Quality vs Quantity

[Captain Seafort]

What exactly are those images meant to show? That you can see a PT explosion from space and therefoe they make big bangs? Problem with that is that you can modern nuclear explosions from space - and they're mid kT range most of the time.

[Thorin]

Okay, firstly.
Where is that picture from?
What were they shooting with?
What were they shooting at?

Star Trek TNG
A photon Torpedo
An earth sized-planet

Very well.
But my point that your interpretation of the yields is contradicted by much of canon still stands.

My interpretation is my own. But it is rarely contracicted by cannon.
Where does cannon show/say that photon torpedos aren't 60 megatons (or 150 for QTs)?

[Thorin]

That you can see a PT explosion from space and therefoe they make big bangs? Problem with that is that you can modern nuclear explosions from space - and they're mid kT range most of the time.

I don't actually know what you said/mean in any of that...
Apart from the first bit, and not that you can't see it from space, but you can see it's relative size next to the planet

[Captain Seafort]

Regarding canon torpedo yields

The Dauphin: A "terawatt source" is more power than a GCS can generate.

The Survivors: 400 GW is enough to pose a threat to a GCS, collapsing the shields.

The Pegasus: A 5 km wide lump of rock (with big holes inside it) would take almost the entire PT complement of a GCS (250 acording to "Conundrum") to destroy.

Battle Lines: A satellite with power output in the high MW range is enough to shoot down a runabout.

One kiloton is equal to 4.2 terajoules. Given the demonstrated power output of a GCS, the power levels required to pose a threat to Fed starships, and the number of torpedoes requied to destroy a small asteroid, we can safely say that PT are nowhere near the power mentioned in the tech manual.

[Thorin]

Regarding canon torpedo yields

The Dauphin: A "terawatt source" is more power than a GCS can generate.

We're also told that the galaxy class creates 12.75 million terawatts (which is reasonable, based on a constant anti-matter stream to the warp core). So that's considerable more than terawatts.

The Survivors: 400 GW is enough to pose a threat to a GCS, collapsing the shields.

When did we start talking about shields?

The Pegasus: A 5 km wide lump of rock (with big holes inside it) would take almost the entire PT complement of a GCS (250 acording to "Conundrum") to destroy.

That's the biggest 5km size asteroid I've ever seen! I'm thinking more of 100km. To vapourise that (or even make it have enough holes so that it can't be touched), well, you'll need a lot of energy.

To get it in perspective, the latent heat capacity of water is 4200J. For asteroids it would probably be similar to this (if not more). The mass of even a 5km asteroid (if you watch The Pegasus, where the Romulan Warbird is next to it, you will by just how much the asteroid dwarfs the Warbird - which has a beam of some 700m), would be around 10^15 kg. So let's do 1000J (heat capacity - very generous again), multiplied by the mass. Giving 10^18 J to raise the temperature of the entire asteroid by 1K. To vapourise it you're talking at least 1000K (again, very generous), which means a total input of 10^21J of energy. So thanks for pointing out that 200 torpedos can give off this sort of energy

Battle Lines: A satellite with power output in the high MW range is enough to shoot down a runabout.

When did we start talking about shields?

One kiloton is equal to 4.2 terajoules. Given the demonstrated power output of a GCS, the power levels required to pose a threat to Fed starships, and the number of torpedoes requied to destroy a small asteroid, we can safely say that PT are nowhere near the power mentioned in the tech manual.

To destroy an asteroid of 5km I've just said the ballpark figure for the energy you need, so again, thanks for adding that to my repisitory. Power levels by a galaxy class ship are 12.75 million terrawatts (exact and cannon). And power levels posed to whatever... Again, when did shields come into this?

[Captain Seafort]

We're also told that the galaxy class creates 12.75 million terawatts (which is reasonable, based on a constant anti-matter stream to the warp core). So that's considerable more than terawatts.

The exact line was "12.75 billion gigawatts per...[second, acording to the script]" This suggests that Data was talking bollocks (again), since watts per second is a power ramp-up curve, not power generation. This makes the entire scene of highly questionable usefulness. If were're being forgiving, and assume he simply meant "watts", then we have to reconcile it wit Riker's outright statement that a GCS produces less than one terawatt. It's possible that 12.75E18 W is the theoretical maximum output, based on the mass of the reactants, while 1 TW is the total useable energy available to the ship (after inefficiencies).

When did we start talking about shields?

