Not cool, man. It's just a movie.
"...all 72 torpedoes are still in their tubes."
- Thread starter Flying Spaghetti Monster
- Start date
YARN
Fleet Captain
It's not a serious question or even an insult. It is, rather, the classic (literally the primary textbook) example of the "fallacy of many questions." By inserting an unwelcome assumption, there is no way you can provide a direct answer to the question. Crazy Eddie asks me if I am again going to do something which I have not agreed that I have done. I cannot answer his question directly without implicating myself in doing something I deny. It's not a fair question. My response highlights NOT my suspicion of spousal abuse (the question is both preposterous and conventional), but rather the form of the question.
I think you doth protest too much (also a conventional expression, but in this case intended literally).
YARN
Fleet Captain
Well, I guess we should tell textbook writers to remove this example from all those textbooks.
Also, we should note that the modern phrasing of the example is no longer heterosexist (e.g., not asking about "wives," but spouses) or intrinsically tied gendered violence. It's pretty PC as far as examples of fallacies go.
Indeed. Is TNG diminished by scenes in Ten Forward (which is far too big for the Enterprise-D's saucer rim) or every time we see Picard's impossible Ready Room window? Of course not. Did the TNG movies fail when Picard walked into his Ready Room there, which isn't on the exterior model at all?
The old Enterprise didn't have 72 torpedo launchers, this one does. Where is the big deal? Scotty doesn't like the direction Starfleet is taking in ID and resigns. Still not seeing a problem.
Knock it off, both of you. If you cannot carry on a discussion without resorting to taking debate-school pokes at each other, then the thing for you to do is to voluntarily withdraw from the public conversation and take your personal squabble elsewhere.
YARN, you're conducting lectures again, something from which you've been specifically directed on more than one occasion to refrain. That will earn you a warning.
Any and all comments concerning this are to be taken to PM. Discussion of torpedoes, tubes and the like will now be resumed without further interruption. And... go.
If we assume the Enterprise has less than 72 tubes, I wonder how many torpedoes can be loaded into each launch tube?
If there are 5 tubes on each side and 2 in the neck, that's 12. So ... 6?
I suggested a few pages ago that 9 tubes each side, 18 in all, could hold 4 torpedoes each, giving 72.
The screencap posted only a page or two ago which shows Vengeance's scan of the Enterprise shows maybe 18 each side, or 2 torpedoes each.
And the big issue would be how fast they reload rather than the number of tubes.
That doesn't answer the question. You keep making these far-reaching claims about what the audience knows from "cultural memory" or whatever as if to predict how they're most likely to interpret those torpedo tubes. I can't help but wonder if the reason you're getting defensive all of a sudden is because you have no idea what you're talking about.
No, because phase cannons are a 22nd century technology, and even those didn't fire solid projectiles.
Are you going to address the fact that I have just conclusively shown you it is EXTREMELY UNLIKELY the ship actually has 72 torpedoes in the lower weapons bay?
Doubtful. In the case of the smaller launcher, it would make sense if all six of them share a common launch hatch, like the VLS tubes on an Ohio SSGN conversion. The ESSM missiles in the Mk-41 VLS can also be quad packed, four missiles to a tube, which I suspect is what we're seeing in the first film. It's not clear to me if they are a different weapon system customized for short-range engagement (e.g. an additional point defense system) or an adapter that has been fitted to the larger tubes to make the smaller weapons useable.
I prefer the former explanation just because it explains why the two sets look so different, but considering both the shuttlebay and the engine room both undergo cosmetic changes between the two films it is entirely possible they are the same system.
Of course he could. We about as much about the Enterprise's design as Khan does. Probably more, actually, since Khan has never actually SEEN the Enterprise' weapons bay and we have.
OTOH, based on the graphic it's a lot more likely the torpedoes are ether loaded in-line in the tube or queued up right behind it, an arrangement which is strongly implied by the graphic itself.
We've already established that Khan was wrong. The question is, HOW wrong was he?
Well, we saw them being loaded in the first place using this big mechanical cranes, so assuming nothing goes disastrously wrong in the weapons bay, they could probably reload all 18 tubes in thirty to sixty seconds.
I'm actually of the opinion that these tubes are similar to the ones on the TMP Enterprise, which means the tube is really a kind of reinforced airlock with an outer and an inner chamber. The TMP launcher carries at least two torpedoes in each chamber (TSFS and WOK imply as much), so probably the launcher is designed to eject the torpedo and then quickly push the next one into launch position.
Yup, and they wouldn't literally all be fired at once unless there was a very serious emergency that needed 9/18 torpedoes hitting something at once.
So some of the tubes fire, they're reloaded with several other tubes still fully loaded ready to go. Alternating fire from even 9 tubes a side could give sustained fire at a fast enough rate.
72 super torpedoes plus maybe as many from the neck tube is 144 torpedoes overall. Some prime universe ships had 200+ according to some of the tech manuals/books.
So some of the tubes fire, they're reloaded with several other tubes still fully loaded ready to go. Alternating fire from even 9 tubes a side could give sustained fire at a fast enough rate.
72 super torpedoes plus maybe as many from the neck tube is 144 torpedoes overall. Some prime universe ships had 200+ according to some of the tech manuals/books.
Consider that "tube" could equal "magazine." Each magazine holds a number of torpedoes which are fed one after another into a launcher, or "chamber." When one torpedo fires, the next one is automatically loaded, ready to fire.
Not really a difficult concept as far as I'm concerned.
Not really a difficult concept as far as I'm concerned.
Those "tubes" were pretty long, segmented the entire length we could see, and the torpedoes external hatch implies a final loading chamber at the end. So they could have as many torpedoes as necessary parked in the tube behind it.
For all we know fully loaded they could carry 180 of the things, 10 each.
For all we know fully loaded they could carry 180 of the things, 10 each.
I think there are more than 18. Owing to the size of the graphic and how close the launchers are to each other, a bunch of them overlap as they blip onto the screen.
One thing to consider: the Vengeance is similar to the Enterprise in its basic configuration. In order to design her, Khan probably studied existing Federation designs, probably in much greater detail than his prime counterpart. It stands to reason that he was familiar with the Enterprise.
Let's say there are 24 than on each side.
24 + 24 + 2 + 1 = 51
So the Enterprise, a ship not built for war has 51 Torpedo launchers... That's almost twice as many torpedo launchers as the freaking Scimitar. Kind of hard to paint the Vengeance as an evil ship when the Enterprise has more torpedo launchers than all of the previous original Enterprise ships combined.
What was the point? The ship already has a torpedo launcher on the neck and two in the rear and we've seen her fire torpedoes in quick succession. Why can't we simply use what the Enterprise has instead of adding all this other stuff just for the sake of it?
General Order 24.
It is obvious that the TOS version of the ship carried quite a bit of firepower and wasn't a war ship.
Not really seeing an issue with the number of torpedo launchers.
So did the TNG Enterprise - take a look at all the firepower it unloads in "Best of Both Worlds", yet they're a ship of peaceful exploration in the most PC Trek of them all.
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