posted
I think it's safe to say that Pike's "lasers" aren't laser as we think of them today. More likely they were a form of Disruptor (probably Vulcan tech) that was later abandoned for the Phasers when Starfleet became more of a not-quite-pacifist-but-still-not-militant type of organisation as the Phaser was seen to be able to be used both offensively and defensively.
Daniel Butler
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posted
Vulcan or Andorian or Tellarite or even Human. I mean if we're ignoring Enterprise then we never saw that Vulcans were any more advanced than Earth at the signing of the charter (or any of the other founding races).
Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
Well, just by the simple logic that they were having nuclear war and interstellar migrations about 1000 years ago lends to the idea that they'd be quite a bit along, if a little stagnant. Then there's First Contact, of course.
As for the Andorians and Tellarites, we have no substancial info on them outside of Enterprise so anything is possible. I only said Vulcan because the Romulans are known to use Disruptors and it stands to reason that if there's one technology those two races will still have in common, it's weaponry.
Daniel Butler
I'm a Singapore where is my boat
Member # 1689
posted
No, right, they were more advanced in 2063, but that doesn't guarantee they were more advanced by 2161. Maybe without Enterprise in the timeline they let humans advance much more rapidly. Hell, maybe even *with* Enterprise - after season 4 maybe the Vulcans trusted humans more and started handing over more tech, or maybe the Andorians or Tellarites did, or all three.
Point taken about the Romulans/Vulcans both using disruptor tech. It seems like disruptors and phasers are both part of the same basic tech, and are pretty much the only two alternatives in the field of particle weapons, and we know the Vulcans must not have used phasers or the Fed would have had them by Pike's time.
Registered: Jul 2005
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Well either way it's pure speculation. It's just more likely that the Vulcans (eventually) gave them disruptor technology than for Earth to do 1000 years of catching up in less than a century.
posted
Perhaps, during the time of the TOS pilots, Starfleet was contracting their phaser production out to Lā-Zer, LLC, and that's why the officers called them that.
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Daniel Butler
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Well, I wasn't saying humanity would catch up on its own. As I thought I made clear I was saying perhaps Vulcan or one of the other three gave them the "laser" technology, instead of keeping humanity back technologically. We know they didn't at least in Enterprise canon but we're ignoring that.
Registered: Jul 2005
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Daniel Butler
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posted
Photon torpedoes use matter/antimatter annihilations, shikaru. That means 100% conversion of matter to energy. In a nuclear explosion (here I'm assuming heavy hydrogen fusion) you might get 2% conversion. In other words, in M/AM, E=mc^2, whereas in fusion, E=0.02mc^2. For the same mass, the energy release is obviously a lot higher for photon torpedoes than for a nuclear warhead.
Registered: Jul 2005
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Although, Enterprise's original spatial torpedoes could have been nukes, or some advancement of nuclear technology. That may be why Malcom was all randy over the new photonic torpedoes.
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Registered: Jul 2007
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Fusion is about as advanced as nuclear technology goes, I mean it is what makes stars go boom after all. As for the spatial torpedoes, I took them as being an early form of low yield subspace warhead. I mean they must have been used at some point by the Earth of the Federation before they were banned. Of course the reality is that the writers were just talking out of their collective arses again. They should have just called them torpedoes and be done with it. Either way this is a Masao thread, so again, just ignore Enterprise and everything within.
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