Star Trek acceleration figures

[Connor MacLeod]

What are the known/stated/calculated figures (Based on canon) for ST ships?

I've heard estimates as high a hundreds of thousands or millions of gees (that Fed ships can and do regularly reach high freactions of c in seconds or minutes, etc.)

Two sources often mentioned are "best of Both Worlds" and "Star Trek Insurrection."

Thoughts? Calcs? comments?

<and please keep it relevant to the conversation. No random trek bashing or general "they can't do it" unless you can prove it.>

[ClaysGhost]

What are the known/stated/calculated figures (Based on canon) for ST ships?

I've heard estimates as high a hundreds of thousands or millions of gees (that Fed ships can and do regularly reach high freactions of c in seconds or minutes, etc.)

Two sources often mentioned are "best of Both Worlds" and "Star Trek Insurrection."

Thoughts? Calcs? comments?

<and please keep it relevant to the conversation. No random trek bashing or general "they can't do it" unless you can prove it.>

Since I'm not very enamoured of 5000g accelerations in SW, I'm even less happy with 10^5g or 10^6g accelerations in ST, and I'm even less prepared to believe that they could do it since the power source's operating principle is not magic (unlike hypermatter), and the limits are better known. I'm going to do some guessin'. I guess that the exhaust velocity of a ST ship is 80% of c. Now, let's look at a ST ship accelerating. The following argument is non-relativistic because I can't be arsed with gamma today, so the true power requirements will be higher than I find here.

Every second, the impulse engines eject mdot kilogrammes of fuel into space - mdot is the fuel consumption rate, pretty obviously (and is negative). If the exhaust speed is vex, then the kinetic energy of the fuel ejected in 1 second is

E_kinetic = 0.5 * (mdot * 1 sec) * vex^2,

and the engines must do work at a rate of P to provide this, so

P = 0.5 * -mdot * vex^2.

Every second, in the centre-of-mass frame of the ship before it ejects mdot, it clearly has zero momentum - after the ejection, we have mdot * 1sec leaving the ship with velocity -vex, and the ship gains momentum delta_M in the opposite direction.

delta_M = -vex * mdot * 1sec.

Over a very short (infinitesimal) time, << 1 sec, delta_M -> dm = mdv and mdot * 1sec -> dm, so that

m * dv = -vex * dm,

and dividing through by the infinitesimal time dt over which this happens, we find

m * (dv/dt) = -vex * (dm/dt),

or if a is the acceleration of the ship,

a = -vex * mdot / m.

Using this to eliminate mdot from the power equation up top,

P = 0.5 * m * a * vex

Given the mass of the ship and the exhaust velocity guess, we can use all this to work out the power requirements of a particular acceleration. If it exceeds the power available from the ST ship's M/AM reaction, then there's a problem. We can work out an upper limit on the time that such accelerations could be sustained (-mdot/m), again given m. We also could work the other way, starting from P to get m, and then work out mdot and hence the max burn time again. I do not know the supposed power output or mass of a typical ST ship; someone'll have to help, there.

At vex = 80% c, the engines must provide at least (since the above formulae are all non-relativistic) 2.8PW (peta-Watts) per kilogramme.

[omegaLancer]

Fnny I heard that it was maxed at 1000 G's.. Where that figure come from escapes me, but it used very often on varies BBS...

[His Divine Shadow]

ClaysGhost, you forget ST has REAL magic that is actual masslightening which works by phasing it into subspace where stuff like the laws of physics are used for toilet paper.

[Lord Edam]

Fnny I heard that it was maxed at 1000 G's.. Where that figure come from escapes me, but it used very often on varies BBS...

1000g comes from the TNG TM, where the historical reasons for impulse driver coils is given as the fact that the Ambassador could not achieve the specified acceleration of 1000g due to its mass.

This is often translated as "an ambassador can only do 1000g" and extended to Galaxies and every other Trek ship, which is wrong - 1000g was a design goal for the Ambassadotr, we are not told the final top end acceleration after IDCs are introduced. Very often the people using the TM to claim the E-d can only manage 1000g ignore another quote from elsehwere in the TM that states the Galaxy class regularly exceeds 1000g by massive amounts.

