Borg cube mass.

[Khas 12,158]

In TNG's "I, Borg", Data mentions that a Borg scoutship, a small, cube-shaped vessel, several meters long, has a mass of 2.5 million metric tons. Given that "several" usually means "three", we can infer that a Borg cube is a thousand times longer on all sides, since in VOY's "Dark Frontier", a Borg cube was stated to have a volume of 28 cubic kilometers, which translates to just over three kilometers per dimension (length, width, height). Given that a thousand cubed is a billion, we know that a Borg cube has a billion times the volume of a Borg scoutship. And assuming similar construction materials - which, given the Borg, we can easily do - means that it also has a billion times the mass. Which translates to 2.5 quadrillion metric tons. Or, roughly 200 times the mass of Phobos. Of course, Phobos isn't solid rock, but actually porous

 

Given what we know of the size, something ultra-dense must be used in construction. White dwarf material, maybe, or something of similar density, since a matchbox-sized amount of white dwarf matter would have the same mass as an elephant. It can't be neutronium, because A - Seven of Nine said that the Borg have never been able to get neutronium alloys before -not that you can even alloy neutronium, but that's a different can of worms altogether, and B - Neutronium is absurdly dense. To the point that a pinhead made of it would have the mass of a supertanker.

[Khas 12,158]

Whoops. Got "Descent" mixed up with "I, Borg".

[scvn2812 504]

Found the quote about the mass of the rescue vessel of similar configuration in the episode transcript but nothing that establishes size. Assuming 1 ton per cubic meter, the cube root of 2.5 million is 136 meters. 136 meters of length is pretty big but still pretty small compared to a Galaxy-class starship and most ships in Starfleet. Length wise, its close to an Oberth, though you could cram a lot of Oberths into such a space. You could of course make the ship smaller by assuming greater densities but I fail to see anything rational about jumping straight to assuming this is something smaller than a shuttle with the density of a white dwarf.

[Afishymeadow 534]

[Khas 12,158]

Found the quote about the mass of the rescue vessel of similar configuration in the episode transcript but nothing that establishes size. Assuming 1 ton per cubic meter, the cube root of 2.5 million is 136 meters. 136 meters of length is pretty big but still pretty small compared to a Galaxy-class starship and most ships in Starfleet. Length wise, its close to an Oberth, though you could cram a lot of Oberths into such a space. You could of course make the ship smaller by assuming greater densities but I fail to see anything rational about jumping straight to assuming this is something smaller than a shuttle with the density of a white dwarf.

 

Data said "several meters long", and he said that it was identical to the ship that they found crashed on the planet. Said ship (that crashed) looked about 3 meters long on each side.

[Vince 520]

That is quite absurd, but these are ships that can tank the bombardment of a thirty strong fleet firing megaton range torpedoes -energies enough to fragment multi-kilometer wide spheres of solid iron- and then go on to destroy said fleets. Point being these ships are orders of magnitude tougher than what they should be and maybe having armour between 100,000 and 1000,000 times denser than conventional materials is how they achieve this?

 

Given the power gen figures chucked around it seems likely that this figure may represent the ships dead-weight without any mass-reducing tech in play, less its core generates enough power to blow up planets by the second

Edited April 12, 2013 by Vince

[Vince 520]

Assuming near C exhaust velocity is this the right way to work out propulsion power: acceleration x C x mass?

 

If so (assuming that is actual mass and comparable acceleration to Fed ships) we would end up with a 3 meter long borg scout with eerily similar power generation to the Enterprise's "billions of gigawatts" provided by Data.

 

Or, if we ran with those density figures for Federation vessels (as other have done before us) we would have to re-think everything we have concluded about power generation and firepower making the events of TDiC being the result of DET a feasible reality. But at least the Enterprise couldn't get done in by a 3 meter long scout ship!

Edited April 12, 2013 by Vince

[Afishymeadow 534]

What if one of these Borg "shuttles" were to ram a Galaxy Class starship?

 

[scvn2812 504]

Data said "several meters long", and he said that it was identical to the ship that they found crashed on the planet. Said ship (that crashed) looked about 3 meters long on each side.

 

When did he say this? Can you provide the actual quote?

 

Scaling based on what may be a chunk of debris field versus the entire field seems like a flawed process. How would you even fit five drones and their support equipment in a 3 by 3 meter box? Those outlets they plug into alone take up significant space.

[Khas 12,158]

http://www.chakoteya.net/nextgen/223.htm

 

[bridge]

PICARD: What is it, Number One?

