Star Trek: Some quick NX-01 weapons calculations

[Lucky]

DATA: Energy flow is within normal parameters, from the pre-fire chamber to the emission aperture. 


LAFORGE: Rapid nadion pulse, right on target. Beam control assembly, safety interlock, both checked out. Beam width intensity controls also responding correctly. 


DATA: Energy cell usage remains constant at one point oh five megajoules per second. Curious. The efficiency reading on the discharge crystal is well above Starfleet specifications.

KIRA: This is a standard issue, Cardassian phase-disruptor rifle. It has a four point seven megajoule power capacity, three millisecond recharge two beam settings. 


ZIYAL: How do you know so much about Cardassian weapons? 


KIRA: We captured a lot of them during the occupation. It's a good weapon, solid, simple. You can drag it through the mud and it'll still fire. Now this. (Federation phaser rifle.) This is an entirely different animal. Federation standard issue. It's a little less powerful, but it's got a more options. Sixteen beam settings. Fully autonomous recharge, multiple target acquisition, gyro stabilised, the works. It's a little more complicated, so it's not as good a field weapon. Too many things can go wrong with it. 


ZIYAL: I can see why my father likes having you around. 


KIRA: I think you should stick with the Cardassian rifle. It's smaller, easier to use, and if we get boarded I don't want you to have to think too much about the weapon you're using.

Round Fired: 4.7 Mega joule Pulse

Rate of Fire: 20,000 Rounds Per-Minute

Output: 1566.66667 Megawatts or roughly 1.6 Gigawatts

REED: This, ladies and gentlemen is a phase-modulated energy weapon. It's rated for a maximum power output of five hundred gigajoules. Enterprise was designed to carry three of them. We have one, and it's only a prototype.

Round Fired: 500 Gigajoule Pulse

Rate of Fire: Unstated, but high enough to give the illusion of being a beam
Low End
I will assume 4500 rounds a minute like the Phalanx CIWS as that barely appears as a beam when firing tracers at night to me

High End End
I will assume the 20,000 rounds a minute like the Type-3 Phaser

Output:
Low End
4500*500=2250000
2250000/60=37500

37500 Gigawatts or 37.5 Terawatts

High End
200000*500=100000000
100000000/60=1666666.67

1666666.67 Gigawatts or about 1.7 Petawatts

REED: Check the cannons. Be careful down there. The blast yield was ten times what we expected. 


ARCHER [OC]: What happened? 


REED: Something overloaded the phase modulators.

Round Fired: 5000 Gigajoule Pulse

Rate of Fire: Unstated, but high enough to give the illusion of being a beam
Low End
I will assume 4500 rounds a minute like the Phalanx CIWS as that barely appears as a beam when firing tracers at night to me

High End End
I will assume the 20,000 rounds a minute like the Type-3 Phaser

Output:
Low End
4500*500*10=22500000
22500000/60=375000

375000 Gigawatts or 375 Terawatts

High End
200000*500*10=1000000000
1000000000/60=16666666.7

16666666.7 Gigawatts or about 16.7 Petawatts

TRAVIS: I can tie the plasma turrets directly into the impulse engines. Lieutenant Reed did that and it increased our yield by eighty percent.

Round Fired: 900 Gigajoule Pulse

Rate of Fire: Unstated, but high enough to give the illusion of being a beam
Low End
I will assume 4500 rounds a minute like the Phalanx CIWS as that barely appears as a beam when firing tracers at night to me

High End End
I will assume the 20,000 rounds a minute like the Type-3 Phaser

Output:
Low End
4500*900=4050000
4050000/60=67500

67500 Gigawatts or 67.5 Terawatts

High End
200000*900=180000000
180000000/60=3000000

3000000 Gigawatts or 3000 terawatts or 3 Petawatts

REED: Photonic torpedoes. Their range is over fifty times greater than our conventional torpedoes, and they have a variable yield. They can knock the comm. array off a shuttlepod without scratching the hull or they can put a three kilometre crater into an asteroid.

Since no asteroid size is given I will simply use the Moon as the object being hit with a full yield Photonic Torpedo because I have been able to find a formula for that

E = 4.0 x 1015 D3 Joules.

Sadly I can't make heads or tails out of the formula, but the answer key on the page seems to claim 8 megatons(33472000 gigajoules, or 33472 terajoules) to cause a 2 kilometer crater.

[2046]

For reference, a megaton per second is 4.184 petawatts. A ton per second is 4.184 gigawatts.

I am not comfortable with the calcs.

[Lucky]

For reference, a megaton per second is 4.184 petawatts. A ton per second is 4.184 gigawatts.

I am not comfortable with the calcs.

Could you please elaborate?

[Mike DiCenso]

I think, although Lucky is making somewhat loose assumptions about the rate of pulses in each beam, there is something to it. In these images from ENT's "Silent Enemy", you can see the individual pulses making up the beam:





In the first image, I count four visible pulses that are discernible in the starboard side phase cannon's beam, and in image two, I make out the same in the visible portions of the two beams hitting the peak. Without good quality video, it's hard to know at what rate the pulses are being generated, or how many over what length of beam to get any kind of idea what the power is.

But this is nothing new to Trek:



This is obviously from Wrath of Khan, but phasers or similar weapons firing in pulses rather than a continuous, unbroken beam is quite interesting, and the pulse phasers of the Defiant or the E-1701 ("Balance of Terror") can be fired in such a way so that they do not produce a beam, but separate bolts, may have some kind of advantage, such as packing more of a punch as well as proximity detonation effects on a target.
-Mike