There are examples of Trek ships with acceleration far in excess of 1000g.

There are several examples where we are shown the ship entering warp from the POV of those on the ship, either through windows or on the viewscreen (eg, in DS9 Soldiers of the Empire iirc), which allow us to time the acceleration into FTL travel. This shows the warp engines are capable of accelerations round about 75,000km/s/s. But that's going in to warp. Though Trek ships are capable of fractional warp most people prefer to use the impusle engines as the measure of acceleration for STL examples.

A couple of the higher end Trek accelerations are...

In voy: The Swarm Voyager crosses 500,000km from a standing start at an unknown impulse rate in 15 seconds, for an acceleration of about 4,000km/s/s - 400,000g

In TNG: In Theory, the Enterprise is travelling through an area of space infested with subspace anomalies or some such at very low impulse rates - 0.1 impulse or less. In this example, which is real time (both from watching the episode and from the script), we arrive at accelerations measured in tens of thousands of g's or higher (given it takes them less than 10 minutes to cover the 40 million km or so to get out - at 0.1 impulse)

In Chain of Command, Geordie talks about slinging a shuttle around titan at 0.7c. For sake of doing some numbers, if you assume a standing start on saturn's surface, and accelerating to 0.7c at titan, this turns out to be about 100 km/s/s

all this is straight-line acceleration of course. For maneuvering abilities you're probably looking at something very different.

[ClaysGhost]

ClaysGhost, you forget ST has REAL magic that is actual masslightening which works by phasing it into subspace where stuff like the laws of physics are used for toilet paper.

Mass lightening is very dodgy. Is the fuel lightened forever, or does it stop being light and return to its former mass upon leaving the engines, or at some later time? It reduces fuel consumption and power requirements but not the mass ratio needed for velocity calculations. Aside from that, both ST and SW ships are subject to those equations. Impulse engines and ion drives both must provide that power per kilogramme with that vex. The get-out for SW is that hypermatter adds a free parameter to the whole thing; it'll just turn out to be able to produce whatever power the equations demand (magic). The problem for trek is that (I thought that) their power source's operating principle (rather than the implementation!) is not so magic, and has a limit. Ah, I hadn't noticed. Assuming a 100% efficient M/AM reactor, the ST ship will produce 60PJ for every kilogramme of matter collided with a kilogramme of antimatter in the reactor. Therefore, since the ST ship must produce 2.8PW/kg of fuel to drive the engines, it must consume kilogrammes of antimatter per second, which is somewhat suspicious. If someone can provide me with a total mass for one of these allegedly rapidly accelerating ships, I can turn that into a proper figure.

Why they don't all use photon rockets is confusing to me.

[ClaysGhost]

Duh. That 2.88PW/kg figure is for an acceleration of 1m/s/s, so it's 2.8PW/kg/(m/s/s) so even if the ship accelerates at this allegedly low-end 1000g, it must produce at least 28,800PW/kg (28.8EW/kg?), and so must consume tonnes of antimatter per second

Is nobody checking the nonsense that I post but me?!

[Alyeska]

In TNG BOBW PT2 they entered Sector 001 and left warp, they could make it from Saturn to Mars in 23 minutes...

Assuming the shortest possible distance between the two, thats FTL travel with impulse engines.

[His Divine Shadow]

Mass lightening is very dodgy. Is the fuel lightened forever, or does it stop being light and return to its former mass upon leaving the engines, or at some later time?

I think it's like part of the ship, except the engine pods are AMRE'd, as it's called, and it's just like pushing the engine pods, the rest of the mass is in subspace and not subject to pesky crap like intertia, or logic for that matter

[TheDarkling]

I believe someone over at SB.com got 13 Million G's (without mass lightening no less) from the episode Boobytrap - I know it was recent but I cant seem to find the calcs

[ClaysGhost]

I think it's like part of the ship, except the engine pods are AMRE'd, as it's called, and it's just like pushing the engine pods, the rest of the mass is in subspace and not subject to pesky crap like intertia, or logic for that matter

That's bizarre. How does the mass-lightening field know to stop at the engine pods (do ST ships have engine pods? The impulse engines look built-in to me).

Duh.

