SDN spam

[Kor_Dahar_Master]

Ok so im reading a thread on factpile linked to ASVS and some fella linked these rather outdated gems likely from SDN.

A) Genesis: Photon torpedoes are being test fired with 11% greater yield than normal (according to Worf), manage to do nothing more than fragment tiny asteroids that are little bigger than the torpedoes themselves.

Why would the asteroid size be important to measure the explosions?, any target would do no matter the size and composition as it is the blast they are measuring not the effect on the target.

B) Alliances: Demonstrates not one, not two, but three photon torpedoes hit a Kazon ship, in atmosphere, hovering 2-3 stories over a city, and the blasts were positively tiny.

Aparantly this guy thinks that using a single max yield torp and wiping out the entire town and its population would have been a good idea, or using phasers and melting the ppl below if the ship moved before the beam was expended was also a great idea.

C) Starship Down: The Defiant is struck by a Jem’Hadar torpedo, which fails to detonate. It instead becomes a KE penetrator device. The Torpedo is moving at a rate of about 50 meters a second when it impacts. Even assuming a mass of 1,000 kilograms, the energy does not exceed 12.5 megajoules. This means that the Defiant, with its uber ablative armor, the ship that has been demonstrated to survive punishment that rips the Galaxy-class to pieces, can be one-shotted by a modern tank.

I have not seen this episode in a while but i do recall the defiant had already taken damage. And that the torp is undamaged after it punches through the hull obviously meaning it was designed to penitrate the hull some how before exploding.

D) Inheritance: Phasers specially modified for drilling (most focused possible) purposes take 5 seconds to carve out a hole of 7 meters in diameter to 2 kilometers deep. This is about 6,000 cubic meters of stone removed. Assuming vaporization (which we know phasers do not do, they ‘cheat’ and get it done with less energy) and granite, that’s about 45 kilotons or 9 kilotons per second. About a good one millionth of what they need to compete with even gigaton level torpedoes.

And yet Phasers are consistently used in combat in capital ships.

We already did this and the phasers put out a lower estimated equivalant (Mr. Oragahn) of around 20 gigatons per second.

E) Nemesis: Despite being at nearly full shields and possessing an undamaged hull, the Scimitar is utterly ravaged when the slow moving Enterprise-E smashes into it. This is a KE event of, at most, 100 kilotons and yet the entire prow of the Scimitar is turned to scrap.

I thought its shields were down?.

F) Insurrection: Two Son’A ships, who together can outfight the Enterprise-E, and take quantum torps without flinching, are destroyed by the chemical incendiary explosion that results from the detonation of Metrion Gas. Chemical reactions of that nature are, compared to nuclear fission/fusion and M/AM reactions, absolutely pathetic.

Metrion Gas is well known in ST to be pretty nasty stuff but if the dude has a chemical analysis proving how sucky it is he should post it not speculate.

G) Who Watches The Watchers: A Phaser bank can be run by a 4.2 Gigawatt power source and was considered sufficient for a stand-up fight. And yet you expect individual weapons to be in the gigaton to teraton range?

A nuke can be set off with a car battery or less.

H) First Contact: Inability for the Borg Sphere to destroy the Phoenix. Borg weapons are notably superior to their UFP counterparts, and if they had anything approaching teraton level weapons, then even if that sphere had less than one millionth the offensive firepower of its main ship, the Phoenix and everyone around it should have still be a large smoldering expanse of radioactive waste. Even modern sub-kiloton weapons can take out a bunker like that with a direct hit, yet the Borg efforts look more like mortar rounds than nuclear hellfire.

The spheres systems were likely down after traveling to the past just like the E-E's were, and complaining about low explosions from high energy weapons is quite a large hippocracy from a warsie.

I) Tears of the Prophets: Inability to destroy an asteroid with an entire fleet of ships unloading everything they have. Requires exploiting a weakness in the Cardie IFF targeting system and the destruction of their generator to overcome. Even if that asteroid was 10 kilometers in diameter, a group of Federation warships with gigaton torpedoes would have turned the entire facility to molten globules and plasma.

Clearly showing how powerful ST shielding can be on a static and large instalation...a bit like what we saw on DS9 way of the warrior and a call to arms.

J) Rise: Inability to vaporize a 100-200 meter wide asteroid. 500 megaton or gigaton level torpedoes or Phaser blasts could reduce that asteroid to rapidly cooling vapor within a few milliseconds at most.

