Yield of Torpedoes and Strenght of Shields.

[FordSVT]

JuanBolio said:
I always found it a terrible shame that the VFX guys rarely, if ever, tried to convey the awesome power of the ship-to-ship weapons of Star Trek. Even when weapons were supposedly set to maximum yield, the resulting explosions seemed to carry all the destructive force of a small cruise missile. Often less.

I agree to a certain extent, though it should be noted that explosions in space would look much less impressive than atmospheric explosions.

 

[JuanBolio]

That's true, there would be no blast wave and no real fireball, but a nuclear explosion in space would still give off a huge, bright flash, like a giant flashbulb going off. It wouldn't look anything like a atmospheric chemical explosion, which is what we get. It would also be big enough to totally engulf any ship that gets a direct hit. HUGE.

 

[shipfisher]

Just once, wouldn't it be great to see a photorp, or somesuch, detonation depicted as something actually a few hundred years down the road from a mid-20th century H-bomb?

 

[Ronald Held]

The Enterprise was better prepared and tuned its shields accordingly?

 

[darkwing_duck1]

Timo said:

There was an episode in Voyager where photon torpedoes were said to have a yield of 500 megatons, far above the figures of the TNG and DS9 technical manual.

Isotons, to be accurate.

It's anybody's guess what an "isoton" is.

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Isoton

1 isoton ~ 2.6 megatons

Standard 24th century torp yield (1.5 kg matter + 1.5 kg antimatter): 25 isotons/64.4 megatons

Voyager max standard torp yield: 200 isotons/520 megatons

Quantum torpedo: 19.5 isoton (50.7 megaton) initiator blast with final release yield of 50+ isotons (130+ megatons)

Biggest actual device ever deployed on earth (Tsar Bomba): ~50 megatons

 

[darkwing_duck1]

Unicron said:
They used a similar mistake in TMP, where a V'Ger projectile could disintegrate a K't'inga with one blow, yet the Enterprise survived thanks to its "new shields" albeit with a heavy drain. Obviously they can't kill the heroes off so quickly.

I've heard it suggested that the torpedoes which killed the Klingons were a higher yield because their shields were up when they entered V'Ger, while the Enterprise only raised theirs when it was clear they were under attack. Therefore the one that hit them had a lower yield. It's not a bad explanation, but given the sheer power V'Ger has I'm not sure I entirely buy it either.

V'ger didn't destroy the Klingons OR Epsilon IX with a torpedo, it "patterned them for data storage"..essentially it scanned and dematerialized them like a transporter would, then "stored" the pattern in permanent memory.

 

[ren0312]

Based on your figures, there is a large discrepancy between the typical maximum yield for a photon torpedo in the TNG era and the maximum yield for the photon torpedos of the USS Voyager, so what gives, although for me, the 520 megaton figure is more like it.

 

[darkwing_duck1]

ren0312 said:
Based on your figures, there is a large discrepancy between the typical maximum yield for a photon torpedo in the TNG era and the maximum yield for the photon torpedos of the USS Voyager, so what gives, although for me, the 520 megaton figure is more like it.

For the record, that would amount to a warhead load of 12 kg each matter/antimatter (if I did the math right).

 

[Unicron]

darkwing_duck1 said:
V'ger didn't destroy the Klingons OR Epsilon IX with a torpedo, it "patterned them for data storage"..essentially it scanned and dematerialized them like a transporter would, then "stored" the pattern in permanent memory.

The effect seemed to be the same. I don't know whether V'Ger could "remove" them from memory or not, but if it chose not to then they'd be considered destroyed. Just as a person would be dead if you beamed then into space, or held their pattern in a buffer without rematerializing them.

 

[FordSVT]

So the question would be, would V'ger have the power to restore what it's dematerialized? Or it is simply the information it's collected without any kind of "matter stream" to go along with it like you'd find preserved in a transporter?

 

[JuanBolio]

I would imagine that the information/pattern gathering device was separate from the weapons system. I somehow doubt that V'Ger obliterated all the planets and galaxies stored in its memory. It seemed to only shoot at things that were in its way and seemingly hostile.

 

[Vance]

JuanBolio said:
How did you calculate yields for TOS weapons? After all, we have VERY little if any data regarding any kind of technical specifications during that period.

It's been a few years, so bear with me on this one. But I took the numbers based on a published amount of anti-matter mentioned for a torpedo, and went through all the calculations needed to determine the maximum yield.

 

[Timo]

1 isoton ~ 2.6 megatons

Sounds reasonable enough - but of course it solely relies on TNG Tech Manual figures, which are way off as regards starship phasers. One is sorely tempted to consider these figures part of the "deception in case Klingons read this" aspect of the book...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[FordSVT]

Vance said:

JuanBolio said:
How did you calculate yields for TOS weapons? After all, we have VERY little if any data regarding any kind of technical specifications during that period.

It's been a few years, so bear with me on this one. But I took the numbers based on a published amount of anti-matter mentioned for a torpedo, and went through all the calculations needed to determine the maximum yield.

With M/AM annihilation, 100% of the mass is converted to energy. If 1kg of matter and antimatter annihilate, they will release energy equivalent to (e=mc^2) 1 x c^2 = 1 x 3x10^8 x 3x10^8 = 9x10^16 Joules of energy. To compare, burning 1kg of petroleum produces 4.2x10^7 Joules - a billionth of the energy produced by M/AM annihilation. Fusion is a lot more efficient, but in, for example, H->He fusion, only 0.7% of the fuel's mass is converted to energy.

