Do 23rd or 24th century planets have panetary shields?

[ConRefit79]

Do 23rd or 24th century planets have planetary shields? Besides a defense against attack, they can protect against natural disasters. Although unlikely, there could be rouge comets or meteors. But the biggest unknown I can think of is if a nearby star went super nova. Such event could wipe out most life on a planet. The planet itself would survive, but the radiation would kill most of the lifeforms. Planetary shields should protect a planet from the radiation. The good thing is, in many cases you would have 4 yrs to prepare.

 

[T'Girl]

Romulus didn't

 

[Mister_Atoz]

Romulas may have, but none that were strong enough to withstand all that red matter stuff.

 

[T'Girl]

Romulus was destroyed by a "supernova shock wave?" before the red matter could eat the omni-directional shock wave (somehow).

 

[Christopher]

I don't recall planetary shields in the sense of a deflector bubble surrounding an entire planet, but it has been established, going back to TMP and again in ST2009, that Earth has a planetary defense grid, presumably an array of satellites. We've seen at least one similar planetary defense grid during the Dominion War.

 

[Itisnotlogical]

It would only make sense. But Guinan's safe from any orbital bombardment with her weird little hat thing.

 

[SoM]

DS9's shields - even after the S4 station upgrade - couldn't manage to shield the whole station. I very much doubt you could put a worthwhile shield over a whole planet. Individual installations yes, cities maybe at a stretch, but not the whole sphere.

 

[T'Girl]

It might be possible to have a planetary shield that could protect against the energy from a solar flare, block transporter beams, maybe stop space debris.

Didn't they have a shields of sorts during TOS around the two crazy planets (DOTM and WGD) ?

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Well, we know that even in the 22nd century some cities and installations have shields, and we know that by the 24th century some portable shield generators do exist (a la "Lessons"). A dedicated shield for something the size of a major city or a metropolitan area is hardly beyond the realm of possibility; if you can protect a space station the size of DS9, a city shouldn't be all that difficult.

An entire planet, though? Except possibly for preventing enemy troops from landing on the surface, there doesn't seem to be much point, especially since your enemy probably isn't going to carpet bomb every square inch of your oceans with photon torpedoes. It makes more sense to concentrate shield coverage over areas that are either very important (where everyone lives/works) or very likely to become targets (same places, plus your major military and government facilities).

 

[scotpens]

Didn't they have a shields of sorts during TOS around the two crazy planets (DOTM and PGD)?

I assume you meant to type “WGD” (“Whom Gods Destroy”).

It's established in TOS that penal colonies and institutions for dangerous loonies have security shields that block transporter beams but allow radio communication. We're never told if those shields can stop other forms of energy, or if they can block a spacecraft from physically landing on a planet, or how far they extend. At least in the TOS era, a shield covering an entire planet would be considered unnecessary and would consume enormous amounts of power.

 

[kkozoriz1]

It would only make sense. But Guinan's safe from any orbital bombardment with her weird little hat thing.

When did Guinan ever wear a little hat?

 

[Timo]

We're never told if those shields can stop other forms of energy, or if they can block a spacecraft from physically landing on a planet, or how far they extend.

"Whom Gods Destroy" offers clues on every one of these aspects, though.

1) Scotty seems convinced he could shut down the shields with phaser or torpedo bombardment, but this isn't an option because it would kill Kirk and Spock, too.

Scotty: "We could blast our way through the field, but only at the risk of destroying the Captain, Mister Spock and any other living thing on Elba Two."

Scotty might be speaking about using superstrong transporters for the "blasting", of course - but we haven´t heard of such tech existing, let alone having the potential to kill every living being on a planet.

Eventually Scotty uses phasers against the far side shields, and two volleys at full power don't create a useful hole yet. A third might have succeeded, though, and we don't have any idea about the effects of the attacks on the planet beneath the shield. Scotty's aim was not to create destruction but to create a hole, which might affect the outcome.

Just as elsewhere in Trek, firing at the shields doesn't seem to involve firing at the shield generators - holes can be created in an arbitrary spot. However, interestingly, the asylum building doesn't shake, nor do its instruments bleep or its consoles sparkle, when Scotty pummels the shields. Perhaps the generator is in a separate building, and the ground doesn't transmit the vibrations...