I thought the roids were artificially hardened?. In fact they comment that they SHOULD have been vaporised and at best seen cm fragments at best.

K) Pegasus: Inability to destroy a 5 kilometer hollow asteroid with the entire loadout of a Federation Galaxy-class ship (nearly 250).

Not seen this one for a while but i doubt the quote is correct and likely riker is refering to the torps they have loaded, was there not a romulan hanging around and as such how could they have time to fire 250 torps?.

I say he was refering to what they had loaded in the tubes rather than the entire ships compliment as the time factor for firing 250 torps is just too long with the romulan nearby.

L) Dragon’s Teeth: Alien fighters are capable of dropping Voyager’s shields within the atmosphere with megajoule level explosions (which do indeed threaten the shields down to the single digit percentile), whilst Voyager returns fire and successfully destroys said fighters with her own megajoule level weapons.

Not seen this for a long time either but i recall their were a lot of fighters 200 or so i think.

M) The doomsday Machine: Facing the Doomsday device, Spock ultimately concedes that the only way to destroy the machine is to detonate a 97 megaton explosive in its maw; which can only be accomplished by sacrificing a Constitution class with a self-destructing impulse drive.

So?.

I thought The doomsday Machine allowed the coni inside to "eat" it then it exploded, all other weapons fire could not penitrate.

N) The Masterpiece Society: Geordi tells Hannah that they normally kick plasma up into the terawatt range (which would indicate somewhere between 1 TW and 999 TW) within their AM reactor.

So?.

I can boil water on my cooker but the rings on my cooker can reach much higher temps than the boiling point of water.

O) The Descent, Part II: In this incident, the Enterprise-D moved deep into the corona of a star using special metaphasic shields, and its chief engineer estimated that its shields would fail within 5 minutes under this bombardment. Based on the presence of a habitable planet in that star system as well as the colour spectrum of the star, we can conclude that its star was very similar to Earth’s star in terms of general luminosity. We can estimate corona power intensity to be roughly 60 MW/m², since that is the approximate power intensity at the surface of our Sun (note that the corona is outside the star). If we use a 100,000 m² profile area estimate, total absorption is roughly 6 TW, which would add up to roughly 420 kilotons.

Dunno about that its beyond my scientific education.....but then so are most things lol.

P) Deja Q: Geordi states it would take 31,000TW to shift a moon by 4km/s for seven hours at full bore warp power, which he compares to an ant pushing a tricycle due to the inability of the reactor to produce said power. It’s only when he lowers the mass of the moon to a few million tons is the Enterprise capable of accelerating it in the opposite direction.

Dunno about that either.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Genesis. The time when Worf made two modifications. 11% increase from the older photon torpedo yield, and new guidance systems.
Logically you'll make sure you can actually drive the car before even attempting to see how much horsepower she has.
Because there's no need to fill up your torps with huge amounts of AM for that, since they had to verify the accuracy first, a little pop would suffice.

That said it comes with two low ends, about phaser range and shield strength.

[Jedi Master Spock]

Ok so im reading a thread on factpile linked to ASVS and some fella linked these rather outdated gems likely from SDN.

A) Genesis: Photon torpedoes are being test fired with 11% greater yield than normal (according to Worf), manage to do nothing more than fragment tiny asteroids that are little bigger than the torpedoes themselves.

Why would the asteroid size be important to measure the explosions?, any target would do no matter the size and composition as it is the blast they are measuring not the effect on the target.

Well, the asteroid size would be important, and the yield of torpedoes is not particularly high in "Genesis." However, while the warheads are improved, there's no indication they are at maximum setting, and they are rather larger than the torpedoes themselves are.

I have not seen this episode in a while but i do recall the defiant had already taken damage. And that the torp is undamaged after it punches through the hull obviously meaning it was designed to penitrate the hull some how before exploding.

Actually, on top of that, the visuals pretty clearly indicate that the torpedo that missed the Defiant had a relative velocity of more than 50 m/s. 50 m/s is in the general neighborhood of the net closing speed. Both the Defiant and torpedo are flying in something other than a straight line.

We already did this and the phasers put out a lower estimated equivalant (Mr. Oragahn) of around 20 gigatons per second.

Yes, "Inheritance" is much more powerful than whoever that was claimed. We've seen that precise claim quite a few times - it's fairly persistent.

I thought its shields were down?

The E-E didn't take its shields down, but it's disputed whether or not the shields were still up.