Double-duh. I pity the fool who merrily plugs numbers into the wrong formula, as I did. The power figures so far have actually been per (kg/s), since I computed P/mdot and not P/m (m is ship's mass). The appropriate formula is therefore

P = 0.5 * m * a * vex,

not

P = 0.5 * mdot * vex^2.

So, for vex = 80% c and a = 1000g, the ship must provide at least

Therefore (I will eventually get this right, I swear it!), P/m = 0.5 * 1000 * 9.81 * 0.8 * 3e8 = 1.1TW/kg of ship's mass. For the Voyager example of 400,000g, the engines must provide ~470TW/kg. For every kilogramme of the ship's mass, the engines must burn 0.5 * 1.1e12 / 3e8^2 = 3.3 milligrammes of antimatter per second for the 1000g acceleration, or 2.6 grammes per second for the 500,000g figure. With a 50 tonne Voyager (weigh too low, I know , the consumption of antimatter would be about 130 kilogrammes per second for the 400,000g acceleration case. In 15 seconds Voyager would have gone through almost 2 tonnes of antimatter. Multiply by 1000 for a decent-massed Voyager.

[His Divine Shadow]

I think it's like part of the ship, except the engine pods are AMRE'd, as it's called, and it's just like pushing the engine pods, the rest of the mass is in subspace and not subject to pesky crap like intertia, or logic for that matter

Who knows, that might be one reason for the crazy designs, maybe the fields grow weaker there, or they can just controll it very accurately.

[E1701]

There are two direct sources for acceleration figures... and their hugeness is, I suppose, the reason why they refer to impulse in terms of velocity and not acceleration - ie, full impulse is .25c instead of 25 km/sec^2, because their acceleration allows them to hit that speed to quickly that the acceleration factor is a non-issue.

The first is TMP, where the Enterprise leaves dock, and engages impulse (with a very abrupt and rapid acceleration, not typical of movies that spend several very long panning shots establishing the large size of the ship). Kirk orders Sulu to go to "Warp .5" and then requests a reverse view, where wonder of wonders, the Earth drops away at a speed consistent with something approaching one half light speed. Then, as they pass Jupiter, Kirk tells Sulu to take them to warp 1. Sulu begins to accelerate and starts counting off the velocity - "Warp .6, warp .7, warp .8", and so on, until they hit Warp 1, stating a figure roughly once every second. Since the first part and the novelization establish that fractions of warp are linear (warp 1 being lightspeed), in that last bit, we can establish that their acceleration at that point hovered around 3 million G's.

The second case, which was just pointed out to me recently, was in the TNG episode "Booby Trap", where Picard and Geordi work out an acceleration routine to escape the minefield... Komerade Spoon posted this bit;

"Full impulse for a microsecond" takes them from zero to 132m/s. That gives an average acceleration of 132/(10^-6)=132 000 000 m/s^2. When I heard them say that on the TV I was a bit supprised, especially after punching the numbers into the calculator. What is particularly good is that there is no scene cut between the time LaForge explains how to get out of the trap and the point where Picard takes the helm and fires the engines, so there is no possibility of him saying "no I errr... was just exagerating there sir, I really want you to fire the engines for (insert time period)".

In addition there are two reasons to believe that mass reduction was not functional at the time. 1, they cannot form a warp field due to the trap's "assiton assimilators"- which is shown to be responsible for mass reduction (IIRC in "Deja Q"). 2, after firing the impulse drives they shut everything down except "life support and two thrustors" to avoid the trap detecting them. This occurs before the speed of 132 m/s is read out.

[Darth Wong]

The first is TMP, where the Enterprise leaves dock, and engages impulse (with a very abrupt and rapid acceleration, not typical of movies that spend several very long panning shots establishing the large size of the ship). Kirk orders Sulu to go to "Warp .5" and then requests a reverse view, where wonder of wonders, the Earth drops away at a speed consistent with something approaching one half light speed.

Naturally, since they were using their warp drive, not their impulse drive. Duh.

"Full impulse for a microsecond" ...

Except that they did not fire their engines for just one microsecond. The "microsecond" quote is from Geordi just trying to explain the concept to Picard. When they actually went and did it, they only said they would fire the engines for a "short burst", and the onscreen video indicated a much longer duration than one microsecond.

