Two scenes which are demonstrating hull strength

[Who is like God arbour]

I have just seen DS9 - Return to Grace.

There were two scenes, which I have found interesting.

In the first scene, the Groumall has fired on an asteroid and has destroyed it.

In second scene, the Groumall has fired on a Bird of Prey but has failed to breach the hull, although the Bird of Prey's shields were deactivated and they have especially targeted the underside of the ship, where the ship's weakest spot was.

In both scenes, it was the same weapon from the same ship.

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What does this say about the strength of the weapon used to destroy the asteroid and what does this say about the strength of the hull, that couldn't have been breached with that weapon?

• • • • Edited to prevent the "steam punk goggles" impression.

[Mr. Oragahn]

It's like watching a coloured film from the 40s via a pair of steam punk goggles.

Most bizarre is the behaviour of the asteroid when hit by the beam. Nothing happens and suddenly, poop!

Looks like the power of the beam was suddenly increased for the last fractions of a second.

[watchdog]

I remember this scene, I had similar thoughts about it. I would point out that later Gul Dukat managed to instal a planetary phaser on his ship which made a bigger boom when he targeted another asteroid and did more damage against the same Klingon ship.

[Who is like God arbour]

Correct:

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But this weapon is, as you have said, a system-5 planetary disruptor and not the same weapons, with which they have fired on the first asteroid.

The question still is, what we can learn from the first two scenes - or these two scenes, comparing the effect of one and the same weapon on two different targets.

We know now, that the board disruptor of the Groumall is strong enough, to destroy an asteroid.

• • • Assuming a 100 m length for the Bird of Prey and that the beam is in both scenes equal wide, where it hits the target, I would estimate, that the asteroid has a diameter of at least 20 m.
      How much energy, assuming conventional weapons, would be necessary to destroy an asteroid like that?

But it is not strong enough to even breach the hull of a Klingon Bird of Prey.

The system-5 planetary disruptor is also strong enough to destroy the asteroid. And it is strong enough to damage the Bird of Prey, but not strong enough to destroy it.

And in both instances, the shields of the Bird of Prey were deactivated. It was only the hull, that has withstood the weaponfire.

[Mike DiCenso]

I remember this scene, I had similar thoughts about it. I would point out that later Gul Dukat managed to instal a planetary phaser on his ship which made a bigger boom when he targeted another asteroid and did more damage against the same Klingon ship.

Actually, a much more important point that has not been brought up here is that the first asteroid is destroyed at a distance of about 400,000 km, while the second is targeted at a distance of about 500,000 km. Given that we see very little debris escaping from either asteroid, while most of their masses being turned to vapor within a couple seconds at most, is very damn impressive, especially the first attack which was done with the Groumall's standard phaser, which was considered weak. So by the time that beam gets to the asteroid over that distance it should have lost a fair amount of energy.
-Mike

[ILikeDeathNote]

The planetary disruptor shot is inconclusive, we certainly see the possibility of SW-style vaporization, but the small disruptor clearly results in a debris field.

[Cocytus]

Dukat didn't actually fire the System 5 disruptor until less than 200,000 km from the target, as stated by Damar.

And as for debris, the first asteroid produced a series of larger, rapidly moving fragments and a slowly expanding cloud of smaller particles. It doesn't appear that most of its mass was vaporized, or even melted. It looked more like most of it was shattered by the brief explosion. The second asteroid, on the other hand, does something funny. It's more apparent on the DVD, but you can see it in WILGA's examples. The outer perimeter of the asteroid disappears. It isn't vaporized, or even melted, it simply vanishes, possibly indicative of continuum transition. It looks like much of the rest of the mass was dispersed as molten gleeds, which rapidly cool as they move offscreen.

In any event, gauging the power of either weapon is difficult since the compositions of the respective asteroids are not known. Asteroids vary wildly in composition, with silicate asteroids being found in close proximity to stars, and carbonic asteroids farther out. Given that both asteroids are clearly lit by some offscreen light source that ISN'T coming from Groumall, we can assume them to be close to the star and therefore silicate, since Dukat woulld have wanted to find the strongest target asteroid he could to test his weapons. He wouldn't have wasted his time destroying the loose agglomerations of ice, dust and carbon found at greater distances from the star.

[Mike DiCenso]

Again, the difference here is that the asteroids are being hit at from hundreds of km distance, which will effectively lessen the energy of either the beam or the bolt. The ISD in TESB is only a few km away from it's target asteroids as it picks them off, which means the TL bolts won't lose all that much energy before they reach their respective asteroid targets. SW has never had hits against targets over as great a distance as that, and the TCW CGI series is showing us repeatedly that the whole light minutes crap of ICS is utter nonsense. Approximately one hundred km seems to be the upper effective ship-to-ship range for most SW capital ships.

