E-D's upper-limit phaser output

[seanrobertson]

We all know that phasers don't require a lot of power to create
neat trick effects in their targets.

However, I'd like to get an idea of just *what* might constitute
a true upper-limit for the E-D's dorsal phaser array. And I have
an idea how to find it.

The illustrious Darth Wong once argued with a group of Trek fans
at RAST, IIRC, concerning this very subject. I think I was actually
in the thread myself. Graham Kennedy told Michael that
the E-D's phasers didn't create chain-reactions in the target (were
DET weapons, IOW), and had a power of 100,000 TW.

Michael countered by pointing out how easily the E-D was moved
by decompressing her main shuttle bay in "Cause and Effect,"
further noting that a 100,000 TW phaser would literally
spin the ship around like a top. LOL...I still chuckle when I think
of that

So, anyway, I'd like to know: just how powerful COULD the phasers
be before this didn't happen? I have a set of figures here to figure
out what might happen if we treated the E-D as a 4.5 million ton
ship, but the aforementioned episode makes that pointless.

All input will win you a trip to your vacation spot of choice; please
state your destination, and I'll see what I can do Hehe...

Thanks.

[His Divine Shadow]

1) in a "A Matter of Time" the phaser had a variance of 0.06TW
2) Lord Edam once pointed out an episode where they could control phaser variance to 1%

So using this we can assume that phaser power is 6TW, at max, remember, this drained the EPS taps on the E-D when it did it, there was something about the deflector dish too, but I don't remember it being the main power drain here.

[seanrobertson]

1) in a "A Matter of Time" the phaser had a variance of 0.06TW
2) Lord Edam once pointed out an episode where they could control phaser variance to 1%

So using this we can assume that phaser power is 6TW, at max, remember, this drained the EPS taps on the E-D when it did it, there was something about the deflector dish too, but I don't remember it being the main power drain here.

Interesting.

I don't know the episode in which phasers could be controlled to
a single-digit of their total output, though IIRC, in the episode
that featured the "real" Leah Brahms and the space slugs,
3% phaser power ("narrow beam") was ordered by Dr. Crusher
to make an incision into one of the large space creatures.
That would seem to indicate that the phasers could go as low as 1%.

As for the deflector dish, in "AMoT," the shields were supposed to
act as a "lightning rod" for the plasma in a planet's atmosphere,
attracting it then redirecting it into space. I don't remember the specifics...

Earlier, I alluded to an exchange Darth W. and Graham Kennedy had
ages ago on R.A.S.T. (rec.arts.startrek.tech...I dunno if it's still there
or not). Michael said the following about the 100,000 TW of raw
power Graham said the phasers utilized:



BTW, didn't you notice that Trek is moving TOWARDS fixed-axis cannons?The futuristic E-D in "All Good Things" had a big fixed-axis cannon.As their firepower increases they are forced to use beam weapons withactual fixed-axis barrels (similar to the turret weapons employed onthe far more sophisticated ISD's). This makes sense, since the highmomentum of very high-energy weapons makes the GCS-style phaser arrayimpractical. A GCS-style phaser array only makes sense if it doesn'thave to carry a lot of energy, otherwise momentum effects would spinthe ship around like
a top...


3) >The momentum of a very high energy weapon is negligible. Certainly >when compared to the multi-million gees produced by the main engines, >which are easily handled by the Inertial>Dampers.

Mike's response:

Wrong. The momentum produced by a 100,000 TW weapon is 330 millionkg*m/s for a 1-second discharge. That is NOT negligible- the formulafor momentum of light is U/c, where U is energy and c is the speed oflight. If you consider the fact that this momentum would be appliedover a period of 1 second, then the reactive force on the ship wouldbe 330 MN.That is ANYTHING but negligible for a vessel which is operating undera subspace field that lightens its effective mass. When theEnterprise was struck by the Bozeman, it accelerated forward byevacuating the air from a shuttle bay. If the shuttle bay door is 30metres wide and 15 metres tall, then the air pressure exerted a forceof <50 MN on the ship. Yet this significantly accelerated the ship,thus proving that a 330 MN force would EASILY push the ship around.

