How powerful is the Enterprise's main deflector dish?

[Typhonis 1]

Borgholio, War of the Worlds 1953, not the Tom Cruise remake. They have saucer shaped fighting machines held aloft by three tractor beam emmiters. The things also have force fields capable of surviving a proximity blast from a nuclear weapon. The things land inside giant meteorites , that are hollow then the martians unpack or do something to ready them for combat. They have the traditional heat ray and a green disintigration bolt. Hits the target, you see it's skeleton and it vanishes into a pile of ash.

[Borgholio]

Borgholio, War of the Worlds 1953, not the Tom Cruise remake. They have saucer shaped fighting machines held aloft by three tractor beam emmiters. The things also have force fields capable of surviving a proximity blast from a nuclear weapon. The things land inside giant meteorites , that are hollow then the martians unpack or do something to ready them for combat. They have the traditional heat ray and a green disintigration bolt. Hits the target, you see it's skeleton and it vanishes into a pile of ash.

...I know the movie. It's one of my favorite Sci-Fi movies of all time. I can recite all the dialogue from memory. I was referring specifically to the walkers from the original novel set in the 1890s with the x-ray laser emitters and the poison gas, where the conquest would not be so easy when facing mechanized armies.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Wasn't that why they gave them the force-shields in the 1953 version? Someone in the military told them that if the book-Martians landed in '53 they'd be blasted to scrap in hours?

[Borgholio]

Exactly true. The old clunky tripods of the 1890s would be easy targets for a tank battalion or a squadron of jet bombers. But I figure if they were like the Tom Cruise versions (fast and heavily armored) then it would still be a hell of a fight vs 1940's tech. It would not be an interesting story if we just curb-stomped the Martians, but then again having them roll right over us is kind of tired too. I wanted to tell a story about the political and social aspects of a seemingly never-ending world war vs alien invaders.

[Joun_Lord]

That actually sounds like a pretty interesting story. War of the worlds where the humans don't get curbstomped but still have to deal with almost continuous invasions for decades or longer. Imagine the aliens the clunky aliens landing in the 1940s. We can beat them but they will do alot of damage before we can. They can land anywhere, hit our population centers and kill a great deal of people. They have the ultimate high ground to launch attacks. We wouldn't be able to detect where they are coming from for quite some time and even once we can start detecting them incoming we still wouldn't be able to strike back.

It would be a long time before the world could muster the tech to launch an invasion of Mars. Tech we don't even have now 70 years later. Heck I think we'd only just barely have the tech to intercept alien landings, the tech we have to intercept ICBMs is as far as I know very limited and still pretty iffy. So even now we'd probably be able to figure out where they are going to hit but couldn't stop them from landing or atleast not most of them depending of the size of the invasion and would still have to make it to where they are to stop them.

For people in the 40s is far worse. They don't know when they are coming, where they are going, can't stop them from landing and will only be able to find where they are with recon planes. It could be days or longer before sufficient force can be mustered to deal with tri-pod landings.

Aww fuck, know I really want somebody to write this story.

[Eternal_Freedom]

In fairness, modern ICBM defence is iffy because for years it was a treaty violation to develop it. With an actual bonafide threat from Mars such a defence will be top priority. I suspect that Von Braun won't get sideline by the US Army like he historically did in the late 40s and 50s. Hell, maybe he and Korolev will team up in a super-space-program to build Nova-sized rockets for lobbing apocalyptic-sized warheads back at Mars.

[Esquire]

Plus, Orion almost certainly gets the go-ahead, and never mind the ecological damage.

[Borgholio]

I may have to start writing the story then...but in another thread. We've hijacked this one enough already.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I've got a "humans return to Mars" story up in User Fiction at the moment. Different concept to what Borgholio describes, but maybe this new story will give methe impetus to continue mine.

[Prometheus Unbound]

The chances of anything coming from Earth, are a million to one it said......
The chances of anythiiiiing coming from Earth, are a million to one... but still... they come!