The Die is Cast Strikes Back

[Jedi Master Spock]

The only ones which can be measured by DET, was Masks. First, your figure was about a total energy deposited into the commet. Divided over the duration of the process, the wattage became lower.

Yes, but the power level is 10%. And then there is also "Skin of Evil" and "Rise."

There's just as much evidence to point out that the phaser, at this rate, would have needed more than one hour to melt the whole comet. Of course, for the whole discussion, I have pointed out how this episode is hardly consistent. I don't expect Picard and co sit in the birdge for more than one hour, and resume "panic and tension" a few seconds before the final ice goes off... in the most unscientific and absurd way. Yes, even the way ice melts is stupid. Not mentioning the fact that the alien station was supposed to be in the core of the comet - as pointed out by dialogue mentionning the source of the signal - not in the outskirt of the comet, as the visuals show it.

While it isn't absolutely required in the sense you describe, the visuals confirm as best as possible the "real time" nature of the pacing. I.e., require as strongly as possible given the lack of a complete continuous single cut.

There's also the fact that Geordi planned to melt the ice, not vapourize it.

... in vacuum, you have either vapor or ice for most substances. Liquid is not stable.

Besides, I'm curious as to how the ice didn't break. No matter how low the yield would be, just to raise temp strictly at the first fraction of the first degree necessary for fusion, or say... sublimation, even pouring cold water on ice will crack ice. And I'm not talking about temps necessary for vapourisation mind you.

You wouldn't notice this on this scale with this much structural irregularity.

All cross sections and caps of torpedos I've seen show that there's enough room for only two warheads. All the rest is taken up by whatever's necessary to protect and fly that torp.



The shot above, I think used for the tech manual, is the same than the shot of the mark XXV displayed on one of the Voyager computer screens.

By which you mean one on-screen Okudagram (in addition to the notoriously unreliable TM, but the two are fortunately similar in this case) ... by which, in reply, I have this to say:

especially considering that we know, from "The Emissary," that functional drive and shield systems of a photon torpedo can be contained within the outer shell exclusively, suggesting that the entire interior is potentially modular.

It's a very simple fact.

Perhaps the standard load of a torpedo is only two (or four, actually; the Voyager cutaway again leaves room for possible warheads of the same size immediately below) - but you clearly have the option to stick two dozen standard warhead modules in there.

(There's also another probable bit I'm neglecting, and that's antimatter used for drive fuel.)

More about the yields...

This, besides, does not negate the very fact that the gravimetric warhead is incredibly light. We can see that the trek guy is holding a warhead with the tip of his fingers, not even bracing the device against his right thumb, and not even putting a hand underneath it, to gain a better grip.
Above all, he's holding it with arms stretched in front of him.

A 2-3 kg warhead is the utmost acceptable maximum weight estimation for that device. I have all the training bench & muscle stuff at home to make quick empirical tests.
There is just no way the guy could hold a device that way, if it was more than 2-3 kg.

And there are plenty of ways in which a gravimetric warhead could have a standard yield higher than its own mass in annihilated matter - namely, by imploding half the torpedo into a pocket singularity.

Of course, to obtain such a yield, the torpedo would be nothing more than an inert casing, which would need to be propelled by the launch tubes, and never gain any extra acceleration. No shields. No sensors. No guidance systems. Nothing but a shell, filled with warheads.
And in fact, if a warhead contained 1 kg of anti deuterium, its real yield would be of 21.48 megatons (due to more than a half of the energy going off via neutrino waste), assuming a near perfect reaction. So to get a 1 gigaton yield of destructive force, you'd need 46.5 warheads crammed into that torpedo.
I think it will be hard to fit that many inside your typical black UFP shell.

FYI, most of that "neutrino waste" is mainly a third-order product down the decay chain.

Take the classic proton-antiproton reaction. It gives off about 30% of its energy in hard gammas, and then about 70% in pions of either positive or negative charge. The pions - after having traveled some 20 meters at their speed - in turn decay to muons and muon neutrinos, or the anti- counterparts. Muon neutrinos are only in the hundred keV range, negligible; muons, as it so happen, can interact with matter fairly well with matter for the microseconds they exist, and decay into a combination of electrons and neutrinos (or positrons and antineutrinos).

In short, if there is significant containment of the annihilation reaction and interference through other objects (e.g., the rest of the torpedo, a material target, et cetera), we can expect to lose not nearly so much energy to, as you put it, "neutrino waste."

And that's not mentioning the possibility of a "high yield" module that - unlike a spherical module - actually fills the available space, more than doubling the amount of available antimatter.

I'd like to see evidence that this "cramming" is even possible.

Watch "Emissary," remembering that the torpedo must include everything necessary to send a diplomat for a significant warp hop. Inertial compensation, navigational deflector, warp drive, fuel, and environmental support.

If you don't believe me, click here and believe TrekCore.

Besides, do we even have proof that both tanks are filled with antimatter, and not just one?

Proof that they do is not required to speak of the maximum yield.

I'm sure, in fact, that there are cases where you would just load one module, or a smaller module pair.

[Mr. Oragahn]

The only ones which can be measured by DET, was Masks. First, your figure was about a total energy deposited into the commet. Divided over the duration of the process, the wattage became lower.

Yes, but the power level is 10%. And then there is also "Skin of Evil" and "Rise."

Skin of Evil... it's still up in the air. A single screencap is not enough.
As for Rise, even the upper limits are still very far from the required near teraton yields.

