Mav Posted February 7, 2006 Share Posted February 7, 2006 Related question. I was watching First Contact on Sci Fi this past Sunday night and when the Defiant gets pretty fubared to the point they have no weapon capabilities and pretty much lost all shield functionality, Worf orders "Ramming speed!" to the helm officer. Now my question is, what exactly is ramming speed for a Starfleet ship? Full impulse jumps to mind obviously since I doubt they'd pull the warp-and-ram trick we've been discussing, but aganist the enemy in question in this case, I don't think impluse speed at the range they were at would be enough. Note this was moments before the Enterprise E showed up and Picard launched them on the offensive, so the Cube was fairly operational and defensive at that point. And also related, if impulse is not an option, could they successfully pull of a "ramming" with simple maneuvering thrusters? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Palantas Posted February 7, 2006 Share Posted February 7, 2006 Seems if you suspend disbelief while watching something like Star Trek, the fact that they don't ram vessels at warp would lead one to conclude that this maneuver is either impossible or impractical. These objects, moving at near-lightspeed or over-lightspeed velocities would have enough Kinetic Energy to instantly liquefy a planet. 1/2 mv^2 = 1/2(2000 kgs)( 299,792,458 m/s)^2 = 898,755,178,736,817,640,000 The fact that these effects do not occur would seem to prove that warp ramming involves elements with which we are not familiar. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anonyman Posted February 7, 2006 Share Posted February 7, 2006 And of course' date=' that doesn't contradict my cited point - they've never been showing going to warp :p[/quote'] TNG's first episode shows Torpedoes fired backwards at Warp 9.5. As do many many other episodes from TOS through to DS9. If torpedoes fired sub-light--- the enemy could just warp away & outrun them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tenebrae Posted February 7, 2006 Share Posted February 7, 2006 Impulse would give you a high fraction of c - which would give you a pretty big impact but it's unclear as to whether shields could cope with that. The impact would be the equivalent to millions of megatonnes, I think. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
queenhank Posted February 7, 2006 Share Posted February 7, 2006 It's entirely possible that Worf knew nothing would come of it. He knew he was about to die, along with his whole crew, and figured it would be better to die flying straight at the cube than to die drifting aimlessly through space. Honor and soforth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Palantas Posted February 10, 2006 Share Posted February 10, 2006 TNG's first episode shows Torpedoes fired backwards at Warp 9.5. As do many many other episodes from TOS through to DS9. If torpedoes fired sub-light--- the enemy could just warp away & outrun them. Disclaimer: I haven't conducted an exhaustive survey to confirm or deny this. However...While torpedoes are fired at warp speeds, they are always fired at a target also at warp moving at a similar speed to the firing vessel. We never see any examples of "warp strafing." Are you claiming that torpedoes always go to warp when they are fired? I find this idea rather difficult to reconcile with the visual evidence. Are you really saying that every torpedo fired in Star Trek is moving in excess of c? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
queenhank Posted February 10, 2006 Share Posted February 10, 2006 Not a chance. We have, however, seen that weapons can be fired at warp. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tenebrae Posted February 10, 2006 Share Posted February 10, 2006 If torpedoes fired sub-light--- the enemy could just warp away & outrun them. If you can show ONE example of a ship jumping to warp to evade regular torpedoes, I will eat my hat. There is a big difference to firing a torpedo - backward or forward - while at warp to actually putting one INTO warp. Given that distances between ships in combat are generally less than 100,000km then assuming that they went to warp they'd hit their targets in NANOSECONDS. You're talking nonsense. Unless I missed about a thousand warp signatures of torpedoes going to warp. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arktis Posted February 10, 2006 Share Posted February 10, 2006 If you can show ONE example of a ship jumping to warp to evade regular torpedoes' date=' I will eat my hat.[/quote'] Star Trek 05 - The Final Frontier: Right after Kirk's shuttle gets aboard with Sybok's men, the Klingons fire a photon torpedo at the Enterprise. Chekov orders the ship to warp and thus dodges the torpedo at the last moment. TNG 2x21 - Peak Performance: The Enterprise D fires a torpedo at the Hathaway who goes to warp just at the right moment to avoid being caught by the detonation. Let us know how the meal goes. :p Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
