Power of the Enterprise's Warp Core

[Mr. Oragahn]

Mr. Oragahn wrote:

We don't know how much energy the Ba'neth ship can channel into its weapons. Did it have torpedoes? Of what yield?
We don't know what's necessary to overcome the cloak.
So nothing says that the Voyager would have to match that power.

Huh? So what if the Ba'Neth ship had photon torpedoes?

Quantify them then.

That would not be any different than Voyager having them since the torpedoes effectively carry an independent loadout of antimatter on them as part of the warhead.

Then why mention them if you can't know how powerful they are, or can be?

That would only tell us about the yeild of the torps themselves, most in particular if they are used against something we can readily quantify the effects on such as asteroids or a planet's surface.

If it gives a yield for the Ba'neth torps, then yes.
But would you be able to derive a shield figure from them, and then a reactor output?
As I have understood, shields are charged. They don't directly tap into the reactors.

What it does tell us is that the Ba'Neth ship was generating a cloaking field at nearly the same level of power as the E-D's core in "True Q", which also happens to fit in well with the VOY "Revulsion" quote for the amount of power flowing through a single conduit. Voyager's deflector dish was modified so that it could be used to illuminate the Ba'neth cloak, which suggests that Voyager can generate power on a comparable level.

You have proof that to illuminate the cloak, you must oppose the same level of power?

Janeway showed little hesitation in engaging the Ba'neth ships, also suggesting that Voyager is at least able to survive the Ba'neath weapons, and indeed does so through at least one volley.

How many torps? Total yield?

Any proof that Ba'neth phasers, if there were any, could use those exawatts of power?

Is it possible that she was confident she could engage the enemy ship precisely because that ship was using that power for the cloak?

Do we know if the ship had shields of a quality sufficient to use that power as well?

That's a pretty heavy bunch of unknowns.

This is not to dispute the other quotes, but on its own, that one doesn't seem that "stable" for the moment.

Bear in mind again, that Voyager is a medium sized vessel by the 24th century Federation's standards. So a medium sized Starfleet vessel can at least disrupt/illuminate a 9 million terawatt cloak, and hold it's own against the ship/outpost that generated it.

Does not matter. What matters is the size of the core.

Voyager warp core.

Enterprise-D warp core.

Doesn't seem much different.
Besides, the E-D is older by something like 8 years.

Even if it were coping with a fraction of the 90 million terajoules (approximately 21 gigatons) of energy, say only 1/1000th, that is still 90,000 terajoules.

Yes, but it would only be 90,000 terajoules.

Also note in the dialog that the field's energy gradient was still on the rise, but they stopped bothering to call that out as survival and escape became their primary concern. Ninety million terajoules was is simply the lower limit here. All this from a ship whose main power was disrupted by the storm's other effects.

Yes, the field was growing in power - what kind of field is that? Was it shrinking?

But do we still know how the field transmitted the energy?

What does the power figure corresponds to exactly? We don't know.

And it's really gets interesting if you really do go with the assumption that the field was very dense, and Voyager's shields really did have to deal with that much energy over some four minutes (excluding the 30 seconds or so during Kim's calling out the rising energy levels and the other crew members' discussion).

Assumption being the key word, indeed.

I wouldn't call anything that you can routinely run for what essentially amounts to an indefinite time as a peak.

And I didn't say that this power output diverted to sensors was the peak. On the contrary.

We don't know anything about the antimatter sample that Wesley was using for his experiment. If it takes 100 megatons or so (assuming Wes was using anti-deuterium) just to do a couple seconds of low warp speed, then the lower limits on Federation starship power estimates only go up, not down. Your original assumptions were faulty in that the antimatter was to be used by the Hathaway as power for the whole entire wargames, when it was not, and therefore the power estimate you derived is far too low.
-Mike

If reread my former post about that, you'll notice that it's still an open question, because we don't know the roles of both ships, which one was emulating what.
In one of the two cases, shields would have been likely powered by the antimatter gop as well.

Besides, it's assuming he used anti-deuterium, or any dense form of that.

We don't even know if that blue thing was the antimatter, and not a shell built around the antimatter, which could be anything, like as big as a cloud of a few particles.

What we got is an absolute high end.

We know that the fusion or fission core of the Phoenix could get reach the lowest warp for much more than two seconds, and they switched the warp drive off on purpose, and likely reactivated it to return home.

Besides, it is necessary to adress the point raised regarding fuel storate and the warp speeds and trip durations achieved by shuttles or even probes used to transport people at warp 9.

[Roondar]

Is it possible that she was confident she could engage the enemy ship precisely because that ship was using that power for the cloak?

Hmm..

Ever heard of 'better safe than sorry'?

It's not very reasonable to suggest that Janeway would assume that something that uses tons of energy for it's cloaking device would not be able to, say, use a similar amount of energy in it's shields or weapons. She has no way to know and it seems like an awfully big chance to take. You know, what with the whole 'no backup or rescue' thing.

