mfc@hp-pcd.UUCP (mfc) (12/21/84)
Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but it seems to me everybody on the net is overlooking a rather blatant solution to the "why didn't the anti-matter go BANG when the enterprise blew up" problem. We already know that the matter/anti-matter reaction is what make the Enterprise go VERY FAST. If it can supply all of this energy, why can't it supply just a little more to drive the magnetic bottle generators that contain it (sort of a perpetual motion machine, you see). If such were the case, then the normal thing to do during a shipboard self-destruct would be to incorp- orate in each main engine nacelle a small navigational computer. When the main ship's computer initiates the self-destruct sequence, it feeds into the nacelle nav comps a course towards the nearest stellar primary (or some other likely target) and then jettisons the warp nacelles which then proceed blindly towards that target. Since they wouldn't detonate until they got hot enough to melt, you would think that such an action would put them more that far enough away from the ship (and any planet it might happen to be orbiting) to do any damage. In any event, this sort of self-destruct procedure would allow the ship's crews to 'abandon ship' without the imminent prospect of becoming very hot, ionized gas. Mark F. Cook HP-PCD Corvallis, OR ..hplabs!hp-pcd!mfc