And no, the intertial dampers do not affect the ship's acceleration-they only affect things INSIDE the ship, rather than making the shipimmune to external accelerative forces. Read the TM- it specificallydescribes how the inertial dampers only affect the "habitable volume"of the ship. If they prevented external accelerative forces fromaffecting the ship, its own impulse drive wouldn't work![/i]

In short, I'd like to know: how much power CAN the phasers have
BEFORE they start spinning the ship around like a top? Mike's figures
for the size of the shuttlebay might be off-the-cuff, but I don't doubt
he's addressing the rough order of magnitude force we ARE looking
at.

[Ted C]

We can note from "Who Watches the Watchers" that a "small phaser array" draws about 4.2 GW. We can also gather that a particle weapon which has an "equivalent firepower" of 400 GW (which I take as equivalent to a phaser that draws 400 GW) is dismayingly powerful. These descriptions indicate to me that it is unlikely that phasers draw more than a few hundred gigawatts of power.

[His Divine Shadow]

Uhm....
*head explodes ala Raiders of the Ark style*

[seanrobertson]

We can note from "Who Watches the Watchers" that a "small phaser array" draws about 4.2 GW. We can also gather that a particle weapon which has an "equivalent firepower" of 400 GW (which I take as equivalent to a phaser that draws 400 GW) is dismayingly powerful. These descriptions indicate to me that it is unlikely that phasers draw more than a few hundred gigawatts of power.

Agreed. I swear, man...if you were a woman, we think so much alike
sometimes, I'd have to ask you out (Would that be good or bad,
though? Like-minded people often fight. My ex and me had a successful relationship for about a year mostly *because* we didn't think alike.)

To be sure, circa "The Survivors," a Galaxy's maximum
phaser firepower would be well below 400 GW of phaser-equivalent
energy. I'd hazard a guess that'd it'd be below 80 GW, 5 half-second
bursts of which would equal the effects of the illusory Husnock's
weapon (which are deliverable pretty quickly; e.g., the E-D's strikes
against the Tamarian ship in "Darmok").

I'm most interested in finding out the absolute upper-limit for what
the E-D could put out *before* its weapons configuration would start
moving the ship around disadvantageously, according to the information
we have for the amount of force required to move a GCS at a rate
of at least 50m/s/s in "Cause and Effect" (the decompression of
the main shuttlebay).

[seanrobertson]

Uhm....
*head explodes ala Raiders of the Ark style*

LOL That one really pale, bald Nazi dude with the glasses'
melting face was cool.

Ok, though, we're celebrating at my house, and champagne
is flowing freely, so I'm becoming less and less coherent.
You wouldn't know it, given my fanatical self-spell-checking,
but it's true

[Connor MacLeod]

Well, I'd guess around 15,000-20,000 TW based on what you posed from the Mike Wong/Graham Kennedy argument. If we assume the air pressure in the reference Mike cited was 50 MN, that would *probably* represent the upper limit before the ship starts getting pushed around (possibly a generous one.)

if we likeiwse use Mike's reference that a 100,000 TW has 330 MN of momentum, we just have to divide 50/330 to discover that 50 MN is about 15.2% of the "total" 330 (I'm just using 330 as the "total" because its the known momentum attached to an energy rating). Therefore, the energy output would be 15.2% of 100,000 TW (I think), or about 15,200 TW. This assumes my math is correct, I didnt screw up somewhere, and that the properties/characteristics of a phaser are similar to the 100,000 TW energy weapon Mike attributed the momentum to.

This constraint though only applies to a ship operating under the subspace
"mass lightening" field, apparently. One could probably sustain greater momentum by either tuning down the field or shutting it off completely - but this will hinder acceleration characteristics accordingly (suggesting you can either punch harder or move quicker, but not neccesarily both.)

<note: does anything else in my estimates look bad?>