RIKER: We've picked up a vessel on the long range scanners, headed this way.

PICARD: Analysis.

DATA: The vessel is traveling at warp seven point six. Mass two point five million metric tons. Configuration, cubical.

RIKER: The Borg.

DATA: Its dimensions indicate that it is a scout ship similar to the one that crashed. Interference from the star's radiation will shield us from their sensors. We should remain undetected until they enter the system.

PICARD: How long do we have?

DATA: At present speed they will arrive in thirty one hours seven minutes.

 

Here are pics of the crashed scoutship:

 

 

 

Note the light in the last image. That's a transporter beam.

[scvn2812 504]

To state the obvious, the whole thing is never shown on screen so how can the scale of the whole ship be extrapolated to 3 x 3 x 3 when the camera cuts off our view of it before we see where the corner is and its partially embedded in the ground? Furthermore, as we see later in First Contact and Voyager, not all Borg ships are cubical or symmetrical.

[Khas 12,158]

Umm, didn't you read the quote from Data? He said that there was an approaching Borg ship, similar to the crashed one, that was cubical. Now, to prevent an 8-Bit Theater style semantics argument, he probably said "similar" in the same way most people use it, which means "nearly identical", rather than the mathematician's meaning, of "same shape, different sizes". After all, if you saw two oil tankers that were pretty much the same, you'd call them similar, wouldn't you?

 

Also, considering that the ship that was approaching was intact, while the ship that crashed was broken, they really were similar, and not identical.

[scvn2812 504]

Did you read the quote? The dialog you posted contains no mention of the dimensions of the ship, just mass.

 

We cannot see how large the crashed one is because the camera doesn't show the whole thing, just what may be the top sticking out of the ground. We don't even see a corner to see even where one side ends.

 

Your three by three box that can barely fit five drones in it without palletizing them, is also two and a half times heavier than the original Enterprise according to Scotty and five times heavier than the significantly larger than the original Enterprise USS Voyager according to dialog from the show. So either the scout is bigger than it appears on screen, something is missing with the ability of the D to determine the mass of the scout. Otherwise, we're left with the conclusion that Borg ships are orders of magnitude more dense than anything Starfleet has yet build ships that are much more fragile without shields or other counter measures, judging by the way the D blew a hole in one the size of the ship the first time they met.

[Khas 12,158]

You are aware that three METERS is about equal to ten feet? There's plenty of room for 5 drones who just stand there in alcoves, as Borg drones seem to do most of the time. Or maybe they neglected to teach meter-to-feet conversions in your school.

 

As for further proof, here's the Memory Alpha page:

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Borg_scout_ship

 

Also, it was possible that they fired a torpedo of the same yield as those used in TDiC (as we SHOULD KNOW, torpedoes have variable yields), as in that same episode, either Riker or Data said that firing a torpedo at that range would risk destroying the E-D in the blast. And yes, torpedoes were used in the bombardment in TDiC.

 

And yes, the implication is that the Borg hulls are super-dense. Data said that the Borg scout ship that was coming was similar to the crashed one, implying that it was pretty much the same. Did you miss that?

 

Sometimes, I think you exist for the sole reason of objecting to my claims.

[Khas 12,158]

Well, three meters actually seems like an under-estimate. It seems closer to four or five, going by that pic with Riker, Worf, and Crusher. Which means that my calculations were off, but not by too much. Let's check for each figure.

 

4 meters: 750 times the length of each dimension. 750 cubed = 421875000. Multiply this by 2.5 million, and you get just over a quadrillion metric tons for the Borg cube's mass.

 

5 meters: 600 times the length of each dimension. 600 cubed = 216 million. Multiply this by 2.5 million, and you get just over half a quadrillion metric tons for the Borg cube's mass.

[Khas 12,158]

For the record, even though the 1 quadrillion metric tons figure is heavy (100 times more massive than Phobos), it's still only 1/6,000,000 the mass of Earth.

[scvn2812 504]

I read the Memory Alpha page at the start, like a lot of things I've run into on wikis, there's no rationale given for the meters figure. Also, even five meters by five meters by five meters would be a stretch for the alcoves and including anything else like propulsion systems, sensors, power supply or anything else a ship might find useful.

 

The E D used phasers not torpedoes to carve out that big chunk of cube which you are suggesting is orders of magnitude tougher than the Pegasus asteroid which Riker wanted to use torpedoes on to blow through two klicks of material to get to the Pegasus rather than dig using phasers.