In fact, if I where the captain of a starship that could not produce at least similar levels of power I'd not even consider going anywhere near a potential enemy that does produce that kind of power.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Is it possible that she was confident she could engage the enemy ship precisely because that ship was using that power for the cloak?

Hmm..

Ever heard of 'better safe than sorry'?

It's not very reasonable to suggest that Janeway would assume that something that uses tons of energy for it's cloaking device would not be able to, say, use a similar amount of energy in it's shields or weapons. She has no way to know and it seems like an awfully big chance to take. You know, what with the whole 'no backup or rescue' thing.

In fact, if I where the captain of a starship that could not produce at least similar levels of power I'd not even consider going anywhere near a potential enemy that does produce that kind of power.

Ok. What about fuel volumes now?

[Roondar]

Is it possible that she was confident she could engage the enemy ship precisely because that ship was using that power for the cloak?

Hmm..

Ever heard of 'better safe than sorry'?

It's not very reasonable to suggest that Janeway would assume that something that uses tons of energy for it's cloaking device would not be able to, say, use a similar amount of energy in it's shields or weapons. She has no way to know and it seems like an awfully big chance to take. You know, what with the whole 'no backup or rescue' thing.

In fact, if I where the captain of a starship that could not produce at least similar levels of power I'd not even consider going anywhere near a potential enemy that does produce that kind of power.

Ok. What about fuel volumes now?

You misunderstand me, I'm not saying that problem has been fixed. Far from it. I merely am pointing out that it's not logical for Janeway to act that way.

The whole fuel issue is ten times worse for Voyager actually, they where seriously considering flying home on -basically- one tank of fuel*.

*) The early Voyager episodes gave no indication Janeway seriously expected to find usable fuel in great quantities and every time they did seem to find the stuff something happened that made it either impossible to extract or cost them so much energy as to almost certainly make the whole thing a net loss of power.

[Mike DiCenso]

Please bear in mind that this was from the impulse engines of a relatively primitive 22nd century starship. The NX-01's impulse engines were obviously also producing an excess above the 10 terawatt range, and this does not account for any other possible power from the warp reactor itself.
-Mike

Huh, they didn't get their terawatts from am/m?

What about the weapons? I've recently read (here) that the terawatt yeild, instead of 500 GJ, was the result of some alien device being present their in the shuttle bay, and that the weapons burned, and everytime they tried to reproduce the yield, it destroy their weapons and maybe more stuff.

Why should we consider that they can handle superior power output, if their technology can't even let them harness terawatts of energy in cannons?

At the end of the episode, the crew duplicates the alien device's overload (the device was only 500 MJ, BTW, and could not have supplied all the power necessary for a x10 power increase) by directly feeding power from the impulse engines to the phase cannons.
-Mike

[Mike DiCenso]

Mr. Oragahn wrote:

Quantify them then.

That's a strawman since the Ba'neth ships and outpost are not stated to be superior to Voyager, that there was something big inside. What we do know is that the Ba'neth had a ship/outpost capable of generating at least 9 million TW continuously to generate a cloaking field, which is the point.

That would not be any different than Voyager having them since the torpedoes effectively carry an independent loadout of antimatter on them as part of the warhead.

Code: Select all

Then why mention them if you can't know how powerful they are, or can be?

Because simply speaking, there are no known torpedoes used by the Ba'neath, but their weapons in general appear to not be such a threat to Voyager. Janeway had no reservations about jumping into a direct confrontation. It also shows a race on a rough technological par with the Federation that can generate so much power on a regular basis, and yet is not seen as such serious threat.

That would only tell us about the yeild of the torps themselves, most in particular if they are used against something we can readily quantify the effects on such as asteroids or a planet's surface.

If it gives a yield for the Ba'neth torps, then yes.
But would you be able to derive a shield figure from them, and then a reactor output?
As I have understood, shields are charged. They don't directly tap into the reactors.

Actually, the shields can be directly tapped into impulse power or warp power (i.e. "Elann of Troyius" [TOS3], "The Nth Degree" [TNG5]).

What it does tell us is that the Ba'Neth ship was generating a cloaking field at nearly the same level of power as the E-D's core in "True Q", which also happens to fit in well with the VOY "Revulsion" quote for the amount of power flowing through a single conduit. Voyager's deflector dish was modified so that it could be used to illuminate the Ba'neth cloak, which suggests that Voyager can generate power on a comparable level.

You have proof that to illuminate the cloak, you must oppose the same level of power?

Simple really; the deflector shield is a high-capacity system. It can project so much power that even phaser and photon torpedo weapons cannot match it (i.e. "The Best of Both Worlds, Part I and II). Therefore it is quite reasonable that in order to illuminate the Ba'neth cloak, you need a lot of power as well as technobabble.

Janeway showed little hesitation in engaging the Ba'neth ships, also suggesting that Voyager is at least able to survive the Ba'neath weapons, and indeed does so through at least one volley.

How many torps? Total yield?

