Phaser/warp power

[Mr. Oragahn]

Inheritance, if anything, shows tunnel digging with no evidence of heat. That's a cheat on physics, with unknown energy inputs.
Masks is an episode where you can understand phasers taking even up to more than one hour, if not much more, to "melt" the ice comet. The episode has visuals causing much trouble. And then you have to wonder if they really tried to vapourize the ice, or actually NDF it slowly. The former would have shattered the comet due to the massive change of temperature.

Requirements for warp fields and warping away from planets/suns place the warp engine's peak power usage at around a hundred gigatons per second, possibly even more.

Where is that from?
At best, there's been that billions of what again, gigawatts from Voyager, right? Which as a conservative stance, would mean hundreds of megatons.

Various detonations, especially "Skin of Evil" and similar incidents, suggest that the top yield of a photon torpedo is perhaps around a gigaton.

From what I have seen, the flash lasts a fraction of a second. That's not a gigaton. It would even be too short for a megaton shot.

It is difficult for us to judge this well from observation in the movies alone. Depending on how the asteroids in TESB are scaled, the bolts seen fired could be sub-kiloton - or multi-megaton - if they're vaporizing the asteroids.

There's only one right method, and it doesn't provide megaton figures. Now, nothing says that's the maximum those inferior cannons could ditch.
The heavier turbolasers aren't rated with movie material.

Fighter-range ships around a millionth the size have gigajoule range beam weapons that fire multiple times per second. See Slave I.

Very low gigajoule is not even a correct figure, as shown here.
These asteroids have all the caracteristics of lumps of aggregated dust notably when they collide or get cut by the seismic mine.
The only way to obtain a gigajoule figure is to consider that a 10 meters wide asteroid of nickel-iron is properly shattered into far many smaller bits.
Which is nothing of what happens on screen. And of course, a 12x10m asteroid is mostly fragmented into two large bits, plus a few debris here and there.
That's megajoule for you.

There is Luke's X-wing blasting stuff on the Death Star, but the reference used by SDN misses the novelization part of it, about how apparently most of the damage we see is actually caused by secondary explosions.

Missiles are rarely used - almost never by capital ships.

Despite the EU facts, I can't recall one single capital ship ever firing missiles against anything else.

Interestingly enough, certain pro-Wars types like to claim justification for their firepower figures based on a passage from an EU story that claims the Hoth asteroids were iron in composition, however this runs contrary to the second-order canon of the TESB novelization which states several times that describes the asteroids variously as "rock", and "chunk of rock".

Saxton tried to enforce the idea that the asteroids of Geonosis were made of iron. You know, the kind that, when it falls down through our atmosphere, melts into distorded metal balls.

[Jedi Master Spock]

Inheritance, if anything, shows tunnel digging with no evidence of heat. That's a cheat on physics, with unknown energy inputs.
Masks is an episode where you can understand phasers taking even up to more than one hour, if not much more, to "melt" the ice comet. The episode has visuals causing much trouble. And then you have to wonder if they really tried to vapourize the ice, or actually NDF it slowly. The former would have shattered the comet due to the massive change of temperature.

We actually do see matter disappearing fairly quickly in "Masks." I would doubt an hour.

Hence the discussion of "effective" yield vs material objects. The evidence indicates phasers "destroy" as much matter as vaporizing 100 MT/s would provide for [on low settings]; the evidence also indicates that phasers ought to peak at around a 1-10 GT/s power consumption.

Where is that from?
At best, there's been that billions of what again, gigawatts from Voyager, right? Which as a conservative stance, would mean hundreds of megatons.

Well, there's also been the billions of terawatts quote (12.75 EW), which as I recall has been clarified (in that Data never actually says "per" in the episode as filmed, simply 12.75 billion terawatts); however, the much higher figure comes from incidents like "Deja Q" and "Descent."

