Exactly, a planet like Earth has SOO many resources, there's literally no reason to put in a primary reactor on ODP (Orbital Defense Platforms). Every Satellite based Orbital Defense Platform should only have a Mini Fusion Reactor and lots of batteries & Ultra Capacitors to quickly generate the energy needed to turn on shields or fire beam weapons. The Mini Fusion Reactor is really only to operate the Computers, the basic Satellite Orbital manuevering & station keeping. Any excess energy comes from Solar Panels & Planetary Energy re-charge to the various ODP satellites in space that makes up the Planetary Shield Grid. And the Planetary Shield Grid shouldn't just be a single layer. You have SOO much Air-Space above the ground, you should have at least 16x layers on various altitude planes to park a entire network.
So, like Hoth, has a defense shield that can withstand any bombardment. Which it should be. as @KamenRiderBlade said, sourced from the planet. Though, I don't know if there would be any A/Am reactors on the ground. That crap is dangerous!! I would have the Station on one side, and the Moon on the other.. I'd arm the moon with a crap ton of weapons. You want to come attack Earth, You better come correct..
Fortunately, Sulu is the one who said "200 years" so we can include some slop, and it may be more like 160-170 years and the skirmishes can take place in the early 22nd Century. The Kzinti seemed pretty weak, so we presumably even the fledgling human space power was capable of defeating them.
M/A-M reactors only really become dangerous when you have enemies "Shoot At It" or mess with it. Under normal operations, it's usually fine. That's true with most reactors. Don't shoot at the bloody thing and protect it properly. If it was me, both the Planet and all it's moons would have shields. You don't want somebody to do something silly like knock a moons orbit off it's axis and send it crashing down to the planet. Somebody with genocidal intent would do something like that, so all Planetoids & Stars of significant mass should be defended with a form of Planetary Shields and/or monitored with a Orbital Defense Network grid to make sure nobody does anything funny. It was bad enough that the changeling pretending to be Julian Bashir was willing to artificially detonate the Sun in the Bajor System by making it go Super Nova before it's natural end of life-cycle. If he succeeded, the amount of lives / planets / resources lost would make the devastation from WW2 look like a terrorist attack. At every single major Lagrange Point, I would put some form of StarBase. Spoiler: Lagrange Points In my Head Cannon, every single Lagrange Point of use, be it: - Star-Planet L(1-5) - Planet-Moon L(1-5) All have some form of StarBase there to defend it or do some important work besides being a Manufacturing/Repair station for StarShips. What type of StarBase each system gets is dependent on how important each system is and how many residents reside over each planet. Every major Astronomical object within each Star System is precious, it must be protected IMO.
I always took "planetary defense grid" or "protection grid" to refer to a system of orbiting satellites that are designed to launch torpedoes and fire phasers against attacking ships that enter planetary orbit. Agreed. And the capital planet of every Federation Member State should probably have a Sol Station-sized starbase in orbit, to maintain planetary security. Yeah, I don't think matter/anti-matter reactors should be on planetary surfaces.
@KamenRiderBlade Forgot about the Sun thing.. Surprised the Borg didn't just collapse the sun, even a significant solar Flare would burn it down. Once a civilization can distable stars, its game over. you really can't protect yourself from that. Read a book, had that exact thing happen, Human worlds were overrun with aliens, no chance of getting them off the planet, so the humans invented nova bombs.. boom.. aliens gone..
Having Earth supply the power to the shields nicely explains how Spacedock was able to take so much punishment before shields went down. It's just with that much bombardment even planetary power was eventually overwhelmed.
So did I, and not just one layer, there can be multiple layers stacked on top of each other at different altitudes. Only one? You should have many orbiting the Star System, fully manned. How many times in the 24th century ALONE, has Earth been threatened with imminent doom? Threats from inside and outside: 1) 2364 Parasitic Bugs try to take over StarFleet upper brass 2) 2367 Battle of Wolf 359 dealt a tremendously lopsided loss to StarFleet, waking them up that StarFleet ISN'T PREPARED for the worst case scenario. 39/40 Ships Destroyed (97.5% Ship Loss Rate) in one battle. 11,000 StarFleet officers killed or assimilated. We only got by because of William Riker & his crew got lucky and found the "Sleep Command" and triggered it with the help of a semi-resisting Assimilated Locutus (Captain JLP). This was a CRITICAL MOMENT in StarFleet history. 3) 2372 The Founders start the Dominion War by infiltrating the Klingon High Council and having them fight the Cardassians to the point that the Cardassians get beaten down so hard that they willingly join "The Dominion", which eventually leads to the very bloody Dominion War which ends in 2375. 4) 2373 Battle of Sector 001 - Borg tries to conquer Earth AGAIN, but has a backup plan to Time-Travel into the past should Plan-A fail, which it does, thanks to the USS Enterprise-E rallying the Federation Task Force. "At least 20 ships" were destroyed out of "At least 30 ships", those aren't good survival odds for the Federation Task Force for the price of 1x Borg Cube. - 2378 Voyager Returns and thanks to Future Admiral Janeway, a critical blow is dealt to "The Borg" thanks to the Neurolytic Pathogen. 5) 2379 Praetor Shinzon threatens to genocide earth by using a banned Thaloron Weapon on Earth. Luckily the USS Enterprise-E and 2x Valdore type Warbirds stop the Scimitar from accomplishing its goals and potentially starting another war and killing everybody on Earth. 