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The Voyage Without

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Rihtan said:
The larger ships have Defector fields are rated for small asteroids ( < 2 meters diameter ).
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OK, assuming my math is correct, and assuming a 1m radius sphere of solid iron (S.G. ~8) that's 32tns mass. A 100kg (0.1tn, ~220lb) projectile with x1000 inertia has an effective inertia mass of 100tns. About 3x that limit. At sufficient velocity that's an immense amount of impact energy on a ship.
(Please correct me if my math is wrong.)

Of course, it's entirely possible Trek-tech doesn't permit this sort of thing...
 
The fact that tractor beams and deflector arrays and faster then light sensors exist gives all sorts of weird and wonderful ways that space debris can be stopped from harming the ship. It might have quite a few reactive defenses and just generally if you are going for efficiency and a design has been iterated on hundreds of years then I expect that however it works isn't something that can be summed up by a single paragraph.
 
Ace Dreamer said:
OK, assuming my math is correct, and assuming a 1m radius sphere of solid iron (S.G. ~8) that's 32tns mass. A 100kg (0.1tn, ~220lb) projectile with x1000 inertia has an effective inertia mass of 100tns. About 3x that limit. At sufficient velocity that's an immense amount of impact energy on a ship.
(Please correct me if my math is wrong.)

Of course, it's entirely possible Trek-tech doesn't permit this sort of thing...
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Also anything hitting you definitionally has to be strong enough to punch through the curved ellipsoid of space time that is the warp field, so that surely diverts a decent amount of any incoming matter. By post-TNG it may be that the deflector is mainly doing an efficiency job by stopping matter impacting the warp field and increasing power costs than the mandatory relativistic shield thing.
 
Sayle said:
Also anything hitting you definitionally has to be strong enough to punch through the curved ellipsoid of space time that is the warp field, so that surely diverts a decent amount of any incoming matter. By post-TNG it may be that the deflector is mainly doing an efficiency job by stopping matter impacting the warp field and increasing power costs than the mandatory relativistic shield thing.
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I'd be guessing a rail gun would be useless while either ship is using Warp Drive. Unless each shell includes a Warp Drive, which seems... unreasonable. So, expect there's no warp field, just any distortion caused by Impulse Drive?
 
Ace Dreamer said:
I'd be guessing a rail gun would be useless while either ship is using Warp Drive. Unless each shell includes a Warp Drive, which seems... unreasonable. So, expect there's no warp field, just any distortion caused by Impulse Drive?
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I mean, the ship isn't cut off from the universe and there's a power = speed curve going on so there's clearly not total spatial warping. If there was the ship could fly through a planet because any matter impacting the front of the bubble would 'smear' across the exterior in a wash and then reconstitute itself at the rear of the warp field as if nothing had happened. Maybe. I dunno, spacetime geometry stuff isn't my thing. Warp fields are partially subspace based so one assumes some sort of cheating is going on where subspace effects warp realspace.

Bigger might not be the main factor, but mass probably is. Throw a neutronium tennis ball in a starship's course and maybe the warp field would deflect its trajectory by a couple degrees, but it probably still cores the ship. It might make sense that particles/bodies below a certain mass are scooped up by the warpfield and harmlessly brushed out of the ship's course, but anything bigger passes into the 'calm' space within the warp bubble and can collide.
 
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Ace Dreamer said:
OK, assuming my math is correct, and assuming a 1m radius sphere of solid iron (S.G. ~8) that's 32tns mass. A 100kg (0.1tn, ~220lb) projectile with x1000 inertia has an effective inertia mass of 100tns. About 3x that limit. At sufficient velocity that's an immense amount of impact energy on a ship.
(Please correct me if my math is wrong.)

Of course, it's entirely possible Trek-tech doesn't permit this sort of thing...
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The values for the sphere are correct but I'm not sure why you're multiplying inertia like that.
Please remember that whatever velocity you apply to the projectile that its limited to lightspeed, while the Deflectors have to be able to cope with items trying to impact at over
1,000,000,000c at Warp 9. For context most high end Kinetic space weaponry in BT operates at around 0.0001 c or less.

