Starfleet Jedi

Picard, my point is that the quote you are using states that the entire sky was basically filled with intersecting turbolaser bolts. Your same site thinks that HTL's have a RoF of one shot per 10 seconds, yet you also claim that the turbolasers in this quote are HTL's, even though they can fill the entire sky.

Do you see the contradiction here? Either you need to edit your RoF calc or admit that those were LTL's.

And your justification for the asteroid not being fragmented is silly, as you fail to recognize that the energy released would also vaporize large portions of the asteroid near the epicenter of the explosion, which would be the super-expanding gas you mention.

Besides, do you think that this:



Is the sign of some warhead that doesn't shatter stuff?

No, that is the image of a Jem Hadar bug ramming a Vor'cha cruiser...

StarWarsStarTrek wrote:Picard, my point is that the quote you are using states that the entire sky was basically filled with intersecting turbolaser bolts. Your same site thinks that HTL's have a RoF of one shot per 10 seconds, yet you also claim that the turbolasers in this quote are HTL's, even though they can fill the entire sky.

Do you see the contradiction here? Either you need to edit your RoF calc or admit that those were LTL's.

The comment is obviously hyperbole and poetic license due to the "infinite" part of it.

Star Wars starship tactical systems pages updated, as well as some other.

Praeothmin wrote:No, that is the image of a Jem Hadar bug ramming a Vor'cha cruiser...

Is it? My bad then, perhaps this:

...gah, I can't find a good image of a ship being hit by a photon torpedo. You'll clearly see from, for example, Dominion fights though.

We can also know from the Rise asteroid that photon torpedos do indeed fragment things, given that the asteroid was indeed, to their surprise, fragmented.

Why yes, Photon Torpedoes fragment things, who said they didn't?

But ships are made from stuff more resistant than simple iron-nickel asteroids, so the fact they are not vaporized are not proof that Photorps are weak...

Praeothmin wrote:Why yes, Photon Torpedoes fragment things, who said they didn't?

It's ok if I falsify facts Picard wrote:
Except that with photon torpedoes it is questionable wether fragmentation is achievable. M/AM reaction produces radiation which then heats surrounding matter - something like large scale microwave; classic "explosion" can happen only if there is gas around torpedo when it detonates. So part of asteroid might have been melted, but even then new torpedoes would vaporize that part (lest it cools down and solidifies).

Go ahead and try reading the above, and then come and tell me that Picard isn't bullshitting.

Go ahead and try reading the above, and then come and tell me that Picard isn't bullshitting.

Prove that I am bulshitting. I am making comment on real-life physics, not your imagination or Trek VFX. Do you know how photon torpedo works?

EDIT: Only way I can see fragmentation achievable is if, for example, dominantly-iron asteroid has enough of material which has lower melting/vaporization point than iron to completely isolate "patches" of iron in asteroid. When that material melts, you get fragmentation.

And if you are interested, photon torpedo is bascially weaponized microwave. Microwave is popular beacouse it cooks/bakes all parts of something put in it equally - surface of cake is baked equally to center of it. Of course, issue would be that density of rays drops with distance from torpedo (especially with old omni-directional model) and that rays are absorbed by material, but even then, material melts or is vaporized, not fragmented. It is not TNT.

SWST, I stand corrected...


Picard, how do Photorps work, exactly?
If they only release M/AM which in turn only releases waves, then where do the explosions come from in space?

@ Picard:I admit to be being slow on the uptake but even granting photon torpedoes are microwave generators wouldn't the very fact of heating something to such a degree as your implying cause the afflicted material to warp and buckle? To splinter apart so to speak? Sorry if my question sounds alarmingly dumb but that is how I thought the physical world operated.

Picard wrote:

Go ahead and try reading the above, and then come and tell me that Picard isn't bullshitting.

Prove that I am bulshitting. I am making comment on real-life physics, not your imagination or Trek VFX. Do you know how photon torpedo works?

EDIT: Only way I can see fragmentation achievable is if, for example, dominantly-iron asteroid has enough of material which has lower melting/vaporization point than iron to completely isolate "patches" of iron in asteroid. When that material melts, you get fragmentation.

