Unfortunately, we don't know if the hand phaser allows such fine adjustments; we've only seen narrow beams and pretty broad spreads.
Now, I'm not suggesting your standard phaser can do that 'out of the box', so to speak, but with a few spare parts and some tinkering, does it really seem to be such a stretch to think that if you're going hunting for Jedi, you can't modify some phasers to generate a wider or slowly expanding beam? I know the shipboard phaser arrays have some fair control over the beam dispersal pattern, I think, I'm trying to remember anything with phasers. I think they have a narrower cutting beam, too. Just saying, if there's technology for wide, normal, and narrow beams, even if they don't normally come equipped with the ability to vary as you please, it wouldn't exactly be a breakthrough in Trek Science to whip it up.
Don't be silly. We saw the explosion of Alderaan: we know there was a planet before and an asteroid field after. Observation tells us that it was the energy from the superlaser beam.
I'll try to tread lightly here (I just did the same in a different thread, sort of.) Let me begin by saying, I DO currently believe that the Death Star imparted a tremendous amount of energy to blow up Alderaan. But I'm skeptical of how quickly people want to say 'what you see is what you get' in this and many other instances. You say that just because a person disappears, we can't assume whether it takes a lot of a little bit of energy to do so. By a similar token (an example that I used in the other thread), just because a nuclear bomb creates an enormous explosion doesn't mean you actually imparted all that energy into a fissionable material. By the same token, we can't actually assume that there isn't some 'hidden mechanism' at work which lets the Death Star blow up Alderaan without using quite so much energy. But I haven't seen any good theories to disprove it, so the Death Star I fear.
But it just irks me when I feel that the rules are changed around sometimes between different arguments.
As to the amount of energy imparted in a phaser blast, I really feel it's trivialized by a lot of people because 'we don't have real measures' of their performance. I concede that, as far as I know right now, this is so. I'll puzzle on it a little bit, but seriously, given what we've seen a full-blast phaser do, being hit by something a few order of magnitude lower, I think, would still really hurt! (much less the full blast.) But I'll have to do some reading.
It took almost a whole rack of hand phasers to boost a shuttle into an unstable orbit. The incident your describing (from TOS "The Gallileo Seven") suggests that a TOS hand phaser carries a few hundred megajoules of energy.
I'll have to get back to you, I'm terrified to think that a phaser carries the same amount of energy as a couple litres of gasoline. That I'd have trouble believing.
Providing ground support fire from orbit while under fire from an enemy starship is not going to be very practical. Your ship will be heading into a gravity well, which will reduce its maneuverability, you'll be divert fire from the enemy ship to your ground target, and you'll be moving in a predictable pattern to line up your shot. Basically, you're making an inviting target of yourself if you try to provide ground support while still engaged with hostile ships in space.
We've ships fight in orbit of a planet, it doesn't seem that unusual (perhaps more difficult, but they never seem to think so.) I don't know about it seeming to reduce their maneuverability, it's never been mentioned that I recall? (I'm not talking about dropping into the atmosphere, of course.) As to moving in a 'predictable pattern to line up your shot', we're not dropping bombs here, you basically need 'line of sight' to fire a phaser, other than that you basically have your run of that side of the planet. Firing off a phaser shot or two doesn't seem beyond the realm of reason, even if there is a space battle going on as well, especially given the potential gains in the groundfighting. Again, not saying that it'd be easy, but it hardly seems infeasible. Plus, I'm more curious why it just NEVER showed up again, there surely have been plenty of opportunities when you're not waging a space battle at the same time.
Cri_Havoc wrote:
Especially if you're not QUITE as concerned with accuracy (I mean, the ORIGINAL enterprise was able to hit guys outside of the door without Kirk and the boys being hit inside the building.
The Enterprise was not threatened at all in orbit. It could casually fly in geosynchronous orbit over the target area to line up the shot.
Well, see above, but the fact that they had it real easy there is no proof at all that it can't be done under combat conditions.
"The Cage"/"The Menagerie" had some kind of heavy weapon operated by broadcast power from the ship in orbit, according to the script. Again, the space above the planet is uncontested, so the ship can stay in geosynchronous orbit to transfer power.
That does sound like a more complex operation (not as viable under combat conditions, I'd most likely concede), but they basically do have a portable phaser bank on the ground, it appears, I'm just surprised that these more powerful weapons (and the orbital stun-beam) never made appearances again.
So at a 30° arc at 5m you get 1/262th of the intensity, which is a hell of a lot less impressive (but should actually be supported by math this time) which is still ample to show how widebeam (and we're still talking PLANAR widebeam here) is either a hell lot lower energy density or more energy costly than a standard beam.
).