Patrick Degan wrote:
OK, according to the tactical air defence doctrines of the period, the entire purpose of a nuclear-tipped interceptor missile was to be able to knock down enemy planes with a proximity blast, using shockwave effect. The idea was to employ this tactic as an answer to massed Soviet bomber formations with the minimum number of weapons and later was being played around with as a possible antiballistic missile defence. With a 1KT warhead, for example, you could score an effective "hit" on a target from ranges of up to 450 metres from detonation point zero. Firing such a missile for proximity blast against the Enterprise would be sufficent to inflict damage without actually physically hitting the ship's hull with the warhead itself.
Interesting.
Of course, Spock might not've known that...and even at 450m,
a one kiloton explosion would deliver 1.64E6J/m^2. That's pretty weak;
1.6 MJ per meter sq. shouldn't breach dense wood, let alone a starship's
hull.
Still, as I said, a direct hit from a nuclear-tipped missile is no big
deal. Those yields were insignificant, and do little if nothing to help
the cause of weapons one thousand or more times heftier.
And in a different vein, even if Spock didn't know that such weapons
were intentionally used as proximity devices in the period, point-defense interception of a low-velocity rocket should be no problem for the E-nil.
Thus, again, we're looking at a proximity detonation...
From what we see, the Warbird hit the outpost asteroid with two plasma shots. The first one would have rendered the body's molecular structure brittle (from what we see of the structural fragment brought on board for forensic examination and shattered by Spock in the briefing room), hence making it much easier to shatter what was left of the outpost asteroid with shot number two. Clearly, some sort of unconventional mechanism is at work in the case of the Romulan plasma-based implosion weapon.
Probably, yes. I said something about how the Romulan ship
used "simple impulse," as Scotty'd pointed out...assuming that means
fusion reactors, it'd take a LONG time to power a plasma discharge
round rated at 10 MT/shot. Even assuming a 500 GW reactor and
perfect energy transfer, a 10 megaton shot would need some 232
hours to charge up
Of course, Scotty could've been wrong; and if ENT is any indication,
M/AM isn't too unique among even the youngest Trek races.
For a start, we do not have several variables to aid us in calculating the power level of the charge against the E-nil's shields when the plasma shot finally hits: distance from the original target point from which the ship retreated, degree of dispersion of the plasma cloud and correleation between said dispersion and reduction of field strength.
Indeed. That's why I called it an upper-limit.
It was a maximum of ten Warbirds firing in rotation. The Romulans clearly modified the weapon for shorter range and lower power yields to not incapacitate their ships in general combat. We see the weapon impacts against the Enterprise's shields prior to the recovered Capt. Kirk coming back onto the bridge and pulling his corbomite trick on the Romulans. The visuals show blasts which certainly not MT-range. By the time of "The Enterprise Incident" however, the Romulans had abandoned this weapon in favour of disruptors and photorps, going by standard Klingon design.
Yes.
Recall however that the Klingons attacking the militarised E-D are employing their disruptors exclusively. And in any case, the figures in the above estimate still do not square with the observed performance of the photon torpedo in combat.
They don't, but they are:
1--at very close proximity to the firing ship;
and
2--appear to be directed warheads. We don't see the torpedos interact
with anything but the Klingon ship's shields.
One could be summarily dismissed given the seriousness of the situation.
The crew of the E-D understood that protecting the E-C was of the utmost importance.
Two is harder to deal with, though it's certainly the case that we don't
see the Klingon's shield dumping that much energy back into the
surrounding environment. Given, however, the way in which shields
supposedly work--involving the inevitable Trek fall-back, subspace--
that we don't see this isn't necessarily damning evidence against the
torpedo's yield. It does demonstrate that *visual confirmation* of
such yields remains elusive, though.
NOMAD's plasma bolts; one equalled ninety photorps as you cite, and three such took down the ship's shields. However, without more substantive data, it's hard to say precisely what that means in terms of blast yield for each plasma shot from NOMAD.
Indeed. My point was that, even if Spock quantified NOMAD's blasts
as something other than what dialogue suggests--direct hits--that
a ship could withstand upwards of 100 photon torpedos is far from
the case in latter-day Trek, suggesting that TOS torpedos are
lower-yield devices.
The one thing we can know is that apparently photorps could not have done the job in this case, and it took a different type weapon to destroy the platform.
The script is as follows:[/i]
72 EXT. SPACE (OPTICAL)
The Defiant FIRES upon the moon, but the phaser bolt
dissipates as it strikes the forcefield surrounding
the moon.
73 RESUME
WORF
We can't penetrate the moon's
defense grid.
The ship SHAKES again.
O'BRIEN
Sir, I have an idea.
KIRA
Go ahead.
O'BRIEN
Maybe we can't destroy that
power generator, but I'd bet
those Weapon Platforms could.
KIRA
Why would they fire on their own
power source?
GARAK
(catching on)
We'd have to fool the platforms'
targeting systems into thinking
the generator is an enemy ship.
O'BRIEN
We can use our deflector array
to imprint a Federation warp
signature on the generator's
energy matrix.[/i]
Which, of course, O'Brien did successfully, and the platforms blew
the asteroid away in a matter of seconds.
Anyway, to speak at the topic as a whole, perhaps photon torpedos
simply *aren't* such menacing weapons. I have a hard time accepting
that they're not at least into the mid-kiloton range given, admittedly,
largely dialogue-driven sources (e.g., Damar's expectation that a Klingon
Bird of Prey's torpedo spread would kill everything w/in several hundred
kilometers in "Apocalypse Rising"), with the rare FX support in the form
of "Genesis" and "Rise." To explain the possibility of high kiloton
to low megaton-ranged weapons, perhaps we should turn to the
technobabble of episodes like "Yesterday's Enterprise," in which photorps
tear a whole in the fabric of space-time.
Infinite energy couldn't do this, so photorps must affect some level
of reality beyond that which we can see directly. That doesn't do anything
to help *verify* any yield, to be sure, but it might explain why shields
that can withstand megatons of solar EM don't visibly radiate such energy back into their surrounding environment.
Then again, I'm all for photorp yields into the low megaton range given
the comparative context w/ which we're dealing: tiny turbolasers putting
out megatonnage, medium-sized turbolasers putting out hundreds
of gigatons, and huge turbolasers potentially putting out teratons of energy per shot
