Capitol Ship Firepower

Post by **Mike DiCenso** » Fri Sep 29, 2006 8:18 pm

Okay, I had a chance to pick up the DVD version of "Masks" at one of my local DVD/Video rental stores, and popped it in the player for a look at what happened with the comet melting/vaporization.

1.) First off the beam is a continuous wide-beam blast, no intermittent firing seen in the brief FX shot scenes.

2.) Timing: Picard orders the phasers fired at 9 minutes, 2 seconds, then Worf reports the phasers are terminating the operation at 9 minutes, 13 seconds. For an approximate duration of 11 seconds.

This means the phaser power delivered will be approximately 6 times higher than my conservative 60 second duration estimate, or 18.1 MT a second. Since this represents 10% power, a full-power blast for the second largest phaser array on the E-D would be in the range of 181 MT a second. The largest of the E-D's phasers, the upper main saucer array, will be at least around 23% higher than this as previous noted, or 222 MT a second.
-Mike

AnonymousRedShirtEnsign · Post by **AnonymousRedShirtEnsign** » Fri Sep 29, 2006 10:10 pm

So this basically confirms my high MT estimate, cool.

GStone · Post by **GStone** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 1:18 am

This puts TDiC in a good perspective.

Post by **Mike DiCenso** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 3:21 am

The low-end estimates for TDiC are still 112 times greater firepower than the ones generated here for "Masks".
-Mike

GStone · Post by **GStone** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 10:23 am

Yeah, it blows the crap out of the Mask figures.

Enterprise E · Post by **Enterprise E** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 3:43 pm

I just watched the relevant parts of the episode "Masks" where the Enterprise fired its phasers at the comet and I found no reference to the amount of time it would take to melt the comet. All Worf said was that the phasers had been set to wide dispersal and had been programmed to automatically terminate when the core of the comet was reached. Even when Riker was talking to Geordi, he made no mention of time. The time reference could have come from another episode that season where Data met "his mother" since they were talking about using the phasers to drill down to the core, or the mantle. I don't know how much this will affect the firepower figures of the phasers, though, and I don't know how they'll compare to "The Die is Cast."

Post by **Mike DiCenso** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 9:06 pm

You misunderstood me, Enterprise E. By timing I ment the phasers are order firing at time index 9 minutes, 2 seconds, then are reported terminating at 9 minutes, 13 seconds into the episode. 11 seconds total firing time ( I could go for a second or two shaved off from that, because the phasers were set to automatically cease firing once the core of the comet was reached, and we hear from Worf's console a beeping sound which Worf reacts to indicating the phasers have stopped).
-Mike

Enterprise E · Post by **Enterprise E** » Sun Oct 01, 2006 8:48 pm

Oh, sorry about that Mike.

AFT · Post by **AFT** » Mon Oct 02, 2006 5:42 am

I have the distinctive impression that it was 236 Megatons per second at 10% power, so about 2 Gigatons per second for a full power blast. Unfortunately I’ve been unable to find that analysis again.

GStone · Post by **GStone** » Mon Oct 02, 2006 3:09 pm

Where the hell is Omega or Newland when you need them?

Nonamer · Post by **Nonamer** » Mon Oct 02, 2006 4:57 pm

Someone should email them and fetch them here. ;)

AnonymousRedShirtEnsign · Post by **AnonymousRedShirtEnsign** » Mon Oct 02, 2006 8:08 pm

For phaser firepower wouldn't it also matter how much of your reactor power you put into phasers? So does anyone have anything concrete about photon torpedos?

Post by **Mike DiCenso** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 11:29 pm

Before Captain Newland, Graham Kennedy did the numbers, and came up with the following:

Yet another phaser power calculation

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From: Graham Kennedy - view profile
Date: Sun, Apr 14 2002 3:15 am
Email: Graham Kennedy <gra...@adeadend.demon.co.uk>
Groups: rec.arts.startrek.tech
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I was just wandering my site, and I came across the sci-tech
entry on the D'Arsay Archive from TNG's "Masks". The images
here : http://www.ditl.org/scitech/picdarsayarchive.htm
caught my attention...

The first image shows that the comet is, roughly, spherical.

The second shows the E-D boiling off the ice, a process that
takes (from memory) less than ten seconds.

The third image shows that the height of the archive is about
three times the length of the E-D.

So... the comet must have been about 2 km in diameter.

Its volume would be 4/3 pi r^3, or 4,188,790,205 m^3.

It's density, assuming it was pure water ice all the way
through, would be 1,000 kg/m^3.

So it's mass would be 4.189 x 10^12 kg.

Now, it takes 4,200 Joules to heat one kilo of water by
one degree celsius. It takes about 334,000 J to then
change 1 kg of ice into to water. Another 4,200 Joules
per degree to heat it up to the boiling point, and then
2,260,000 Joules per kilo to convert the water into
vapour.

We don't know the temperature of the comet before the
E-D started heating it, but surface material was boiling
off in the first picture so at the very least the surface
layers were close to vapour point. Yet the rest of the
comet was solid.

To simplify matters, I'm just going to look at how much
energy it takes to convert from liquid to gas. This is
so much more than the energy involved in the rest of the
process that it's pretty much the only bit that matters
anyway!

4.189 x 10^12 kilos of comet vapourised at 2.26 x 10^6
Joules per kilo means that the E-D had to supply the
equivalent of 9.466 x 10^18 Joules.

Released over about ten seconds, this represents a power
of about 900,000 Terawatts.

I'd be interested to hear comments and/or criticisms...

Anyway, Graham's numbers seem to support a maximum 200 MT a second phaser output, and 2 GTs total energy delivered over ten seconds.
-Mike

Post by **Mike DiCenso** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 11:09 pm

Actually, I goofed up there. Graham is actually looking at 900,000 TJ a second (900,000 TW 0r 214 MT) based on a 10 second phaser firing. In other words, 900, 000 TW is what the ship can do at 10% power, so 9 million TW (2.143 GT) is what the second largest array can do at full power. Theoretically, the largest array on the ship being some 23% larger in size should deliver at least 2.635 GT a second.
-Mike

AFT · Post by **AFT** » Thu Oct 05, 2006 6:04 am

So, both Captain Newland and Graham Kennedy pretty much came to the same firepower: Low Gigaton range. But what about examples that show higher and lower firepower? Since no one is so clear cut as this one, shouldn’t be relatively easy to rationalize them?