ST vs. SG Scenario

[Mr. Oragahn]

First off, the 500 megaton yeild for a photon torpedo, is not necessarily an upper limit, and photon torpedoes are variable yeild weapons. The 100 to 150 MT yeild from "Rise" is a lower limit, as well, since the torpedo explosion geometries will deposit only about half the energy, probably much less than that.

You mean they're not even a little tiny wee focused? That's surprising for the advanced tech they're supposed to have.
Anyway, let's double Robert's yield then, if 50% of the energy radiated will be wasted.

Furthermore, Robert Anderson's estimate is conservative for the simple reason that he's only describing the torpedo in terms of the energy necessary to vaporize the asteroid, not the power as the explosion clearly releases the energy in a fraction of a second.

I don't dispute that. Most weapons, like nukes, deliver their energy in fractions of a second. While wattage seems to have a relevance on Trek shields, it doesn't seem to be so for Gate shields.

Plus Gate's blobs of energy are very similar in that it take a frame for a bolt to go from menacing projectile about to hit to completely splashed pancake of energy washed upon a shield. Obviously, a very quick reaction as well.
Faster than a phaser.

Then there are the torpedo impacts seen in TDiC, which show lower limits in the tens of gigaton range.... well above the phaser yeild for "Masks".

Are there at least detailed calcs to see how people reached that multi GT figure?

Finally a clarification of sorts on the statements above; the photon torpedoes must not only be set to full yeild, but also part of a full spread (up to 5 torpedoes) to be able to so completely overwhem a phaser's output.

Where does info come from? May I see quotes, observations, counts, etc.?

If you apply the comets curvature from the image you took from JMS' site to the comet's curvature in the image above, then combine it with a scaling of the width using the phaser beam; you'll wind up with a fairly large comet overall! Suffice to say, 2 km is a fairly conservative number.
-Mike

Wouldn't be reliable. They set the weapon on wide-field.
With perspective in play, that asteroid could even end smaller than the Enterprise. Other camera shots could simply be extremely close to the thing inside the comet, making it look big in contrast to the Enterprise.
What clarifies this is a shot that shows the alien structure behind the Enterprise being even bigger, on screen, than the Enterprise. And that structure's height was almost equal to the comet's diameter.

What is particularily odd about that vaporization process is that the phasers were supposed to dig down to the core of the comet, then stop.
The claim is that they imparted so much energy that it made the whole ice vaporize even after it stopped firing. Odder when you look at how the asteroid looses mass.

There's also the fact that despite hitting the core, and thus putting most of the energy in this very core, the alien structure inside the comet still had plenty of big blocks of ice strapped on it. Quite weird to be since there supposedly was enough energy to let the comet melt on her own by letting the energy put into the core radiate over time and finish the job.
Yet, we're supposed to believe that the ice on the other side of the comet would be completely vaporized, yet the very ice sitting in the core of the comet, where the beam hit, and where most of the energy was supposed to be deposited, managed to survive to a certain extent.

Finally, we will remember that it actually took around ten seconds to actually reach the core of that asteroid.

As quickly hinted above, since the energy was supposed to be deposited down to the core, the way the comet melted/vaporized isn't logical at all. It shrinks like if you put an icecube inside a hot room, not like if a canal of energy drilled through it and had the core radiate the heat.
And it keeps shrinking even after the phaser has stopped firing.

The comet should have actually ended looking like a fish bowl.

Besides, hydrogen and oxygen are invisible as water vapor, yet we clearly see clouds and streams of matter as the block of ice gets reduced in size. Say that the water immediately condensed after that eventually, yet later on, when the ice still shrinks after the phasers stopped firing, you don't see any clouds.
Melted? Pretty much. Totally vaporized? Does not seem so.

Plus the whole duration is based on time elapsed on screen. There are at least two cuts. It could have been much longer.

Above all, the structure inside the asteroid occupied a very large volume of it, possibly not far from 50% of the whole mass.

Plus I find that vaporization claim not in agreement with the plan of the crew:

RIKER
Maybe it's time we found out.
(beat)
Could we use the phasers to melt
away the outer shell of the comet?

GEORDI
(considers)
A dispersed wide-field beam might
do the trick... it wouldn't take
long to come up with the firing
parameters...
(to Data)
What do you think, Data?

They wanted to melt ice, not vaporize it.

To put it simply, the visuals are dubious to the extreme.
There's a problem with that sequence. As a consequence, those calcs... though mathetically correct, are based on premises which are, for all intents and purposes, extremely flawed.

The low gigaton range numbers are perfectly doable given what we know.

Gigatons cut over x seconds. Are there other events besides Masks? That Pegasus thing, are there calcs on it?

* In TNG's "Who Watches the Watchers", it is stated that a fusion powerplant of 4.2 GW is enough to power a "small phaser bank", while in the later TNG episode "A Matter of Time" time we are given a clear statement that the second largest array on the E-D must not exceed a varience of .06 TW (60 GW), which in turn is described as the most critical of margins, this implying strongly that the phaser is putting out vastly greater power outputs.

39 INT. READY ROOM

We open on CU of Picard. Data is there.

PICARD
The good news.

DATA
The motion of the dust has created
a great deal of electrostatic
energy in the upper atmosphere.
With a modified phaser blast, we
could create a shock-front that
would encircle the planet and
ionize the particles.

PICARD
That would be like striking a
spark in a room filled with gas.

STAR TREK: "A Matter of Time" - 9/20/91 - ACT THREE 39.

39 CONTINUED:

DATA
With one exception, sir. The
particles would be converted
into a high-energy plasma which
our shields could absorb and
redirect harmlessly into space.

PICARD
Turn the Enterprise into a
lightning rod.

DATA
Precisely, sir.

PICARD
And what about the bad news, Data?

DATA
If our phaser discharge is off
by as little as point-zero-six
terawatts, it would cause a
cascading exothermal inversion.

PICARD
Meaning?

DATA
We would completely burn off the
planet's atmosphere.

All I see is that they must not put more than 60 GW beyond what they need.

14.33 extra tons of TNT per second. That's not impressive at all, and certainly not a valid basis to claim "vastly greater power outputs".
It's, in fact, a very small power output. And largely illustrates the risk of the process.

All it points out is that they have to be very cautious, and even weight each ton of TNT, otherwise, 14.33 in that bag of flammable bits and it's the whole atmosphere that goes off.

It's like they had a gun a 100 gigawatts, then they must not exceed 160 gigawatts max.
Even worse, if we're talking statistics, the variance is the square of the variation in distribution, which could apply to a quantification of energy or power, ad you'd be looking at a variation of 7.7 GW.

It's not like Data is saying that they must not exceed a difference of nine or ten orders of magnitude. That would be a totally absurd statement to make, and suggest that Trek computers are not fine tuned enough to spot a difference by so many orders of magnitude.

* The large asteroid in TNG's "The Pegasus" could be destroyed using "most of" the E-D's 250 photon torpedoes. Big controversy here in the scalings, but low megaton range firepower to gigatons is possible, depending on your starting assumptions.

I'd be interested in seeing the calcs, please.

Any info there? Because 250 torps to get rid of an asteroid is obviously a bad point.

Depends on how big of an "asteroid" you're trying to destroy, and the goal of why you're getting rid of it in the first place. TESB asteroids aren't that impressive in size; a few meters wide. On the other hand, getting rid of one that spans possibly tens of kilometers wide is another:

The whole asteroid as seen on the viewscreen:
http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/display ... 63&pos=108

Just part of the asteroid with the 1 km wide Romulan warbird next to it:
http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/display ... 63&pos=130

Later, the 652 meter E-D right up next to a mere small section of the asteroid:
http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/display ... 63&pos=197

Conservatively I get around 12 km for that asteroid's long axis.

Destroying that asteroid doesn't require vaporization, not even complete fragmentation. They wanted to be sure the Pegasus would be taken down along the necessary parts of the asteroid. Being crushed inside an asteroid turned into bits thrown left and right would surely prove devastating for a ship which was apparently stuck and unshielded.

* Then there is the controverial "The Die is Cast" planetary bombardment by a mere 20 ships, along with the statements that said fleet can strip a planet down to the core in about 6 hours time for yeilds in the modest gigaton region, and low teraton range conservatively. This is an extreme upper limit and unsual demonstration of ST firepower to say the least.

With funky visuals and extremely exotic theories... one of the very few Trek issues I've been looking closely. Trek at this time never had such a level of firepower.

You mean they never had the opportunity to display such a level of firepower before during the TNG-era.

Not only I'm sure we could find many instances where such a level of firepower should have been expected and demonstrated in TNG (for example, Pegasus), but you're assuming they had that level of firepower (mid gigaton to teraton) to boot.

Stripping a planet down to the core is over the top. You remove the crust and the mantle, and eventually even a part of the core. In 6 hours and 20 ships.
That's almost destroying the entire planet, bar the core. Even ships with teratons of firepower could not achieve that

.

Nevertheless, it is stated, it is shown (at least the opening volley), and it is all in a canon live-action series.

What is stated could be misreading of sensors, metaphorical language and exageration, and the opening volley shows things that have nothing to do with multi teraton level weapons exploding in atmosphere, at least if we're talking about explosing devices.
Now, if you think about exotic chain reaction stuff...

[AFT]

Depends on how big of an "asteroid" you're trying to destroy, and the goal of why you're getting rid of it in the first place. TESB asteroids aren't that impressive in size; a few meters wide. On the other hand, getting rid of one that spans possibly tens of kilometers wide is another.
Conservatively I get around 12 km for that asteroid's long axis.

Destroying that asteroid doesn't require vaporization, not even complete fragmentation. They wanted to be sure the Pegasus would be taken down along the necessary parts of the asteroid. Being crushed inside an asteroid turned into bits thrown left and right would surely prove devastating for a ship which was apparently stuck and unshielded.

The discussion about what Riker actually meant, all over again? As Mike clearly stated the firepower would be very different depending on what size for the asteroid you choose and what level of destruction Riker had actually in mind. Since we don’t get to see or hear anything more, its just speculation (on our part, not Riker’s). IMHO that makes this example an unreliable way to determine the firepower for photon torpedoes. As unreliable as the 200 megaton quote from the alternate universe for SG.

What is stated could be misreading of sensors, metaphorical language and exageration, and the opening volley shows things that have nothing to do with multi teraton level weapons exploding in atmosphere, at least if we're talking about explosing devices.
Now, if you think about exotic chain reaction stuff...

