Starfleet Jedi

Posted: **Mon Aug 04, 2008 11:11 am**

I just saw the Voyager episode Dreadnought and I was wondering what that weapon used by the missile was. It seemed to me it vaporized the smaller ship in one burst, yet it didn't really seem to bother Voyager that much at all.

That thing must have a pretty ludicrous power supply (other than it's payload) for it's size anyway, according to what we saw Voyager (which is not just a bit bigger) was totally unable to harm it.

Have there been any calculations etc about it?

Posted: **Tue Aug 05, 2008 2:46 am**

I'd say there are two very interesting facts about it:

1. The federation was considered superior in technology to the Cardassians.

2. This was designed and built by the Cardassins and had the destructive power of 42.96 gigatons.

This of course leads us to the inevitable conclusion that the federation is more than capable of similar feats... Hell, federation vessels are able to obliterate cardassian ships in one shot over extreme distances... so the dreadnought is essentially the cream of the crop of cardassian technology, with some federation enhancements to be able to stand up to voyager like it did.

Also, plasma wave = anti fighter weapon ^_^

Posted: **Tue Aug 05, 2008 9:49 am**

Well, technically getting a bigger payload should be easy enough - just increase the amount of matter/antimatter in there.

Another interesting point is: why did the Cardassians build it like this anyway?

It would probably be much more effective to rebuild the thing as an automated photon torpedo launcher - like a MIRV. You'd be able to blast a much larger area that way.

It's almost as if they either overdid the payload by something fierce or that they expected a smaller bomb to be unable to penetrate the Maquis base defences.

Posted: **Wed Aug 06, 2008 12:11 am**

Trinoya wrote:I'd say there are two very interesting facts about it:

1. The federation was considered superior in technology to the Cardassians.

2. This was designed and built by the Cardassins and had the destructive power of 42.96 gigatons.

This of course leads us to the inevitable conclusion that the federation is more than capable of similar feats... Hell, federation vessels are able to obliterate cardassian ships in one shot over extreme distances... so the dreadnought is essentially the cream of the crop of cardassian technology, with some federation enhancements to be able to stand up to voyager like it did.

Also, plasma wave = anti fighter weapon ^_^

All this with the slight detail that the Cardassian ship was built as a missile with some other extra stuff in it. The sheer mention of the payload of the ship and its ability to deal with Voyager would, within that episode (I'm saying this because of consistency) cap UFP abilities.

Posted: **Wed Aug 06, 2008 2:51 am**

A missle with a "other extra stuff on it" is a bit disingenuous to say the least. The thing was, for all practical intents and purposes, a moderate sized, unmanned, automated suicide starship. Missles simply don't have anti-ship plasma wave weapons, quantum torpedoes, impulse engines and warp drives (read a full up warp core), and heavy shields.

Also bear in mind that Torres and the Maquis had also modified Dreadnought. But regardless, a suicide starship can do things that a regular starship cannot. It can put all it's power into shields, weapons, and whatever else it needs in order to carry out it's mission since it is one-way only.
-Mike

Posted: **Thu Aug 07, 2008 6:40 am**

It's always been something of a sticky point. We really never had seen anything corresponding to a strategic long-range missile in Trek before, and it really was a fully functional suicide starship. Makes things a bit hairy.

I am of the opinion that the DN missile really pushes Trek more towards the lower end of things than the higher end of things. 1,000 kg of antimatter really shouldn't be that imposing compared to the amount necessary to drive starships around - yet that's the most easily noticed detail of the episode.

Posted: **Thu Aug 07, 2008 1:47 pm**

What I never could wrap my head around was how a missile like that could've been at warp for such a long time. I mean warp engines require a powersource of their own, and from memory warp drives require quite a powerful ones. So, this thing has to have its own anti-matter supply for propulsion, weaponry and all the smaller things like keeping the lights running (because insufficient lighting on a long-range missile is to be avoided).

What's stranger still is the fact that the missile was said to be able to blow up a small moon, if memory serves. You don't do that with just a few gigatons.

IMO the only way to reconcile it would be to think that the anti-matter was used in conjunction with something else, which allowed it to create such destruction it was supposed to be capable of.

Posted: **Thu Aug 07, 2008 2:38 pm**

Or we are back to Â»Super-Anti-MatterÂ«.

Sometimes it is simply the best explanation.

Posted: **Thu Aug 07, 2008 5:56 pm**

Yet this was a device the Cardassians did not have much success with initially. The use of the so-called kinetic dedonator that failed miserably to work on the Maquis munition that Torres was at demonstates that the "Dreadnoght" ATR-4107 was not developed properly.

Only with the Maquis modifications did the weapon achive something like it's full potential. However, in the case with the Maquis Alpha 441 munitions depot and the later Rakosa V colony, it was going up against targets that really were not heavily defended and would be extremely vunerable to the effects of a weapon carrying warhead of that size. Forty-three gigatons is is enough to shatter into bits a 40 or so km wide asteroid, and enough to seriously crater a much larger one.

