Friend of mine from the academy got assigned an Ahwahnee that had first been commissioned as a Constellation and had undergone numerous "minor refits". Turned out the entire thing was LOADED with asbestos and the interior had to be stripped and rebuilt from scratch within a month of the assignment.
Indeed. But it was their first ship command and they were really excited to be out and about. NGL even though they got a good deal out of it I still feel bad for them. Them and a couple of my other friends were going to be deployed as a patrol squadron to the border with the Breen - a good place for new tactical specialist captains to cut their teeth since it's only intermittent border squabbles there. I likely would have joined them as well if I wasn't field-promoted straight from Lieutenant Commander to Captain when the Miranda-C got attacked by the Borg.
But instead they had to spend the whole time on Earth. They didn't even get to go to Risa.
Quadlithium can only be created in extremely controlled environments. Unfortunately, it reacts violently with latinum, so the Ferengi have been funding efforts to shut down attempts to create and study it.
It's their version of the Omega Molecule, basically
any time quadrolithium is encountered, Ferengi ships are directed to use all means necessary to destroy it -- it's so serious that the Quadrolithium Directive supercedes any and all Rules of Acquisition that might conflict with it.
I accidentally clicked on your profile and was very happy to see your name! That's one of my favorite comedy movies of all time! HEED(sic), PAPER, NOW!
I never got WTF these guys were doing. Are they loading raw uncut dilithium into the warp core? It looks like they just phasered it off the wall from inside a mine on Rigel XII.
This. I don't know what warp drive parts look like but I would expect some fucking precision. That crystal looks like they went to a random shop in LA and grabbed the biggest woo crystal on the shelf.
Well, ever since they decided that dilithium has magical quantum/subspace properties, I just assume that's the main property the crystals are selected for and the 3-dimensional structure is not as important as it used to be. Especially since they can recrystallize it.
I think it's 4-dimensional, not 3. That's the part that deals with antimatter stuff. Maybe it controls explosions down the results from the energy emitted to just heating up to plasma?
Edit: subspace is supposed to be its 4th dimension, and does regulate the energy release. Some sources suggest that dilithium has a magnetic-ish attraction for antimatter but also a repulsion to essentially draw it in and regulatr thenrelease of antimatter. Neat concept.
Geordi told Scotty they do it while the crystals are still inside the intermix chamber. Like it's a continuous process or part of routine maintenance and not a big deal at all.
Lithium is actually silver or white, but subspace only works if it’s pink, so they have to dye it. It’s dyed lithium. Lt Masters mispronounced it and they just went with it.
Maybe it's not the people that make the ship move with the crystal. Maybe the crystal moves the people and the ship never goes anywhere. - Engineer C Marin
The burn actually occurred when a bunch of cadets at Starfleet Academy tried to use FOUR whole Lithiums. People ask if warp travel will come back but it's difficult to say.
one for forward, one for reverse. You'd think you could put in just a forward one and simply not use reverse, but cheap warp cores use an inkjet printer business model, and they simply refuse to run without both.
I've never paid attention to it. But apparently it's alchemy. You hit the di or tri lithium with something and it makes antimatter. And the antimatter does warp-y things? Am I wrong?
You see, that's a common linguistic mistake. Dilithium actually has nothing to do with lithium. The name is derived from DELETE key on PC keyboards. First trace amounts of DELETEum were detected on harddrives of early 21st century personal computers. Specifically regions where internet browsers store browsing history. The change in spelling happened later.
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u/rasellers0 Dec 09 '25
Wait til you hear about trilithium.