Okay, so while I was thinking about escape pods for that other thread, I started thinking about the escape pods we saw in the second Battle of Chin'toka in DS9's "The Changing Face of Evil."
And I wondered... if all 300+ ships except for one were disabled and destroyed by the Breen energy-dampening weapon, then where the heck did the escape pods go to get the survivors like the Defiant crew away? They don't have anything more than a mini-fusion reactor and maybe some weak impulse engines to power them... so how would they get away from Dominion territory?
I'm wondering if anyone else thinks that the dialogue in "When it Rains..." could justify saying that some of the ships managed to restart their power systems and escape the battle? I know that the final effects shot pretty much indicated that the whole fleet was destroyed, but it seems to me that at least some of the ships would've had to have been left intact -- especially since Weyoun and the Female Changeling seemed to think that those escape pods they left would be able to get out of the system.
Which brings me to the Breen energy-dampening weapon, and a rather interesting question I should've thought of a lot earlier: Why wasn't the Defiant (or any other ship) immediately destroyed when the power to the ship's antimatter containment fields was lost? The only solution I can come up with is that the power loss was not as total as one might have thought -- or also that the power loss was in some way selective.
Either way, it suggests that there's some way around it aside from the countermeasures that Starfleet and the allies developed later on. Perhaps some starships still took power hits at Chin'toka, but weren't completely disabled and were thus able to escape?
Posted by Dat (Member # 302) on :
I'm guessing that lone Klingon ship was able to leave the area and get a signal out to allied fleets to get some rescue ships in to retrieve survivors.
As for the Breen weapon, I'm sure that had the Dominion not continued firing at disabled ships, they would still have exploded on their own. From what the episode suggested, power was not lost instantenously. It was gradual, meaning the M/ARA magnetic fields were slowly losing power and in time would completely collapse. All the disabled ships we saw were still losing their power and had not yet exploded yet.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
THe M/ARA bottles probably have a redundant power to prevent loss of containment if power is lost (we've seen ship's shot up so bad that only batteries are working at best, so I think it's pretty clear the ship does'nt blow-up if power is suddenly lost).
THe pods were likely recovered by a second wave of incoming ships that would have aborted the attack after hearing about the total destruction of the first wave. Nobody attacks an entrenched force without some reenforcments.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
quote:Nobody attacks an entrenched force without some reenforcments.
Except for Sisko. Remember "The Sacrifice of Angels"? Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Hey! Stop pointing out flaws in my arguments! Bastard. Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
Well, they deliberately left the survivors after that battle, didn't they? They wanted people to live to tell the tale of the mighty Breen weapon that could disable a whole fleet. The blow to morale would have been staggering, no?
Mark
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
Batteries? What about a solar sail even... in ST:IV:TVH The Yorktown was trying to deploy a make-shift solar sail.
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
I think it's likely the antimatter containment fields are powered by a completely separate system, not tied into the main power system at all. That would probably be the best solution, since it is one of the most vital parts of the ship.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Exactly....they could even be powered by the M/ARA reaction itself: kinda a minature version of the system that powers the whole ship. Or, a small amount of energy from the m/ARA system could be stored in a reserve "battery" with hundreds of hours of containment time for when the main power goes off.
Posted by Dat (Member # 302) on :
I agree that the M/ARA has it's own separated power source, but it's quite possible that power source was also drained or dampened by the weapon so that the containment fields would collapse in time anyway. The same goes with those reserve batteries.
Posted by J (Member # 608) on :
It seems to me that the pods are degaussed over a longer period of time... which gives you some leeway if power goes out. Isn't there a comment on this in the TNG TM?
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
It's quite possible that there were a number of support ships (transports, medical ships, Engineering support vessles) attached to the fleet that hung back during the engagement and picked up the survivors afterwards. The Dominon would have left them alone on the Founder's orders since they posed no threat and as has been pointed out, she wanted people to survive to spread the word of their defeat.
Posted by David Templar (Member # 580) on :
quote:Originally posted by J: It seems to me that the pods are degaussed over a longer period of time... which gives you some leeway if power goes out. Isn't there a comment on this in the TNG TM?
That's what I was thinking. Remember TNG's "Disaster"? Didn't the Ent-D lose almost all power? I can't check the scripts on minutiae for some reason. The TNGTM says very little about the topic, but it does suggest that in the event of lost of containment, the field does take time to decay. I would expect antimatter pod's containment fields being able to hold a charge for at least a little while. And if the Breen energy dampening weapon only affects electro-plasma-dependent systems, it might not work on something that is holding a reserve charge in non-EP form.
Posted by Dat (Member # 302) on :
The degaussing didn't hold true for the Yamato though. IIRC, what happened was the initial dumping of the antimatter (pods?) that was halted and immediate failure/sudden loss of power to magnetic containment which resulted in an immediate explosion.
Posted by Dax (Member # 191) on :
Some systems must have independant power or else the Breen weapon is somehow selective in what it disables. Surely the mechanism for opening the escape pod hatches on the Defiant must require some sort of power. The strangest thing is that sensors must've still been somewhat functional because the crew were able to detect where the hull was being breached, aswell as keeping track of what ship systems were being effected.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
Also the viewscreen was still on.
As for the Escape pod hatches, even if the electronics failed, there could have been a non-electrical backup, probably a set of chemical based explosive charge.
Posted by David Templar (Member # 580) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dat: The degaussing didn't hold true for the Yamato though. IIRC, what happened was the initial dumping of the antimatter (pods?) that was halted and immediate failure/sudden loss of power to magnetic containment which resulted in an immediate explosion.
Maybe the degaussing did work. The Iconian virus must have knocked out Yamato's containment monitoring system, otherwise her crew would have known about the containment failure way before the Ent-D did. It could have also knocked out her containment field power, and during the period before the explosion, the pods were running on reserved charge. Since the monitoring system was malfunctioning, no one knew that. All they knew was that containment was still up, they didn't know that it wasn't up the way it should be. When the Yamato blew up, it was the containment field power that failed, it was the degaussing finally running out.
Posted by J (Member # 608) on :
No... it wasn't just the yamato's monitoring system because they lost containment quickly after the E-D detected it. I suspect that the Iconian virus did more than just deactivate the magnetic field, I think it switched the polarity on the field generator which quickly killed the magnetic field.
Look at what the TNG TM says about the gravity generators... which can be considered to be similar technology I think... If it doesn't receive power it will still produce a field for 4 hours.
But there are still circumstances which I think power loss doesn't mean eventual containment loss. I would think that they would have some type of permenant [or semi-permenant: meaning that it lasts long enough for you to be unconcerned about it.. like days] storage system. Probably something to where they can't access the antimatter inside unless an external power source is available. Something like a capacitence jar, which keeps it's static charge for a long time and that charge can store the antimatter.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
Wouldn't an antimatter storage device be one of the last things you would ever want to degauss?
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
That's what the EMH Mark I is for.
Posted by J (Member # 608) on :
Yes, it would be one of the last things [I'm sure there is some type of maintence that would require you to empty the antimatter and degauss the pod], but even if it is one of the last things, if you switch the flow of the electrons through an electromagnetic you switch the fields polarity. It's not a hard thing to do, especially if we're talking about a really advanced computer virus that turns things topsy tervy for a living. So, you're right, but I still think that's the more likely scenario.
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