In that case, the Mark 12A warhead, enriched by naquadah, didn’t display the explosion that one might come to expect for a yield in excess of 1000 megatons, not even close, going with the visuals from The Serpent’s Lair. Also, the Biliskner, Thor's Asgard ship was destroyed by entering Earth's atmosphere, if Asgard technology is more advanced than the Goa’uld then that doesn’t bond well with the uber-strength Ha’tak hulls. Moreover, an unshielded Ha’tak was destroyed by fire form another Ha’tak during The Serpent’s Venom, but it was just blown to very large bits, not vaporized, very short of Gigaton-Low Teraton firepower and they had not reason to hold back since doing so would expose them to the mines, so if one shot at full power could have done the trick then why they didn’t?
The old dialogue vs. visuals is a two-way street, something that can be easily forgotten during a versus debate.

[AFT]

So, Trek calculations for firepower ranges from kilotons to very high teraton levels and so are the calculations for SG, not very surprising since both shows are very inconsistent in that regard. However low gigaton firepower for phasers from Masks and yield for a single photon torpedo around 500 megatons as per Skin of Evil (making a full spread of photon torpedoes superior to phasers) is then not high end but a very reasonable medium ground. On the other hand, teraton or even high gigaton level firepower and shielding for SG is the very high end for them since all such calculations comes from a Ha’tak sitting on the orbit of a blue gas giant, an example that is not supported for other events on the show. All I’ve been reading here is something along the lines of “if a Ha’tak can take that much energy on that example then the shots fired to another Ha’tak on some other event must be on the gigaton range since only six were enough to bring down the shields and so on and so forth”, whatever the visuals for that example might be. While the same can be applied to the Trek side and the TDIC example and say that Trek shields can take high level teraton firepower with no regard to visuals or other examples.

So, in short, applying medium end calculations for the Trek side and high end for the SG side. Not fair on my book, but anyway with a numerical advantage of some 30 to one, the Trek side might still have a chance to win this. And about all the stuff over naquadah enhanced weapons, for all I seen and read those are fairly scarce, so I don’t think that SG ships would start using hand-full loads of that weapons any time soon.

So taking the former into account and using same level calculations for both sides, I’ll say that the Trek factions wins this on either a hard fought victory or a cakewalk over the SG forces.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Destroying that asteroid doesn't require vaporization, not even complete fragmentation. They wanted to be sure the Pegasus would be taken down along the necessary parts of the asteroid. Being crushed inside an asteroid turned into bits thrown left and right would surely prove devastating for a ship which was apparently stuck and unshielded.

The discussion about what Riker actually meant, all over again? As Mike clearly stated the firepower would be very different depending on what size for the asteroid you choose and what level of destruction Riker had actually in mind. Since we don’t get to see or hear anything more, its just speculation (on our part, not Riker’s). IMHO that makes this example an unreliable way to determine the firepower for photon torpedoes. As unreliable as the 200 megaton quote from the alternate universe for SG.

On the contrary, it's extremely relevant, and literally apples and oranges in regards of that AU figure for Stargate.

We know what his plan was: Destroy as much of the asteroid as needed to destroy the Pegasus before the Romulans could get their hand on it.
If those torps were really sitting in the gigaton range, unleashing the full load would have simply been waaay more than what would be necessary to destroy that asteroid.
Especially with a sort of carpet bombing with gigaton rounds, instead of a single blast.
Basically, we could even consider that a couple of craters centered on the middle of the asteroid would have been enough to reveal the core, and possibly the Pegasus, and soon, a torpedoe's blast would have exploded close enough to the spaceship. With all the fragmented rock expelled left and right, the human ship would have not survived, and this would have not required anything close to those gigaton ranges.

What is stated could be misreading of sensors, metaphorical language and exageration, and the opening volley shows things that have nothing to do with multi teraton level weapons exploding in atmosphere, at least if we're talking about explosing devices.
Now, if you think about exotic chain reaction stuff...

In that case, the Mark 12A warhead, enriched by naquadah, didn’t display the explosion that one might come to expect for a yield in excess of 1000 megatons, not even close, going with the visuals from The Serpent’s Lair.

There are people, including me, who acknowledge the idea that the nukes didn't explode. It would have not prevented the EM though, considering what happened in the past, at the SGC, when Carter was messing around with their first naqahdah generator.

Also, the Biliskner, Thor's Asgard ship was destroyed by entering Earth's atmosphere, if Asgard technology is more advanced than the Goa’uld then that doesn’t bond well with the uber-strength Ha’tak hulls.

Actually, looking at the ship during the fall reveals that it's not getting destroyed in the slightest. The hull isn't even glowing, contrary to a certain ship in a certain prequel in a galaxy far far away.

Moreover, an unshielded Ha’tak was destroyed by fire form another Ha’tak during The Serpent’s Venom, but it was just blown to very large bits, not vaporized, very short of Gigaton-Low Teraton firepower and they had not reason to hold back since doing so would expose them to the mines, so if one shot at full power could have done the trick then why they didn’t?
The old dialogue vs. visuals is a two-way street, something that can be easily forgotten during a versus debate.

Like ship explosions in Trek look anything like they should either after being hit by nuclear level weapons...

You're also forgetting the rule of the vast majority vs the small inconsistency. In Serpent's Venom, they didn't even thought about making the shields glow when the mines were exploding on them!
Yet they thought about pushing Heru'ur ship backwards.

The Die is Cast is an extremely inconsistent and exceptional event which suggest yields in the many medium to high teratons, and even absurdly more if we're taking the 30% of the crust destroyed in the first volley comment at face value.
You wonder where those super explosives and beams of doom went for the rest of the episodes.

[Mike DiCenso]

First off, the 500 megaton yeild for a photon torpedo, is not necessarily an upper limit, and photon torpedoes are variable yeild weapons. The 100 to 150 MT yeild from "Rise" is a lower limit, as well, since the torpedo explosion geometries will deposit only about half the energy, probably much less than that.

Mr. Oragahn wrote:
You mean they're not even a little tiny wee focused? That's surprising for the advanced tech they're supposed to have.
Anyway, let's double Robert's yield then, if 50% of the energy radiated will be wasted.

I know of nothing canonical that would suggest photon torpedoes have the ability to focus their explosive energies the way that you suggest. If they could do that, they would likely be the prefered weapon in virtually all situations over the phaser.

Furthermore, Robert Anderson's estimate is conservative for the simple reason that he's only describing the torpedo in terms of the energy necessary to vaporize the asteroid, not the power as the explosion clearly releases the energy in a fraction of a second.

I don't dispute that. Most weapons, like nukes, deliver their energy in fractions of a second. While wattage seems to have a relevance on Trek shields, it doesn't seem to be so for Gate shields.

That seems unlikely given what I've seen of SG shielding.

Plus Gate's blobs of energy are very similar in that it take a frame for a bolt to go from menacing projectile about to hit to completely splashed pancake of energy washed upon a shield. Obviously, a very quick reaction as well.
Faster than a phaser.

That doesn't mean anything, particularly since a phaser is often a sustained beam, and could be delivering a very large amount of energy every second. The dwell time ability is a very serious advantage for phasers. Also, what you describe also matches what we seen when disruptor bolt weapons are used in Trek.

Then there are the torpedo impacts seen in TDiC, which show lower limits in the tens of gigaton range.... well above the phaser yeild for "Masks".

Are there at least detailed calcs to see how people reached that multi GT figure?

Graham worked it out using the Nuclear Weapon's website FAQ formula for calculating yeilds:


Again taking the planet to be roughly Earth-sized, the damage would cover 170 million square kilometres. To further reduce the yield of our torpedoes I'm going to assume that 90% of this was done by the beam weapons, with only 17 million square kilometres affected by torpedoes. And to cut the numbers down even more I'm going to assume that the damage inflicted was of the most feeble kind. According to the High Energy Weapons Archive quoted above, for any given weapon yield the most widespread effect is thermal - meaning any nuclear bomb will start fires at far greater distances than it will knock down buildings. So for my low end estimate I am going to say that the 17 million square kilometre area was only affected to the extent of having fires started on it.

The fleet launches only ten torpedoes to cause this damage, so each one accounts for 1.7 million square kilometres. This means that each torpedo has lit fires over an area of about 735 kilometres radius. Using the above equations we can get an idea of the yield required to do this damage :

r_thermal = Y0.41
735 = Y0.41
7352.44 = Y
Y = 9,793,653.38


This is in multiples of 2.5 kilotons, so the overall yield would be :

Yield = 9,793,653.38 x 2,500
= 24,484,133,461.48 tons
= 24,484.13 Megatons


Giving each torpedo a yield of 'only' 24 thousand megatons.

Finally a clarification of sorts on the statements above; the photon torpedoes must not only be set to full yeild, but also part of a full spread (up to 5 torpedoes) to be able to so completely overwhem a phaser's output.

Where does info come from? May I see quotes, observations, counts, etc.?

From the TNG episode "The Nth Degree":


PICARD
Options, Number One?

RIKER
We can't use photon torpedoes.
An explosion this close to the
ship could cripple us.

WORF
Sir, recommend full phasers.

PICARD
Proceed.

WORF
Firing phasers.

Even a short while later, when the phasers are pumped up to maximum power do they not risk endangering the ship. Eventually Barclay finds a way to enhance the E-D shields to withstand the the torpedoes' blast and Picard orders:

PICARD
Mister Worf. Photon torpedos.
Maximum yield, full spread.

If you apply the comets curvature from the image you took from JMS' site to the comet's curvature in the image above, then combine it with a scaling of the width using the phaser beam; you'll wind up with a fairly large comet overall! Suffice to say, 2 km is a fairly conservative number.
-Mike

Wouldn't be reliable. They set the weapon on wide-field.
With perspective in play, that asteroid could even end smaller than the Enterprise. Other camera shots could simply be extremely close to the thing inside the comet, making it look big in contrast to the Enterprise.
What clarifies this is a shot that shows the alien structure behind the Enterprise being even bigger, on screen, than the Enterprise. And that structure's height was almost equal to the comet's diameter.

You obviously did not go through the Trekcore.com archives for the episode:

http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/display ... 168&pos=68

The phaser beam starts off narrow, then widens out during the firing process. Given that a standard phaser beam is about 6 meters wide (the width of the arrays themselves), the stretch of comet surface seen here easily is a kilometer wide.

What is particularily odd about that vaporization process is that the phasers were supposed to dig down to the core of the comet, then stop.
The claim is that they imparted so much energy that it made the whole ice vaporize even after it stopped firing. Odder when you look at how the asteroid looses mass.

There's also the fact that despite hitting the core, and thus putting most of the energy in this very core, the alien structure inside the comet still had plenty of big blocks of ice strapped on it. Quite weird to be since there supposedly was enough energy to let the comet melt on her own by letting the energy put into the core radiate over time and finish the job.
Yet, we're supposed to believe that the ice on the other side of the comet would be completely vaporized, yet the very ice sitting in the core of the comet, where the beam hit, and where most of the energy was supposed to be deposited, managed to survive to a certain extent.