6) 2385 Rogue Synths launch an attack on Utopia Planitia, Fleet Yards. Setting Mars Ablaze. UFP bans Synths and abandons it's rescue efforts for the Romulus System and the impending SuperNova. Commodore Oh was in a position to risk critical damage to StarFleet/Earth. The fact that she only cared about her role to exterminate Synthetic Life isn't comforting considering that StarFleet's highest level of security was infiltrated and we got lucky that nothing worse happened. - 2399 Commodore Oh was discovered to be a Tal-Shiar / Zhat Vash Double-Agent Mole infiltrating the StarFleet and becomes the Director of Security. Her Zhat Vash faction is directly responsible for the Synth attaack on Utopia Planetia on Mars. This infiltration of the highest order will have ripples across StarFleet security. 92,143 dead on Mars. The Romulan Armada is halted and countless millions dies because of the Zhat Vash's action in it's belief that it needs to exterminate Synthetic Life at all costs, including risking the millions of lives of their own Romulan people and dooming them to death. At least 6x major incidents in the latter half of the 24th century alone. Not counting anything that happened in the earlier half of the 24th century that we don't know about. And the Early 25th century had the Borg taking over StarFleet through subtle assimilation plot. One that got "BARELY" averted. The borg also opened up a giant TransWarp Conduit that could've been a "Galactic Event" if Borg Queen Jurati wasn't there to stop it. We got VERY lucky that Admiral JLP was there to help negotiate that critical moment. So that makes 8x major incidents in a relatively short 50 year-ish time span starting from the later half of 2360's. That's alot of potentially "World Ending" or "Galactic Effecting" events. If you design them correctly, it should be fine. IMO. What you don't want is a AQS (Artificial Quantum Singularity) reactor. If that goes run-away, you have a Black-Hole on your planet with ALOT of matter to feed it. That makes the M/A-M reactor look easy to tame in comparison. The M/A-M reactor just needs it's A-M stream shut-off to prevent the reactor from going Nuclear. There are enough safety systems that can be designed to force shut-off manually or automatically the feed in the M/A-M reactor chamber. That's why you need to protect your local Stars from getting messed with, even the Stars in adjacent and nearby StarSystems need protection due to how wide of a disaster a SuperNova could affect your Star System. Yes you can, protect yourself by having Orbital Defense Systems stationed around each star along with a Starbase and reaction force. The Changeling Bashir was easily stopped by people who were paying attention and chasing him down. It's not impossible, just requires eternal vigilence. That's the price you pay from bad actors that are willing to go that far. That sounds like a bomb designed to target non-human species, very speciest of humanity to pull such a action. Depends on how much power you're providing to your Planetary Shield Grid. Earth looks like it only has a single layer. It doesn't look like it has multiple layers or redundant reactors.
This is a great and comprehensive argument for the fact that up until S3 of PIC they were relying on nothing but the Mars Defense Perimeter.
matter-antimatter reactors are a great compact energy source for starships, but it still takes energy to create the antimatter in the first place. On a planet where space is more abundant just build a giant fusion reactor (or twelve) and off ya go!
The Mars Defense Perimeter is a joke. Remember, the same lone Borg Cube swatted them down like Brock Lesnar swatting most people down.
It's a joke because a civilization hundreds of years more advanced than the Federation defeated it? Y'know, something can be extremely good at what it's designed to do (say, defend against the Klingons, Romulans, and Cardassians) and extremely bad at what it's not designed to do (defend against an advanced alien race no one knew existed two years before), without being a joke.
Each one of those Mars Perimeter Defense drones were "1-Shot, 1-Kill" by the Borg cube. Spoiler: Borg Cube vs Mars Perimeter Defense They didn't even noticeably slow down the cube. So as far as a "Defense Perimeter", it's a joke. It's literally the same as many of "Brock's Matches". Spoiler: Brock Lesnar winning World Title in 10 secs off of Kofi Kingston. Literally, the definition of a "Squash Match".
No, it's a system being asked to do something it was not designed to do. That doesn't mean it's a joke; it means the Borg were so much more powerful than the Federation in 2366-2367 that absolutely no defense system was adequate to defeating them.
There in lies the problem, they weren't anywhere near ready for defending themselves. Even with swarm tactics that peck at the enemy at distance or Kamikaze attacks, none of that was tried. Just send 3x ships, and boom, Mars Perimeter is gone.
And there was never any possibility of them being ready for the Borg. You might as well ask the ancient Romans to defend against a modern industrial army. The Roman legions were no joke -- they were enormously effective at defeating the enemies they were designed to defeat. But the technological difference is insurmountable. How do we know that? We only saw a small snippet of the action.
Reminds me of a joke made about a Voyager episode. "Harry, whip up a counter to a technology you didn't know existed before lunch and have ready for me by 1800 hours. I'll be in my office picking out chair swatches."
Coruscant from that other Star franchise feels a lot safer considering there was only the CIS invasion in Episode 3, although it would've been a goner in Episode 7 if they hadn't moved the Republic capital to Hosnian Prime. Legends Coruscant on the other hand especially with the Vong war gives Trek Earth a run for its money in danger zones.