Chris OFarrell wrote:Eh? Voyager was in Geosynch orbit, not low orbit. EMP isn't something I know much about but unless I am mistaken, the strength of an EMP is directly related to the distance from the upper atmosphere. And the ability of the explosion to energise electrons hanging around in the ionsephere. If you hit the Voyager out in Geosynch with a nuke, would you even get a significant EMP effect on the ground?
Actually, orbital nuclear detonations create a remarkably devastating EMP because the blast interacts with the upper atmosphere to create an ionization shockwave. See the Nuclear Weapons FAQ for more information.
And this is asssuming that they don't have any technology capable of shielding against an EMP like, well, shields...
So you figure the whole facing hemisphere of the planet was shielded now? Even though their visitor could fly right down with his primitive spacecraft without difficulty?
It wasn't exactly a nice place to live but it was hardly falling appart. And it wasn't unshielded as far as I know. The first time Voyager came up against a Malon ship it got its ass kicked badly and almost destroyed. I don't know where you got the idea that it wasn't shielded.
Perhaps I was confusing it with some other episode.
True but the Borg only appear to shield against specific things they are expecting. For example. They would have been destroyed by the E-D with their main defelctor play. Until Picard was assimilated and they adjusted their defenses accordingly.
Mere conjecture. You don't know that to be true.
This is not saying that they didn't have shields before hand, just that they had not prepared to defend against that kind of specific attack. The question put was that of a rationalisation of a pair of sceens, the Cubes in Scorpion and the Think Tank event. I am attempting to come up with one.
That planet took a looong time to blow up, and they had more than enough time to figure out what was about to happen. People keep acting as though it looked just like the Alderaan explosion, when nothing could be further from the truth.
There is no need to worry about rationalizing "Think Tank", because it is ambiguous. The lower limits for that event are quite low, and the upper limits quite high, so it proves nothing either way. I saw the SB thread, and the only person really making a fuss about it was Darkstar. Since Darkstar makes a fuss about
everything, this hardly warrants consideration.
A poor choice of words on my part. Though I thought the shuttle flew right into the detonation just as it happened in the actual episode, though I concead my memory of this may well be in error. The point is though that the detonation of the nuke wasn't even considered to be the slightest threat to their ship, just a source of power to do something with their technobabble material and get them home. They were never concerned with the shockwave or initial thermal pule or EMP or any of the effects of the detonation.
Incorrect. They all shared a look of concern over the safety of the plan, and Odo expressed his doubts about its feasibility. Then, they flew into the mushroom cloud
after the initial pulse and EMP were already over. And small objects can more easily withstand the overpressure from the shockwave at their initial distance than large objects (simple physics; this is why people can survive a 5 psi overpressure while buildings fall down).
Again a very poor choice of words on my part. I did not mean deflection as in return to the radar, I ment it in the context of scattering / absorbing the radar waves away from the receiver so that no return signal was received. In 'Futures End' when Voyager gets sent back to 1996, they mentioned quite a few times that their shields could and were modified slightly to scatter any attempted Radar scan. They also were able to use the shields to project a false radar / visual image at anything but point blank range for their shuttles. And this is backed up on the ground.
If they're moving as quickly as some would suggest, it won't matter because their movement through the air will create a trackable disruption itself. But I'd agree that if they have stealth capabilities built into their shielding, that would make tracking much more difficult.
The episodes we realy see Voyager in an atmosphere are Basics PT 1. Futures End PT 1. Demon. And Dragons Teath. In those episodes it wasn't realy doing major manouvering as there wasn't a real reason to do so. However its not shabby in what they can do. In Basics she was able to accelerate from the ground into a climb for space and out of sight very quickly.
Do you have a figure for "very quickly?"
That ability alone would mean the Voyager could quickly withdrawl into orbit where she can't be touched to lick any wounds. Hell she could just sit there and fire down with impunity if she wanted to.
That point was raised much earlier in this thread (I raised it myself). The thread-starter clarified that Voyager is already in the atmosphere for some reason.
Well they wouldn't as a matter of course today. But the idea that an Ohio would be able to fire on a fast moving or even slow moving spacecraft/aircraft with an ICBM...its absurd.
It doesn't have to hit it. It only needs to get in the neighbourhood.
Chris, "deflection" is precisely how radar works. It detects bounces from the target object, remember? Now, while these missiles are not currently designed for this purpose, it seems reasonable to me that they might be for this scenario, where the USN is gathered in one place to confront Voyager and has obviously been preparing.
