Cardassian Dreadnought vs the Death star

[Mr. Oragahn]

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.

Or these systems could require much less power. Unless there's a solid figure somewhere, it's rather useless.

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.

I could equally point out that the warp core blowing were merely the prime triggers of near complete destructions. So this is Yamato's fate, and the entirety of the lower section of the E-D iirc. AM tanks were obviously next on the list of things that would blow up.
The question being also how much AM a warp core presently contains. I can't picture an overload building up if there's not a constant feed of AM into the core, and we had an overload of Voyager's warpcore, and that even after the core was jettisoned, so I'd say it's rather clear that the warpcore takes quite some large amount of AM with it. I don't know where it's stored in that long stick that a warpcore is, but it's clearly somewhere there.

(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.

Wait. That neither Kim nor 7o9 were surprised is totally normal if the ship is capable of doing it. It does not mean, though, that's a regular power flow.
Besides, Kim checking on this particular power conduit happened for a reason, and was likely in relation to what he was doing with the astrometrics lab. It would be rather logical that the conduit he'd use to divert power would be the conduit showing a greater power flux. This could not necessarily speak for all power conduits in normal use conditions.

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

I can only hope, one day, not to have to remind Trekkies to take the episode's title a bit less to the heart.
Obsession's event makes no sense. Not only it speaks of totally absurds quantities of energies, but even the explosion itself could have not achieved the effect we saw without a massive technobabble effect.

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

And to do what?
5 TW is still 3 OoMs short of the power indicated above, and could have been for a short period of time as well.

[Roondar]

I had to edit the reply a bit so that the forum wouldn't tell me there where to many quote-levels. Sorry about that!

I could equally point out that the warp core blowing were merely the prime triggers of near complete destructions. So this is Yamato's fate, and the entirety of the lower section of the E-D iirc. AM tanks were obviously next on the list of things that would blow up.
The question being also how much AM a warp core presently contains. I can't picture an overload building up if there's not a constant feed of AM into the core, and we had an overload of Voyager's warpcore, and that even after the core was jettisoned, so I'd say it's rather clear that the warpcore takes quite some large amount of AM with it. I don't know where it's stored in that long stick that a warpcore is, but it's clearly somewhere there.

It makes very little sense for the M/AM core to contain all of (or nearly all of) the AM you have at any time. That is a very dangerous way of doing things (not to mention a bit of a silly thing to claim to begin with - it's like saying your gasoline engine will have all the gasoline you have in the tank in it when it starts running hot, or your nuclear power plant having all the uranium you have in store in when it starts to melt down. Neither are true).

Besides, we know they have seperate -and nigh indestructable, IIRC not a single one has ever breached- antimatter pods where they'd store the bulk. Also, please note that we don't see a small explosion followed by a bigger one. We see one big one.

Wait. That neither Kim nor 7o9 were surprised is totally normal if the ship is capable of doing it. It does not mean, though, that's a regular power flow.
Besides, Kim checking on this particular power conduit happened for a reason, and was likely in relation to what he was doing with the astrometrics lab. It would be rather logical that the conduit he'd use to divert power would be the conduit showing a greater power flux. This could not necessarily speak for all power conduits in normal use conditions.

Thats a weak argument though, they where working on a -for all intents and purposes- hi-def mapping chamber. Not say, the shield generator or the phaser array. It makes sense they'd use a pretty bog-standard conduit to power it, not some massive uber conduit (you don't connect your radio directly to the high voltage lines either!).

It also makes sense that the powerlevels in that conduit wouldn't be much above what is nominally needed. Especially since nothing special was happening on Voyager in the mean time.

This is a big thing. Even if Harry was rerouting energy, that conduit would not be suddenly swamped with a much higher than average level of power. And if that was the only way to deal with things that just means he rerouted all that energy away from it's normal destination and you still end up with that figure as a reasonable amount of energy to flow about a small part of a pretty much idle ship.

