True; the primary killing system is the sleet of radiation the device produces. There was a lot of work done on the design of space-initiated nuclear devices back in the old days of Nike-Zeus. The designs used a lot of tricks to up the radiation yield at the expense of the blast and thermal effects. One of them was to wrap the device in gold foil. The "explosive" effects of an initiation in space are astonishingly limited; 100 meters probably would protect a reasonably heavily-constructed space ship from damage from a 1 kiloton initiation. Unless the warhead was heavily doped using tricks, I believe the hull would provide enough protection to limit radiation damage to the crew. In Balance of Terror, the nuclear device used was IIRC a scuttling charge. So it was probably a pretty conventional device.

By the way. most of the radioactive product from an initiation comes from debris being sucked into the fireball. That ain't going to happen much in space. We never really worried much about gamma. If blast and flash are going to reduce a victim to the size and appearance of a McDonalds hamburger, irradiating them as well isn't a productive use of resources. As a friend of mine put it, it isn't the explosion that kills you, its the fall to the bottom of the crater.

"Don't forget, Star Trek has Vulcan and Betazoid telepathy."


Example of Betazoid Empath telepathy:

Seething alien on screen.

Empath: "Captain, I sense that he is angry."

RBG

Jonas is clearly Betazoid.

I disagree, this iws a perfect example of where the sensor deficiencies are completely a plot device to raise tension, if the sensors had been better then there goes the entire plot.

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Let this thread live!

It's worse than that, It's dead Jim.

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I remember this therad.. It's like a poltergeist. Good when making noise. :wink: -Colt

Spock: Live long and prosper...

I didn't read any of the posts in this thread so don't expect anything new or fresh from me.

Quick, you get its Tricorder.

I'll get its Wallet!

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Hey, this thread just doesn't die, does it? Anyway, I thought I'd point out that

sounds perfect for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

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Neither love nor money makes the world go round.
Unfortunately, we're down to about 17 ounces of the highly unstable stuff that does.

Getting back to the issue of the TR-116, O'Brien said that a projectile weapon was under research to be used in energy dampened environments (probably like the planet in 'Paradise' [DS9]), but it was abandoned in favour of regenerative phasers.

First, if you're in an energy dampening field, regenerative or not, the phaser won't work.

Second, what does it mean for a phaser to be regenerative. We know what regenerative shields mean, but phasers aren't known to loose power. The other explanation I can think of is one that violates the laws of thermodynamics The phaser never runs out of energy. Still, what do you expect?

But, clearly the TR-116 was under development for combat purposes, but for the reasons demonstrated by Stuart, it's crap! And why do they need to develop a projectile weapon? Just dust of the old records and use an M-16 or something. The arrogance of Starfleet is amazing. They never even think of using projectile weapons when it is shown that they are so much better.

What the...? Who brought this thread back up? Besides, there's another thread (or more) discussing projectile weapons vs energy weapons.

Regenerative phasers means rechargeable phasers; regular phasers use energy cartrige like current weapons.