In applying the warp field to an object to lighten it, you must input energy in order to account for the difference in gravitational binding energy. In the case of "Deja Q," a rather large moon is being lightened by a great deal.

How much power needs to be put into this is somewhat dependent on the very messy effects of the warp field - is this a propagating front moving at c that must be fed, or must the total absolute binding energy be applied?

On my website, I assumed that the moon is only around a hundred million tons (wayyy too low, incidentally, but there's no real hard figures for the moon) in which case the warp field needs to come up with a half dozen exajoules just to deal with its binding energy relative to the planet (immediate, in light-speed terms) and quite a bit more several minutes later, when we take into account the primary star.

The COE problem also is invoked going to warp against a local g field. You're moving distance/applying a warp field, which eliminates a certain amount of [negative] gravitational binding energy. In the case of a speed of c and a field like that near the surface of our Sun, and a five million ton object, we need to supply about 400 exawatts.

A similar situation pops up in "Relics" with moving away from a star very quickly. Going straight to high warp while around a planet gives similar figures.

From what I have seen, the flash lasts a fraction of a second. That's not a gigaton. It would even be too short for a megaton shot.

As I've pointed out, a megaton shot would've been invisible.

Imagine this: What we are seeing is a very high velocity shell of superheated dust and debris. This fades from sight as it thins to nearly nothing. Not a perfect match for the visuals...

... but we should not see a bloom that size appear in a fraction of a second from anything short of a gigaton.

There's only one right method, and it doesn't provide megaton figures. Now, nothing says that's the maximum those inferior cannons could ditch.
The heavier turbolasers aren't rated with movie material.

Except implicitly, through comparison.

Very low gigajoule is not even a correct figure, as shown here.
These asteroids have all the caracteristics of lumps of aggregated dust notably when they collide or get cut by the seismic mine.
The only way to obtain a gigajoule figure is to consider that a 10 meters wide asteroid of nickel-iron is properly shattered into far many smaller bits.
Which is nothing of what happens on screen. And of course, a 12x10m asteroid is mostly fragmented into two large bits, plus a few debris here and there.
That's megajoule for you.

Not necessarily an upper bound, really. Melting a cubic meter of rock would take several gigajoules, for example. We have ample room to consider a lot of non-explosive heating effects going on, with possibly a couple cubic meters of outright melting and vaporization going on in what is interpreted as a cloud of small debris.

There is Luke's X-wing blasting stuff on the Death Star, but the reference used by SDN misses the novelization part of it, about how apparently most of the damage we see is actually caused by secondary explosions.

Still, causing really significant damage to meter-scale chunks of metal is a potentially gigajoule-range weapon.

Despite the EU facts, I can't recall one single capital ship ever firing missiles against anything else.

Victory class star destroyers, in fact, are known for their heavy missile firepower, for all that they don't seem to use it often.

There is one example on the Obsidian Order page; a corvette takes down a bulk cruiser with two capital-ship sized proton torpedoes. We were also discussing a case recently in this thread where a capital ship had baradium missiles on hand.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Inheritance, if anything, shows tunnel digging with no evidence of heat. That's a cheat on physics, with unknown energy inputs.
Masks is an episode where you can understand phasers taking even up to more than one hour, if not much more, to "melt" the ice comet. The episode has visuals causing much trouble. And then you have to wonder if they really tried to vapourize the ice, or actually NDF it slowly. The former would have shattered the comet due to the massive change of temperature.

We actually do see matter disappearing fairly quickly in "Masks." I would doubt an hour.

I did get a very close and meticulous look at Masks, and aside from the bogus ice removal which magically doesn't crack (enters NDF, which doesn't help yields), the mass of ice disappearing onscreen can be properly timed, and when compared to the comet's whole size, gives two different results. If we consider the volume, it does take more than hour, at least. If we just take the distance to the core which the beam covers, assuming that the beams would manage to remove the overincreased amount of ice without loosing speed, then we're around 45 seconds or more, but this makes no sense, precisely because the more ice there will be when getting closer to the core, the more time it will take to get close to the core. Hence the volumetric estimation, instead of that purely arbitrarily radius based estimation.
Translated into pure energies if the ice was removed by mere heating, you wouldn't get more than kilotons per second at best.