Yet another Trekkie who uses ambiguous dialogue (from a different scene, no less!) as quantitative evidence. Gee, how original. Perhaps if you'd watched the episide, you would have noticed them warning the crew that the inertial dampers were on manual control, and that they would have to be ready for a shock. I suppose they could pull this off at millions of G's, with microsecond reaction times? Puh-lease.

You want impulse speed? Try TWOK: two ships approaching each other at half impulse. Try ST3: Two ships leaving spacedock at full speed, and to put it bluntly, not going too fast. Try all of the battles of DS9, where ships were travelling at relative velocities of only a few km/s at most.

TMP only proves that they can use warp drive below c. It does not prove that impulse drive is any faster than has been previously estimated.

[E1701]

1) As far as TMP goes... they weren't using their warp drives. Roddenberry is very clear on this. For one thing, Kirk specifically orders Sulu to activate the impulse engines (they cruise out of dock on thrusters), and the novelization also specifically refers to the impulse exhaust vents. Secondly, as they pass Jupiter, Kirk states that the intruder is only two days from Earth, and so "we will have to risk engaging warp drive while still within the solar system." And of course, Scotty interjects that they cannot engage warp drive yet because the M/AM intermix ratio is unbalanced, and he cannot garauntee stability. It is engaging the warp drive that leads to the wormhole - crossing the boundary from just shy of c into warp drive is where the warp engines first kick in. They can only reengage the warp drive after Spock arrives - and during that scene, Sulu reports that they are continuing on course at Warp .8. From the moment they engage the drives for the second time, the ship is running at warp throughout the rest of the movie, until V'ger snags them in it's tractor beam.


As far as the second one goes, who knows, I don't have the damned episodes taped, I don't have the foggiest idea. I was just reposting an arguement someone else made that - because I don't have the episode or time to watch it anyway - I cannot refute or confirm myself. I couldn't care less about this one anyhow... barring any better explanations for the massive powerdown between TOS and TNG+, I'm inclined to think it's a seperate universe entirely...

Besides as any artist knows, visual evidence from any SF show is bollocks to begin with... cripes man, do you really think any of them actually give a shit about being scientifically correct about anything? Hell, do you really think the ambient light in the ST and SW universes was so unbearably bright until around 4th season TNG? just one of the many reasons that written SF beats the unholy hell out of visual SF... If Asimov says a Foundation battlegroup opened fire from several light minutes out, or Banks says that Killing Time blew away 14 ROU's and a GSV within 11 microseconds at speeds exceeding 20 billion c, or Weber says that ships sporting impeller wedges hundreds of km across open up with an opening salvo of 15,000 ship-killer missiles that crank out at 79,000 G's... then by God they mean it, no ifs, ands, or buts.

Ah, anyhow, rant over, I still got work to do, and I was just looking for some thread Steve pointed me to. 'Night all.

[AdmiralKanos]

1) As far as TMP goes... they weren't using their warp drives. Roddenberry is very clear on this. For one thing, Kirk specifically orders Sulu to activate the impulse engines (they cruise out of dock on thrusters), and the novelization also specifically refers to the impulse exhaust vents.

Then perhaps you could explain why full impulse does not achieve even a miniscule fraction of this speed in ST3 (in a chase, no less).

As far as the second one goes, who knows, I don't have the damned episodes taped, I don't have the foggiest idea. I was just reposting an arguement someone else made that - because I don't have the episode or time to watch it anyway - I cannot refute or confirm myself. I couldn't care less about this one anyhow... barring any better explanations for the massive powerdown between TOS and TNG+, I'm inclined to think it's a seperate universe entirely...

Massive powerdown? From a ship which can't muster a 97.835 megaton blast to destroy the giant planet-eating turd without destroying itself in the process? From a ship which would be crippled by a kiloton-yield 20th century tactical nuke? Where's this coming from?

Besides as any artist knows, visual evidence from any SF show is bollocks to begin with... cripes man, do you really think any of them actually give a shit about being scientifically correct about anything?

