Would a photon torpedo move forever through space

[Shawnster]

There was an incident during WWII where a US sub fired a spread of torpedoes at a Japanese ship. A few of the torps missed, and continued on under power for several miles, and randomly hit and sank another ship!

Does the same hold for torpedoes today? Wouldn't it make sense to have all torpedoes auto-destruct if they miss their target? Shouldn't be too difficult to program a torpedo to explode if it runs 150% of the initial targeted distance or if they run for X amount of time without hitting a target.

Perhaps the same could be done with photon torpedoes.

 

[Kemaiku]

if it fails to hit its target, or does it have an auto destruct mechanism?

Yes, there's even an episode that covers this.

 

[USS Triumphant]

Even worse than a torpedo sailing off forever...

We've seen ships battle in orbit of a planet before. If a torpedo misses its target, what stops it from getting caught by the planet's gravity, getting pulled down to the surface, and causing an ELE?

Good thing they seldom seem to miss...

I think that it doesn't do to think too deeply about the combat technologies shown on Trek, because once you take what you've been told on screen about how they work as a given, there are some VERY scary and unfortunate ways that they would be used if they were real and being used by a species playing for keeps, either out of self-defense or in pursuit of conquest or just being the last species standing. Massive nukes, anti-matter warheads, running objects into enemy planets, bases, etc, at extremely high velocities (as in, dropping out of warp just before impact), sensor and automation systems that conduct combat automatically at near light-speed (well beyond the reaction times of organics) as soon as sensors confirm a good enough enemy pattern match on a target (or possibly even just if they *fail* to make a good enough pattern match as a *friendly*). And I know that a lot of that seems like it would fall well short of the lofty ideals of the Federation - but it wouldn't fall short of some other species, and then even the Federation would have no choice but to keep up in the arms race or die.

 

[tharpdevenport]

"Federation Law & Order: Torpedo Recovery Unit"

DUNG DUNG


Tomalak: "Another one of your blasted stray torpedos hit my warbird!"

Recovery Unit Officer: "Blah, blah, blah, funny joke at the victim's expensive, blah, blah, blah."



Yes, it will drop out of the higher speed from the anti-matter propellant, but it won't just drift, the torpedo is an object in motion in the vacuum of space that will keep going at high speed until something acts upon it. Maybe an asteriod, maybe a gravitational force or some other space anomoly Trek is littered with, or maybe a planet or ship.


But I think we can safely say, since no worry appears to have ever been expressed on screen for stray torpedos, that they self-detonate at some point, or perhaps more safely they expel their fuel source, drop out of warp and then self-destruct in a safe way.

 

[Deks]

I doubt that standard ideas apply.
Starfleet intentionally designed their technology to be mainly environmentally friendly.
Phasers would not be effective past certain range... the nadion particles would likely disperse.
Torpedoes would effectively self-destruct after a certain distance - and if not, safety mechanisms would likely prevent the warhead from becoming dangerous.

 

[Navigator_NCC2120]

Yes, there's even an episode that covers this.

Yes, from TNG Season 7, Episode 19, "Genesis".

Excerpt of the "Genesis" episode below courtesy of http://www.chakoteya.net/NextGen/271.htm .

[Bridge]

WORF: The next test will involve the new photon torpedoes. The explosive yield has been increased by eleven percent and I have enhanced the targeting system for increased accuracy.
PICARD: Sounds fascinating, Mister Worf. Please proceed.
WORF: Setting targeting coordinates zero zero five mark three one seven, spread pattern delta nine four. Torpedoes armed and loaded, sir.
PICARD: Fire when ready.
(only two of the three find their targets in the asteroid belt)
RIKER: Worf?
WORF: One of the torpedoes has veered off course. It appears to be a malfunction in the guidance system.
PICARD: Abort and destroy.
WORF: The torpedo is not responding. Subspace detonator will not engage.
RIKER: Lock on phasers.
WORF: The torpedo is out of range.
RIKER: Even for your newly improved phasers?
PICARD: Maintain a sensor lock on the torpedo, Mister Worf. We'll have to go after it.
DATA: That would be inadvisable, sir. The asteroid field is unusually dense. The Enterprise is too large to safely navigate through it.
PICARD: Then I'll take a shuttlecraft and retrieve it. Mister Data, you're with me.
RIKER: Captain, the shuttle pilot who's on duty is Lieutenant Hayes.
PICARD: I happen to be a reasonably qualified pilot, Number One. Besides, these tests hardly require the Captain's personal attention.
RIKER: Understood. Enjoy yourself.
PICARD: Mister Worf, I think that you should consider analysing your new guidance system.
DATA: Captain, I will need a few minutes to attend to a personal matter.

Navigator NCC-2120, USS Entente
/\

 

[USS Triumphant]

Maybe they use the last bit of warp drive they have to turn their warp field inside out, and the warhead detonates harmlessly in subspace.

Maybe the subspace entities that were kidnapping crewpeople in TNG weren't entirely unjustified, after all....