Where is that from?
At best, there's been that billions of what again, gigawatts from Voyager, right? Which as a conservative stance, would mean hundreds of megatons.

Well, there's also been the billions of terawatts quote (12.75 EW), which as I recall has been clarified (in that Data never actually says "per" in the episode as filmed, simply 12.75 billion terawatts);

He does say "per...".

however, the much higher figure comes from incidents like "Deja Q" and "Descent."

In applying the warp field to an object to lighten it, you must input energy in order to account for the difference in gravitational binding energy.

Why?

Imagine this: What we are seeing is a very high velocity shell of superheated dust and debris. This fades from sight as it thins to nearly nothing. Not a perfect match for the visuals...

Actually a very bad one.

... but we should not see a bloom that size appear in a fraction of a second from anything short of a gigaton.

With a thick cloud layer, this is right. Now, in a clear day

Not necessarily an upper bound, really. Melting a cubic meter of rock would take several gigajoules, for example. We have ample room to consider a lot of non-explosive heating effects going on, with possibly a couple cubic meters of outright melting and vaporization going on in what is interpreted as a cloud of small debris.

Why would we do so?
Why would we even consider a mass of vapourized or melted rock sufficient enough to push the estimation into the gigajoule range?

Still, causing really significant damage to meter-scale chunks of metal is a potentially gigajoule-range weapon.

Meter-scale? 2D? 3D?
The novelization clearly shows that only one bolt, of all those fired by Luke, generated the huge fireball - which almost cooked his ship by the way.
Same novelization reveals that major explosions were subsidiary as the "effects of the blast traveled back down various conduits and cables."

Victory class star destroyers, in fact, are known for their heavy missile firepower, for all that they don't seem to use it often.

There is one example on the Obsidian Order page; a corvette takes down a bulk cruiser with two capital-ship sized proton torpedoes. We were also discussing a case recently in this thread where a capital ship had baradium missiles on hand.

Excuse me, I forgot to say in the movies.
Yes, the EU has a load of references, but the movie show nothing, unless I missed a nebulous 30 years old white VFX spot drifting in the background.

[Roondar]

Well, there's also been the billions of terawatts quote (12.75 EW), which as I recall has been clarified (in that Data never actually says "per" in the episode as filmed, simply 12.75 billion terawatts);

He does say "per..."

... But since he didn't finish it, that could mean multiple things.

For all we know he was going to finish it like this:

'per warpcore design specifications'

And presto, our problem is gone.

(Note that you could fill in anything after the per since he didn't actually say anything, but it'd be nice if the sentence actually made sense, no?)

[Mr. Oragahn]

... But since he didn't finish it, that could mean multiple things.

For all we know he was going to finish it like this:

'per warpcore design specifications'

And presto, our problem is gone.

(Note that you could fill in anything after the per since he didn't actually say anything, but it'd be nice if the sentence actually made sense, no?)

Or per hour. Considering that he was forwarding a power/energy consumption figure, per hour would fit as well.
Basically, depending on the last bit of the sentence, the reference can go up or down by many orders of magnitude.
It's an unreliable piece of dialogue.

[Jedi Master Spock]

Split, btw, to preserve l33telboi's thread remaining mostly on subject.

... But since he didn't finish it, that could mean multiple things.

For all we know he was going to finish it like this:

'per warpcore design specifications'

And presto, our problem is gone.

(Note that you could fill in anything after the per since he didn't actually say anything, but it'd be nice if the sentence actually made sense, no?)

Or per hour. Considering that he was forwarding a power/energy consumption figure, per hour would fit as well.
Basically, depending on the last bit of the sentence, the reference can go up or down by many orders of magnitude.
It's an unreliable piece of dialogue.