Since we were talking about weapons. Put simply, if shields collapse after X energy hits them, and they can withstand PT hits without the shields collapsing, then PTs must be weaker than X.

That's the biggest 5km size asteroid I've ever seen! I'm thinking more of 100km. To vapourise that (or even make it have enough holes so that it can't be touched), well, you'll need a lot of energy.

Who said anything about vapourise? You can see the crack the Enterprise entered in the exterior shot of the asteroid. Scaling the width of the crack, from the Enterprise, and the whole asteroid from the crack, Gives a 5 km diametre. Using the energy required to fragment a rocky asteroid of that size and dividing by 250 gives PT yields in the high kT to low MT range.

[Captain Seafort]

We're also told that the galaxy class creates 12.75 million terawatts (which is reasonable, based on a constant anti-matter stream to the warp core). So that's considerable more than terawatts.

The exact line was "12.75 billion gigawatts per...[second, acording to the script]" This suggests that Data was talking bollocks (again), since watts per second is a power ramp-up curve, not power generation. This makes the entire scene of highly questionable usefulness. If were're being forgiving, and assume he simply meant "watts", then we have to reconcile it wit Riker's outright statement that a GCS produces less than one terawatt. It's possible that 12.75E18 W is the theoretical maximum output, based on the mass of the reactants, while 1 TW is the total useable energy available to the ship (after inefficiencies).

When did we start talking about shields?

Since we were talking about weapons. Put simply, if shields collapse after X energy hits them, and they can withstand PT hits without the shields collapsing, then PTs must be weaker than X.

That's the biggest 5km size asteroid I've ever seen! I'm thinking more of 100km. To vapourise that (or even make it have enough holes so that it can't be touched), well, you'll need a lot of energy.

Who said anything about vapourise? You can see the crack the Enterprise entered in the exterior shot of the asteroid. Scaling the width of the crack, from the Enterprise, and the whole asteroid from the crack, Gives a 5 km diametre. Using the energy required to fragment a rocky asteroid of that size and dividing by 250 gives PT yields in the high kT to low MT range.

[Thorin]

The exact line was "12.75 billion gigawatts per...[second, acording to the script]" This suggests that Data was talking bollocks (again), since watts per second is a power ramp-up curve, not power generation. This makes the entire scene of highly questionable usefulness. If were're being forgiving, and assume he simply meant "watts", then we have to reconcile it wit Riker's outright statement that a GCS produces less than one terawatt. It's possible that 12.75E18 W is the theoretical maximum output, based on the mass of the reactants, while 1 TW is the total useable energy available to the ship (after inefficiencies).

If the GCS is producing less than 1 TW of power then I suggest they stop using their top of the line 360 years in the future warp core for a modern day nuclear reactor, and there'd not be much difference. The warp core utilizes a anti-matter/matter reaction, and 12.75 million terawatts is completely reasonable and logical based on special relativity. An efficiency of 1/12,750,000 is absurd (ie capable of the 12.75 million but only giving off 1) - we have better uncontrolled effeciency now in our fission or fusion nuclear bombs!!! Nevermind a controlled environment on a starship... I accept 12.75 million may be the upperlimit, but a real usable production of one terawatt is just insane - unless the ship was just sat doing nothing with all the lights off! . A "terawatt source", we must assume, means something different. Maybe its the point of how the source actually works - such as an omega molecule. It's possible for a warp core to create the energies of the omega molecule, but it has to be a few billion times larger to do it, in which case an "omega molecule"/"terawatt source" is beyond the capability of a warp core if it were the same size as the source.

Since we were talking about weapons. Put simply, if shields collapse after X energy hits them, and they can withstand PT hits without the shields collapsing, then PTs must be weaker than X.

Well, regarding The Survivors, we could assume that that particular beam weapon has some special effect (perhaps even similar to the Breen weapon, which could realistically have only 1J of energy and disable the enemy ship).

Who said anything about vapourise? You can see the crack the Enterprise entered in the exterior shot of the asteroid. Scaling the width of the crack, from the Enterprise, and the whole asteroid from the crack, Gives a 5 km diametre. Using the energy required to fragment a rocky asteroid of that size and dividing by 250 gives PT yields in the high kT to low MT range.

