Cloaked Phaser mines

[Kitsune]

You also have a tiny fraction of the capability. The mine is never going to accomplish anything since it will be blown away after one or two weak shots.

The phaser mounts on an old Miranda class starship were pretty small yet they were powerful enough to damage a starship. That is not so uncommon actually, an Iowa class battleship's listed standard displacement is 56,565 witha weaponry weight of 5,930 or 11.1% of the displacement. 50 of these mounts with all associated equipment would likely still be cheaper than one Miranda class starship and would have around 4 times the firepower.

A phaser platform requires:
Weapon, Fire Control, Power Supply (probably fusion), and a cloaking device. Shields are an option depending on requirements

A starship requires:
Weapons, fire control, Navigation, propulsion (both Sublight and FTL unless we are talking about a system only defense ship), Power Supply (probably needs to be anti-matter based on other star trek materials), life support, berthing space, and most likely shields.

The weapon platforms have the added advantage of no-one dying if they get destroyed. You can even keep them uncloaked and upowered until a signal from a long range relay shows a disturbance in FTL space and/or command control.

[Ghost Rider]

But one problem with your phaser mine vs starship that you're either being ignorant on...a starship has mobility to attack and defend.

A mine sits there until a target comes into range, no matter how advanced.

[Kitsune]

But one problem with your phaser mine vs starship that you're either being ignorant on...a starship has mobility to attack and defend.

A mine sits there until a target comes into range, no matter how advanced.

True, a mix of fixed assets at important locations (for example an important shipyard or a planet you want to protect from attack) and mobile starships is the key. I am not even trying to suggest that mines will replace starships.

[Patrick Degan]

First, there would be the expense of the cloaking system itself and the fuel required to power it. Next would be the fuel supplies required for the phasers and the systems to preheat the emitters prior to firing. To top it off, you also would require a control computer and remote targeting sensors to make it an effective combat weapon. Whereas a simple mine requires only a basic proximity sensor, a warhead, and maybe manoeuvring thrusters and a fuel cell sufficent for those.

I don't recall any episodes where they preheat a phaser. I know that the Defiant had to replace a component of their phasers but also know that the Enterprise in "Wrath of Khan" was able to fire phasers from strictly batteries (which might mean capacitors instead) No matter, even if I include a shield, the cost is still a fraction of a starship.

The mere physics of the situation demands preheating of the emitters. After prolonged exposure to 0°K temperatures in open space, a sudden heat spike would result in damage which would render them useless. On a starship, this is not a problem since I would imagine it quite feasible to maintain the phaser emitters at minimum operational temperatures.

And a simple mine is far cheaper than your powered, cloaked phaser platform and requires far fewer active systems —which also means far fewer electronic and heat emissions which can be picked up by passive sensing.

My assumption as far as power is a fusion reactor and/or capacitors. Of course you need control computers but I don't know what the concern is. You need a computer for a explosive mine as well. As well, a thruster may not necessarily be simple.

You are merely digging yourself into a far deeper hole. Listen to yourself for a second and realise how needlessly complex you are getting for a simple area-denial weapon.

As for the statement "you need a computer for an explosive mine" and "a thruster is not necessarily simple", I can only assume you do not as yet see the absurdity of these assertions and definitely have not thought through the problem.

A mix is likely the best idea, that way the enemy does not have a simple one attacker situation.

You are missing the whole point of a minefield —small, hard to detect explosive packages which can be produced by the millions and spread into any area within a ship's flight path to deny a navigable course pathway. Larger, more complex weapon platforms defeat this purpose and are not adequate by half to effectively give battle against starships on their own.

[Death from the Sea]

You are missing the whole point of a minefield —small, hard to detect explosive packages which can be produced by the millions and spread into any area within a ship's flight path to deny a navigable course pathway. Larger, more complex weapon platforms defeat this purpose and are not adequate by half to effectively give battle against starships on their own.

I wouldn't say that weapons platforms are not effectively adequate in giving battle against starships, look at the battle for the Chintoka system. The Dominion had deployed many weapon platforms that were ripping through the Federation and Klingon Fleet until Sisko and crew were able to use technobabble to make the platforms for on their remote power source and shut them down.
IIRC Sisko made it clear that unless they took down those platforms power that they could not win that battle.

[Patrick Degan]

You also have a tiny fraction of the capability. The mine is never going to accomplish anything since it will be blown away after one or two weak shots.

The phaser mounts on an old Miranda class starship were pretty small yet they were powerful enough to damage a starship. That is not so uncommon actually, an Iowa class battleship's listed standard displacement is 56,565 witha weaponry weight of 5,930 or 11.1% of the displacement. 50 of these mounts with all associated equipment would likely still be cheaper than one Miranda class starship and would have around 4 times the firepower.

I'm afraid all this is irrelevant to the equation at hand. The factor to be considered here is not relative size of weapon to its platform's displacement mass, but the differential in the available power to be had from a starship's high capacity reactor v. that from a smaller reactor with a far more limited fuel supply.

