I wrote:DarkStar wrote:"The nature of the shielding systems is curious . . . the Enterprise seemed to plow right through them without impediment. Some have claimed this as proof that shields don't stop physical impacts, or that the shield energy of the Scimitar could not have exceeded the KE of the Enterprise, but these are preposterous claims. We saw the Enterprise-E shields deflecting large pieces of a Romulan cruiser earlier in the battle, knocking the debris away from the saucer and then the port nacelle. In the case of the Scimitar, we either have a secondary shield system that cannot block physical impact (which would assume that the primaries could, and that they had failed at this point), or that technobabble was employed off-camera while we watched proceedings from Shinzon's point-of-view, or that his new cloaking system required oddly-configured shields. In any case, I have no intention of throwing away the rest of the evidence for physical impact protection (including some from this very film) in favor of the claim that starships don't have KE shields."
This is merely another one of Mr. Anderson's pro-Trek claims that come from nowhere. While it is clear the starship shields are more than capable of stopping physical impacts (like photon torpedoes or the section of the hull that Anderson mentions), it is also impossible to rule out that the shields were simply not capable of deflecting such a large impact. Considering that the relatively small section of the Valdore class warbird, which struck the E-E twice, knocked its shields down by an enormous percent—down to ten percent from an unspecified but probably very high percent, and certainly one larger than forty percent because they were trying to hide another set of shields that had been depleted to that percentage by using their forward shields—we come up with a fairly consistent idea of how good Trek shielding is against KE impacts. Thus, we know with a high degree of certainty that ST ships' shields are designed to stop collisions, and we know that the Scimitar's shields did little or nothing to stop the E-E. All of this indicates that the shields were inadequate to stop the E-E.
Now, Anderson meekly responds to these concerns about the Scimitar's shields. According to Occam's Razor, when we have two competing theories [which both fit the data equally well], the one with fewer terms is [superior, ie- there is no reason to choose an unnecessarily complex theory]. Anderson claims that the primary shields might have been the only ones designed to stop physical impacts. Apparently, Mr. Anderson would have us believe that the primary shields made up less than thirty percent of the total shielding on the Scimitar, because that is the percentage of the shield that had been "knocked out" up to that point in the engagement. Had the primary shields failed, we should have heard about it, or we should have heard that the Scimitar had a much smaller fraction of its shields up than it did. Anderson goes on to state two other possibilities:
DarkStar wrote:"that technobabble was employed off-camera while we watched proceedings from Shinzon's point-of-view, or that his new cloaking system required oddly-configured shields."
Of course, either of these views is absolutely absurd. If we employ Occam's Razor, which is mentioned above, then the unseen "technobabble" would violate it by adding another term. Additionally, the principle of parsimony tells us that unless we have evidence to believe something is going on, it probably is not. This is why we do not assume that God or alien abductions are real just because we have no evidence that they are not real. Mr. Anderson is employing a logical fallacy in attempting to tell us that technobabble is being used off-screen, particularly since we see that Picard commands everyone to brace for impact. If he was ordering technobabble to take place, he should have done that before he ordered the crew to brace for impact.
Now for some quick calculations. We don't know how much the E-E masses, nor what its actual volume is, but we can get a reasonable idea. The length of the ship is about 680 meters. Its beam is 240 meters, and its height is 87 meters1. For these calculations, it will be assumed that the ship is a perfect, rectangular box. It clearly is not, and its actual volume is likely somewhere between one half, and one quarter of the volume here calculated. Now, that gives the E-E a volume of 14,198,400 cubic meters. Assuming that the ship's density is that of iron, the ship will thus mass a total of 1.07E11 kilograms (This could, theoretically, be low. It's possible that the ship would be more dense than iron, but it would have to be far more dense in order to raise the total mass of the actual ship beyond the one here calculated. Remember that the ship is filled with empty space, including a long shaft shown in this very movie, with lots of lightweight plastic and ceramic-looking parts.). The collision speed was 30 meters/second. We can easily plug these numbers in to a KE calculator, and we find that the ship did ½(1.07E11*30²) = 4.81E13 joules to the Scimitar. Now, this is still being very generous. Remember that the E-E took substantial damage from the collision- indicating that it also absorbed a considerable amount of the impact energy itself. It also disregards the mass lightening effect of ST ships, which would lower this even further. Thus, this should be treated as a fairly high-end estimate of the amount of energy involved in the collision.
In any case, the shields of the Scimitar were lowered from seventy percent to zero, and the E-E continued on as if nothing had happened. Let us, however, assume for the moment that the Scimitar did manage to stop the E-E using just its shields. This would mean that the Scimitar has shielding equal to 4.81E13 joules, or the equivalent of less than 15 kilotons. It further means that all of the weapons fire that struck the Scimitar during the battle was the equivalent of just 5 kilotons! Most of the E-E's weaponry missed its target. According to Gil Hamilton's count2, at least eight torpedoes and three quantum torpedoes hit the Scimitar, as well as numerous phaser and disruptor shots. If we assume that only photon torpedoes hit the Scimitar, and that the quantum torpedoes and phasers and disruptors did no damage, we find that the yield of a photon torpedo is merely .625 kilotons. This means that an X-Wing can match a photon torpedo for firepower with just eleven shots!3 That calculation, incidentally, gives every possible advantage to Star Trek. It involves a lower limit for X-Wing firepower, and the enormously generous calculations above for both the collision, and for calculating the torpedo firepower.
DarkStar wrote:"The Tech
Wow . . . they handled things well this time out . . ."
