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Star Trek Enterprise Tested to Mach 5
Sporkinum writes "University of Queensland Laser Diagnostics Dept
has a page
where they put the Enterprise through the gauntlet in a mach 5 wind tunnel. It did surprisingly well."
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...can be found here.
Fair warning - the linked-to page contains an applet, so be prepared for the usual "computer freezes for 10 seconds" effect if you're running Windows.
The Army reading list
If they have that much time on their hands, I have some important stuff they can work on... sheeesh
Like measuring how aerodynamic your self righteous ego is? Flame aside, researchers deserve a bit of fun too. Random thoughts and experiments often bring new insights.
Now the NCC-1701D whoulc have been the one to test, after all, we know it actually made planetfall.
Did they use containment forcefields in the test?
How did the plasma conduits hold up to the stress?
(Questions Geeks REALLY want to know!)
Well, if you read the article, they do point out that they are using the shockwaves resulting from mach speeds in air as a speculative analogy to the shockwaves resulting from warp speeds in space.
Now obviously Einstein showed everyone that that kind of analogy is not likely to be worth a bowl of warm spit, even after you get past the impossible part, but this sort of thing is still way unnecessarily cool, and precisely the sort of ilk I think we geeks should be encouraging.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
> I'll believe its real space the moment I see someone drifting backwards.
This was touched upon in the second movie, where Spock commented on Khan's two-dimensional thinking in the cat-and-mouse hunt in that gas cloud, and the battle was won by piloting the Enterprise downward (relative to its orientation) and then back up behind the Reliant. Still, it's fairly easy to explain banking in spacecraft using relative inertia. When a spacecraft turns, the body of its pilot tries to continue in a straight line. Banking the craft causes the pilot to feel the change in direction as being pressed downward into the seat, which is both familiar and less likely to cause a g-force related blackout. On larger ships, it could be seen the same way, allowing the inertial dampers to work less to keep the crew vertical while the ship turns, and there were a number of occasions where large craft turned by spinning on center, as one would expect from spacecraft. Think of the opening credits on later versions of the above-mentioned DS9, where the Defiant backs off from the docking port and spins around its center to get to its exit heading, while drifting directly away from the station.
There are lots of failings in Star Trek, but they do make at least some effort, and one must remember that it's a TV show/movie, so entertainment value sometimes trumps reality (like when one hears the explosions ripping apart yet another version of the Enterprise, or when a shock wave moving faster than warp 3 strikes a ship and swats it along instead of pulverizing it or crushing it like a soda can). Play along.
Virg
On the other hand, this has interesting implications for the physics of star trek weapons technology. No phasers at warp drive, and firing, never mind aiming, photon torpedoes could be a royal pain.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Interstellar vacuum holds about 1 atom of hydrogen per cubic centimeter.
According to the Star Trek encyclopedia, a ship's speed = (warp factor)^3 x c.
So, warp 10 is 1000c.
This translates to 3x10^11 meters per second or 3 x 10 ^13 cm/s
This means, each second, 3x10^13 atoms of hydrogen are impacting each square centimeter of the ship.
This gives us a total kinetic energy of 22.95 kJ/s for each square meter of the ship.
Let's see what that would do to Ten forward's windows, which are made from Transparent Aluminum:
Let's assume the windows are ten centimeters thick. A one meter square slab would then have the following properties:
Mass: 270 Kg
Specific Heat: 243 kJ/K
Melting point: 933.52 K
Heat of Fusion: 1.08E+05 kJ
If you run the numbers you'll find that, at warp 10, the windows of Ten Forward will rise from a space normal temperature of 4K to the melting point of 933.52 K in 2.73 hours.
Assuming the soft metal didn't blow out at this point, the windows would gradually melt away over the next 1.31 days.
Mind you, this is in the deepest interstellar space where hydrogen molecules are at their thinnest.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.