A phaser platform requires:
Weapon, Fire Control, Power Supply (probably fusion), and a cloaking device. Shields are an option depending on requirements

A starship requires:
Weapons, fire control, Navigation, propulsion (both Sublight and FTL unless we are talking about a system only defense ship), Power Supply (probably needs to be anti-matter based on other star trek materials), life support, berthing space, and most likely shields.

The weapon platforms have the added advantage of no-one dying if they get destroyed. You can even keep them uncloaked and upowered until a signal from a long range relay shows a disturbance in FTL space and/or command control.

And a simple mine requires only a warhead, a proximity sensor, and a simple cybernetic relay control with a basic power cell to run the whole package.

[SirNitram]

There's a gulf of difference between a mine and a defensive platform, and people shouldn't consider them the same thing.

[Patrick Degan]

You are missing the whole point of a minefield —small, hard to detect explosive packages which can be produced by the millions and spread into any area within a ship's flight path to deny a navigable course pathway. Larger, more complex weapon platforms defeat this purpose and are not adequate by half to effectively give battle against starships on their own.

I wouldn't say that weapons platforms are not effectively adequate in giving battle against starships, look at the battle for the Chintoka system. The Dominion had deployed many weapon platforms that were ripping through the Federation and Klingon Fleet until Sisko and crew were able to use technobabble to make the platforms for on their remote power source and shut them down.

IIRC Sisko made it clear that unless they took down those platforms power that they could not win that battle.

Which rather proves my point, actually. The automated battle platforms were taken out when the control computer was destroyed, rendering them all useless in a stroke. Such would not have happened to a fleet of ships in a similar situation.

[Death from the Sea]

You are missing the whole point of a minefield —small, hard to detect explosive packages which can be produced by the millions and spread into any area within a ship's flight path to deny a navigable course pathway. Larger, more complex weapon platforms defeat this purpose and are not adequate by half to effectively give battle against starships on their own.

I wouldn't say that weapons platforms are not effectively adequate in giving battle against starships, look at the battle for the Chintoka system. The Dominion had deployed many weapon platforms that were ripping through the Federation and Klingon Fleet until Sisko and crew were able to use technobabble to make the platforms for on their remote power source and shut them down.

IIRC Sisko made it clear that unless they took down those platforms power that they could not win that battle.

Which rather proves my point, actually. The automated battle platforms were taken out when the control computer was destroyed, rendering them all useless in a stroke. Such would not have happened to a fleet of ships in a similar situation.

it wasn't a control computer, it was the power source, they had a remote power source set up, which was just stupid. If they had made the platforms with internal power supplies then they could not have been defeated in such a manner.

[Patrick Degan]

it wasn't a control computer, it was the power source, they had a remote power source set up, which was just stupid. If they had made the platforms with internal power supplies then they could not have been defeated in such a manner.

My mistake, then. But evidently, if the Cardassians needed a broadcast power setup to adequately supply energy for the weapon platforms, the things must have been too small to mount a decent reactor with sufficent capacity to do the job.

[Patrick Degan]

In terms of relative cost of mines v. phaser platforms: a mere 100g of matter/antimatter in a warhead will deliver a blast yield ranging from a high-end estimate of 1.6MT (assuming 75% reaction efficency) to a respectable low-end estimated yield of 75KT (assuming 35% efficency). Fifty thousand metric tons of matter/antimatter can supply reactant material sufficent for 500 million mine warheads.

[Kitsune]

The mere physics of the situation demands preheating of the emitters. After prolonged exposure to 0°K temperatures in open space, a sudden heat spike would result in damage which would render them useless. On a starship, this is not a problem since I would imagine it quite feasible to maintain the phaser emitters at minimum operational temperatures.

There is some logic to that but that does not mean that it can be followed all the way through. There is no way of knowing if the emitters are inside of the platform and even if not, there is no need to consider that the power to keep the emitter to a safe temperature. I would have to wonder with our deep space probes if we have to do something similar to their antenna or if it is not an issue

And a simple mine is far cheaper than your powered, cloaked phaser platform and requires far fewer active systems —which also means far fewer electronic and heat emissions which can be picked up by passive sensing.

We are talking about an anti-matter mine, this means you have to have a powered field to keep the anti-matter contained. Also, what is the evidence that the platform would need active sensors. Subspace field sensors could very well be passive.

You are merely digging yourself into a far deeper hole. Listen to yourself for a second and realise how needlessly complex you are getting for a simple area-denial weapon.

You need a believable denial weapon and you need one which will stop military forces, who can and will take risks. That means you need to have the definative ability to KILL starships and lots of them. The best way to do that is a weapon with some felxability.

As for the statement "you need a computer for an explosive mine" and "a thruster is not necessarily simple", I can only assume you do not as yet see the absurdity of these assertions and definitely have not thought through the problem.

You need a pretty capable computer for a space mine, otherwise you similar trick the mines. In the Starfire Novel "Crusade", the admiral used a bunch of tramp freighters withe emmiters to make them look like battleships and cleared out the mines as they swamped the freighters. You make your mines stupid, that is what could happen. At least a energy platform can, if you design it right, fire again.