There is nothing too odd about it. The phasers where set to widen, which is what we see. That would more evenly distribute the phaser's energies over a larger surface area, and therefore melt the ice without necessarily causing harm to the D'Arsay archive inside it. The remaining ice is only a tiny fraction of the overall starting amount, but is clearly indicative of the care that was being taken in the operation.

Finally, we will remember that it actually took around ten seconds to actually reach the core of that asteroid.

As quickly hinted above, since the energy was supposed to be deposited down to the core, the way the comet melted/vaporized isn't logical at all. It shrinks like if you put an icecube inside a hot room, not like if a canal of energy drilled through it and had the core radiate the heat.
And it keeps shrinking even after the phaser has stopped firing.

The comet should have actually ended looking like a fish bowl.

Not really, since the operation started from the outside, and the phaser beam was apparently continuely widened, it isn't terribly suprising we see what we do. That the D'Arsay archive structure might have been heated up enough to continue the process a little bit further after the phasers ceased firing is again an indication of the precision involved.




Besides, hydrogen and oxygen are invisible as water vapor, yet we clearly see clouds and streams of matter as the block of ice gets reduced in size. Say that the water immediately condensed after that eventually, yet later on, when the ice still shrinks after the phasers stopped firing, you don't see any clouds.
Melted? Pretty much. Totally vaporized? Does not seem so.

Plus the whole duration is based on time elapsed on screen. There are at least two cuts. It could have been much longer.

Above all, the structure inside the asteroid occupied a very large volume of it, possibly not far from 50% of the whole mass.

Plus I find that vaporization claim not in agreement with the plan of the crew:

RIKER
Maybe it's time we found out.
(beat)
Could we use the phasers to melt
away the outer shell of the comet?

GEORDI
(considers)
A dispersed wide-field beam might
do the trick... it wouldn't take
long to come up with the firing
parameters...
(to Data)
What do you think, Data?

They wanted to melt ice, not vaporize it.

To put it simply, the visuals are dubious to the extreme.
There's a problem with that sequence. As a consequence, those calcs... though mathetically correct, are based on premises which are, for all intents and purposes, extremely flawed.

The low gigaton range numbers are perfectly doable given what we know.

Gigatons cut over x seconds. Are there other events besides Masks? That Pegasus thing, are there calcs on it?

* In TNG's "Who Watches the Watchers", it is stated that a fusion powerplant of 4.2 GW is enough to power a "small phaser bank", while in the later TNG episode "A Matter of Time" time we are given a clear statement that the second largest array on the E-D must not exceed a varience of .06 TW (60 GW), which in turn is described as the most critical of margins, this implying strongly that the phaser is putting out vastly greater power outputs.

All I see is that they must not put more than 60 GW beyond what they need.

Right, it's a variance, and they can't exceed that variance in the total overall output of the phasers, or they'll wind up burning off the Pentharn atmosphere. Some quotes you forgot to look at:


The scene just before Data briefs Picard:


GEORDI
Have you rerun the phase reversal
figures, Data?

DATA
There were no errors, Geordi.
The variance must be no more than
point zero six terawatts.


...and later Picard trying to persuade Professor Rasmussen into helping them:



PICARD
Mister La Forge has a possible
solution. The margin of error
is extremely critical, but if it's
successful, there's no more
threat.


Still later:


GEORDI
Keep the phasers on active surge
control, Worf. We're only going
to have one shot at this.

14.33 extra tons of TNT per second. That's not impressive at all, and certainly not a valid basis to claim "vastly greater power outputs".
It's, in fact, a very small power output. And largely illustrates the risk of the process.

All it points out is that they have to be very cautious, and even weight each ton of TNT, otherwise, 14.33 in that bag of flammable bits and it's the whole atmosphere that goes off.

It's like they had a gun a 100 gigawatts, then they must not exceed 160 gigawatts max.
Even worse, if we're talking statistics, the variance is the square of the variation in distribution, which could apply to a quantification of energy or power, ad you'd be looking at a variation of 7.7 GW.

It's not like Data is saying that they must not exceed a difference of nine or ten orders of magnitude. That would be a totally absurd statement to make, and suggest that Trek computers are not fine tuned enough to spot a difference by so many orders of magnitude.

Again, the dialog, which you either did not see, or chose to ignore, does not support that notion. They are talking about this being a "very critical" margin. It cannot be so wide a margin, or Picard would not be speaking they way he is. This is a very fine edge variance where they need enough power to do the job, but not allow the variance to slip and cause a catastrophe to occur.

* The large asteroid in TNG's "The Pegasus" could be destroyed using "most of" the E-D's 250 photon torpedoes. Big controversy here in the scalings, but low megaton range firepower to gigatons is possible, depending on your starting assumptions.

I'd be interested in seeing the calcs, please.

You can play around with Mike Wong's asteroid calculator here:

http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Sci ... roids.html

To blow the asteroid apart (assuming igneous rock, and 8.5 km wide) into 10 meter fragments requires a little more than 614 MT. Let's say that "most of" means 200 torpedoes, that means 614/200 = 3.07 MT. Wong's calculator is also conservative for our purposes since it assumes that the torpedoes' are exploding as though planted in the center of the asteroid. Since the torpedoes will obviously have to start at the surface of the asteroid and work their way inward, it will likely require higher total firepower to make up for the losses due to explosion geometries.

On the other hand, the melt and vaporization energies vastly exceed the above amount, again for an 8.5 km asteroid. Just to cause melting of a granite asteroid would mean expending just shy of 473 gigatons of energy, or 2.65 gigatons per torpedo, assuming 200 of the weapons are expended in the effort.

That's a fairly simple, but reasonably conservative estimate.

Any info there? Because 250 torps to get rid of an asteroid is obviously a bad point.

Depends on how big of an "asteroid" you're trying to destroy, and the goal of why you're getting rid of it in the first place. TESB asteroids aren't that impressive in size; a few meters wide. On the other hand, getting rid of one that spans possibly tens of kilometers wide is another:

The whole asteroid as seen on the viewscreen:
http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/display ... 63&pos=108

Just part of the asteroid with the 1 km wide Romulan warbird next to it:
http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/display ... 63&pos=130

Later, the 652 meter E-D right up next to a mere small section of the asteroid:
http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/display ... 63&pos=197

Conservatively I get around 12 km for that asteroid's long axis.

Destroying that asteroid doesn't require vaporization, not even complete fragmentation. They wanted to be sure the Pegasus would be taken down along the necessary parts of the asteroid. Being crushed inside an asteroid turned into bits thrown left and right would surely prove devastating for a ship which was apparently stuck and unshielded.

Again, you get caught here in your ignorance. There was no "they". It was Commander Riker's suggestion with the ulterior motive of him not wanting Admiral Pressman salvaging the phase cloak, which was made in violation of a treaty made with the Romulans. But here is what Riker says when suggestions are called for by Pressman:


RIKER
(to Picard)
I recommend we destroy the
asteroid. It would take most
of our photon torpedoes, but it
would preclude any possibility of
the Pegasus falling into Romulan
hands.

He's not talking about blasting the asteroid into big chunks. He's talking about totally destroying the thing and the Pegasus with it. He's not talking about blowing up part of the asteroid to dig out the other ship, then destroy it. He's talking the whole sheebang.

* Then there is the controverial "The Die is Cast" planetary bombardment by a mere 20 ships, along with the statements that said fleet can strip a planet down to the core in about 6 hours time for yeilds in the modest gigaton region, and low teraton range conservatively. This is an extreme upper limit and unsual demonstration of ST firepower to say the least.

With funky visuals and extremely exotic theories... one of the very few Trek issues I've been looking closely. Trek at this time never had such a level of firepower.

You mean they never had the opportunity to display such a level of firepower before during the TNG-era.

Not only I'm sure we could find many instances where such a level of firepower should have been expected and demonstrated in TNG (for example, Pegasus), but you're assuming they had that level of firepower (mid gigaton to teraton) to boot.

Again, the Pegasus asteroid can be scaled up using the Romulan warbird, and you can calculate as I showed above to reach firepower in the hundreds of gigatons.

What is stated could be misreading of sensors, metaphorical language and exageration, and the opening volley shows things that have nothing to do with multi teraton level weapons exploding in atmosphere, at least if we're talking about explosing devices.
Now, if you think about exotic chain reaction stuff..

No misreading. They knew going in there with crews of combat veterans and what they were going to be able to do:

TAIN
(to Garak)
Our plan is to wait until we've
entered orbit of the Founders' planet,
then decloak and begin a massive
bombardment.

LOVOK
Computer analysis indicates that the
planet's crust will be destroyed
within one hour, and the mantle within
five.
GARAK
That should more than take care of
the Founders...

TAIN
Yes, it should. Unless they have
some planetary defenses we don't
know about. And the only person
here who might know the answer to
that question is Mister Odo.


Even if they later got false readings about the damage, it still doesn't explain away how a crew of combat veterans could be fooled into thinking their weapons could do something they actually couldn't.
-Mike

[l33telboi]

In that case, the Mark 12A warhead, enriched by naquadah, didn’t display the explosion that one might come to expect for a yield in excess of 1000 megatons, not even close, going with the visuals from The Serpent’s Lair.

It's widly accepted that the nukes impacted the shields before they could detonate.

IMO the writers did intend for the nukes to go off, which is why we have reports of EMP wiping out satellites and such. But since the effects weren't consistent with a nuke detonation, one can't be sure. Which is why people generally favor the "failed detonation" theory.

Also, the Biliskner, Thor's Asgard ship was destroyed by entering Earth's atmosphere, if Asgard technology is more advanced than the Goa’uld then that doesn’t bond well with the uber-strength Ha’tak hulls.

If you watch the episode, then you'll notice that O'Neill even comments on it, something like "Wait, you're telling me that with all this fancy tech the ship can't even withstand a little heat?" (that's not an exact quote, rather what i remember). Thor then goes on to give some technobabblish explanation as to why it won't, something involving power needed to subspace something.

Both Ha'taks and Wraith ships have been known survive re-entry though.

Personally i don't find it that much of a stretch to believe that a race like the Asgard almost completly rely on their shields for protection. Atlantis seems to have followed the same motto.

On the other hand, teraton or even high gigaton level firepower and shielding for SG is the very high end for them since all such calculations comes from a Ha’tak sitting on the orbit of a blue gas giant,

There are other incidents that show high firepower as well. Netu was bombed to the point where magma started sipping through crust. And Sokar was expecting to re-do this feat with only a single Ha'tak.

And if i'm not mistaking there was even an episode where it's said a Ha'tak's weapons can reach even Tok'ra tunnels, that are located far beneath the ground itself.