Besides, even if it's a 'high throughput' conduit -which remains to be seen, we've heard really high energy quotes in ST during idle moments before-, it's still only going to be a fraction of the total energy grid and hence only a fraction of the total power output of the ship at that time. Unless you want us to believe the rather inane idea that UFP engineers route most of their total energy capacity over a single wire.

You know, the same UFP engineers who claim they'd feel uneasy without at least three (primary and backup) systems running for the same job. You really think that engineers who value redundancy that much would lead all their energy through a single conduit?

And to do what?
5 TW is still 3 OoMs short of the power indicated above, and could have been for a short period of time as well.

You seem hellbent on lowering any form of powergeneration for ST, don't you :P

Seriously, I don't see the problem here. 5 TW is well in the lower range of other named power quantities on the various ST shows.

To be blunt:

You have zero proof that your assertion (all these numbers just happen to be high ends and only for a small amount of time) is true. There is in fact plenty of evidence in the ST canon that UFP ships generate downright scary amounts of energy. Ignoring or trying to rationalize all of those away reeks of bias more than trying to find out what the 'true limits' are.

It's exceptionally unlikely, in my view, that all the ST powergeneration numbers stated on the show just so happen to be flukes, false, outliers or only peak-power moments.

[l33telboi]

Or these systems could require much less power. Unless there's a solid figure somewhere, it's rather useless.

Uh, my post is in response to an incident where a crewman gives a solid figure for power.

[Mr. Oragahn]

It makes very little sense for the M/AM core to contain all of (or nearly all of) the AM you have at any time. That is a very dangerous way of doing things (not to mention a bit of a silly thing to claim to begin with - it's like saying your gasoline engine will have all the gasoline you have in the tank in it when it starts running hot, or your nuclear power plant having all the uranium you have in store in when it starts to melt down. Neither are true).
Clearly the whole rod thing DOES carry a large amount of AM. The episode in Voyager where Banana ejects one and the Voyager races away from the thing should be a proof. Or should we ignore it, because writers had no advisory and were playing the lucky pot shot, and sometimes what they wrote made sense, other times not?

Besides, we know they have seperate -and nigh indestructable, IIRC not a single one has ever breached- antimatter pods where they'd store the bulk. Also, please note that we don't see a small explosion followed by a bigger one. We see one big one.

I am not the one who decided that jettisoned warp cores would still build up towards overload and explode later on like a bomb, even in space.

The warp core is a big long rod in many UFP ships, either horizontal or vertical.
I wasn't saying that the AM was stored in the intermix chamber or whatever, but present in tanks as part of the whole rod-assembly that the warp core is. Think of the term more as "power plant" than a given specific piece.

A large and single explosion doesn't really contradict this. It merely says that a large amount of fuel reacts all at once.

Thats a weak argument though, they where working on a -for all intents and purposes- hi-def mapping chamber. Not say, the shield generator or the phaser array. It makes sense they'd use a pretty bog-standard conduit to power it, not some massive uber conduit (you don't connect your radio directly to the high voltage lines either!).

A radio that would need power rerouted to it manually, while the ship's mundane power conduits would be channeling petawatts?
This pretty much proves that this fancy radio was clearly a sucker for power, so my argument stands, even if I, myself, don't see why the lab needed so much power.

It also makes sense that the powerlevels in that conduit wouldn't be much above what is nominally needed. Especially since nothing special was happening on Voyager in the mean time.

A ship that does nothing special doesn't require the power of one 15F42 warhead per second!

It would also demonstrate a poor energy efficiency.

This is a big thing. Even if Harry was rerouting energy, that conduit would not be suddenly swamped with a much higher than average level of power.

Why not? They're apparently powering a radio that needs a manual modification --instead of pressing a console's icon-- to get some extra energy for that supposedly non-power-hungry lab, while the ship is supposedly presently idle, and yet it's farting a hundred Little Boys (or more) per second down there in engineering?
Uh-huh.

And if that was the only way to deal with things that just means he rerouted all that energy away from it's normal destination and you still end up with that figure as a reasonable amount of energy to flow about a small part of a pretty much idle ship.