For a high-mass low-velocity impact, the important quantity is momentum. The amount of thrust provided by the engines isn't exactly trivial either.

I will also be amazed if the E-E was in fact going as slow as claimed on SDN.

Metrion Gas is well known in ST to be pretty nasty stuff but if the dude has a chemical analysis proving how sucky it is he should post it not speculate.

Ultritium is an apparently chemical explosive. There are some issues here.

The spheres systems were likely down after traveling to the past just like the E-E's were, and complaining about low explosions from high energy weapons is quite a large hippocracy from a warsie.

ST:FC is still an example of fairly low yield weapons systems.

I) Tears of the Prophets: Inability to destroy an asteroid with an entire fleet of ships unloading everything they have. Requires exploiting a weakness in the Cardie IFF targeting system and the destruction of their generator to overcome. Even if that asteroid was 10 kilometers in diameter, a group of Federation warships with gigaton torpedoes would have turned the entire facility to molten globules and plasma.

Clearly showing how powerful ST shielding can be on a static and large instalation...a bit like what we saw on DS9 way of the warrior and a call to arms.

Yes, that's a case of ignoring shields completely.

It's worth noting that the power generation platform has enough reserve power to turn the asteroid into a field of small, bright, incandescent points in a blinding flash of light.

J) Rise: Inability to vaporize a 100-200 meter wide asteroid. 500 megaton or gigaton level torpedoes or Phaser blasts could reduce that asteroid to rapidly cooling vapor within a few milliseconds at most.

I thought the roids were artificially hardened?. In fact they comment that they SHOULD have been vaporised and at best seen cm fragments at best.

Missing the point of "Rise" in ST/SW debate generally takes three things.

First, ignoring that the asteroid should have been largely or entirely vaporized, were it a natural nickel-iron asteroid.

Second, downscaling the asteroid. 390m is much more reasonable.

Third, ignoring the fact that Star Destroyers' own asteroid-blasts are no more violent than that actually seen in "Rise."

Not seen this one for a while but i doubt the quote is correct and likely riker is refering to the torps they have loaded, was there not a romulan hanging around and as such how could they have time to fire 250 torps?.

I say he was refering to what they had loaded in the tubes rather than the entire ships compliment as the time factor for firing 250 torps is just too long with the romulan nearby.

The scaling is severely off, as is the mechanism of destruction. SDN figures assume the asteroid is 5 km and broken up into 10m fragments.

It is clear they are underestimating the mass of the asteroid by at least an order of magnitude, and vastly overestimating the mechanical efficiency of photon torpedoes.

Not seen this for a long time either but i recall their were a lot of fighters 200 or so i think.

That's not what's interesting. "Megajoules" is what's interesting. It's a claim for which there is absolutely no backing.

M) The doomsday Machine: Facing the Doomsday device, Spock ultimately concedes that the only way to destroy the machine is to detonate a 97 megaton explosive in its maw; which can only be accomplished by sacrificing a Constitution class with a self-destructing impulse drive.

So?.

I thought The doomsday Machine allowed the coni inside to "eat" it then it exploded, all other weapons fire could not penitrate.

What's missing here is the fact that the Doomsday Machine had a field that rendered antimatter incapable of annihilating with matter. Thus, photon torpedoes, which have antimatter warheads, were rendered inert. Warp power could not be directed to phasers, either.

N) The Masterpiece Society: Geordi tells Hannah that they normally kick plasma up into the terawatt range (which would indicate somewhere between 1 TW and 999 TW) within their AM reactor.

So?.

I can boil water on my cooker but the rings on my cooker can reach much higher temps than the boiling point of water.

What's missing is that in "The Masterpiece Society," the E-D uses that same power to tow a neutron star fragment. This is actually a very energetic event. You do not tow quadrillions of tons of neutronium using a terawatt-range reactor.

O) The Descent, Part II: In this incident, the Enterprise-D moved deep into the corona of a star using special metaphasic shields, and its chief engineer estimated that its shields would fail within 5 minutes under this bombardment. Based on the presence of a habitable planet in that star system as well as the colour spectrum of the star, we can conclude that its star was very similar to Earth’s star in terms of general luminosity. We can estimate corona power intensity to be roughly 60 MW/m², since that is the approximate power intensity at the surface of our Sun (note that the corona is outside the star). If we use a 100,000 m² profile area estimate, total absorption is roughly 6 TW, which would add up to roughly 420 kilotons.