Except that, as has been pointed out numerous times, a unit of time doesn't make sense.

The only possible conclusions that make sense are the ones that weren't scripted - per specifications, per normal warmup procedures...

See, watts are a unit of power already. You don't generate watts per unit time; you can increase or decrease power by watts per unit time, but if you're generating watts, you could be generating them "per" either in a different sense of the word (as in "per normal operating specifications") "per" some rate of fuel burn, etc.

It's not that ambiguous - and it really fits well with peak power requirements, which are 1-2 orders of magnitude above that figure.

[Mike DiCenso]

Inheritance, if anything, shows tunnel digging with no evidence of heat. That's a cheat on physics, with unknown energy inputs.

Actually, you are incorrect on that. We don't actually get to see the drilling first-hand in "Inheritance". We only have a dialog description of the drilling via character dialog, and a brief scene much later on looking up the tunnel made by the phaser beam.

Masks is an episode where you can understand phasers taking even up to more than one hour, if not much more, to "melt" the ice comet. The episode has visuals causing much trouble. And then you have to wonder if they really tried to vapourize the ice, or actually NDF it slowly. The former would have shattered the comet due to the massive change of temperature.

We actually do see matter disappearing fairly quickly in "Masks." I would doubt an hour.

The comet's ice is not simply disappearing, there are definite thermal effects occuring as seen here (remember to cut and paste the link):

http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/ ... sks069.jpg

http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/ ... sks070.jpg

Note the phaser beam widening out, and the material clearly visible sublimating off into space.

As for the issue of thermal expansion, it was stated and shown that the phasers were adjusted to a wide beam setting, no doubt to evenly sublimate the ice away with minimal shattering, and prevent damage to the archive beneath it.
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

Except that, as has been pointed out numerous times, a unit of time doesn't make sense.

Why so? Measuring overall power production per hour is one of the most used methods to provide power figures across the world.
It couldn't make more sense.

The only possible conclusions that make sense are the ones that weren't scripted - per specifications, per normal warmup procedures...

See, watts are a unit of power already. You don't generate watts per unit time;[/quote]

Watt-hour. Sorry, but it does exist, and perfectly fits an estimation of power for a given system.

I am no way saying it's what Data had in mind, but it's a very good plausibility.

It's not that ambiguous - and it really fits well with peak power requirements, which are 1-2 orders of magnitude above that figure.

The only two other figures I can think of pointing to gigatons per second are:

- the one from Voyager, with 7o9 saying that her exothing arm can withstand the billions of watt in that tube. Which is of course is complete nonsense, there's no way the chick's arm could withstand even a fraction of that.

- the dish beam used to bust a Cube I think, but I can't remember the calcs behind the claim.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Inheritance, if anything, shows tunnel digging with no evidence of heat. That's a cheat on physics, with unknown energy inputs.

Yes, must be Pen Pals then, the one where we see the beams dig through the soil, in the middle of some ravaged desert city.

[l33telboi]

Why so? Measuring overall power production per hour is one of the most used methods to provide power figures across the world. It couldn't make more sense.

Does it matter? You're not decreasing poweroutput by a whole lot. And from what I recall, your own opinion on power generation landed several orders of magnitude blow even that.

Watt-hour. Sorry, but it does exist, and perfectly fits an estimation of power for a given system.

Maybe, maybe not. The practice of labeling stuff as kWh is done today only because civilians tend to have problems with larger numbers and things they can't conceptualize. And it's far from being used exclusively when it comes to power, a lot of stuff is still defined as how much power it consumes, in terms of watts, kilowatts etc.