It is a very much a Trek-tech thing. Star Trek literally considers discovering the tech required to break light speed as the minimum required to even open up contact with you. To put in into context a Star Trek in-system interplanetary civilian taxi flies and accelerates faster then the fastest kinetic weaponry that the BT universe has. They are so fast you could easly shoot the railgun, get in the taxi, catch up to the projectile, grab it, and fly home to use the projectile again.

Sayle said:
Bigger might not be the main factor, but mass probably is. Throw a neutronium tennis ball in a starship's course and maybe the warp field would deflect its trajectory by a couple degrees, but it probably still cores the ship. It might make sense that particles/bodies below a certain mass are scooped up by the warpfield and harmlessly brushed out of the ship's course, but anything bigger passes into the 'calm' space within the warp bubble and can collide.
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Yep. Mass is the big issue. But as they have superluminal sensors and computers so they just fly around anything too massive to push out of the way.

EDIT: Responding to this has reminded me just how utterly OP broken Star Trek tech is.
 
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Rihtan said:
The values for the sphere are correct but I'm not sure why you're multiplying inertia like that.
Please remember that whatever velocity you apply to the projectile that its limited to lightspeed, while the Deflectors have to be able to cope with items trying to impact at over
1,000,000,000c at Warp 9. For context most high end Kinetic space weaponry in BT operates at around 0.0001 c or less.

It is a very much a Trek-tech thing. Star Trek literally considers discovering the tech required to break light speed as the minimum required to even open up contact with you. To put in into context a Star Trek in-system interplanetary civilian taxi flies and accelerates faster then the fastest kinetic weaponry that the BT universe has. They are so fast you could easly shoot the railgun, get in the taxi, catch up to the projectile, grab it, and fly home to use the projectile again.



Yep. Mass is the big issue. But as they have superluminal sensors and computers so they just fly around anything too massive to push out of the way.

EDIT: Responding to this has reminded me just how utterly OP broken Star Trek tech is.
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And that BEFORE we get into the sheer bullshit present in STO like holographic starships with functional phasers and ripping holes in spacetime to inconvenience enemy ships.
 
'You're the worst spy I've ever heard of.'

'Ah, but you HAVE heard of me!'

'.....yes. That's the problem.'
 
Rihtan said:
The values for the sphere are correct but I'm not sure why you're multiplying inertia like that.
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Context:
Ace Dreamer said:
How small can you make an Impulse Drive with power supply? The implication of a number of Trek scenes is that it can reduce inertia/momentum, presumably by dirty tricks using subspace. Can you run one in reverse so it increases inertia?

The trick then would be to harden an 'inertial pulse' system so that a shell with it on-board can be shot by a rail gun. Then, a proximity sensor burns-out the power supply spiking the shell's inertia just as it hits the shields of a target ship. So a 100kg shell (briefly) becomes a 100Mg one? Or more?
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Warp speed isn't real speed - real speed is limited to less than 'c', the velocity of light. If you exceed that you are not in space-time, as we understand it. And, the Warp Drive maintains some relationship to space-time, by warping space, sort of the way a wave in water, ridden by a surfer, isn't an immense amount of water moving horizontally.

Battletech (which is what I assume you mean by 'BT') isn't a good comparison to Star Trek - the weapons tech is near-future (for 1984) primitive, barely science fictional at all. If Trek-tech can't throw around mass at 0.01c (1000x RW 2020 tech?) I'd be surprised.

Trek-tech doesn't break light-speed, it bypasses it. It all seems to be about subspace, which is also something used for the reaction-less (sub-light) Impulse Drive. And, the definition of a civilization that the Prime Directive doesn't apply to seems to be messing with subspace tech, like Cochrane did with the homo sap. prototype warp-drive.