Dunno about that its beyond my scientific education.....but then so are most things lol.

As with most of these examples, it's very poorly put together and doesn't actually reflect what happens in the episode. We see explicitly the E-D entering the actual surface of the star - not the corona itself (which is actually millions of degrees Kelvin - sitting in it involves getting a lot of particle energy, not just radiative energy).

We also have the E-D's hull reaching a temperature of 12,000 C. This is over twice the temperature of the surface of the sun, and thus, as radiative activity increases with the fourth power of temperature, and the hull temperature was still rising, we know that the E-D was immersed in plasma radiating at least twenty times as much photon energy per square meter as the visible surface of our own sun. Possibly quite a bit more, but the E-D's hull would not achieve temperatures of 12,000+ C without the plasma being at least the same temperature.

Since the E-D has a surface area of about five hundred thousand square meters (see here), that means that it's getting (in order to reach thermal equilibrium) 670 terawatts of net radiation.

I'll cut straight through the math here for you: If you calculate correctly using the method outlined by that quote, without ignoring, in other words, canon evidence as plain as the nose on your face, you end up with the E-D getting bathed with 48+ megatons of solar energy rather than 420 kilotons.

What the calculation neglects is that the shields are not simply holding off EM radiation; they are also staving off particle impacts.

P) Deja Q: Geordi states it would take 31,000TW to shift a moon by 4km/s for seven hours at full bore warp power, which he compares to an ant pushing a tricycle due to the inability of the reactor to produce said power. It’s only when he lowers the mass of the moon to a few million tons is the Enterprise capable of accelerating it in the opposite direction.

Dunno about that either.

Geordi does not say "31,000 TW" anywhere in the episode, so the source of the number is more bad math. In this case, they've dropped more than two orders of magnitude; "Deja Q" is one of the cases that I have trouble keeping out of the zettawatt range using realistic estimates.

They have probably severely underestimated the mass of the moon as well.

[Mike DiCenso]

Well, the asteroid size would be important, and the yield of torpedoes is not particularly high in "Genesis." However, while the warheads are improved, there's no indication they are at maximum setting, and they are rather larger than the torpedoes themselves are.

The dialog in the episode's teaser strongly supports this idea since they were carrying out a series of tests, and when Picard and Data get going on their way to retrive the errant torpedo, he explicitly orders them to continue with the rest of the testing program. So I can see that the first test was at a low or default yield, primarily to test propulsion and guidance, then further tests would be ones involving increasing yields and maybe more precision targeting over longer ranges, ect.

Geordi does not say "31,000 TW" anywhere in the episode, so the source of the number is more bad math. In this case, they've dropped more than two orders of magnitude; "Deja Q" is one of the cases that I have trouble keeping out of the zettawatt range using realistic estimates.

They have probably severely underestimated the mass of the moon as well.

It's obvious that what this is just some dumb Warsie kid who cut and pasted stuff off of Wong's SDN website, and who likely does not understand or care what any of it means except to look smart in front of his internet buddies and his opponent.
-Mike

[Mike DiCenso]

Genesis. The time when Worf made two modifications. 11% increase from the older photon torpedo yield, and new guidance systems.
Logically you'll make sure you can actually drive the car before even attempting to see how much horsepower she has.
Because there's no need to fill up your torps with huge amounts of AM for that, since they had to verify the accuracy first, a little pop would suffice.

That said it comes with two low ends, about phaser range and shield strength.

How? Torpedo range is obviously insanely huge (it would take a couple days by shuttle to retrive it and come back), plus we see the torpedo pull an amazing 90 degree angle turn here as well.

Furthermore, we don't know how far the torpedo travelled to it's target asteroid, nor do we know how far or fast it went after it lost control.
-Mike

[Mike DiCenso]

Not seen this one for a while but i doubt the quote is correct and likely riker is refering to the torps they have loaded, was there not a romulan hanging around and as such how could they have time to fire 250 torps?.

I say he was refering to what they had loaded in the tubes rather than the entire ships compliment as the time factor for firing 250 torps is just too long with the romulan nearby.

[quote="Jedi Master Spock""]The scaling is severely off, as is the mechanism of destruction. SDN figures assume the asteroid is 5 km and broken up into 10m fragments.