With engines, we are talking about an impulse engine if we are talking about covering any sugnificant volume. We are talking in the range of at a few thosuand Gs of acceleration to ram or get in teh proximity of any target.

You are missing the whole point of a minefield —small, hard to detect explosive packages which can be produced by the millions and spread into any area within a ship's flight path to deny a navigable course pathway. Larger, more complex weapon platforms defeat this purpose and are not adequate by half to effectively give battle against starships on their own.

What I am saying is that in space, millions is not sufficient, billions might not even be sufficient. In an early message I tried to show just what type of volume you need to fill. A few thoudand smart mines is a much better solution because each mine can cover hundres of thousands to millions of cubic kilometers of space.

[Kitsune]

In terms of relative cost of mines v. phaser platforms: a mere 100g of matter/antimatter in a warhead will deliver a blast yield ranging from a high-end estimate of 1.6MT (assuming 75% reaction efficency) to a respectable low-end estimated yield of 75KT (assuming 35% efficency). Fifty thousand metric tons of matter/antimatter can supply reactant material sufficent for 500 million mine warheads.

Where do you get the idea that the federation (or any other government) can even come up with 50 kilotons of anti-matter through whatever process. Episodes seem to indicate that it cannot be replicated and no starships seem to carry more than a few hundred photon torpedoes. Starships seem to carry nothing like this for their power plant eight. My idea uses fairly simple fusion reactors (compared to anti-matter)

[Patrick Degan]

The mere physics of the situation demands preheating of the emitters. After prolonged exposure to 0°K temperatures in open space, a sudden heat spike would result in damage which would render them useless. On a starship, this is not a problem since I would imagine it quite feasible to maintain the phaser emitters at minimum operational temperatures.

There is some logic to that but that does not mean that it can be followed all the way through. There is no way of knowing if the emitters are inside of the platform and even if not, there is no need to consider that the power to keep the emitter to a safe temperature. I would have to wonder with our deep space probes if we have to do something similar to their antenna or if it is not an issue

If the emitters are inside the platform, they aren't much good, are they? And even you can't be obtuse enough to liken an active weapon componnent to a transmission antenna.

And a simple mine is far cheaper than your powered, cloaked phaser platform and requires far fewer active systems —which also means far fewer electronic and heat emissions which can be picked up by passive sensing.

We are talking about an anti-matter mine, this means you have to have a powered field to keep the anti-matter contained. Also, what is the evidence that the platform would need active sensors. Subspace field sensors could very well be passive.

The magnetic field to keep the matter and antimatter seperate would not require a huge amount of energy —far less than the setup for a phaser platform with a cloaking system. And a directed beam weapon will require active targeting.

You are merely digging yourself into a far deeper hole. Listen to yourself for a second and realise how needlessly complex you are getting for a simple area-denial weapon.

You need a believable denial weapon and you need one which will stop military forces, who can and will take risks. That means you need to have the definative ability to KILL starships and lots of them. The best way to do that is a weapon with some felxability.

No, you need a denial weapon which will actually work and will remain undectable until the target is on top of it. And no minefield of any sort is sufficent to stop a warfleet on its own; that is not the logic behind the concept.

As for the statement "you need a computer for an explosive mine" and "a thruster is not necessarily simple", I can only assume you do not as yet see the absurdity of these assertions and definitely have not thought through the problem.

You need a pretty capable computer for a space mine, otherwise you similar trick the mines. In the Starfire Novel "Crusade", the admiral used a bunch of tramp freighters withe emmiters to make them look like battleships and cleared out the mines as they swamped the freighters. You make your mines stupid, that is what could happen. At least a energy platform can, if you design it right, fire again.

Nice, but the authour of a novel which offers no relevant evidence to the topic under examination here evidently decided to indulge his desire for technowanking instead of thinking the problem through. Only an idiot conceives of a mine which is programmed to pick out one ship-type from others. Now let's get back to the discussion at hand and not bring up any more red herrings, shall we?

With engines, we are talking about an impulse engine if we are talking about covering any sugnificant volume. We are talking in the range of at a few thosuand Gs of acceleration to ram or get in teh proximity of any target.

No, we're talking about a sufficent number of mines in an orbital course so that at any given point there will be a minimum amount of time between intervals in which a mine is on hand to intercept a target.

You are missing the whole point of a minefield —small, hard to detect explosive packages which can be produced by the millions and spread into any area within a ship's flight path to deny a navigable course pathway. Larger, more complex weapon platforms defeat this purpose and are not adequate by half to effectively give battle against starships on their own.

What I am saying is that in space, millions is not sufficient, billions might not even be sufficient. In an early message I tried to show just what type of volume you need to fill. A few thousand smart mines is a much better solution because each mine can cover hundres of thousands to millions of cubic kilometers of space.

Except Trek combat has shown, repeatedly, that "choke point" interception strategies are the rule, not the exception, and this makes a passive minefield feasible. Doubly so in the orbits of planetary objectives.