queenhank Posted February 10, 2006 Share Posted February 10, 2006 Photon Torpedoes are not fired at warp speeds, unless the ship is traveling at warp speeds when they fire. The torpedoes have the ability to sustain a warp field once they have left the field of the ship which fired them, but are not able to go to warp on their own. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tenebrae Posted February 10, 2006 Share Posted February 10, 2006 Final Frontier is generally considered to be out of continuity, 2x21 shows what amounts to a choreographed maneuver. That's like saying the Star Wars project could intercept nuclear missiles when they knew exactly where everything was going. Of course if we take those suggestions to be correct - then it disproves that torpedoes go at warp. That would make my hat taste awful good. But of course, given the fact that it never really ever happens in general combat I think we can assume that it's something that is either totally impractical or just not possible. Good job on the examples though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
queenhank Posted February 10, 2006 Share Posted February 10, 2006 Final Frontier is generally considered to be out of continuity I would say that people WISH it were out of continuity...like Spock's Brain. It was, in fact, a Star Trek movie, and Paramount has made no official announcement that it is non-canon, and it doesn't DIRECTLY contradict anything that was said before or after (unlike, say, Animated Adventures), so I would still consider it canon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tenebrae Posted February 10, 2006 Share Posted February 10, 2006 I think the main difference is that the Church backed the other 9 films. Satan backed Final Froniter. Check the blood contracts if you don't believe me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
magestorm Posted February 11, 2006 Share Posted February 11, 2006 According to the Star Trek Tech manual, the photon torpedo is fired at a high fraction of C, unless the ship firing them is at warp. Then, the torpedo has a warp field sustainer that sustains the warp field. The reasoning for this is because phasers cannot be used in warp, but a ship needs to be able to defend itself at warp speeds. As far as why a mixture of matter and antimatter is used instead of straight antimatter is a matter of physics. Antideuturium will react to any matter at all. However, it reacts best with its matter component, deuturium. If this were otherwise, then a ship would simply carry nothing but antimatter, and throw whatever in for the matter reactant. And Dreadnaut was a special case. It was designed to be a planet killer, and was simply a modified robot ship. It could quite easily to redesign a standard ship into a kamakazi ship. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tenebrae Posted February 11, 2006 Share Posted February 11, 2006 To be honest, immaterial - photon torpedoes are hilariously ineffective. I mean, the Romulans use plasma bolts. Unless they're invoking usual treknologly, that can't even possibly compare to photon torpedoes... but by that same reasoning the omega particle is nonsense and a half. Dreadnaught was just hilarious. If the Cardassians could make such devastating weapons - they'd have won the war in a heartbeat. Besides, it was designed to destroy a planetoid. Not a planet. Destroy planets in Trek? Dime a dozen. Utterly, utterly pointless in strategic terms. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rjfoster Posted February 15, 2006 Share Posted February 15, 2006 According to the Star Trek Tech manual' date=' the photon torpedo is fired at a high fraction of C, unless the ship firing them is at warp. Then, the torpedo has a warp field sustainer that sustains the warp field. The reasoning for this is because phasers cannot be used in warp, but a ship needs to be able to defend itself at warp speeds. [/quote'] The reason for this is that Phasers are a form of Energy Weapon that probably requires some form of EM carrier wave to get to the enemy ship, thus it would be limited to travelling at the speed of light, and could not be used when a ship is at Warp. Might have to go and buy a copy of the ST technical manual to check, unless someone else has a copy to hand.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pavey1991 Posted February 16, 2006 Share Posted February 16, 2006 Yeah, he nearly tears his ship in two. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tenebrae Posted February 16, 2006 Share Posted February 16, 2006 Well, GENERALLY they can't but from time to time, energy weapons have been fired at warp. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TFMF Posted February 19, 2006 Share Posted February 19, 2006 My opinion is that when you see a ship going into warp - they have to build up quite a bit of speed first - so you'd need quite a lot of manuvering room to get into warp first - this isn't always available... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tenebrae Posted February 19, 2006 Share Posted February 19, 2006 They've made going to warp look hilariously similar to the star wars jump to lightspeed... but less cool. But yes, I agree - it's clear that it takes some considerable distance to enter subspace. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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