Star Trek Social Club

10676 readers

353 users here now

r/startrek: The Next Generation

Star Trek news and discussion. No slash fic...

Maybe a little slash fic.

New to Star Trek and wondering where to start?

Rules

1 Be constructive

All posts/comments must be thoughtful and balanced.

2 Be welcoming

It is important that everyone from newbies to OG Trekkers feel welcome, no matter their gender, sexual orientation, religion or race.

3 Be truthful

All posts/comments must be factually accurate and verifiable. We are not a place for gossip, rumors, or manipulative or misleading content.

4 Be nice

If a polite way cannot be found to phrase what it is you want to say, don't say anything at all. Insulting or disparaging remarks about any human being are expressly not allowed.

5 Spoilers

Utilize the spoiler system for any and all spoilers relating to the most recently-aired episode. There is no formal spoiler protection for episodes/films after they have been available for approximately one week.

6 Keep on-topic

All busmittions must be directly about the Star Trek franchise (the shows, movies, books, etc.). Off-topic discussions are welcome at c/Quarks.

7 Meta

Questions and concerns about moderator actions should be brought forward via DM.

Upcoming Episodes

Date	Episode	Title
11-28	LD 5x07	"Fully Dilated"
12-05	LD 5x08	"Upper Decks"
12-12	LD 5x09	"Fissure Quest"
12-19	LD 5x10	"The New Next Generation"
01-24	Film	"Section 31"

Episode Discussion Archive

In Production

Strange New Worlds (TBA)

Section 31 (2025-01-24)

Starfleet Academy (TBA)

In Development

Untitled theatrical film

Untitled comedy series

Wondering where to stream a series? Check here.

Allied Discord Server

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

ValueSubtracted@startrek.website

USSBurritoTruck@startrek.website

OpticalData@startrek.website

Kinetic impulse weapons (startrek.website)

submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by kargarocP4@startrek.website to c/startrek@startrek.website

15 comments fedilink hide all child comments

"Full Impulse" is generally considered to be 0.25c.
The force of an impact of a Voyager-sized (700 kilotons) mass at that speed would be many times greater than that of the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs.
And I think its reasonable to assume that 0.25c isn't a hard limit, but rather an agreed-upon speed limit for starships.
If you could make an object go even faster, that energy goes up by a few orders of magnitude.
0.9c sounds doable. I don't know about any faster, but maybe?

At that speed, the force of Voyager hitting a planet would be at least hundreds of times greater than the aforementioned asteroid. This sounds like it would completely sterilize the planet.

Which begs the question, why don't we see weapons like this in star trek? I'd figure the Federation wouldn't use them, but the Federation isn't alone.

One argument I tend to see when this comes up is, that the shields would block it. Which then makes you think, if they could block that, then what couldn't they block? It makes them pretty much invincible. So I don't think that's it.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] wjrii@kbin.social 4 points 2 years ago

At least in Trek, 24th century shields are extremely good at handling physical impacts. Even in a compromised state, with one of the shield processors having escaped and gone rogue, an ageing California class was able to take several hard impacts without so much as a scratch. They might have been able to resist indefinitely if their shields were performing optimally.

If addressing kinetic impacts this isn't part of the handwavium, then there's frankly very little way to enjoy Star Trek. I am just an old English major, but various sources put the Enterprise-D at about 4 million metric tons of mass. If you accelerate that to even 5% of c with impulse drives, it would impact with a force of about 2/3 or more of the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs, and that's just one ship operating well within the accepted performance of the impulse drives.