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Comment by happytoexplain | Hacker News Reader

Wait - the warp engine doesn't generate power using matter-antimatter annihilation??

The entirety of Star Trek revolves around using deuterium-antideuterium annihilation as an energy source. They use those reactors for two things that are essential to the ST setting: warp drive and matter replicators. Both require an astounding amount of energy, made possible by the matter-antimatter reactors, and both address the twin issues of faster-than-light travel and post-scarcity society.

The "warp core" on a ship is just the power plant. The nacelles under the saucer house the "field coil" machinery that generates a warp field.

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Warp_drive

Except for Star Trek Discovery where the energy source is...mold.

No, the fungi give them access to the subspace mycelial network which they can navigate/transverse in order execute what is basically galactic-scale teleportation.

Yes, this is gobbledygook. But no moreso than regular "subspace" or anything else in Trek.

For power (ed: including their standard warp drive), the Discovery still has a plain old M/AM reactor. And yes, I did just use the phrase "plain old M/AM reactor" hah

Am I the only one who appreciates that a show with the acronym STD is all about space fungus?

Eh, but in practice the only people who use STD rather than DSC are people who don't like it and go out of their way to shit on those who do.

So using "STD" has turned into kind of a unsavory gatekeepy dogwhistle. It tends to bring out the worst types of stereotypical toxic fandom. /r/DaystromInstitute even automod-bans it for that reason.

ugh.. had no idea. sometimes I hate the internet

DIS is a better short form anyway, matches VOY and ENT.

Warp engines are powered by annihilation, since it's an "easy" fuel, but the annihilation itself doesn't move the ship. Similar to how nuclear-powered ships and submarines don't detonate nukes to push themselves forward.

Except when that's the plan?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propu...

> Similar to how nuclear-powered ships and submarines don't detonate nukes to push themselves forward.

Picturing this in my head was certainly a treat :)

The original series was a bit fuzzy on just what role the matter-antimatter engines (and dilithium crystals) played in making warp drive possible. From the Next Generation era onward, the idea was basically that a matter-antimatter engine was the only practical way to generate the enormous power required to generate the warp field needed to go FTL via warp drive.

Except for the Romulans using some sort of captured/artificial singularities (white holes?) for their power generation IIRC.

Undersized black holes. Maintained and dragged along with the ship by manipulating the gravitational frame of reference in the engine core.

In TNG, they don't practically behave much differently from the warp core, but some of the video game spin-offs had fun with the idea, having destroyed Romulan warbirds collapse into their own engine core, which then evaporated because it was unstable outside of the confines of the gravitational field.

It's a nice way to prevent enemies from salvaging your ships. Seems appropriate for the Romulans!

My memory is a little fuzzy. Matter-antimatter may in fact be involved in the warp drive, but it's definitely not direct propulsion.

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