Besides, even if it's a 'high throughput' conduit -which remains to be seen, we've heard really high energy quotes in ST during idle moments before-, it's still only going to be a fraction of the total energy grid and hence only a fraction of the total power output of the ship at that time. Unless you want us to believe the rather inane idea that UFP engineers route most of their total energy capacity over a single wire.

You know, the same UFP engineers who claim they'd feel uneasy without at least three (primary and backup) systems running for the same job. You really think that engineers who value redundancy that much would lead all their energy through a single conduit?

It's not much about where the power flowed and how much of it there was, but about the reasons why such power was needed.

Really, look at your arguments. You're telling me that the astrometrics lab is like a radio and you don't need large amounts of power for that (despite the fact that for some reason, they had to bring power manually to that part of the ship).
Then you also repeatedly insist that the ship is idle.

And that thing still needs megatons of energy per second?
It would be better to know what they were trying to do with the astrometics labs.

You seem hellbent on lowering any form of powergeneration for ST, don't you :P

Seriously, I don't see the problem here. 5 TW is well in the lower range of other named power quantities on the various ST shows.

I don't have the context for that "5 TW for the dish" reference, and it's very likely that they needed it then for a good reason. But 5 TW is still nowhere 5 PW or more (since that was one power conduit).

To be blunt:

You have zero proof that your assertion (all these numbers just happen to be high ends and only for a small amount of time) is true.

There's equally no proof that the ship the size of the love boat would need petawatts while twisting its thumbs in the cold ass end of nowhere.

There is in fact plenty of evidence in the ST canon that UFP ships generate downright scary amounts of energy.

That they can do it for a given amount of time, for a specific purpose, yes.

Ignoring or trying to rationalize all of those away reeks of bias more than trying to find out what the 'true limits' are.

And the contrary could be called fanboyism.

It's exceptionally unlikely, in my view, that all the ST powergeneration numbers stated on the show just so happen to be flukes, false, outliers or only peak-power moments.

Specific purposes or tests, that works well enough. It's like that figure from Data. Millions of terwatts or something? A figure thrown around casually, while the E-D was idle as well, I suppose.
Oh yeah, our ship is presently generating the energy of hundreds of Tsar Bombas per second, just for the sake of it. It's also the amount of energy our food processor, our lighting neon complex and casino matrix require. Our ship usually generates a billion times that amount of energy when battle ready. Maybe you wish to tour the rest of our ship? Can I offer you a drink of fresh Remola juice?

Or these systems could require much less power. Unless there's a solid figure somewhere, it's rather useless.

Uh, my post is in response to an incident where a crewman gives a solid figure for power.

Oh wait, I see. You mean the energy is stored there, as part of something that helps creating a whole artificial gravity. It's more like a capacitor system.
Well I wonder how this would work without considerable energy loss.





Now, I don't remember if it was in this thread, but here's the quote about the hypermatter reactor that was to be tried on an ISD-II:

The Battle Lance.

His nephew, Hora Graneet, had been a navy spacer on the Imperial-class Star Destroyer Mark II class vessel, which had been selected for a shakedown cruise testing one of the improved prototype hypermatter reactors. Tenn didn't know the specifics of what had happened, and didn't have anything close to the math needed to understand it anyway. He knew that hypermatter existed only in hyperspace, that it was composed of tachyonic particles, and that charged tachyons, when constrained by the lower dimensions of realspace, produced near-limitless energy. How this "null-point energy" had become unstable he didn't know. He only knew it had been powerful enough to turn an ISD-II and its crew of thirty-seven thousand people into floating wisps of ionized gas in a microsecond.

The quote is vague enough to make it unclear about how new hypermatter reactors were.

On a sidenote, it's always good to remember this, regarding the Death Star and what it may have been capable of, from a cursory look at its heavy weapon components:

"Yon construction, upon which so many of our fellows have been conscripted to menial labor, along with thousands and thousands of slaves, droids, and private contractors, not to mention army, navy, and Imperial engineers, is the destination for this colossal apparatus."

"Yeah-so?"

