posted
Combining the Excelsior stalling thing with the ENT backstage technobabble, I'd say that ships from the pre-Ambassador era manipulated their inertia with a combo of the warp engines and the blue glowing "field stabilizer" thingamabob that appears on basically all pre-ENT, ENT and TFS designs (although not on the TOS era ones).
Post-Ambassador designs would move the blue doohickey into the impulse engines themselves, and make it independent of externally created warp fields. This would come at an extra cost: why install dedicated subspace coils for the impulse drive if warp coils already exist for the trick? Thus, only the biggest of the modern ships would rely on this tech, while something like the Defiant shuttlecraft would still use the cheaper alternative.
TOS era ships might have tried another expensive alternate method, which was abandoned by the time of TMP.
Whether the different types of starship would have different ramming properties... It probably depends on whether "integrated" and "warp field tapping" inertia manipulation effects collapse differently when the ship flattens itself against the Cube.
As for maximum impulse speed and related ramming energy, I don't think either 0.25c or 0.99c would be a relevant figure when a starship rams a Cube from a relative standstill across a range of just a few hundred or at most thousand klicks. Even at ten thousand gees, ten times the supposed Ambassador performance, it'd take about an hour to accelerate to 0.99c if Einstein was asleep, and the better part of a working day if General Relativity was vigilant. Assuming my math isn't too badly affected by my lack of sleep and concentration.
Still, something must be negating the inertia of starships or torpedoes if they can't dent the Cube with kinetic energy alone. We can always argue that shields deflect/absorb/turn-into-sperm-whales-and-petunias kinetic energy better than they do phaser energy or photon torpedo explosive energy, though. Perhaps even the fastest and most massive bullet can't deliver the correct type of joules to the target, and thus won't make the desired dent.
posted
It's interesting that there's a discussion of warp-ramming in a thread started by BOBW part 2 and no-one has mentioned that Riker apparently plans to do just that at the end of said episode.
(Okay, you could technically argue that he wanted warp "power", rather than warp "speed". But that seems to be stretching things.)
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
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posted
Regardless, they were at a dead stop relative to the cube AND being held by a tractor beam. They may have tried warp acceleration to ram it and shake off the beam, but I think that Riker would have been just as happy trying to explode that close and cause some damage.
posted
He ordered The Boy to set a collision course and to prepare to go to warp on his order. I don't think they were being held by a tractor beam at the time either. The cube was in Earth orbit and the Enterprise was in pursuit... but I don't remember tham being in a tractor beam at that point.
I think Worf on the Defiant just said, "Prepare for ramming speed!!!" After which he was informed dat his ship be aw broke. Shortly afterwards, the Borg cube tried to lock a tractor beam on the ship, but was denied the opportunity by the Enterprise E
posted
Nope, a tractor beam was most certainly on the E-D at the time. When Data sent over the "sleep" command, I quite clearly rembember the VFX shot of the tractor and cutting beams disengaging at different times.
As for the Defiant, Work just barely utters his command before Helm Boy reports another starship coming in. It's the Enterprise! Cut to the exterior VFX of the Borg tractor starting to lock on before photon torpedoes from the E-E destroy the emission point, followed by the new ship sailing by.
posted
The Borg were trying to lock on a tractor beam at that point, but I don't know if they had succeeded. There was a definite countdown of some kind going on though (possibly the shields beginning to fail) that caused Riker to tell Data that they couldn't hold on any longer.
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
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posted
Right... I think the Borg were *trying* to lock on... but hadn't yet. And, yes, thinking back, the reason they had to hurry was because they were under attack, not because Earth was about to be attacked.
posted
Was just on Spike TV today. The Borg had them in a tractor beam, and their cutting beam was about to reach Main Engineering. That was the countdown. Riker ordered Wes to set a collision course, and called down to Engineering to tell Geordi to stand by to go to warp power.
Got to dig the graveyard scene all over again...
--Jonah
-------------------- "That's what I like about these high school girls, I keep getting older, they stay the same age."
--David "Woody" Wooderson, Dazed and Confused
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Teh PW
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posted
A bit of necrothread casting but (AND I KNOW i asked about this long ago, just don't recall when) where are the filming miniatures for BOBW now? who has them? Is the Kyushu still hanging from threads in a office somewhere?
posted
With the exceptions of the Ambassador and Nebula, none of the BOBW ships were sold at auction- none of the kitbashes went. None of the DS9 bashes either except the Yeager.
I was hoping hor good reference shots for some of those ships but they're probably in storage- awaiting Mike Okuda's retierment aution.
Registered: Aug 2002
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quote:Originally posted by The Vorlon: The Enterprise went to warp from a standstill right after the shuttle crash-landed in ST5...
"Varp speed NOW..."
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier... it was all a dream sequence. A collective dream of Kirk, Spock and McCoy, brought about due to Spock's imbibment of McCoy's "special ingredient" in the beans and possibly the eating of "Marshmelons", Spock cast a mild telepathic field across the three of them and they shared a collective dream.
I don't know which of them were responsible for the naked Uhura fan-dance, though.
-------------------- "Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica." - Jim Halpert. (The Office)
quote:Originally posted by Jason Abbadon: With the exceptions of the Ambassador and Nebula, none of the BOBW ships were sold at auction- none of the kitbashes went. None of the DS9 bashes either except the Yeager.
The Nebula wasn't sold, all the new photos of it are from the touring exhibition.
You could say the Saratoga was sold, though, since the Reliant model went.
posted
I don't know which of them were responsible for the naked Uhura fan-dance, though.
First, was, not were, and second Kirk. Has to have been Kirk.
-------------------- I have plenty of experience in biology. I bought a Tamagotchi in 1998... And... it's still alive.
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