So the "Return to Grace" examples are a pretty effective demonstration of range and firepower for lower end ST ships.
-Mike

[Mike DiCenso]

Dukat didn't actually fire the System 5 disruptor until less than 200,000 km from the target, as stated by Damar.

And as for debris, the first asteroid produced a series of larger, rapidly moving fragments and a slowly expanding cloud of smaller particles. It doesn't appear that most of its mass was vaporized, or even melted. It looked more like most of it was shattered by the brief explosion. The second asteroid, on the other hand, does something funny. It's more apparent on the DVD, but you can see it in WILGA's examples. The outer perimeter of the asteroid disappears. It isn't vaporized, or even melted, it simply vanishes, possibly indicative of continuum transition. It looks like much of the rest of the mass was dispersed as molten gleeds, which rapidly cool as they move offscreen.

In any event, gauging the power of either weapon is difficult since the compositions of the respective asteroids are not known. Asteroids vary wildly in composition, with silicate asteroids being found in close proximity to stars, and carbonic asteroids farther out. Given that both asteroids are clearly lit by some offscreen light source that ISN'T coming from Groumall, we can assume them to be close to the star and therefore silicate, since Dukat woulld have wanted to find the strongest target asteroid he could to test his weapons. He wouldn't have wasted his time destroying the loose agglomerations of ice, dust and carbon found at greater distances from the star.

Actually, the asteroids in both cases show that most of the mass of the asteroids is vaporized as the tiny glowing particles of debris are too small to account for the original mass and volume. That some of the debris is glowing significantly indicates that the beam and later disruptor bolt are at least somewhere in the terawatt range in the first milliseconds after leaving the emitters.

As for the asteroids themselves, the first one is could be anything, really since the only purpose in shooting at it was for simple response and target practice. The second one was to test out the disruptor's systems. Whether or not their deadline to get to the BoP's next target would have allowed them the time to locate a suitably tough asteroid is debatable.
-Mike

[Cocytus]

Actually, the asteroids in both cases show that most of the mass of the asteroids is vaporized as the tiny glowing particles of debris are too small to account for the original mass and volume. That some of the debris is glowing significantly indicates that the beam and later disruptor bolt are at least somewhere in the terawatt range in the first milliseconds after leaving the emitters.

As for the asteroids themselves, the first one is could be anything, really since the only purpose in shooting at it was for simple response and target practice. The second one was to test out the disruptor's systems. Whether or not their deadline to get to the BoP's next target would have allowed them the time to locate a suitably tough asteroid is debatable.
-Mike

Yes, the debris in both cases is too little to account for the total mass of either asteroid, but your assertion that "we see very little debris" is wrong. We see several larger fragments go flying out of the first explosion, and a large, dense cloud of smaller fragments. This isn't just dust, there are clearly defined individual fragments in that cloud. The fact that none of the debris is glowing means there can't have been wide-reaching vaporization, since the material would have to have been widely melted first, and we would therefore expect the remaining debris to be red-hot. It isn't. If the first asteroid is a loose agglomeration, as in an assemblage of smaller objects, rather than a dense fragment of a larger parent object, that would make the yield of the first phaser shot much lower. The beam most likely vaporized the least resilient materials, possibly frozen volatiles, and the resultant rapidly expanding vapor shattered the rest of the asteroid.

The second asteroid does produce glowing debris, making it at or near the melting point. So, if we discount any sort of odd disruptor effects, then I agree most of the second asteroid was vaporized.

And you're not going to get any argument out of me as far as weapons range and targeting abilities go. The superiority of Trek ships in that arena is well established.

[Mr. Oragahn]

I'd rather say that as far as the first asteroid is concerned, it's largely pulverized to very small debris, so small that many can't be seen. There's been a bit of vapourization at the point of impact and that's all.

The second asteroid totally turns into luminous dust and plasma.

Now, how big are those asteroids? Looking by the size of the ships, and notably the size of the glow balls fired in the second set of gifs, the asteroid didn't seem that big.

Using this picture and working from the idea that the BoP is 110 m long, on my screen, I get 8 cm for the length and 12.8 cm for the wingspan, and 0.55 cm for the narrower section of the neck.

That makes the neck 7.5625 m wide at its thinnest section.
Those balls are roughly 2/3 of the width of this section (that's a quick eyeballing mind you, measurements from stills and using an appropriate picture software would be better) means that a glow ball's width is 5.04 meters.

For the asteroid, using the ruler, I get a max length of 1.75 cm, a width of 1.4 cm, while the ball at the moment of impact is more or less 0.2 cm wide.