Then there are incidents like Beachhead where a Ha'tak is able to provide something like 20% of all the power the shielding needed to evelop the planet. The rest of course came from the Gatebuster and whatever weaponsfire the Jaffa managed to deal before that.

And it's not a blue gas giant, it's a blue giant, as in a star. And speaking of stars, "Spacerace" shows us that even simple civilian owned craft, powered mostly by a mere Naq generator, is able to survive inside the corona of a normal star. And that was just one stage of the race, with other stages involving such fancy stuff as weapons platforms firing on the ships and tumbling through a dense field made up ice asteroids.

an example that is not supported for other events on the show.

We even have Carter flat out stating that the blasts on the Goa'uld motherships are the equivalent of 200MT nukes. And Teal'c says that the system lords usually leave a planets entire surface irradiated and blasted if they've attacked it. And this does fit perfectly into the rest of the verse. Klorel and Apophis continuously talked about "burning their world to ashes" about how Klorel would get to choose which city to burn down first.

And like i said once already, there are plenty of other ways to see why assuming low yields would be a tad unrealistc. The Goa'uld and their bombs for instance, why don't they rely on nukes like Earth if their energy weapons are so bad? Why would a Deathglider have a yield similar to that of a ship thousands (if not more) times larger. Why would Earth not have been curbstomping the Goa'uld even with just the Prommie?

And about all the stuff over naquadah enhanced weapons, for all I seen and read those are fairly scarce, so I don’t think that SG ships would start using hand-full loads of that weapons any time soon.

Really? Earth, with only a few simple mines (i can actually only remember them saying they have one) have been able to create a multitude of nukes all by themselves. Anubis was able to send a large asteroid made of Naquadah hurling towards Earth and at that time he was at war with several other System Lords while Earth wasn't a threat, more of a nuisance. There have been numerous Goa'uld made Naq bombs on the show. Heck, even in the recent episode "Family Ties" it becomes quite apparent, that just one, a single Jaffa owning a single mine is able to fill up several cargoships with Naquadah to be used as a bombs. Even the starships are made out of Naquadah, not weapons-grade, but still Naquadah.

And if you watched some of the episodes, you'll notice that you only need an extremely small amount of Naquadah to enhance bombs to Gigaton level. There have been plenty of episodes, like "Need" where we are shown that even a failing Naquadah mine is able to produce enough Naquadah to build nukes on a regular basis.

No, i don't think it's all that scarce. Naquadriah however, i belive is.

[AFT]

On the contrary, it's extremely relevant, and literally apples and oranges in regards of that AU figure for Stargate.

Uhh? I said unreliable not irrelevant, but anyway that’s not the point. The AU quote is unreliable because it comes from another reality and we simply don’t know if that can be applied to the official universe. The Pegasus example is unreliable because you can play with the variables involved and get very different results, as shown on Mike’s post, from kilotons up to gigatons per photon torpedo. That’s too wide on my dictionary to can be considered a reliable example.

We know what his plan was: Destroy as much of the asteroid as needed to destroy the Pegasus before the Romulans could get their hand on it.
If those torps were really sitting in the gigaton range, unleashing the full load would have simply been waaay more than what would be necessary to destroy that asteroid.
Especially with a sort of carpet bombing with gigaton rounds, instead of a single blast.
Basically, we could even consider that a couple of craters centered on the middle of the asteroid would have been enough to reveal the core, and possibly the Pegasus, and soon, a torpedoe's blast would have exploded close enough to the spaceship. With all the fragmented rock expelled left and right, the human ship would have not survived, and this would have not required anything close to those gigaton ranges.

Not quite, please read Mike’s post on that regard. I don’t want to repeat the same thing all over again, again.

Actually, looking at the ship during the fall reveals that it's not getting destroyed in the slightest. The hull isn't even glowing, contrary to a certain ship in a certain prequel in a galaxy far far away.

However, we know that all but one replicator were destroyed along with the ship, for that to happen I’ll say that the ship must have been completely destroyed, otherwise how could the replicators have been destroyed? Those are some very resilient bugs after all.

Like ship explosions in Trek look anything like they should either after being hit by nuclear level weapons...

And I’m not implying at all that they are, only that if someone is going to start arguing visuals over dialogue then he/she should be prepared to do the same to his/her side, otherwise, on my book they are using a double standard.

You're also forgetting the rule of the vast majority vs the small inconsistency. In Serpent's Venom, they didn't even thought about making the shields glow when the mines were exploding on them!
Yet they thought about pushing Heru'ur ship backwards.

I’m not, but some people are only focusing on some examples forgetting everything else.

The Die is Cast is an extremely inconsistent and exceptional event which suggest yields in the many medium to high teratons, and even absurdly more if we're taking the 30% of the crust destroyed in the first volley comment at face value.
You wonder where those super explosives and beams of doom went for the rest of the episodes.

Reading Mike’s post I’ll say that those uber explosives were there all along.

[AFT]

It's widly accepted that the nukes impacted the shields before they could detonate.

Then, how does those things work? Shouldn’t the very impact on the shields make the nukes go off?

IMO the writers did intend for the nukes to go off, which is why we have reports of EMP wiping out satellites and such. But since the effects weren't consistent with a nuke detonation, one can't be sure. Which is why people generally favor the "failed detonation" theory.

Well, fair enough. However that means that from this example we cannot claim that Ha’tak shields can resist explosions in excess of a 1000 megatons.

If you watch the episode, then you'll notice that O'Neill even comments on it, something like "Wait, you're telling me that with all this fancy tech the ship can't even withstand a little heat?" (that's not an exact quote, rather what i remember). Thor then goes on to give some technobabblish explanation as to why it won't, something involving power needed to subspace something.

Both Ha'taks and Wraith ships have been known survive re-entry though.

Personally i don't find it that much of a stretch to believe that a race like the Asgard almost completly rely on their shields for protection. Atlantis seems to have followed the same motto.

Since I haven’t seen the episode Nemesis and only Small Victories I concede the point, for now. However, also Trek ships from capital vessels to shuttlecrafts have survived reentries just fine.

There are other incidents that show high firepower as well. Netu was bombed to the point where magma started sipping through crust. And Sokar was expecting to re-do this feat with only a single Ha'tak.

And if i'm not mistaking there was even an episode where it's said a Ha'tak's weapons can reach even Tok'ra tunnels, that are located far beneath the ground itself.

Then there are incidents like Beachhead where a Ha'tak is able to provide something like 20% of all the power the shielding needed to evelop the planet. The rest of course came from the Gatebuster and whatever weaponsfire the Jaffa managed to deal before that.

And it's not a blue gas giant, it's a blue giant, as in a star. And speaking of stars, "Spacerace" shows us that even simple civilian owned craft, powered mostly by a mere Naq generator, is able to survive inside the corona of a normal star. And that was just one stage of the race, with other stages involving such fancy stuff as weapons platforms firing on the ships and tumbling through a dense field made up ice asteroids.

Can you say from what episodes are the first examples? Maybe I can manage to get those and see for myself. If there is enough evidence to change my mind on this matter, I’ll will. It’s not like my opinion is set on stone.
And my mistake about the blue giant star, I wrote that on a hurry. Sorry.

We even have Carter flat out stating that the blasts on the Goa'uld motherships are the equivalent of 200MT nukes. And Teal'c says that the system lords usually leave a planets entire surface irradiated and blasted if they've attacked it. And this does fit perfectly into the rest of the verse. Klorel and Apophis continuously talked about "burning their world to ashes" about how Klorel would get to choose which city to burn down first.

And like i said once already, there are plenty of other ways to see why assuming low yields would be a tad unrealistc. The Goa'uld and their bombs for instance, why don't they rely on nukes like Earth if their energy weapons are so bad? Why would a Deathglider have a yield similar to that of a ship thousands (if not more) times larger. Why would Earth not have been curbstomping the Goa'uld even with just the Prommie?

If you read my previous posts I’m not trying to minimize the firepower for the Goa’uld, only that some people is leaning too much to the high end calculations for the SG side.

Really? Earth, with only a few simple mines (i can actually only remember them saying they have one) have been able to create a multitude of nukes all by themselves. Anubis was able to send a large asteroid made of Naquadah hurling towards Earth and at that time he was at war with several other System Lords while Earth wasn't a threat, more of a nuisance. There have been numerous Goa'uld made Naq bombs on the show. Heck, even in the recent episode "Family Ties" it becomes quite apparent, that just one, a single Jaffa owning a single mine is able to fill up several cargoships with Naquadah to be used as a bombs. Even the starships are made out of Naquadah, not weapons-grade, but still Naquadah.

And if you watched some of the episodes, you'll notice that you only need an extremely small amount of Naquadah to enhance bombs to Gigaton level. There have been plenty of episodes, like "Need" where we are shown that even a failing Naquadah mine is able to produce enough Naquadah to build nukes on a regular basis.

No, i don't think it's all that scarce. Naquadriah however, i belive is.

I’m not arguing that naquadah is scarce, although is not abundant as sea water on Earth. Having watched some of the episodes, my point is that enhanced naquadah weapons are scarce, even when plenty of them would have been of great use. Despite all the reasons that you stated, something must prevent them to deploy those things on massive numbers.

[l33telboi]

Then, how does those things work? Shouldn’t the very impact on the shields make the nukes go off?

No, nukes usually have to have some time to make itself go boom. If they are suddenly and without warning smashed into something, they won't have time to arm.

Well, fair enough. However that means that from this example we cannot claim that Ha’tak shields can resist explosions in excess of a 1000 megatons.

Not from that incident no. But i doubt anyone here has suggested as much either.

Since I haven’t seen the episode Nemesis and only Small Victories I concede the point, for now. However, also Trek ships from capital vessels to shuttlecrafts have survived reentries just fine.

I've never said that they haven't.

There are other incidents that show high firepower as well. Netu was bombed to the point where magma started sipping through crust. And Sokar was expecting to re-do this feat with only a single Ha'tak.

And if i'm not mistaking there was even an episode where it's said a Ha'tak's weapons can reach even Tok'ra tunnels, that are located far beneath the ground itself.

Then there are incidents like Beachhead where a Ha'tak is able to provide something like 20% of all the power the shielding needed to evelop the planet. The rest of course came from the Gatebuster and whatever weaponsfire the Jaffa managed to deal before that.

And it's not a blue gas giant, it's a blue giant, as in a star. And speaking of stars, "Spacerace" shows us that even simple civilian owned craft, powered mostly by a mere Naq generator, is able to survive inside the corona of a normal star. And that was just one stage of the race, with other stages involving such fancy stuff as weapons platforms firing on the ships and tumbling through a dense field made up ice asteroids.

Can you say from what episodes are the first examples?