And if you are interested, photon torpedo is bascially weaponized microwave. Microwave is popular beacouse it cooks/bakes all parts of something put in it equally - surface of cake is baked equally to center of it. Of course, issue would be that density of rays drops with distance from torpedo (especially with old omni-directional model) and that rays are absorbed by material, but even then, material melts or is vaporized, not fragmented. It is not TNT.

The fragmentation can easily happen with the process of heating up any material, especially an asteroid, with EMR.
It won't gently cook up a given section of an asteroid. The M/AM warhead will hardly be any different than a nuke, baring a difference in particles. Take the simulation of a nuclear detonation of a nuke inside a 500x600x700 meters wide asteroid. The core is plasma, the "crust" cracks. There's no reason, with an external detonation, why the rock on the lip of the crater and deep down the crater wouldn't crack.

Praeothmin wrote:Picard, how do Photorps work, exactly?
If they only release M/AM which in turn only releases waves, then where do the explosions come from in space?

PT combine matter and antimatter which reacts, releasing radiation. About 40% of that radiation is capable of interacting with matter, heating it to point of melting / vaporization. And since there is no atmosphere, there are no shockwaves.

As for explosions in space, it is simply bad VFX and case of "did not do the research" on the side of special effects team. Actual "explosion" of photon torpedo in space would look like very bright, very small and very short flash of light, barely larger than casing itself, regardless of actual yield (there would be differences, true, but nothing which would allow us to immediately say "this is 1 gigaton explosion and this is 5 gigaton one).

wouldn't the very fact of heating something to such a degree as your implying cause the afflicted material to warp and buckle?

Possible. That would still depend on material, and way it reacts to heating, thought. And heating itself would be relatively evenly distributed (that agains depends on way reaction goes on within torpedo itself, but ideally, that would be the case), so fragmentation will occur only if fragments of material with higher melting point are divided by zones of material with lower melting point, or by material which expands radically when heated. I might be wrong about it, thought.

Picard, a gigaton from a photon torpedo would still fragment the asteroid from the rapidly expanding gases; we can clearly see this from when photon torpedos shatter ships (and when it unexpectantly shattered that asteroid in Rise due to the asteroid being more durable than expected). Therefore, if they really were gigaton level, the first asteroid would have shattered the asteroid, and all the rest would have to deal with millions of flying fragments, meaning that vaporizing them all with just 250 or so torpedos would be impossible even with teraton torpedos.

Therefore, the only reasonable thing Riker would be suggesting would be fragmentation, because vaporizing a single object with multiple weapons hitting one at a time would be silly. The first would have fragmented it into millions of pieces, and the rest would be unable to do squat. It has to be fragmentation.

StarWarsStarTrek wrote:Therefore, if they really were gigaton level, the first asteroid would have shattered the asteroid, and all the rest would have to deal with millions of flying fragments, meaning that vaporizing them all with just 250 or so torpedos would be impossible even with teraton torpedos.

Why would the torpedo, and I assume you meant torpedo not asteriod, shatter the Pegasus asteriod into millions of flying pieces? We are dealing with a relativly inert lump of rock miles across being blasted at from the outside not a barrel of black powder.

Therefore, the only reasonable thing Riker would be suggesting would be fragmentation, because vaporizing a single object with multiple weapons hitting one at a time would be silly. The first would have fragmented it into millions of pieces, and the rest would be unable to do squat. It has to be fragmentation.

You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means! :)

In truth Riker wants to destroy the starship Pegasus and its fancy cloak which was buried somewhere inside of a multi-mile wide asteroid and has to do before the Romulans warship comes to investigate and has to so destroy Pegasus/cloak as to remove any trace of its existence preventing either the Romulans or Pressman from getting thier hands on it. So this is a very messy and inefficent bombardment with much energy squandered melting and vaporizing already fragmented material as the Enterprise tries to blast the entire things to ribbons. So no Riker believing more than one torp is needed does not mean he must be thinking only in fragmentation, much like if they were using nukes to "excuvate" vaporization is a unavoidable byproduct.

would still fragment the asteroid from the rapidly expanding gases

And where do you get these gases from? Torpedo would explode near surface, or bit away from surface, and any gasses would mostly go out into space. There might be some minor shattering, but nothing that will be able to fragment entire asteroid. And even those shattered bits would most probably be melted/vaporized by next torpedo. As it is already said, it is not black powder or TNT, even if I measured it in (giga)tons of TNT-equivalent ;-).