It is clear they are underestimating the mass of the asteroid by at least an order of magnitude, and vastly overestimating the mechanical efficiency of photon torpedoes.[/quote]


The actual dialog in question is:

"I recommend we destroy the asteroid. It would take most of our photon torpedoes, but it would preclude any possibility of the Pegasus falling into Romulan hands. "

What do you define "most of" as in this case out 250? It could be anywhere from 150 to 249. Also I highly doubt that Riker did any real study of the situation and was just giving a generalized answer to Pressman. Furthermore, breaking the asteroid up into large fragments as SDN would believe is the case here totally defeats Riker's desire to make sure the Pegasus and the illegal cloaking device on board it is utterly destroyed so that Presman as well as the Romulans cannot get a hold of it.

As for the Five Kilometer Fallacy, this hoary old bit of Warsie and Wong misinformation has been floated around for years now. Just search for "The Pegasus" asteroid scaling here on SFJN and you'll find numerous discussions that place the minimum size of the asteroid at no less than 8.9 x 6.5 km. Furthermore, another thing that needs to be addressed is the "mostly hollow" fallacy that Wong and his followers keep perpetuating. Even with the chasm the E-D was in being some 4 km x .8 km, it only makes up a tiny relative percentage of the whole volume. Using this calculator, I get a volume of 1,575 cubic km for the whole asteroid. Assuming a 4 km by .8 km long chasm, it would only make up about around 2 cubic km of volume or about 0.00127 percent of the total asteroid's volume. So much for the mostly hollow claim. Of course there's other issues, like whether the torpedoes would be detonated on the surface of the asteroid verus inside the chasms, and how the energy relased by the torpedo would have to have to then travel to the walls of the chasm, losing strength with the inverse square of the distance and so on. So whatever else, "The Pegasus" only sets lower limits, not upper ones.
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

Missing the point of "Rise" in ST/SW debate generally takes three things.

First, ignoring that the asteroid should have been largely or entirely vaporized, were it a natural nickel-iron asteroid.

Second, downscaling the asteroid. 390m is much more reasonable.

Third, ignoring the fact that Star Destroyers' own asteroid-blasts are no more violent than that actually seen in "Rise."

Fourth, ignoring that these Hoth asteroids have shown a capacity to spontaneously burst.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Genesis. The time when Worf made two modifications. 11% increase from the older photon torpedo yield, and new guidance systems.
Logically you'll make sure you can actually drive the car before even attempting to see how much horsepower she has.
Because there's no need to fill up your torps with huge amounts of AM for that, since they had to verify the accuracy first, a little pop would suffice.

That said it comes with two low ends, about phaser range and shield strength.

How? Torpedo range is obviously insanely huge (it would take a couple days by shuttle to retrive it and come back), plus we see the torpedo pull an amazing 90 degree angle turn here as well.

Furthermore, we don't know how far the torpedo travelled to it's target asteroid, nor do we know how far or fast it went after it lost control.
-Mike

Damn, lost a post for no reason. It only happens when I don't use a text editor. RAGE!!

So, there's no reason to believe they targeted distant asteroids, more than a few km away. Small yields aren't a danger, and they want the best readings possible.
Besides, the turn is good, but the speed is not. It's clear that the torpedo wasn't moving that fast.
But I could retract what I said for both.
I originally thought it was just as bad as with TCWS and with Grievous' droids concerned about going through an asteroid field and Grievous doubling the shields forward.
But perhaps the out of range remark about phasers is due to the screening of so many rocks. Data says the field is unusually dense to fly through it, yet we see none of this, and above all, the torpedo is still moving away? What? It's programmed to avoid a target?
OK, so let's say that it's true, that torpedo avoided rock "on purpose", and the density was only getting worse, so phasers couldn't do much and they had to track it.
I'd say the torpedo was flying at 0.5 or 1.5 km/s, but could have been accelerating (although if that were so, there'd be little point trying to catch it).
So the Enterprise would need to fly faster than that.
Looking at the size of the rocks, you're not exactly seeing pieces larger than a dozen meters, really.
If they fly at 5~6 km/s to catch it up, then by the density of the field, it doesn't look like they'd hit more than two tens of asteroids per second. They could shoot some on their way as well.
In terms of cumulative kinetic energy against shields, we'd probably be looking at a low one-digit petajoule figure for the KE, per second.
It would increase if the E-D were to go faster.
Over a couple minutes of stormy flight, you'd get a total of a couple hundreds of petajoules poured onto the shields, more than what the E-D can cope with.
---
EDIT:
The point is that the damage they'd take would be superior to the charge of the shields plus the recharge rate.
---
Now like for anything, they didn't have to go into the field. They could just avoid it, fly at full throttle and wait for the torp to exit on the other side. Especially since they had a lock on it despite the density of the field, and asteroid fields still are overall planar.