Ball screen/real size ratio: 0.2 cm : 5.04 m
Therefore, 1 cm on screen represents 25.2 meters.

So the asteroid's dimensions are:

Length: 44.1 m
Width: 35.28 m

Assuming there's no funky effect at play, using Wong's asteroid destruction calculator (which is based on centrally buried omnidirectional charges), here are the returned values:

Diameter 35.28 m

Volume: 22992 m³
Fragmentation Energy (igneous rock): 43.9 tons

Hard Granite

• Mass: 53572 tons
• Melt Energy: 33.8 kilotons
• Vapourization Energy: 168.8 kilotons
• Cratering Energy: 7.9 tons

Nickel-Iron

• Mass: 180950 tons
• Melt Energy: 55.1 kilotons
• Vapourization Energy: 328.7 kilotons
• Cratering Energy:

Diameter 44.1 m

Volume: 44907 m³
Fragmentation Energy (igneous rock): 85.8 tons

Hard Granite

• Mass: 104633 tons
• Melt Energy: 66 kilotons
• Vapourization Energy: 329.6 kilotons
• Cratering Energy: 15.5 tons

Nickel-Iron

• Mass: 353418 tons
• Melt Energy: 107.7 kilotons
• Vapourization Energy: 642 kilotons
• Cratering Energy: 405.1 tons

Now, remembering that it's a surface explosion, the yield would be greater if the weapon was not focused. If the blast was omnidirectional, you'd probably end with something between twice or thrice the figures shown above.

Note: MA says the length varies, and I know there's been scaling issues with BoPs. Measuring the size of one of those balls from the Groumall may be useful as well.

[Mike DiCenso]

The drive section of the BoP is about 1.91 that of the overall ship's length or some 57 meters, assuming that the BoP here is only 110 meters long. Given that the ship had a crew of 36, while Kruge's BoP 110m BoP from ST3 and 4 only had a crew of 12, it is reasonable to assume that any number derived here is on the lower end of things, not the upper. Adjusting for the 3/4 view and you wind up with an asteroid of about 45 meters wide. If the BoP is one of the larger variety, which it likely is, say about the size of General Martok's BoP, which has been scaled to about 150 meters, then the numbers only go up from there, since the drive section will be over 78 meters wide. So I would more realistically place the asteroid in the first and second shots in the 50-64 meter range given that the asteroid to beam width ratio is 1.848 to 1, and the drive section has a ratio to the phaser of 2.26 to 1.
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

Globally, both low end and high end would sit in the one digit megaton range, once doubled or even tripled (the highest vapourization energy for the biggest asteroid measured, for the hardest composition, returns 2 megatons, so that's between 4 and 6 in the end).

[ILikeDeathNote]

I am inclined to believe, especially when taking the above posts into consideration, that most of the "vanished" material of the second asteroid is simply vaporized, and that none of it was "transferred" to any other sort of continuum or alternate dimension or any of that nonsense. What appears to be the outer layer of the asteroid vanishing may have simply been vaporized into minuscule particles, an illusion caused by flash from the blast or, hell, just messed up visual effects.


Why can't we just act rational and admit that sometimes, the visual effects were just slightly screwed up due to technical difficulty or sheer laziness on the production staff's part, instead of trying to come up with all these insane and downright retarded theories of magically morphing BoPs or matter disappearing into another dimension?

[Mike DiCenso]

I am inclined to believe, especially when taking the above posts into consideration, that most of the "vanished" material of the second asteroid is simply vaporized, and that none of it was "transferred" to any other sort of continuum or alternate dimension or any of that nonsense. What appears to be the outer layer of the asteroid vanishing may have simply been vaporized into minuscule particles, an illusion caused by flash from the blast or, hell, just messed up visual effects.

That is reasonable, the disruptor bolt does look for an instance as though it is enveloping the asteroid, and the thing is burning off the asteroid's outer layers in the process.

Why can't we just act rational and admit that sometimes, the visual effects were just slightly screwed up due to technical difficulty or sheer laziness on the production staff's part, instead of trying to come up with all these insane and downright retarded theories of magically morphing BoPs or matter disappearing into another dimension?

Well, in the case of Star Trek, we do have a canon quote that says that phasers on their highest setting disintegrate objects and people. So yes, that is something to consider when we view the special effects. On the other hand, if the special effects are so obviously messed up, for whatever reason, then it can be seen as a statistical outlier. We also have more sophisticated special effects in AoTC, which clearly and without doubt show Slave-I shattering parts of asteroids much smaller than the ones destroyed here in the "Return to Grace" example.
-Mike