What might be interesting is that some theoretical physics might have ideas about a 'subspace', 'below' physical space-time. Maybe interacting with that would allow a lot of the Trek-tech strangeness? It's tricky to say.


Rihtan said:
EDIT: Responding to this has reminded me just how utterly OP broken Star Trek tech is.
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Trek-tech is moderately broken. The 3 Bigs that 'break science fiction stories', AI, nanotech, biotech - Trek AI is a bit... naff, for nanotech you need to look to the Borg, and they ban a lot of biotech/dance around the possibilities. Look at Bank's 'Culture' for a lot more 'gloves off', and an author like Greg Egan, or Ken MacLeod (or Jack Chalker, Charles Stross, ...) for serious brain-exercising stuff. Not to mention greats like Norton, Le Guin, Delany, Niven, Laumer, Frank Herbert, van Vogt, etc., etc. Trek barely scratches the surface. But, there's things it does pretty well.

I recall the quote, 'The closest thing to science fiction on tv'...
 
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Ace Dreamer said:
Warp speed isn't real speed - real speed is limited to less than 'c', the velocity of light. If you exceed that you are not in space-time, as we understand it. And, the Warp Drive maintains some relationship to space-time, by warping space, sort of the way a wave in water, ridden by a surfer, isn't an immense amount of water moving horizontally.

Battletech (which is what I assume you mean by 'BT') isn't a good comparison to Star Trek - the weapons tech is near-future (for 1984) primitive, barely science fictional at all. If Trek-tech can't throw around mass at 0.01c (1000x RW 2020 tech?) I'd be surprised.

Trek-tech doesn't break light-speed, it bypasses it. It all seems to be about subspace, which is also something used for the reaction-less (sub-light) Impulse Drive. And, the definition of a civilization that the Prime Directive doesn't apply to seems to be messing with subspace tech, like Cochrane did with the homo sap. prototype warp-drive.

What might be interesting is that some theoretical physics might have ideas about a 'subspace', 'below' physical space-time. Maybe interacting with that would allow a lot of the Trek-tech strangeness? It's tricky to say.

Trek-tech is moderately broken. The 3 Bigs that 'break science fiction stories', AI, nanotech, biotech - Trek AI is a bit... naff, for nanotech you need to look to the Borg, and they ban a lot of biotech/dance around the possibilities. Look at Bank's 'Culture' for a lot more 'gloves off', and an author like Greg Egan, or Ken MacLeod (or Jack Chalker, Charles Stross, ...) for serious brain-exercising stuff. Not to mention greats like Norton, Le Guin, Delany, Niven, Laumer, Frank Herbert, van Vogt, etc., etc. Trek barely scratches the surface. But, there's things it does pretty well.

I recall the quote, 'The closest thing to science fiction on tv'...
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Lol. I'm old. I grew up on TOS and TNG and learned my Star Trek lore when everything was still working under more Lensman type rules and the Alcubierre drive wasn't a thing yet. If they've officially moved over to that you're probably right, but I bet people are still fighting about it. I fully admit I'm probably out of touch with the new stuff cause I gave up watching it when Picard season one tried to be a bad Blade Runner knockoff. :(

My primary love in literature has always been hard sci-fi so I consider Star Trek and anything with superluminal drives broken. If it was decent and written before 2000 I probably have a physical copy somewhere on my shelves. Speaking of that I'm suddenly feeling an urge to go read Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga again.
 
Ace Dreamer said:
Trek-tech is moderately broken. The 3 Bigs that 'break science fiction stories', AI, nanotech, biotech - Trek AI is a bit... naff, for nanotech you need to look to the Borg, and they ban a lot of biotech/dance around the possibilities. Look at Bank's 'Culture' for a lot more 'gloves off', and an author like Greg Egan, or Ken MacLeod (or Jack Chalker, Charles Stross, ...) for serious brain-exercising stuff. Not to mention greats like Norton, Le Guin, Delany, Niven, Laumer, Frank Herbert, van Vogt, etc., etc. Trek barely scratches the surface. But, there's things it does pretty well.