[Mike DiCenso]

The video you provided a link to clearly shows that the ship fires the torpedoes, each one accelerating to at least 350 meters a second given how fast the first two clear the saucer section, likely considerably faster. Then we have a jump cut to the torpeodes hitting the asteroids, and none of the scenes showing either the E-D nor the asteroids in proximinity to each other, or exactly how long the trip took. At the minimum speed of 350m/sec, and assuming at least 3 seconds travel time, we would see a distance of no less than 1.050 km.

And honestly since this was a test of the guidence systems as much as anything else, the torpedoes, like the phaser and distuptor drills in DS9's "Return to Grace", could be taking place over thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of kilometers. In addtion there is about 14 seconds that go by before Picard gives the self-destruct order, and then when it is discovered that the torpedo desruct system does not work, indicating a considerable increase of distance. The rest of the asteroid field that the errant torpedo wandered off into is not shown and we only know that the density was too great for the E-D to safely navigate. For a comparison, look at this asteroid field and the ones seen in "The Pegasus" and "Final Mission", which are fairly dense and have both large and small asteroids, and the E-D was still able to travel through at modest speeds.

Also the target asteroids hit by the first two torpedes are not less than 12 meters in diameter on the long axis given that the torpedo is dwarfed by the first target asteroid by about 4 to 1 in size, and assuming no torpedo glow growth and the smaller 3 meter total diameter for the glow and flares. More likely given the torpedo size ranges we've seen over the course of all the ST series, the asteroids could be as big as 50 meters diameter.

As for chasing the torpedo down, it's unknown what circumstances about it's trajectory kept it from striking anything, or if it did, it might have drifted an lodged into a large asteroid after fuel exaustion. We just don't know since the story never focuses on the recover effort made by Picard and Data.
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

The video you provided a link to clearly shows that the ship fires the torpedoes, each one accelerating to at least 350 meters a second given how fast the first two clear the saucer section, likely considerably faster. Then we have a jump cut to the torpeodes hitting the asteroids, and none of the scenes showing either the E-D nor the asteroids in proximinity to each other, or exactly how long the trip took. At the minimum speed of 350m/sec, and assuming at least 3 seconds travel time, we would see a distance of no less than 1.050 km.

Which just fits with what I said.

And honestly since this was a test of the guidence systems as much as anything else, the torpedoes, like the phaser and distuptor drills in DS9's "Return to Grace", could be taking place over thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of kilometers.

The fact that they just begin to spread as the appear on screen with the asteroids in the background would actually suggest that the targeted asteroids were just in front of the E-D.

In addtion there is about 14 seconds that go by before Picard gives the self-destruct order, and then when it is discovered that the torpedo desruct system does not work, indicating a considerable increase of distance. The rest of the asteroid field that the errant torpedo wandered off into is not shown and we only know that the density was too great for the E-D to safely navigate. For a comparison, look at this asteroid field and the ones seen in "The Pegasus" and "Final Mission", which are fairly dense and have both large and small asteroids, and the E-D was still able to travel through at modest speeds.

But my point is that they want to catch the torpedo, so they'd have to fly fast through it.
But then you realize that it's absurd, since if the torp is going to remain inside the field, then there's no real pressure of time, and if it's going to get out of it, since they have a lock on it, as I said, they can circumvent the whole field at full speed and keep track of the silly bugger and catch it on the other side.
They even return a few days search and we see them flying through clear space. Now it's possible they had to scan space after the torpedo burnt all fuel and went practically dead (no glow either, no radio). Why the hell they didn't use the E-D to get that torp... back then they were not dumbed down, and Data was on bridge. He wouldn't regress back into a box of light bulbs either.
I took the liberty of rearranging your post, for the following part. I hope you don't mind.

As for chasing the torpedo down, it's unknown what circumstances about it's trajectory kept it from striking anything, or if it did, it might have drifted an lodged into a large asteroid after fuel exaustion. We just don't know since the story never focuses on the recover effort made by Picard and Data.

