http://ocean.otr.usm.edu/~randers2/STSWrise.html
Basically, what DarkStar says is that in the VOY episode "Rise," Voyager targets an asteroid with a torpedo. The shot does very little damage to the asteroid, but everyone is surprised that it does not do vastly more. Chakotay is surprised that the asteroid is not vaporized, but Harry Kim says that they should not be seeing any fragments larger than a centimeter. Basically, DarkStar then goes through it and does some scaling with the torpedo that actually hit the asteroid and then moves on to determine limits based on the asteroids size. He tries to find out how much energy it would take to vaporize that asteroid (he says that he is generous, in that he leaves out some factors to account for Harry Kim's comment, but watch). His figures come up with about 150 MT (remember that he does not accept any "EU crap," like ICS, so he says that that's far in excess of SW weapons), give or take, as the lower realistic limit for Voyager's firepower. He can say that I am misrepresenting him, but I am confident that I have put together the general gist of what he did. If anyone wants to check, you can see everything he did at the link that I provided.
Now, DarkStar says a couple of interesting things about the asteroid. First off, he admits that it is a bit darker than would be expected. The quote is here:
I found this a bit strange, as he repeatedly told us that an asteroid's composition cannot be determined from video footage of ESB (he said that its behavior, texture, and color cannot be judged from the video, IIRC). But in any case, I'll give him that because he also had a quote that said that the asteroid was simple iron-nickel.The extremely dark and mottled coloring of the asteroid is a bit odd, but not unreasonably so. From what we know of the asteroid, it should fall within the parameters of an M-type . . . S-type if the olivine was common throughout....
Now, he also takes a look at his asteroid the way "Rabid Warsies" look at the asteroids in ESB. That is kind of odd, from my perspective, because I would have thought that the asteroids would appear to be different. This is also fairly consistent with the way he does business. Remember how he acted in "Wong Collisions Calcs," when he repeatedly asserted that because Wong made a mis-estimation of a Jem Hadar ship, he could use that to his advantage (Wong didn't actually give a damn about how big the thing was, because it was totally irrelevent to his calcs. DS used it because it was incredibly generous and because his calcs were based off Volume and Density). I'll give him that as well, though, because it won't matter once I'm through here.
Finally, (and this is what a lot of people picked up on) DarkStar says that that is far greater than SW firepower and references some "maximum" figures from a few SW sites. They all have slightly different estimates based on the same incident, but the range is 250 to about 2900 terajoules. Those are LTL's, but seeing as how EVERYONE knows he isn't going to allow for the possibility of higher power TL's based on EU evidence (or whatever else), so I will grudgingly give him that point, as well.
Here's the problem. Chakotay and Torres gather up the fragments of the asteroid (in an effort to learn why it wasn't destroyed more fully) and get a fragment that I would describe as being about the size of a beach-ball. You can see a picture of it on DumbShit's site, if you want, and scale it roughly with the hands that are holding it in the picture there. Now, Chakotay cracks the thing open with a pick, or, as DarkStar describes it:
Now we can see the problem with the whole thing. If Chakotay was able to crack a beachball sized hunk of the thing open with a pick, how is it possible that Voyager did so little damage to it if Voyager's weapons were anywhere near what DarkStar is claiming? Note that the crack through the asteroid is evidently not the result of repeated chiselling, or any kind of cutting laser (or similar). If it was a cutting laser, we would have expected the asteroid's edges to be smooth, with a single cut going straight through the rock. If it was from repeated chiselling, we would see evidence of that (tool marks, rock shavings, etc.). Instead we see evidence of a fairly clean fracture, like the ones that most kids would get from cracking open a golf ball sized geode with a hammer. It was likely the result of only a few, strong blows, if that. This represents an EXTRAORDINARILY low strength for the rock.Torres: "I've completed the mineralogical scans. The rock is composed of trioxine, olivine, . . . waitaminute. I'm reading a concentration of triatium."
Ambassador: "Triatium? Isn't that an alloy?"
Torres: "Yes."
Chakotay: "B'Elanna, give me a hand with this."
(Chakotay has used a pick to crack the outer layer. He and Torres now pull the two pieces apart, revealing the rock's technology-innards.)
Torres: "This doesn't look like any asteroid I've ever seen, but I'll bet it's the source of our triatium."
So how can Voyager have done so little damage to rock that was that fragile if it had the firepower that DarkStar was claiming? The answer is, of course, that it is impossible. Voyager's torpedoes are likely reasonably powerful, but this incident shows a pathetically weak firepower for what is probably Voyager's most powerful weapon. DarkStar, in this case, was mistaken.
Not that I find that surprising.
when I`m sleepy and tired I must think like Darkstar.
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if true then you really should include it on your site since you dont have any HTL references).