There's just as much evidence to point out that the phaser, at this rate, would have needed more than one hour to melt the whole comet. Of course, for the whole discussion, I have pointed out how this episode is hardly consistent. I don't expect Picard and co sit in the birdge for more than one hour, and resume "panic and tension" a few seconds before the final ice goes off... in the most unscientific and absurd way. Yes, even the way ice melts is stupid. Not mentioning the fact that the alien station was supposed to be in the core of the comet - as pointed out by dialogue mentionning the source of the signal - not in the outskirt of the comet, as the visuals show it.

While it isn't absolutely required in the sense you describe, the visuals confirm as best as possible the "real time" nature of the pacing. I.e., require as strongly as possible given the lack of a complete continuous single cut.

I know. Doesn't make it right, though. The other visuals show that it would take far more than one hour, at that rate.
The amount of nonsense and contradictions in that episode make the estimations unreliable.

There's also the fact that Geordi planned to melt the ice, not vapourize it.

... in vacuum, you have either vapor or ice for most substances. Liquid is not stable.

Liquid not being stable is irrelevant. He simply wanted to melt it, not vapourize it.
If the ice would return to a solid state after that is not a problem, since the droplets would be drifting away from the station anyway.

Besides, I'm curious as to how the ice didn't break. No matter how low the yield would be, just to raise temp strictly at the first fraction of the first degree necessary for fusion, or say... sublimation, even pouring cold water on ice will crack ice. And I'm not talking about temps necessary for vapourisation mind you.

You wouldn't notice this on this scale with this much structural irregularity.

Huh, your claim about dumping a couple of gigatons in a few tens of seconds would really surprise me if it didn't crack the asteroid in result, to some noticable extent.

All cross sections and caps of torpedos I've seen show that there's enough room for only two warheads. All the rest is taken up by whatever's necessary to protect and fly that torp.



The shot above, I think used for the tech manual, is the same than the shot of the mark XXV displayed on one of the Voyager computer screens.

By which you mean one on-screen Okudagram (in addition to the notoriously unreliable TM, but the two are fortunately similar in this case) ... by which, in reply, I have this to say:

especially considering that we know, from "The Emissary," that functional drive and shield systems of a photon torpedo can be contained within the outer shell exclusively, suggesting that the entire interior is potentially modular.

It's a very simple fact.

Huh.
A couple of mistakes here.
The slightly more than 2m long probe had stuff pasted on its shell.
http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/display ... =45&pos=48
http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/display ... =45&pos=52
So all isn't within the shell. It's literally on it.

According to script, it also missed several elements.
Now, again, since scripts in Trek seem to get cut willy ninny, I can't be 100% certain on that.

DATA
Apparently there were no starships
available at Starbase
one five three. The emissary is
aboard a class eight probe.

Surprised reactions from the group.

RIKER
A class eight probe is just over
two meters long!

PICARD
(thinking)
True, Number One. But if the
sensors and transmitters were
removed and life-support
installed, there would be just
enough space for one person.

RIKER
And those probes are designed to
go warp nine.

PICARD
(to Clancey)
We'll need an intercept course
with pin-point accuracy. The
probe carrying the emissary has
no means of navigation...

No means of navigation.

28 INT. TRANSPORTER ROOM

CLOSE on O'Brien as he touches a panel on the probe.
The latches on the probe pop open.

29 WIDER

to reveal Riker and Pulaski looking on as the casing
opens automatically. (Geordi is no longer present.)

Inside the probe is a person whose face we cannot see
-- the head is fully covered by an oxygen helmet.
Pulaski does a medical scan, is surprised at the
readings.

Oxygen reserves don't take much room. Besides, the Federation wanted this done as fast as possible. So we shouldn't expect a long journey inside that probe.

Besides, is there any proof that the probe had shields?
besides, it didn't "glow" when flying at warp 9.

Basically, it's easy to fit the okudagram's schematic. Most of the systems were removed, and the necessary ones made minimal, and either kept close to the emissary, or strapped on the probe's hull.

This quite disprove the idea that a torpedo's near entire volume can be filled with antimatter and matter, and still achieve the military and tactical requirements of a normal and properly equipped torp.

Perhaps the standard load of a torpedo is only two (or four, actually; the Voyager cutaway again leaves room for possible warheads of the same size immediately below) - but you clearly have the option to stick two dozen standard warhead modules in there.

No, the cutaway clearly shows that the big tanks can at mid height of the torp, not in the upper part of the torp.
Besides, it's an horrible design to have here if there's only two traps like those, to fill an entire torp with AM tanks.

(There's also another probable bit I'm neglecting, and that's antimatter used for drive fuel.)

If this was true, it would be hard to dial a yield up or down, if the torp already contains a finite amount of antimatter.
Of course, you could argue that the "fuel" tank is charged before fire, according to the amount of AM necessary to reach the target. But then, the AM will be depleted by the moment it hits the target.
Other systems could also use pre charged capacitors of some kind.

And there are plenty of ways in which a gravimetric warhead could have a standard yield higher than its own mass in annihilated matter - namely, by imploding half the torpedo into a pocket singularity.

The omega molecules don't seem to be contained within a pocket singularity.
Besides, if graviheads were more powerful, they would be the norm, not the exception.
If their power is geared towards the destruction of anything in subspace, then it's pointless, because it's a complete different layer of spacetime, and thus ranges and effects can't be used in the same way they would in our spacetime.

FYI, most of that "neutrino waste" is mainly a third-order product down the decay chain.

How late or soon would it occur?
Antiproton and proton pairs, after anihilation, produce two sort of relativistic pions. Since I'm lazy and can't dig another site than wiki, here's what it says: the charged pions travel a few tens of meters and decay into muons and neutrinos.