The Netu episode was the one involving Sokar and the hell-prison. It was a two-parter and i think it was fairly early in the series, before anubis. I'm guessing season 3, perhaps 4. It's been a long while since i've watched those episodes. If you look through episode descriptions of the two parters in those two season then you'll find it. If you don't, just chime and i can do a more thorough search.

The second one i'm not sure. It's something i've heared said on Gateworld and i remember the episode. But not it's name. It's not in the first two season though. Most likely a season 3 or 4 thing again.

And my mistake about the blue giant star, I wrote that on a hurry. Sorry.

No worries.

If you read my previous posts I’m not trying to minimize the firepower for the Goa’uld, only that some people is leaning too much to the high end calculations for the SG side.

Fair enough.

I’m not arguing that naquadah is scarce, although is not abundant as sea water on Earth. Having watched some of the episodes, my point is that enhanced naquadah weapons are scarce, even when plenty of them would have been of great use. Despite all the reasons that you stated, something must prevent them to deploy those things on massive numbers.

It's never stopped Earth with only a few mines. They've shown a wide variety of Naquadah enhanced nukes. They've even fired nuke swarms at ships.

But yes, there is a reason naq nukes aren't used by the Goa'uld. Namely the fact that they are cumbersome when compared to energy weapons, they can be intercepted, they take time to produce, etc. This is the reason i think they rely on energy weapons. But all that would be moot if the energy weapons were so weak that they couldn't penetrated shielding.

[AFT]

No, nukes usually have to have some time to make itself go boom. If they are suddenly and without warning smashed into something, they won't have time to arm.

Ahh! Well, never mind.

Not from that incident no. But i doubt anyone here has suggested as much either.

I just meant that it is an example less for gigaton level shielding.

I've never said that they haven't.

Of course not. It was only to illustrate that very tough hulls are not an exclusive of the SG side.

The Netu episode was the one involving Sokar and the hell-prison. It was a two-parter and i think it was fairly early in the series, before anubis. I'm guessing season 3, perhaps 4. It's been a long while since i've watched those episodes. If you look through episode descriptions of the two parters in those two season then you'll find it. If you don't, just chime and i can do a more thorough search.

The second one i'm not sure. It's something i've heared said on Gateworld and i remember the episode. But not it's name. It's not in the first two season though. Most likely a season 3 or 4 thing again.

OK. I’ll see what I can find. No offense, but relying on second or even third hand information on a debate is very distasteful at least for me. That’s why I try to check first before posting even if that takes more time and if I’m in error I acknowledge that as soon as I find out.

It's never stopped Earth with only a few mines. They've shown a wide variety of Naquadah enhanced nukes. They've even fired nuke swarms at ships.

But yes, there is a reason naq nukes aren't used by the Goa'uld. Namely the fact that they are cumbersome when compared to energy weapons, they can be intercepted, they take time to produce, etc. This is the reason i think they rely on energy weapons. But all that would be moot if the energy weapons were so weak that they couldn't penetrated shielding.

I’m sure there are reasons that prevents their generalized deployment and that energy weapons are very useful, but anyway those weapons are scarce, as late as SG Atlantis Second Season they only deployed six to try and stop the Wraith. When did they fire nuke swarms? And more important, those were regular nukes or enhanced ones?

[Mr. Oragahn]

So, Trek calculations for firepower ranges from kilotons to very high teraton levels and so are the calculations for SG, not very surprising since both shows are very inconsistent in that regard.

As far as demonstrated, there's not such a vast discrepancy regarding Stargate's firepower. You could always cite two examples (Imhotep's camp and Kelowna), but they've already been explained and there's even info in the episodes to know why they were holding back.
Otherwise, the calcs are particularily rare, and all you have is the base figure of 200 MT and a couple of low gigatons claims at max, for reasonnable low ends. Grenade level explosions are not reasonnable figures, just as much as semi planet-busting claims from an episode.

We're far from the gap of a dozen of orders of magnitude that plagues Star Trek, because one single event seems to suggest a level of power that goes against a vast range of lower yields.

However low gigaton firepower for phasers from Masks and yield for a single photon torpedo around 500 megatons as per Skin of Evil (making a full spread of photon torpedoes superior to phasers) is then not high end but a very reasonable medium ground.

I'd rather hear someone rationalize the events and visuals of Masks before expecting people to accept the numbers, and especially tell me where the asteroid was vaporized when Geordi only planed to melt it.

On the other hand, teraton or even high gigaton level firepower and shielding for SG is the very high end for them since all such calculations comes from a Ha’tak sitting on the orbit of a blue gas giant, an example that is not supported for other events on the show.

I've presented a list of several references that show the destructive yields of naqahdah.
Your standards of how a legitimate low end becomes an exuberant high end are puzzling.
If their weapons were so weak, they'd not bother with fancy blobs of energized matter. They'd just stick those big globes on a rocket and throw them at their enemy the old classical way, because that would get rid of their enemies much faster. With projectiles which would easily sit in the gigaton range, it would be a short affair.
Even Ra pompously appreciated how we finally entered the age of the atom. It's pointless to even dare pretend that the Goa'uld couldn't come with such primitve weapons.

The fundamental difference between Trek and Gate is that Trek needs centuries and enough technobabble to manage to reach yields in the many hundreds of megatons. For Stargate, it just requires a good old nuke and a few bits of raw naqahdah, and voila!

All I’ve been reading here is something along the lines of “if a Ha’tak can take that much energy on that example then the shots fired to another Ha’tak on some other event must be on the gigaton range since only six were enough to bring down the shields and so on and so forth”, whatever the visuals for that example might be. While the same can be applied to the Trek side and the TDIC example and say that Trek shields can take high level teraton firepower with no regard to visuals or other examples.

TDIC is a completely super exceptionnal event that can't be rationalized as long as you want to involve regular weaponry (DET), and puts Trek's firepower in a league that's many orders of magnitude beyond what it should sit.
I may have not seen many episodes, but I've been reading enough debates to see that TDIC is largely disregarded, even by a portion of the Trek fanbase.

So, in short, applying medium end calculations for the Trek side and high end for the SG side. Not fair on my book, but anyway with a numerical advantage of some 30 to one, the Trek side might still have a chance to win this. And about all the stuff over naquadah enhanced weapons, for all I seen and read those are fairly scarce, so I don’t think that SG ships would start using hand-full loads of that weapons any time soon.

So taking the former into account and using same level calculations for both sides, I’ll say that the Trek factions wins this on either a hard fought victory or a cakewalk over the SG forces.

Naqahdah isn't scarce. Actually, I recall Earth's system said to be an oddity.

[l33telboi]

No offense, but relying on second or even third hand information on a debate is very distasteful at least for me.

It's not second hand information. It's stuff i saw a very long time ago myself. Admittedly i had forgotten about the whole "they can reach the Tok'ra tunnels thing" or missed the significance entirely when i first saw the episode. But when it was brought up i did recall the incident. It's the episode where we see Al'Kesh flying around bombing the surface.

I’m sure there are reasons that prevents their generalized deployment and that energy weapons are very useful, but anyway those weapons are scarce, as late as SG Atlantis Second Season they only deployed six to try and stop the Wraith.

What? They even had the Deadalus filled with MK 8s when it arrived to Atlantis. And this is measly earth, that at this time didn't really 'own' anything at all in the galaxy.

When did they fire nuke swarms? And more important, those were regular nukes or enhanced ones?

SGA 3x01. And no, they didn't say they were enhanced, but as we've seen in later episodes, like "Family Ties", even the stuff they refer to just as 'missiles' do have yields as high up as the gigatons.

[Mr. Oragahn]

In Summit and Last Stand, we have confirmation that a part of the tunnel network is close to the surface, enough so al'kesh bombing is enough to shake crucial rooms and even open holes for troops to invade the Tok'ra base.

Technically, those crystals could allow a network to go in any direction, to any depth, but it seems the Tok'ra prefer to stay close to the surface, even if they use rings to go out in the open.

TEAL'C
If their intent was simply to kill the Tok'ra they have weapons that could have destroyed this facility from space.

On the same hand, there's this from the first Tok'ra episode:

TEAL'C
It is said throughout the legend of the Tok'ra, when they arrive on a planet they go deep underground, it is said they possess the technology to actually grow tunnels.

This would actually make sense to minimize possible energy signatures seen from space.

However, we know that a bunch of gliders from Anubis can detect asgard secret underground facilities hundred of km below the surface, by flying into an ionized soup.

If all gliders were capable of that, it would be pointless to go so deep imho.

On a completely unrelated note, it's funny to see how Osiris warned the other System Lords from threats that exist outside of the Milky Way.

[Mr. Oragahn]

I know of nothing canonical that would suggest photon torpedoes have the ability to focus their explosive energies the way that you suggest. If they could do that, they would likely be the prefered weapon in virtually all situations over the phaser.

I assumed that since even we can focus some contemporary nukes, low yields however atm, a civilisation that uses all sorts of babble and tougher materials would have no problem to make even megaton level torpedoes slightly focused.

I don't dispute that. Most weapons, like nukes, deliver their energy in fractions of a second. While wattage seems to have a relevance on Trek shields, it doesn't seem to be so for Gate shields.

That seems unlikely given what I've seen of SG shielding.

Please point to evidence that wattage has a definitive relevance.

Plus Gate's blobs of energy are very similar in that it take a frame for a bolt to go from menacing projectile about to hit to completely splashed pancake of energy washed upon a shield. Obviously, a very quick reaction as well.
Faster than a phaser.

That doesn't mean anything, particularly since a phaser is often a sustained beam, and could be delivering a very large amount of energy every second. The dwell time ability is a very serious advantage for phasers. Also, what you describe also matches what we seen when disruptor bolt weapons are used in Trek.

A gate "blob" is not sustained at all. In the expense of one frame, it goes from there to not there anymore. There my point about how it delivers its energy fast.
There are a couple of beam weapons in Gate but they're quite scarse and often involve exotic mechanisms, since they manage to drain god waful high levels of energy without displaying much of the expected DET effects.

Graham worked it out using the Nuclear Weapon's website FAQ formula for calculating yeilds:


Again taking the planet to be roughly Earth-sized, the damage would cover 170 million square kilometres. To further reduce the yield of our torpedoes I'm going to assume that 90% of this was done by the beam weapons, with only 17 million square kilometres affected by torpedoes. And to cut the numbers down even more I'm going to assume that the damage inflicted was of the most feeble kind. According to the High Energy Weapons Archive quoted above, for any given weapon yield the most widespread effect is thermal - meaning any nuclear bomb will start fires at far greater distances than it will knock down buildings. So for my low end estimate I am going to say that the 17 million square kilometre area was only affected to the extent of having fires started on it.

