Torpedoes and the Tsar Bomba

[Augustus Caesar]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba

Simply put, the Tsar Bomba was the most largest nuclear device in history. It was not intended as a weapon, and detonated as a stunt during the Cold War. The yield was around 50 Mt, if uranium had been used in the bomb, the yield would have been 100 Mt.


The only way I see something like the TB remotely of use to us today is if there was an asteroid/comet big enough was discovered that would hit within about a decade. If powerful launch vehicles were assembled(possibly a Saturn V?), and versions of the TB recreated, it would be possible to administer a few hundred Mt's of smackdown to said asteroid/comet.

From Mike's site on Fed torpedoes, it gives the number of between 32 and 24 Mt for a direct hit from a Photon torp, and between 10 and 7 Mt for a proximity hit. I'm not definitely sure, but apparently in 1961, the Soviet Union had a weapon that makes photon torps and quantum torps to an extent look downright puny. In a TOS episode that I can't remember the title of at the moment, a Romulan vessel jettisoned a thermonuclear warhead of undetermined yield and caused the Enterprise some damage, if only superficial.

If SF had a weaponized version with a propulsion system that could make it have the same velocity, range, and accuracy as a photon torp, would it be that much of a advancement in firepower? Even the stunted 50Mt version using lead had a greater yield than photon torps. Also, considering the test version weighed over 14 tons, it would carry much more kinetic energy. The most effective use of this in theory would be against a Borg cube whose shields had been worn down. Instead of continually grinding it down with phasers and torps, a single one would punch through most of the cube from the much greater KE and detonate somewhere inside the cube, causing a whole world of hurt to the Borg cube, if not destroying it outright.

[Uraniun235]

From Mike's site on Fed torpedoes, it gives the number of between 32 and 24 Mt for a direct hit from a Photon torp, and between 10 and 7 Mt for a proximity hit. I'm not definitely sure, but apparently in 1961, the Soviet Union had a weapon that makes photon torps and quantum torps to an extent look downright puny.

That page goes off the non-canon Technical Manual-based yield calculation of the PT, which is 64 MT. The 32 MT figure is based on the fact that no more than half the energy of the warhead will actually be directed against the target.

Therefore, your mighty (huge, unwieldy) Tsar Bomba would only direct ~25MT of energy against the target. Also, the physical impact of "punching through most of the cube" would have a high probability of breaking the warhead.

Now, granted, the 64MT figure is wildly inconsistent with much of the canon, but a fourteen-ton warhead is still mighty unwieldy, as well as utterly inefficient; I'm not convinced it would make for an effective weapon.

[Augustus Caesar]

Well, the test version only had a 50Mt yield, had Uranium been used, it would have had 100Mt. So 50Mt would be directed against the target. Perhaps the unwieldyness could be negated by using it on targets you can't possibly miss, like the above mentioned cube, orbital defense stations, and star bases.

By the way, what are the canon upper and lower limits for photon torps?

[Uraniun235]

If you want to accept Voyager, the lower limit is somewhere around a handful of firecrackers... there was an episode where Voyager torpedoed a Kazon ship hovering right next to a building, and, well, the effects were quite underwhelming.

Upper limit depends on how big you think the asteroid in The Motion Picture is; could be as high as a megaton or as low as a couple hundred kilotons.

[seanrobertson]

A few qualms, mighty Caesar:

*A 14-ton projectile is about shuttlecraft-sized, so it's potentially interceptable. To protect it from Borg weaponry, you'd probably wind up building something the size of the Cardassian Dreadnought.

But let's assume I'm being pessimistic, and the Borg couldn't shoot it down. I still wonder...

*Why go to all this trouble just to nuke the cube? Why not arm our device with a huge M/AM warhead?

*Also, why hold off deploying the TB 'til the cube's shields are already worn down? That's no fun

*If its propulsion systems are anything like conventional torpedoes--or, for that matter, impulse or warp drive--it will utilize mass-lightening; as such, it won't pack anywhere near the kinetic energy we'd otherwise expect.

*Slight aside: 24 megaton photorps are a Tech Manual-based anachronism--something we only use to be super-generous these days More realistic figures are in the mid-kT to low single-digit megaton range.

[seanrobertson]

Oops. We're all posting at the same time!

As Uraniun indicated, torpedo yields seem to run from next to nothing ("Alliances," "ST V") to a few hundred kilotons and/or couple of megatons ("Pegasus," possibly "ST: TMP" and "Cost of Living" [TNG]).

FWIW, then, Tsar Bomba may yield the equivalent of 25 to as many as 200+ photon torpedoes If that's indeed the case, it could be a very useful weapon against a cube.

But I said before, the trick is to get the thing close enough to deliver even a nice fraction of that yield

[Ender]

Off the top of my head -

Rise = 1 MT
Pegesus = 1.2 MT (600 KT if you assume they were going to burow first)
Night Terrors = 2 MT (varies based off the power of the warp core you assume)
Deja Q = 3 MT
Relics = 6 MT (30 MT shields, usually takes 10 torps to down shields, only half energy applied)

[Augustus Caesar]

Well, if you got just 2 to hit directly without interception, you'd be exposing the cube to over 100 Mt. That's near the firepower of a few TL's on an ISD.

And I don't see the Borg adapting shields working against something that has no single frequency to adapt to. But, as you pointed out, a shuttle craft sized warhead coming at you is hard to miss.

As for the KE, it still would have a far greater amount of KE than the average torp, even with mass lightening. This is 14 tons, not just several hundred kilos.

Whichever way you look at it, it still seems the Soviet Union had something that makes SF weapons look like firecrackers. In 1961!
That would be a real old-school smackdown if they were used effectively.

