Trek's navigational deflectors

[Stofsk]

So in Trek we see several ships which have what is called a navigational deflector that's embedded in the secondary hull. The Connie has it, so does the Galaxy, and a few other designs. Supposedly the deflector pushes away particles and is 'indispensable' to warp travel because even the tiniest speck of space dust can cause catastrophic damage should it hit a ship at superluminal velocities.

But if that's the case, then nav deflectors should be ubiquitous across all star trek designs, as would the warp nacelles (but that's another topic in itself). The problem is, they're not. The number of starships that have no visible navigational deflector outnumbers the ones that do have a visible deflector.

So what else could it be? Or what rationalisation can you make to account for this? For fun, I once considered the dish on the original Enterprise to be a huge ass radio telescope because that's what it looks like. I always thought it was for sensors and high-resolution scans of stars and other exploration duties.

[frigidmagi]

Honestly, that's what I thought it was to.

[Batman]

When WAS it decided that was the main navigational deflector and not the sensor system it indeed very much looked like during TOS? I can't recall hearing that term prior to TNG but I'm working from memory here.

As for the absence of the conspicuous large deflector dish from most ships, I don't think we EVER see them on non-Starfleet ships and since it is entirely possible to generate a deflector field OR a tractor beam without an easily visible emitter maybe the rest of them simply decided to go with a covered-up large/several distributed small emitters for whatever reason.
Heck, for all we know Starfleet just liked the looks, or the covered/distributed emitters don't offer the swiss army knife functions of the big dish and Starfleet considered that important for some reason.

As for the nacelles, I dimly remember them being more performant than enclosed warp coils or something. Maybe the Feds (and to some extent, the Klingons and Romulans) considered the higher performance worth the exposed nacelles.

[Stofsk]

When WAS it decided that was the main navigational deflector and not the sensor system it indeed very much looked like during TOS? I can't recall hearing that term prior to TNG but I'm working from memory here.

they had meteor beam deflector in 'The Cage' and there was a season three episode in TOS (the one with the American Indians) that referred to the Enterprise's deflector failing to deflect an approaching asteroid (Taxpayer's money at work there guys).

Supposedly the v shape in front of the romulan warbird is its navigational deflector, but then the stupid vfx guys fucked it up when they had disruptors fire from there (just like in that infamous episode where the Enterprise fires its phasers out of its forward torpedo launcher).

[Batman]

Thanks. So were those actually associated with the big dish in the front of the engineering hull or were they simply stated to HAVE those? It's been ages since I saw TOS.

[Jason_Firewalker]

I have always operated on the theory for nacelles that Batman put forward, and that the deflector array may just be most powerful when designed the way Starfleet standards seem to do it and that there is a way to do it otherwise, I mean honestly it is also called the MAIN deflector array which to me means there are other deflector arrays across the hull of the ship and that one just is the major one used for the really really big heavy jobbies, like when they pumped that giant energy pulse into the Borg cube just before Wolf 359 in BoBW pt1, or when Voyager emits the energy pulse as of Seasons 6 and 7 when they get the transmissions from Barclay in the Alpha Quadrant.

It just seems to me that maybe for the other governments which are more warlike then science/exploration/brave new worlds and new civilizations oriented, boldly going with disruptors and phased polaron beam cannons blazing instead of seeking peaceful contact, a powerful scientific tool that the main deflector dish provides (since it is seen as being a central part of the Long Range Sensor array in a few episodes of TNG and VOY) is as necessary.

Most of the vessels that we see throughout the series are line combat vessels when they are not Federation ships, so we have to assume that Romulans and Klingons, heck even the Cardassians and the Dominion have vessels designed for science, its just we have yet to see them on screen and I bet they will pack some sort of main deflector dish or some equivalent of it.

[Stofsk]

Thanks. So were those actually associated with the big dish in the front of the engineering hull or were they simply stated to HAVE those? It's been ages since I saw TOS.

Presumably they were associated with the big dish.

As it turns out, the nav deflector also harbours various sensors, so on Federation ships (that have them) I guess it fulfils a dual role.

[frigidmagi]

It could have to do with the fact that from the aliens the ships we see are always military ships. Do we ever see a Romulan science ship? A Klingon colony vessal?

Meanwhile even in TOS federation ships were multi-role ships capable of performing science and military missions.

[Stofsk]

It could have to do with the fact that from the aliens the ships we see are always military ships. Do we ever see a Romulan science ship? A Klingon colony vessal?

Yeah, we see a Romulan science vessel in TNG. It doesn't have a nav deflector that's visible.

Though the Warbird supposedly has one in the front. It doesn't glow or anything.

Meanwhile even in TOS federation ships were multi-role ships capable of performing science and military missions.

Even the Defiant has a visible nav deflector.

I suppose looking for consistency in Star Trek is futile. There are ships which have no warp nacelles after all.

[frigidmagi]

Even the Defiant has a visible nav deflector.

It does? I never noticed.

[Soontir948]

Even the Defiant has a visible nav deflector.

It does? I never noticed.

It's the nose of the ship.

[Stofsk]

Even the Defiant has a visible nav deflector.

It does? I never noticed.

Yeah, see the front 'nose' thingy? It's right there.

[Jason_Firewalker]

Even the Defiant has a visible nav deflector.

It does? I never noticed.

The blue glowy thing at the tip of the nose is the Defiants deflector dish.

Also as a notation on the Romulan Science Vessel is a sub type of the Romulan Scout Ship, which is a primarily military vessel designed to find enemy ship movements and report back to the Imperial Fleet.

[Destructionator XV]

I say it might have originally been just a deflector beam, but they saw that it was useful for the other things that ships see out there with just slight modifications, so they kept adding to it over the years.

After a while, they had something that could do just about everything and deflecting stuff was a very small role it played, if it still did it at all, but it kept the same name anyway.

There might even be some visual evidence for this kind of accumulation: hasn't the deflector dish gotten proportionally bigger as time went on? The Enterprise D's looks a bit bigger than the old Enterprise's, even after accounting for the increased overall size of the ship. But maybe that's just due to its shape and galaxy class specific design.

Everyone else keeps the single job deflectors which are too small to see. Or decided that in their experience, it wasn't actually as important as the federation once thought, so they just ditched it. (if there is something important, perhaps the regular shield array does the job anyway). But the Feds kept it because it is so useful for varied random jobs.

[Stofsk]

Well if Memory Alpha is to be believed, the navigational deflector creates distortion which fools with a warp-capable craft's sensors. So Starfleet put an array of sensors around the deflector, so as to 'punch through' that distortion.

This might be more useful for exploration vessels than anything else, although even the Defiant has one. (although given the swiss army knife nature of the navigational deflector, it might be weaponised for all we know)