I also said put enough holes/cracks/fragmentations in it to render it useless - which is destroyed. To put holes in them, the material must also be vapourised. At least a great portion of it. And that asteroid is never 5km. Scaling the width of that crack I'd give about 100km, you see 2.4km worth as the Enterprise enters (about 4 length of the ship), and that is definitely not half way along. I would get a screenshot but for some reason it just gets messed up in any program that I try to paste it in... If you have it, watch the first time you see the warbird at the asteroid. It dwarfs the warbird. It's no where near 5km. And even if it were, to fully destroy 30 billion cubic kilometres of rock, you'd need to fragment it at most into bits about 10 cm across, to make sure the cloaking device isn't in any of them.

But all of this is subjective, we dont' know how many "most" of the Enterprise's torpedo is, we can't get a proper full shot scaling of the asteroid, we don't know if it needs to be vapourised, fragmented into two, or into trillions, if...
What we do know is that the picture I have shown shows a rather large blast against an earth sized planet. Which would put it around the 60 megaton (if not more) size.

[Thorin]

The exact line was "12.75 billion gigawatts per...[second, acording to the script]" This suggests that Data was talking bollocks (again), since watts per second is a power ramp-up curve, not power generation. This makes the entire scene of highly questionable usefulness. If were're being forgiving, and assume he simply meant "watts", then we have to reconcile it wit Riker's outright statement that a GCS produces less than one terawatt. It's possible that 12.75E18 W is the theoretical maximum output, based on the mass of the reactants, while 1 TW is the total useable energy available to the ship (after inefficiencies).

If the GCS is producing less than 1 TW of power then I suggest they stop using their top of the line 360 years in the future warp core for a modern day nuclear reactor, and there'd not be much difference. The warp core utilizes a anti-matter/matter reaction, and 12.75 million terawatts is completely reasonable and logical based on special relativity. An efficiency of 1/12,750,000 is absurd (ie capable of the 12.75 million but only giving off 1) - we have better uncontrolled effeciency now in our fission or fusion nuclear bombs!!! Nevermind a controlled environment on a starship... I accept 12.75 million may be the upperlimit, but a real usable production of one terawatt is just insane - unless the ship was just sat doing nothing with all the lights off! . A "terawatt source", we must assume, means something different. Maybe its the point of how the source actually works - such as an omega molecule. It's possible for a warp core to create the energies of the omega molecule, but it has to be a few billion times larger to do it, in which case an "omega molecule"/"terawatt source" is beyond the capability of a warp core if it were the same size as the source.

Since we were talking about weapons. Put simply, if shields collapse after X energy hits them, and they can withstand PT hits without the shields collapsing, then PTs must be weaker than X.

Well, regarding The Survivors, we could assume that that particular beam weapon has some special effect (perhaps even similar to the Breen weapon, which could realistically have only 1J of energy and disable the enemy ship).

Who said anything about vapourise? You can see the crack the Enterprise entered in the exterior shot of the asteroid. Scaling the width of the crack, from the Enterprise, and the whole asteroid from the crack, Gives a 5 km diametre. Using the energy required to fragment a rocky asteroid of that size and dividing by 250 gives PT yields in the high kT to low MT range.

I also said put enough holes/cracks/fragmentations in it to render it useless - which is destroyed. To put holes in them, the material must also be vapourised. At least a great portion of it. And that asteroid is never 5km. Scaling the width of that crack I'd give about 100km, you see 2.4km worth as the Enterprise enters (about 4 length of the ship), and that is definitely not half way along. I would get a screenshot but for some reason it just gets messed up in any program that I try to paste it in... If you have it, watch the first time you see the warbird at the asteroid. It dwarfs the warbird. It's no where near 5km. And even if it were, to fully destroy 30 billion cubic kilometres of rock, you'd need to fragment it at most into bits about 10 cm across, to make sure the cloaking device isn't in any of them.

But all of this is subjective, we dont' know how many "most" of the Enterprise's torpedo is, we can't get a proper full shot scaling of the asteroid, we don't know if it needs to be vapourised, fragmented into two, or into trillions, if...
What we do know is that the picture I have shown shows a rather large blast against an earth sized planet. Which would put it around the 60 megaton (if not more) size.

[Captain Seafort]

Sme pictures from "The Pegasus"



The E-D is 123pixels long, while the hole is 203 pixles tall. A 641m E-D gives a 1,058m tall hole.



The hole is 21 pixels tall

The long axis is 249 pixles, or 12.5 km, while the short axis is 172 pixles, or 8.6 km. A bit bigger than I originally worked on, but nowhere near your 100km guess.

