Some interesting numbers?

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Picard
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Re: Some interesting numbers?

Post by Picard » Sat Mar 12, 2011 2:28 pm

Gene Rodenberry said that TNG overrides TOS. Given that TOS is original, and actually has more input from Gene than TNG, it is quite telling - and TNG is last ST work that has any input from Gene. Plus TNG is more consistent than any other Star Trek series (except TOS) in most things.
What matters is we see how fast Torpedoes go in most fights, and aside from a few examples of hight speeds, they go much, much slower than in "The Wounded"...
And most of these fights are at knife-fighting distances, so there is no reason to waste energy on accelerating torpedoes to few tens of thousands kilometers per second if it is going to hit anyway.

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Re: Some interesting numbers?

Post by Jedi Master Spock » Sun Mar 13, 2011 4:41 am

Torpedo speed is inconsistent.

What's missing is the coherent tie-in of this issue to Star Wars. Turbolaser bolts in Star Wars crawl at several hundred meters per second. The on-screen speed of the ion bolt in TESB is impossible to reconcile with its ability to hit starships orbiting that high above Hoth. We cannot reconcile the bolt speeds seen on the screen with SW ships fighting at ranges greater than a few kilometers from each other - not without unnecessarily complex assumptions.

There is one consistent behavior of torpedoes in Star Trek regarding speed. It is not the rate at which they move across the screen. It is time to impact. However slow torpedoes move in Star Trek, they generally hit their target in a matter of seconds. With rare exceptions (see "Balance of Terror"), those targets are generally unable to outrun the torpedoes being fired at them, whether fired at a range of a few hundred meters or a few hundred thousand kilometers.

The best conclusion is that VFX is not a good accurate measure of weapon speeds. The logical "documentarian" conclusion is that the weapon speeds vary for some unknown reason; in the case of
Star Trek, this would mean saying that torpedoes are capable of incredible speed and acceleration, but save that energy for warhead yield instead. In the case of Star Wars, it would mean saying that ion bolts accelerate very rapidly after being fired.

There is, however, a major problem with calculating kinetic energy of photon torpedoes that has nothing to do with their precise velocity: Warp fields. Torpedoes are capable of traveling at warp speed, and they may be under the influence of a warp field, which - per "Deja Q" - would reduce their effective mass substantially.

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Mr. Oragahn
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Re: Some interesting numbers?

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Sun Mar 13, 2011 10:10 am

The better thing that would be done with the Ion Cannon is assume a form of homing. We have the same problem in a Stargate episode, Trinity, where a puddle jumper is trying to dodge bolts fired from the surface by a turret, with bolts obviously not flying anywhere fast enough to actually be capable of hitting the small ship.
That said, in ROTS, we see plenty of small bolts that travel at several km per second. The SPHA-T beams in ATOC and ROTS are quite fast as well, easily several kps, and the fast long energy streams seen, aside from the superlaser (which is not instantaneous and even sees its tail move faster than its head) are the faint turbolaser bolts exchanged by an ISD and a Mon Cal ship in the background of ROTJ, right before the ISD blow up.

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Praeothmin
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Re: Some interesting numbers?

Post by Praeothmin » Mon Mar 14, 2011 2:45 pm

Picard wrote:Gene Rodenberry said that TNG overrides TOS. Given that TOS is original, and actually has more input from Gene than TNG, it is quite telling - and TNG is last ST work that has any input from Gene. Plus TNG is more consistent than any other Star Trek series (except TOS) in most things.
But TOS is not DS9, and you said TNG overrides DS9, not TOS.
As far as consistency is concerned, you'll be hard pressed to actually prove TNG is indeed more consistent than DS9.
I'd like to see that...
What matters is we see how fast Torpedoes go in most fights, and aside from a few examples of hight speeds, they go much, much slower than in "The Wounded"...
And most of these fights are at knife-fighting distances, so there is no reason to waste energy on accelerating torpedoes to few tens of thousands kilometers per second if it is going to hit anyway.
Agreed...

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Re: Some interesting numbers?

Post by Lucky » Tue Mar 15, 2011 8:40 am

Praeothmin wrote: Is it possible it went to low Warp?
After all, IIRC, torpedoes have a "Warp Sustainer engine", do they not?
Does it only sustain them in Warp, or does it also allow them to go to Warp?
Would it matter if the torpedo was at warp? I seem to recall there being something said about small meteoroids/asteroids being able to punch fist size holes in ships if they go to warp without the navigational deflect up.

Warp sustainers are tech manual only as i recall.

Don't we see torpedos fired at warp, and then accelerate to catch up to the other target?

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Re: Some interesting numbers?

Post by Lucky » Tue Mar 15, 2011 8:50 am

Praeothmin wrote: Says who?
You?
DS9 came after TNG, so if any series overrides another, it would be DS9 overriding TNG.
The fact you don't like DS9's way of doing things doesn't matter.
What matters is we see how fast Torpedoes go in most fights, and aside from a few examples of hight speeds, they go much, much slower than in "The Wounded"...
We also have in DS9 size changing ships to the point that the defiant seems to grow to be possibly hundreds of thousands of kilometers long in way of the warrior as I recall.

