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

[publiusr]

I forget the Next Gen episode where some terrorist who worked with Dr. Crusher had some type of displacement/jump teleporter that caused DNA damage a transporter wouldn't. Looks more like the other way around.

The way I always thought of early transporters were that they really did transfer the person and not just reassemble a duplicate at the location. A cascade effect would allow everything else to follow at its proper relationship, even if there were no other pad below as it were.

All or nothing--with higher computer memory allowing certain parasites to not materialize, but otherwise not interfere with the main pattern at all. As it stands now, quantum entanglement reminds me more of the stones of Stargate Universe. You have to have something there at both ends, and just link them. Not true teleportation.

 

[USS Jack Riley]

I thought we had on screen evidence of an orbital weapons platform - Starbase 1 (see ST: III, IV and VI and TNG ep with the binars (I forget the order of the 1's and 0's in that ep). The FASA books list it as heavily armed, but that is non-canonical.

There was also that planet that sold weapons (the inhabitant were all dead and Picard spoke with a hologram). The Enterprise had to deal with an orbital version of what was attacking people on the plaent's surface. We could look at that orbital version as another type of orbital weapons platform.

Food for thought.

 

[publiusr]

Ah yes, the echo papa system. (A leggs egg I think) As I see it, it was a NOMAD sized critter that used non-zero point energy otherwise the planet would have went up. I'm thinking it got its energy from deep within the planet itself. Remember the Stargate Atlantis episode where there was a gate that was transmitting a beam? The gate itself was not the weapon. I think the echo papa system was like like the Cardie' platforms, had to be similar, if it was capable of blowing apart an Ambassador class ship.

There were explosions very deep--like a deep earthquake that weren't felt, and only the near surface center went up in a low grade secondary explosion. That's one explanation. (Arsenal of Freedom)

 

[Timo]

I think the echo papa system was like like the Cardie' platforms, had to be similar, if it was capable of blowing apart an Ambassador class ship.

We don't know what class of a ship the system blew up, and how, not canonically - the Drake might have been a midget (she was described as a "light cruiser", and not many things in Starfleet appear to be "light").

Also, we don't know how small the killer probe really was. We saw two of them: one was doing antipersonnel work down on the planet (and received upgrades or rebuilds every 12 minutes), while another was hunting the starship (and didn't seem to evolve in like manner). The latter might well have been much, much larger, large enough to plausibly have a starship-killing power plant inside. The former in turn might have lacked that sort of oomph, and would have posed little or no hazard to the planet when blowing up.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[publiusr]

I thought I heard that Drake was an Ambassador class. My memory must be playing tricks.

 

[Timo]

The first edition of the Encyclopedia made the noncanon suggestion that it was Wambundu class. This class was never seen on screen, but the Encyclopedia later assigned the same class identity to the medical transport Fleming from "Force of Nature". A bit funny to have a light cruiser as a medical transport...

OTOH, even if we choose to ignore the noncanon Encyclopedia, we did learn that the Ambassador was a heavy cruiser class in "Conspiracy", so the light cruiser Drake probably didn't belong to that class.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[publiusr]

Must be my failing memory. There was some line...from Data I think... about the mass of some ships wreckage being equivalent to an Ambassador class or something.

 

[Timo]

Yup, that was from "Conspiracy" where they found the wreckage of the Horatio, an Ambassador mentioned earlier in the episode but never shown intact.

The wreckage of the Drake was never found in "Arsenal of Freedom". All we learned of this ship was that it was a light cruiser, was commanded by a whippersnapper called Paul Rice (a four-pip Captain), and probably did not have a top speed of warp three (because the hostile machine claimed it did).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Leathco]

I just figured the transporter wasn't often used as a weapon due to treaties and Federation guidelines. Otherwise couldn't one take an opposing shields offline (through battle or subterfuge), than transport out key compnents of the operation of the ship? Surely it wouldn't be healthy if the warp core suddenly appeared on the bridge!

As far as weaponizing, should be easy. The replicator is basically a transporter system that takes from a stock of matter onboard the ship and creates tasty treats for the crew. Why not use the transporter like this too? Having your opposition beamed onboard as a bacon cheeseburger, large fries and a coke could be a perk of being a transporter operator!

 

[Timo]

If you have the means to make the enemy lower his shields, you probably won't need or want to use transporters as a weapon against him. A simple phaser blast would do.

Since the enemy appears to know this perfectly well, he never lowers his shields for you. Not in the aired episodes of Star Trek anyway - save for a couple of blatant cases where transporter subsequently was used against him, such as in "A Matter of Honor".

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Deks]

The race in the Delta Quadrant on the planet 'Quara' (I think) from the episode 'Workforce' had planetary shields.

The technology is definitely there, but seldom (or never) used (depending on the plot).

DS9 was fully shielded btw, the only problem that show faced was avoidance of showing the shields during fleet battles (too much time to invest into the VFX).

 

[dgguy2006]

The energy output required for the creation of a true planetary shield would be incalculable. Not to mention the need for shield emitter arrays over a significant portion of the planet. You would need several thousand M/AM generators to sustain even a weak field.

 

[Deks]

The energy output required for the creation of a true planetary shield would be incalculable. Not to mention the need for shield emitter arrays over a significant portion of the planet. You would need several thousand M/AM generators to sustain even a weak field.

We weren't given specific numbers or hardware requirements that would be needed to accomplish this task.

For all we know, if a planet has an extensive satellite network in orbit, they could be used for shield generation.

Or, you would require several large or powerful enough shield generators (and appropriate energy production facilities) on the planets surface that could be linked together.

The Talaxians were able to generate a shield grid around their particularly large asteroid by strategically placing generators on it's surface and linking them to the internal core providing them with an inexhaustible energy supply.

If the Federation knows how to use geothermal energy (and there's no reason to think they don't), all they need is to extend the shield generators into the ground where they could draw power from the planet's core.
It's a simple matter to drill all the way down and use tractor like system for pulling matter that would be converted into energy (at least it is for them).
Or you simply put a class 9 Warp core (or a fusion generator) as a power source for each shield generator.

Since Federation ships can extend shields quite far (ignore on-screen representation where they are limited to several hundred meters, and instead they should be able to extend them for hundreds of km), planetary shield generators with dedicated power sources wouldn't have a problem extending the field as far as necessary without loss in efficiency.