How a single Intrepid-class starship can defeat the Death Star.

[Khas 12,158]

Okay, this is gonna require some very unconventional tactics, but here goes. An Intrepid-class starship could blow up the Death Star using... an asteroid. More specifically, we'll use Phobos, one of Mars' moons, and fairly small (only 18 miles wide). Here goes:

 

 

 

An Intrepid-class starship's maximum sublight speed, going by Memory Alpha, is 0.8c, or 80% lightspeed. This is incredibly fast STL, no matter how you look at it. Now, suppose the starship is carrying - via tractor beam - an asteroid the size and mass of Phobos. Not a difficult task, as in the TOS episode "The Paradise Syndrome", the E-Nil moved an asteroid the size of Luna with its tractor beam. A "small" object like Phobos is going to be no problem whatsoever. When the Fed starship enters within a few hundred thousand kilometers of the Death Star, it disengages the tractor beam, and lets the asteroid go. However, that asteroid is going to have inertia, which will keep it moving towards the Death Star at 0.8c. This is where the fun begins.

 

 

 

We'll assume that it has the same mass as Phobos, 10,720,000,000,000,000 kg. However, when accelerated to near lightspeed, an object's mass increases. The formula for this increase is , with M = mass, v = velocity, and c = the speed of light. Now, we have 1.072E16 kg for the initial mass of the asteroid, 240,000 km/s for the velocity, and 300,000 km/s for the speed of light. When we punch in the numbers, we find that the asteroid's mass has increased to 1.78667E16 kg. The asteroid's mass has been increased by more than 71%. Now, we have to calculate the kinetic energy from an impact of an asteroid with that mass travelling at 0.8c.

 

 

 

By using K=1/2mv², we can find the kinetic energy of such an impact, which equates to 5.1456E32 joules. To convert this to explosive force in megatons, we first divide this number by 4 billion (4E9). This brings us to 1.2864E23 tons of TNT. Now, if we divide this number by a million, we can find out how many megatons this is. This is 1.2864E17 megatons, which, going by Wong's planet killer page, is more than twice the energy needed to blow the Earth to smithereens! Overkill doesn't do this tactic justice when using it against either Death Star, the latter of which only barely met the size qualifications for dwarf planet, if we use the 900 km diameter model.

 

 

 

And that, is how, using very unconventional tactics, the USS Voyager could destroy the Death Star.

[Tyralak 12,068]

Oh dear. Logic AND math. Not a bad tactic. I could see it being something Sisko would try, I don't see Janeway doing it though.

[Khas 12,158]

This tactic would just lend Chuck's statement even more creedence. "You don't fuck with the Sisko!"

[Jason 27]

Khas I would why no science fiction villians ever us this kind tantic it goes law phyical education people even.

[Khas 12,158]

I don't know why either. The closest thing to this tactic I've seen is using asteroids for orbital bombardment in Babylon 5 and one of Heinlein's novels. And even then, those were much smaller asteroids travelling at a much slower speed.

[Jason 27]

I don't know why either. The closest thing to this tactic I've seen is using asteroids for orbital bombardment in Babylon 5 and one of Heinlein's novels. And even then, those were much smaller asteroids travelling at a much slower speed.

 

Maybe make own page plans UFP has crush Star War Empire.

[the atom 0]

An interesting plan, but it has a few critical flaws. First, in order to succeed, the plan requires that the DS does not simply detect and obliterate the asteroid before it even comes within so much as a lightsecond. This is extremely implausible for obvious reasons, so you'd need a lot of ships towing a lot of asteroids to have any hope of getting past it's superlaser.

 

 

 

Unfortunately this entails problems of it's own. Once it becomes apparent that the superlaser isn't going to be able to intercept every single projectile, a fleet of warships, along with swarms of fighters are going to be dispatched to intercept the rest. Starfleet would need to send an escorting fleet somewhere in the hundreds to possibly thousands (depending on where you stand on the firepower issue) to have any hope of getting through.

 

 

 

Now then even assuming you've done all this, the DS still has the option of simply jumping to hyperspace and evading danger, like it has from the start.

[Khas 12,158]

For the part about the Death Star obliterating the asteroid, they could just fling it at it from behind, where the superlaser won't be able to react in time, what with the Death Star needing to rotate to destroy the rock. As Mara Jade said in "Survivor's Quest", the Death Star's design stinks. It just happens to be big enough to get away with it. The asteroid is moving at 0.8c after all. As to avoid detection, if they come in at warp and then deccelerate to full impulse near the Death Star, let the asteroid go, and get out of there before anyone notices.

 

 

 

That said, it's not a foolproof plan, just a demonstration on a different way to blow up the Death Star.