2) Shuttles would be capable of landing through the weaker parts of the field, which was supposedly generated from a single location on the surface.

Sulu: "The force field is weakest on the far side of the planet. We can send down a shuttlecraft carrying a team in environmental suits."

Sulu doesn't indicate that they'd first have to blast a hole in the shield. That might be implicit in what he says - but Scotty just said that blasting holes wasn't practical!

3) The shield covers the entire planet, as Sulu identifies no spot where there would be no shields. The planet's size can be guesstimated as not being entirely negligible, even if we discount the seeming effects of gravity (because that could be artificial gravity we're seeing):

McCoy: "It won't work, Scotty. They'd have to cover thousands of miles through poisonous atmosphere before they'd ever reach the asylum."

How high up the shield reaches is unknown, though. Our heroes operated from synchronous orbit, but we don't know its parameters, and we have reason to suspect Trek synchronous orbits might be powered rather than freefall ones anyway.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[publiusr]

I remember the Gold Key comics showing EDF stations.

 

[Myasishchev]

I don't recall planetary shields in the sense of a deflector bubble surrounding an entire planet, but it has been established, going back to TMP and again in ST2009, that Earth has a planetary defense grid, presumably an array of satellites. We've seen at least one similar planetary defense grid during the Dominion War.

There was one in "In the Bough Breaks."

Granted, it was a non-Fed planet, but also one run by people too dumb to realize it was poisoning them and built by a savior species dumb enough to think a cloaking device for a planet was a good idea.* Also, that episode sucked. But still, it's apparently possible in principle.

*It either doesn't work, because a planet can be located by its wobble viz. its star or other planets, or it does work, and disengages the planet from its sun's gravity. This presents problems.

Well, we know that even in the 22nd century some cities and installations have shields, and we know that by the 24th century some portable shield generators do exist (a la "Lessons"). A dedicated shield for something the size of a major city or a metropolitan area is hardly beyond the realm of possibility; if you can protect a space station the size of DS9, a city shouldn't be all that difficult.

Something I've always wondered about deflector shields is whether they would have really deleterious environmental effects, in an atmospheric setting. If they work on some space-bending principle, wouldn't that really mess up a planet? Actually, I can't really think of any operating principle that wouldn't really mess up a planet.

An entire planet, though? Except possibly for preventing enemy troops from landing on the surface, there doesn't seem to be much point, especially since your enemy probably isn't going to carpet bomb every square inch of your oceans with photon torpedoes. It makes more sense to concentrate shield coverage over areas that are either very important (where everyone lives/works) or very likely to become targets (same places, plus your major military and government facilities).

True. On the other hand, you could obliterate a planet's biosphere without hitting it at all, just by detonating enough (not terribly many--I'd guess between a dozen a thousand) pho-torps relatively close by, and watch as the ozoneless planet marinated in sweet ultraviolet radiation sauce. So defending just cities wouldn't protect a planet very well.

Scotty might be speaking about using superstrong transporters for the "blasting", of course - but we haven´t heard of such tech existing, let alone having the potential to kill every living being on a planet.

It's funny, though, because disintegrating a guy and shooting his vaporized body out of a hole at fractional lightspeed would make a pretty good weapon.

 

[Timo]

*It either doesn't work, because a planet can be located by its wobble viz. its star or other planets, or it does work, and disengages the planet from its sun's gravity. This presents problems.

I'm not sure it would, in a universe where the adversary species isn't all that likely to notice if a planet or four in a star system suddenly go missing ("Doomsday Machine", ST2). I mean, sure, they could look at the wobble of the star and go see if there's a planet worth conquering there, then be a bit miffled when they don't see one. But if the default technology of the day is to fly into the system and count the planets while there, these people probably don't bother to observe stellar wobble over any appreciable period of time.

Some scholar might notice something amiss eventually, yes. But the important thing is that the scholar wouldn't be the one the conquest armies listened to, because they'd have more practical sources of information available. We're just biased here because we rely primarily on these clumsier, slower and ultimately perhaps more revealing techniques.

Something I've always wondered about deflector shields is whether they would have really deleterious environmental effects, in an atmospheric setting. If they work on some space-bending principle, wouldn't that really mess up a planet? Actually, I can't really think of any operating principle that wouldn't really mess up a planet.