So an AM warhead woult be most effective on strict impacts, or detonating extremely close to the hull/shield.
Maybe, after all, the neutrino waste happens late enough.

Take the classic proton-antiproton reaction. It gives off about 30% of its energy in hard gammas, and then about 70% in pions of either positive or negative charge. The pions - after having traveled some 20 meters at their speed - in turn decay to muons and muon neutrinos, or the anti- counterparts. Muon neutrinos are only in the hundred keV range, negligible; muons, as it so happen, can interact with matter fairly well with matter for the microseconds they exist, and decay into a combination of electrons and neutrinos (or positrons and antineutrinos).

In short, if there is significant containment of the annihilation reaction and interference through other objects (e.g., the rest of the torpedo, a material target, et cetera), we can expect to lose not nearly so much energy to, as you put it, "neutrino waste."

I don't think containment is the solution. Of course, you want your reaction to be the most efficient possible, but containment is irrelevant. The torp will release its energy in a flash second anyway. So containment is not useful here, in the sense that it's not going to make sure that the charged pions interact with enough matter, soon enough.
The key is to release the particles as soon as possible, and have the charged pions react as fast as possible with the most matter possible.
That said, even with a perfect reaction, which I'd like to know if an UFP torp is capable to achieve, it seems that in a way or another, there'll be an amount of wasted energy.

I'd like to see evidence that this "cramming" is even possible.

Watch "Emissary," remembering that the torpedo must include everything necessary to send a diplomat for a significant warp hop. Inertial compensation, navigational deflector, warp drive, fuel, and environmental support.

Most of which were platered on the shell, obviously. Besides, there's no visible navigational deflector on that probe. I don't think it would need it much anyway.

If you don't believe me, click here and believe TrekCore.

Trekcore precisely seem to offer an other interpretation of the facts.

Besides, do we even have proof that both tanks are filled with antimatter, and not just one?

Proof that they do is not required to speak of the maximum yield.

I've lost you here. It should. Obviously, and ultimately, how much AM a torpedo will pack is a key element in determining the possible yield.

I'm sure, in fact, that there are cases where you would just load one module, or a smaller module pair.

All depends on how, and more precisely, where the AM-M anihilation occurs. If it's in the tank, or somewhere else, in some kind of reactor where both tanks unload their content.

[Who is like God arbour]

That said, I don't see how it would explain the superior yield. Because even if a gravimetric warhead is necessary to bust omega molecules, the reactants and technology used for such a warhead wouldn't be kept by the UFP to only be used within Omega Directives, when it would be extremely useful for the simple purpose of winning battles.

Besides, if graviheads were more powerful, they would be the norm, not the exception.

Please answere the already adressed objection:

Why do you expect, that they would use in each battle the most powerfull weapons they have?

• There are nukes since 1945 and - except for the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - they wasn't used although the states with nukes have had numerous wars and battles [1].
  
  Not every warships and not every plane of these states are equipped with nukes. Often they have "only" conventional weapons.
  
  
  
  We know for example from the Voyager episode The Voyager Conspiracy, that a Tricobalt device, a type of high yield explosive, isn't routinely carried by Federation vessels. It was exceptional that the Voyager has such devices on board to destroy the Caretaker's array.
  
  We know for example from Star Trek: Insurrection that the Khitomer Accords banned the use of subspace weapons and that all powers but the Son'a observe this accord.
  
  They voluntary do without weapons which are mightier than their "conventional" weapons - even in war.
  
  Apparently that doesn't mean that they have no mightier weapons as they use. Because than such accords would be unnecessary. They have weapons which are mightier than their "conventional" weapons. But their vessels aren't routinely equipped with these.

Could it be that the weapons, used in the battles you have in mind, aren't the mightiest weapons of Star Trek?

No means of navigation.

[...]

Oxygen reserves don't take much room. Besides, the Federation wanted this done as fast as possible. So we shouldn't expect a long journey inside that probe.

Besides, is there any proof that the probe had shields?
besides, it didn't "glow" when flying at warp 9.

Basically, it's easy to fit the okudagram's schematic. Most of the systems were removed, and the necessary ones made minimal, and either kept close to the emissary, or strapped on the probe's hull.

This quite disprove the idea that a torpedo's near entire volume can be filled with antimatter and matter, and still achieve the military and tactical requirements of a normal and properly equipped torp.

That was also already adressed:

There was a fleet extra build to destroy a planet. That was - for the time being - the sole mission of these ships. It seems plausible to assume that these ships were equipped with weapons sufficient for this mission.
Why is it impossible to imagine that the fleet would have been able to accomplish its mission?
[...]

One would only have to made the torpedos and their ramps bigger. Because it is known that the torpedos doesn't need a warp field sustainer or a guidance system or other gadgets one could have done without them and would have created more place for the war head.

Conveniently, for a gigaton maximum normal yield, we need slightly less than 1 kg of antimatter per module. This is actually a little high for a module that size, considering we usually are thinking of finely divided slush antideuterium, but larger warhead modules are not completely out of the question considering that all the additional non-warhead components seen may be dispensed with for bombardment purposes (i.e., the maximum yield scenario).

The Cardassians and Romulans don't have torpedos exactly like the Federation. They may have torpedos which are based on the same principle, but they surely don't get their weapons from the same producer.

They have thought that they will use their weapons only against a planet for bombardment purposes. That's why we can assume that they will have configurated their weapons accordingly.

They could have done without guidance-, prosecution-, steering- and similar systems.

