Trek and BSG

[Sileas]

Hi!

So there's my introduction. Down to business.

So here’s the short version. Battlestar Galactica, we’re talking the 1978 show. One website I found theorized that based on what we see onscreen, the hand-held "blasters" apparently fired a plasma beam (basically some really hot material) and could vaporize 25 cubic cm of metal. Not just destroy—vaporize. The power output was guessed to be in the neighborhood of 315 kilowatts, or 315,000 watts.


According to my trusty TNG Big D manual, the highest setting of a type II or III phaser could "explosively uncouple" 650 cubic meters of rock/ore with a density or weight of 6 grams per cubic cm "per discharge", and do this while only being "capable of directing" 0.01 megawatt, which, if I’m not fumbling these number things, is 10,000 watts.

Leaving aside for the moment that one is shooting plasma and another is firing out a "rapid nadion effect", it seems that BSG needs 315,000 watts to take out 25 cubic cm of metal, and in Trek, 10,000 watts blows up approximately a 2,000 square foot chunk of rock. Rapid nadions are fictional, but within that universe, they are defined as "short-lived subatomic particles possessing special properties relating to high-speed interactions within atomic nuclei."

So....are any of these conclusions grievously wrong? I ask because I want to write something to match a video on youtube that involves BSG and Trek, and I want to make at least a passing swipe at reality, rather than just saying one destroys the other. (The feds come to rescue Galactica, not blow ‘em up.)

 

[Albertese]

Hi!

.... and I want to make at least a passing swipe at reality, rather than just saying one destroys the other. (The feds come to rescue Galactica, not blow ‘em up.)

This way lies madness, my friend!

Seeing as how ALL those numbers were pulled out of the air by some fan or backstage production guy trying to nail things down, doesn't mean that any of those figures were referenced on-screen or in any way fact-checked or technically rationalized. They are essentially random guesses.

Even in your discussion you switch from talking about cubic centimeters to square feet, which have no relation to each other in this context. One if a three dimensional volume and the other is a two dimensional area.

So I'm not sure what you plan to accomplish. Or how you assign authority to the source material. (The TNG TM is a great read, but Sternbach gets pretty far into the weeds in some of that stuff and I'm not sure how much of it really adds up.)

--Alex

 

[Sileas]

Understood---I know things are pulled out of the air. And thanks for catching the typo. Dangit! I meant 10k watts takes out 2,000 cubic feet. /redfaced. But if you really want to get right down to it, none of us have any business talking about faster-than-light travel, or "nadions", because none of this exists.

Assigning authority---since so little is at stake, there's precious little risk. All I have is the TNG book and one fan site taking guesses about another fictional series. I'm going to use these two houses of cards to build a little bridge with a neat support in the middle, also out of cards. I just was seeking to see if anyone knew which cards were used, so to speak.