 

[Timo]

In terms of conventional high speed impact in space, blowing up the torpedo with a small onboard explosive might not make much sense: the kinetic energy of the entire device would not be that much greater than the kinetic energy of a piece of shrapnel from a scuttled device (i.e. both would utterly destroy any spacecraft that did not conform to Trek standards of shielding and durability), and the act of scuttling would create hundreds of those pieces, in addition to giving extra kinetic energy to them...

Blowing up the torpedo to thin dust with a largish percentage of the actual warhead might be the way to go. But it might be even simpler to just vent out the antimatter and leave the inert torpedo be: both a thin antimatter cloud and an inert torpedo are known to be "threats" a starship can deal with trivially easily, even in the extremely unlikely case where such a ship would run into either "threat" in the vastness of space.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[USS Triumphant]

Dropping containment on the antimatter in the warhead should work to keep their from being much shrapnel, shouldn't it? After all, antimatter doesn't just explode, it actually annihilates matter.

 

[Captain Rob]

I still prefer the auto-safing and auto-return ability. It's a lot less messy.
It's something I learned as a tiny child and I'm sure many of us did: "You make a mess. You clean it up."

 

[Avro Arrow]

^ Well, it might help to explain the "torpedo issue" on Voyager, too.

(Assuming Voyager ever missed, that is...)

 

[DonIago]

I would think, barring malfunction or trying to hit a faster-moving target, torpedoes really shouldn't be able to miss in the first place. We know they have at least rudimentary guidance systems, including the ability to course-correct (as shown in TUC), so even if you missed the initial shot you'd think the torpedo should be smart enough to ultimately find its target.

 

[SpaceLama]

@OT:

Yes.

But it would never hit anything by virtue of space being massive.

Also, since Photon Torpedos use the same source of fuel to act as their warhead, when the fuel was expended, they would just be an empty case, and thus no more dangerous than a meteorite.

 

[USS Triumphant]

and thus no more dangerous than a meteorite.

A meteorite made of material designed to attempt to penetrate starship hulls, which in turn are mostly designed to be able to survive atmospheric reentry and all sorts of other environmental concerns.

That empty torpedo could still be very dangerous if it hit a planet at high speed, and a Prime Directive concern if it came in slower and was found by primitives after it landed/impacted.

 

[SpaceLama]

But again, it would never hit anything.

The chances would be like less than being destroyed by a supernova, I bet.

Also anything solid accelerated enough, would be devastating - so a photon case really isn't much worse.

 

[Timo]

As for torps not missing, anything capable of being guided is also capable of being misguided. Jamming might result in a relatively large number of misses, compared with phaser beams that basically never miss.

Recovering of torps would be a fun addition to the scifi environment of Trek. It would also bring torpedoes around a full circle, figuratively as well as literally: in WWI, submarines in the Mediterranean and Black Sea theater sometimes found torps such a scarce resource that they programmed the primitive inertial guidance system to bring the as such slightly buoyant things to surface after a failed run, allowing the skipper to swim to the weapon and drag it back to the boat!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Forbin]

But it would never hit anything by virtue of space being massive.

No, space has no mass at all.

 

[Griffeytrek]

Modern Torpedo's have safety settings that prevent a torpedo from arming until it gets a safe distance from its own ship, and ultimately limit its range to prevent an uncontrolled hazard. It would be reasonable to think that Star Trek weaponry would have at a minimum these sorts of configurable safety systems.

Hah! I jest! When have we ever seen anything resembling modern safety common sense safety engineering applied to Star Trek? Seat Belts? What are those? Build Spaceships out of materials that don't burn or explode? Why would we do that? Randomly exploding bridge consoles are far superior! Look we poured gasoline in that one! Basic Computer Security? Bah! We can be hacked and disabled by the cooks cheese! And don't get my started on this whole "safety and redundancy" nonsense! What wimps you must be for wanting such things.

I sleep soundly in the knowledge that most of the Torpedos fired by Janeway will eventually find their way home to earth in order to enact their own automated incompetent vengeance.

 

[Forbin]

Any lack of guidance system a photorp may, um, lack, is strictly because of writers with no knowledge of current military missile tech, who are too lazy to look it up. We have ship-launched missiles NOW that can fly 1500 miles, dodge terrain, and jam their warhead into a specific window. We have air-to-air missiles that can be fired off-aspect and home on heat, radar return, or the shape of the plane that the pilot winked at with his helmet-mounted sight. We have fire-and-forget, beyond-visual-range radar-guided missiles that can switch to IR (heat-seaking) for their terminal run. We have contact fuses, proximity fuses, timed fuses, radio command fuses. AND we (and the enemy) have countermeasures for it all.

 

[Ithekro]

From a perspective of the Prime Directive, it would be logical to have the torpedo self destruct because that is technology you would not really want to share with just anyone. The Federation was worried about the Cardassians getting some tech from Federation torpedoes. Even if it isn't about the warhead, the engine unit is likely quite advanced to be able to sustain a warp field. Who knows what sorts of technologies a more primitive planet (relative to the Federation) could cook up by reverse engineering the components of a photon torpedo.