TOS & TNG+

[Mr. Oragahn]

As I said, we see many different examples of Firepower, but that would be normal since we know that ST has variable yields, so the difference in effects can easily be reconciled.

I doubt they'd fire the first torp at say 1 gigaton, and therest at some ridiculously inferior yield.
It makes no sense in light of what they were trying to achieve: thawing a way through defenses by blasting them.

As for the mass lightening tech, I don't see why it would be used on the weapons Platforms...

Faster to rotate. That's basically the only way they can aim at targets, so it's quite of importance.

[Praeothmin]

I doubt they'd fire the first torp at say 1 gigaton, and therest at some ridiculously inferior yield.
It makes no sense in light of what they were trying to achieve: thawing a way through defenses by blasting them.

We have no way of knowing which ships fired what weapons at whom, and I doubt very much that all the ships have the same Firepower.
Some are older ships that were "un-retired" for the war, while other are newer classes.
Some are mainly explorers with teeth (Excelsiors), while others are clearly warships with more powerful weapons (Defiant).
In addition, we clearly see the Peregrine's weapons have less power then Capships' in their effects.
To believe all the ship classes have the same firepower would be foolish.

Also, many Captains have many different strategies.
One might fire lower power beams in order to fire more frequently, while others may prefer to fire more powerful beams less often.

Faster to rotate.

Depends on the power of their engines.
Mass-lightening might not be needed.

I was wondering:
Where in canon de they mention mass-lightening at impulse speeds?
All I remember is that it is mentioned in non-canon technical manuals, but where is it mentioned in the movies or the series?

[Mike DiCenso]

I found footage here on YouTube of the two Maquis vessels being knocked aside by the near-miss, warning shot dedonation of the photon torpedo. The scene starts at 0:24 seconds and ends at 0:26.

Anyone want to take a stab at calculating the yeild from this event?
-Mike

[Jedi Master Spock]

Depends on the power of their engines.
Mass-lightening might not be needed.

I was wondering:
Where in canon de they mention mass-lightening at impulse speeds?
All I remember is that it is mentioned in non-canon technical manuals, but where is it mentioned in the movies or the series?

"Deja Q." The whole mass-lightening incident there, although it involves a warp field, all takes place at STL and in real space.

Also, some of the impulse accelerations we see are truly ridiculous if we don't assume an exotic mechanism (such as mass lightening) in play. I can't think of any episode that explicitly tells us that impulse engines use mass-lightening, but it really does fit pretty well.

[Mike DiCenso]

Don't forget DS9's "Emissary" with the use of a subspace field to reduce the station's mass down to where it's handful of still-working thrusters could propel it at a decent fraction of c across 160 million km to the wormhole from Bajor.

In the Bree'el moon thread, we also got an estimate of a 4 million x reduction in mass with the use of a subspace/warp field. So a ship would on average go from millions of tonnes down to just a couple tonnes or even substantially less depending on the ship's size.
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

Subspace = magic rod.

[Praeothmin]

In both cases, there was a clear mention of either a Subspace field or Subspace bubble that were needed in order to achieve the desired effects.

It's never mentioned in any other episodes when talking about STL travel, AFAIK.

Also, some of the impulse accelerations we see are truly ridiculous if we don't assume an exotic mechanism (such as mass lightening) in play.

And yet, when Data mentions that the E-D was generating 12.1 Gigawatts of power, no one batted an eyelash.
We have no idea the actual, true measure of power that is generated by a ship's warp core, so we do not know if it actually needs any mass-lightening to attain the necessary speeds and accelerations in STL travel.

[Mr. Oragahn]

That Cube scanning the Voyager and suddenly resuming its course, that was impressive.

[Cocytus]

Also the cube scanning the E-D in BoBW before resuming course towards Earth. It didn't really accelerate visibly. One second it was standing still, and the next it was off, with a loud whoosh.

[Roondar]

I've been wondering about this a bit.

Wouldn't letting your ship move with the explosion when hit be a really good idea?

Seems to me it would effectively reduce the yield of the explosive to your shields/armour because you let part of the energy involved produce purely a kinetic 'shake' instead of melting/vaporizing your hull.

It'd be simple:
1) switch of mass lightening just before impact
2) let the ship move with the explosion
3) you've just let your ship survive something it never would've if it didn't recoil when hit because all the energy used to move you is effectively 'lost'

The question is of course how inertial dampners fit into this - do they produce an equal force or do they cheat?

--

As for Star Wars performance - just how heavy would a Stardestroyer have to be to survive an ICS style blast and not be visually moved by such a blast?

[Jedi Master Spock]

As for Star Wars performance - just how heavy would a Stardestroyer have to be to survive an ICS style blast and not be visually moved by such a blast?

Hard to say. Not to be visibly spun depends on the internal distribution of that mass.

If most of the mass is concentrated in the reactor core, you need an awful lot more mass than if it is in the hull armor.

If I assume that the Imperial Star Destroyer is essentially a 1600m slender rod being whacked by a 50 GT beam of light at 45 degrees halfway between the middle and the end, I have a moment of inertia about 213,000 m^2 * (mass in kg), and I have a transfer of angular momentum of .71*50*4.2e18 J/3e8 m/s * 400m = 1.98 x 10^14 Nms, meaning I get an angular velocity of M/2.300,000 radians per second.

Which means that if we have a mass of, say, 2,300,000 tons, that would be 0.001 radians per second. Which is to say... not much. And that's not a very large mass.

If I assume almost all the mass is concentrated in a 600m sphere, and the object impacting at ideal angle, angular velocity is M divided by 19,000 tons in radians per second. Rotation of bigger ships is a lot harder - this goes up by MR^2.

Now, to translate it, a 50 GT beam has enough momentum to move a 55 million ton ship at 13 m/s. Up that by a couple orders of magnitude, and we do start to see a recoil problem.

[Praeothmin]

Now, to translate it, a 50 GT beam has enough momentum to move a 55 million ton ship at 13 m/s. Up that by a couple orders of magnitude, and we do start to see a recoil problem.

Such as the Teratons of Firepower of an ISD... :)

[Roondar]

I don't suppose the ICS lists the mass of Star Destroyers?

If it does things will be interesting, to say the least.

[Mike DiCenso]

I don't recall about what the RoTS:ICS has to say about the Venator Republic Cruiser, I don't think it does list a mass since the Wookipedia entry which copies the RoTS:ICS numbers does not list a mass. But there is most definitely nothing about the ISD Type-I mass in the SW:ICS.

As for calculating an approximate mass, we know more or less that an ISD is about around 53,942,400 cubic meters. Going for a very generous figure, we can assume steel or iron-like densities of about 7.5 metric tons per meter^3. That would mean an ISD would weigh in around 404,568,000 metric tons! Of course, this would mean that the ISD would have to be constructed of solid iron, no internal space at all!

Realistically, we could expect an ISD to be about 10-15% of that, if it is mostly hollow. So on a more realistic basis, an ISD would mass out at just shy of 61 million metric tons. Using Voyager-like densities, we would have an ISD just tipping the scales at a little over 60 million tons. So an ISD can be anywhere realistically between 40 and 60 million tons.
-Mike

[Praeothmin]

Voyager was around 350 meters long, and massed 700 000 tons.
The ST:Technical manual stated that a Galaxy-class massed around 4 200 000 Tons.

When we compare the volumes of the two ships, I have no problem in assuming 10 times the mass of a GCS for an ISD.