Dominion war - galaxies without saucer section

[Coalition]

Yeah, that always bothered me slightly. The name literally means "space torpedo". Why not just call them that, instead?

Then again, "photon torpedo" doesn't make a whole lot of sense either.

IIRC, it was because scientists used to think that an antimatter explosion produced a lot of photons when it occurred

[Mikey]

Then again, "photon torpedo" doesn't make a whole lot of sense either.

You can see them, can’t you?

[Graham Kennedy]

Yeah, that always bothered me slightly. The name literally means "space torpedo". Why not just call them that, instead?

Then again, "photon torpedo" doesn't make a whole lot of sense either.

IIRC, it was because scientists used to think that an antimatter explosion produced a lot of photons when it occurred

Almost certainly it was just because they thought it sounded cool and sciency, and then people came up with the "it emits photons" after the fact.

[Graham Kennedy]

Then again, "photon torpedo" doesn't make a whole lot of sense either.

You can see them, can’t you?

I can see my door, but I don't call it a photon door!

They should have called them antimatter torpedoes, really. Or maybe antimatter charges, since the original intention was that they were not physical weapons but rather a kind of magnetic forcefield with a M/AM charge in it.

But then photon torpedo sounds cooler than antimatter torpedo, just as spatial torpedo sounds better than space torpedo.

[Captain Seafort]

But then photon torpedo sounds cooler than antimatter torpedo, just as spatial torpedo sounds better than space torpedo.

Which is probably as good a reason as any, IU as well as OU - whoever invented the things would have had a marketing department, given that they appeared pre-24th century.

[McAvoy]

They had to be something other than a torpedo that can be used in space. I mean, Earth knew about ships with shields so they had to know that they needed a weapon that could damage the shields. Not some run of the mill, torpedo that can be used in space.

Maybe a low yield or some exotic nuke.

[Mikey]

And I will now be calling my door a “photon door” forever.

[Captain Seafort]

They had to be something other than a torpedo that can be used in space. I mean, Earth knew about ships with shields so they had to know that they needed a weapon that could damage the shields. Not some run of the mill, torpedo that can be used in space.

Why? Ultimately, all you need to defeat any defence is a bigger boom. Look at Iraq for example - the insurgency learned pretty quickly that a jury-rigged six inch shell might kill a Humvee or Snatch, but it isn't going to do much to a modern MBT or IFV. Their solution - daisy-chain a couple of dozen of the things together. Get enough of them, and they will demolish literally anything, it's just a matter of what constitutes "enough". Likewise, there's no reason why spatial torpedoes can't be the same basic technology as modern nuclear weapons.

[McAvoy]

They had to be something other than a torpedo that can be used in space. I mean, Earth knew about ships with shields so they had to know that they needed a weapon that could damage the shields. Not some run of the mill, torpedo that can be used in space.

Why? Ultimately, all you need to defeat any defence is a bigger boom. Look at Iraq for example - the insurgency learned pretty quickly that a jury-rigged six inch shell might kill a Humvee or Snatch, but it isn't going to do much to a modern MBT or IFV. Their solution - daisy-chain a couple of dozen of the things together. Get enough of them, and they will demolish literally anything, it's just a matter of what constitutes "enough". Likewise, there's no reason why spatial torpedoes can't be the same basic technology as modern nuclear weapons.

That was what I meant. It had to be a nuke of some kind, maybe a focused one to account for how it was pretty pathetic looking, or shields are pretty effective at destroying a nuke before it even gets close to a nuclear reaction.

What I meant it couldn't be a torpedo was that it just couldn't be a simple torpedo that works in space. As in having a non nuclear level detonation level of power.

[bladela]

I mean, Earth knew about ships with shields so they had to know that they needed a weapon that could damage the shields. Not some run of the mill, torpedo that can be used in space.

..and they failed miserably, seeing Enterprise

[Coalition]

And I will now be calling my door a “photon door” forever.

Unless it is partially open. Then you'll call it 'photon ajar'

[Bryan Moore]

Post. It's topic astray, contents baffling. AKA Trump and Media at Press Conference.

[Mikey]

And I will now be calling my door a “photon door” forever.

Unless it is partially open. Then you'll call it 'photon ajar'

The you could just screw it shut, right?

Anyway, much like the completely-unheralded LTL laser device reverse-acronymed "PHASR," any of these names - spatial torpedo, photon torpedo, etc. - are simply names that some writer thought to be sufficiently science-y with no thought to the actual science behind the nomenclature. As such, we may try our damnedest to match science to the names given, but such an effort is most likely doomed to failure.