Batmobile Armor in Destiny

[Kemaiku]

Besides, even before the Borg were able to adapt they had dealt enough damage to Voyagers armour to take an entire region of the armour down to 40%, as to what that even means (40% remaining mass of the plates, remaining material in storage for that section, energy in the buffers or whatever) means that Borg weapon systems were already powerful enough to reduce it to being no more than a flimsy temporary shell already. Enough shots, the armour would have simply failed in that section, the Borg fire everything they have into the gap, the secondary explosions are *encased* in the armour amplifying them and incinerating the ship inside.

 

[Elemental]

I find it hard to believe that whoever designed the armor in the future would not have accounted for a heating problem.

That's like saying "I find it hard to believe that whoever invented the blindfold would not have accounted for the visibility problem." We're talking about fundamental laws of physics here. A ship generates heat and needs to radiate that heat into space. If the armor completely encases the ship, it covers the heat radiator surfaces and therefore traps that heat.

Not to mention the multiple other problems that make the armor unfeasible, like the energy drain, the loss of maneuverability, and the secondary radiation cascades that would actually amplify the danger to the crew rather than protecting them. Also, a thick, rigid shell would absorb all the kinetic and thermal energy of an impact and transmit it to the ship inside, maximizing rather than minimizing the damage. It's the worst possible kind of armor to use against weapons at the energy levels you're dealing with in a sci-fi space battle.

Bottom line, the Batmobile armor was a stupid idea that made no physical or practical sense and was only done for the sake of a (supposedly) cool special effect. It has no practical value.

Not really much of a comparison since that is the purpose the blindfold would be used for whereas preventing the transmission of desired heat would be a side effect of the armor (assuming it would actually even do this)... Trying to apply physics to say the armor could never work effectively simply because it would prevent heat loss is neglecting the extremely liberal take Star Trek tech already takes on science. If you define that to be the reason why it won't be used in Trek lit that's your prerogative, but to say it's a preposterous idea altogether isn't fair because we could come up with just as many scientific sounding reasons why it does work as for why it doesn't. It's fictional technology, we can say about it whatever we want. I have a hard time believing that Federation ships are so energy inefficient that they're spilling heat out of every pannel. Don't you think it would be better insulated than that?

I don't see too much dispute going on lately about how come we're hearing sound in space or how nicely lit all the ships are in space, even the ones with no external lighting.

 

[LutherSloan]

If all those problems with the armor are true, shouldn't Voyager's crew have all been killed? I thought I remember the ship taking a lot of Borg attack hits.

 

[Elemental]

Yes, I don't recall hearing any concern about heat trapping from them.

 

[captcalhoun]

probably because the writers just thought OMG, THAT'S SO F***IN COOL!!!!!1111! and didn't think anything of the science. c'mon, it was written by Mr. Warp-10-turns-you-into-a-freakin'-newt.

 

[DonIago]

^To be fair though, it could just as easily be argued that it wasn't brought up as a concern because the crew analyzed the armor and knew that due to its (insert technobabble here) heat trapping wouldn't _be_ a concern.

 

[Christopher]

Trying to apply physics to say the armor could never work effectively simply because it would prevent heat loss is neglecting the extremely liberal take Star Trek tech already takes on science. If you define that to be the reason why it won't be used in Trek lit that's your prerogative, but to say it's a preposterous idea altogether isn't fair because we could come up with just as many scientific sounding reasons why it does work as for why it doesn't.

But why would you want it to be reused? What possible value does it have in story terms? It was a silly gimmick. It's not desirable to reuse it, and I'm simply offering a justification for ignoring it.

It's fictional technology, we can say about it whatever we want. I have a hard time believing that Federation ships are so energy inefficient that they're spilling heat out of every pannel. Don't you think it would be better insulated than that?

You're getting it completely backwards. In a spaceship, you don't want to keep the heat in. The problem is that it's hard to get rid of it. Contrary to popular belief, it's hard to lose heat in space, because vacuum is a superb insulator. (Ever used a thermos bottle?) In atmosphere or in the ocean, when your vehicle's engine and the bodies of its occupants generate waste heat, that heat is carried away through the surrounding medium by conduction and convection. That keeps your vehicle from overheating, and if the heat loss is too great, you may need to insulate against it. But in a spaceship surrounded by vacuum, there's no conduction or convection -- only radiation, the least efficient method of heat transfer. Just by being in space, you're ideally insulated -- too much so, in fact. Your engine and your computer and your crew's bodies are still producing just as much heat -- and an engine as powerful as a starship's is going to produce far more waste heat than the engine of an aircraft or seagoing vessel. And if you can't get rid of that heat, if you can't radiate it into space, then your crew will be cooked to death.

