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Grom

Where do all the stray photons go?

Space warfare in Trek always seemed incredibly strange to me. I often wondered what happened to all those stray shots. Would a photon torpedo keep traveling until it met with another object? What about beam weapons? Would they dissipate over time?

 

Maybe some of you can shed light on this subject.

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I often wondered what happened to all those stray shots. Would a photon torpedo keep traveling until it met with another object? What about beam weapons? Would they dissipate over time?

Interesting questions. I was trying to think about a Trek example of dealing with stray shots and could only think of one: the TNG episode "Genesis". As a reason to get Picard and Data off the ship while the crew devolves, they show Worf testing a new guidance system. One of the torpedoes goes astray and into a dense asteroid field where it can't be disabled, so they go after it by shuttlecraft. The key point is that it establishes a precedent for caring about stray photorps.

 

Photon Torpedoes. How to disable or abort a torp is an interesting thought exercise. If we envision photorps as having a small M/AM charge inside them, then just disabling them would leave the explosive force intact. Still not something you'd want floating around. There's also the problem of speed. If you're firing these things at warp and they miss, how far do they go before they stop? (And why don't they just turn around and try again, huh?) Remember, there's negligible friction. You'd have to imagine there's some sort of energy decay in the warp handoff field or they'd go forever. So, unless they're rigged to blow up after recognizing they've missed their target, there'd be a lot of mines out there, mobile or otherwise.

 

Beam Weapons. Phasers are harder to deal with. The TNG Tech Manual says they're limited to light speed, which makes it hard to reconcile battles at warp speed, but this may not matter as much as the conjectural physics of a beam weapon. Unless you're duking it out in a nebula, there's no medium to diminish your phaser power. But even in a vacuum, there's dissipation due to an eventual "spread" of the energy.

 

To remain a beam, one has to assume some kind of coherence in phaser energy, like a laser. That is, the energy stays concentrated in a very straight line, reducing dissipatatoin. This is the genius of lasers, where one aimed at the moon expands from a pin-point to only about 4 miles in diameter by the time it gets there (based on the Lunar Laser Ranging Experiment). That may sound like a lot, but remember that's over a distance of a quater-million miles. This shows that distance matters. As distance increases, the same energy gets spread over a wider area. Phasers are probably really coherent, but eventually distance and stray interstellar particles would reduce the punch. But at short range, try not to fire at a ship with an inhabited planet behind it.

 

Other. I don't know enough about what makes a disruptor different from a phaser, but I imagine them operating along the same lines. Likewise for polaron weapons, etc. Particle beams would probably be limited in speed and would have even faster energy drain. The Romulan plasma weapon, from its only appearance, clearly had a range dissipation issue which is the reason the Enterprise survived.

 

One can imagine plot elements falling out of this: having to retrieve a stray torpedo, getting hit by a left-over torpedo from some long-forgotten battle, causing accidental collateral damage during a near-planet phaser battle. The mind reels.

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Re: Torpedoes, I would think they were equipped with an 'abort/destruct' mechanism, so that when the battle was over a tactical officer could send out a signal to destoy any strays that might be hanging around. This would also be useful in big fleet battles, if someone's evasive took it into the path of your fire.

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Haha, this reminded me of blowing up those annoying shuttles in Starfleet Command 3. The shuttle instantly vaporizes and the phaser shot would streak off into the black.

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One can imagine plot elements falling out of this: ... getting hit by a left-over torpedo from some long-forgotten battle, ... The mind reels.

 

Ha-hmmm... :D

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Re: Torpedoes, I would think they were equipped with an 'abort/destruct' mechanism, so that when the battle was over a tactical officer could send out a signal to destoy any strays that might be hanging around.

And an interesting plot point if someone could get hold of another ship's torpedo abort code... could be the stuff of surviving an epic outgunned confrontation. :::imagines a Khan-esque scene of using one's own tactical console to order an enemy ship to abort its own torpedoes:::

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And an interesting plot point if someone could get hold of another ship's torpedo abort code... could be the stuff of surviving an epic outgunned confrontation. :::imagines a Khan-esque scene of using one's own tactical console to order an enemy ship to abort its own torpedoes:::

Point of RW goodness here. All ICBMs are equipped with such things. However, the only time it is enabled is during a test launch, with inert warheads, in the event it strays off course. For that very reason.

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And an interesting plot point if someone could get hold of another ship's torpedo abort code... could be the stuff of surviving an epic outgunned confrontation. :::imagines a Khan-esque scene of using one's own tactical console to order an enemy ship to abort its own torpedoes:::

 

Time it just right and auto-destruct the torp as it just launches. But there's probably a couple of safety systems to prevent that.

 

Trek battles are usually rather unrealistic in my mind. But one true thing is probably how close they sometimes are to each other. Given much of any distance and it becomes very easy to see the shot coming. This is probably why stray shots aren't much of a problem. Space is big and the chances of crossing a beam at the right time to impact is small. And you can see it coming quite easily. And as said, if the beams are limited to sublight it's easy to get out of the way or simply outrun it.

 

Torps would travel for as long as their warpfield stays intact. After that they would drift until either they self destruct or power for their antimater containment fields gave out then they'd blow up anyways.

 

Side note: One of the best Trek battles I've seen, the fanfilm ST:PhaseII - Blood and Fire. Just watch the intro "teaser" clip.

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