Ultimate Federation Weapon - Of course they never used it.

[Gandalf]

The Cardassians thought of that, and their design was HUGE (and carried a relatively tiny payload, t'boot).

yeah but fitting that missile with a cloaking device instead of all those weapons and shields would mean they could increase the pay load I would have thought

IIRC the Cardies had no cloaking device till sometime around TDIC, and the Feds couldn't use it due to Treaty of Algeron.

[Wrath]

IIRC the Cardies had no cloaking device till sometime around TDIC, and the Feds couldn't use it due to Treaty of Algeron.

but the marquis could, as well as the klingons and romulans....

[Darth Wong]

Three words: long range torpedoes.

That would require putting drive systems on a torpedo. They would become nothing more then warp pods, shuttles with anti-matter containment systems. I think those would be easier to intercept. However, if you can speed them up to a point where interception is difficult, such a weapon system would be nice.

In "The Emissary" (the TNG episode, not the DS9 quasi-religious figure), Worf's girlfriend caught a long-range ride in a photorp. That means a photorp has enough long-range capability to do interstellar travel while retaining an internal cavity large enough for a human body: good enough for a midsized warhead.

As for interception, the soliton wave shows up on sensors as a large wavefront and can be dispersed with photon torpedoes, so I don't see why it would be any more difficult to intercept than a long-range photorp.

[Striderteen]

Since accident caused this warp shell to become so dangerous in the eyes of the Enterprise crew, it's quite plausible that if further research was made to make the warp shell *deliberately* feed on subspace as much as possible, it could become a planet-killer weapon.

*If* it works the way their cursory examination *might* indicate. *If* they're able to recreate it. *If* they're able to control it.

Way too many ifs.

[Ted C]

As we don't know what the writers were thinking, we'll have to leave it at that.

EoB, the writers never think about these scientific issues when they're coming up with a plot because they don't understand any of the scientific principles involved. That's why we're stuck trying to rationalize the pseudoscientific nonsense they publish.

[Ted C]

In "The Emissary" (the TNG episode, not the DS9 quasi-religious figure), Worf's girlfriend caught a long-range ride in a photorp. That means a photorp has enough long-range capability to do interstellar travel while retaining an internal cavity large enough for a human body: good enough for a midsized warhead.

Keh'lyr was actually riding in a "class 8 probe", as I recall, but its dimensions were indistinguishable from those of a photon torpedo, so that's an insignificant nitpick.

[Marc Xavier]

[Grand Admiral Thrawn]

That would require putting drive systems on a torpedo. They would become nothing more then warp pods, shuttles with anti-matter containment systems.

The Cardassians thought of that, and their design was HUGE (and carried a relatively tiny payload, t'boot).

But that's because they decided to make it into an automated warship.