Yes but that doesn't really tell why they bothered going after the torp with a shuttle when they were willing to use the E-D. It's not even like they didn't want to follow the torp with the E-D to begin with. At least if it had been true, it would have helped making the situation more logical: they let the E-D crew continue their operations and weapon testing and stay close to schedule (we know they were contacted by Starfleet).
The best solution I can think of is that Picard changed his mind. He saw that it would take too loog with the E-D going through that field if he couldn't go as fast as he wanted, so he needed a smaller craft and decided to let the crew complete the mission in time. We see that they wasted quite some time after Picard made the decision to pick a shuttle, since Data had time to go take care of Spot's pregnancy before leaving.

Good enough? Got a better explanation?

Also the target asteroids hit by the first two torpedes are not less than 12 meters in diameter on the long axis given that the torpedo is dwarfed by the first target asteroid by about 4 to 1 in size, and assuming no torpedo glow growth and the smaller 3 meter total diameter for the glow and flares. More likely given the torpedo size ranges we've seen over the course of all the ST series, the asteroids could be as big as 50 meters diameter.

We don't see the torpedoes' aura increase in size after exiting the torpedo tube. We can make a direct comparison with the neck's windows. The glow core is only a fraction of the height of the windows, about half of it.
Without any evidence of torpedo glow growth for this shooting test, but with more evidence that the glow growth would not happen, unless the windows are six meters high (6/2 = 3 ; 3 x 4 = 12 m), those rocks are below 12 meters large, possibly by far.

There were larger asteroids in fact, but we also see that there was enough room between them to avoid collisions (see beginning of part II).
The real problem would be the small ones, too numerous and close to each other to avoid.

[Mike DiCenso]

But my point is that they want to catch the torpedo, so they'd have to fly fast through it.
But then you realize that it's absurd, since if the torp is going to remain inside the field, then there's no real pressure of time, and if it's going to get out of it, since they have a lock on it, as I said, they can circumvent the whole field at full speed and keep track of the silly bugger and catch it on the other side.
They even return a few days search and we see them flying through clear space. Now it's possible they had to scan space after the torpedo burnt all fuel and went practically dead (no glow either, no radio). Why the hell they didn't use the E-D to get that torp... back then they were not dumbed down, and Data was on bridge. He wouldn't regress back into a box of light bulbs either.

Obviously Picard wanted to get out of there for a while, since it was clear he wasn't too excited about them. Whether or not the tests were a priority over anything else is unknown, but Picard did order Riker and Worf to continue with them while he and Data were gone.

Good enough? Got a better explanation?

I suppose keeping to schedule is good, but then again, the exact situtation with the torpedo in the field was unknown, and no one suggested "catching it on the other side of the asteroid field", suggests that some factor would prevent it remerging where the E-D or the shuttle could catch it, and Data would not have been so fussy over the density of the field where the E-D could not safely go. Perhaps the gravity from the total mass of the asteroid field had an effect on them the way the one asteroid field's gravity had an effect on the E-D by slowing it down just enought to prevent escape. In the end, Picard may have just been looking for a good excuse to get off the bridge and leave the drudgery work to others for a little while.

We don't see the torpedoes' aura increase in size after exiting the torpedo tube. We can make a direct comparison with the neck's windows. The glow core is only a fraction of the height of the windows, about half of it.
Without any evidence of torpedo glow growth for this shooting test, but with more evidence that the glow growth would not happen, unless the windows are six meters high (6/2 = 3 ; 3 x 4 = 12 m), those rocks are below 12 meters large, possibly by far.

There were larger asteroids in fact, but we also see that there was enough room between them to avoid collisions (see beginning of part II).
The real problem would be the small ones, too numerous and close to each other to avoid.

The core glow is not the only one I was using; I was also using the total flare glow as well, which would place the torpedoes around deck height of 3.5 to 4 meters wide. these torpedoes were also unsual in that they left a strange flare-like trail behind them as they went out towards the target asteroids. I don't know of any instance in all of trek where that happens outside of Star Trek 2:The Wrath of Khan when Spock's coffin torpedo is launched.

As for the asteroid gaps or the dispersal of the torpedoes, the tight flight formations over long distances is something we have seen since the early days of Trek , so that to me is not an indication of short range. You may be getting confused by the burst-spread formations, like those seen in "Arsenal of Freedom", or Yesterday's Enterprise" where up to 5 torpedoes spread out after a simultaneous launch.