In terms of relative cost of mines v. phaser platforms: a mere 100g of matter/antimatter in a warhead will deliver a blast yield ranging from a high-end estimate of 1.6MT (assuming 75% reaction efficency) to a respectable low-end estimated yield of 75KT (assuming 35% efficency). Fifty thousand metric tons of matter/antimatter can supply reactant material sufficent for 500 million mine warheads.

Where do you get the idea that the federation (or any other government) can even come up with 50 kilotons of anti-matter through whatever process.

How the fuck do you imagine they keep their starfleets fueled?

Episodes seem to indicate that it cannot be replicated and no starships seem to carry more than a few hundred photon torpedoes.

Red Herring fallacy.

My idea uses fairly simple fusion reactors (compared to anti-matter)

And my idea uses a simple power cell, far fewer active systems, and a design which can be manufactured in very huge quantity and comparatively cheaply. So cheaply and simply that a space station commander and his engineers were able, in a very short time period, to effectively kludge together enough warheads for a minefield out of spares lying about in station technical and cargo stores.

[Sea Skimmer]

The phaser mounts on an old Miranda class starship were pretty small yet they were powerful enough to damage a starship.

What you have completely ignored is the fact that the power those phaser mounts require comes from the ships reactors, which are rather larger.

That is not so uncommon actually, an Iowa class battleship's listed standard displacement is 56,565 witha weaponry weight of 5,930 or 11.1% of the displacement. 50 of these mounts with all associated equipment would likely still be cheaper than one Miranda class starship and would have around 4 times the firepower.

You're making a flawed comparison an a bunch of assumptions, one of which is very very stupid.

[Kitsune]

What you have completely ignored is the fact that the power those phaser mounts require comes from the ships reactors, which are rather larger.

NCC 1701 in the "Wrath of Khan" fired several phaser shots on just batteries. Also, the power supply of the DS-9 is fusion (by the DS-9 tech manual / not cannon but at least something of a source) and a fairly small installation. If the power system is Cardassian and the Fedarion is more advanced, they should be able to make a smaller power system. The station was able to fire an incredible volley of fire out of what amounts to over fifty mounts in all likelyhood.

You're making a flawed comparison an a bunch of assumptions, one of which is very very stupid.

Which assumption is this?

[Patrick Degan]

NCC 1701 in the "Wrath of Khan" fired several phaser shots on just batteries.

Which would have been utterly ineffective against shields. Remember —Kirk had to pull the prefix code trick to override the Reliant's computer to drop the shields and expose the ship to the Enterprise's underpowered phasers.

Also, the power supply of the DS-9 is fusion (by the DS-9 tech manual / not cannon but at least something of a source) and a fairly small installation. If the power system is Cardassian and the Fedarion is more advanced, they should be able to make a smaller power system. The station was able to fire an incredible volley of fire out of what amounts to over fifty mounts in all likelyhood.

Leaving aside the issue of the non-canonicity of any of the tech manuals, the fact that no large fuel tanks were visible on the DS9 structure argues against the theory that the station was fusion powered. The whole advantage of matter/antimatter is that it offers greater energy density for less fuel mass than can be had with any form of hydrogen fusion.

You're making a flawed comparison an a bunch of assumptions, one of which is very very stupid.

Which assumption is this?

Namely that the ratio of a wet-navy battleship's tonnage to the throw weight of its main guns is at all comparable to a starship mounting a reactor powerful enough to fuel effective beam weapons. The two entities are totally dissimilar.

[Sea Skimmer]

NCC 1701 in the "Wrath of Khan" fired several phaser shots on just batteries.

Which would have been utterly ineffective against shields. Remember —Kirk had to pull the prefix code trick to override the Reliant's computer to drop the shields and expose the ship to the Enterprise's underpowered phasers.

In addition to which we have no idea as too how large those batteries are or how long they can hold a charge for.

[Kitsune]

If the emitters are inside the platform, they aren't much good, are they? And even you can't be obtuse enough to liken an active weapon componnent to a transmission antenna.

I was simply asking a question. That question was if NASA has a problem with near 0 K temperatures and their their transmission antenna. I know that space probes like Voyager have to have pretty high powered microwave systems. I would hope that we are all here to learn.

As far as emitters being inside of a platform, there is something called a hatch or a retractable mount. Retractable mounts have been used in the past on submarines so that the guns do not cause drag. There are many different was such an item could be protected if it is needed.

The magnetic field to keep the matter and antimatter seperate would not require a huge amount of energy —far less than the setup for a phaser platform with a cloaking system. And a directed beam weapon will require active targeting.

How are you providing power for the magnetic field. Batteries would not give you an extended duration. I don't see solar cutting it and volume covered by the panels would greatly increase volume. Beamed energy is out because that means you have a web of beams which can be tracked. You eather have to pull from the warhead and have a tiny anti-matter power system or again you needed fusion

Hmm, Why would you need active targetting, just "Because" does not cut it. You need really good targetting true but not always active targetting.

