Star Trek vs. Babylon 5

[buzzard]

Oh, but just some corrections and additional data from the book:
Torpedos have a range of 3,500,000 km (not 1,500,000 as I wrote earlier), and it can be increased if the antimatter/matter onboard is used for the engines instead of the final explosion. The typical warhead yields 1.5 kg antimatter (the explosion should be comparable to at least some tactical nuclear warheads. Unfortunately, I don`t know how much nuclear material is used with this kind of weapons, and how much mass is actually converted to energy).

The shields seem to be able to hold of 2.688 MW (Megawatt).
One Phaser Emitter (a phaser bank contains of several of them, but I don`t know how or if this adds up) can emit 5.1 MW (maybe someone has some comparitive figures from Babylon 5 or Starwars- Fiction, technical manuals, scenes from the show?)

Mustrum Ridcully

If there is 1.5 kg of antimatter on a photon torpedo, they should be able to varporize pretty much any ship they hit. If we assume full conversion of matter into energy, we're talking 2.7 x10^17 joules of energy. Nukes are only very mildly efficient in terms of the amount of matter transformed into energy (as in fractions of a percent, and not a real big fraction). Of course Star Trek doesn't have them work out to be that powerful, so this doesn't provide us with much of a basis for comparison. If a phaser only emits 5.1 MW of energy, that's pretty ho-hum. I'd say a round from a M1A1 tank delivers on the order of that much energy. We certainly have chemical lasers which are around that right now. The ABL program says it gets multimegawatt beams right launched from a 747. Honestly I do remember from reading a roomate's ST technical book that I was completely underwhelmed by the numbers they claimed. Though the photon torpedo number is pretty crazy. I guess the author didn't bother to apply e= mc^2 and see the result.

buzzard

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

If there is 1.5 kg of antimatter on a photon torpedo, they should be able to varporize pretty much any ship they hit. If we assume full conversion of matter into energy, we're talking 2.7 x10^17 joules of energy. Nukes are only very mildly efficient in terms of the amount of matter transformed into energy (as in fractions of a percent, and not a real big fraction). Of course Star Trek doesn't have them work out to be that powerful, so this doesn't provide us with much of a basis for comparison. If a phaser only emits 5.1 MW of energy, that's pretty ho-hum. I'd say a round from a M1A1 tank delivers on the order of that much energy. We certainly have chemical lasers which are around that right now. The ABL program says it gets multimegawatt beams right launched from a 747. Honestly I do remember from reading a roomate's ST technical book that I was completely underwhelmed by the numbers they claimed. Though the photon torpedo number is pretty crazy. I guess the author didn't bother to apply e= mc^2 and see the result.

buzzard

I wondered about the torpedo figures myself. I made some similar calculations a few years ago when I read a book (also Startrek) about an antimatter bomb used on a planet that only contained a few gramms of antimatter. Unfortunately at that time I hadn`t any access to internet, and I didn`t find any comparable data...

I am somehow surprised about these inconsistencies, since I know from the writers (Rick Sternback and Micheal Okuda) that they have some knowledge in these fields, even if it might not be much more than hobby level.
But on the other hand - Charles Ryan and Mike Mulhilvill both claim to have knowledge in the fields of modern firearms, but our own "weapon-guru" always finds (both minor and major) mistakes in their products.

Mustrum "Geek researchs" Ridcully

 

[s/LaSH]

1.5kg is equal to a truly massive explosion, one the biggest fusion bombs would possibly rival. A single gram of AM would obliterate whole suburbs with the explosion.

However, when you're talking space battles, there's no atmosphere to conduct a shockwave. Your only concern is a blast of photons (light, heat, exotic particles...). At ground zero, that's going to be pretty intense. But it will fall off dramatically with distance (the square of the distance? Not sure), thus meaning that a near miss with a torp would do almost no damage unless it was really heavy.

Star Trek space battles always seem to be scaled up by a factor of a few thousand or so, so the ships are simultaneously visible to the naked eye. Assuming that, is it so hard to believe that those photon torpedoes explode within a hundred km of the target and do damage that way, instead of impacting directly on the ship's shields? An actual direct hit would probably rupture everything.