I recall the quote, 'The closest thing to science fiction on tv'...
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Many times I get the impression that the federation is hundreds to thousands of years ahead tech-wize to all their local rivals, but they just refuse to use most of it. If the Romulans, Klingons, Cardassians had super AI, Nanotech or biotech you can bet that they would you use it, but they don't. Well the Federation clearly has the ability, but disdains using it.
 
fictionfan said:
Many times I get the impression that the federation is hundreds to thousands of years ahead tech-wize to all their local rivals, but they just refuse to use most of it. If the Romulans, Klingons, Cardassians had super AI, Nanotech or biotech you can bet that they would you use it, but they don't. Well the Federation clearly has the ability, but disdains using it.
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Well, it's more the federation has it, but can't control it. And refuses to use technology they can't stuff in the bottle when they are done with it. Their rivals probably have some of these that they also can't control, and are too wary of what it would do to them if unleashed. But the federation definitely seems to have the most of the weird shit.
 
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    • I looked out the window of the meeting room.

    The meeting had been ongoing for almost two hours now and I checked out an hour and a half into it and just let people discuss what to do about Seska. I had not sat down by the table in the first place, simply laid down along the wall by the window.

    All the senior staff were there.

    Which somehow included Neelix for some reason. I was not happy about this.

    As it turns out however, it seems like if I spend enough time in the same room, my nose just kind of gives up and it becomes less bad.

    At least enough that I can ignore the rest easily enough.

    Joining the senior officers were Chakotay and Torres. The latter still shooting me glares from time to time.

    Yeah, she wasn't happy I breached her systems. There really wasn't any need to be so territorial about it, it was necessary.

    Considering I really didn't care about what happened to Seska as long as she stopped being a threat, I didn't have anything to input into the conversation so I had spent the first half of the meeting getting ahead on the sensor logs.

    I gave up on that an hour ago.

    Now I was just playing tetris while feeling the life draining from my body.

    "Lieutenant," Tuvok said, half turning in his chair to look at me as there was a break in the discussion, "You have said very little. What is your view on the subject?"

    I banished the game, turning my head to him and snorted to try to get the Neelix out of my nose. It didn't help.

    "The way I see it there is nothing to discuss. There is only one solution that we can do according to Federation law. She's too dangerous to be allowed to walk free, and while she does have valuable skills, keeping track of her and making sure she's not up to something would take resources we can not afford to waste. Same as keeping her in the brig, not to mention that it would be illegal for such a long time in such a small box. Unless Captain Chakotay would like her transferred back to the Val Jean?"

    Chakotay sighed softly and then shook his head, one hand adjusting the PADD on the table before him, "No. Even if we had somewhere to hold her, she wouldn't last a week before someone tried to kill her for everything she's done."

    I would be surprised if she lasted a day to be honest.

    I nodded to him and then turned my head back to Janeway and Tuvok, "We can't hold her safely or legally. While technically what she did may be considered piracy, we have her in custody which means we can't execute her. We can't hold her, we can't put her to use, we can't kill her. Only thing we can do is put her off the ship. We stop at the next uninhabited M class we find, give her some basic supplies and leave her there."

    "Zeph, that is very likely to kill her too," Dinah said from across the table, "Solo survival on an unknown world has horrendous odds."

    I mimicked a shrug with my wings, "Should have thought of that before she became a Cardassian spy. It's literally the only option we have."

    Janeway frowned slightly, "Where are we on the Kazon situation?"

    I snorted in annoyance.

    Dinah picked her PADD up but didn't activate it, just holding it in one hand, "We haven't found any evidence she's working with the Kazon," she said and then shrugged, "...We haven't actually found any evidence anyone is working with the Kazon."

    "Maybe I was wrong," I admitted and then shook my head, "Which meant the Kazon are tracking us some other way. I don't like that."

    Torres shook her head, "I don't think you're wrong, and we're nowhere near done with the sweep of the Val Jean," she said, "We may still find something. You are certain it's nothing on Voyager?"

