Star Trek Impulse Drive

[potoes6]

If you have ever scene Star Trek you know what impulse is. Its that blue glowing part of the ship that magicly moves it but does anyone know in theory if something like that is possible? The closet thing I can think to that Ion engines.

Any Ideas?

Thanks For Reading

-Potoes

[Kryten]

I'm afraid it's just another piece of standard treknobabble. 'Magically moves it' is the best you're going to get. There's no actual detail whatsoever.

[Scotius]

According to Star Trek sources it is a reactionless drive (if i didn't messed it up translating from trekkish to human ) - so no, it's nothing like a ion drive. If i could choose, i would vote for Quantum Thruster as Impulse Drive equivalent. It's amazingly cool prospect: to have an engine that creates its own propellant out of void. But it's a power hog, thrust is pathetic, and it's still mostly theoretical.

[ramnrmeul]

From what I understand about the Impulse Drive, it's based on ejecting helium from a hydrogen-fusion reactor that also produces power for the ship.

So, basically all it's doing is fusing hydrogen and ejecting the helium produced and using everything else for power.

[Scotius]

Yeah, just add a inertia-cancelling gizmo and some doodad that reduces ship's mass so fusion thruster can get humongous starship to 1/4 c. in couple of minutes. Space magic

[Brotoro]

When Kirk uses the impulse drive of the USS Constellation to destroy the "planet killer" (in the Doomsday Machine episode) by overloading the impulse drive, they say that it is a thermonuclear detonation of something like 100 megatons. And Spock comments that they are using a variation of the 20th century doomsday device (the H-bomb) to destroy this planet killer doomsday device. So the impulse drive is apparently powered by hydrogen fusion. How it converts this energy release into ship motion is not clearly specified...be it a very efficient reaction drive, or some sort or reactionless drive.

[Kryten]

Isn't there a bit in one of the films where it gets them from earth to around neptune in about ten minutes? Seems like it would imply something a bit more than just fusion...

[K^2]

If i could choose, i would vote for Quantum Thruster as Impulse Drive equivalent. It's amazingly cool prospect: to have an engine that creates its own propellant out of void. But it's a power hog, thrust is pathetic, and it's still mostly theoretical.

The theoretical work is also plagued with errors. At best, Q-thruster is a crappy photon drive. Which means you'll need over 300kW per 1N of thrust, rather than 3kW that the Wikipedia article suggests. The final "exhaust" of such a drive is still going to be electromagnetic radiation with total energy and momentum conserved. There is no way around that in quantum field theory.

[Boggerm]

In TOS:Obsession scotty mentions radioactive waste from the impulse drive. I think that a fusion reaction is plausible.

[K^2]

Matter-antimatter drive could also produce radioactive waste. In fact, anything with sufficient power output probably will. H-fusion won't work as realistic energy source for these kinds of ships even if you found a magic way of turning that energy directly into kinetic energy of the craft without any waste. Even to get to .1c the hydrogen you'd need for fuel would be much heavier than the ship itself.

[Lanfranc]

According to the ST:TNG Technical Manual – as far as I can tell amongst all the technobabble – it heats deuterium to a plasma in some sort of fusion reactor, then runs it through a set of warp coils that bring it to near-lightspeed before exhausting it. It's capable of an acceleration of about 10 km/sec/sec.

[Kaleb]

I've always thought it was a fusion/plasma-based drive, but augmented with subspace technology to make the ship itself lighter while thrusting. The memory alpha wiki page for Impulse Drive agrees, stating that "The accelerated plasma was passed through the driver coils, thereby generating a subspace field which improved the propulsive effect."

On the Driver Coil page, it says that they "envelop the starship in a low-energy subspace field intended to lighten the relative mass of the starship it encompasses. This significantly reduces the mass burden on the impulse drive, allowing for unprecedented rates of acceleration."

[Ruedii]

The thrusters used on Star Trek are usually combinations of either ion drive, magnetic-plasma drive, matter-antimatter heat-expansion or fusion rocket, depending on the craft. All of them use super-heated plasma as their propellant, although shuttles have a non-plasma propellant for use in volatile atmospheres. (Super-heated plasma + volatile atmosphere = global scale disaster.)

As of impulse it is another form of subspace propulsion, likely combined with specially designed thrusters. It somehow alters space to make the ship more capable of moving, then uses a specially designed set of thrusters to move it.

Edited July 25, 2013 by Ruedii
clarifying

[Echostatic]

If you have ever scene Star Trek you know what impulse is. Its that blue glowing part of the ship that magicly moves it...

I must nitpick!

Blue glowing part: Warp drive.

Red glowing part: Impulse drive.

Please, continue.

[tek_604]

I must nitpick!

Blue glowing part: Warp drive.

Red glowing part: Impulse drive.

Please, continue.

For those of us who are older than NG (and are known as Trekkies, and not Trekkers, as seems to be the case post-NG), it appears the impulse engines on the original NCC-1701 Enterprise were also red. But, I've not found a decent shot from the original series (and I mean the original series, not the digitally remastered version ). Can a fellow Trekkie confirm this for me? I'm curious

[Nibb31]

It works with magic and blue visual effects. What more do you want to know?

[Brotoro]

For those of us who are older than NG (and are known as Trekkies, and not Trekkers, as seems to be the case post-NG), it appears the impulse engines on the original NCC-1701 Enterprise were also red. But, I've not found a decent shot from the original series (and I mean the original series, not the digitally remastered version ). Can a fellow Trekkie confirm this for me? I'm curious

I don't think the impulse engines glowed at all in the original series. You'd have to get to the movies before they added impulse drive glow.

[Awaras]

*nevermind*

Edited July 25, 2013 by Awaras

[Awaras]

I don't think the impulse engines glowed at all in the original series. You'd have to get to the movies before they added impulse drive glow.

Yeah, there was no glow in TOS. The first time they added the glow was in the first movie (or maybe even The Wrath of Khan? - I just quickly scanned through the first movie, and in every scene I could find that shows the ship from the back the 'impulse engines' are just dull gray...).

Edited July 25, 2013 by Awaras