Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Quick Estimation of Photon Torpedo Max power

Since my last post caused some controversy about how powerful Federation weapons are, and photon torpedoes in particular, I thought I'd take a few minutes while I have a bit of a break to take a rough estimate of the power that photon torpedoes have.

This will be an upper bound estimate. I am going to use "Pegasus" to determine this yield because, really, it's quick and straight-forward, and I'm going to use some loose parameters, but I should be on the proper order of magnitude here, and that's what I'm looking for.

Start with the 5km wide asteroid. Yes, I know it is not solid, but this will overestimate the yield of a photorp. That gives a volume of 6.4*10^10 m^3 of nickel-iron. Assuming iron's density of 7.874 g/cm^3, this yields 5.1*10^14 kg of material.

Now, I'm interested in the gravitational binding energy. This is the minimum energy necessary to blow this mass apart. Now, I do know that in an actual destruction, it won't be scattered to infinity, and I'm also neglecting to include the mass that may be vaporized or melted in the process. Again, I don't think that this will be a terribly large difference, but if you want to go through the time and effort to prove me wrong, go ahead. Please show your work!

This energy is 3GM^2/5r--G being the gravitational constant (6.67*10^-11 m^3/(kg*seconds^2), M being the mass in KG, and r being the radius in meters. So, quick calculation: 4.25*10^15 joules. Sounds like a lot? Well, a kiloton of TNT is 4.184*10^12 Joules. The gravitational potential energy of that asteroid? 1 megaton. And it's supposed to take 250 warheads to take it out? That's pretty weak.

Well, suppose that I melt the thing instead. Melting point is 1811 k, and the heat of fusion is 13.8kJ/mole and the heat capacity is 25.1J/mole. Iron has an atomic weight of 55.845g/mole. So we have 9.22*10^15 mole of iron. Space is pretty close to 0K, so I'm going to use a temperature difference of 1800K for this calculation. This yield 5.44*10^20 joules of energy, or about 100 gigatons of energy.

If it took 250 torpedoes to do this (the payload of the Enterprise), then we have 400 megatons of explosive yield per torpedo. That's much better. However, this is probably a gross overestimate. The asteroid would be blown apart far earlier than this--the gravitational potential energy is much lower, so it is not unreasonable to believe that huge sections would be blown off with each torpedo.

Of course, there is a third possibility: that Riker is just a moron, and it would take far less than 250 photorps to destroy it. It wouldn't take 250 modern nukes to blow that thing to dust.

I'll let you all draw your own conclusions.

(Edited because I erred greatly--I used the heat of vaporization instead of the heat of fusion!  That's a huge energy difference.)

Sunday, October 9, 2011

An analysis of the Federation vs the Galactic Empire

I will begin this by saying, simply, that while I do enjoy both Trek and Star Wars, I am by no means a great expert in either. I certainly am more familiar with Star Wars, and I will admit that I am slightly biased towards it. So, if I make errors here, please feel free to correct me.


I'm going to start with describing the Federation. My fist assessment of them is, basically, semi-inept scientists put into a conflict scenario. Why do I say semi-inept. Well, they can treknobabble their way out of some situations, I'll admit, and they do have some truly innovate and exceptionally talented crewmembers. I cannot possibly deny that. However, all that said, they have a very civilian mentality towards, well, everything.


First, let's take a look at their flagship, the Enterprise. It's filled with non-combatants and children. That second part is kind of key. Also, no one has small rooms that you'd see in a combat vessel, or even anything other than a luxury liner. Honestly, those rooms that everyone has are absolutely gigantic. For a place where space must be at a premium, they certainly did not skimp with their quarters. I'm sure they have great food recycling programs (i.e. poop to food via replicator tech), because they simply have to. No room for anything, really. It's a very civilian operation, which is alright if their missions were not frequently "Run here, deal with this crisis where people will be shooting at your ship and may be able to take it out." As you can imagine, this is not exactly responsible behavior. Even if it was just an exploration vessel, that's still very risky--a few hundred families bite it if that ship goes out, and given that they often go into unexplored territory with ancient dangers and hazards, it's all but inevitable that there is a massive loss of civilian life on that ship.