Trek weapons and defenses have always seemed extremely sanitary and environmentally safe to me. Phasers neatly make the victim disappear, barely leaving a microscopically detectable film of remains. Transporters manage to insert something in a place where there already was something, or extract something without leaving nothing there. Shields might well be capable of similar levels of courtesy...

So defending just cities wouldn't protect a planet very well.

That'd probably be a good way to defend those things that make a planet worth conquering, though. We see a remarkable lack of planeticide (or astricide) in Trek, despite the bountifully available means. I doubt it's all bushido: something more practical is probably driving our villains and heroes into conducting their wars the hard way, and only resorting to nova bombs or devious poisons when all other options have run out.

It's funny, though, because disintegrating a guy and shooting his vaporized body out of a hole at fractional lightspeed would make a pretty good weapon.

For some reason, Trek shields seem extremely adept at handling kinetic energies. So perhaps pulping the poor redshirt would serve no other purpose than serving as an example?

I can sort of understand the lack of transporter weapons. Or, rather, I can understand why the standard transporter isn't weaponized often. A weapon based on the transporter principle might very well exist, though - and the phaser could well be such a thing, considering the many similarities: practical (both techs make targets disappear), semantic (both use "phasing"), even visual (both "freeze" the target during the disappearing act in TOS, fail to do so in ST2, and do it again in TNG).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I should add that phasers and transporters both fail to freeze transported/vaporized objects after TNG's second season.

A phaser as a weaponized transporter is an otherwise interesting concept, though. Since the basic technology of transporters is to use an energy beam that directly operates on an object's molecular structure. If a transporter can permanently neutralize entire classes of harmful microorganisms it can temporarily neutralize every motor neuron in a particular brain.

 

[SoM]

I can sort of understand the lack of transporter weapons. Or, rather, I can understand why the standard transporter isn't weaponized often.

Not often, perhaps, but it can be done - there's even a shorthand code for "destroy using transporter". Not to mention devices that lethally prevent proper materialisation.

 

[Myasishchev]

I should add that phasers and transporters both fail to freeze transported/vaporized objects after TNG's second season.

A phaser as a weaponized transporter is an otherwise interesting concept, though. Since the basic technology of transporters is to use an energy beam that directly operates on an object's molecular structure. If a transporter can permanently neutralize entire classes of harmful microorganisms it can temporarily neutralize every motor neuron in a particular brain.

Indeed. (You know, I half-imagine that transporter-like technology really would help "evolve" humanity--by getting rid of all our T. gondii infections amongst other neural parasites.)

But if they could paralyze neurons, they could do more than that.

Charles Stross took the concept to its logical conclusion in Glasshouse. They were named A(assembly)-gates, but worked on essentially the exact same prinicple as a transporter, less the Trek conceit of a quantum consciousness that cannot be readily duplicated, unless the plot calls for it.

In Glasshouse, the A-gates had been used in a censorship war that involved the targeted changing of memories in billions.

 

[Timo]

I'd argue that even in the TNG era, the "biofilter" has always been a crude system that, far from being a divine tool, barely and rarely does what's expected of it.

Our heroes can depower/sabotage phasers in mid-transport, or remove them from the hands of the transportees. They can detect macroscopic or microscopic parasites and attempt to kill them, such as in "The Host" or "Realm of Fear". But as for actually rearranging the transportee to any degree of resolution... They can "cheat" by using earlier templates, as in "Lonely Among Us" or "Unnatural Selection", but that seems about that.

It doesn't seem as if one would have to evoke a "fantastically high resolution" mind or soul that would be beyond the reach of the transporter. Rather, one could postulate that the transporter cannot manipulate matter beyond micrometer scale, even though it can do duplication down to infinite resolution. After all, the operating principle of the device doesn't seem to be disassembly and reassembly, but rather a transformation into another realm and back. Thus, one cannot insert a desire to buy Slug-o-cola or extract the codes to Earth's defense network, even if those merely exist as chemical patterns of the brain that are no "finer" than the taste of a ham sandwich.

OTOH, even relatively crude control of matter would allow a transporter-based weapon to inject paralyzing agents into the target's bloodstream or organs. No need to fiddle with individual neurons or the like.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Myasishchev]

Heck, if they had described the transporter as simply a short-range warp gate, it probably would be a lot better for everybody.