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Given how easy it appears to futz up a phaser you'd think a back up slug thrower would be a no-brainer.

When I wrote up my SF marines I tried to strip off all the bells and whistles of the Federation's weapons and concentrate on simple and robust rather than slamming every gee-whiz gadget on I could.

Hell, if it were up to me Starfleet security would just be using the futuristic equivelant of an M4 carbine. Perhaps with a (well designed) phaser pistol as backup and for stunning purposes.

I still think all Officers should be armed with a Type 1 phaser. They're small enough to be carried with out inconvenience, and would stop the common problem of a hostile being able to run riot until security turn up on the scene.

I vaguely remember working out once that the recoil force of a beam of light is it's power divided by c. Meaning that you need a beam of power 3x10^8 to generate a recoil of 1 Newton.

Been a long, long time since I looked at that, though. I may be misremembering it.

Makes sense, though, without going through all the math. And goign by that - or anything even remotely close - there;s no way a hand phaser could produce visible muzzle climb.

Mikey wrote:Makes sense, though, without going through all the math. And goign by that - or anything even remotely close - there;s no way a hand phaser could produce visible muzzle climb.

Really? So you know the mass of the nadion pulse emanating from the pistol?

Sorry for the sarcasm in that, but really we cannot begin to even make assumptions about the kickback because we know so very little about the wonderful nadion.

But, what we DO know is that until that point we'd never seen a nadion cause a kick....in TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, or ENT. And unless for physics of the universe changed regarding the "nadion", we STILL shouldn't have seen a kick. Even the rapid fire compression rifles didn't have a recoil.

Mark wrote:But, what we DO know is that until that point we'd never seen a nadion cause a kick....in TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, or ENT. And unless for physics of the universe changed regarding the "nadion", we STILL shouldn't have seen a kick. Even the rapid fire compression rifles didn't have a recoil.

But we don't know the particle density of these pulses. They certainly looked denser.

And nadions do cause a "kick" for Klingon BoP disrupters (TFF), which shows they do produce a recoil at some point.

stitch626 wrote:

Mark wrote:But, what we DO know is that until that point we'd never seen a nadion cause a kick....in TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, or ENT. And unless for physics of the universe changed regarding the "nadion", we STILL shouldn't have seen a kick. Even the rapid fire compression rifles didn't have a recoil.

But we don't know the particle density of these pulses. They certainly looked denser.

And nadions do cause a "kick" for Klingon BoP disrupters (TFF), which shows they do produce a recoil at some point.

To the first point.......we've seen beams powerful enough to vaporize people fire without a recoil. I would imagine those beams be alot more powerful.

Second, do Klingon disruptors use nadions as well? And those WERE shipboard weapons too, right?

To the first point.......we've seen beams powerful enough to vaporize people fire without a recoil. I would imagine those beams be alot more powerful.

Second, do Klingon disruptors use nadions as well? And those WERE shipboard weapons too, right?

A) More power does not mean more particles. It could be a slightly higher frequency.

B) Yes disruptors are nadions. And while they were shipboard weapons, they also provided kickback to a much larger weapon. If it were a giant person holding a giant rifle, the effect would be the same. Its just a larger version of the handheld weapon.

Actually, your assuming when those disruptors fired that what a kick. That just as easily have been how the weapons cycles for the next shot (IIRC it was sort of like a "pump action", right?)

Mark wrote:To the first point.......we've seen beams powerful enough to vaporize people fire without a recoil.

Where? I can't recall a single example of a phaser beam that powerful.

TOS: Mirror, Mirror and The Omega Effect to name two right off the top of my head.

Riker didn't have a recoil either when he vaped his future ex wife either (episode name escapes me)

Mark wrote:TOS: Mirror, Mirror and The Omega Effect to name two right off the top of my head.

Riker didn't have a recoil either when he vaped his future ex wife either (episode name escapes me)

In other words, none. They can make people disappear into thin air somehow, but they can't vaporise them. Where's the vapour?

No nitpicking in the nitpick thread