They could also have enlarged the casings of, and the ramps for the torpedos. After all, they have thought, that they don't have to engage in ship to ship battle for which they would need regular torpedos.

I see no reason to believe that they would have used regular torpedos for their bombardement. Maybe you can give one.

[Jedi Master Spock]

Skin of Evil... it's still up in the air. A single screencap is not enough.

Screencap and timing is all that it takes.

As for Rise, even the upper limits are still very far from the required near teraton yields.

I'll assume you mean gigaton. As far as upper limits, a gigaton would fit with sufficient superheating, but what comes more to mind for that is the ~100 megaton order of magnitude.

The amount of nonsense and contradictions in that episode make the estimations unreliable.

It's not really an unusual amount.

Liquid not being stable is irrelevant. He simply wanted to melt it, not vapourize it.
If the ice would return to a solid state after that is not a problem, since the droplets would be drifting away from the station anyway.

Well, in order to insure that liquid clears out away from the comet, it's going to need to get enough energy that most of it is going to vaporize anyway.

However, more to the point, you're not going to get liquid in the first place. As you apply heat to ice, it's going to simply vaporize as soon as it gets warm enough.

Huh, your claim about dumping a couple of gigatons in a few tens of seconds would really surprise me if it didn't crack the asteroid in result, to some noticable extent.

You don't "crack" dirty snowballs. Are we still talking about "Masks," or not?

Huh.
A couple of mistakes here.
The slightly more than 2m long probe had stuff pasted on its shell.
http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/display ... =45&pos=48
http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/display ... =45&pos=52
So all isn't within the shell. It's literally on it.

In terms of size and volume, the probe is basically a repainted torpedo. We see the same with Spock's coffin in terms of the interior space, actually.

According to script, it also missed several elements.
Now, again, since scripts in Trek seem to get cut willy ninny, I can't be 100% certain on that.

DATA
Apparently there were no starships
available at Starbase
one five three. The emissary is
aboard a class eight probe.

Surprised reactions from the group.

RIKER
A class eight probe is just over
two meters long!

PICARD
(thinking)
True, Number One. But if the
sensors and transmitters were
removed and life-support
installed, there would be just
enough space for one person.

RIKER
And those probes are designed to
go warp nine.

PICARD
(to Clancey)
We'll need an intercept course
with pin-point accuracy. The
probe carrying the emissary has
no means of navigation...

No means of navigation.

28 INT. TRANSPORTER ROOM

CLOSE on O'Brien as he touches a panel on the probe.
The latches on the probe pop open.

29 WIDER

to reveal Riker and Pulaski looking on as the casing
opens automatically. (Geordi is no longer present.)

Inside the probe is a person whose face we cannot see
-- the head is fully covered by an oxygen helmet.
Pulaski does a medical scan, is surprised at the
readings.

Oxygen reserves don't take much room. Besides, the Federation wanted this done as fast as possible. So we shouldn't expect a long journey inside that probe.

Besides, is there any proof that the probe had shields?
besides, it didn't "glow" when flying at warp 9.

I didn't say shields - I said "navigational deflector," which is absolutely required to move at warp.

Basically, it's easy to fit the okudagram's schematic. Most of the systems were removed, and the necessary ones made minimal, and either kept close to the emissary, or strapped on the probe's hull.

This quite disprove the idea that a torpedo's near entire volume can be filled with antimatter and matter, and still achieve the military and tactical requirements of a normal and properly equipped torp.

Which "normal and properly equipped torp"? The one being used to bombard a target planetside (or asteroid-side), the one being used to attack a sublight starship, or the one being used at warp to attack a warp speed starship that is actively evading and shooting back?

This is the key point that you're missing. A torpedo that doesn't have to do anything more complicated than Spock's coffin doesn't need any of the internal packages.

No, the cutaway clearly shows that the big tanks can at mid height of the torp, not in the upper part of the torp.

The one in the TM suggests that. The Okudagram - slightly different in many regards does not really suggest that, and both indicate that there's plenty more space there and no other components directly above and behind. Scaling directly from the torpedo and the warhead spheres discussed shows that there's enough room for two modules on top of each other - and why not?

Besides, it's an horrible design to have here if there's only two traps like those, to fill an entire torp with AM tanks.

If this was true, it would be hard to dial a yield up or down, if the torp already contains a finite amount of antimatter.

It would be particularly hard to dial it down unless you loaded next to no fuel, yes, but it's a complication that should never be too far from our minds: The little spheres aren't the only things that may supply energy in detonation.

The omega molecules don't seem to be contained within a pocket singularity.
Besides, if graviheads were more powerful, they would be the norm, not the exception.
If their power is geared towards the destruction of anything in subspace, then it's pointless, because it's a complete different layer of spacetime, and thus ranges and effects can't be used in the same way they would in our spacetime.

Two words:

Warp field. If the local value of G is reduced by, say, a factor of 100, then it becomes 100 times harder to create a local singularity. Hence, although more powerful per unit mass, the gravitational warhead would, under this model, remain essentially useless in ship-to-ship combat.

How late or soon would it occur?

Antiproton and proton pairs, after anihilation, produce two sort of relativistic pions. Since I'm lazy and can't dig another site than wiki, here's what it says: the charged pions travel a few tens of meters and decay into muons and neutrinos.

