Weapon Power

[Mr.Borg]

Hi,

I've been catching up on my Trek Tech, but this one thing keeps bothering me. The power of weapons.

The power of a Phase Cannon (in ENT) is rated 500 gigajoules. But the photon torpedoes in VOY, are rated anywhere from 25 to 75 isotons.

Anyone know the conversion between gigajoules and isotons, or any approximate?

This just keeps haunting me....

Are ENT Weapons that weak?
And are TNG, DS9, and VOY weapons that much more powerful?

 

[Ablative_Oberth]

Just a quick word of caution: anyone caught giving the BORG weapons data will be executed.

 

[Mr.Borg]

DS9 Quote: "With what?"

--Odo and Quark

 

[Ablative_Oberth]

DS9 Quote: "With what?"

--Odo and Quark

Don't think we aren't watching you, 'cause we are.

Why don't you go assimilate a chicken or do something "relevant" for awhile.

Move along now.

 

[T'Girl]

500 gigajoules is about 125 tons of TNT explosives, if that's the amount of energy that is delivered, it's consistent with the shot the enterprise took at that asteroid.

Isoton on the other hand is a meaningless made-up word.

 

[Timo]

...And of course, it's pretty meaningless to give the yield of a beam weapon in joules, or in units of energy, because the amount of energy delivered to the target is dependent on how long one sustains the beam on the target! The same gun could deliver a microjoule or a terajoule, depending on how long Reed leans on the trigger.

One should give beam strength in units of power instead, that is, watts or horsepowers or whatnot. OTOH, perhaps the joules refer to some other quality of the beam besides delivered power? Perhaps the joules give the "caliber" or "wavelength" of the beam? A laser beam can also be described in terms of output power (in watts) and "caliber" or wavelength (which may well be given in joules if one so prefers).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Crazy Eddie]

...And of course, it's pretty meaningless to give the yield of a beam weapon in joules, or in units of energy, because the amount of energy delivered to the target is dependent on how long one sustains the beam on the target!

Well, it depends on what you're describing. If it's the amount of energy delivered per second then it's "joules per second" which is the same as "watts." It could also be the amount of energy stored in the weapon's power cells, in which case a phase cannon can discharge 500 gigajoules before it has to be recharged.

Anyway, it's customary to rate directed energy weapons like lasers (and even some railguns) in watts, so that's probably more fitting in the end. If you think about it, a 500 gigajoule phaser with an output of 80 gigawatts would be able to fire for a continuous 6.25 seconds before having to stop and recharge. Not sure how long a recharge takes (ten to twenty seconds if all powerplants are operational?) but that would certainly explain why phasers only ever fire in short little pecking beams when they could just keep on firing until the enemy' shields go down.

 

[Deks]

It's entirely possible phase cannons deliver the 500gigajoules every second or in a single short jolt, but the re-fire rate depends primarily upon cooling the system, because I never really saw phasers on ships needing recharge cycles ... more like cool-down cycles because of the enormous heat being produced by the system.

 

[Tigger]

Type X phasers were rated at 5.1 megawatts per emitter. though it stands to reason multiple emitters were brought to bear on a target when initiating a beam.

 

[Santaman]

All weapons in Trek are as powerful or weak as the plot needs them to be...