[Praeothmin 532]

Problem is, Khas, we've never actually seen 0.8c from VOY at STL...

 

The most we've seen is a couple hundred m/s, so I have a hard time accepting the Memory Alpha figure...

 

Where does that figure come from anyways?

 

Also, as The Atom said, TLs are all over the DS, so they should be able to eventually destroy it, even with their shitty aiming, if they saturate its flight path with hundreds of TL bolts...

[Khas 12,158]

They mention it in "Timeless".

[Praeothmin 532]

Ah...

[the atom 0]

One way it might possibly work is if the DS is charging up it's superlaser and the attack is perfectly timed. Assuming it can't just jump to hyperspace while charging the main weapon, Starfleet might have a window of opportunity, if only for a few seconds.

[Tyralak 12,068]

If a cloaking device was used, this could maintain the element of surprise. Not to mention the fact that 0.8c is pretty damn fast. Depending on the distance, they might not have enough time to react at all.

[enigma 521]

Do you think that they'll be able to use a cloaking device, fly at max impulse AND tractor a large asteroid at the same time? I mean, the amount of energy needed must be huge. Isn't that why cloaked ships can't use their shields nor use their weapons? Because the cloaking device uses up tremendous amounts of energy?

 

 

 

Nevertheless, any proof that any starship can fly at max impulse or warp while tractoring a huge object like an asteroid? E-D managed to use their tractor beam AND a warp\subspace shell on a stellar fragment (chunk of a star) and yet managed to barely deflect its path from a colony.

 

 

 

Did E-Nil at any point managed to fly at max speed while tractoring that asteroid?

 

 

 

Personally I do not think that an Intrepid Class nor any Fed ship has the power to tractor an object many times its mass and fly at max impulse or warp. The ship does not have the "horsepower" nor fuel to accomplish such a task.

 

 

 

It would be like attaching a trailer with a 2 ton load to a large car. Sure at best, the car might barely be able to pull the trailer and load if you start out slow but you'll be sucking up gas like no tomorrow and you'd be putting a lot of stress on its engine. Driving at full speed is not going to happen without trashing the car.

 

 

 

While the Intrepid may be able to move the asteroid, it would not be able to move it at any practical speeds to destroy the DS before it turns around and blasts it in to dust.

 

 

 

*BUT*, if you can construct an overpowered ship to offset such limitations then yeah, I can see the DS being destroyed. But then again it would be more fun to use that ship (along with enough shielding to soak up TLs) and tractor the DS into a nearby planet.

[Millenniumfalsehood 11]

I think the Voyager would have bigger problems moving an asteroid that size than you realize. An asteroid the size of Phobos is a rock approximately 6 miles in diameter. The most powerful ship in the fleet, the Enterprise-D, had trouble moving rocks of similar size, such as the moon in "Deja Q", so the Voyager would have no chance of moving it.

 

Usually when a Federation ship is depicted moving an object, it's an object of similar mass to itself. So I doubt this would work.

 

As stated.

 

What about using multiple ships in tandem, projecting several beams onto the asteroid? That could work.

 

On the other hand, I think the Empire would be able to pinpoint those ships and set up a grid of anti-asteroid Star Destroyers to deal with the incoming rock. They wouldn't have to be particularly accurate. Each of them carries plenty of firepower, and sending several salvos, shotgun style, would put up enough of a screen to destroy the rock. They have sensors capable of FTL detection; Solo was able to tell whether ships were following him in ANH, and sensors must read signals being bounced back, whether they are active or passive, and so those signals must have been traveling faster than the Falcon. Therefore they would be more than capable of detecting the incoming asteroid and blast it apart before it arrives.

[scvn2812 504]

For the reasons stated, I don't think using this tactic on the Death Star would be practical. However, if you've managed to establish orbital supremacy over a planet and need to breach a planetary shield in a hurry and aren't too concerned about civilian casualties, that might not be such a bad idea, providing the planet doesn't have any defensive batteries. Although there's not many factions in Star Trek or even Star Wars that are too keen to just wreck a perfectly good planet.

[Khas 12,158]

Well, the point of this thread was just to show the physics behind it. Not to establish whether or not it was a practical plan.

[the atom 0]

Actually one thing I learned not too long ago is that the Death Star is apparently capable of tanking it's own superlaser at full power, so even assuming everything went according to plan and the Death Star did nothing to acknowledge or destroy the attackers then the asteroid would just splatter across it's shields like a firecracker hitting a tank.

[Khas 12,158]

Where the hell did you hear that?

[scvn2812 504]

I'm uncertain about that as well: the planet killer beam represents hours, as much as a full day's worth of the Death Star's main reactor. It is a very robust weapons platform due to the heat dissipation requirements of running such a tremendous reactor flat out for far longer than any other space craft is thought to do. As well as tanking some fraction of the destruction of Alderaan as well but I don't think there is any reason to assume the Death Star is able to take a full on shot from her super laser.