Pairs consisting of muon and muon neutrino, specifically. Muon neutrinos are not particularly high energy compared to muons. The pions "live" on average for 21 meters' distance; the muons "live" on average for 660 meters. So anything visibly close to a Trek ship is going to be getting muon blasts, while anything more than a kilometer is just going to get gammas, neutrinos, and the very occasional stray electron/positron that managed not to interact with anything. (Since electron/positron reactions usually produce gamma rays, it's actually rather more than 30% of the energy from a proton/antiproton annihilation that winds up in the gamma band, but it's not so important for our purposes here.)

That said, even with a perfect reaction, which I'd like to know if an UFP torp is capable to achieve, it seems that in a way or another, there'll be an amount of wasted energy.

IMO, it's not very significant, particularly considering the amount of variability we're concerned with. It's good effect to keep in mind, of course.

Most of which were platered on the shell, obviously. Besides, there's no visible navigational deflector on that probe. I don't think it would need it much anyway.

Interstellar hydrogen says it does. See also "The Battle."

I've lost you here. It should. Obviously, and ultimately, how much AM a torpedo will pack is a key element in determining the possible yield.[/quote
No, I've lost you. What's perfectly clear is that torpedos are modular weapons with highly variable effects.

Since it is possible to, for a given stationary target, hit it with a photon torpedo with anything you like inside, ranging from a corpse to a full case of antimatter, a torpedo's maximum possible yield is clearly on the close order of a gigaton.

So what's all that other stuff there for? Well, obviously enough, the things that you don't need when you're shelling some helpless planetary target - on-board AI/navigation, sensors, high-powered shielding, directional blast focusing (i.e., shields that are up on the inside), maneuvering engines, shield penetration aids, et cetera. Which is why the yield of an anti-ship torpedo can't get as high as a bombardment torpedo can.

[l33telboi]

Not sure i've seen your take on the subject, but how do you respond to the whole "That's just the visible thermal flash of bomb" argument when it comes to "Skin of Evil"?

[Mr. Oragahn]

That said, I don't see how it would explain the superior yield. Because even if a gravimetric warhead is necessary to bust omega molecules, the reactants and technology used for such a warhead wouldn't be kept by the UFP to only be used within Omega Directives, when it would be extremely useful for the simple purpose of winning battles.

Besides, if graviheads were more powerful, they would be the norm, not the exception.

Please answere the already adressed objection:

Why do you expect, that they would use in each battle the most powerfull weapons they have?

• There are nukes since 1945 and - except for the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - they wasn't used although the states with nukes have had numerous wars and battles [1].
  
  Not every warships and not every plane of these states are equipped with nukes. Often they have "only" conventional weapons.

I find this logic to be most misplaced. That no-nuke argument does certainly not apply here.

1. Torps are WMDs routinely used by Fed ships. Their effects on cities would be dreadful. The advantage they have is that they can be dialed down.

2. They would use their most powerful weapons precisely because their enemies, like the Borg for example, have defenses which require the use of such powerful weapons, to deliver the maximum level of energy, in the shortest amount of time, as simple as that.

3. If the US had faced an enemy which could only be defeated with nukes, nukes would have been used, as simple as that as well. The nukes in WWII were not used for combat purposes, but for geopolitical fear, as part of a strategy to force an enemy to surrender. An enemy who didn't have access to such weapons.
It's completely irrelevant here.

So sorry to restate it, but as far as it goes, if graviheads were more powerful, they would be the norm, not the exception.

We know for example from the Voyager episode The Voyager Conspiracy, that a Tricobalt device, a type of high yield explosive, isn't routinely carried by Federation vessels. It was exceptional that the Voyager has such devices on board to destroy the Caretaker's array.

We know for example from Star Trek: Insurrection that the Khitomer Accords banned the use of subspace weapons and that all powers but the Son'a observe this accord.

They voluntary do without weapons which are mightier than their "conventional" weapons - even in war.

Apparently that doesn't mean that they have no mightier weapons as they use. Because than such accords would be unnecessary. They have weapons which are mightier than their "conventional" weapons. But their vessels aren't routinely equipped with these.[/list]Could it be that the weapons, used in the battles you have in mind, aren't the mightiest weapons of Star Trek?

1. There is no wonder why tricobalt devices are rarely used.
"Tricobalt devices are relatively ineffective when used against shielded targets due to the slow expansion of energy from the explosion. It is primarily used as a demolition weapon, most notably against space stations and ground targets."
Most pointless in the vast majority of battles the UFP ships get into, and when it comes to ground targets, phasers and standard torps are just as good and enough.

2. Tricobalt devices can create interphasic rifts and disrupt subspace, which means mess up with warp drives and actually create anti-warp zones. We've seen, though the Omega Directive, that destroying pans of subspace, because of the Omega particles, forbids the use of warp, which is precisely a thing that the UFP wants to avoid at all costs.

3. You make a grave mistake in confounding traditional weapons, with weapons, such as the tricobalt devices and others, which can "harm" subspace.
We're talking about purely normal space weapons. So please let's leave it at that and not involve more red herrings.

That was also already adressed:

There was a fleet extra build to destroy a planet. That was - for the time being - the sole mission of these ships. It seems plausible to assume that these ships were equipped with weapons sufficient for this mission.
Why is it impossible to imagine that the fleet would have been able to accomplish its mission?
[...]

Totally irrelevant to the composition of a fed torp, and even more irrelevant in a case where you're supposed to find evidence out of TDIC to support your claims, not fall back on that episode to assert your claims.
You're building a pattern close to circular logic here.

One would only have to made the torpedos and their ramps bigger. Because it is known that the torpedos doesn't need a warp field sustainer or a guidance system or other gadgets one could have done without them and would have created more place for the war head.