"Well, let me enlighten you. Beams of coherent particles, such as electrons, positrons, and the like, as well as amplified photon emissions, are often focused with large magnetic rings. Let us postulate that one could, in this fashion, generate a weaponized beam with enough force to blow a large asteroid apart with a single blast."

"Is there such a thing?"

"In theory, yes, though it requires a power source so large as to be impractical to perambulate, even on a Star Destroyer. But," Balahteez continued, raising one phalange in emphasis, "aboard something the size of, say, a moon, one could easily install and house such a mechanism."

"You're saying the battle station they're building up there is going to be that large?"

"Oh, my, yes. Easily. But this is not the point. The magnetic ring being built by Dybersyne is much, much larger than would be needed to focus such a beam, even a beam of such astonishing power."

Ratua frowned. "You've lost me."

The smuggler smiled. "Let us say, for the sake of argument, that the battle station under construction is large enough to hold, oh, six or eight such weapons, as well as a hypermatter reactor that could power a small planet. And that it is possible to focus all of this energy into a single beam-by the largest and most powerful magnetic ring ever made." He looked expectantly at Ratua.

"Milking mopak," Ratua said softly.

"Indeed, indeed. I see you comprehend at last. Not so dull and boring after all, eh?"

Ratua shook his head. That was for sure. If the Empire could make something like that work, there wouldn't be any place a Rebel force could hide-the superweapon could, with a single blast, destroy whole continents. Maybe even whole planets. Just knowing such a thing existed, it seemed, would be enough to keep the peace. You certainly wouldn't want to see it coming into your system with malign intent . . .

Earth's world energy consumption: 174 petawatts (1.740 e17 W), plus or minus 3.5%.

[Jedi Master Spock]

Just one minute please.

It is true that many of the power output figures take place while nothing particularly exciting is happening - the 5 petawatt conduit (not main core, just a conduit!) in VOY:"Revulsion" and the 12.75 exawatt figure for the warp core in "True Q."

And again, Voyager also gives us megakelvin temperatures for the interior of the warp core; as I discussed before, the known behavior of the core is reasonably consistent with the sort of power generation figures I've claimed, as are the various feats we see starships perform (e.g., hasty solar system exit in TNG:"Relics"). In fact, those feats peak substantially higher (OOMs) than the stated figures. On the figure of warp core breaches, I would remind all reading that the high end of the error bars are set by "Drive" and the Delta Flyer's gigameter warp core overload threat radius.

Now, there's a nice explanation for why (A) peak consumption is higher than any stated power generation figure and (B) "high" power consumption figures happen when ships seem to be doing nothing. That explanation is that energy is being stored for later use - whether in on-board batteries, "idling" plasma currents, fissioning helium into deuterium, or being dumped straight into the warp field. The last of that list is my favorite, since it can be used to help reduce some of the highest-power short-term examples to more reasonable levels.

Back to the OP: The Cardassian missile is remarkably tactically clever, and I don't see the Death Star's turrets being able to take it out. I also don't see the Death Star's heavy armor resisting a 100m shielded projectile going full speed into it, and a 45GT explosion in the interior would probably demolish any systems within 10-20 km (much larger than the crater diameter for a similar yield Earth impact; note the Death Star is nowhere near being a solid object) and quite possibly temporarily disable the entire Death Star in spite of most of the DS being physically intact.

The missile would have to have substantially more yield to actually destroy the Death Star outright, barring hitting a key critical system that would explode or cause a chain reaction in the reactor, but the power requirements of warp drive leave room for some ambiguity in its actual total yield under different circumstances. In the episode, it was expected to cause 2 million casualties on impact - perfectly consistent with tens of gigatons.

If we are to approach the matter with a respect for the whole evidence, rather than just the episode, the amount of fuel on the missile would have to affect its yield substantially. The warhead might be as much of a failsafe as anything else, but it may also be that the missile carries little fuel and is expected to collect fuel while traveling at low power mode with a Bussard ramscoop (ramscoop known to exist on the GCS).

