reject your reality and substitute my own!

Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Crow T. Robot: Oh, stop pretending there's a plot. Don't cheapen yourself further.
Reply With Quote