Now, let's look at their security/internal weapon systems. They use phasers. To be honest, this is a bad, bad policy. Why? Well, for one, they don't seem to have consistent effects on various types of materials. Sometimes, on some settings, they do well, other times, they are barely effective. They have a small power plant, which means if they increase power to do more damage against a target, they have fewer shots. It has to be limited power supply, because their overloads are about as effective as a modern hand grenade (give or take). Also, they're not exactly the most well-designed weapon. It's not shaped like a pistol, and it takes that function. Pistols have their grip and design for a reason, and it's not looks. It is function. It fits the hand, it's easy to aim, and it's easy to maintain ease of firing. The phaser has none of that. It fits the hand badly, and has no real way to aim well. If you watch the firefights, and have any actual experience in any armed service, you'd see that any squad with any actual combat tactics would clean them up in no time at all.


While I'm on the phasers, I have another beef: why don't they have shotguns for shipboard security? A good, honest, 10-gauge shotgun with shot or slug. It would do wonders for shipboard defense against the Borg, or any boarding action, really. Any security situation, a shotgun would do well in. Even if they didn't want to kill someone, non-lethal rounds could be used. Even if we hadn't developed them in 1989, I don't see why they couldn't have imagined them for the show. Combine replicator/transport tech into their chambers, and you never have to reload and can switch out rounds on the fly. Seems reasonable enough.


Since I just mentioned it, their transportation tech is sorely underused from a tactical perspective. We know that it is quite possible to duplicate people with it, each with the same memories and skillsets of the original. Given how it's supposed to work, this is, to be honest, quite feasible. So why is it that there isn't a dedicated squad of assault troops, volunteers all, who transport clone into combat in shipboard actions, wreak all kinds of havoc with targeted sabotage in enemy ships, even to the point of critical overload of reactors? You'd have no net losses of your own, and your enemies would suffer catastrophic losses. The Borg don't do this, the Klingon don't, no one does. But it is quite highly possible to do so. I could understand ethical limitations on this (creating clones to die, but that's pretty much what a two-way transport via transporter is anyhow), but Klingons certainly don't have that kind of limitation.


Even if the idea of using it to replicate assault troops for boarding actions is repugnant, it could be used for highly ethical purposes. Just keep a log of people who transport down on away teams. Hey, look, Tasha Yar isn't dead any more. Data is a unique resource, and they want to make more. There are ethical concerns with taking him apart to do so, but Data seems to have no objections to a replication via transport. That would either enable research into creating more sentient AIs or it could simply negate the need for such research--every ship could have an android to serve as officer. But that aspect is never used. It's kind of baffling, really.


Another baffling thing is their use of the holodeck. It seems that, every so often, it goes horribly wrong, and nearly destroys the ship somehow. So the first question is "If it does this every so often, why do they let people use it at all?" The second question is "Why haven't they weaponized this at all--Picard was willing to to take out some Borg once, so why isn't this standard practice?" The third question is, "Why isn't this extremely powerful training tool used heavily for training of various types of espionage and combat missions?" Think about it--you can have a fully realistic combat experience, minus actual death of personnel, whenever you needed it. One would think that there would be at least a team of agents who used it routinely for such things, given the number of problems that the Enterprise deals with.


All in all, they seem to be, basically, civilians who are only half-heartedly transitioning into a military position. And, to be fair, that fits their supposed character--explorers and scientists, exploring a galaxy that is still new to them. They're still learning from everything, all the time. And their domestic problems are largely settled, I'd imagine--they have replicators and holodecks, so it's hard to imagine anyone would truly lack a basic necessity. And those things can't be that expensive, since they are apparently in every crewmember's luxurious cabin, no matter their rank. If they were, then the Federation would be, well, bordering on corrupt military dictatorship, and I want to give them the benefit of the doubt there.


They are quite successful, however, and there is a great reason for this: their enemies are utterly incompetent morons. The Borg, for instance, have a time machine. They want to beat the humans. So they use it to go back to a few days before the launch of the first warp drive, which would be noticed by the Vulcans and then they'd be integrated into galactic society. That plan is moronic. They have a time machine. There is a much better time to hit earth, hard, and irrecoverably--it's called "before the pyramids were built." Seriously, there would be little to no resistance when they show up literally from nowhere and proclaim themselves now in charge of Earth. Most such peoples would worship them and gladly let themselves be assimilated. Problem completely solved. No pesky humans, and a planet that has had no real mineral or environmental exploitation is now in their grasp. Simple. But they can't do this, at all. They had the imagination to use a time machine, but why give the humans even the slightest chance to succeed? Heck, here's a more salient question: Why did they go to Earth, then use the time machine? They could have used the time machine, then gone to Earth, thus avoiding the huge Federation fleet that damaged and nearly prevented their whole operation. Something just seems off here.


