Why didn't they use that array on Mars

[Gingerbread Demon]

In season 4 we learnt that there was some kind of array on Mars that could have been used as a weapon. Was that around when the Xindi were trying to destroy Earth at the end of season 3?

I'm wondering why no one considered aiming that thing towards Earth to see if it could have done some damage? I mean at that point anything was worth a try.

 

[Tenacity]

Mars and Earth are separated by anywhere from 3 light minutes and 22 light minutes, depending on where they are in their orbits. 22 minutes is no real problem when shooting at a big target like a planet give you know exactly where it's going to be years in advance.

Shooting at something several hundred feet across that suddenly appears out of nowhere is considerably harder.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Mars and Earth are separated by anywhere from 3 light minutes and 22 light minutes, depending on where they are in their orbits. 22 minutes is no real problem when shooting at a big target like a planet give you know exactly where it's going to be years in advance.

Shooting at something several hundred feet across that suddenly appears out of nowhere is considerably harder.

Wasn't the array part of a mobile mining thing? They could have lifted off and flown it? I seem to remember something big in season 4 that was mobile, and built by humans.

 

[Timo]

Paxton's mining rig was mobile, and indeed warp-mobile. We didn't learn whether this was supposed to be exceptional or expected - but Nero's mining rig a couple of hundred years later followed the pattern, so...

In contrast, the array at Mars wasn't indicated to be mobile.

"Built by humans"... Now there's an angle I never considered! Nothing was said about the origin of the device, but perhaps it was of alien make, explaining its ability to do more than most human weapons of the time? The purpose of the array was to facilitate terraforming Mars, a distinctly human project and one apparently initiated early on, but it may have been possible only through the purchasing of alien hardware. After all, it's supposed to be a giant tractor beam of sorts, and humans at the time explicitly didn't know how to build tractor beams for starships.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Paxton's mining rig was mobile, and indeed warp-mobile. We didn't learn whether this was supposed to be exceptional or expected - but Nero's mining rig a couple of hundred years later followed the pattern, so...

In contrast, the array at Mars wasn't indicated to be mobile.

"Built by humans"... Now there's an angle I never considered! Nothing was said about the origin of the device, but perhaps it was of alien make, explaining its ability to do more than most human weapons of the time? The purpose of the array was to facilitate terraforming Mars, a distinctly human project and one apparently initiated early on, but it may have been possible only through the purchasing of alien hardware. After all, it's supposed to be a giant tractor beam of sorts, and humans at the time explicitly didn't know how to build tractor beams for starships.

Timo Saloniemi

OK I didn't know that..... But now got an excuse to watch season 4 again...

I just thought of that array being used on the Xindi ship that the reptilians were on. But I thought about this more and range would have been the killer, Earth was too far out of the machines range I think.

 

[Timo]

The episode ignores any timelag, showing the beam emerging from the array at Mars, a cut to Archer saying a few words, and the beam impacting the Moon. This might be taken to indicate that the beam is actually FTL (despite it "really" being slow enough that we see it move!). If so, it might be used for sniping at Death Star type targets that pop up on Earth orbit. Although odds are that the Xindi weapon would either be on the wrong side of the planet altogether - or then on the Mars-facing side but with a big risk of devastating the surface at least as badly as in the earlier Xindi attack if the beam misses!

Then again, the cut to Archer could be several minutes long; it's not as if anything he (or anybody else) said or did would alter anything. So if we want to believe that the beam is lightspeed or slower, we can do that easily enough.

It's a bit similar to ST:Generations, where Soran's starkiller missile appears to turn the local star to cinder immediately at impact, even though the "wave of darkness" from the star ought to take at least five minutes to reach Picard's eyes. We can assume that five minutes did pass, because there's nothing the panting old man could have done in the meantime, and no reason to expect him to have moved from where he stood.

FWIW, Earth and Mars are going to be almost at their closest in late January, 2155. Which makes matters easy - but OTOH means that the beam should not be shown coming from the lit side of Earth/Moon. It should come slightly from the direction of darkness, even if at a very shallow angle.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[F. King Daniel]

The writers hadn't come up with it, yet.

 

[Captain Rob]

Enterprise took a direct hit from that thing and survived with minor damage. I would think the Xindi would fair better.

 

[Idran]

Wasn't the array part of a mobile mining thing?

In contrast, the array at Mars wasn't indicated to be mobile.

It also wasn't a mining thing, for a minor correction. It was meant to redirect comets from the Oort cloud to Mars' north pole for long-term terraforming. They didn't explain why, but it was probably the pretty standard "cause outgassing through directed energy to adjust orbital trajectory" concept, akin to asteroid redirection plans today. Does mean that it's got the range, strength, accuracy, and beam coherence to hit a comet from that far away in such a manner as to predictably change its trajectory, though, by whatever means it does so if not that.

According to that article, it was supposed to be FTL too; that's explicitly why they had it use verterons instead of just being a laser beam.

So yeah, the real answer is probably a combination of @King Daniel Beyond's and @Captain Rob's.

 

[Timo]

To nitpick, the comet they use for covering their raid against the array is stated to have been diverted "by the array eight years ago". While the verteron beam might be FTL, the comets clearly aren't, so the diverting is something they do to comets that are much closer than Oort. So the range might not be all that impressive - and the effect at range even less so. Across three light-minutes, the beam can create an impressively large new crater on the Moon. Against a comet eight years away, the nudge might be minuscule.

And the main purpose would be to eventually guide the comets to a controlled impact with the polar caps of Mars, a short range job. In the episode, there are 14 comets on an impact course with Mars, but not on a course to a controlled polar cap impact, and at least one of those not yet adjusted comets is 30 months away. The plot-specific comet was already on a controlled trajectory, since it got no further blasts from the array and yet hit its target. It was just a hair's breadth from Mars, so we got no good maximum data on the range at which the second adjustment takes place. All we can say is that it must happen no sooner than 30 months before impact, but no later than a day or so before impact.

Pluck in your preferred value for cometary speed and you get the range at which comets can be diverted. I doubt it would be in good agreement with the ability to move significant amounts of moondust across three lightminutes - but then again, Paxton may have fiddled with the power settings, the standard cometary setting being nowhere near max.

Timo Saloniemi