Why is Star Trek so vurnerable to ions?

Alyeska · Post by **Alyeska** » 2002-11-05 10:21am

NecronLord wrote:In "Dark Froniter" there is a borg sphere with great frickin holes in it, Janeway says "was it damaged in combat?" seven replies "No, an ion storm"

Thats pretty f**king vinerable!

Vulnerable to something we know hardly anything about with unknown levels of power.

Post by **NecronLord** » 2002-11-05 11:31am

Alyeska wrote:
NecronLord wrote:In "Dark Froniter" there is a borg sphere with great frickin holes in it, Janeway says "was it damaged in combat?" seven replies "No, an ion storm"

Thats pretty f**king vinerable!
Vulnerable to something we know hardly anything about with unknown levels of power.

please, An ion storm by it's very nature cannot exceed a certain density. Charged particles of like charge repel each other.

Dooey Jo · Post by **Dooey Jo** » 2002-11-05 01:14pm

Alyeska wrote:And as to the topic. We have no proof that Fed ships are "vulnerable" to ions. All we know is that something they call ion storms (of unknown energy levels) can be dangerous to ST ships.

Ions of the same charge repel each other so the density of these ion storms can't be very high. And if the density isn't high then it must be the ions that are dangerous to the ships.
And in the episode of Voyager (I don't know what it's called), where the Doctor joined the holograms that had killed a bunch of Hirogens, Voyager followed a Hirogen ship moving at warp and avoided beeing noticed by staying in the ship's "ion wake" because the Hirogens couldn't scan through the ions. Later in that episode, Voyager started shaking a lot and Harry Kim told Janeway that it was because of the ions, they then raised the power on the intertial dampers and the ship stopped shaking.

So, not only are ions dangerous to ST ships but they also makes their sensors blind.

Isolder74 · Post by **Isolder74** » 2002-11-05 01:20pm

The ions may disrupt the vaunted SIF's and cause them to fail at key stress points causing the ship to fall apart.

Alyeska · Post by **Alyeska** » 2002-11-05 01:44pm

NecronLord wrote:
Alyeska wrote:
NecronLord wrote:In "Dark Froniter" there is a borg sphere with great frickin holes in it, Janeway says "was it damaged in combat?" seven replies "No, an ion storm"

Thats pretty f**king vinerable!
Vulnerable to something we know hardly anything about with unknown levels of power.
please, An ion storm by it's very nature cannot exceed a certain density. Charged particles of like charge repel each other.

Yet as we know it Ion storms can't exist outside of nebula. In ST they almost exist like bad weather does today, at random.

Alyeska · Post by **Alyeska** » 2002-11-05 01:45pm

Dooey Jo wrote:So, not only are ions dangerous to ST ships but they also makes their sensors blind.

So not only are ions dangerous to ST ships, Fed ships can hide in ion wakes without any apparent problem they are THAT dangerous. And ions make all ST sensors blind as example from a SINGLE ST race.

Dooey Jo · Post by **Dooey Jo** » 2002-11-06 01:38pm

Alyeska wrote: So not only are ions dangerous to ST ships, Fed ships can hide in ion wakes without any apparent problem they are THAT dangerous. And ions make all ST sensors blind as example from a SINGLE ST race.

The ship started shaking as hell after a while, if they hadn't adjusted their intertial dampers, the ship probably would have broken apart... And every time Voyager encounters an ion storm it nearly gets them killed.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2002-11-09 02:52pm

SPOOFE wrote:
God forbid anyone write a universe without uberstarships.
Congratulations, you've won! You've received the National MISSING THE FUCKING POINT Award!

The whole point is that - SURPRISE! - ST ships are NOT "uberstarships", as some Trekkies will claim.

I don't see any of these Trekkies here. Why would this be a surprise? What point is there in repeating a point everyone around here already knows?

You're just an asshole, and not even a particularly entertaining one at that. My point is that there seems to be a growing attitude of derision on this board to any universe that doesn't toss around multi-gigaton weapons... an attitude I don't particularly care for.

Illuminatus Primus · Post by **Illuminatus Primus** » 2002-11-09 02:58pm

What derision? Who cares about attitudes? Star Wars vessels will reduce Feddie ships to plasma. The end.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2002-11-09 03:09pm

Illuminatus Primus wrote:What derision? Who cares about attitudes? Star Wars vessels will reduce Feddie ships to plasma. The end.

What's that? Is it a communist? Jerry Falwell? A pile of shit?

No, it's Captain Obvious! With his Redundancy Beams, no less!

SirNitram · Post by **SirNitram** » 2002-11-09 03:23pm

Uraniun235 wrote:
Illuminatus Primus wrote:What derision? Who cares about attitudes? Star Wars vessels will reduce Feddie ships to plasma. The end.
What's that? Is it a communist? Jerry Falwell? A pile of shit?

No, it's Captain Obvious! With his Redundancy Beams, no less!

Do you perhaps have something interesting to say, kiddo?

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2002-11-09 04:12pm

Alyeska wrote:
Dooey Jo wrote:So, not only are ions dangerous to ST ships but they also makes their sensors blind.
So not only are ions dangerous to ST ships, Fed ships can hide in ion wakes without any apparent problem they are THAT dangerous.

You are presuming ion hazards are insensitive to ion concentration; that is silly.

And ions make all ST sensors blind as example from a SINGLE ST race.

Besides, there is already a long list of things that makes Feddie sensors blind.

aerius · Post by **aerius** » 2002-11-09 09:55pm

It's because the starship circuits aren't grounded properly, and the power distribution system isn't electrically shielded. Of course using unstable plasma to do the power distribution doesn't help either. So once the ship encounters some ions the power system gets a charge buildup which starts interfering with and shorting out the circuits, and in severe cases the plasma conduits and relays start blowing out. Trek engineering, they ignored all the basics of electrical engineering and ended up with unprotected and unhardened circuits which are susceptible to interferance from many things, including ions.

Isolder74 · Post by **Isolder74** » 2002-11-10 12:27pm

aerius wrote:It's because the starship circuits aren't grounded properly, and the power distribution system isn't electrically shielded. Of course using unstable plasma to do the power distribution doesn't help either. So once the ship encounters some ions the power system gets a charge buildup which starts interfering with and shorting out the circuits, and in severe cases the plasma conduits and relays start blowing out. Trek engineering, they ignored all the basics of electrical engineering and ended up with unprotected and unhardened circuits which are susceptible to interferance from many things, including ions.

Or it is because the rely on those dumb strututal integrity fields to hold everything togather and Ions(charged particles) cause the field to stop working in places by disrupting the field in places at random.

Darth Yoshi · Post by **Darth Yoshi** » 2002-11-11 01:42am

Isolder74 wrote:
aerius wrote:It's because the starship circuits aren't grounded properly, and the power distribution system isn't electrically shielded. Of course using unstable plasma to do the power distribution doesn't help either. So once the ship encounters some ions the power system gets a charge buildup which starts interfering with and shorting out the circuits, and in severe cases the plasma conduits and relays start blowing out. Trek engineering, they ignored all the basics of electrical engineering and ended up with unprotected and unhardened circuits which are susceptible to interferance from many things, including ions.
Or it is because the rely on those dumb strututal integrity fields to hold everything togather and Ions(charged particles) cause the field to stop working in places by disrupting the field in places at random.

Probably both. Ions work by disrupting electrical currents, and I'm assuming that other than the fact that plasma conduits are ridiculously overpowered and dangerous, they work like electricity. If so, then the ions will short them out, knocking out the systems or even rupturing the conduits.