So you say while using visual evidence from TMP (snicker). Besides, what makes you think they give a shit about being scientifically correct with dialogue? It's ridiculous to throw anything out of canon based on your interpretation of the writers' offscreen motivations.

Hell, do you really think the ambient light in the ST and SW universes was so unbearably bright until around 4th season TNG? just one of the many reasons that written SF beats the unholy hell out of visual SF...

Yes, written sci-fi is usually more powerful. But since this is a complete red herring when discussing two visual sci-fi series, I can only assume that you are desperately grasping around for a way to justify your arbitrary and inconsistent methods.

So visuals are evidence in TMP, but not evidence in "Booby Trap", eh? I see you haven't changed at all. Still a baby, wanting to have your cake and eat it too.

[Master of Ossus]

In TNG BOBW PT2 they entered Sector 001 and left warp, they could make it from Saturn to Mars in 23 minutes...

Assuming the shortest possible distance between the two, thats FTL travel with impulse engines.

But that's velocity, not acceleration. I assume that they should have been able to maintain momentum from warp, or from their exit from warp.

[AdmiralKanos]

Assuming the shortest possible distance between the two, thats FTL travel with impulse engines.

But that's velocity, not acceleration. I assume that they should have been able to maintain momentum from warp, or from their exit from warp.

Or they realized their mistake, said "aw, fuck, we can't wait that long", and made a short in-system warp jump to close the distance more quickly. Since we didn't see all 23 minutes, we can hardly rule this out, and it makes more sense than FTL impulse drive.

[TheDarkling]

WESLEY
Enterprise approaching the Terran
system, sir...

RIKER
Slow to impulse... time to
intercept...

WESLEY
Twenty-three minutes, fourteen
seconds, sir.

98 EXT. SPACE - THE ENTERPRISE (OPTICAL)

at impulse power moving by Saturn...

Sorry that warp jump idea doesnt fit.

[E1701]

Kanos:

Then perhaps you could explain why full impulse does not achieve even a miniscule fraction of this speed in ST3 (in a chase, no less).

Well for one thing, they were still inside spacedock... it was probably implicit in his order not to open 'er up until they'd at least gotten the space-doors open. The same thing happens inST:6 - Kirk orders Valeris to engage at impulse, and she reminds him that regulations limit ships to thrusters only while in spacedock. Probably implied in a command like "one-quarter impulse" is "when we get *outside* the dock." But by the time they did get out, Excelsior was on their tail, and getting their tractor beams online (Styles orders them to bring the tractors online as the Enterprise is clearing the doors). The next shots show the ship cruising around the spacedock, keeping the structure between them and Excelsior - probably to block any tractor attempts.

Massive powerdown? From a ship which can't muster a 97.835 megaton blast to destroy the giant planet-eating turd without destroying itself in the process? From a ship which would be crippled by a kiloton-yield 20th century tactical nuke? Where's this coming from?

1) In the case of the Doomsday Machine, they needed an explosion of ~100 MT to detonate *inside* the maw of the machine - which means they needed a transport that could survive a direct hit from the planet-chopping anti-proton beam. Decker got lucky with the shuttle, since the machine was concentrating on the Enterprise. But odds are, assuming TOS photon torpedoes are actual explosives and not energy weapons, the machine would simply have shot down torpedoes before they could have gone down it's throat. However, it should be noted that this is the only time we've ever seen a Constitution-class ship actually externally damaged, and that required repeated hits from a weapon designed to slice and dice planets...

2) In "Tomorrow is Yesterday", the Enterprise had just nearly collided with a black hole - they were shieldless, damaged, and cruising through the upper atmosphere at a fair velocity. And even then, Spock simply noted that if his memory served, some military planes of the era carried nuclear warheads (he did not know that an F-104 Starfighter does not carry nukes, so he also likely did not know the possible yield), so it might pose a risk factor. There was nothing about it crippling them, damaging them, or otherwise doing much more than scratching the paint or blowing out a window or two.