This is why real astronauts' spacesuits are designed with cooling systems, not heating systems. This is why the Space Shuttle always orbits with its cargo doors open -- because the inner surfaces of the doors are heat radiators. If it orbited with the doors closed, the crew would be cooked to death within days.

If you've played the computer game Mass Effect, it makes good use of this idea. It's something that comes up often in hard SF involving spaceship combat. Ships need large radiator surfaces to maintain a safe internal temperature, especially if they're engaged in combat and using powerful weapons that would inevitably produce huge amounts of waste heat. But those radiators are vulnerable, while conversely armor would make it harder to lose heat. So ships in combat have to strike a balance between the protection of armor and the danger of overheating, and that limits the duration of a space battle. It's a major part of how combat works in the Mass Effect game, and it's impressive to see that they put so much care into the science of it, especially given that most mass-media SF totally ignores the heat-radiation issue.

I don't see too much dispute going on lately about how come we're hearing sound in space or how nicely lit all the ships are in space, even the ones with no external lighting.

Those are easy to dismiss as matters of presentation that aren't part of what's "really" happening in-universe. After all, when there's background music playing in a scene, we don't assume the characters are really hearing it, and when the same character is recast with a different actor, we don't assume their appearance actually changed. So visuals and sounds can be treated as figurative. But the armor is an actual plot point, mentioned in dialogue.

 

[Trent Roman]

It's a bit of future tech, which means it can do pretty much whatever the plot requires it to. Problems with heat radiation? Why, little lady, this futuristic alloy is designed especially to be porous to heat in one direction, while providing maximal protection from without. Like a two-way mirror for heat... and then something bad happens.

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

[Kemaiku]

Which doesn't solve the two main problems of A) The Borg were able to beat the crap out of it *before* they adapted to it...five minutes later rendering it utterly useless against them and B) If conventional weapons fire can damage it so badly then something like the Scimitar would rip through it, peeling it off like scales off a fish. Its useless and looks ridiculous.

 

[Trent Roman]

Borg weapons are advanced enough to beat the crap out of anything. Do we not remember how a cube cut through the Enterprise like it was a sardine can, making mockery of its shields? How another cube ripped through the assembled fleet at Wolf 359 with nary a pause? The purpose of the armor was to allow a small ship like Voyager to run the gauntlet of the transwarp hub's defenders without getting atomized within seconds of the engagement. It's not a permanent defence to anything; rather, it lasted as long as it needed to.

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

[Christopher]

^But we know that in the Trek Lit continuity, the "Endgame" armor has not been adopted by Starfleet vessels in the three years since Voyager's return. So there's no point in concocting some rationalization for how it could be usable when what we need is the exact opposite, an explanation for why Starfleet (not to mention every other power in the galaxy, including those thousands of years more advanced than Starfleet) doesn't use it. And the most convenient explanation is the one real physics already provides: that it simply isn't practical and would actually do more harm than good.

 

[Cyke101]

Yes, I don't recall hearing any concern about heat trapping from them.

It's been a while since I've seen that episode as well, but IIRC, Voyager wasn't encased in the armor for significantly long amounts of time, either.

But being in a prolonged battle, say in a major Dominion engagement, with the armor up? That'll probably be a bad thing for our heroes.

 

[Elemental]

Trying to apply physics to say the armor could never work effectively simply because it would prevent heat loss is neglecting the extremely liberal take Star Trek tech already takes on science. If you define that to be the reason why it won't be used in Trek lit that's your prerogative, but to say it's a preposterous idea altogether isn't fair because we could come up with just as many scientific sounding reasons why it does work as for why it doesn't.

But why would you want it to be reused? What possible value does it have in story terms? It was a silly gimmick. It's not desirable to reuse it, and I'm simply offering a justification for ignoring it.

I'm not trying to say I want it reused (other than perhaps acknowledging it providing some form of advancement in knowledge due to it being from the future). I agree that it is a gimmick but I thought you were trying to say it wasn't being used strictly because of this reason rather than creating a reason for why it isn't going to be used.

It's fictional technology, we can say about it whatever we want. I have a hard time believing that Federation ships are so energy inefficient that they're spilling heat out of every pannel. Don't you think it would be better insulated than that?

