Editing Spaceship (section)

===[[Star Trek Starships|Space craft in Star Trek]]===
Spaceships in Star Trek use antimatter reactors called "warp cores", meaning that any breach from battle damage will destroy the ship as antimatter and matter get along worse than pretty much everything in existence. Weapons are also very immensely powerful, in the TOS era a single ship being able to destroy a planet with enough time and by the time of the TNG era an entire fleet is able to do it in a few seconds. Because of this every time you hear the shields fail completely means the ship will be destroyed within the next 2 hits or so. Star Trek created the trope of consoles exploding during battles, as hearing "shields down to 60%" alone just doesn't show tension well.

While small shuttles exist and were used for combat a few times, you almost never see a dogfight. Gene Roddenberry asked his NASA advisor about space fighters and was told the boring truth - that there's nothing a space fighter can do that a guided missile (Torpedo in Star Trek's case) can't do.