My recently started blog - need suggestions

[Picard]

@Mike DiCenso

This may be helpful:
http://picard578.blogspot.com/2010/08/g ... -hull.html


"Analyzing Arsenal of Freedom

Hand phasers have 5 to 12 GW power output, with 73 GW high end. In "Arsenal of Freedom" Tasha Yar states that Federation weapons cannot melt centimeter thick plate of tritanium. If we take that hand phaser can melt 5 cm^3 of tritanium per second (tritanium is able to withstand 12 000 ° C without showing any signs of melting) then heat capacity of tritanium is around 300 000 J/(cm^3 x K) to 720 000 J/(cm^3 x K). "

[Mike DiCenso]

Thanks, but that was not exactly the point of my calculations for the Yamato stardrive destruction. It was only to set a lower limit and nothing more. As for your estimate of tritanium, it is difficult to quantify since:

1.) How much tritanium is used in the hull of a GCS, versus say duranium.

2.) In the "Descent" example, how much of the hull's ability to withstand the star's enery was actually the physical properties of the materials as opposed to the Structural Integrity Fields (SIF), which we know per TNG's "The Chase" can act like a low-level deflector shield.

So setting the upper level for a GCS stardrive hull's destruction energies is not something I see being resolvable with information we have on hand, merely the lower limits.
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

Picard, you should really try your assertions on other boards as well... are you trying to throw the bases of a future "Star Trek: ICS" or something?

[Mike DiCenso]

Heh, heh, heh.... we must contact Paramount, CBS, and DK books immediately!
-Mike

[Picard]

Picard, you should really try your assertions on other boards as well... are you trying to throw the bases of a future "Star Trek: ICS" or something?

Not for now... but writing such book would certainly be fun.

[Picard]

About GCS hull... I think that at least outer hull is tritanium, and inner hull might be tritanium too. Intrepid class was built with duranium hull (I think bulkheads were still tritanium; I might have confused Galaxy and Intrepid classes thought) but it was built to be light and fast. Galaxy class was built to be premiere Federation explorer and warship - development of class, according to memory Alpha, begun in 2350s; Cardassian wars lasted from 2347 to 2350s; smaller skirmishes continued until 2360s. So it was designed during wartime and one would think that designers wanted to provide ship with maximum amount of protection possible - and tritanium is ideal for that. Nebula class survived direct hit from cardassian warship with no shields up, and no apparent damage, so it seems to suggest that hull of Nebula class is made from tritanium. In terms of protection, tritanium is way superior to any other material I heard of in either real life or Star Trek, except maybe to whatever material Klingons use in their ships - then again, it could be that they just make hull thicker. Also, Galaxy class hull seems to be far stronger than that of Intrepid class with similar thickness.

[Mike DiCenso]

Some problems here. As noted before, how much of the Phoenix's ability to survive unshielded the hits from the Cardassian warship were the result of the materials used in the hull construction's inherent strength, or were boosted by other means, such as SIF fields. See, that is what makes it so tough to quantify the materials here, even though we know that they are tough, is just how tough is the problem. The other issue is how much of the tritanium alloy is used in the hull construction. The bulkheads of both GCS and ICS are made tritanium. The hull of a class 2 shuttle made use of the alloy. Nitrium is a component material of the hull and other parts as well, and that has demonstrated in it's natrual form the ability to withstand tremendous temperatures as was the case in TNG's "Cost of Living" where a 200 or so meter core fragment was able to withstand 2 photon torpedo blasts and would have been too resistant to further use of torpedoes and probably phasers to break up before it struck an inhabited planet. Then there is duranium, which seems to be the most commonly used material, and that has definite limits, at least with 22nd century Earth metallurgy since a quarter kiloton was able to partially vaporize, and fragment an approximately 15 x 6 meter section of hull on the NX-01 in "Minefield".

So you are trying to quantify something that is is pretty difficult. What we do know is this: Tritanium is 21.4 times harder than diamond. Nitrium can withstand high temperatures generated by photon torpedoes' antimatter blasts, and duranium can withstand up to a 1/4 kiloton direct hit. The hull of a GCS can handle over 12,000 degrees C.
-Mike

[Picard]

Photon torpedoes are in high megaton to low gigaton range, which suggests that phasers and disruptors should be in that range too. Duranium is definetly not alloy used in GCS hull which leaves us with tritanium as its alloy. My calculations for "Rise" asteroid, giving between 10 and 22 gigatons for photon torpedo yield, fit relatively well with tritanium. Nitrium, if used in GCS hull, should have similar properties to tritanium in terms of resistance to weapons.