 

You try to claim a shuttle sized object from a race not significantly more advanced than the Feds in materials science in terms of durability weighs almost an order of magnitude more than the traditionally accepted mass of the first Enterprise, two and a half times it's mass according to dialog, three times more than Voyager according to dialog and then complain that I'm objecting? You don't exactly need the Hubble telescope to see that coming.

 

I object to any conclusion I think is on the spectrum of iffy to pants on head crazy. Brian apparently has been busy lately so the debate on the what, where and how of Star Wars shields has stalled out or is it only when you're the one making claims that it counts? ;-)

[scvn2812 504]

Seriously dude, of course I object to taking this meters long, two and a half million ton shuttle face value. It flies in the face of other evidence from the franchise and sanity in about the same way as measuring the intensity of energy in space in decibels or the stunning revelation I'm certain we would find out in season 5 of Enterprise where the crew discovers a tiny man searching for a flash light at the center of a black hole. (+1 Internets for that last reference.)

[Khas 12,158]

Given that we know that Borg power supply is highly decentralized, it wouldn't be too hard, especially if they use something other than a matter/antimatter reactor, like the Romulans, who use tiny black holes to power their ships. Also, the asteroid in "The Pegasus" was stated to be unstable, and if they used the torpedoes on full blast, they would risk causing debris to fly everywhere, destroying the Enterprise. It would have to be a controlled stream of small bursts to get the Pegasus out.

 

As for the ship being a few meters long on all sides, Data stated that the scout ship that was coming had dimensions that matched the ship that had crashed, and was cubical.

 

Wait, did you just claim that the Borg aren't that much more advanced than the UFP in terms of science? Have you forgotten just how easily they can assimilate people? That their hulls regenerate, and the maturation chambers? Not to mention the ease of transwarp for Borg ships.

[Khas 12,158]

For me, the sheer mass of even Borg scout ships shows that this is a huge threat to be taken seriously. That they're able to make even their tiny ships massive.

 

Also, is that reference that of the theorized Star Trek/Doctor Who crossover that would have happened?

[scvn2812 504]

As many times as we've trod this ground, I'm surprised you don't know it by heart by now. ) Riker wanted to blow through two kilometers of asteroid using most of their torpedoes in order to destroy Pegasus. Safety of the ship was why they didn't try to shoot their way out, it had nothing to do with the selection of weapons outside the asteroid.

 

I'm not arguing that the second ship is substantially different from the first. I never said anything about the two not being comparable. What I did say, repeatedly, is that the only clues we have on scale are the phrase "small" and a few shots of one part of a crashed ship which we cannot be certain we are seeing the whole thing. We only see one part of one side and we don't even have a corner in the frame. It's essentially a square taking up the entire frame of the camera. We don't see side edges, we don't even know what the top looks like because it's a 2d view. So it could extend out of the frame and under the ground for a hundred meters for all we know.

 

The singularity power source is interesting. Assuming that after crashing, it's mass is not lightened, then that might actually explain why the thing has such crazy mass compared to Starfleet ships. The Romulans would probably have also had to solve the problem of not having their power core being so dense it would make a Warbird into a space station. Which could be solved with the creative use of subspace fields since the same technique can be used to move small moons.

 

Please don't selectively interpret my comments. I was very clear that the Borg are not much better than Fed standard for material strength, not that they are only modestly better in all areas. Regeneration of the hull could be an application of transporter and replicator tech. With perhaps a dash of nanotechnology magic involved. Borg science is likely far ahead of the Feds, their engineering is a lot better in terms of propulsion, not much better if at all in terms of how resilient their materials are if Borg hulls are a fair sample.

[scvn2812 504]

For me, the sheer mass of even Borg scout ships shows that this is a huge threat to be taken seriously. That they're able to make even their tiny ships massive.

 

Also, is that reference that of the theorized Star Trek/Doctor Who crossover that would have happened?

 

Big Bang Theory, it's a Sheldon line. If I remember right, he says Leonard is about as likely to get laid as it being discovered that at the center of every black hole is a little man looking for a flashlight.

[Khas 12,158]

Well, the hull thing is at least initially, the E-D's weapons were effective, after they adapted, eh, not so much. Also, we rarely see Borg ships with shields up. And as Vince said, the sheer mass could also explain why they're able to take such a beating. After all, the Cube in First Contact fought Starfleet forces all the way from the Typhon Sector to Earth.

 

Also, if you think this idea is nuts, you would've had a heart attack had you ever had the misfortune of meeting KirkSkywalker. I still twitch in anger when I think about him.

[Vince 520]

Could the ground beneath it support something that dense?

[Khas 12,158]

Not sure.