On a planet like Rakosa V, the enviromental effects from a 43 GT explosion would be enourmous, combined with the kinetic velocity of the "missle" and we must also consider the explosive release of any matter and antimatter left in the warp core and pods and you'd get a fairly devastating explosion that could well reach the lower end of the petaton range, if not higher.
-Mike

Posted: **Thu Aug 07, 2008 6:57 pm**

l33telboi wrote: What I never could wrap my head around was how a missile like that could've been at warp for such a long time. I mean warp engines require a powersource of their own, and from memory warp drives require quite a powerful ones. So, this thing has to have its own anti-matter supply for propulsion, weaponry and all the smaller things like keeping the lights running (because insufficient lighting on a long-range missile is to be avoided).

The missle was initally attempting to get back to the Alpha quadrent, but when Voyager ran across Dreadnought, it was only doing about warp 2. Later, once the missle had decided to attack Rakosa V in earnest, it jumped to warp 9 and would have reached the planet in less than 48 hours. So the missle knew enough to conserve it's fuel and the like until it needed to do so otherwise. Presumably there is enough mission reserves built into the ATR-4107 design to allow it to make it through some types of heavy defenses without exausting itself in the process and running out of the power needed to maintain the warhead itself, nevermind any other system.

l33telboi wrote:What's stranger still is the fact that the missile was said to be able to blow up a small moon, if memory serves. You don't do that with just a few gigatons.

It would depend on what your definition of a "small moon" is. A 43 GT explosion is enough to shatter into 10 meter pieces a perfectly spherical moon (asteroid) of 40 km quite readily. That is a moon twice as wide as Mars' asteroidal moon of Phobos. If you are willing to accept much larger chunks, then you can destroy small moons larger than 40 km, or put a really huge crater in it.

l33telboi wrote:IMO the only way to reconcile it would be to think that the anti-matter was used in conjunction with something else, which allowed it to create such destruction it was supposed to be capable of.

See my other posting in this thread that links back to another where I calculated the energies needed to vaporize the stardrive section of a Galaxy class starship. A warp core alone can at least contribute several gigatons by itself, never mind what there might still be in the storage pods.
-Mike

Posted: **Fri Aug 08, 2008 12:40 am**

Who is like God arbour wrote:
Or we are back to Â»Super-Anti-MatterÂ«.

Sometimes it is simply the best explanation.

If that is true, then it would indeed explain why the crew thought so highly of the weapon. That weapon in Obsession was 73,725,000,000 Megaton yield bomb, I can hardly imagine what a 1000 kilograms of that stuff would do.

Of course, we need to see the size of said moon is.

Posted: **Fri Aug 08, 2008 2:59 pm**

Here we go again. Mith, are you going to ballad your obsession (haha) all around the versus community or what?

Posted: **Fri Aug 08, 2008 6:13 pm**

l33telboi wrote:What I never could wrap my head around was how a missile like that could've been at warp for such a long time. I mean warp engines require a powersource of their own, and from memory warp drives require quite a powerful ones. So, this thing has to have its own anti-matter supply for propulsion, weaponry and all the smaller things like keeping the lights running (because insufficient lighting on a long-range missile is to be avoided).

What's stranger still is the fact that the missile was said to be able to blow up a small moon, if memory serves. You don't do that with just a few gigatons.

IMO the only way to reconcile it would be to think that the anti-matter was used in conjunction with something else, which allowed it to create such destruction it was supposed to be capable of.

As Mike has shown, the yield is enough to destroy a small planet, and it all depends on what destroy means. It's extremely variable in Trek.

The reactants necessary to power the ship's warp engines, shields and weapons can either be part of the 1 ton AM figure, or extra to that.

In the first case, the ship would have a stock of 1 ton of AM to power everything, but would logically consume very little of that otherwise there wouldn't be much left to destroy the target.

In the second case, the fact that they were not worth a mention next to the missile's warhead's yield means that it would be negligible in comparison.

Posted: **Fri Aug 08, 2008 8:07 pm**

Mr. Oragahn wrote:Here we go again. Mith, are you going to ballad your obsession (haha) all around the versus community or what?

Again, I am not a fan of the uber-antimatter claim. I go with the dense antimatter theory. I was just making a amusing (if unserious) point on what that would do.

Posted: **Sun Aug 10, 2008 1:50 am**

Mith wrote:
Mr. Oragahn wrote:Here we go again. Mith, are you going to ballad your obsession (haha) all around the versus community or what?
Again, I am not a fan of the uber-antimatter claim. I go with the dense antimatter theory. I was just making a amusing (if unserious) point on what that would do.

As I've seen in your post at SBC (I'm getting a reply down), you actually get very confused between both "styles" of antimatter, regarding their densities.

You were clearly satisfied to the idea that the uber antimatter would explain Obsession and make it fit.
But again, fit with what precisely? more nonsense, as you'll see at SBC.
That back and forth double standard and circular reasoning you're going through will be commented properly and I hope brought to an end.
It's widely admitted that TOS and Connie based versuses are in a different league than the rest of Trek and are almost jokingly worth combats like E-nil vs Death Star.
Let's just get real, you'll never convince any sane person that you can make that rubbish of Obsession fit your average and larger Trek material.
And same applies to that episode with the E-nil repeatedly hit by a sound wave... in space... so powerful still that it would destroy an entire star system, multiple times.

Starfleet Jedi

Cardassian Dreadnought

Cardassian Dreadnought