Phaser output
Phaser output
How is a starship's phaser or beam weapon output determined?
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Re: Phaser output
Pluck an impressive sounding number out of the air. Make sure you confuse power and energy units, each and every time.
It's what the writers do.
It's what the writers do.
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Re: Phaser output
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Re: Phaser output
For my sci-fi, I like to keep in mind that 4.28 petajoules of energy is roughly equal to one megaton. Helps me visualize the scale of that sort of energy discharge.
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Re: Phaser output
Dang, I thought you used a twenty-sided die for that.
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Re: Phaser output
To be serious...
With some modification, Enterprise phase pistols could fire at least "ten megajoule" shots.... but they say joules not watts even though they're talking about power. And it's a long duration shot, so who knows if it's ten megawatts and they just said it wrong, or it's ten megajoules total and the power is that much lower. (The dialogue kind of indicates the former, though.)
The ship's phase cannon could fire 400 Gigajoule shots, but some modifications allowed them to fire shots ten times this powerful, i.e. 4 Terajoules. Again they talked about this as power even though they're energy figures... but shots from phase cannon last roughly one second anyway so it doesn't make much difference.
We know a TNG Type 3 rifle had an output of around one megawatt. It's not stated what setting this is on, though the Enterprise figures (and common sense, given that they're just testing it) indicate that it's a low one.
Riker and Geordi once said a 4.2 gigawatt reactor was enough to power a "small phaser bank". Meanwhile another episode established that it's pretty hard to control the E-D's phaser output to within 60 GigaWatts.
Make of it what you will. Truthfully the writers just make it up as they go along...
With some modification, Enterprise phase pistols could fire at least "ten megajoule" shots.... but they say joules not watts even though they're talking about power. And it's a long duration shot, so who knows if it's ten megawatts and they just said it wrong, or it's ten megajoules total and the power is that much lower. (The dialogue kind of indicates the former, though.)
The ship's phase cannon could fire 400 Gigajoule shots, but some modifications allowed them to fire shots ten times this powerful, i.e. 4 Terajoules. Again they talked about this as power even though they're energy figures... but shots from phase cannon last roughly one second anyway so it doesn't make much difference.
We know a TNG Type 3 rifle had an output of around one megawatt. It's not stated what setting this is on, though the Enterprise figures (and common sense, given that they're just testing it) indicate that it's a low one.
Riker and Geordi once said a 4.2 gigawatt reactor was enough to power a "small phaser bank". Meanwhile another episode established that it's pretty hard to control the E-D's phaser output to within 60 GigaWatts.
Make of it what you will. Truthfully the writers just make it up as they go along...
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Re: Phaser output
To add a further example, tThere's also the <400TW calc from Deja Q and BoBW: the former shows warp 9 power to be around 20PW, and the latter shows the deflector weapon (likely to be around the same output) to be equal or greater than 50 times more powerful than their phasers.
Don't forget that you'll need a lot more than a 4PJ DEW shot to equal a 1Mt nuke, given the far lower power.Tsukiyumi wrote:For my sci-fi, I like to keep in mind that 4.28 petajoules of energy is roughly equal to one megaton. Helps me visualize the scale of that sort of energy discharge.
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Re: Phaser output
You could go by visual evidence too.
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Re: Phaser output
That gets hard since phasers work on wacky magic fairydust technology, so we don't really know what it is they are doing to things.McAvoy wrote:You could go by visual evidence too.
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Re: Phaser output
Visual evidence is useless - DET weapons wouldn't produce the effects we see from phasers. The infamous lack of vapour from phaser "vaporisation" being the most obvious problem.McAvoy wrote:You could go by visual evidence too.
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Re: Phaser output
So... use figures that use incorrect terminology instead. Gotcha.
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Re: Phaser output
Also future material wouldnt react anyway that we can judge visually.
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Re: Phaser output
Starfleet's incompetence is a well-worn road. This is pretty minor compared to other examples.McAvoy wrote:So... use figures that use incorrect terminology instead. Gotcha.
Only two things are infinite - the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the universe: Albert Einstein.
Re: Phaser output
Uh-huh. Gotcha. So we the people who are viewing from the outside must be literal and not use a dash of common sense when dealing with coming up with figures?
So... in Star Trek universe weapons use magic unicorn fart dust to power its weapons which explains lack of vapor and low power.
So... in Star Trek universe weapons use magic unicorn fart dust to power its weapons which explains lack of vapor and low power.
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Re: Phaser output
Yes, otherwise you may as well make it all up. Once you start choosing what to belief and what not to, you are doing that anyway. If you are going to do that you may as well be watching Star Wars, that's what their fans do.McAvoy wrote:Uh-huh. Gotcha. So we the people who are viewing from the outside must be literal and not use a dash of common sense when dealing with coming up with figures?
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