And the Klingon! Strength and honor, but sneak attacks via cloaking tech are okay. Sure, I get that. Ambush is legitimate, and I have no gripes with that. But I do have gripes with them using the bat'leth. That's not exactly a practical weapon for a humanoid (please note the lack of weapons like that in human history, and realize that it's for a good reason). Okay, it's a sacred thing. But why use it at all? They're supposed to be hard-core, but they just seem to be, well, kinda bad at combat. Despite near total militarization, they never really seem to be able to get anywhere.


The Romulans? Sorry, but they have battleships, actual battleships, that can cloak, but they can barely make headway either. They supposedly have this great covert ops program, but they never seem to be able to get even a small raiding fleet anywhere deep into anyone's territory. They get caught in pretty small nets. Look, space is big. Really, really, really big. Our nearest neighbor? 4 light years away. Given warp-drive technology, they could take a non-direct route, and totally avoid almost any picket. Instead of the perimeter of a circle to defend, the Federation and Klingon Empire have a sphere to defend. That area goes up dramatically, and there simply is no way to practically defend it. A raiding fleet could do immense damage, and could force an opponent into guarding certain lanes heavily, and hanging around their outposts exclusively. This is a classic guerrilla campaign. But they can't seem to be able to do this. Yes, their infiltration was caught by an innovative technique, but the point is that they shouldn't have even been at risk of that in the first place.


So the Federation's enemies seem to be, more or less, pretty much worthless, which is why the Federation is still viable--their foes are just less competent than they are.


Now, how about the Empire? The Empire has one truly glaring weakness, and it's called "The Emperor." Really, that man just doesn't understand how a trap works. He uses himself as bait, and actually shows up. Then he has his whole fleet of capital ships not fire at the enemy fleet so he can have some fun. Even if the rebels never took down the shield, that still cost him quite dearly because rather than quickly and utterly annihilating the Rebel fleet, he loses many valuable capital ships--including the Executor. So, that's a big drawback.


But, tech-wise, it's clear that they are better off, from a military standpoint. They have actual rifle-gripped weapons, and that makes a difference in boarding actions. Or ground combat. They have all sorts of ground combat weapons, and they're really good with them. My previous bit on Stormtroopers should attest to that.


Now, they do lack transporter tech, but that may be for religious/ethical/practical reasons. It's not a great combat maneuver, really, given that large ships tend to have large crews and the transport limit is pretty small. Given that thick armor makes good scans harder, it would be all but impractical in their ships. Plus, you are sort of killing yourself and hoping your clone does well. So there may be an ethical or religious consideration there.


But their ships are larger, pack more firepower, and have larger crews. Their crews are military, and do seem to have combat tactics down. Their engagements occur at longer distances than is typical in Trek (maybe a few dozen km or so in Trek vs a few hundred km as point blank in Star Wars). They use fighters as screens and for various other supporting roles. They clearly are a militaristic group, and are good at it.


Before anyone mentions Ewoks, let me point this out: The Ewoks joining, at all, was literal divine intervention. Imperial scouts certainly noted their xenophobia, and counted on the rebels being unable to effectively join with them, which would serve as a good secondary threat to taking out any incursion force. If Threepio hadn't happened to look just like a God to them, then it would have been game over for the Rebels. They'd not have been able to count on them in any fight.


But, even barring that, it's not fair to say "LOL stormtroopers get taken out by teddy bears! HAHAH DERP!" because, really, that's not exactly what happened. Outside of mechanical traps vs the AT-STs, they were of very limited direct effectiveness against the Stormtroopers. Their primary use was surprise against an already engaged foe. That's pretty huge, even against disciplined elite. It creates a new front to fight against, and it distracts them quite dramatically. Their attacks against the Stormtroopers show this--mostly, they drive them from cover, or ruin its effectiveness, and that really is a huge factor in any legitimate firefight.


Overall, the Empire has an extreme advantage, in sheer combat ability and experience. But, let's consider this thematically. Star Trek is about moral dilemmas that an exploring population faces. That is the core theme here. Star Wars? That's about massive conflict, across the galaxy. And since moral certainty is part of this, then ethical considerations don't appear. In a conflict mode, the Empire would probably win, all things equal.


This is in no way to say that the Trek isn't fun, or worthwhile, but I am saying that, in the end, a war would see the Federation probably losing.