[Mike DiCenso]

You should look up the exmaples I listed. We know that nitrium is used in GCS hulls since the parasitic organism that threatens the ship in "Cost of Living" feeds off the stuff. But that's not quite the point. The point is how much of each material is made use of in the hull and exacly where, and how much of the ship's resistance is the materials and the rest SIF.
-Mike

[Picard]

I doubt SIF will affect photon torpedoes that much - maybe phasers and physical impacts, althought I'm not sure about first.

Also, from what I read here it seems to me that nitrium is similar in weapons resistance to tritanium. SIF might increase resistance of hull but we don't know how much, so I had to do with what I had.

[Lucky]

While your blog is nice and all Picard you still need to defend your claims when you enter a debate. You can't just make a post or two, and then leave the debate. People will not take you seriously.

[Mike DiCenso]

I doubt SIF will affect photon torpedoes that much - maybe phasers and physical impacts, althought I'm not sure about first.

SIF actually might have saved the E-D from instant destruction in ST:Generations when the Duras sisters' BoP opened fire with the two photon torpedoes.
-Mike

[Kor_Dahar_Master]

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Here is some stuff i found on SB.com regarding shielding and how wong fucked up his calcs:



1) The Sun's output that Wong is using is... well... Wrong (no pun intended). Granted, it's a small error (the output averages to 64 MW/m2) but none the less, someone with his credentials SHOULD know this.

2) Wong is assuming the temperature at the SURFACE of the sun... a fair mistake to be sure, but a deadly one. Observe:

Originally Posted by Loble-Murray-Rice. Earth Science. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Pretice-Hall, 1986.
"Temperatures in the photosphere usually do not exceed 6,000 °C"

Originally Posted by World Book Encyclopedia Vol. 18. New York: World Book, 1996.
"The sun's surface or photosphere is about 340 miles thick and its temperature about 5,500 °C"

Originally Posted by Davis, Dan & Anny Levasseur-Regourd. Our Sun. New York: BLA, 1989.
"The Solar surface is not solid like the earth's, but its high temperature 5,700 °C …."

So, as you can see, the temperature at the surface of the sun is around 6,000 degrees Celsius, or roughly 6,275 degrees Kelvin. Compare it to the temperature in the Corona:

Originally Posted by Prentice Hall Earth Science. Engelwood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1987: 73.
"Gas particles in the corona can reach temperatures of up to 1,700,000 °C"

Originally Posted by "Sun."Compton's Encyclopedia. Chicago: Compton's, 1996: 708.
"The corona has a temperature of about 2,000,000 K"

Originally Posted by Clark, Stuart. Stars and Atoms. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995: 106.
"1,000,000 K at the outer atmosphere (the corona)"

Originally Posted by "The Sun." World Book Encyclopedia. Chicago: Childcraft, 1977: 784c.
"Above the chromosphere is a region called the corona which has a temperature from 2,000,000 °F - 3,000,000 °F"

So, we have a range from 1 million degrees Kelvin to 2 million degrees Kelvin... so we'll go with 1.5 million degrees Kelvin (the variance is due to the fact that the Corona has no real single defined boundary).

So, right there, they were exposed to a very high level of heat... far in excess of what Wong is calculating based on.

To his first bullet: They went into the corona... this is stated and shown on screen.

1) They were actually in the photosphere, not the corona, since misuse of terminology is common in Federation starships. However, the ship was clearly visible as it moved into the corona, and it was nowhere near the photosphere. Furthermore, the Enterprise-D used a particle-beam to induce a solar prominence by aiming it downwards to hit the photosphere. This obviously indicates that the ship was well above the photosphere. Therefore, this explanation is unworkable.

Here's the problem... the Corona is ABOVE THE PHOTOSPHERE... apparently, Mike Wong doesn't know how a Star is put together...

His next point, about how diffuse the gases are... well, to be honest, it's total bunk. The Corona is not as diffuse as he claims (in fact, what he is describing is the areas astronomers call the Solar Wind, which is the extreme reaches of the Corona; in the case of our sun, that part actually reaches to EARTH... so yeah, it's a huge area). Near the Photosphere, where the Enterprise was, it is actually rather dense. Nowhere near liquid-like, but dense enough to throw his calculation right out the window. Now, as per NASA

Corona

Corona is the part of the sun's atmosphere whose temperature is greater than 500,000 K. The corona consists of such structures as loops and streams of ionized gas. The structures connect vertically to the solar surface, and magnetic fields that emerge from inside the sun shape them. The temperature of a given structure varies along each field line. Near the surface, the temperature is typical of the photosphere. At higher levels, the temperature has chromospheric values, then values of the transition region, then coronal values.

In the part of the corona nearest the solar surface, the temperature is about 1 million to 6 million K, and the density is about 100 million to 1 billion particles per cubic centimeter. The temperature reaches tens of millions of Kelvins when a flare occurs.