PS- What does FWIW mean?

[Ender]

FWIW for what its worth

And the American MX bomb design had a yield of 60 MT for a full design of a 120 MT missile

[SCVN 2812]

Matter / Anti-matter warheads (was that ever confirmed in the canon btw?) would be a matter of convenience. Pick your target and yield, siphon off an appropriate amount of reactant from the fuel tanks, fire torpedoes. Rinse and repeat, your actual mileage may vary.

[FedRebel]

Matter / Anti-matter warheads (was that ever confirmed in the canon btw?)

In Enterprise

After the NX-01 recieved "photonic" torpedoes and used them against Duras

[Uraniun235]

What the fuck, Duras was around in ENT?

[Gandalf]

What the fuck, Duras was around in ENT?

His ancestor was.

Evidently coming up with another Klingon name for a tiny role was too much.

[Sea Skimmer]

Now, granted, the 64MT figure is wildly inconsistent with much of the canon, but a fourteen-ton warhead is still mighty unwieldy, as well as utterly inefficient; I'm not convinced it would make for an effective weapon.

Well it was efficient as fuck in terms of using up its nuclear material, and the detonation was incredibly clean. It can only be called inefficient because no target on earth demanded an attack with that level of weapon, though the Soviets did design and test a fractional orbital bombardment system which would have required such a large warhead due to the very high CEP (IIRC the impact zone was anywhere within a 5x3km box).

[TimothyC]

What the fuck, Duras was around in ENT?

His ancestor was.

Evidently coming up with another Klingon name for a tiny role was too much.

And to make it worse he was "Duras son of Toral"

(Toral was Duras's illegitamate son in TNG).

[Bounty]

And to make it worse he was "Duras son of Toral"

(Toral was Duras's illegitamate son in TNG).

To be fair, it's not unusual for dynasties to recycle names of illustrious predecessors.

I admit that Duras of the House of Duras sounds a bit funny, but it still fits Klingon naming conventions.

[Gustav32Vasa]

Off the top of my head -

Rise = 1 MT
Pegesus = 1.2 MT (600 KT if you assume they were going to burow first)
Night Terrors = 2 MT (varies based off the power of the warp core you assume)
Deja Q = 3 MT
Relics = 6 MT (30 MT shields, usually takes 10 torps to down shields, only half energy applied)

Voyagers shields could take 90+ million TJ before failing.

[brianeyci]

Voyagers shields could take 90+ million TJ before failing.

Full quotation please, script and episode name. Unless you calced it somehow, then calcs .

Brian

[Gustav32Vasa]

Voyagers shields could take 90+ million TJ before failing.

Full quotation please, script and episode name. Unless you calced it somehow, then calcs .

Brian

Fair Haven

KIM: The neutronic gradient's rising. Thirty million terajoules. Forty million.
JANEWAY: Shields?
TUVOK: Holding.
KIM: Sixty million.
TORRES [OC]: Torres to Bridge. The inverse warp field is destabilising. We're losing our anchor.
JANEWAY: Acknowledged. How long before we're clear?
PARIS: At least another five minutes.
KIM: That's about four minutes too long. The gradient's rising fast. Ninety million.
PARIS: Stabilisers are offline.
CHAKOTAY: Thrusters.
PARIS: No effect.
TUVOK: Shields are failing.

[Lancer]

40 million terajoules is only about one gigaton.

[Bounty]

40 million terajoules is only about one gigaton.

For several seconds. I think that goes above the more optimistic shields calcs I've seen here.

[Lancer]

crap, I messed up the mental math.

40 million terajoules is only about 10 gigatons.

still not very impressive though.

[Gustav32Vasa]

crap, I messed up the mental math.

40 million terajoules is only about 10 gigatons.

still not very impressive though.

40?

The shields lasted to above 90 million TJ

[Darth Wong]

Voyagers shields could take 90+ million TJ before failing.

Full quotation please, script and episode name. Unless you calced it somehow, then calcs .

Brian

Fair Haven

KIM: The neutronic gradient's rising. Thirty million terajoules. Forty million.
JANEWAY: Shields?
TUVOK: Holding.
KIM: Sixty million.
TORRES [OC]: Torres to Bridge. The inverse warp field is destabilising. We're losing our anchor.
JANEWAY: Acknowledged. How long before we're clear?
PARIS: At least another five minutes.
KIM: That's about four minutes too long. The gradient's rising fast. Ninety million.
PARIS: Stabilisers are offline.
CHAKOTAY: Thrusters.
PARIS: No effect.
TUVOK: Shields are failing.

And you are apparently too fucking stupid and ignorant to realize that a "neutronic gradient" cannot be measured in terajoules, hence this dialogue is scientifically meaningless? The only thing that "neutronic gradient" could possibly mean would be a gradient in neutron radiation flux, and that would not be measured in TJ.

Voyager's shields were once defeated by a bunch of acid-spitting space bugs, for fuck's sake.

PS. Since you probably won't understand what I just wrote, a gradient is a rate of change.

[Adrian Laguna]

Not necessarily "stupid" as much as "not paying attention". None of the other posters pointed out the "neutronic gradient" thing. I didn't notice it either, untill you pointed it out.

Ironically (if I'm not mistaken) a shield that goes down under high neutrino radiation could also be brought down by throwing rocks at it. Or even by shining a flashlight on it, come to think of it.

EDIT - I suddely get this awful feeling that I misunderstood something about Mr. Wong's post. Therefore my reply is inherently wrong in someway. However, I'm leaving it as is, and taking advantage of my right to say something stupid every now and then.