The fleet launches only ten torpedoes to cause this damage, so each one accounts for 1.7 million square kilometres. This means that each torpedo has lit fires over an area of about 735 kilometres radius. Using the above equations we can get an idea of the yield required to do this damage :

r_thermal = Y0.41
735 = Y0.41
7352.44 = Y
Y = 9,793,653.38


This is in multiples of 2.5 kilotons, so the overall yield would be :

Yield = 9,793,653.38 x 2,500
= 24,484,133,461.48 tons
= 24,484.13 Megatons


Giving each torpedo a yield of 'only' 24 thousand megatons.

Thank you.
I don't understand the assumptions behind his calcs though, nor how they're relevant to the episode.
We're still talking about TDIC, right?
Why does he assume the torps only providing 10% of the damage, since in that case, the assault fleet would have likely put their torps on maximum yield, and in all logic, represent an equal or likely larger level of firepower than phasers?
Plus what's that story about fires and other whatnots?
Where's the part about the crust destruction?

Where does info come from? May I see quotes, observations, counts, etc.?

From the TNG episode "The Nth Degree":


PICARD
Options, Number One?

RIKER
We can't use photon torpedoes.
An explosion this close to the
ship could cripple us.

WORF
Sir, recommend full phasers.

PICARD
Proceed.

WORF
Firing phasers.

Even a short while later, when the phasers are pumped up to maximum power do they not risk endangering the ship. Eventually Barclay finds a way to enhance the E-D shields to withstand the the torpedoes' blast and Picard orders:

PICARD
Mister Worf. Photon torpedos.
Maximum yield, full spread.

Thank you.
So it really seems that those Federation torpedoes are not focused at all. Pure ol' omniblast as I see.

You obviously did not go through the Trekcore.com archives for the episode:

http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/display ... 168&pos=68

The phaser beam starts off narrow, then widens out during the firing process. Given that a standard phaser beam is about 6 meters wide (the width of the arrays themselves), the stretch of comet surface seen here easily is a kilometer wide.

Wrong wording. Sorry. My point is that a later shot with the alien structure in the background precisely shows that it's bigger than the Enterprise.
However, a shot from the tractor beam holding the E-D tight reveals that the asteroid woudn't be more than 3 km wide at best.

What is particularily odd about that vaporization process is that the phasers were supposed to dig down to the core of the comet, then stop.
The claim is that they imparted so much energy that it made the whole ice vaporize even after it stopped firing. Odder when you look at how the asteroid looses mass.

There's also the fact that despite hitting the core, and thus putting most of the energy in this very core, the alien structure inside the comet still had plenty of big blocks of ice strapped on it. Quite weird to be since there supposedly was enough energy to let the comet melt on her own by letting the energy put into the core radiate over time and finish the job.
Yet, we're supposed to believe that the ice on the other side of the comet would be completely vaporized, yet the very ice sitting in the core of the comet, where the beam hit, and where most of the energy was supposed to be deposited, managed to survive to a certain extent.

There is nothing too odd about it. The phasers where set to widen, which is what we see.

I don't dispute that.

That would more evenly distribute the phaser's energies over a larger surface area, and therefore melt the ice without necessarily causing harm to the D'Arsay archive inside it.

I've not claimed it should have.
Plus visuals tend to show that the beam wasn't that spread after all. It still was extremely focused.

The remaining ice is only a tiny fraction of the overall starting amount, but is clearly indicative of the care that was being taken in the operation.

This was not my point.

Besides, the station is largely doused in the phaser beam.

My point is that regarding the way energy was imparted, the way the ice melted is completely nonsensical.

The phaser hits the core. The energy will be dispatched as a radiating tunnel down to the core. The other side of the comet will only be molten by the energy radiation.
In all logic, the last bit to go should have been located on the hidden side of the station, opposite to the E-D, and should have looked like a stalactite.
Even more, since the beam was hitting the station as large, most of the energy was to be found there.
Yet, the last bit to melt is the ice surrounding the station, and above all it shrank inwards, towards the station.

Above all, vaporizing water would have been unnecessary and risky since they didn't know what was inside that comet. Not only would it be overkill to vaporizing all the water, but without knowing what there was inside, it was uncalled and unwise.

Finally, Geordi himself said they would melt the ice, not vaporize it.

What I am saying is that the visuals are damn fishy, and people assume vaporization when it's not what was planned, when it was not necessary, and when it was possibly dangerous to whatever was inside the comet.

Finally, we will remember that it actually took around ten seconds to actually reach the core of that asteroid.

As quickly hinted above, since the energy was supposed to be deposited down to the core, the way the comet melted/vaporized isn't logical at all. It shrinks like if you put an icecube inside a hot room, not like if a canal of energy drilled through it and had the core radiate the heat.
And it keeps shrinking even after the phaser has stopped firing.

The comet should have actually ended looking like a fish bowl.

Not really, since the operation started from the outside, and the phaser beam was apparently continuely widened, it isn't terribly suprising we see what we do. That the D'Arsay archive structure might have been heated up enough to continue the process a little bit further after the phasers ceased firing is again an indication of the precision involved.

Actually, it's totally surprising and physically impossible. Even more if as you suggest, the structure was heated up a bit to radiate heat, which would be the only solution to still find a source of heat to melt the remaining ice. The point is that no ice should have actually remained on the station. The last bits of ice to melt should have actually been the ones the more distant from the core, from the station.

If you watch the video, you'll see how this makes no sense.

The low gigaton range numbers are perfectly doable given what we know.

Not with the visuals that do not make sense.
Not with an asteroid around 2 or 3 km wide, and with a structure in its middle that eats a significant percentage of the whole volume. Maybe not 50% as I suggested earlier on, but still big nonetheless.

Right, it's a variance, and they can't exceed that variance in the total overall output of the phasers, or they'll wind up burning off the Pentharn atmosphere. Some quotes you forgot to look at:


The scene just before Data briefs Picard:


GEORDI
Have you rerun the phase reversal
figures, Data?

DATA
There were no errors, Geordi.
The variance must be no more than
point zero six terawatts.

As they have to avoid putting out 60 GW more than what is needed.
What is needed is unknown, but the result in the same. The operation they're about to execute is very meticuous, and requires a very specific level of energy. Whatever this level is, if there's a difference of 60 GW, the plan fails and the planet is torched.
There's nothing to chant about there.

...and later Picard trying to persuade Professor Rasmussen into helping them:



PICARD
Mister La Forge has a possible
solution. The margin of error
is extremely critical, but if it's
successful, there's no more
threat.

Yes, the operation is delicate. There's nothing more to read there. It's critical because of the very context and nature of the operation. It's made clear well enough.
If they mess up by even a few tons of TNT, the party's over.

Still later:


GEORDI
Keep the phasers on active surge
control, Worf. We're only going
to have one shot at this.

It just shows, once again, that they have to keep an eye on the surges due to phaser power generation.
It reveals that normally, they don't seem to bother with those checkings that much.
However, it's not because 60 GW is a level of surge that is not acceptable here, that what they accept when they fire their phasers on a daily routine is many orders of magnitude more.

14.33 extra tons of TNT per second. That's not impressive at all, and certainly not a valid basis to claim "vastly greater power outputs".
It's, in fact, a very small power output. And largely illustrates the risk of the process.

All it points out is that they have to be very cautious, and even weight each ton of TNT, otherwise, 14.33 in that bag of flammable bits and it's the whole atmosphere that goes off.

It's like they had a gun a 100 gigawatts, then they must not exceed 160 gigawatts max.
Even worse, if we're talking statistics, the variance is the square of the variation in distribution, which could apply to a quantification of energy or power, ad you'd be looking at a variation of 7.7 GW.

It's not like Data is saying that they must not exceed a difference of nine or ten orders of magnitude. That would be a totally absurd statement to make, and suggest that Trek computers are not fine tuned enough to spot a difference by so many orders of magnitude.

Again, the dialog, which you either did not see, or chose to ignore, does not support that notion. They are talking about this being a "very critical" margin. It cannot be so wide a margin, or Picard would not be speaking they way he is. This is a very fine edge variance where they need enough power to do the job, but not allow the variance to slip and cause a catastrophe to occur.

Yes and? How does it disagree with my point?
They need power X for their operation. They're not allowed more than a difference of 60 GW in their output, something they don't bother about usually, apparently.

Again, if they needed say 100 GW (likely far far more, but that's just an example in the same ballpark, to keep the unnecessary zeros out), they would have to be sure not to burst over the 160 GW critical limit.

* The large asteroid in TNG's "The Pegasus" could be destroyed using "most of" the E-D's 250 photon torpedoes. Big controversy here in the scalings, but low megaton range firepower to gigatons is possible, depending on your starting assumptions.

To blow the asteroid apart (assuming igneous rock, and 8.5 km wide) into 10 meter fragments requires a little more than 614 MT. Let's say that "most of" means 200 torpedoes, that means 614/200 = 3.07 MT. Wong's calculator is also conservative for our purposes since it assumes that the torpedoes' are exploding as though planted in the center of the asteroid.

Let's say most of rather means close to 250. Eventually 230 or 240.

Since the torpedoes will obviously have to start at the surface of the asteroid and work their way inward, it will likely require higher total firepower to make up for the losses due to explosion geometries.

10 m wide bits is more than enough, when hurled left and right, to crush a ship located inside. Even more, the torpedoes could be directly fired inside the asteroid. If a ship went there, a swarm will be able to do so as well with large ease. Safe if those torpedoes are inert projetiles once fired.
With the unfocused warhead, a lack of manoeuverability for a missile in the future would be worth a good laugh.

On the other hand, the melt and vaporization energies vastly exceed the above amount, again for an 8.5 km asteroid. Just to cause melting of a granite asteroid would mean expending just shy of 473 gigatons of energy, or 2.65 gigatons per torpedo, assuming 200 of the weapons are expended in the effort.

That's a fairly simple, but reasonably conservative estimate.

It's not conservative in the slightest to require even melting half of the asteroid when simply blasting it to pieces would be plain enough.

Destroying that asteroid doesn't require vaporization, not even complete fragmentation. They wanted to be sure the Pegasus would be taken down along the necessary parts of the asteroid. Being crushed inside an asteroid turned into bits thrown left and right would surely prove devastating for a ship which was apparently stuck and unshielded.

Again, you get caught here in your ignorance. There was no "they".

I just put "they" because I wasn't arsed to type Commander Riker, but the rest was from the transcript. But go for Commander Riker if it makes your day.

It was Commander Riker's suggestion with the ulterior motive of him not wanting Admiral Pressman salvaging the phase cloak, which was made in violation of a treaty made with the Romulans. But here is what Riker says when suggestions are called for by Pressman:


RIKER
(to Picard)
I recommend we destroy the
asteroid. It would take most
of our photon torpedoes, but it
would preclude any possibility of
the Pegasus falling into Romulan
hands.

