Omega

[alexmann]

By the way, in "The Omega Directive" Seven thought she had found a way to stabilise omega. What if it worked?

[Lt. Staplic]

By the way, in "The Omega Directive" Seven thought she had found a way to stabilise omega. What if it worked?

Then one could stabilize Omega, that doesn't change the fact that no one in Starfleet or the Federation is going to risk the possibility of failure to let her try.

[Captain Seafort]

Agreed. Antimatter is unstable enough as it is. Adopting a power source that not only requires active containment to prevent it destroying the ship, but also to prevent it rendering FTL impossible over vast areas, would be utterly insane - far more so than anything even the Federation has done.

[Graham Kennedy]

Omega is really quite fascinating in that respect. The potential for almost unlimited power, but at the risk of galaxy-wide catastrophe if it goes wrong even slightly. No matter how good your control technology is, imagine putting it on a starship and having somebody firing at you!

It's kind of like antimatter in that respect, both useful and dangerous, though on a much bigger scale.

It always amuses me when people in Trek react with such shock and amazement over what Spock termed our "dubious flirtation with atomic fission" in the 20th century. Yeah, right, people who go around sitting on top of buckets of antimatter are going to tell us that fission is dangerous.

[alexmann]

It doesn't require active containment. Infact I just watched a bit and they actually stabilised in the episode. You would just need to reproduce that, which would be possible. Then harness that energy and use a couple of molecules et voila!

[Captain Seafort]

And if it destabilises, then you (and every interstellar civilisation for hundreds of light years) are fucked. Note that this stuff is so notoriously unstable that Starfleet, the organisation that tested a new method of propulsion by aiming an interstellar tsunami at an inhabited planet, decided it was too dangerous to work with.

[Lt. Staplic]

they get momentary stability for 3.2 seconds.....immediately after which the thing blows up....... and it was in containment while this happened IIRC.

But your still way underestimating the cost:benefit ratio here I think. your talking about using something for power which has the ability to completely wipe out your only method of travel between worlds if even the smallest thing goes wrong, which is easy to do considering how unstable omega is. Even if they could stabilize it under ideal conditions, a ship where they get shot at or find the anomaly of the week which could have untold effects on the molecule could very easily destabilize it and boom. Beyond that, given Starfleet's trackrecord for holding Antimatter, which is Much easier to contain and secure by the looks of things, I don't think they could keep omega stable for that long under ideal conditions.

[alexmann]

interstellar tsunami

???

What episode was this?

[Captain Seafort]

New Ground. Their approach experimentation is apparently to run some computer simulations and then jump straight to the full-scale prototype, without any laboratory or small-scale testing, and work on the assumption that it won't blow up in their faces.

[alexmann]

Run some simulations of Omega and then work on the assumption that that won't blow up in your face.

[Captain Seafort]

Run some simulations of Omega and then work on the assumption that that won't blow up in your face.

They did. The result (which could have been predicted by anyone with half a working brain) was why they introduced the Omega Directive.

[Graham Kennedy]

Run some simulations of Omega and then work on the assumption that that won't blow up in your face.

No matter what simulations you run, no matter how certain you are that you are right, there will always be some chance that it will go wrong. And it only has to go wrong once to utterly screw your entire galaxy.

[Deepcrush]

Run some simulations of Omega and then work on the assumption that that won't blow up in your face.

Using this method, take a gun... place it against your head and then finally pull the trigger. With the assumption your skull won't paint the wall. Really kid, just shut up already.

[RK_Striker_JK_5]

Yeah. The Omega Directive makes a hell of a lot of sense. No way Omega wouldn't literally blow up in your face.

[Mikey]

Indeed. We're not talking about a ship blowing up if something goes wrong, or even a system being damaged. We're talking about everything in a practical sense going FUBAR.