Speculation...

 

[buzzard]

1.5kg is equal to a truly massive explosion, one the biggest fusion bombs would possibly rival. A single gram of AM would obliterate whole suburbs with the explosion.

I'm pretty sure that 1.5 kg of antimatter completely dwarfs the biggest fusion bomb ever popped off. I mean by many orders of magnitude. The efficiently on fusion bombs is so much lower that it isn't even funny. Of course the lack of a conductive medium would work as you say, but that quantity of energy it truly mind boggling.

buzzard

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

1.5kg is equal to a truly massive explosion, one the biggest fusion bombs would possibly rival. A single gram of AM would obliterate whole suburbs with the explosion.

However, when you're talking space battles, there's no atmosphere to conduct a shockwave. Your only concern is a blast of photons (light, heat, exotic particles...). At ground zero, that's going to be pretty intense. But it will fall off dramatically with distance (the square of the distance? Not sure), thus meaning that a near miss with a torp would do almost no damage unless it was really heavy.

Star Trek space battles always seem to be scaled up by a factor of a few thousand or so, so the ships are simultaneously visible to the naked eye. Assuming that, is it so hard to believe that those photon torpedoes explode within a hundred km of the target and do damage that way, instead of impacting directly on the ship's shields? An actual direct hit would probably rupture everything.

Speculation...

According to the book, if a torpedo is able to penetrate the shields of the target, and explodes within the shields, it usually tends more to vaporize it than to "break" it.
For the phaser output: There are three sample battles that come from the Starfleet database in the book (somehow, this sounds ridicilous ). One of them describes a combat between a Galaxy class starship and a Romulan Warbird. The Warbid fires Phasers with 20 GW (Gigawatt). Since Warbirds and Galaxy class starships are considered (in Startrek Canon) to be similar in firepower, I assume that the Phaser Emitters of a Phaser bank must add up somehow. (And even a Ferengi Marauder fires 500 MW weapons)

Mustrum Ridcully

 

[Umbran]

Again, I'm led to question whether that's due to torpedoes or phasers/disruptors.

Oh, the phasers will do just fine from orbit. Over the course of the series, the Enterprise D repeatedly used phasers to dig into planetary cores to relieve pressure and whatnot. Even in the current Enterprise series, the Xindi use beam-weapons to kill millions of people on Earth. There's no problem at all with the phasers, I assure you

There's one thing going for Star Trek in this face off - exotic technology. Both Star Wars and B5 are limited in the variety of tech they can apply - blasters and shields and that's about it. These space operas weren't particuarly interested in investigating neato science and technology. Trek, in trying to appeal to more full-fledged geeks, has computer's who's processors carry impulses that move faster than light, easily adaptable nanotechnology, and readily acessible time travel.

Imagine if you will...

"Babylon 5 Station, this is Jean Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise. We have scanned and read your databases, and are aware of the alien plague currently affecting your homeworld. We are in possession of advanced nanotechnology that should be able to fix the problem in about a week. Stand down so that we may negotiate..."

 

[Storm Raven]

"Babylon 5 Station, this is Jean Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise. We have scanned and read your databases, and are aware of the alien plague currently affecting your homeworld. We are in possession of advanced nanotechnology that should be able to fix the problem in about a week. Stand down so that we may negotiate..."

A week? Standard Star Trek level miracle technology should be able to resolve any problem like that in ten minutes or so. Usually the last ten minutes of an episode.

 

[s/LaSH]

There's one thing going for Star Trek in this face off - exotic technology. Both Star Wars and B5 are limited in the variety of tech they can apply - blasters and shields and that's about it. These space operas weren't particuarly interested in investigating neato science and technology. Trek, in trying to appeal to more full-fledged geeks, has computer's who's processors carry impulses that move faster than light, easily adaptable nanotechnology, and readily acessible time travel.

