Galactic Empire vs United Federation of Planets

[2046]

I have a mental imagery of an ISD on a leash and *bitch* written over the hull, with the E-D looming closely astern.

Pics or it didn't happen.

[theta_pinch]

Good news for the Federation: they don't have to worry about the Galactic Empire; one ship could take on the entire Empire's starfleet.

How am I getting this? I'm getting it from the USS Voyager surviving the destruction of a planet. It take 10E32 joules to overcome the gravitational binding energy of an earth sized planet. The explosion moves one planetary radii in one second. Assuming an earth sized planet that means it was moving at 6,371 km/s 6371/299792.458 gives a speed of 2.125%C
The debris from the Death Star according to SDN is about 2%C which requires 10E38 joules(since they're roughly equal I'll use that number). Even if Species 8472 is using a chain reaction to destroy the planet the shields of anything in the blast zone would have to be taking a very large amount of that energy due to the debris from the explosion. So Voyager's shields have to be able to take around 10E32 joules if not more.

In battle it normally takes a volley of torpedoes to take down an enemies shields so a photon torpedoes yield is roughly 1.6E31 joules or 2.39 Zettatons of TNT(this fits quite well with the comment in Voyager about blowing up a small planet with a photon torpedo; 2.39 Zettatons is higher than the binding energy of mercury.)

Phasers are probably in the gigaton to teraton range. There is simply no way the Galactic Empire can even hope to win with high kiloton/low megaton range turbolasers.

[2046]

That's a good calculation for GalaxyClassStarship.Net.

[theta_pinch]

That's a good calculation for GalaxyClassStarship.Net.

Is that good or bad?

[Mike DiCenso]

Both good and bad, Theta. If you read his blog article, you'll see what I mean.

Now 1e38 joules is a lot of energy, but Voyager and her Borg escort were considerably further away than one planetary diameter:



A few fractions of a second later...



The lead Borg cube is the one towing Voyager so its not too far out in front of the others when the planet explodes. But a quick rough estimate based on how much of the planet subtended the screen before it blows apart would place the distance considerably closer in to the Borg planet than the Death Star was to Alderaan. About 36,000 km, versus 77,000 km. So the amount of energy per m2 is going to go up dramatically. So then we need to find out the surface area of the imaginary sphere at this range, and for that we use the following classic formula:

A= 4 pi r 2.

The surface area at 36,000 km =

1,628,601,6316,209,488.148 m2

So now we divide 1e38 by that surface area and we get:

614,023,688,308,409,828,712.37 J per m2 or 146.75 gigatons per m2!

For the total energy, we need to find out how Voyager was facing the planet when the big boom went off, and how large her shield facing is. So the only image I can find of the ship's aspect is this one as she is being towed out of there by the Borg:



And that's about the worst possible position the ship could be in since it presents almost a full dorsal side to the upcoming explosion. So now we have some interesting numbers. Voyager is generally accepted to be around 344 meters long and about 130 meters wide which fits with the visuals, particularly the MSD cutaway displays of the ship showing the 15 decks as well as spoken dialog in episodes such as "Relativity".

So with that in mind, we can go to the next set of calculations which involve shield surface area. For this I will be fairly conservative and assume that the shields are even with the length and width of the ship, even though we know otherwise:



So 344 m x 130 = 44,720 x pi (the shields are spheroidal) = 140,492 m2.

Then the final calculation: 140,492 x 146.75 = 20,617,201

That's right, almost 21 million gigatons!

Or 20.617 petatons.

I don't know how you got zettatons, Theta, but this calculation would allow Voyager to go toe-to-toe with 200 gigaton-slinging ICS Star Destroyers quite handily, and it is not the only time Voyager tanks energy from an exploding large planetary body:







That's from the Season 5 episode "Think Tank", which the ship is near a planetoid when an enemy sets off a trap that causes the planetoid to explode.