So all we need is a rough or given estimate of the quantity or volume of matter and antimatter and we can come up with a rough equivalent to a more conventional detonation.

 

[JuanBolio]

One has to keep in mind, though, that with M/AM explosions a good deal of the energy released would be in the form on nutrinos, which react with nothing. Plus, its doubtful that 100% of the antimatter would react with 100% of the matter before being blown off into space.

 

[Vance]

I assumed a lower end of energy available to the yield, considering some 'waste' in the process, and energy used to maintain a warp-field (required for what we see on screen even in TOS era), etc...

 

[FordSVT]

JuanBolio said:
One has to keep in mind, though, that with M/AM explosions a good deal of the energy released would be in the form on nutrinos, which react with nothing. Plus, its doubtful that 100% of the antimatter would react with 100% of the matter before being blown off into space.

I had written a paragraph addressing that point but I had noticed it was mentioned earlier. I was just explaining in a rough sense how one would figure out a yield using real numbers as opposed to having to rely on on-screen evidence.

 

[darkwing_duck1]

Unicron said:

darkwing_duck1 said:
V'ger didn't destroy the Klingons OR Epsilon IX with a torpedo, it "patterned them for data storage"..essentially it scanned and dematerialized them like a transporter would, then "stored" the pattern in permanent memory.

The effect seemed to be the same. I don't know whether V'Ger could "remove" them from memory or not, but if it chose not to then they'd be considered destroyed. Just as a person would be dead if you beamed then into space, or held their pattern in a buffer without rematerializing them.

Perhaps, but the real point is that V'ger's assaults on the Klingons and Epsilon IX tell us nothing about the relative strengths of photon/quantum torpedoes and or shields, which was the topic I was addressing.

 

[darkwing_duck1]

Timo said:

1 isoton ~ 2.6 megatons

Sounds reasonable enough - but of course it solely relies on TNG Tech Manual figures, which are way off as regards starship phasers. One is sorely tempted to consider these figures part of the "deception in case Klingons read this" aspect of the book...

Timo Saloniemi

The only things to come from the tech manual were the total yeild and the size of the warhead. The rest was simple math: take the total result in megatons of yeild for the size warhead stated (assume a 100% efficient reaction) and divide by the stated number of isotons.

 

[darkwing_duck1]

FordSVT said:

Vance said:

JuanBolio said:
How did you calculate yields for TOS weapons? After all, we have VERY little if any data regarding any kind of technical specifications during that period.

It's been a few years, so bear with me on this one. But I took the numbers based on a published amount of anti-matter mentioned for a torpedo, and went through all the calculations needed to determine the maximum yield.

With M/AM annihilation, 100% of the mass is converted to energy. If 1kg of matter and antimatter annihilate, they will release energy equivalent to (e=mc^2) 1 x c^2 = 1 x 3x10^8 x 3x10^8 = 9x10^16 Joules of energy. To compare, burning 1kg of petroleum produces 4.2x10^7 Joules - a billionth of the energy produced by M/AM annihilation. Fusion is a lot more efficient, but in, for example, H->He fusion, only 0.7% of the fuel's mass is converted to energy.

So all we need is a rough or given estimate of the quantity or volume of matter and antimatter and we can come up with a rough equivalent to a more conventional detonation.

There used to be a yeild calculator for anti-matter reactions on line somewhere, but I can't find it.

Here's what Wikkipedia has to say about antimatter explosions:

Over 99.9% of the mass of neutral antimatter is accounted for by antiprotons and antineutrons. Their annihilation with protons and neutrons is a complicated process. A proton-antiproton pair can annihilate into a number of charged and neutral relativistic pions. Neutral pions, in turn, decay almost immediately into gamma rays; charged pions travel a few tens of meters and then decay further into muons and neutrinos. Finally, the muons decay into electrons and more neutrinos. Most of the energy (about 60%) is carried away by neutrinos, which have almost no interaction with matter and thus escape into outer space.

The overall structure of energy output from an antimatter bomb is highly dependent on the amount of regular matter in the area surrounding the bomb. If the bomb is shielded by sufficient amounts of matter, the gamma rays are absorbed and the pions slow down before decaying. Part of the kinetic energy is thus transferred to the surrounding atoms, which heat up.

In any practical form however, the weapon could not simply be a ball of antimatter floating in space. There would have to be a significant amount of supporting hardware surrounding the antimatter. Also, in order to maximize the power of the bomb, it would be designed to mix the antimatter with matter in the least amount of time. The effect of a large antimatter bomb would likely be similar to that of a nuclear explosion of similar size. The reacting antimatter would release about half of its energy in a form immediately available to the environment, superheating the casing and components of the bomb and the surrounding air, and turning it into an ultrahot plasma which then emits blackbody radiation in the full EM spectrum. A quantity as small as a kilogram of antimatter would release 1.8×1017 J (180 petajoules) of energy. Given that roughly half the energy will escape as non interacting neutrinos, that gives 90 petajoules of combined blast and EM radiation, or the rough equivalent of a 20 megaton thermonuclear bomb.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimatter_weapon