Is it just me, or did the Enterprise's hull polarization defense mechanism work essentially work just like ablative armor or that funky armor in "Endgame"?
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
There's no real way of telling.
Mark
Posted by David Templar (Member # 580) on :
Actually, there might be.
Ablative armor works by absorbing the distructive energy from the incoming weapon and vapourizing itself to reduce the damage (ST: Encypd). Kind of like the modern explosive reactive armor, AA will wear itself out if hit in the same spot repeatedly. AA is also not very effective again projectile weapons, especially delay-fused ones, like the Breen torpedoes during the Dominion War. They'll just punch holes in the armor and explode inside the target.
The armor in "Endgame" is tricky, since they didn't say anything about it. I think it refracs or reflects an incoming weapon's energy, which would also explain why tractor beams couldn't lock on. The graviton particles were being bounced off.
I think polarizing the hull is meant to put a charge on it. If the incoming weapon contains a charge, the same charge, the law of magnetism would mean at least some of it will be reflected off. This kind of armoring would work best against things like particle beams and ion cannons, anything with involving charged particles, but it probably next to useless against phasers, disruptors, and fused projectile weapons.
Just my 2 cents, probably a glaring error in the law of physics somewhere.
Posted by Masao (Member # 232) on :
This is from memory, but reactive and ablative armor would be two very different things. Reactive armor, as the name implies, reacts when it is struck. It often takes the form of little explosive packages fixed above the "real" (metal or ceramic) armor. It's meant to disrupt the plasma jet of a shaped armor-piercing antitank round before it reaches the real armor beneath. In contrast, ablative armor ablates, which means to be removed by cutting, melting, burning, vaporizing, etc. It's passive, like the heat shield of space capsules. The heat shield absorbs the energy of atmospheric re-entry and burns off and hopefully will last until you splash down in the Pacific.
Posted by The359 (Member # 37) on :
I believe that when they say "polarizing the hull", it's meant as a simple shield. I think that they are giving the hull a simple energy shield to cover it, which can be used to deflect laser blasts and the like (but most likely not torpedoes).
Posted by David Templar (Member # 580) on :
AA is like ERA because they are both *reacting* to an attack. If AA sat there and worked by sheer hardness and passitivity, then it'd be different from ERA, but it doesn't.
When you polarize something, you usually put a negative and a positive charge to it. Does require energy, but I wouldn't call it an "energy shield". More like making the hull magnetic.