It also puts the 90 million terajoule (21 gigaton) and rising number from "Fair Haven" as well as the 30 million terajoule subspace energy output of the gravton ellipse from "One Small Step" into perspective as well, too since it means they were refering to the local energy immediately around the ship, not the neutronic wavefront's total energy and the subspace ellipse was putting out that subspace energy per second.
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

I have a mental imagery of an ISD on a leash and *bitch* written over the hull, with the E-D looming closely astern.

Pics or it didn't happen.

Oh well, you wish! :D

[2046]

That's a good calculation for GalaxyClassStarship.Net.

Is that good or bad?

It just means it was one of those over-the-top figures that I tend to ignore even if the math is sound. For instance, I go for 100 megaton torpedoes even though TDiC demands a larger figure.

GCSN would be the Trek counterpoint to SDN, where only the most ludicrous value serves as basis for all others.

[Jasonb]

Well as mining wormhole that take time not like UFP going to do it all at once. They first have know that Star War Empire hostile going try invade. Not that UFP chance to do for a simple reason. On other hand Star War Empire straingt fighting war in general tactic normal us distance against the UFP. They normal depend big ISD take out enemy starships and they us fighters to protect the own starships and enemy fighters. They also like us fighters attack against enemy star-ship in rare cases. Problem tactic normal total lead fleet be total destroyed.

UFP republcation technology allow make photon torpedoes almost unlimited number allow resousre to do themselves. Star War Empire depend doing by driods or by hand. No one in Star War Universe even think design starship fire projective weapon no tomorrow they simple produce enough fast enough for that make sense the UFP can. No reason why UFP starship carry photon torpedoes in thousands. Normal a ISD big size does come cost good thing no one real us rate fire projective weapons in Star War universe. UFP does and UFP starship just stay range and fire 300 photon to 600 photon torpedoes and minute simple leave ISDs space dust stay out fire range. UFP mine the worn-hole itself short after fire works happen. Empire like decades for before they have realistic way compete upper hand in the UFP. Also the UFP does not have enemies hate them that Romulus more like give UFP cloak device allow mine worn-hole cloaked in some form lease deal. Buy them one thing learn make themselves your self another story replicators. Even if the Empire just after order 66 and because war last decades. Empire fall before they conquest UFP more like speed up fall. Worst yet Section 31 with own fleet likely has phase cloak devices would turn make matter even worst.

[theta_pinch]

Another important factor is whether the Empire's ships will even be able to safely use hyperdrive in the Milky Way since we know gravity can affect hyperdrive negatively and Starships seem to encounter "gravimetric distortions"(and worse phenomena) every other episode. Without hyperlanes and the apparently high density of gravitational anomalies, they'll probably be forced to do micro hyperspace jumps and hope for the best.

[Lucky]

It just means it was one of those over-the-top figures that I tend to ignore even if the math is sound. For instance, I go for 100 megaton torpedoes even though TDiC demands a larger figure.

I'm not sure the firepower in TDIC is really an outlier. We know that about a thousand NX-01 can act like a scaled up N.I.F. with a planet as the fuel target instead of D-T gas or D-T ice, and this matches what is stated in Booby Trap. The Die Is Cast is not an outlier, but simply the "modern" version of something repeatedly talked about, and a controlled demolition. Planetary destruction by the United Federation of Planets/humans comes up at least once in every Star Trek making it very hard to ignore.

Then you have the quote from Apocalypse Rising which kind of requires a larger boom then Rise as I understand it.

[Sandyin]

That's a good calculation for GalaxyClassStarship.Net.

No doubt a lower limit calculation.

[359]

I'm not sure the firepower in TDIC is really an outlier.

No, it is definitely not a statistical outlier, but on the other hand, nor is it entirely representative either. There is much that contradicts it and its few similar instances.

Then you have the quote from Apocalypse Rising which kind of requires a larger boom then Rise as I understand it.

I calculated that to about 850 Gt based on a full spread following a flower shaped distribution of six torpedoes, each with an average heavy destruction radius of 250 km. So not anywhere near the TDIC effects range, but higher than Rise.