aha.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=23098&highlight=enterprise
Ya’ll just warp over to page five.
Ok, here goes my take - yes I’ve been a trekkie all my life. If I get too deep, please, just laugh and realize that I think about this stuff, 24-7.
(1) Beaming Bombs: The particles that are fundamental to “beaming” technology travel no faster or slower than phasers or photon torpedoes. Beaming also has inherent inefficiences where a great bulk of buffer energy is lost in the process - you might as well spew the extra energy at your enemy then have it dissipated as quantum states are filled allowing a bomb to appear in its ideal place. If you are going to miss with a bomb, then you are going to miss with a “beam”. There are horrible delays between where the computer projects the position of the enemy ship and where it really is - do to various active-scan particle & passive photon speed limitations.
Original series idea: I think it was in “Omega Syndrome” - there was a culture that claimed at one time it would “beam hydrogen bombs over targets” on their rival planet, killing millions at a time. I think when writers thought about it a bit more, they put the idea to rest.
(2) Sheilds: Sheilds (according to what I have gathered from reading the compendia and watching too many shows, repeatedly) are built to block large energy fluxes through them. “beaming” a photon torpedo onto a ship would be resisted by such sheilds, much energy would be dispersed and the final resolution would never occur. Also, a super-compacted explosive weapon typically has juicily packed quantum states, full of energy, ready to be released, which would also have to be conveyed by the transport, which is occurring no faster than sending a torpedo anyway. No Shields, No limitation to beaming bombs or bullets - yes, someone mentioned something like this from deep space nine. There was also another inceident where a time-bomnb was inconspicuously beamed onto Deep Space nine so that there would be an explosion long after they had left. EM Inverters - using space-folding might be a novel way for bombs or people through federation sheilds. Terrorists used that tech in season 4 STTNG.
(3) Firing at Warp speed: Bad idea for light-limited phasers. Not a bad idea for warp-savvy torpedos, IF THE TARGET IS BEHIND YOU. If the traget is in front of you, you risk knocking out their warp drive, then you crash into their, now warp incapable, ship - bad for everyone, unless you intend to die. It was done in “NEMESIS” – Shinzon fired on the enterprize, while trailing at warp, knocks out their warp drive and sleekly misses them and comes around for another pass. I seem to recall there were more warp torpedo ideas, but I can’t remember the specific details at this time.
(4) Guided Missiles: McCoy & Spoke rig one up in “The Undiscovered Country” to track the semi-cloaked Klingon ship. Interesting idea. I don’t recall it discussed much in the Next Generation. I do know that cloaks are better at that time, though. Anyway, Photon torpedos travel at nearly the same speed as particles one might use to actively track an enemy – giving a diminished return unless you were firing at a very great distance. Under normal battle conditions, the arrival time is so much smaller than any reaction time, it’s not worth the extra bulk in computer parts.
Try these site for answers to more questions - these guys put REAL time into it:
Jay's Physics and Star Trek Page or
http://www.keele.ac.uk/socs/ks02/interest/startrek/sttech.html
A beaming bomb would be pretty easy to defeat. Just randomly change the radius of your shields. Since beaming takes time it would be impossible to accurately aim the bomb if the shield radius was changing every 2 seconds. You would either get a bomb that goes off a ways from the shield or gets messed up trying to beam through shields.
Can a ship warp in “reverse” or “straight up/down” or “sideways” out of a sticky situation, or do they always warp forward?
Citizen Bob, thanks for all that info!
:smack: I just saw an episode of Next Generation today - “Time’s Arrow”
In the very last scene, they fire phase-modified-photon torpedos on a target and then Realize Picard is on the planet and quickly beam him out before the torpedos arrive.
I could probably defend by saying these extremely modified torpedos were fired at slower speeds in order to be careful, but the writers had to make the thing exciting…
Ugh – I think I need another one :smack:
There