[Thorin]

I don't remember us ever been told/shown that those two holes are the same. Do you?

And still, you've not addressed the other issue of the torpedo blast on the planet's surface, merely arguing irrelevancies based on the size of an asteroid that would make little difference whether it is 10km or 100km in size, as the overall energy required to destroy it would be around the same orders of magnitude.

[Captain Seafort]

I don't remember us ever been told/shown that those two holes are the same. Do you?

They're the same shape, the curvature of the asteroid is the same - they're the same.

And still, you've not addressed the other issue of the torpedo blast on the planet's surface

I have reffered to that - you can't use the size of the flash of the detonation for scaling the yield any more than you can use the size of the flash of a modern nuclear weapon to determine its yield. It's like trying to determine the size of a piece of glass from the size of the flash you see from miles away as it catches the sun.

merely arguing irrelevancies based on the size of an asteroid that would make little difference whether it is 10km or 100km in size, as the overall energy required to destroy it would be around the same orders of magnitude.

No it wouldn't - the volume of a 100km diametre asteroid is three orders of magnitude greater than that of a 10km diametre asteroid, and the required yield would scale with volume.

Your insistence that a terawatt source must mean something other than a power source producing a terawatt is, to put it bluntly, plain stupid, as is the claim that "four hundred gigawatts of particle energy" might have some wierd effects simply because you don't like the implications for PT yields.

[Thorin]

They're the same shape, the curvature of the asteroid is the same - they're the same.

Really? I don't see it and it looks pretty different to me, especially the other holes around it don't line up. And there's other holes on the top, bottom, sides, and back.

Your insistence that a terawatt source must mean something other than a power source producing a terawatt is, to put it bluntly, plain stupid, as is the claim that "four hundred gigawatts of particle energy" might have some wierd effects simply because you don't like the implications for PT yields.

Your insistence that the best weapons from 360 years from now will be worse than our own is also, to put it bluntly, plain stupid. A terawatt source means a place where terawatts originate. And we know a galaxy can generate more power than this. And why on earth can't four hundred gigawatts of particle energy have a different effect, just like the Breen weapon and Dominion phasers.
And yet again, you've completely ignored the previously posted pictures!

[Thorin]

I have reffered to that - you can't use the size of the flash of the detonation for scaling the yield any more than you can use the size of the flash of a modern nuclear weapon to determine its yield. It's like trying to determine the size of a piece of glass from the size of the flash you see from miles away as it catches the sun.

Yes, you can, and really have no other response to that. You can tell from the blast. End of.

No it wouldn't - the volume of a 100km diametre asteroid is three orders of magnitude greater than that of a 10km diametre asteroid, and the required yield would scale with volume.

Strange, considering I'd worked out the energies needed to be around 10^21 J for a 5km asteroid, not even the newer 10km one.

[Captain Seafort]

Your insistence that a terawatt source must mean something other than a power source producing a terawatt is, to put it bluntly, plain stupid, as is the claim that "four hundred gigawatts of particle energy" might have some wierd effects simply because you don't like the implications for PT yields.

Your insistence that the best weapons from 360 years from now will be worse than our own is also, to put it bluntly, plain stupid. A terawatt source means a place where terawatts originate.

Tera is the SI prefix for 10^12, or one trillion. A terawatt is therefore one trillion watts. It was stated that this is "more power than out entire ship [the E-D] can generate". Therefore the total usable power of a GCS is less than one tera watt

And we know a galaxy can generate more power than this.

Wrong. We know that Data claimed that the E-D can generate 12.75 billion gigawatts per [something, maybe second]. The demonstrates that either a) only one millionth of that power can be usd by the ship's systems. The rest would probably have been lost in process of converting from mass to energy, transfering that energy to the EPS system, and transferring the energy through the ship to the point of use. It's also possible that most of the energy went to the warp nacelles (the most luminous objects on the ship), and Riker was discounting the energy sent there. Option b) is that Data is an idiot and was spouting nonsense.

And why on earth can't four hundred gigawatts of particle energy have a different effect, just like the Breen weapon and Dominion phasers.

Occam's Razor - don't introduce uncessesary complexity to a theory. Option a) is that 400 GW hit the shields and overwhelmed them. Option b) is that 400 GW of energy hit the shields, and some technobabble effect caused the shields to fall. The Razor favours option a.