3) There are a great many fun examples to guage TOS power by. For one thing, the TMP novelization describes the UFP as essentially a very early form of the Culture... complete with the asskicking ability to back it up. For another, we have plenty of incidents from TOS itself... there's "Elaan of Troyus", where we learn that all combat is carried out at warp as SOP, and that being restricted to impulse is a terrible disadvantage. Whereas in TNG+, all combat is carried out either at impulse, or with both parties at warp on the same bearing. Then there's "Balance of Terror"... the Romulan weapon, besides moving at warp, and being a guided munition, manages to almost utterly vaporize a solid iron asteroid that is at least 2 miles in diameter. While one hit knocks out the Enterprise's shields, by the time of "The Deadly Years", they are able to withstand close to a dozen hits before they manage to bug out using a corbomite ploy. In "The Lights of Zetar", Kirk is openly shocked that Memory Alpha does *not* have a planetary shield. And we know a fair amount about these shields from "Whom Gods Destroy". In that episode, we find out that UFP planetary shields cover the whole planet, that they prevent the passage of matter unless intentionally allowed through, and their weakest point is on the opposite side of the planet from the generator. In that case, the generator was beneath the penal facility where Kirk and Spock were trapped. Sulu suggests battering down the shield, and Scotty points out that while they are capable of doing just that, a bombardment on that scale, directed at the weak point, would kill Spock and Kirk, as well as every other living thing on Elba II.

Anyhow, that's not all of it by half, but there's some stuff to chew on.

So you say while using visual evidence from TMP (snicker). Besides, what makes you think they give a shit about being scientifically correct with dialogue? It's ridiculous to throw anything out of canon based on your interpretation of the writers' offscreen motivations.

First off, the only visual "evidence" I used from TMP was not only mostly irrelavent, but was also, as I said, a "wonder of wonders" for actually representing the dialogue.

Second off, I never said throw anything out of canon. But if you are going to insist that the visuals are absolutely correct without the slightest doubt, you must also accept things like the 100,000 km Bird of Prey o' Doom, the apparently staggering level of ambient light present in space until about 1992, where they started to phase out models, and the fact that apparently no one can read a range-finder in the future...

Third, I don't trust the dialogue implicitly either. I think if you want the real low-down on what the creator intended, you gotta see what stuff they wrote. In the case of Trek, that's most of TOS (where Roddenberry personally rewrote most of the episodes), TMP, which he was directly involved with, the TMP novel, and his biography, letters to Isaac Asimov, and so forth. I suggest you check those things out, because like I said before, what he was designing was essentially an Earth-based precursor to a civilization like the Culture. They were still pretty hippy-like, but unlike TNG+, they had the balls and the firepower to back that up...

Yes, written sci-fi is usually more powerful. But since this is a complete red herring when discussing two visual sci-fi series

However, it's not a red herring, because SW is *not* a completely visual series... 90% of the evidence I've seen bandied about comes from EU sources and thirty-seven different tech books... right away, the very existence of an officially recognized EU demolishes any claim that SW is a visual series.


Anyhow, gotta run, or the Animation professor's gonna nail my head to the wall... Adios folks, OBS2 is getting started, so that's all I wrote, as they say...

[Slartibartfast]

I think it's like part of the ship, except the engine pods are AMRE'd, as it's called, and it's just like pushing the engine pods, the rest of the mass is in subspace and not subject to pesky crap like intertia, or logic for that matter

Who knows, that might be one reason for the crazy designs, maybe the fields grow weaker there, or they can just controll it very accurately.

I think that the impulse engines are actually in the body and not the warp nacelles. But I don't remember any canon evidence, only some blueprint that isn't even official IIRC.

[Darth Wong]

Then perhaps you could explain why full impulse does not achieve even a miniscule fraction of this speed in ST3 (in a chase, no less).

Well for one thing, they were still inside spacedock

Wrong. They covered only a few km after 30 seconds of acceleration AFTER they left spacedock.

The same thing happens inST:6 - Kirk orders Valeris to engage at impulse, and she reminds him that regulations limit ships to thrusters only while in spacedock. Probably implied in a command like "one-quarter impulse" is "when we get *outside* the dock."

Implied in your mind, perhaps. To the rest of us, it looks like he overruled her objection and they went to 1/4 impulse inside Spacedock.

But by the time they did get out, Excelsior was on their tail, and getting their tractor beams online (Styles orders them to bring the tractors online as the Enterprise is clearing the doors). The next shots show the ship cruising around the spacedock, keeping the structure between them and Excelsior - probably to block any tractor attempts.

