StarWarsStarTrek wrote:
No, not really; the asteroid having unusual magnetic properties has nothing to do with its durability.
There you go again dismissing without providing a reason why. Having magnetic properties that can mess up a millions of metric ton starship or several tons shuttlecraft... spacecraft that I might remind you that have withstood stellar magnetic fields many orders of magnitude more powerful than the Earth indicates that the asteroid is not normal in any sense of the word. In order to generate a field of that magnitude, you'd have to have something on the order of a large black hole at the center of this asteroid to produce gravitational and magnetic disturbances big enough to shake the E-D or throw a shuttlecraft.
Your obvious ignorance of the episode in question is rather glaring. You need to step back and admit this instead of trying to twist around the information people are giving to you. Which by the way, would grounds for being issued another dishonesty warning should you continue to go down that route.
StarWarsStarTrek wrote:The 30 megatons were over a course of several hours. Said photon torpedos were in quick succession.
7.5 megatons and 6 megatons are very close for fan calculations.
Um, no. Read what I wrote again. You said that 600 kt (0.6 MT) to 5 megatons is what you get from shattering the asteroid. And no, 7.5 MT is not that close. It's 50 percent above the 5 MT estimate you provided, which is quite signficant as an increase. Furthermore, the torpedoes detonate within milliseconds, so that wattage will be insanely high.
StarWarsStarTrek wrote:
You would think, then that Riker would go out of his way to specify vaporization to Picard, so as to not screw up via miscommunication, wouldn't he?
As for shattering destroying the Pegasus, you would be conceding that the energy needed to destroy said asteroid by shattering; 250 to 1000 megatons, would be enough to take out an unshielded Pegasus, even though only a miniscule portion of said energy would actually be directed at wherever the Pegasus would be at.
If said shattering scattered the remnants of the Pegasus away, how would the Romulans ever find them? If they can, why can't the Federation, given their sensors and their ability to detect different elementary particles?
And shattering the Pegasus is not going to leave anything of use left; just a few flying hunks of metal.
Crissakes, dude. This is blatently fallcious in every possible way. How do you know, for example, that shattering the
Pegasus would leave such a small amount of material behind? How could Riker or anyone else know that by doing so that within any small piece that there would not also be surviving pieces of material useful to the Romulans or other enemies of the Federation?
StarWarsStarTrek wrote:Your point? Vaporization might be doable, but if it is not necessary, why would they do so? Same thing with melting. Riker was making the suggestion in real time, and made no confirmation to vaporize or melt. He only said destroy, which typically does not mean melt or vaporize, but merely fracture.
Shattering the asteroid would accomplish their objective. The Pegasus is likely to survive in one or two pieces, in which case the Enterprise can easily catch up with its remnants and secure it.
Except that it would not accomplish the objectives. That has been made plain and simple to you. You are assuming that, and you are deliberately twisting things to try and make it seem as though the
Pegasus would be so utterly destroyed by a few megatons. The fact of the matter is that we have other episodes to compare this to. In fact we have also Star Trek: The Motion Picture where the 23rd century refit
Enterprise mostly vaporizes a large asteroid with a single torpedo. All of this ties together as part of one continuity, you know.
1.) ST:TMP asteroid mostly vaporized. Check
2.) "Booby Trap" [TNG]: several asteroids and a large ship vaporized, one torpedo for each asteroid and the ship. Check
3.) "Skin of Evil" [TNG]: Explosion from single torpedo detonation hundreds of km wide indicating 500-1000 MT.
4.) "Rise" [VOY]: Asteroid hundreds of meters long and made of nickel and iron can be vaporized such that only a few tiny bits of debris less than one centimeter survive. Check.
5.) "For the Uniform" [DS9]: Each of the two quantum torpedoes fired at a Maquis planet produced explosions in the hundreds of km and continent sized shockwaves indicatiing 500-1000 MT of firepower.
I could go on and on. The point is clear and easily understandable. When Riker means destroy, he very likely means each torpedo is going to be doing some signficant amounts of vaporization and melting of the asteroid to ensure total and complete destruction of the
Pegasus
StarWarsStarTrek wrote:When did you make this rebuttal? Because my updated post, which I made, as I recall, over half an hour ago, already addresses this issue. The "chasm collapsing" is apparently highly dangerous to the Enterprise:
1. The chasm collapsing could crush/destroy the Enterprise
2. The sealings on the entrance after the collapse would be too great to vaporize or barge through.
Neither of which speak well of the Enterprise's capabilities.
They are issues, but only if you are dishonest about it. First off, given that the asteroid could generate enough gravity for a total collapse of the chasm to occur, that's mighty impressive.
1.) You are clearly unfamilar with the episode, or pretend to be, so you do not have any idea the scale of what you are talking about.