No, you need a denial weapon which will actually work and will remain undectable until the target is on top of it. And no minefield of any sort is sufficent to stop a warfleet on its own; that is not the logic behind the concept.

In ww2, they knew that mines would not stop forces from trying to go through them and there were several designs for unsweepable mines. The purpose behind these is to sink ships. Losing a few cruisers or a few transports could cause a military to lose a battle. My idea for mines and/or platforms is to destroy an attacking force.

Nice, but the authour of a novel which offers no relevant evidence to the topic under examination here evidently decided to indulge his desire for technowanking instead of thinking the problem through. Only an idiot conceives of a mine which is programmed to pick out one ship-type from others. Now let's get back to the discussion at hand and not bring up any more red herrings, shall we?

Oops, well, you just made sweepble mines. I prefer my mines to examine their targets and/or be command controllable, otherwise the enemy can just throw large canisters, rocks, ect and simily take out all of your mines. Sorry, dumn mines, even if you could put them in an effective number to cover the volume will not work.

No, we're talking about a sufficent number of mines in an orbital course so that at any given point there will be a minimum amount of time between intervals in which a mine is on hand to intercept a target.

I want to built a defense system which can protect my objective without stopping me from being able to get there. Random mines flying around do not make this easy. As well, only in close orbit do objects move fast enough to have considerable and the shiops can simply bombard your shipyard, planet, or even take out your minefield from out of their path.

Except Trek combat has shown, repeatedly, that "choke point" interception strategies are the rule, not the exception, and this makes a passive minefield feasible. Doubly so in the orbits of planetary objectives.

If we assume a shell of the mines at around 10,000 km from the center of a planet, we are talking about a surface area of 1,256,637,061 square km. I tried to be a bit conservative and figuing on a planetary diameter out and in a geosync orbit.

Let us examine "Choak" points.
To my knowledge, there is only one case of a minefield being used. That is the DS-9 wormhole.
There is one other example of a "Choak Point", that is in TNG when the Romulan states that it would take too long to go around. That states that they could go around. Other than that, we have some incidents where ships seem to leave warp to fight. Choak Point or stupid officers.
Let us examine one of the battles, the Federation was were waiting for the Klingons. Now, I never understood why the Klingons did not send just a couple of small ships to take out the emmiter in DS-9 which is taking out the mines maybe backup by a few cargo ships carrying hundreds to thousands of times the mines which are already there. You solution seems to be that they had to go around to get to their destination which does not fit with other episodes.

How the fuck do you imagine they keep their starfleets fueled?

Let us make the assumtion that they are 10,000 Federation ships. I think it is too large a number I consider ti to be more like 2000 ships total not including fighters. If we go with half the anti-matter being used for starship fuel and using the number of 25 ktons of anti-matter. This means that each ship would carry 2.5 tons of anti-matter. If a ship blew up, the explosion would be 125 giga-tons. Based on the on screen explosion of starships and the explosion of photon torpedos, they carry noohing like

Red Herring fallacy.

Let us state that there is 10,000 starship and let us assume that each of them has 500 photon torpedoes (probably an over estimation). This makes 5 million torpedoes or 5 k tons of anti-matter, only 10% of you number in the entire fleet.

My idea uses fairly simple fusion reactors (compared to anti-matter)

And my idea uses a simple power cell, far fewer active systems, and a design which can be manufactured in very huge quantity and comparatively cheaply. So cheaply and simply that a space station commander and his engineers were able, in a very short time period, to effectively kludge together enough warheads for a minefield out of spares lying about in station technical and cargo stores.[/quote]

I don't see a power cell being able to provide enough power to keep the anti-matter containment for any extended period of time. I will let that go though. If I could see a why billions of these things could be created in a reasonable time frame or even at all. If we assume that the anti-matter can be gotten and that we are only talking about your 500 million mines and you are talking a mine mass of 1 ton each, you are talking about the material to make 100 Galaxy class starships according to the DS-9 tech manual for the ship's mass.

[Kitsune]

If the emitters are inside the platform, they aren't much good, are they? And even you can't be obtuse enough to liken an active weapon componnent to a transmission antenna.

I was simply asking a question. That question was if NASA has a problem with near 0 K temperatures and their their transmission antenna. I know that space probes like Voyager have to have pretty high powered microwave systems. I would hope that we are all here to learn.

As far as emitters being inside of a platform, there is something called a hatch or a retractable mount. Retractable mounts have been used in the past on submarines so that the guns do not cause drag. There are many different was such an item could be protected if it is needed.

The magnetic field to keep the matter and antimatter seperate would not require a huge amount of energy —far less than the setup for a phaser platform with a cloaking system. And a directed beam weapon will require active targeting.

How are you providing power for the magnetic field. Batteries would not give you an extended duration. I don't see solar cutting it and volume covered by the panels would greatly increase volume. Beamed energy is out because that means you have a web of beams which can be tracked. You eather have to pull from the warhead and have a tiny anti-matter power system or again you needed fusion

Hmm, Why would you need active targetting, just "Because" does not cut it. You need really good targetting true but not always active targetting.