Cruising at very low speed, I might add, which is the whole point. You are introducing pointless trivia in order to distract from the point. And as for the tractors, this is yet more unfounded speculation on your part.

1) In the case of the Doomsday Machine, they needed an explosion of ~100 MT to detonate *inside* the maw of the machine - which means they needed a transport that could survive a direct hit from the planet-chopping anti-proton beam.

Of course, since their phasers weren't up to the job. So much for the uber-connie.

However, it should be noted that this is the only time we've ever seen a Constitution-class ship actually externally damaged, and that required repeated hits from a weapon designed to slice and dice planets...

Which you presume to be operating at planet-killing power levels against a ship? I love the way you pile assumption upon assumption.

2) In "Tomorrow is Yesterday", the Enterprise had just nearly collided with a black hole - they were shieldless, damaged, and cruising through the upper atmosphere at a fair velocity.

Again, ignoring the point. Who said it had to be fully shielded for this incident to be damning? The shieldless E-A is not severely damaged by a photorp hit in ST6, even though it took only half a dozen photorp hits to bring down their shelds from full strength. If they expected to be heavily damaged by a 20th century aircraft nuke, this severely limits the increase in power between 20th century aircraft nukes and TOS-era photorps.

3) There are a great many fun examples to guage TOS power by. For one thing, the TMP novelization describes the UFP as essentially a very early form of the Culture... complete with the asskicking ability to back it up.

Wow, can you get any more vague, please? I can almost make out faint outlines of information in there.

For another, we have plenty of incidents from TOS itself... there's "Elaan of Troyus", where we learn that all combat is carried out at warp as SOP, and that being restricted to impulse is a terrible disadvantage.

I've seen that episode. You're full of shit. They called out the ranges as the enemy ship approached, and it was obviously NOT moving at FTL. Mind you, if warp can be used for sublight maneuvers and impulse drive is pathetic, as previously speculated, then this incident makes sense again. Too bad that hypothesis doesn't fit with your desired conclusion, eh?

the Romulan weapon, besides moving at warp, and being a guided munition, manages to almost utterly vaporize a solid iron asteroid that is at least 2 miles in diameter.

Pulverize. Not vapourize. There are many orders of magnitude difference between the two. The torp would have been gigaton-range, and it was obviously a one-shot, one kill weapon against a Connie. This limits Connies.

While one hit knocks out the Enterprise's shields, by the time of "The Deadly Years", they are able to withstand close to a dozen hits before they manage to bug out using a corbomite ploy.

Wow, all hits are presumed identical? Interesting "logic".

In "The Lights of Zetar", Kirk is openly shocked that Memory Alpha does *not* have a planetary shield. And we know a fair amount about these shields from "Whom Gods Destroy". In that episode, we find out that UFP planetary shields cover the whole planet, that they prevent the passage of matter unless intentionally allowed through, and their weakest point is on the opposite side of the planet from the generator. In that case, the generator was beneath the penal facility where Kirk and Spock were trapped. Sulu suggests battering down the shield, and Scotty points out that while they are capable of doing just that, a bombardment on that scale, directed at the weak point, would kill Spock and Kirk, as well as every other living thing on Elba II.

Not exactly a stunning achievement, since there are only a dozen living things on Elba II. The point of that episode was that they have no planetary shields capable of withstanding starship weapons. Thank you for providing more evidence against your uber-TOS idea.

Anyhow, that's not all of it by half, but there's some stuff to chew on.

Consider it chewed.

First off, the only visual "evidence" I used from TMP was not only mostly irrelavent, but was also, as I said, a "wonder of wonders" for actually representing the dialogue.

Hardly, unless warp factors are linear now. Does that mean the E-Nil tops out at 13c?

Second off, I never said throw anything out of canon. But if you are going to insist that the visuals are absolutely correct without the slightest doubt, you must also accept things like the 100,000 km Bird of Prey o' Doom, the apparently staggering level of ambient light present in space until about 1992, where they started to phase out models, and the fact that apparently no one can read a range-finder in the future...