Strawman. As Roondar points out correctly, Janeway has no way of knowing how much energy the Ba'neth can channel through their weapons systems. In fact, in order to help Tuvok, they were confronting the Ba'neth in order to learn more about their weapons. But even if only 1% of the weapons' power was channeled from the reactor, then you still get 90,000 TW.

Any proof that Ba'neth phasers, if there were any, could use those exawatts of power?

Is it possible that she was confident she could engage the enemy ship precisely because that ship was using that power for the cloak?

Nothing stops them from dropping the cloak when discovered, or being able to fire while cloaked. In fact, that is what the Ba'neth do, if you look at the quote I provided again more closely.

Do we know if the ship had shields of a quality sufficient to use that power as well?

What difference does it make? Even a tiny fraction of that is still a rather impressive amount of power.

That's a pretty heavy bunch of unknowns.

Not really. I think you are just trying to pull the arguement away from the fact that a technically on-par group to the Federation was running around with a ship/outpost that could generate that much power.

This is not to dispute the other quotes, but on its own, that one doesn't seem that "stable" for the moment.

I'd say it's quite stable, and it can be combined with all the other higher-end power quotes for a general pattern that they are the norm, not the exception.

Bear in mind again, that Voyager is a medium sized vessel by the 24th century Federation's standards. So a medium sized Starfleet vessel can at least disrupt/illuminate a 9 million terawatt cloak, and hold it's own against the ship/outpost that generated it.

Does not matter. What matters is the size of the core.

It is the amount reactants the ship can afford to spend, as well as the engine efficency, ect, not just size.

Doesn't seem much different.
Besides, the E-D is older by something like 8 years.

The E-D is a much larger vessel, has more fuel, and has been continually upgraded.

Even if it were coping with a fraction of the 90 million terajoules (approximately 21 gigatons) of energy, say only 1/1000th, that is still 90,000 terajoules.

Yes, but it would only be 90,000 terajoules.

However the field was continually growing in strength at a rather impressively fast rate, so that is likely a very lower limit, and remember they were exposed to the field for at least 4 minutes.

Also note in the dialog that the field's energy gradient was still on the rise, but they stopped bothering to call that out as survival and escape became their primary concern. Ninety million terajoules was is simply the lower limit here. All this from a ship whose main power was disrupted by the storm's other effects.

Yes, the field was growing in power - what kind of field is that? Was it shrinking?

But do we still know how the field transmitted the energy?

What does the power figure corresponds to exactly? We don't know.

And it's really gets interesting if you really do go with the assumption that the field was very dense, and Voyager's shields really did have to deal with that much energy over some four minutes (excluding the 30 seconds or so during Kim's calling out the rising energy levels and the other crew members' discussion).

Assumption being the key word, indeed.

I wouldn't call anything that you can routinely run for what essentially amounts to an indefinite time as a peak.

And I didn't say that this power output diverted to sensors was the peak. On the contrary.

But still important to bear in mind.

We don't know anything about the antimatter sample that Wesley was using for his experiment. If it takes 100 megatons or so (assuming Wes was using anti-deuterium) just to do a couple seconds of low warp speed, then the lower limits on Federation starship power estimates only go up, not down. Your original assumptions were faulty in that the antimatter was to be used by the Hathaway as power for the whole entire wargames, when it was not, and therefore the power estimate you derived is far too low.
-Mike

If reread my former post about that, you'll notice that it's still an open question, because we don't know the roles of both ships, which one was emulating what.
In one of the two cases, shields would have been likely powered by the antimatter gop as well.

Besides, it's assuming he used anti-deuterium, or any dense form of that.

We don't even know if that blue thing was the antimatter, and not a shell built around the antimatter, which could be anything, like as big as a cloud of a few particles.

What we got is an absolute high end.

We know that the fusion or fission core of the Phoenix could get reach the lowest warp for much more than two seconds, and they switched the warp drive off on purpose, and likely reactivated it to return home.

Besides, it is necessary to adress the point raised regarding fuel storate and the warp speeds and trip durations achieved by shuttles or even probes used to transport people at warp 9.

The Phoenix was also a very small ship by almost any of the later 22nd, 23rd, and 24th century starships' standards. You may as well be comparing the 500 horsepower outboard moter of dingy to the 100,000 HP engines of a supertanker for all that it matters.

Besides which, the Hathway example doesn't workt for you since it was simulation that used low power shields (that is why the E-D got caught by the Ferengi maurader ship later in the episode) with computer simulated weapons, and the antimatter was only really good for a 2-second warp jump as the dialog here clearly indicates:

RIKER
The simulation begins in one hour.

GEORDI
You'll have warp drive, Captain,
though it may not be what you
expected.

RIKER
I'd say that calls for an
explanation.

GEORDI
Sir, we'll be able to give you
warp one...
(a glance to Wesley)

WESLEY
-- for just under two seconds.

RIKER
(making the best)
Well, not enough for an escape
but used as a surprise, sufficient
for gaining a strategic advantage.


Which is precisely what they did when the E-D is attacked for real by the Ferengi ship. So your assumption that it was to provide power all throughout the simulation is simply incorrect.
-Mike