No, you need a denial weapon which will actually work and will remain undectable until the target is on top of it. And no minefield of any sort is sufficent to stop a warfleet on its own; that is not the logic behind the concept.

In ww2, they knew that mines would not stop forces from trying to go through them and there were several designs for unsweepable mines. The purpose behind these is to sink ships. Losing a few cruisers or a few transports could cause a military to lose a battle. My idea for mines and/or platforms is to destroy an attacking force.

Nice, but the authour of a novel which offers no relevant evidence to the topic under examination here evidently decided to indulge his desire for technowanking instead of thinking the problem through. Only an idiot conceives of a mine which is programmed to pick out one ship-type from others. Now let's get back to the discussion at hand and not bring up any more red herrings, shall we?

Oops, well, you just made sweepble mines. I prefer my mines to examine their targets and/or be command controllable, otherwise the enemy can just throw large canisters, rocks, ect and simily take out all of your mines. Sorry, dumn mines, even if you could put them in an effective number to cover the volume will not work.

No, we're talking about a sufficent number of mines in an orbital course so that at any given point there will be a minimum amount of time between intervals in which a mine is on hand to intercept a target.

I want to built a defense system which can protect my objective without stopping me from being able to get there. Random mines flying around do not make this easy. As well, only in close orbit do objects move fast enough to have considerable and the shiops can simply bombard your shipyard, planet, or even take out your minefield from out of their path.

Except Trek combat has shown, repeatedly, that "choke point" interception strategies are the rule, not the exception, and this makes a passive minefield feasible. Doubly so in the orbits of planetary objectives.

If we assume a shell of the mines at around 10,000 km from the center of a planet, we are talking about a surface area of 1,256,637,061 square km. I tried to be a bit conservative and figuing on a planetary diameter out and in a geosync orbit.

Let us examine "Choak" points.
To my knowledge, there is only one case of a minefield being used. That is the DS-9 wormhole.
There is one other example of a "Choak Point", that is in TNG when the Romulan states that it would take too long to go around. That states that they could go around. Other than that, we have some incidents where ships seem to leave warp to fight. Choak Point or stupid officers.
Let us examine one of the battles, the Federation was were waiting for the Klingons. Now, I never understood why the Klingons did not send just a couple of small ships to take out the emmiter in DS-9 which is taking out the mines maybe backup by a few cargo ships carrying hundreds to thousands of times the mines which are already there. You solution seems to be that they had to go around to get to their destination which does not fit with other episodes.

How the fuck do you imagine they keep their starfleets fueled?

Let us make the assumtion that they are 10,000 Federation ships. I think it is too large a number I consider ti to be more like 2000 ships total not including fighters. If we go with half the anti-matter being used for starship fuel and using the number of 25 ktons of anti-matter. This means that each ship would carry 2.5 tons of anti-matter. If a ship blew up, the explosion would be 125 giga-tons. Based on the on screen explosion of starships and the explosion of photon torpedos, they carry noohing like

Red Herring fallacy.

Let us state that there is 10,000 starship and let us assume that each of them has 500 photon torpedoes (probably an over estimation). This makes 5 million torpedoes or 5 k tons of anti-matter, only 10% of you number in the entire fleet.

And my idea uses a simple power cell, far fewer active systems, and a design which can be manufactured in very huge quantity and comparatively cheaply. So cheaply and simply that a space station commander and his engineers were able, in a very short time period, to effectively kludge together enough warheads for a minefield out of spares lying about in station technical and cargo stores.

I don't see a power cell being able to provide enough power to keep the anti-matter containment for any extended period of time. I will let that go though. If I could see a why billions of these things could be created in a reasonable time frame or even at all. If we assume that the anti-matter can be gotten and that we are only talking about your 500 million mines and you are talking a mine mass of 1 ton each, you are talking about the material to make 100 Galaxy class starships according to the DS-9 tech manual for the ship's mass.

[Kitsune]

Which would have been utterly ineffective against shields. Remember —Kirk had to pull the prefix code trick to override the Reliant's computer to drop the shields and expose the ship to the Enterprise's underpowered phasers.

Very good but it proves it is possible, now multiply the number of weapons which can fire by 100. That will get through the shields. I am also suggesting more fusion powered than battery powered to be honest, just showing that power requirements are not that high.

Leaving aside the issue of the non-canonicity of any of the tech manuals, the fact that no large fuel tanks were visible on the DS9 structure argues against the theory that the station was fusion powered. The whole advantage of matter/antimatter is that it offers greater energy density for less fuel mass than can be had with any form of hydrogen fusion.

Large tanks may not be required because the station is fixed and could easily be able to get refueld often. The station probably only needs a few months of fuel at best.

Namely that the ratio of a wet-navy battleship's tonnage to the throw weight of its main guns is at all comparable to a starship mounting a reactor powerful enough to fuel effective beam weapons. The two entities are totally dissimilar.