 

The standard (and in my opinion, the most reasonable) assumption is that the Death Star is not built like a true warship. She's more like a mobile turbolaser of incredible scale than a warship with substantially greater percentages of her volume given over to power generation, power storage, fuel and everything else needed to support the operation of a planet killing super laser and not nearly as much by volume given over to defenses and things not directly related to making planets explode.

 

For the Death Star to have been built with a warship's proportionate resilience just strains credibility. Although the Death Star Deuce by virtue of its ludicrous size might be another story were it to have been finished but that's speculative, who knows what all that extra volume would be used for.

[Khas 12,158]

The standard (and in my opinion, the most reasonable) assumption is that the Death Star is not built like a true warship. She's more like a mobile turbolaser of incredible scale than a warship with substantially greater percentages of her volume given over to power generation, power storage, fuel and everything else needed to support the operation of a planet killing super laser and not nearly as much by volume given over to defenses and things not directly related to making planets explode.

 

 

That... was pretty much confirmed in the novel "Survivor's Quest". Mara mentions that the Death Star's design stunk, ​and that it just happened to be big and mean enough to get away with it.

[scvn2812 504]

Well, Mara's opinion as a military commander and spy is not entirely uninformed but I think it's one of Obi Wan's infamous "true from a certain point of view" scenarios.

 

The Death Star is a prime example of design compromise and doing the best you can with what you've got.

 

Not built like a true warship:

 

Probably "weak" in the sense that she can't plausibly turn aside her own firepower. (although is this a realistic expectation given how warships deliver perhaps minutes of reactor output in seconds, the Death Star hours of output in seconds)

 

Spherical shape limits the conventional artillery that can be brought to bare to at most half of her total.

 

Yet the difficulty of turning something that size would mean that a blade design would be horrifyingly vulnerable to flanking maneuvers. Micro jumping is an EU phenomenon not directly seen in the movies but in the unlikely event a foe could assemble enough force to threaten the Death Star's rear, the Death Star would not easily be able to reply. There's no flanking the spherical Death Star, you can evade the super laser but any approach brings you into view of half her guns until you get to point blank range.

 

From an engineering stand point, if you have an artificial object massing as much as a small planet, even though the Empire has a mastery of all forces that is staggering, it will still be more cost effective to give in to gravity and build a sphere. That way your structure doesn't need to be as robust so less investment in exotic super materials and force fields.

 

Were someone to build a Death Star equivalent of warship spec or assemble a battle fleet with a combined similar per second total reactor output, it would handily cream the DS1. I suspect that the greater volume of DS2 was partly to address some of the issues with the DS1 in the event of say, a sudden but inevitable betrayal by an underling who somehow rallies the Imperial Starfleet to his cause rather than throwing you down a ventilation shaft.

 

Ever notice that the downfall (pun intended) of megalomaniacs tends to be overlooking small details like that in favor of planning for much grander scenarios?

[Jason 27]

Simple way over come problem wieght is to us warp bubble that of course asteroid lot lighter. They made DS9 much lighter with us warp bubble. So might allow USS Voyager did the trick. If USS Voyager could pull DS9 it warp bubble around it is unknown. They even made planetet lighter by the way warp bubble. Of course plan must change the UFP pratice making object size astriond take same amount beaten but much lighter after all even NASA could build stuff lot tough and lighter then astriond had be about the same size to.

[Khas 12,158]

In one of those very uncommon instances, Jason has made a valid point. They could produce a warp bubble around the asteroid, lowering it's gravitational constant, tow it with a tractor beam at .8c, and let all hell break loose.

[enigma 521]

I seriously doubt the practicality of using a warp bubble to greatly reduce the asteroids mass and then use it to accelerate to 0.8c unless Voyager was with them throughout the whole trip!

 

You do not get nothing for free. The asteroid is getting a free ride in the bubble but it won't get that once it is dumped into real space. That same asteroid now needs to come up with the energy needed to maintain that acceleration! Since it never moved under its own power in the bubble it definitely won't once the bubble goes away. Imagine the stresses involved in being brought into real space while still expected to move at 0.8c. Not a pretty picture. That asteroid will suffer a nasty case of whiplash.

 

Again, the Intrepid does not have the "horsepower" to go at max impulse and still be able to tractor an asteroid of that magnitude. It has never been shown on TV of a Federation starship towing a multi petaton object and be able to fly at max impulse or warp.

 

It simply isn't feasibly and to expect the DS and its fleet to just sit there as Voyager gets a hernia pulling an asteroid is laughable.