And he is right.
While many people tend to disregard this in order to claim lower phaser firepower, using "chain reaction" effect seen during TNG, that simply doesn't stand, beacouse we already know phasers are able to heat stones to 8 000 ° C, and NDF majic just cannot do that. Only energy transfer can.
There are sixteen power settings:
Level seven: Capable of vaporizing noranium carbide alloy. (TNG: "The Vengeance Factor")
Level ten: Kill setting, capable of killing a biological organism. (TNG: "Aquiel")
Level sixteen: Capable of vaporizing rock to widen an opening in a lava tube partially blocked by rubble, or blowing large holes in walls. (TNG: "Chain of Command, Part I", "Frame of Mind")
In order to get high end of phaser firepower, I will use two examples - from TOS, which seems to be clean vaporization, with no chain reaction, and therefore low end of phaser firepower, especially given that we talk about 24th and not 23rd century phasers. Basis is same, thought. Another is TNG vaporization, where hand phaser is capable of vaporizing stone.
Stone example firepower
Phasers are able to heat stones enough to glow (again - no chain reaction or other technobablle, just good ol' energy transfer - example "Silicon Avatar"). According to this, temperature should be 580 to 730 ° C.
Specific heat capacity of granite is 1.534 J(cm^3 x K). That means, to raise temperature of 1 cubic cm of granite by 1 kelvin (kelvin is essentialy same as °C) you need to bring 1.534 joules. Now, to heat granite from starting temperature of 25 ° C to 580 ° C we need to raise its temperature by 555 K. So we have equation E= 1.534 J (6 000 000 cm^3 x 555 K). (6 cubic meters is most we ever saw being cleanly vaporized). That gives us 5 x 10e9 joules or 5 gigajoules.
If we go with "Silicon Avatar" example, we have two hand phasers heating up approx. 2-5 cubic meters of rock within 5 seconds. That gives us 116 to 290 MW or 58 to 145 MW per phaser.
Power capacity
"The Galileo Seven"[TOS1] features the use of phasers drained into a shuttlecraft's engines to enable it to take off and make orbit. (I know it might be wierd beacouse I m using TOS event to calculate power capacity of TNG phaser, but I don't have anything better. I'm still going to use TNG shuttlecraft and not TOS one).
TOS shuttle is 7.44 meters long.
http://www.st-v-sw.net/STSWvolumetrics.html
According to that, Type 6 shuttle weights 29-113 tons. For TOS shuttle, I will assume mass of 48, 188 and 200 tons.
With this calculator we can calculate energy requirements to put shuttlecraft into orbit.
Low Earth orbit is 160 to 2 000 kilometers, but below 200 km objects experience orbital decay. Given that they were concerned with losing orbit after fuel was spent - and did lose orbit - I think it would be safe to assume that they were below 200 km. However, we don't know amount of energy they needed to hold orbit.
So we have this situation:
Mass - minimum energy to reach orbit
48t - 75.264 GJ
188t - 294.784 GJ
200 t - 313.6 GJ
We know five phasors were onboard. That would give us 15 to 60 GJ power capacity.
In TNG's "The Mind's Eye" we are informed that a phaser rifle power pack can easilly hold a charge of around 53.55 megajoules as a phaser rife was test fired with a stated output of 1.05 megawatts for 34 and 17 seconds (total of 51 seconds) with no sign in sight of the power pack charge being depleated. Energy efficiency is stated to be 94.1%, Data mentions that the normal phaser discharge crystal fires with 86.5% efficiency. That means that energy cell capacity is at least 53.55 megajoules. However, given that TOS hand phasers had over 280 times greater capacity than minimum capacity we can derive from this example, we can safely assume that power capacity of phaser rifle is considerably greater than minimal capacity we might calculate from "The Mind's Eye".
Conclusion
58 to 145 MW power output for phasers. "Chain reaction" seen in TNG phasers does nothing to disprove this - it is merely additional ability to conserve energy and make use of phasers realistically possible in CQC.
Also, in most cases there is no vapor produced. So "vaporization" is actually "disintegration. We already have a canon statement from ST:ENT's "In a Mirror, Darkly, Part 2" where Mirror Archer states that TOS phasers on their highest setting are a disintegration weapon.
Power capacity is around 75 to 313 gigajoules for TOS. If it is same for TNG, that would give 517 to 5397 seconds of continuous fire (8 minutes 36 seconds to 1 hour 29 minutes 57 seconds of continuous fire).
Notes
There is "no-recoil" issue, brought up on several places - it is possible that phasers have inertia dampeners to solve that problem, just like starships.
Also, hand phasers have ability of off-axis fire, and seem to have ability of auto-aim. It is possible that hand phaser is actually aimed at target at which person holding it looks ("eye aiming").
Plus, so-called NDF effect is actually impossible to use, beacouse it would create nuclear explosion.
P.S.: Thanks to people from StarfleetJedi.net for bringing up some issues about this page (vaporization/disintegration issue, no-recoil issue, information regarding "In a Mirror, Darkly" and "In Mind's Eye", correcting me on shuttlecraft weights), and suggesting "inertia dampeners" solution for hand phasers. I hope they will keep contributing, and not only for this page.
Pictures:
TNG-era hand phaser
Hand phaser heating rocs
Nema komentara:
Objavi komentar