Huh, you try to demonstrate that a torp's volume can be largely filled with lots of AM tanks... by saying that higher yields could be achieved by using larger torps and ramps.
This is just completely missing the point.

Also, torps in TDIC had the traditional shield glow.
Though it doesn't mean drive systems would be required, it still means that the shield generators were still there.
And when you think about it, this would clearly suggest that nothing was changed.
See, you don't need shields on torps moving at hundreds of km per second, in the slightest way, to hit ground targets. Any primitive space missile could achieve that without fancy protection.

Besides, any evidence that the ramps were bigger? Any evidence that the romulan ships were modified?

Conveniently, for a gigaton maximum normal yield, we need slightly less than 1 kg of antimatter per module. This is actually a little high for a module that size, considering we usually are thinking of finely divided slush antideuterium, but larger warhead modules are not completely out of the question considering that all the additional non-warhead components seen may be dispensed with for bombardment purposes (i.e., the maximum yield scenario).

Please. We're looking at near - or plain - teraton level events. The amount of antimatter you'd need to cram into a single torpedo is absurd. Even a one tonne heavy torp comes short of the claimed yields.

The Cardassians and Romulans don't have torpedos exactly like the Federation. They may have torpedos which are based on the same principle, but they surely don't get their weapons from the same producer.

That's not a good excuse. Layout aside, if it made such a difference in TDIC, it should have long before that day.
The fact that their torps have the traditional fed-shield effect on them actually points out to a very similar design.

They have thought that they will use their weapons only against a planet for bombardment purposes. That's why we can assume that they will have configurated their weapons accordingly.

Probably. Still fails to make the yields consistent.

They could have done without guidance-, prosecution-, steering- and similar systems.

I believe that they'd still need a minimal level of sensor equipment to make the warheads detonate when it's precisely needed, or even at impact.

Besides, if a torps needs an AM-M mix chamber, you won't be able to inflate the amount of AM tanks you can cram in one torp by that much.

By the way, do Romulans use plasma torps?

They could also have enlarged the casings of, and the ramps for the torpedos. After all, they have thought, that they don't have to engage in ship to ship battle for which they would need regular torpedos.

Any evidence of that?
I'm sure that if I'd go to measure the size of the glow of the torps fired in that sequence, against the size of the glow of romulan/cardassian torps from other episodes, I'd probably end with the same figures.

I see no reason to believe that they would have used regular torpedos for their bombardement. Maybe you can give one.

No, but I don't believe any of the arguments presented thus far can bend truth enough to make the TDIC yields legit.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Skin of Evil... it's still up in the air. A single screencap is not enough.

Screencap and timing is all that it takes.

Not really. Expansion and duration of a fireball are very dependant of the yield.

Looking at a cropped low quality thumbsized picture won't help at all, btw.
I don't consider it reliable.

So thus far, SoE proves nothing until you can show that it does support a multi hundred megaton yield.

As for Rise, even the upper limits are still very far from the required near teraton yields.

I'll assume you mean gigaton. As far as upper limits, a gigaton would fit with sufficient superheating, but what comes more to mind for that is the ~100 megaton order of magnitude.

Near teraton is not an understatement.
You have those (nonsensical) waves that cover several hundreds of kilometers in a matter of a very few frames.

Liquid not being stable is irrelevant. He simply wanted to melt it, not vapourize it.
If the ice would return to a solid state after that is not a problem, since the droplets would be drifting away from the station anyway.

Well, in order to insure that liquid clears out away from the comet, it's going to need to get enough energy that most of it is going to vaporize anyway.

And how do you assert that? It's a zero gravity environment. The liquid will likely reach for the path of less resistance. It won't require much energy to make the droplet depart from the comet.

However, more to the point, you're not going to get liquid in the first place. As you apply heat to ice, it's going to simply vaporize as soon as it gets warm enough.

Good! So we know that Geordi is a dumbhack who's responsible of all the technological specificities onbard the Enterprise.
I suppose that makes the episode, and thus the yields, much more reliable and acceptable then. :)

Huh, your claim about dumping a couple of gigatons in a few tens of seconds would really surprise me if it didn't crack the asteroid in result, to some noticable extent.

You don't "crack" dirty snowballs.

Depends on how dense those things are.
Besides, if we talk about snowballs, the density is going to be low, and will need to be accounted for in calcs. Of course... you know how much I don't put much credit on Masks-related calcs.

Are we still talking about "Masks," or not?

Now. I'm tired of it. :)

In terms of size and volume, the probe is basically a repainted torpedo. We see the same with Spock's coffin in terms of the interior space, actually.

Yep. But how does this dispute the evidence that many systems were obviously added on the shell, and not contained inside the very thin shell?

I didn't say shields - I said "navigational deflector," which is absolutely required to move at warp.

Looking at the okudagram, and considering the elements pasted on the shell, it's very easy to consider that the inner dish could be left at the front of the probe, and not forbid someone from getting inside, even if it means putting one's feet on each side of the dish. The power could come from any other the bits strapped on the shell.

Which "normal and properly equipped torp"?
The one being used to bombard a target planetside (or asteroid-side), the one being used to attack a sublight starship, or the one being used at warp to attack a warp speed starship that is actively evading and shooting back?

There is no evidence that in all these cases, the Feds, or any other faction, bothers to remove stuff from their standard torpedoes, make them very target specific, to increase yields.
Unless you have evidence of this, of course.

That said, see my points made for Wilga's post about how much space you could hope gain, and how it will always fail to reach the TDIC yields.

This is the key point that you're missing. A torpedo that doesn't have to do anything more complicated than Spock's coffin doesn't need any of the internal packages.