In real life, we have outliers, photographs that may have been spoiled or corrupted somehow, it happens. We don't discard the entire endeavour on that basis, nor do we resort to non-objective methods. If you are saying that objective methods are not possible, then you are saying that objective analysis is not possible, which in turn means that we should not bother trying to analyze anything.

As for the light levels, that can be simply chalked up to image-enhancement in the imaginary observer's camera. If you look through a modern night-sight camera, do you scream that all footage should be invalidated because of the insane amount of light at night, or the fact that everything's green?

Third, I don't trust the dialogue implicitly either. I think if you want the real low-down on what the creator intended, you gotta see what stuff they wrote. In the case of Trek, that's most of TOS (where Roddenberry personally rewrote most of the episodes), TMP, which he was directly involved with, the TMP novel, and his biography, letters to Isaac Asimov, and so forth. I suggest you check those things out, because like I said before, what he was designing was essentially an Earth-based precursor to a civilization like the Culture. They were still pretty hippy-like, but unlike TNG+, they had the balls and the firepower to back that up...

Ah, in other words, throw suspension of disbelief out the window. Read letters written by the creator to his friends. Of course. We all love hearsay.

However, it's not a red herring, because SW is *not* a completely visual series... 90% of the evidence I've seen bandied about comes from EU sources and thirty-seven different tech books... right away, the very existence of an officially recognized EU demolishes any claim that SW is a visual series.

By that "logic", the world is not visual either, because there are tons of books to describe it and fill in gaps in our historical knowledge of it. Jesus Ass-fucker, where the hell do you get these kinds of cheesy arguments?

[TheDarkling]

Didnt the dommsday machine require an explosion inside it - if so then phaser wouldnt exactly be of any use since they dont explode.

I cant exactly remember the episod well but wasnt the explosion cause some sort of power drain in the machine not actually destroying it.

As for the search for spock - if it conflicts with other speed examples (I dont know if it does) then the solution is simple, the Ent-Nil at this point was in less that great condition and it was "bypassed like a christmas tree" (or it least it had been) and may even of been in the process of being stripped bare, any reduction in speed (or acceleration) is understandbable.

[Darth Servo]

Didnt the dommsday machine require an explosion inside it - if so then phaser wouldnt exactly be of any use since they dont explode.

You're missing the point. Why couldn't they just shoot at the mouth of the thing? The only reasonable explanations are
1) their weapons were not powerful enough to do the needed damage
2) they're idiots
3) both

I cant exactly remember the episod well but wasnt the explosion cause some sort of power drain in the machine not actually destroying it.

The most reasonable interpretation of the events was that the explosion damaged the insides of the machine. Said damage resulted in a loss of power. How does this help your side of the argument?

As for the search for spock - if it conflicts with other speed examples (I dont know if it does) then the solution is simple, the Ent-Nil at this point was in less that great condition and it was "bypassed like a christmas tree" (or it least it had been) and may even of been in the process of being stripped bare, any reduction in speed (or acceleration) is understandbable.

The Excelsior wasn't.

[TheDarkling]

I dont have a side in the argument since im not a member of the cult of connie (let alone its king/high priest).

The point is phasers dont causes explosions nor are they a conventional weapon remmeber Q torps can harm neutronium but phasers cant.
If you want phasers and disruptors to be conventional weapons I will take the TDiC calcs and go home .

Not only that but as has been stated attacking the machine head on was a bad idea and the gambit of overloading tyhe ships fusion reactors worked because the machine was distracted.

The explosion resulted in minute drop in power do to minute damage instead of the minute damage hitting something critical or having no affect - the machine inside the doomsday machine was cmiopletely decentralised then? it doesnt seem a sund theory to me but it isnt beyond being possible.

We dont know what speed the Excelsior was going though - we do know that Stiles (right?) wasnt to bothered about catching them before they jumped to warp (in fact he was looking forward to the chance to use his transwarp drive).
Not to mention the Excelsior was closing on the Ent-nil even though they should technically be matched in impulse drives (according to Geordi the impulse drive has been of a static design for 200 years) and it was much later out of the gate than the Ent thus giving good evidence that the Ent-Nils impulse drive was sub par at that moment.