posted
A humble request for help, in lieu of access to ENT, and due to laziness in using the search function:
What do we know so far about the power levels of the Enterprise's phase cannon and photonic torpedoes? Apart from guesstimates from VFX, did we get definite megawattage figures in "Silent Enemy"? Have we gotten any meaningful updates later on?
Also, have there been any power figures given for alien ships in ENT that could be used for comparison?
posted
"Silent Enemy"[ENT1] - 500GJ phase cannons, suggesting a total of 1 terajoule per twin shot. Can be overloaded to 5 terajoules per cannon provided one is willing to blow out various doohickeys and not shoot again for awhile.
No time value is given, however, to guage power.
"Cogenitor"[ENT2] - I think that's the right ep. Reed tells some alien chick that their weapons are 80 gigajoules. Instead of an 84% reduction in yield, I'd imagine that's just Reed being sneaky and not showing all of the family jewels to an alien race.
"The Expanse"[ENT2] - Photonic torpedoes are said to be capable of knocking the comm array off of a shuttle without leaving a scratch, or blowing a 3km crater into an asteroid. Yield estimates from the latter have commonly resulted in figures of or near 25 megatons. That is 104.6 million gigajoules, which would suggest a great disparity between photonic torpedoes and phase cannons (unless the latter had a firepower of 500GJ per some small fraction of a second, meaning total shots could be more energetic).
"The Shipment"[ENT3] - Two spatial torpedoes were thought capable of destroying the kemacite facility, which was large and quite solid. While it's possible that something at the facility was thought to be volatile, this is not explicitly stated. Blast suppressors were placed around the area to prevent the destruction of the rest of the community surrounding the facility. There's no way to know just how big a blast this was to be, but I'd give it at least a kiloton judging by the size of the place and its construction.
-------------------- . . . ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
Printer-friendly view of this topic