He's not talking about blasting the asteroid into big chunks. He's talking about totally destroying the thing and the Pegasus with it. He's not talking about blowing up part of the asteroid to dig out the other ship, then destroy it. He's talking the whole sheebang.

This is your interpretation, and looks like inflating the thing out of necessity.
How is that ship going to survive if it's smashed by hypervolicity shrapnel, debris between 10 meters and more, and doused in the firepower of the torpedoes themselves, huh?
The thing probaly has nacelles still largely filled with whatever Trek uses as fuel.
If it's antimatter and if there's a leak, which won't be hard considering the chaos that would surround the ship, I believe things will go very bad.

You mean they never had the opportunity to display such a level of firepower before during the TNG-era.

Not only I'm sure we could find many instances where such a level of firepower should have been expected and demonstrated in TNG (for example, Pegasus), but you're assuming they had that level of firepower (mid gigaton to teraton) to boot.

Again, the Pegasus asteroid can be scaled up using the Romulan warbird, and you can calculate as I showed above to reach firepower in the hundreds of gigatons.

So that's all we have? Accept an overkill high end to legitimate an excessive wankastic episode that comes like it's from another reality?

What is stated could be misreading of sensors, metaphorical language and exageration, and the opening volley shows things that have nothing to do with multi teraton level weapons exploding in atmosphere, at least if we're talking about explosing devices.
Now, if you think about exotic chain reaction stuff..

No misreading. They knew going in there with crews of combat veterans what they were going to be able to do:

TAIN
(to Garak)
Our plan is to wait until we've
entered orbit of the Founders' planet,
then decloak and begin a massive
bombardment.

LOVOK
Computer analysis indicates that the
planet's crust will be destroyed
within one hour, and the mantle within
five.
GARAK
That should more than take care of
the Founders...

TAIN
Yes, it should. Unless they have
some planetary defenses we don't
know about. And the only person
here who might know the answer to
that question is Mister Odo.


Even if they later got false readings about the damage, it still doesn't explain away how a crew of combat veterans could be fooled into thinking their weapons could do something they actually couldn't.
-Mike

I give you that they are veterans.

But the guy who programmed that computer is a total moron. 1 hour to blast the crust, and only 6 hours to destroy the... mantle?
- First, how do you even destroy a mantle? Is it vaporization? They're going to vaporize the mantle over 6 hours? You really believe that?

- Secondly, how can you expect to do whatever to a mantle in 6 hours when your weapons still require 1 hour to destroy the crust? Just check Wong's calculator. Even if it was not totally accurate, check Wong's asteroid calculator. Try a diameter of 23.73 m. You end with 16.8 kilotons necessary to reach the melting temp, for hard nickel-iron, and 100 kilotons to directly reach vaporization.
So not only do you need vastly more energy to vaporize even something that's already molten, but if you take Earth as an example, the mantle largely outweighs the crust by an insane volume, since largely less than 1% of Earth's volume corresponds to the crust, while 70% are occupied by the mantle.

- Finally, this computer estimation is even more crap, since the opening volley destroyed 30% of the crust, by the same dialogue.
Let me check. Ah, destroyed in a couple of seconds at best, according to events.
Say what?

This is totally absurd, it does not make sense, it's written by people who may not fully understand the scope of the numbers they laid down, and it's self contradictory on at least two levels, if not three.

I was initially trying to help find solutions to this...

How thin is the crust? How thick is that mass of brown fluid (atmosphere of liquid) that seemed to cover the whole planet? There are places on Earth where the crust is less than 5 km thick under the ocean, and contemporary nukes could create chiasms in it. That's how it would seem scientists plan to send prove below the crust.
Make many cracks, and let the mantle do the rest.
Other people have rationalized a bit of this mess by saying that it was 30% of the crust in the zone they targeted.

THAT is a good effort and rationalization to make this event fit with an apparently larger bulk of info.
Not the other way round.

... but I can't even be arsed to go through that load of nonsense.

Mind you, Stargate has a case like that. In Redemption, they believe that a single 1 or 2 gigaton underground blast will destroy all life on Earth.
Totally absurd.

[Mike DiCenso]

I know of nothing canonical that would suggest photon torpedoes have the ability to focus their explosive energies the way that you suggest. If they could do that, they would likely be the prefered weapon in virtually all situations over the phaser.

Mr. Oragahn wrote:

I assumed that since even we can focus some contemporary nukes, low yields however atm, a civilisation that uses all sorts of babble and tougher materials would have no problem to make even megaton level torpedoes slightly focused.

Focusing slightly is one thing. I would imagine that 50% or so is about where they should be. Even if we were to accept this without any evidence, it would mean that torpedoes are still no less than around 100 or so megatons for an average range, which seems to also be around the average range for SG explosives.

I don't dispute that. Most weapons, like nukes, deliver their energy in fractions of a second. While wattage seems to have a relevance on Trek shields, it doesn't seem to be so for Gate shields.

That seems unlikely given what I've seen of SG shielding.

Please point to evidence that wattage has a definitive relevance.

Why wouldn't it? Even Atlantis' shields had a definite capactiy, one which could be overloaded after several days of bombardment. This is very similar to Trek shields, which can be overloaded after a specific time. The more wattage, the shorter the time it should take to knock out the shields.

That doesn't mean anything, particularly since a phaser is often a sustained beam, and could be delivering a very large amount of energy every second. The dwell time ability is a very serious advantage for phasers. Also, what you describe also matches what we seen when disruptor bolt weapons are used in Trek.

A gate "blob" is not sustained at all. In the expense of one frame, it goes from there to not there anymore. There my point about how it delivers its energy fast.
There are a couple of beam weapons in Gate but they're quite scarse and often involve exotic mechanisms, since they manage to drain god waful high levels of energy without displaying much of the expected DET effects.

Again, the way you explained it earlier, is very similar to an ST disruptor bolt. A quick blob that impacts and disipates over shields or armor. Perhaps you can provide a better discription, or perhaps screencaps to illustrate what you mean?

Thank you.
I don't understand the assumptions behind his calcs though, nor how they're relevant to the episode.
We're still talking about TDIC, right?
Why does he assume the torps only providing 10% of the damage, since in that case, the assault fleet would have likely put their torps on maximum yield, and in all logic, represent an equal or likely larger level of firepower than phasers?
Plus what's that story about fires and other whatnots?
Where's the part about the crust destruction?

Thirty percent of the planet's crust in TDiC was said to have been destroyed in the opening volley. His assumptions are perfectly valid given he is going to extreme lengths to be conservative by assuming that the fireballs and shockwaves are not destroying the crust itself in any way, and that the torpedoes are providing only a small relative fraction of the total explosive yeild. Nothing too hard to understand, and it still shows how photon torpedoes can be vastly more powerful than phasers, which ties in with "Masks", and the idea that even at one or two gigatons for a phaser, a torpedo or torpedoes will still outrange it.

Thank you.
So it really seems that those Federation torpedoes are not focused at all. Pure ol' omniblast as I see.

Possibly, or if you are right; that cannot focus all of the energy, and there will still be enough excess energy released from the combined torpedoes' explosion to cripple the E-D regardless.

Wrong wording. Sorry. My point is that a later shot with the alien structure in the background precisely shows that it's bigger than the Enterprise.
However, a shot from the tractor beam holding the E-D tight reveals that the asteroid woudn't be more than 3 km wide at best.

It took me a while to find the image you're refering to. The small section of the D'Arsay archive structure is at least 1.5 km tall, assuming that the tractor beam in that image only enlarges out to twice it's size over the distance and therefore the E-D is practically sitting on top of the archive. I think it better to use the phaser beam when scaled to the comet, and not to an unknown quantity like the D'Arsay tractor beam, and the distance from the archive to the E-D.

At any rate, a 3 km wide comet would be actually substantially larger than Graham or anyone else's estimate, and that means that even with only melting occuring, the phasers are still doing a considerable amount of work.

According to Wong's calculator, the melt energies alone, never mind vaporization energies, is still around 1.8 gigatons of energy (163 megatons a second for an 11 second phaser firing).

That would more evenly distribute the phaser's energies over a larger surface area, and therefore melt the ice without necessarily causing harm to the D'Arsay archive inside it.

I've not claimed it should have.
Plus visuals tend to show that the beam wasn't that spread after all. It still was extremely focused.

The beam is shown widening. We do not see what happens after the scene cuts away, so to claim that the beam stays at the same state through the whole firing is a bit disengenous. It might, but since the goal was to not harm the core of the comet and spreading the phaser energies out in a wide beam, it is only logical that the beam was widened as the firing went on.

The remaining ice is only a tiny fraction of the overall starting amount, but is clearly indicative of the care that was being taken in the operation.

This was not my point.

Besides, the station is largely doused in the phaser beam.

My point is that regarding the way energy was imparted, the way the ice melted is completely nonsensical.

The phaser hits the core. The energy will be dispatched as a radiating tunnel down to the core. The other side of the comet will only be molten by the energy radiation.
In all logic, the last bit to go should have been located on the hidden side of the station, opposite to the E-D, and should have looked like a stalactite.
Even more, since the beam was hitting the station as large, most of the energy was to be found there.
Yet, the last bit to melt is the ice surrounding the station, and above all it shrank inwards, towards the station.

The phaser did not hit the core immediately, if at all. It clearly starts at the surface, and as the scene cuts away, the archive is just starting to become exposed, but there is still some (glowing) material between the beam and the archive structure. Given that they are not "tunneling", but apparently removing the outer layers of the nucleous' ice to expose the archive, it only stands to reason that they are using the wide beam to cover a large outer layer all around, possibly removing more on one side, but still keeping things fairly even over the course of the operation.

Above all, vaporizing water would have been unnecessary and risky since they didn't know what was inside that comet. Not only would it be overkill to vaporizing all the water, but without knowing what there was inside, it was uncalled and unwise.

Finally, Geordi himself said they would melt the ice, not vaporize it.

What I am saying is that the visuals are damn fishy, and people assume vaporization when it's not what was planned, when it was not necessary, and when it was possibly dangerous to whatever was inside the comet.

Even without vaporization, we still have gigaton level firepower, especially since we have now established a comet nucleous size in excess of 3 km.

Finally, we will remember that it actually took around ten seconds to actually reach the core of that asteroid.

As quickly hinted above, since the energy was supposed to be deposited down to the core, the way the comet melted/vaporized isn't logical at all. It shrinks like if you put an icecube inside a hot room, not like if a canal of energy drilled through it and had the core radiate the heat.
And it keeps shrinking even after the phaser has stopped firing.

The comet should have actually ended looking like a fish bowl.