And if you take a look on Trek history, you'll notice that everything is stated as kilowatts, megawatts, gigawatts, terawatts etc. Never once has there been a mention of kWh or something similar. It's quite reasonable to assume that they don't need to use such terms, why? Because people serving on a vessel like the Enterprise would be expected to understand the term kW without defining it as kWh.

the one from Voyager, with 7o9 saying that her exothing arm can withstand the billions of watt in that tube. Which is of course is complete nonsense, there's no way the chick's arm could withstand even a fraction of that.

Billions of gigawatts, actually. And I'm afraid it is perfectly plausible. All it comes down to is insulating material. If the material on her hand is heavily insulated, she could grab that piece of cable just fine without the current jumping.

the dish beam used to bust a Cube I think, but I can't remember the calcs behind the claim.

The Cube was never busted. The beam didn't even bring down the shields.

[Mike DiCenso]

I think that Mr. Oragahn is misremembering the episodes again. In "Q Who?" [TNG, Season 2], the E-D does blast out several large craters from the Borg cubeship. There are some calcs done of that by Graham Kennedy on his DITL, but make use of the TNG TM physical properties for tritainium, and screencap where the Borg ship and the damage done to it look smaller than later shots show it to be. All-in-all, he estimated 6.8 x 10^16 joules (68,000 terawatts) for phaser firepower in that instance.
-Mike

[l33telboi]

I think that Mr. Oragahn is misremembering the episodes again. In "Q Who?" [TNG, Season 2], the E-D does blast out several large craters from the Borg cubeship. There are some calcs done of that by Graham Kennedy on his DITL, but make use of the TNG TM physical properties for tritainium, and screencap where the Borg ship and the damage done to it look smaller than later shots show it to be. All-in-all, he estimated 6.8 x 10^16 joules (68,000 terawatts) for phaser firepower in that instance.
-Mike

I was under the impression that he was talking about Best of Both Worlds where the Enterprise uses it's entire power-generation capability to shoot a beam of some sort from the deflector at a Borg Cube.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Why so? Measuring overall power production per hour is one of the most used methods to provide power figures across the world. It couldn't make more sense.

Does it matter? You're not decreasing poweroutput by a whole lot. And from what I recall, your own opinion on power generation landed several orders of magnitude blow even that.

You are right on both points.

Maybe, maybe not. The practice of labeling stuff as kWh is done today only because civilians tend to have problems with larger numbers and things they can't conceptualize. And it's far from being used exclusively when it comes to power, a lot of stuff is still defined as how much power it consumes, in terms of watts, kilowatts etc.

And if you take a look on Trek history, you'll notice that everything is stated as kilowatts, megawatts, gigawatts, terawatts etc. Never once has there been a mention of kWh or something similar. It's quite reasonable to assume that they don't need to use such terms, why? Because people serving on a vessel like the Enterprise would be expected to understand the term kW without defining it as kWh.

Right again. So that ship generates gigatons per second. So how can it be that they can't generate more than terawatts for the communication array (post rationalization - Riker never mentions that it's related to the comm array at all)?
How can it be that some tweaking on a dish let the E-D crew fire gigatons of energy through a beam while phaser banks, apparently tapping into the warp core, and purposely designed and built to deal damage to targets, doesn't get anywhere that?
Or does it? Do phasers fire gigatons of energy?
How can we consider these figures firmly, when in "The Masterpiece Society", Geordi confirms the top output in the terawatt range (the use of range completely rejects the possibility of adding anything beyond "hundreds of"), but use this power through tractor beams which accomplish a feat which terawatts would be absurdly short ot? There's a significant lack of consistency here, so where is the true value?
Why can't we just pick the middle ground between those terawatt and exawatt values?

Billions of gigawatts, actually. And I'm afraid it is perfectly plausible. All it comes down to is insulating material. If the material on her hand is heavily insulated, she could grab that piece of cable just fine without the current jumping.