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Praeothmin
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Re: Some interesting numbers?

Post by Praeothmin » Tue Mar 15, 2011 1:56 pm

And in TNG we have Romulan Warbirds supposedly twice the size of a GCS appear to be only half as long, the appearance of Klingon BoP as big as, if not bigger than a GCS, BoP which ce never, ever see after TNG, not even in the fleet battles in DS9...
Yeah, TNG is so much more consistent...

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Mr. Oragahn
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Re: Some interesting numbers?

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Tue Mar 15, 2011 3:52 pm

Next, topless and the mud.

Mike DiCenso
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Re: Some interesting numbers?

Post by Mike DiCenso » Tue Mar 15, 2011 5:41 pm

Praeothmin wrote:And in TNG we have Romulan Warbirds supposedly twice the size of a GCS appear to be only half as long
Do you have any actual examples of this? The few times a GCS and D'Deridex appeared near enough to each other to matter, the D'Deridex looked pretty damn huge. For example "The Neutral Zone":

Image

"Contagion":
Image
Image

... and "Timescape":

Image
Image

Looks pretty big to me. At least twice a GCS in length, and in the first image it appears to be three times longer.
-Mike

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Praeothmin
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Re: Some interesting numbers?

Post by Praeothmin » Tue Mar 15, 2011 6:51 pm

Funny, because your examples of Contagion and Timescape size difference can easily be attributed to angle of view and closeness to the camera, because frankly, neither seem to depict Warbirds twice the length of the E-D, they seem, at best, 1 1/2 times as long...

In fact, your very last image shows a Runabout that appears almost a 10th of the length of the supposedly 1200 meter long D'eridex, and yet we know it fits quite well in the E-D's shuttle bays with its canon length of about 26 meters...

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Re: Some interesting numbers?

Post by Picard » Tue Mar 15, 2011 7:02 pm

Praethomin wrote:As far as consistency is concerned, you'll be hard pressed to actually prove TNG is indeed more consistent than DS9.
Consistent ship sizes, mostly consistent maximum torpedo yields (actually, there is only one instance where we are given maximum yield, and it can be made to agree with rest of evidence easily enough), more consistent visual effects (althought not 100% more consistent, but still)...
In fact, your very last image shows a Runabout that appears almost a 10th of the length of the supposedly 1200 meter long D'eridex, and yet we know it fits quite well in the E-D's shuttle bays with its canon length of about 26 meters...

Actually, Runabout is closer than Warbird, so it would be 15-20 times its length.

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Re: Some interesting numbers?

Post by Mike DiCenso » Tue Mar 15, 2011 7:41 pm

Picard wrote:
Praethomin wrote:As far as consistency is concerned, you'll be hard pressed to actually prove TNG is indeed more consistent than DS9.
Consistent ship sizes, mostly consistent maximum torpedo yields (actually, there is only one instance where we are given maximum yield, and it can be made to agree with rest of evidence easily enough), more consistent visual effects (althought not 100% more consistent, but still)...
In fact, your very last image shows a Runabout that appears almost a 10th of the length of the supposedly 1200 meter long D'eridex, and yet we know it fits quite well in the E-D's shuttle bays with its canon length of about 26 meters...

Actually, Runabout is closer than Warbird, so it would be 15-20 times its length.
You guys are both measuring wrong. The Runabout is 13 times smaller than the length of distance as measured from the furthest of the 3 raised gridlines on the wing-shaped hull to the aft quarter of the warp nacelle (253 meters). It is not even a fraction close to the overall length of the ship, which in that picture, the hull is distorted by the camera filming in close up of the warbird model. The height is telling since the runabout is at least 20 times smaller than the warbird in that screencap image, or 120 meters minimum height for the warbird. The length measurement would give us a warbird of at least 1,200 meters, and the height would net us at least Galaxy class starship range length.

The "Contagion" pics can determine the warbird Hakona's size based on the two angle views, and the two ships are just within a few hundred meters of each other, making the warbird no less than twice the E-D's length.
-Mike

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Praeothmin
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Re: Some interesting numbers?

Post by Praeothmin » Wed Mar 16, 2011 1:27 pm

Picard wrote:Consistent ship sizes, mostly consistent maximum torpedo yields (actually, there is only one instance where we are given maximum yield, and it can be made to agree with rest of evidence easily enough), more consistent visual effects (althought not 100% more consistent, but still)...
All of which you have yet to prove, and all of which is definitely opened to debate...
Mike wrote:The "Contagion" pics can determine the warbird Hakona's size based on the two angle views, and the two ships are just within a few hundred meters of each other, making the warbird no less than twice the E-D's length.
If you say so, I'm not convinced...

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Re: Some interesting numbers?

Post by Mike DiCenso » Thu Mar 17, 2011 5:37 am

Praeothmin wrote:
Mike wrote:The "Contagion" pics can determine the warbird Hakona's size based on the two angle views, and the two ships are just within a few hundred meters of each other, making the warbird no less than twice the E-D's length.
If you say so, I'm not convinced...
Just do the number crunching.
-Mike

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