Not really, since the operation started from the outside, and the phaser beam was apparently continuely widened, it isn't terribly suprising we see what we do. That the D'Arsay archive structure might have been heated up enough to continue the process a little bit further after the phasers ceased firing is again an indication of the precision involved.

Actually, it's totally surprising and physically impossible. Even more if as you suggest, the structure was heated up a bit to radiate heat, which would be the only solution to still find a source of heat to melt the remaining ice. The point is that no ice should have actually remained on the station. The last bits of ice to melt should have actually been the ones the more distant from the core, from the station.

If you watch the video, you'll see how this makes no sense.

I did watch the episode, several times, in fact. Nothing in my interpretation is out of line with the visuals. Certainly some of the heat could have been imparted to the structure. But that is only one possibility. The other, and more likely is that the E-D phasers widen continuously during the firing, and evenly melted (sublimated) the ice around the archive structure.

The low gigaton range numbers are perfectly doable given what we know.

Not with the visuals that do not make sense.
Not with an asteroid around 2 or 3 km wide, and with a structure in its middle that eats a significant percentage of the whole volume. Maybe not 50% as I suggested earlier on, but still big nonetheless.

The structure does not "eat" a significant volume of the comet. Given the nearly spherical shape of the comet (it's a comet, not an asteroid, or the energies for melting and vaporization would likely go up by orders of magnitude), plus the fact that the archive's structure is not a solid cylindrical shape and has lots of space wasted, the comet will make up the vast majority of the volume. Let's say a huge 30% of the volume is the D'arsay archive structure. That still means 1.2 gigatons will be required to melt the remaining ice.

Again, the dialog, which you either did not see, or chose to ignore, does not support that notion. They are talking about this being a "very critical" margin. It cannot be so wide a margin, or Picard would not be speaking they way he is. This is a very fine edge variance where they need enough power to do the job, but not allow the variance to slip and cause a catastrophe to occur.

Yes and? How does it disagree with my point?
They need power X for their operation. They're not allowed more than a difference of 60 GW in their output, something they don't bother about usually, apparently.

Again, if they needed say 100 GW (likely far far more, but that's just an example in the same ballpark, to keep the unnecessary zeros out), they would have to be sure not to burst over the 160 GW critical limit.

You still don't get it. They are saying things like "as little as", "critical margins", and "variance". To say "as little as", indicates that the overall power output is far greater than you are claiming it to be. If it was as you are trying to interpret it as, Data would have said "as much as". Thus we have here a very small, critical margin of error. A similar comparison would be the reentry corridor for the Apollo spacecraft. That corridor in comparison to the overall trajectory the spacecraft had to follow and scale of the Earth-Moon system as a whole was a tiny, seemingly impossible-to-aim-for fraction. That's what was being aimed for here for dramatic reasons in "A Matter of Time".

* The large asteroid in TNG's "The Pegasus" could be destroyed using "most of" the E-D's 250 photon torpedoes. Big controversy here in the scalings, but low megaton range firepower to gigatons is possible, depending on your starting assumptions.

To blow the asteroid apart (assuming igneous rock, and 8.5 km wide) into 10 meter fragments requires a little more than 614 MT. Let's say that "most of" means 200 torpedoes, that means 614/200 = 3.07 MT. Wong's calculator is also conservative for our purposes since it assumes that the torpedoes' are exploding as though planted in the center of the asteroid.

Let's say most of rather means close to 250. Eventually 230 or 240.

What of it? Adding a couples tens of more torpedoes into it won't change things significantly, and on the other end of the spectrum, as you will see, "most of" can also mean as little as 160 torpedoes...

Since the torpedoes will obviously have to start at the surface of the asteroid and work their way inward, it will likely require higher total firepower to make up for the losses due to explosion geometries.

10 m wide bits is more than enough, when hurled left and right, to crush a ship located inside. Even more, the torpedoes could be directly fired inside the asteroid. If a ship went there, a swarm will be able to do so as well with large ease. Safe if those torpedoes are inert projetiles once fired.
With the unfocused warhead, a lack of manoeuverability for a missile in the future would be worth a good laugh.

This is addressed below with the size of the cloak that Riker really wants to destroy. As for manuverbility, we've seen torpedoes fly with great precision to a target when required.

On the other hand, the melt and vaporization energies vastly exceed the above amount, again for an 8.5 km asteroid. Just to cause melting of a granite asteroid would mean expending just shy of 473 gigatons of energy, or 2.65 gigatons per torpedo, assuming 200 of the weapons are expended in the effort.

That's a fairly simple, but reasonably conservative estimate.

It's not conservative in the slightest to require even melting half of the asteroid when simply blasting it to pieces would be plain enough.

Even melting half the asteroid asteroid requires 236 gigatons, or .98 gigatons, if 230 torpedoes are expended in the effort. Conversely, I would still be well in my rights to say that "most of" means "only" 160 torpedoes expended, and I also decide that the asteroid is the full 40 km. So that means that 4,930,000 gigatons is expended in the effort of just melting melting the thing, or 30 teratons per torpedo.

See how that works? As has already been pointed out, "The Pegasus" is a bad example because you can wank it up or down as you like.

Destroying that asteroid doesn't require vaporization, not even complete fragmentation. They wanted to be sure the Pegasus would be taken down along the necessary parts of the asteroid. Being crushed inside an asteroid turned into bits thrown left and right would surely prove devastating for a ship which was apparently stuck and unshielded.

Again, you get caught here in your ignorance. There was no "they".

I just put "they" because I wasn't arsed to type Commander Riker, but the rest was from the transcript. But go for Commander Riker if it makes your day.

Again, context. A group of experts deciding after careful study and deliberation versus an off-the-cuff statement by a desperate man (though he is still an officer and expert) are two entirely different matters. You can see the size of the cloak here at Pressman's feet (the cylinder his hand is on):

http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/display ... 63&pos=250

It's small enough to survive the ship's being broken up into pieces by some rock chunks. Riker knows that, so it makes little sense he'd want anything less than the total and absolute destruction of not only the asteroid, but the Pegasus.

He's not talking about blasting the asteroid into big chunks. He's talking about totally destroying the thing and the Pegasus with it. He's not talking about blowing up part of the asteroid to dig out the other ship, then destroy it. He's talking the whole sheebang.

This is your interpretation, and looks like inflating the thing out of necessity.
How is that ship going to survive if it's smashed by hypervolicity shrapnel, debris between 10 meters and more, and doused in the firepower of the torpedoes themselves, huh?
The thing probaly has nacelles still largely filled with whatever Trek uses as fuel.
If it's antimatter and if there's a leak, which won't be hard considering the chaos that would surround the ship, I believe things will go very bad.

The Pegasus had been partially buried for over twelve years! If it was going to have blown up, it would have done so a long time ago when the phase cloak failed, and the ship mostly materialized in the solid rock of the asteroid! The ship had no power whatsoever on it's own, it had to have power transfered over to it from the E-D for anything to operate.

On top of that you still keep failing to grasp the context of the situation. Riker wants to make sure that the phase cloak is utterly destroyed. If the ship is destroyed as a whole, but individual parts survive, like the cloak, then it's a pointless exercise to just blast the asteroid to chunks.

You mean they never had the opportunity to display such a level of firepower before during the TNG-era.

Again, the Pegasus asteroid can be scaled up using the Romulan warbird, and you can calculate as I showed above to reach firepower in the hundreds of gigatons.

So that's all we have? Accept an overkill high end to legitimate an excessive wankastic episode that comes like it's from another reality?

Neither TDiC, nor "The Pegasus", are from alternate universes. One can be made to fit with the other by simple changes in the assumptions. The fact that the Pegasus firepower can be scaled up to within a reasonable order of magnitude of the TDiC firepower is important, whether you like to admit it or not. My preference is for the medium ranges, which also happen to match up with those from most of SG. Once we have an agreement on that, then we can move on. You on the other hand, are the one demanding we except "wankastic" upper range SG firepower, while insisting on us taking only the lower range for ST.

I give you that they are veterans.

But the guy who programmed that computer is a total moron. 1 hour to blast the crust, and only 6 hours to destroy the... mantle?
- First, how do you even destroy a mantle? Is it vaporization? They're going to vaporize the mantle over 6 hours? You really believe that?

No, that is a fallacy. There is no indication that the information was false, or that the people running the computer analysis were idiots.

- Secondly, how can you expect to do whatever to a mantle in 6 hours when your weapons still require 1 hour to destroy the crust? Just check Wong's calculator. Even if it was not totally accurate, check Wong's asteroid calculator. Try a diameter of 23.73 m. You end with 16.8 kilotons necessary to reach the melting temp, for hard nickel-iron, and 100 kilotons to directly reach vaporization.

Lots of conditions can lead to that. The crust of the Founder's homeworld might actually be very thick (as planetary bodies like the Moon and Mars are believed to have), and the mantle relatively thin, ect.

So not only do you need vastly more energy to vaporize even something that's already molten, but if you take Earth as an example, the mantle largely outweighs the crust by an insane volume, since largely less than 1% of Earth's volume corresponds to the crust, while 70% are occupied by the mantle.

Who said that "destroy" equals "vaporize"? No one one. For all we know they are blasting holes in the crust over time, then blasting off chunks of the mantle with each volley/

- Finally, this computer estimation is even more crap, since the opening volley destroyed 30% of the crust, by the same dialogue.
Let me check. Ah, destroyed in a couple of seconds at best, according to events.
Say what?

A conservative planning estimate on their part when you look at the context of them carrying out the operation while the nearest Jem'Hadar bases were some seven hours distant.


This is totally absurd, it does not make sense, it's written by people who may not fully understand the scope of the numbers they laid down, and it's self contradictory on at least two levels, if not three.

I was initially trying to help find solutions to this...

How thin is the crust? How thick is that mass of brown fluid (atmosphere of liquid) that seemed to cover the whole planet? There are places on Earth where the crust is less than 5 km thick under the ocean, and contemporary nukes could create chiasms in it. That's how it would seem scientists plan to send prove below the crust.
Make many cracks, and let the mantle do the rest.
Other people have rationalized a bit of this mess by saying that it was 30% of the crust in the zone they targeted.

THAT is a good effort and rationalization to make this event fit with an apparently larger bulk of info.
Not the other way round.


... but I can't even be arsed to go through that load of nonsense.

Mind you, Stargate has a case like that. In Redemption, they believe that a single 1 or 2 gigaton underground blast will destroy all life on Earth.
Totally absurd.

So? How does that equate to TDiC in any real way? None. There is no evidence that they were wrong, and analysis by Starfleet saw no problems with the plan, either. Until we have hard evidence, there is no reason to assume the Tal-Shiar and Obsidian Order planners were idiots.
-Mike