Cardassian Dreadnought vs the Death star

[2046]

The fact that such weapons as the Dreadnought, Druoda Warhead, and even photon torpedoes carry explosive payloads has implications for how they are used.

Specifically, it seems even a high-impulse kinetic penetrator would be fairly unimpressive next to what we might imagine. As noted in Section V on this page of mine, a high-impulse ram by Voyager might strike with no more energy than a photon torpedo blast.

[Mike DiCenso]

Speaking of the Druoda Warhead, has anyone ever attempted to scale the energy needed to make that 200 km crater that was found on one of the planets hit by one?
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

Speaking of the Druoda Warhead, has anyone ever attempted to scale the energy needed to make that 200 km crater that was found on one of the planets hit by one?
-Mike

200 KM? The torpedo would have such little mass and momentum that you'd need many several petatons to achieve that.
Chicxulub's 180 km wide crater was worth 100 teratons, made by an asteroid (considerable mass) hitting our sweet planet.
When there's little mass involved in the "damager", energy requirements go up quickly, unless the warhead, in this case, is deeply wedged.

Mind you, we've seen torps magically burrow into the crust of a planet iirc, so that would help, but you'd still be looking at much more than 100 TT anyway.

[Mike DiCenso]

This screencap pic gives an idea of the weapon's configuration. It measures about a meter long. Either the weapon uses a combination of KE and the warhead to do damage to a target, or there's something mighty exotic about the antimatter warhead it carries, such as uber-antimatter, or ultradense anti-deuterium.
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

DITL says the crater was 400 km wide. The missile had some heavy matrix blah blah, so there's obviously a dense fuel in that, or something vewy eggzotik.
http://www.ditl.org/pagweapon.php?5&PHP ... 4a9d6ceac0
http://www.ditl.org/picweapon.php?5.1&1 ... e75f27aee6
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Series_ ... armor_unit

That said, if it uses antimatter, it would have to be hypercompressed, and assuming a perfect reaction, we'd still several ten thousand tonnes of AM.

That's a bit a stretch. It's possible the warhead used antimatter as a kicker, to trigger a bizarro reaction.
It could power a fleet of starships, so I suspect that the amount of AM was worth a couple tonnes, perhaps two dozens tops.

[Roondar]

Wait, since when was a couple of tonnes of AM enough to power 'a fleet' of ships for any significant time?

I seriously doubt that starships are limited to ~100 - ~1000 KG of AM each.

[Mike DiCenso]

If it was the uber-antimatter from TOS' "Obsession" or "Immunity Syndrome", it would be more than enough to power a fleet!
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

Wait, since when was a couple of tonnes of AM enough to power 'a fleet' of ships for any significant time?

I seriously doubt that starships are limited to ~100 - ~1000 KG of AM each.

Mmm right, I dropped one OoM. Still, do we have any reason to believe that a major UFP ship would carry more than a dozen tonnes of AM?

[Mike DiCenso]

See again my relatively conservative calcs on the amount of energy required vaporize a Galaxy class starship's saucer section. Given that the ship would have to be using at minimuk 93 kilograms of antimatter a second to produce a 3.8 gigaton explosion, it stands to reason that Federation starships have to have more than a few dozen metric tons of antimatter, or they'd run dry in just a few minutes (remember also that Voyager in "Revulsion" was running routinely 5,000 terawatts through a single power conduit). The only thing that makes sense is uber-dense anti-deuterium.
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

See again my relatively conservative calcs on the amount of energy required vaporize a Galaxy class starship's saucer section. Given that the ship would have to be using at minimuk 93 kilograms of antimatter a second to produce a 3.8 gigaton explosion, it stands to reason that Federation starships have to have more than a few dozen metric tons of antimatter, or they'd run dry in just a few minutes...

Unless that was close to the ship's stockpile of AM that blew up.

(remember also that Voyager in "Revulsion" was running routinely 5,000 terawatts through a single power conduit).

Routinely?
Is there any proof of that? Why would a ship have a constant power production of one megaton per second?

Admittedly, it would require more AM for constant use over a full week, since 12 tonnes would cover a bit less than 60 hours with a 100% efficient reaction (2.5 days).
At the rate you mention, more than 33.6 tonnes would be more suited for 7 days.

The only thing that makes sense is uber-dense anti-deuterium.

The volume of regular deuterium wouldn't be a problem much for a starship without requiring ultra compression, although compressed AM is quite possible.

[l33telboi]

Is there any proof of that? Why would a ship have a constant power production of one megaton per second?

It's quite possible it has something to do with inertial dampening and/or artificial gravity. I.e. you need to keep looping that much energy through a contraption of some sort in order to create these fields. There would naturally be energy lost due to inefficiencies and the like, but how much is unknown.

[Mike DiCenso]

See again my relatively conservative calcs on the amount of energy required vaporize a Galaxy class starship's saucer section. Given that the ship would have to be using at minimuk 93 kilograms of antimatter a second to produce a 3.8 gigaton explosion, it stands to reason that Federation starships have to have more than a few dozen metric tons of antimatter, or they'd run dry in just a few minutes...

Unless that was close to the ship's stockpile of AM that blew up.

Unlikely given that the failure was specifically stated in both the U.S.S. Yamato and E-D's case to be the warp cores, not the antimatter storage pods.

(remember also that Voyager in "Revulsion" was running routinely 5,000 terawatts through a single power conduit).

Routinely?
Is there any proof of that? Why would a ship have a constant power production of one megaton per second?

Neither Harry Kim or Seven of Nine thought anything unusual about the power flow through the conduit. In fact, Harry was in charge of the energy flow modifications they were about to undertake, had worked out much of the planning for the diversion of plasma power to the astrometrics lab, and he would have mentioned something if it were out of spec. Not to mention, this was all being done while the ship was simply tootling around on impulse power, and not at any kind of battle-ready condition that would necessitate increased power flow. Also this was a single power conduit, one of many, and not the warp core itself.

Admittedly, it would require more AM for constant use over a full week, since 12 tonnes would cover a bit less than 60 hours with a 100% efficient reaction (2.5 days).
At the rate you mention, more than 33.6 tonnes would be more suited for 7 days.

Exactly. With 100% efficency what you are saying is basically true, but even in Star Trek, they've never stated efficencies like that for the engines and systems on-board a starship. A lot of the antimatter and matter would be lost by virtue of the process.

The only thing that makes sense is uber-dense anti-deuterium.

The volume of regular deuterium wouldn't be a problem much for a starship without requiring ultra compression, although compressed AM is quite possible.

Yet it fits the facts nicely, including explaining away the usually high masses of the Consitution and Intrepid class starships. The other alternative is we go with the uber-antimatter reactions of "Obsession" and "Immunity Syndrome".
-Mike

[Mike DiCenso]

Is there any proof of that? Why would a ship have a constant power production of one megaton per second?

It's quite possible it has something to do with inertial dampening and/or artificial gravity. I.e. you need to keep looping that much energy through a contraption of some sort in order to create these fields. There would naturally be energy lost due to inefficiencies and the like, but how much is unknown.

Don't forget that there are other systems and sub-systems on Voyager that have been explicitly stated to draw large amounts of energy. For example, in "Good Sheppard" [YOY, season 6], Torres orders an additional 5 terawatts routed to the sensor array.
-Mike

[l33telboi]

That would most likely be different, since channeling power to the sensor array wouldn't simply loop the energy, but actually get rid of it.

[Mike DiCenso]

I was giving an example of a relatively high-powered system, of which we know draws at least 10 TW, and possibly quite a bit more depending on how you want to interpret Torres' request.
-Mike