1. Let's see pictures of the coffin-torp.
2. Let's see caps of its behaviour once it was fired.
3. What extra functions did it achieve?

No, the cutaway clearly shows that the big tanks can at mid height of the torp, not in the upper part of the torp.

The one in the TM suggests that. The Okudagram - slightly different in many regards does not really suggest that, and both indicate that there's plenty more space there and no other components directly above and behind. Scaling directly from the torpedo and the warhead spheres discussed shows that there's enough room for two modules on top of each other - and why not?

The okudagram is exactly the same, and precisely show the tanks being at mid height.
The okudagram torp schematic is exactly the TM one, but with strict royal blue swapped for turquoise.
And both clearly show the existence of only two traps - which should be hard to prove/disprove with shots from real torps (supported by the replicas smaller models of the calss VI Geordi was looking at in some episode) - which points to the difficulty of inserting and accessing extra AM tanks.

Two words:

Warp field. If the local value of G is reduced by, say, a factor of 100, then it becomes 100 times harder to create a local singularity. Hence, although more powerful per unit mass, the gravitational warhead would, under this model, remain essentially useless in ship-to-ship combat.

Could make sense... if only I understood what you mean. :)
Please elaborate.

Pairs consisting of muon and muon neutrino, specifically. Muon neutrinos are not particularly high energy compared to muons. The pions "live" on average for 21 meters' distance; the muons "live" on average for 660 meters. So anything visibly close to a Trek ship is going to be getting muon blasts, while anything more than a kilometer is just going to get gammas, neutrinos, and the very occasional stray electron/positron that managed not to interact with anything. (Since electron/positron reactions usually produce gamma rays, it's actually rather more than 30% of the energy from a proton/antiproton annihilation that winds up in the gamma band, but it's not so important for our purposes here.)

Which as a side note, is of interest considering the fears about not getting too close to enemy ships, when firing torps.

Most of which were platered on the shell, obviously. Besides, there's no visible navigational deflector on that probe. I don't think it would need it much anyway.

Interstellar hydrogen says it does. See also "The Battle."

Point made. That said, I made my way around that, as you've seen. I now think it's largely possible to still have the dish present in the probe. Even the blocky apparatus laying behind the dish is tight enough so one can park his legs each side of it.

There's, in fact, no necessity to claim that the dish, and the blocky thing behind, would need to be removed.

So what's all that other stuff there for? Well, obviously enough, the things that you don't need when you're shelling some helpless planetary target - on-board AI/navigation, sensors, high-powered shielding, directional blast focusing (i.e., shields that are up on the inside), maneuvering engines, shield penetration aids, et cetera. Which is why the yield of an anti-ship torpedo can't get as high as a bombardment torpedo can.

That list of functions is interesting.

[Socar]

Skin of Evil... it's still up in the air. A single screencap is not enough.

Screencap and timing is all that it takes.

Not really. Expansion and duration of a fireball are very dependant of the yield.

Looking at a cropped low quality thumbsized picture won't help at all, btw.
I don't consider it reliable.

So thus far, SoE proves nothing until you can show that it does support a multi hundred megaton yield.

Speaking of which, I seem to recall someone mentioning that it was impossible for the fireball seen in SoE to be that large, intense, and contain the amount of energy some were claiming for it, and still radiate that much energy in such a short amount of time.

[Jedi Master Spock]

Not really. Expansion and duration of a fireball are very dependant of the yield.

I'm not modeling it as a fireball - I'm modeling it as anything that could be visible and opaque at that size as a hemisphere extending from the atmosphere appearing in that (fairly short) length of time.

In other words, I've used the model for "What if this is just some strange cold dust plume, rather than a shell or sphere of incandescently hot atmosphere?"

The result is quite similar. The simple fact that a large visible and roughly hemispherical plume, fireball, or whatever else appears in a very short span of time requires very high yields.

Near teraton is not an understatement.
You have those (nonsensical) waves that cover several hundreds of kilometers in a matter of a very few frames.

Oh, you're talking about TDIC. It's an outlier as far as I'm concerned.

And how do you assert that? It's a zero gravity environment. The liquid will likely reach for the path of less resistance. It won't require much energy to make the droplet depart from the comet.

What droplet? I don't think you quite understand when I say that liquid water simply won't form at low pressures. Under 6 millibars, you won't get liquid water. Period. You can only have either solid water, or gaseous water. "Melting" a comet therefore entails vaporization.

Good! So we know that Geordi is a dumbhack who's responsible of all the technological specificities onbard the Enterprise.

No, we know he is not always precise with scientific language. We've known this for a long time, and as I've mentioned numerous times before, it isn't the least bit unusual for someone working on the applied end (engineer) talking to non-specialists (command staff).

Depends on how dense those things are.
Besides, if we talk about snowballs, the density is going to be low, and will need to be accounted for in calcs. Of course... you know how much I don't put much credit on Masks-related calcs.

I believe most of the serious calculations offered make use of "snowball" rather than solid ice figures.

Yep. But how does this dispute the evidence that many systems were obviously added on the shell, and not contained inside the very thin shell?

"Many" meaning "a volumetrically insignificant portion." We're talking about something that closely resembles a new paint job, not added warp nacelles.

Looking at the okudagram, and considering the elements pasted on the shell, it's very easy to consider that the inner dish could be left at the front of the probe, and not forbid someone from getting inside, even if it means putting one's feet on each side of the dish. The power could come from any other the bits strapped on the shell.