No, it is the physical weight of the mounts itself which I am just stating that the actual weight of the weapons mounts is tiny compared to the weight of the starship. Using the DS-9 tech manuel again, the drawing of the Defiant's anti-matter reactor is very small compared to the mass of the ship, maybe 3 to 5 percent. This is at least partially supported by the episodes with pictures of the engine room. Most of the power leads seem to feed the warp drives which would indicate that phasers are comparatively low in power requirements and Defiants are among the most powerful phasers in the Federation.

[Sea Skimmer]

In ww2, they knew that mines would not stop forces from trying to go through them and there were several designs for unsweepable mines. The purpose behind these is to sink ships. Losing a few cruisers or a few transports could cause a military to lose a battle. My idea for mines and/or platforms is to destroy an attacking force.

Nope, the purpose of the overwhelming majority of WW2 minefields was area denial and generally in a defensive role, sure it was nice if you happened to sink a sub or wandering destroyer, but that was secondary.

[Ghost Rider]

Which would have been utterly ineffective against shields. Remember —Kirk had to pull the prefix code trick to override the Reliant's computer to drop the shields and expose the ship to the Enterprise's underpowered phasers.

Very good but it proves it is possible, now multiply the number of weapons which can fire by 100. That will get through the shields. I am also suggesting more fusion powered than battery powered to be honest, just showing that power requirements are not that high.

You are still ignoring the obvious.

THEY WERE ON A SHIP.

Do you have reliable data that a mine is even 1/10th of the firepower of a ship's battery, or a hundredth?

Leaving aside the issue of the non-canonicity of any of the tech manuals, the fact that no large fuel tanks were visible on the DS9 structure argues against the theory that the station was fusion powered. The whole advantage of matter/antimatter is that it offers greater energy density for less fuel mass than can be had with any form of hydrogen fusion.

Large tanks may not be required because the station is fixed and could easily be able to get refueld often. The station probably only needs a few months of fuel at best.

Once again where are you basing this assumption?

This is a rather huge leap of logic.

[Patrick Degan]

If the emitters are inside the platform, they aren't much good, are they? And even you can't be obtuse enough to liken an active weapon componnent to a transmission antenna.

I was simply asking a question. That question was if NASA has a problem with near 0 K temperatures and their their transmission antenna. I know that space probes like Voyager have to have pretty high powered microwave systems. I would hope that we are all here to learn.

Because a simple transmitter antennae is not going to be put through high thermal stress at any point in its operation. Learn.

As far as emitters being inside of a platform, there is something called a hatch or a retractable mount. Retractable mounts have been used in the past on submarines so that the guns do not cause drag. There are many different was such an item could be protected if it is needed.

I had really hoped you'd at least be intelligent enough to see the basic problem but evidently you are not —even if you have the emitter in a retractable housing, you will still be dealing with the problem of the ambient temperature of space. Simply putting something in a compartment is not sufficent to keep heat from bleeding out into space.

The magnetic field to keep the matter and antimatter seperate would not require a huge amount of energy —far less than the setup for a phaser platform with a cloaking system. And a directed beam weapon will require active targeting.

How are you providing power for the magnetic field. Batteries would not give you an extended duration. I don't see solar cutting it and volume covered by the panels would greatly increase volume. Beamed energy is out because that means you have a web of beams which can be tracked. You eather have to pull from the warhead and have a tiny anti-matter power system or again you needed fusion

Oh for fuck's sake! Just how do you imagine Sisko expected his mines to remain useable for timeframes of months? There were no power reactors on board those things. The obvious conclusion is that the Federation does have power cells able to function for extended timeframes. We have that capability, albeit on a smaller scale, with cesium packs on longrange spaceprobes like Cassini.

Hmm, Why would you need active targetting, just "Because" does not cut it. You need really good targetting true but not always active targetting.

If you want maximum accuracy you certainly do. What meaning do you derive from the phrase "phasers locked on target"?

No, you need a denial weapon which will actually work and will remain undectable until the target is on top of it. And no minefield of any sort is sufficent to stop a warfleet on its own; that is not the logic behind the concept.

In ww2, they knew that mines would not stop forces from trying to go through them and there were several designs for unsweepable mines. The purpose behind these is to sink ships. Losing a few cruisers or a few transports could cause a military to lose a battle. My idea for mines and/or platforms is to destroy an attacking force.

Ah, a pipe-dream.

Nice, but the authour of a novel which offers no relevant evidence to the topic under examination here evidently decided to indulge his desire for technowanking instead of thinking the problem through. Only an idiot conceives of a mine which is programmed to pick out one ship-type from others. Now let's get back to the discussion at hand and not bring up any more red herrings, shall we?

Oops, well, you just made sweepble mines. I prefer my mines to examine their targets and/or be command controllable, otherwise the enemy can just throw large canisters, rocks, ect and simily take out all of your mines. Sorry, dumn mines, even if you could put them in an effective number to cover the volume will not work.

The enemy has to detect the mines first —a task which is far easier with platforms which give off active emissions all over the place, leave ion trails in their wakes, and register considerably greater mass than a 1.5 metre warhead. And given how many ways a ST sensor can be jammed, what's to prevent the attack force from simply employing ECM and rendering the phaser platforms useless?