    I nodded, "As certain as I can be without taking her apart bolt by bolt," I said with a sigh before quickly regretting that fact, "Admittedly, it's impossible to be a hundred percent sure."

    Janeway drummed her fingers once on the table before she nodded, "Alright, continue your search. I'll give my decision regarding Seska tomorrow. Chakotay, would you join me in my ready room?"

    "Of course," he agreed.

    Everyone started to file out.

    I needed to go to my quarters and wash the Neelix off. Maybe sickbay too, get some of that decontamination gel. It may stink of mint, but at least it was better.

    Movement drew my attention to the fact that not everyone had left.

    Torres was leaning against the table, arms crossed as she glared at me.

    "I said I was sorry," I said, turning my head fully to her.

    "You could have just told me."

    I shook my head, "I wanted to think I could trust you, having gotten to know you a bit. But you thought the same about Seska. I had to be sure."

    Torres scowled before she looked to the side. Finally she sighed and nodded, "Fine. Don't ever do that again."

    "I won't," I said and then looked at her in amusement, "Not sure you'll ever let me into your engine room again in the first place."

    That got a slight shrug before she shook her head, "I heard your talk with Seska. You really break in that quickly?"

    "Yes and no," I admitted, "It took a while to get an authenticated user. Chell needs a better password than his mother's name and hometown. Once I had an authenticated user, elevating my privileges was pretty fast. Your computer has a number of vulnerabilities. Not easy to get it patched in the Maquis?"

    "Not exactly, no," Torres admitted and then scowled slightly again, "...And I'm not a computer specialist."

    "I did try several things first that you had fixed."

    "I'm okay, it's just not my field of expertise," she said with another shrug, "Seska did a lot of the computer work."

    I nodded.

    "Did you design that hardware tap, by that way?" Torres asked, "I had a look at it after I pulled it. It's pretty ingenious."

    "I wish," I grumbled and shook my head, "No, it's off the shelf tech. If a bit obscure unless you're in a certain field."

    She stared at me for several moments, "You're in Starfleet Intelligence," she finally said.

    I chuckled, "No. I'm not. I did work for them for a bit, but it was mostly research and development. Engineering work and such. As you can see, I'm not exactly built to be a spy."

    One eyebrow.

    "..Alright, I may have taken some courses," I admitted, "I get bored unless I'm working on a problem or learning something new. I like keeping busy."

    "I know the feeling," she admitted and uncrossed her arms, "...Just don't access my ship again."

    "I won't," I agreed, "...Unless you want me to get those security holes patched?" I then offered, "We don't have the full software saved with the latest patches for everything you have, but I'm sure I could fix the biggest holes."

    Torres frowned and then shrugged, "I'll think about it. Send me the software first."

    I clicked through my visor before I nodded, "Huginn will meet you by your shuttle with some data storage with everything loaded by the time you're ready to leave," I told her, "Guaranteed backdoor free."

    "And I can trust that?"

    I mimicked a shrug with my wings, "That's up to you. I try not to lie, it's exhausting. In the meanwhile, I do believe I owe you a tour."

    "You do," she admitted before she nodded, "Alright, I'll have a look at the software. Where do you wanna start?"

    "How about fore to aft? There are some advancements in deflector technology that may be able to be adapted to the Val Jean," I said and got to my paws.
     
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    • Ah yes, the two-hour meeting to decide something that has only one possible option that had already been decided on before the meeting was even scheduled, but that meeting is going to take every minute of the given time anyway.
     
    Hiver said:
    As you can see, I'm not exactly built to be a spy."
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    Bullshit, no one would ever suspect the Giant fire-breathing lizard to be a Spy. He could walk into the Obsidian order headquarters and not a single paranoid Cardassian would Say: Oh no there's a Federation Spy in our headquarters! They would be too busy screaming: Why is there a fire-breathing Lizard on the same planet I am?
     
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