That's another piece inside a crowded probe. It's going to be the torpedo's warp core that powers it, incidentally, and the power requirements for that aren't going to be too small.

There is no evidence that in all these cases, the Feds, or any other faction, bothers to remove stuff from their standard torpedoes, make them very target specific, to increase yields.
Unless you have evidence of this, of course.

Well, in almost all cases (even ENT), we have evidence that torpedos are loaded specifically per mission for the desired yield. There could easily be particular standard yields for use against planetary targets just as there are standard yields for using against other ships.

That said, see my points made for Wilga's post about how much space you could hope gain, and how it will always fail to reach the TDIC yields.

I don't doubt that it won't reach TDIC yields without resorting to (as W.I.L.G.A. pointed out, IIRC) obscene densities of antimatter. IIRC, we have some nice shots in the TOS era movies that strongly suggest torpedos aren't too massive, but I don't feel like going through all of them right now.

That, and my TWOK DVD just went missing.

1. Let's see pictures of the coffin-torp.

See http://images.google.com/images?q=spock's+coffin for all you'd ever want.

2. Let's see caps of its behaviour once it was fired.

It glows (IIRC) and lands intact on the surface from orbit.

3. What extra functions did it achieve?

Aside from the above, nothing - which is the point.

The okudagram is exactly the same, and precisely show the tanks being at mid height.

No, and no.

The okudagram torp schematic is exactly the TM one, but with strict royal blue swapped for turquoise.
And both clearly show the existence of only two traps - which should be hard to prove/disprove with shots from real torps (supported by the replicas smaller models of the calss VI Geordi was looking at in some episode) - which points to the difficulty of inserting and accessing extra AM tanks.

Two traps, quite sufficient room within those traps for two standard size warheads... or a "box" warhead twice the size.

Could make sense... if only I understood what you mean. :)
Please elaborate.

OK. Ships operate under a warp field, dramatically reducing their effective mass by a factor of multiple orders of magnitude through a local reduction in the value of G (see "Deja Q").

A gravitic warhead is presumed to operate through implosion - imploding matter, possibly to the point of a fusion reaction or even the creation of one or more short-lived (and tiny) singularities. The latter case allows for a higher yield than antimatter; however, if G decreases by a factor of 100, so does the Schwarzschild radius for a given mass. Alternately, for a given radius, 100 times the mass must be included.

In summary? A gravitic warhead that offers a greater yield than an antimatter warhead is likely to fizzle against Trek ships if warp fields are active, meaning that it would not be a standard load.

Which as a side note, is of interest considering the fears about not getting too close to enemy ships, when firing torps.

Dead on the money.

That list of functions is interesting.

I'm sure it could get longer if we worked at it. I have no problem with torpedos being used for bombardment being a full order of magnitude stronger than the typical anti-ship torpedo.

[l33telboi]

Speaking of which, I seem to recall someone mentioning that it was impossible for the fireball seen in SoE to be that large, intense, and contain the amount of energy some were claiming for it, and still radiate that much energy in such a short amount of time.

This ties in with the question i posed eariler. Would somone mind elaborating on the scene in question, or perhaps pointing me in the right direction?

[Mr. Oragahn]

specifically per mission for the desired yield. There could easily be particular standard yields for use against planetary targets just as there are standard yields for using against other ships.[/quote]

Yields is one thing. Rearranging the inside of a torp every single time is another thing, really.

I don't doubt that it won't reach TDIC yields without resorting to (as W.I.L.G.A. pointed out, IIRC) obscene densities of antimatter. IIRC, we have some nice shots in the TOS era movies that strongly suggest torpedos aren't too massive, but I don't feel like going through all of them right now.

Oh but they'd be really appreciated nonetheless. ;)

That, and my TWOK DVD just went missing.

What's that? Klingonese? :)

1. Let's see pictures of the coffin-torp.

See http://images.google.com/images?q=spock's+coffin for all you'd ever want.

Mwell, they're hardly sufficient. I thought this would actually return more pictures.

There's that pic from EAS.
Is that thing strapped on the top of the torp not just a magnetized arm to lift the torp?

Besides this shot, and shots from the torp closed, I don't get to see much of the inside before it gets fired.

But, you know, the point is about TDIC. All the stuff about the guts of a torp is nice and all, but you pretty much agree with me that you can't pack enough stuff in a torp to reach TDIC claimed levels.
Which was the point, initially: proving that it can be made.

Since this is clearly turning into what my xmas torp got inside, I'll cut the torp related stuff and reverse to TDIC only.
A new thread, I think, should be better suited for those very torp centric discussions.

Especially in order to find a cohesive explanation between what torps have been seen doing, how they've been moded, and how this fits with the okudagram.

OK. Ships operate under a warp field, dramatically reducing their effective mass by a factor of multiple orders of magnitude through a local reduction in the value of G (see "Deja Q").

A gravitic warhead is presumed to operate through implosion - imploding matter, possibly to the point of a fusion reaction or even the creation of one or more short-lived (and tiny) singularities. The latter case allows for a higher yield than antimatter; however, if G decreases by a factor of 100, so does the Schwarzschild radius for a given mass. Alternately, for a given radius, 100 times the mass must be included.

In summary? A gravitic warhead that offers a greater yield than an antimatter warhead is likely to fizzle against Trek ships if warp fields are active, meaning that it would not be a standard load.

By definition, wouldn't this warhead be nullified precisely when a ship is at warp? On sublight engines, those warheads would be absolutely terrific, no?

[Mike DiCenso]

"TWOK" is short for "The Wrath of Khan".
-Mike