I want to built a defense system which can protect my objective without stopping me from being able to get there. Random mines flying around do not make this easy. As well, only in close orbit do objects move fast enough to have considerable velocity and the ships can simply bombard your shipyard, planet, or even take out your minefield from out of their path.

A defence system based solely on platforms will not do the fucking job on its own. They can be shot down and far easier than a swarm of many thousands of mines. Just what part of this equation eludes your intellectual grasp?

Except Trek combat has shown, repeatedly, that "choke point" interception strategies are the rule, not the exception, and this makes a passive minefield feasible. Doubly so in the orbits of planetary objectives.

If we assume a shell of the mines at around 10,000 km from the center of a planet, we are talking about a surface area of 1,256,637,061 square km. I tried to be a bit conservative and figuing on a planetary diameter out and in a geosync orbit.

You're looking at this totally the wrong way and ignoring orbital mechanics. The number of possible orbital pathways is limited to a finite number determined by the most propulsion-efficent pathway to insertion. And even a ship in a circumpolar orbit will be crossing through the pathways of mines twice with each circuit.

Let us examine "Choak" points.
To my knowledge, there is only one case of a minefield being used. That is the DS-9 wormhole.

Demonstrate how this is a "special case" that is not replicable.

There is one other example of a "Choak Point", that is in TNG when the Romulan states that it would take too long to go around. That states that they could go around. Other than that, we have some incidents where ships seem to leave warp to fight. Choak Point or stupid officers.

Choke point. I'm sorry if you don't understand the implications. And the "stupid officers" handwaving exercise avails you nothing. We're talking about a demostrable lack of capability. A Romulan fleet was clearly unable to outmanoeuvre a blockade line in space.

Let us examine one of the battles, the Federation was were waiting for the Klingons. Now, I never understood why the Klingons did not send just a couple of small ships to take out the emmiter in DS-9 which is taking out the mines maybe backup by a few cargo ships carrying hundreds to thousands of times the mines which are already there. You solution seems to be that they had to go around to get to their destination which does not fit with other episodes.

Did you even watch Star Trek: The Next Generation?

How the fuck do you imagine they keep their starfleets fueled?

Let us make the assumtion that they are 10,000 Federation ships. I think it is too large a number I consider ti to be more like 2000 ships total not including fighters. If we go with half the anti-matter being used for starship fuel and using the number of 25 ktons of anti-matter. This means that each ship would carry 2.5 tons of anti-matter. If a ship blew up, the explosion would be 125 giga-tons. Based on the on screen explosion of starships and the explosion of photon torpedos, they carry noohing like that

You're just a bear for making piles of unfounded assumptions, aren't you? When a starship explodes, its entire fuel supply does not spontaneously detonate. The mechanics of a photon torpedo detonation are totally dissimilar to a starship explosion; the former specifically brings the reactants together which are already contained in minutely close proximity, the latter is a random catastrophic overpressure event which certainly does not bring together the ship's entire fuel store all at once. Start thinking before you say something.

Let us state that there is 10,000 starship and let us assume that each of them has 500 photon torpedoes (probably an over estimation). This makes 5 million torpedoes or 5 k tons of anti-matter, only 10% of you number in the entire fleet.

No, let's assume an antimatter production capacity which fuels a large starfleet. That is the standard for logical examination.

Leaving aside the issue of the non-canonicity of any of the tech manuals, the fact that no large fuel tanks were visible on the DS9 structure argues against the theory that the station was fusion powered. The whole advantage of matter/antimatter is that it offers greater energy density for less fuel mass than can be had with any form of hydrogen fusion.

Large tanks may not be required because the station is fixed and could easily be able to get refueld often. The station probably only needs a few months of fuel at best.

A key design essential for any space station is long term endurance. It must be able to sustain its operations as independently as possible of resupply for the longest possible timeframe; partly in case resupply is interrupted. Nice try at handwaving.

I don't see a power cell being able to provide enough power to keep the anti-matter containment for any extended period of time.

Sisko's lashed-up mines says otherwise.

If I could see a why billions of these things could be created in a reasonable time frame or even at all. If we assume that the anti-matter can be gotten and that we are only talking about your 500 million mines and you are talking a mine mass of 1 ton each, you are talking about the material to make 100 Galaxy class starships according to the DS-9 tech manual for the ship's mass.

You keep missing the point, don't you? Mines are expendible. They can be easily be produced by the millionfold and certainly do not require large, complex assembly facilities to manufacture. And as the Federation already has a production capability to keep a large fleet fueled with antimatter on a regular basis, the other half of the equation is not a difficult one either.

[SirNitram]

I see we have a crackpot in the audience. We'll review the basic purposes of a weapons platform and a mine.

A mine: Area denial weapon. Designed to delay your foe by forcing him to find alternate routes or clear the mines. Exactly one force in history has used mines primarily as an attack, and that was the Viet Cong.

A weapons platform: A defensive weapon. Designed to shoot people coming at it and what it defends.