Heavily insulated against gigatons per second? I don't recall the sequence in detail, but was there a shield of some sort? Did she put her hand into some luminous stuff?
Or did she just gab a couple of cables or so?
Not to say that I'd like to know how an ex Borg drone can be insulated against billions of gigawatts while the drones in battle for far less against weapons? Shields couldn't account for the whole magnitude, and it would be nearing a no limits fallacy.
Why can a post Borg female immune herself from such a flux? Insulation has limits. Where do you pick up such light and flexible materials on 7o9 being capable of such levels of insulation?

The Cube was never busted. The beam didn't even bring down the shields.

Whatever happened to that Cube, where are the calcs?

[l33telboi]

Right again. So that ship generates gigatons per second. So how can it be that they can't generate more than terawatts for the communication array (post rationalization - Riker never mentions that it's related to the comm array at all)?

Well, you want the out-of-universe reason? Because writers probably had somewhat varied views on how powerful the ship was supposed to be. Or then they probably didn't even know just what a terawatt was. In-universe reasoning I can't comment on because I've never seen the episode. But considering that even the NX-01 could generate power beyond that range I'd find it strange to say that the Ent-D is worse.

Basically, the terawatt figure is so low that it doesn’t make sense and is drowned out by the rest of the evidence.

How can it be that some tweaking on a dish let the E-D crew fire gigatons of energy through a beam while phaser banks, apparently tapping into the warp core, and purposely designed and built to deal damage to targets, doesn't get anywhere that?

I posed that question myself some time ago. Apparently they can't handle the full output of a warpcore, that’s all I can gather.

How can we consider these figures firmly, when in "The Masterpiece Society", Geordi confirms the top output in the terawatt range (the use of range completely rejects the possibility of adding anything beyond "hundreds of"), but use this power through tractor beams which accomplish a feat which terawatts would be absurdly short ot? There's a significant lack of consistency here, so where is the true value?

The true value? Depends on how you analyze the material. Do you do it the SB or SDN way where there can never be any contradiction and everything is always correct? Or do you decide that because there are errors, you should go with the most consistent values?

Why can't we just pick the middle ground between those terawatt and exawatt values?

Too arbitrary in my opinion. Because the figure you get will have never been displayed and contradicts both bodies of evidence. But that's just my opinion on the matter. It doesn't really matter how you analyze the material, just as long as you apply the rules you decide to go by consistently and honestly.

When debating on boards though you naturally follow the rules presented there.

Heavily insulated against gigatons per second? I don't recall the sequence in detail, but was there a shield of some sort? Did she put her hand into some luminous stuff?

Well, yeah. Heavily insulated against even gigatons per second. All she has to do is grab a cable and prevent the electricity from jumping to her.

What exactly she did I can't recall, because it's been a while since I saw the episode. Though memory does say she grabbed cables.

Not to say that I'd like to know how an ex Borg drone can be insulated against billions of gigawatts while the drones in battle for far less against weapons? Shields couldn't account for the whole magnitude, and it would be nearing a no limits fallacy.

No, it's just how electricity behaves. Just like you can grab a modern day live wire with electricity in it without fear of getting electrocuted (provided of course it is insulated), Seven could've grabbed those wires because of her insulation.

It doesn't really have anything to do with weapons unless the other guy carries a lightning-gun.

Whatever happened to that Cube, where are the calcs?

I recall Viv making them on SB. But that's all I'm afraid. It was a loong loong time ago.

[Mr. Oragahn]

1. Well, as fas as I'm concerned, I'd go for the middle ground. I prefer to hit in the averages than pick a group of outliers.

2. Yes, you can pick some wires, but each material has a tolerance. I try to remember the video, but I can't recall seeing her plunging her hand into a shielded conduit full of white plasma or whatever those conduits use to transfer energy. The insulation isn't terribly relevant if the system that transfers energy has almost zero leak, zero radiation. Because there's just no way some skin or grey nylon butt hugging suit can protect from gigatons per second, even if she wore superconducting dresses and isolated high heels. :)

3. As for the Cube, just damn. That means I'll have to dig.