2.) I just posted the dialog of Worf talking about cutting their way out. The only reason it is not viable is due to Data's warning about a possible instability of the chasm. Thus phasers can cut enough for the E-D to escape, and rebutting your earlier assertion.
But let's address your KE issue for the E-D. They were in a chasm 4 kilometers long. If the whole thing collapsed from the E-D cutting her way out with phasers, that would be at least a billion cubic meters falling on them from above, likely much more than that. Given the odd gravity of the asteroid, and assuming a low rock density of only 2.5 metric tons per meter cubed, we would have 2.5 billion tons falling on the E-D. Let's make it at a leisurely 20 meters a second, which would then be expressed as:
m = 2500000000 ton metric = 2500000000000 kilogram
v = 20 meter/second = 20 meter/second
Solution:
kinetic energy (K) = 5 x 10e14 joules
Basically the E-D soaks 5,000 TJ of KE.
And while this might be dangerous to the E-D, it's not automatically fatal. By contrast, the asteroid colliding with the ISD in TESB imparted 36 TJ of KE, destroying the bridge tower and quite possibly the rest of the ship with it.
StarWarsStarTrek wrote:Really? And where are these calculations?
They have been posted in threads you have participated in several times as well as numerous past ones. The chasm the E-D was in is no less than 3,000 meters long. We know this because when the E-D uses the phase cloak to move through the rock, Worf calls off the distance travelled and the distance remaining to the surface, and the rest of the chasm where the E-D was sitting trapped in was a good kilometer or more long based on the fact that the E-D is 642 meters long and at least 470 meters wide. But I'll even be generous and go with Graham Kennedy's more conservative estimate:
The volume of asteroidal material melted can be calculated by the equation :
V = pi x average radius of fissure2 x depth of fissure
= 3.142 x 3002 x 3000
= 3.142 x 3002 x 3000
= 848,340,000 cubic metres.
Assuming that the asteroid is rock the density, boiling point and specific heat capacity should be approximately 2,300 kg/cubic metre, 2500 K, and 720 J/Kg/K respectively. The energy required to melt this volume can be calculated thus :
E = 8.4834 x 108 x 2300 x 2500 x 720
= 3.512 x 1018 Joules
That's about 8.36 gigatons for a little more than 0.8 billion cubic meters of rock.
StarWarsStarTrek wrote:What? When did this happen? Are you referring to Worf's suggestion? Because:
1. There is no reason for using their phasers to "cut our way through" equating to melting the entire entrance, instead of just cutting an Enterprise sized hole through.
Are you really this dense? The Romulan warbird did it. To seal in the E-D. In order to fill a 3,000 m x 700 m tunnel with molten rock you have to have at least 800 million cubic meters, and given other scalings up to a billion cubic meters. The E-D herself is 470 meters wide, which means any tunnel they carve has to be at least 500 meters wide to allow a proper escape.
StarWarsStarTrek wrote:2. There is no evidence that it would only take them a few seconds; Picard was willing to wait for several hours inside the asteroid.
So if we go by shattering instead of vaporization/melting (both of which would be stupid overkill on Riker's part, and also demonstrate a potentially fatal lack of communication, as 'destroy' would be interpreted by Picard to blow up, not to vaporize/melt), the photon torpedos of the Enterprise are 0.6 to 6 megatons.
None of what you're saying makes any sense. Picard only waited for a few hours so that cloaking device could be installed. But you're either out of ignorance or intentially misreprensenting the episode's events.
1.) The E-D arrives on the scene under Admiral Pressman to find and if possible salvage the
Pegasus.
2.) The warbird
Terix under Sirol's command shows up, also looking for the ship.
3.) Both parties exchange pleasantries and go about the search under the cover of doing geological research.
4.) The E-D discovers the
Pegasus, but finds that it is buried deep inside a large asteroid.
5.) The warbird starts coming over to see what the E-D has found, so very quickly everyone comes up with options. Riker's is to just destroy everything to ensure the Romulans don't get anything of the
Pegasus.
6.) The E-D manages to use a technobabble trick to fool the warbird, then comes back the next day and enters the asteroid to get at the
Pegasus. They travel down several kilometers into the asteroid and find the other ship half stuck in solid rock. Pressman and Riker beam over and retrieve the phase cloak prototype.
7.) The warbird fires on the asteroid for a few seconds while Pressman and Riker as still on the
Pegasus. They beam back immediately and reach the bridge just in time to see hundreds of millions of cubic meters of rock flowing into the chasm.
8.) Sirol contacts Picard and offers to help evacuate the crew, but Picard puts it off in order to solicit options from the crew (Worf makes the suggestion to use the phasers to cut their way out). Riker then reveals the true nature of the mission and tells Picard about the cloaking device, which is installed on the E-D within 9 hours and used to escape.
You have a better sense of context now? Please keep this in mind as well as read up on the episode at Memory Alpha or Wikipedia because this is just inexcusable on your part.
-Mike