[l33telboi]

Oh wait, I see. You mean the energy is stored there, as part of something that helps creating a whole artificial gravity. It's more like a capacitor system.
Well I wonder how this would work without considerable energy loss.

Not quite. I'm talking about running power through a device that creates these fields. The closest real-world analogy would be be electromagnets. Simply storing energy would not explain why they're talking about power.

[Mike DiCenso]

Back to the OP: The Cardassian missile is remarkably tactically clever, and I don't see the Death Star's turrets being able to take it out. I also don't see the Death Star's heavy armor resisting a 100m shielded projectile going full speed into it, and a 45GT explosion in the interior would probably demolish any systems within 10-20 km (much larger than the crater diameter for a similar yield Earth impact; note the Death Star is nowhere near being a solid object) and quite possibly temporarily disable the entire Death Star in spite of most of the DS being physically intact.

The question of damage to the Death Star (I assume we are speaking of the 120 km one, not the 160 km DS2, or the Saxtonian versions of it which are substantially larger) is a complicated issue since we know little of what materials the thing is made of, if it has equivalents to the the Star Trek Structural Integrity Forcefields (SIF). The DS1 was able to survive in relatively close proximity to Alderaan. Even thought the DS1 would have intercepted only a small fraction of the explosion's energy as well as high-velocity debris, it is still a fairly impressive amount. Of course the shields for the Death Star were up at the time, so it it unclear how much damage Dreadnought can actually do, if it can push through them as the Rebel starfighters did. Based on the Slave-I firepower calcs done here and on STvSW.Net, the X-wing firepower cannot be substantially higher than that of a top of the line 20 meter ship. So if nothing else, Dreadnoughts own weapons might be able to punch a hole before impact. This again leads us back to how far the tens of gigaton explosion will propagate beneath the surface and into the structure of the battlestation itself.

The missile would have to have substantially more yield to actually destroy the Death Star outright, barring hitting a key critical system that would explode or cause a chain reaction in the reactor, but the power requirements of warp drive leave room for some ambiguity in its actual total yield under different circumstances. In the episode, it was expected to cause 2 million casualties on impact - perfectly consistent with tens of gigatons.

However we know little of the overall population of the planet, more specifically the Eastern Continent the missile going to hit in to make any kind of determination of total yield. It seemed odd to me that even in a place like Australia, that only 2 million total people seemed to be threatened with extincition is very unsual, unless Rakosa was a colony, or very tightly controlled it's birthrates. The detonation of a tens of gigaton weapon on someplace like the U.S. New England area, specifically New York city or Boston would result in substantially higher total causalities than a mere 2 million.

Interestingly enough, the episode "Dreadnought" does give some indication about photon torpedo strength as Voyager's warp core was indicated as generating more explosive power than all of the ship's Mark VI torpedoes. If an Intrepid class starship's warp core is anything like a Galaxy class starships; that is a low-end estimate based on warp core power explosive yield of 3.8 GT, it would mean that each torpedo at maximum yield would would be around 100 megatons, assuming that Voyager was carrying a full compliment of 38 torpedoes. This is in-line with RSA's 100 MT figure for "Rise". However, given that Voyager had fired off at least four torpedoes in it's attempts to stop Dreadnought, that number will likely be somewhat higher.

If we are to approach the matter with a respect for the whole evidence, rather than just the episode, the amount of fuel on the missile would have to affect its yield substantially. The warhead might be as much of a failsafe as anything else, but it may also be that the missile carries little fuel and is expected to collect fuel while traveling at low power mode with a Bussard ramscoop (ramscoop known to exist on the GCS).

There is nothing in the episode to indicate that the missile required anything like a ramscoop to gather fuel on it's way to a target. Given that Voyager actually had to stop and sit in a deuterium-filled nebula or planet to collect fuel, it makes little sense for Dreadnought to do the same. The missile also was not supposed to operate for as long as it was, so adding in extra hardware above and beyond what the mission called for seems wasteful when extra fuel or a larger, more powerful warp core, or additional weapons and shield generators would make better sense.
-Mike