The one shot we do see of the asteroids after the shuttle launches shows two relatively dense clusters of asteroids in the distance, though we do not know how big or far away they are, or what the composition and density of the rest of the field where the torpedo had gotten off to looked like.
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

I suppose keeping to schedule is good, but then again, the exact situtation with the torpedo in the field was unknown, and no one suggested "catching it on the other side of the asteroid field", suggests that some factor would prevent it remerging where the E-D or the shuttle could catch it, and Data would not have been so fussy over the density of the field where the E-D could not safely go. Perhaps the gravity from the total mass of the asteroid field had an effect on them the way the one asteroid field's gravity had an effect on the E-D by slowing it down just enought to prevent escape. In the end, Picard may have just been looking for a good excuse to get off the bridge and leave the drudgery work to others for a little while.

I would dismiss the gravity as a problem, otherwise that field would have already collapsed on itself a long time ago.

We don't see the torpedoes' aura increase in size after exiting the torpedo tube. We can make a direct comparison with the neck's windows. The glow core is only a fraction of the height of the windows, about half of it.
Without any evidence of torpedo glow growth for this shooting test, but with more evidence that the glow growth would not happen, unless the windows are six meters high (6/2 = 3 ; 3 x 4 = 12 m), those rocks are below 12 meters large, possibly by far.

There were larger asteroids in fact, but we also see that there was enough room between them to avoid collisions (see beginning of part II).
The real problem would be the small ones, too numerous and close to each other to avoid.

The core glow is not the only one I was using; I was also using the total flare glow as well, which would place the torpedoes around deck height of 3.5 to 4 meters wide.

If you count the streaks, it doesn't change anything. It just makes the entire object of reference larger, but the ratio doesn't budge.

these torpedoes were also unsual in that they left a strange flare-like trail behind them as they went out towards the target asteroids. I don't know of any instance in all of trek where that happens outside of Star Trek 2:The Wrath of Khan when Spock's coffin torpedo is launched.

Perhaps some lousy reaction between the cloud of particles that the glowing aura could be, and the thruster.

As for the asteroid gaps or the dispersal of the torpedoes, the tight flight formations over long distances is something we have seen since the early days of Trek , so that to me is not an indication of short range. You may be getting confused by the burst-spread formations, like those seen in "Arsenal of Freedom", or Yesterday's Enterprise" where up to 5 torpedoes spread out after a simultaneous launch.

No, it's simply that I don't see why the torpedoes would have had not already moved on a more appropriate path after several kilometers of flight. The fact that they all come from the same point on the screen, that they were low yields and that clear readings were needed for that test, tells me that they would not stand several kilometers away. I settled on a couple of them.
In the end, it's not of importance since it doesn't change anything now as I am satisfied with the explanation about why they used a shuttle.

However, we have clear evidence that the E-D is capable of fast tracking simple objects and shoot them in packs. So the danger from moving through that field would come from the asteroids they wouldn't be fast enough to destroy while moving at several kilometers per second through it.

The one shot we do see of the asteroids after the shuttle launches shows two relatively dense clusters of asteroids in the distance, though we do not know how big or far away they are, or what the composition and density of the rest of the field where the torpedo had gotten off to looked like.
-Mike

There's a simple thing we can guess, it's the relative sizes and distances. If we assume the rocks are larger than the ones shot down, which is impossible to deny, then the spaces between them will scale up as well. And those gaps are extremely large.
So I don't see the big ones being the problem, as they're fairly easy to spot and avoid. The issue comes from the storm of impacts from the smaller ones, which even if largely immobile, may pass through the forward firepower of the E-D.

This also tells me that there's not much room left with this incident to find evidence of exawatt power production and shielding. Such power and shielding ratings would allow the ship to move through the field at 10 km/s and hit a thousand 40 meters wide asteroids per second.

[Picard]

Is that from Factpile, Star Trek vs Star Wars? (link here). I'm part of discussion there - lot of very rabid Warsies - one told that Falcon can destro Enterprise-D, if I remember correctly.

[Kor_Dahar_Master]

Is that from Factpile, Star Trek vs Star Wars? (link here). I'm part of discussion there - lot of very rabid Warsies - one told that Falcon can destro Enterprise-D, if I remember correctly.

I think so, but its really just copy pasted crap from SDN some dude was trying to claim as his own.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Is that from Factpile, Star Trek vs Star Wars? (link here). I'm part of discussion there - lot of very rabid Warsies - one told that Falcon can destro Enterprise-D, if I remember correctly.

They may be rabid, but I don't see your figures to be anywhere close to reasonable. The sole difference would be about how you actually debate.