Fuck. This is like reading a 19th century Russian novel. Do you have a table of characters to remind me who is who?

There's no way in hell a Galaxy-class starship has enough delta-v in its cargo bays to meaningfully affect its trajectory, not to mention that the thrust vector wouldn't be aligned with the ship's center of mass and most of it would be wasted. All that would achieve is the starship going out with a fucking fart_reverb.mp3 while gently turning to port.

if they ignite the air in the cargo bay before outgassing it maybe

It took the deep space 1 probe (which only weighed 373kg) 73.5 kilos of xenon through an ion engine to get a delta v of 4.1km/s.

So even if you turned the whole cargo bay into fully ionized plasma and somehow shot it out in a well directed beam, I seriously doubt it would cause any noticeable change in the trajectory of a million metric ton galaxy class starship

Are you telling me that air... under ordinary atmospheric pressure... is somehow LESS dense than metal? :shocked: :)

Ionizing a gas for propulsion is a very different method of using gas for propulsion than evacuating a pressurized area.

Yes and no, technically, in an ion thruster, the gas is still pressurized and let out for propulsion. Its just that after the gas is initially pushed into the thruster, we rip off electrons to make the gas into positive ions which can be further accelerated by an electromagnetic field potential before getting ejected.

You are getting thrust from the depressurization but also from the electromagnetic acceleration of the thruster. The point is that it is more thrust than you’d get from just gas expansion alone and it still would provide basically no delta v for such a massive object.

Legit the whole storyline of Star Trek TNG episode “cause and effect” if you repeat it a few times and end it with them escaping eventually.

Maybe someone was also gonna kick out a few crates of black holes out the door?