quote: Anyway, the Big Sister DM floated unfinished just outside the galaxy, until a member of Guinan's race (still not established as El-Aurians) found it.
Sorry, Mark, but she's not a member of Guinan's race. Her people had been destroyed by the Borg, and she wandered the galaxy for years until she found the El-Aurians. She had a second family with them, and then lost everything again when the Borg struck. Naturally, she was really pissed off after this.
I wouldn't mind seeing this depicted either, particularly since the Doomsday Machine, Mark Two is a LOT bigger than the original. It's "hundreds of miles long," and it also looks more intimidating as well. To quote the novel,
"Foremost was a wide circular opening in the front, like a huge, gaping mouth. It was miles wide, like an entranceway to a tunnel stright down to hell. From within there were flickerings of some ungodly light, like unseen demons dancing around a towering pyre. The thing then immediately angled straight down, the mouth projecting forward while the rest of the body spiralled down at a ninety-degree angle to it. It twisted and turned all the way to the bottom, looking for all the world like some sort of spacegoing cyclone.
"The most notable feature, however, was the huge series of projections that extended from all over the exterior. They were the longest and most densely packed around the maw, huge pointed towers miles high that came to points, packed so densely that they overlapped. Yet there was a symmetry to them, a sense of deadly beauty and purpose. With the combination of the flickering within the maw itself, and the dazzling projections so thickly set around the mouth, it gave the impression of a massive, moving, highly stylized starburst. A moving sun, consuming whatever was in its path."
Add to this the fact that it is intelligently controlled (unlike its predecessor), and you've got one hell of a weapon.
[ January 11, 2002: Message edited by: Woodside Kid ]
-------------------- The difference between genius and idiocy? Genius has its limits.
Registered: Aug 2001
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capped
I WAS IN THE FUTURE, IT WAS TOO LATE TO RSVP
Member # 709
posted
yeah, if the internal mechanisms are in fact made of new age crystals, 97 or so megatons should do the trick quite nicely.
Alien designer #1: Shouldn't we make the mechanism a little stronger.. these NewAge™�� Crystals are kinda fragile.. what if the Borg try to break them?
Alien designer #2: There's solid neutronium around them.
#1: Dude, but the...
#2: Neutronium.
#1: Well, I mean..
#2: Neu-tron-i-um.
-------------------- "Are you worried that your thoughts are not quite.. clear?"
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posted
Borg in Thollie web.. I see no problems with that, aside from perhaps the Tholian Assembly (allegedly) being to the South East of the Federation.
posted
Borg vs Tholians...I'd like to see them try it Do remember how long it took them to spin a web around a piddly little Constitution-Class? it would take them forever to ensnare a Borg cube and I dout they'd just sit there like a dumbass. Still, it would be an interesting image
posted
In the "Vendetta" novel (which I guess we're peripherally discussing here), the Tholians got better at it - they were done in a matter of minutes. Unfortunately, even the advanced web couldn't handle the BSDM's super duper anti-proton beam.
Like so many things on Star Trek the trouble here is that the writers stumble upon a cool sounding substance but don't think of the ramifictions of using it. Sorry Mr. Spinrad!
The big issue is the mass of the stuff. Anything that masses 100 million tons per tablespoon is gonna have a killer gravitational pull (imagine a basketball with the Earth's mass and a surface gravity of something approaching a million Gees).
Yes, the entire thing couldn't be made entirely out of neutronium as there had to be mechanisms inside it.
BUT, this is the Catch 22.
To REMAIN neutronium the object has to have a mass as least 1 sun. The less neutronium there is in the object the more likely it is to fall below this minimum mass. Once it does, boom! No more neutronium. So, if it's dense enough to remain neutronium, it's surface gravity would be so intense that any mechanisms inside it would be crushed into neutronium itself. (Instant neutronium! Just add gravity!)
Okay, maybe the builders floated the mechanism in the (hollow) at the machine's center of mass, so it would be pulled on equally from all sides, but as gravitational pull increases the closer you get the the center of massm the pull on the various parts of this would be uneven as well (I could be wrong). I'd imagine even this would get all those mechanisms smashed instantaneously.
(Hmmm, or maybe that's what the 97.835 megaton blast did...nudge the mechanism a nanometer out of balance and the gravity ripped it apart.)
Oh, and all this forgetting the fact that the Planet Killer is an unstable shape and there would have to be some amazing power exerted just to keep it from collapsing onto itself and becoming a nice smooth sphere.
So, the machine had to exert some kind of power that would negate its own gravitation pull. What kind of power source could it possibly be?! The only thing my friend and I could think of was a Hawking-esque "Leaky" Black Hole, but that raises a whole bunch of other issues.
No matter how you slice it a neutonium is massive beyond belief and it's probably the worst substance to use as a construction material (and I won't even get into the subject of shed electron valences and the "quark soup" nature of the material).
Fun!
-------------------- "Well, I mean, it's generally understood that, of all of the people in the world, Mike Nelson is the best." -- ULTRA MAGNUS, steadfast in curmudgeon
Registered: Feb 2001
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EdipisReks
Ex-Member
posted
hey, if a dyson sphere can be made of neutronium, a planet killer sure as hell can be. maybe the ship has a quintesence field generator, or some other technobabble.
posted
Somehow by the 24th century... they have stablised neutronium... the door to the Founder's compound in What You Leave Behind was made of neutronium.
-------------------- "Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica." - Jim Halpert. (The Office)
quote:Originally posted by AndrewR: Somehow by the 24th century... they have stablised neutronium... the door to the Founder's compound in What You Leave Behind was made of neutronium.
Uh huh, and gotten rid of all that messy gravitational pull too. Suuure...
-------------------- "Well, I mean, it's generally understood that, of all of the people in the world, Mike Nelson is the best." -- ULTRA MAGNUS, steadfast in curmudgeon
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posted
Personally, neutronium in ST is not the same thing as it is today. Instead of being the neutron only material that we know it as. The only good explaination is another extremely extremely dense material.
-------------------- Later, J _ _ _ _ _ ___ _ _ _ _ _ The Last Person to post in the late Voyager Forum. Bashing both Voyager, Enterprise, and "The Bun" in one glorious post.
quote:Originally posted by AndrewR: Somehow by the 24th century... they have stablised neutronium... the door to the Founder's compound in What You Leave Behind was made of neutronium.
I can't stop giggling at the idea of Garek, Dumar, Kira, and everyone else near the door plastered agains it like flies on fly paper, cockroaches in a cockroach trap.
-------------------- "God's in his heaven. All's right with the world."
Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:Originally posted by David Templar: [QUOTE]I can't stop giggling at the idea of Garek, Dumar, Kira, and everyone else near the door plastered against [the neutronium door] like flies on fly paper, cockroaches in a cockroach trap.
Hahaha...that IS a pretty funny image.
-------------------- "Well, I mean, it's generally understood that, of all of the people in the world, Mike Nelson is the best." -- ULTRA MAGNUS, steadfast in curmudgeon
Registered: Feb 2001
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![[Smile]](smile.gif)
Been a while since I read the thing. ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
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