Ancient Sayings

[Joy 0]

Starfleet has wonderful research and development teams. They will take a problem -- for example, detecting cloaked ships -- and dedicate brilliant minds and extensive resources to solving the problem. The state of the art tachyon web is the result of such a process.

 

Unfortunately, the deployed results are not always adequate to the situation in the field. Tachyon webs require multiple stations, one to eject tachyons, another at the far side of the projection to detect. As such, the systems are inadequate for single ship use.

 

And when operational requirements conflict with R&D budgets, on board equipment, and the reality of physics, naturally the operational requirements trump. If centuries of well funded research don't provide an adequate solution, it is of course up to the science department to invent something in a matter of hours with the equipment on hand.

 

Commander Link provided the initial brilliant idea. Flood the area thought to contain a cloaked ship with particles, and watch to see if any particles are influenced by the presence of the ship or cloak. Not a bad idea. This is the basic method behind most active scan methods. The problem was determining which type of particle interacts most obviously with cloaked ships. I had my suspicions. A bit of research soon confirmed them. The best possible particle which interacts most strongly with cloaked ships is... wait for it... the tachyon.

 

There are problems, of course, in that tachyons are notoriously difficult to produce, and even harder to detect. Tachyon based systems have limitations, such that single ship implementation is very difficult. I decided tachyons would be a rather fast moving dead end, and sought an alternate approach.

 

There is a saying on Broadway. "If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with." If we didn't have systems that can produce and detect tachyons easily, what system do we have that could produce a lot of other particles, particles that are more detectable by their nature?

 

The obvious answer is the impulse engines. Divide the mass of a Galaxy Class ship by the weight of your typical subatomic particle. Figure you want to get the Galaxy up to half the speed of light fairly promptly, and it takes a lot of particles to produce your basic newtonian equal and opposite reaction. The problem is not flooding local space with particles, but tracking them all, finding the few that deflect rather than the very many that continue on as usual. The effectiveness of the system is limited more by CPU utilization and scanner capability than the ability to flood local space with matter.

 

The other problem is hitting the entire area to be searched with the particle beams. Impulse drives are most efficient when the particles are ejected in a narrow beam. What is good in a drive system is less good in a scanning system. Engineering has detuned the Republic's impulse drives, spreading out the beam of particles so that a large cone of space is covered by the exhaust.

 

The last step is convincing Helm to steer a crooked enough course such that the exhaust cone sweeps all of local space. There is an old wet navy saying that partially applies to the situation. "When in trouble or in doubt, steam in circles, scream and shout." If the detection system doesn't work, we might track down the perpetrators by tracing back sensor recordings released among the Romulan population of a Federation ship pinwheeling like it is crewed by idiots.

 

Of course, if it works, I will be able to present papers at the next Starfleet Science Convention on how to use impulse engines as scanners. Alas, I don't have time to work on said paper, as I need to develop a method to achieve transporter lock on an individual inside a cloaked ship, and I'd best review how to beam through other ship's shields.

 

There was one other ancient saying. "The difficult we do immediately. The impossible takes a bit longer."

 

I am beginning to understand why Commander Link offered a hiding place in a computer lab, and advised against going near the bridge.