11.13 Deflector Shields

The tactical deflector system is the primary defensive system of the Camelot. It is a series of powerful EM and gravity fields that protect both the ship and its crew from both natural and artificial hazards.

Like most forcefields, the deflector system creates a localized zone of highly focused spatial distortion within which an energetic graviton field is maintained, along with a directed EM field. The deflector field itself is emitter and shaped by a series of conformal transmission grids on the starship exterior, resulting in a field that almost exactly follows the form of the ship. This field is highly resistant to impact due to mechanical impacts of all sorts, from relativistic particles to torpedoes, rocks, and other space debris. When such an intrusion occurs, field energy is concentrated at the point of impact, creating an intense localized spatial distortion; The EM field also becomes focused in this direction.

To the starship-bound observer, it looks like the intruding object bounced off the shield like a rubber ball off a wall. To a zero-dimensional observer on the object, however, it looks like the ship suddenly jumped out of the way. This is somewhat analogous to the spatial distortion created by natural gravity wells, and is usually accompanied by a flash of Cerenkov radiation (radiation emitted when objects exceed the speed of light in a local medium), which looks like a blue flash. The field is also effective against a wide range of EM, nuclear and other field energies. The shields are enhanced with a number of factors, such as:

* Double Redundancy Systems
* Ultra EM Band Support
* Rapid Remodulation Systems
* Electromagnetic Regeneration Systems

Double Redundancy systems ensure shields even in the case of total primary shield failure; Ultra EM band support meaning that EM radiation above that of even Gamma rays are used, and protected against the same radiation, eliminating some of the risk from high-output X-ray and Gamma ray sources; Rapid Remodulation systems are two genetic-algorithm equipped engineering processors that employ frequency-hopping to defeat Borg and otherwise-inspired weaponry; the genetic algorithms ensure that only the successful patterns 'survive' to do their job again; EM regeneration systems use specially controlled electromagnetic field to help boost and regenerate shield fields.

Given that a standard one-megaton explosion contains approximately 2,977,789,639,020,840 joules of energy. A Romulan gigawatt discharge outputs 20,000,000,000 joules per second. This means that a 1-megatonne explosion is contains as much energy as a Romulan phaser blast sustained for 148,889.482 seconds. This is 41 hours 21 minutes and 29 seconds. Given that a typical photon torpedo is some 90.55 megatons it becomes clear that they are by far the more powerful attack form. A quantum torpedo detonation has a near instantaneous release of 112.03 megatons or 333,601,773,259,504,705.2 joules (333.6 Peta joules). The peak momentary load of any single shield generator is 800 Gigawatts, with all 16 generators working that gives 3311 Gigawatts or 12.8 terawatts, which is an order of magnitude below the explosive yield of the quantum torpedo. The question becomes as to what level of energy from the detonation hits the shields over what level of time. If the energy arrives over a longer length of time the shields are more easily able to compensate for the explosion and there is almost certainly a significant portion of energy that is wasted in the vacuum.