Oh, I don't know... B5's Earthforce uses missiles with fairly fearsome destructive ability (see the season 4 culmination where one missile-equipped satellite prepares to destroy the eastern seaboard of America), and there are about a kajillion different types of weapon listed in the B5 d20 rulebook, ranging from lasers to particle beams to Minbari fusion cannon (which aren't powered by fusion, it's what they do to the target) to various antimatter cannon to the feared neutron laser, which I have no concept of operational theory, but sounds cool, just like phasers. Hardly 'just blasters'. The Drakh Plague that overran Earth was nanotech, and not the nano of any mere galactic scourge such as the Borg, but nano derived from the science of a race so ancient they keep the first lifeform of our Universe in their basement.

And Star Wars is riddled with tech if you know where to look. I've already mentioned Interdictor Cruisers and wondered about their effects on warp corridors, seeing as they're intended to disrupt a parallel continuum and Trek ships still travel within 'real' space. There's also bacta (not as effective as dermal regenerators, but hey), droids that manage to both have intelligent personalities and not create an android army to destroy mankind (let me check, how many AI-enabled robots are there in Trek? Hm, two. And one of them's an Evil Twin TM. The record for Giant Computers is even worse, they're all machine supremacists), and cloning. Plus you can do nearly anything with the Force.

I'm not saying Trek is surpassed by any of this. In fact, it's still about the most tech-saturated thing on TV, and still has the awesome Transporter. It's just that there is a fair amount more than just blasters and shields to B5 and SW.

 

[danzig138]

Impuls engines allow flying at up to 0.9 c

I thought impulse only went up to .25 c max?

 

[Green Knight]

Personally I think Earthforce alone can beat Starfleet.

First off, the speed issue. As has been pointed out, they can't fight at Warp speed. And even if they could, what're they gonna do? Go to warp and pop off one shot in the fraction of a second the warp engine will take them out of range? Besides, jump tech is superior to warp drive. As far as I can tell, people can get farther with jump engines then they can with warp drive. There's also the advantage of being able to exit normal space. Let's say you're the Enterprise on some mission to study some spacial anomaly or another. While your guard is down, a jump point opens and out comes an Earthforce Omega-Class Destroyer. Before you have a chance to raise shields and arm phasers and photon torpedos, the Earthforce ship has blown you away.

Second, Earthforce Destroyers carry fighters. So a starfleet ship won't just have to face a destroyer, but a small fleet of fightercraft. And fact is, Starfleet ships don't fire fast enough to take down so many aircraft. The Defiant is pretty much the only ship with a quick enough rate of fire, but it suffers from only being able to shoot what's in front of it.

Third, while Earthforce ships don't have shields, they don't really need them. As has been pointed out, they don't really have to worry about the Transport-A-Weapon thing, since the Starfleet ship would have to bring down shields, at which point the combined firepower of the Earthforce ship and fighters would bring it down. Second, they're so big that they can shrug off several impacts from even photon torpedos and phaser blasts. B5 ships didn't instantly explode upon the first hit, after all. They were tough ships, even without shields. Those Omegas were able to stand up to a lot of damage dished out by ships more powerful than Starfleet ships. Also, unlike Starfleet ships, they have the capability to intercept incoming fire. So while they'll probably eat each and every phaser blast, they have a good shot at bringing down a large percentage of any photon torpedoes fired their way.

All those facts taken together lead me to believe that an Omega-Class Destroyer can defeat even a Sovereign Class Starship. And that's not even counting the latest ship in the Earthforce fleet, the Warlock Class Destroyer.

That thing's a veritable monster, and from what I understand, is nearly a match for a Minbari cruiser! It'd eat the Enterprise alive and THEN some!

As for a war between the Federation and the Earth Alliance, again, I say the Earth Alliance wins. The Federation is only about 150 planets, not "hundreds" of worlds. Also, the Federation fleet isn't that big, whereas Earthforce has a massive fleet in Omega Class Destroyers, alone. Nevermind ground troops! For cripes sake, Federation ground soldiers go into battle wearing the standard Starfleet uniforms! You've got to be kidding me! The guys that're slogging through the deserts and the jungles are wearing the same uniform that Picard and Sisko wear on the bridge? Hasn't the Federation ever heard of BDU's? Nevermind that Earthforce has heard of a little thing called BODY ARMOR.

Earthforce wins this one, hands down. I'm not even gonna MENTION what the Minbari would do to them!