Thread: minnow 2 of 4
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Old October 16th, 2000, 08:49 AM   #5
meshula
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Join Date: Aug 1999
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I assume the extruded windows you mean are the eight black things sticking out the bottom?

Those aren't actually windows - they're part of the compact warp system prototyped for this class of vessels.

The warp core is configured like an inverted V8, and those 8 blocks do double duty as external maintenance tunnels and as breach valves. There are 8 very small matter-antimatter reactions occuring in round-robin sequence in order to achieve the power density required to drive the small nacelle to high warp.

The radical reactor was necessary because there are no long nacelle pylons that help form the warp geometry by putting the nacelles up high, and also there is no distance to condition the plasma on its trip from the warp core to the nacelles.

Also, those "solar cells" are actually huge electron aspirator piles. Although they can collect energy in an emergency, their main purpose is to dynamically balance and stabilize the compact warp field generated when the nacelles are so close to the main mass of the vehicle.

As to the actual windows, they're transparency mapped to show the interior of the vessel (which you can sort of see in the other image with the suns).

And yes, all my vehicles have crazy big back stories!

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