Thus, he is off by a little, but enough to bend the equation out of whack. Getting corrected numbers, courtesy of The Astrophysical Journal:

... the coronal cloud has a thermal energy of 10e51 ergs at 20 kpc...

which works out to roughly 10^44 joules, or a really, really large fucking number.

Now, at this point, I don't feel the need to continue going over his "numbers"... right here we see his energy calcs were off by an order of 10^47 magnitude... that alone should show what kind of energy that they were absorbing.




.

[Who is like God arbour]

[...] Granted, it's a small error (the output averages to 64 MW/m2) but none the less, someone with his credentials SHOULD know this. [...]

No.

Contrary to what he wants us to believe, he has only a Bachelor of Applied Science in Mechanical Engeneering. That's not even a master-degree.

He is no scientist.

He is no physicist.

He is no astronomer.

There are lots of things, which Mike Wrong has not studied - but you wouldn't know it listening to him.

Insofar I do not blame him that he did not know something.

But I blame him, that he pretented to know something and that he was too lazy to look it up in a book.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Careful Kor. They were exposed to high levels of temperature, not heat.

Now, Wong said that gases in the corona "are extremely diffuse- from 1E10 to 1E14 ions/m³", which turns out to be 1e4~e8 particles per cc (mostly protons in this case), while you cited NASA claiming a density "about 100 million to 1 billion particles per cubic centimeter", which would be 1e8~e9 particles per cc.

So as a result of the comparison, his low end would be four orders of magnitude lower than what NASA claims, and his high end would be one order of magnitude lower than NASA's.

That said, I wonder who wrote that NASA article. How can it say, when talking about the corona:

"Near the surface, the temperature is typical of the photosphere." - Which would be thousands of Kelvins, as per the temps in the photosphere.

And later on says:

"In the part of the corona nearest the solar surface, the temperature is about 1 million to 6 million K." - WTF?

... the coronal cloud has a thermal energy of 10e51 ergs at 20 kpc...

which works out to roughly 10^44 joules, or a really, really large fucking number.

Now, at this point, I don't feel the need to continue going over his "numbers"... right here we see his energy calcs were off by an order of 10^47 magnitude... that alone should show what kind of energy that they were absorbing.

It's the whole cloud.

So let me fiddle with his calc.
First, he used 1 M K instead of at least 1.5 M K.
So we'll multiply his number by 1.5.

Then the densities. I'm lazy to go through his calc so let's just say that if he used the low density (1e4 p/cc), you can multiply it by 15,000, and if he used the high end density (1e8 p/cc), you can multiply it by 15.

The biggest figure you'd obtain is 900 MJ per kilometer. It's simply put negligible.
Up to you to assume how fast the ship was orbiting the star (x km/s). At .1c (30,000 km/s), time dilation effects wouldn't be considerable, and you'd have 27 TW.
Over five minutes, you have 8.1 PJ.
Ten times slower and it's 810 TJ.



What about the radiations then?
He used 60 MW/m² instead of 64. 64 may be inferior to 60, but he assumed that the ship was skimming the photosphere. Considering that it was not exactly the case, it's most expected to obtain an intensity closer to what he used.

The Galaxy-class has the following dimensions:

Length: 642.51 m
Beam: 463.73 m
Height: 195.26 m

We know the shields don't touch the ship. For one, you can easily add the equivalent of one nacelle width on either side of the ship to get the ellipsoid's real width.
They seem to be about 40 meters wide, but it's just a quick guess. That's 80 meters in total. I'll add the same quantity for the other dimensions.

722.51 m, 543.73 m and 275.26 m. Those are the full lenghts. We need half that stuff for the calcs.

So, if we assume that half the ellipsoid shield is hit, we need to use half those measures above:

361.255 m, 271.865 m and 137.63 m.

Surface area = 817,343 m².

Divide by two (half the shield is hit) and you get 408,671.5 m². He used 100,000 m², so you can multiply his figure by 4.8.

But there's a catch. He used a cross section, a profile surface area. It's logical in the sense that radiations is about kinetics, and beams that don't hit perpendicularily won't deliver their entire energy. The more open the angle, the more they'll bounce off.
I suppose you'd have to use a volumetric integral with some sin(something) thrown in for good measure.

So, what if we try to verify if we get the same cross sectional surface area with the dimensions from above?
271.865 m and 137.63 m.
Surface area = 117,548.28 m².
We're above his assumed surface area, but not by much.
So globally his figure for the radiation part of the damage is good. It may even be a tad generous.
That said, working with 6 TW, it was 430 KT and not 420.

If anything, all those terajoules figures would at least agree with Geordi's statement that the ship's output was in the terawatt range.

Wouldn't match the megaton levels of torps though.
One thing that could explain the problem for shields that close to stars could be something related to neutrinos messing them up, or the strong magnetic fields.