You're getting it completely backwards. In a spaceship, you don't want to keep the heat in. The problem is that it's hard to get rid of it. Contrary to popular belief, it's hard to lose heat in space, because vacuum is a superb insulator. (Ever used a thermos bottle?) In atmosphere or in the ocean, when your vehicle's engine and the bodies of its occupants generate waste heat, that heat is carried away through the surrounding medium by conduction and convection. That keeps your vehicle from overheating, and if the heat loss is too great, you may need to insulate against it. But in a spaceship surrounded by vacuum, there's no conduction or convection -- only radiation, the least efficient method of heat transfer. Just by being in space, you're ideally insulated -- too much so, in fact. Your engine and your computer and your crew's bodies are still producing just as much heat -- and an engine as powerful as a starship's is going to produce far more waste heat than the engine of an aircraft or seagoing vessel. And if you can't get rid of that heat, if you can't radiate it into space, then your crew will be cooked to death.

This is why real astronauts' spacesuits are designed with cooling systems, not heating systems. This is why the Space Shuttle always orbits with its cargo doors open -- because the inner surfaces of the doors are heat radiators. If it orbited with the doors closed, the crew would be cooked to death within days.

If you've played the computer game Mass Effect, it makes good use of this idea. It's something that comes up often in hard SF involving spaceship combat. Ships need large radiator surfaces to maintain a safe internal temperature, especially if they're engaged in combat and using powerful weapons that would inevitably produce huge amounts of waste heat. But those radiators are vulnerable, while conversely armor would make it harder to lose heat. So ships in combat have to strike a balance between the protection of armor and the danger of overheating, and that limits the duration of a space battle. It's a major part of how combat works in the Mass Effect game, and it's impressive to see that they put so much care into the science of it, especially given that most mass-media SF totally ignores the heat-radiation issue.

Well, I don't pretend to have any first hand experience but in a vacuum with no kinetic energy whatsoever, would radiation not still be a sufficient enough for heat to be pretty well sucked out of a warm object? If a person were to be directly exposed to the vacuum, would their skin not instantly freeze? Radiation seems like an efficient enough heat transfer mechanism for the sun anyway.

I don't see too much dispute going on lately about how come we're hearing sound in space or how nicely lit all the ships are in space, even the ones with no external lighting.

Those are easy to dismiss as matters of presentation that aren't part of what's "really" happening in-universe. After all, when there's background music playing in a scene, we don't assume the characters are really hearing it, and when the same character is recast with a different actor, we don't assume their appearance actually changed. So visuals and sounds can be treated as figurative. But the armor is an actual plot point, mentioned in dialogue.

Ya, I knew that one was bound to come up. It was just the first example that came to mind. I tend to view background music and sound effects differently and I figure that anytime an actor is replaced, the character just underwent extensive plastic surgery.

 

[Christopher]

Well, I don't pretend to have any first hand experience but in a vacuum with no kinetic energy whatsoever, would radiation not still be a sufficient enough for heat to be pretty well sucked out of a warm object? If a person were to be directly exposed to the vacuum, would their skin not instantly freeze? Radiation seems like an efficient enough heat transfer mechanism for the sun anyway.

Blackbody radiation is proportional to the temperature of the radiating body, and the amount of heat given off by a body at a certain temperature is a function of its surface area. The temperature of the surface of the Sun is 20 times that of a human body, and its surface area is about 3 quintillion times that of a human body. So the Sun radiates a whole lot more energy than a human body does. (In fact, the average human body's heat output is about that of a 100-watt light bulb. Pretty feeble compared to a star.) This is exactly why spacesuits and spaceships need cooling systems -- because in direct sunlight, they're taking in heat energy a hell of a lot faster than they're giving it off.

A person directly exposed to vacuum would not instantly freeze; that is a complete and utter myth that arises when people judge space based on our experiences on Earth. We freeze quickly when exposed to frigid winter air because our heat is conducted through the atmosphere. We freeze even faster if there's wind, because then convection comes into play and that takes heat away even faster. But even those are far from instantaneous. Radiating heat away is a much slower process. A body in vacuum -- if it's in shadow -- will eventually freeze, but it will take time. Assuming you're alive in a spacesuit with no heating system or insulation, and are in complete darkness, it would take maybe about an hour for your body temperature to fall to life-threatening levels (meaning a core temperature below about 90 F), much longer to cool to the actual freezing point of water. Of course, if you're in direct sunlight, you'll roast much faster if you don't have a cooling system.