What is ablative armor?

posted on August 24th, 2011, 1:49 pm

Isnt that the tactical armour that the future janeway brought back to save voyager?

Ablative armour is just heavy plates.

posted on August 24th, 2011, 2:17 pm

Isnt that the tactical armour that the future janeway brought back to save voyager?

Ablative armour is just heavy plates.

he was refering to the endgame ablative armour.

both are called ablative armour, the type we saw in ds9 is simpler, in that its simply ablative armour fixed to the hull by a refit/construction process.

the ablative armour in endgame is far more complex in that the engineering crews didnt fit the ablative armour itself, they fitted generators to the hull, which made the armour on demand. presumably they work similarly to a replicator, just are more advanced and can do their job quickly over a larger scale. in this case the generators are the key, and the ablative armour plating that is made would probably be very similar to the earlier armour, just made on a larger scale.

also it's quite possible that the ablative armour plates arent very heavy (here meaning high in mass) but use a futuristic alloy that although not structurally good enough to be a complete hull, does a good job at deflecting the weapons fire when it gets shot.

posted on August 24th, 2011, 2:34 pm

also it's quite possible that the ablative armour plates arent very heavy (here meaning high in mass) but use a futuristic alloy that although not structurally good enough to be a complete hull, does a good job at deflecting the weapons fire when it gets shot.

Well, they didn't use the average shields in any way so the armor appeared to be far more advanced than any deflectors before.

posted on August 24th, 2011, 2:52 pm

Well, they didn't use the average shields in any way so the armor appeared to be far more advanced than any deflectors before.

indeed i agree, but that doesnt seem to contradict my point. as the main shields are not regularly used to serve as a hull, only the hull does that. i was pointing out that ablative armour may be effective against weapons fire but innefective when used solely as a ship's hull, thus meaning that ablative armour should be added to hulls, and hulls shouldnt be composed of the material.

another reason why ships arent made entirely out of ablative armour is cost.

also making a ship out of ablative plating sorta contradicts the point of ablative armour, which is to protect what is underneath by sacrificing the ablative plating. if the entire hull was sacrificed to stop weapons fire then there would be no hull.

posted on August 24th, 2011, 4:54 pm

Ablative armour is simply an extra skin of the ship with a gap inbetween panels that takes the impact rather than the hull. So instead of the hull being struck and anything attached to it getting damaged and injurying crew it damaged the extra armour instead. They are probably the same material just more of it. The british army and US army have used it on their tanks for years.

posted on August 24th, 2011, 5:02 pm

Ablative armor isn't like normal armor, it dissipates energy away from the hull rather than simply taking the hit.

posted on August 24th, 2011, 6:01 pm

Ablative armor isn't like normal armor, it dissipates energy away from the hull rather than simply taking the hit.

exactly, the ablative armour isnt like normal hull, it's designed to sacrifice itself via the process of ablation, hence protecting what is underneath. it doesnt work by being tough or being separate from the hull, it works because of its properties.

currently ablative armour is used in heat shields for atmospheric entry. the armour gets stripped by the heat, but the vulnerable hull underneath isnt damaged.

posted on August 24th, 2011, 8:45 pm

Ablative armor is the star trek version of ERA, Explosive reactive armor. But with magical star trek properties.

posted on August 24th, 2011, 9:12 pm

Ablative armor is the star trek version of ERA, Explosive reactive armor. But with magical star trek properties.

and where do you get that wild claim from? despite the fact it's called ablative armour and not reactive armour, and there is no canon evidence that ablative armour works in any way like current explosive reactive armour, the idea of sticking explosives on a starship is ridiculous, on current armoured vehicles you can only place era tiles on strongly armoured parts of the vehicle, the bits that are more likely to be hit by fire. on a starship you couldnt put these tiles on places like the deflector or the warp nacelles. if an era tile exploded on the deflector it would cause massive damage to the ship.

both ablative armour and reactive armour currently exist, and i'd be surprised if you were confusing the two, as they are different in many ways.

the most obvious thing is that they called it ablative armour, not reactive armour. if they wanted armour that behaves as reactive armour does irl, then they would have called it reactive armour.

[JR_109]

posted on August 24th, 2011, 9:54 pm

Last edited by JR_109 on August 24th, 2011, 9:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.

and where do you get that wild claim from? despite the fact it's called ablative armour and not reactive armour, and there is no canon evidence that ablative armour works in any way like current explosive reactive armour, the idea of sticking explosives on a starship is ridiculous, on current armoured vehicles you can only place era tiles on strongly armoured parts of the vehicle, the bits that are more likely to be hit by fire. on a starship you couldnt put these tiles on places like the deflector or the warp nacelles. if an era tile exploded on the deflector it would cause massive damage to the ship.

both ablative armour and reactive armour currently exist, and i'd be surprised if you were confusing the two, as they are different in many ways.

the most obvious thing is that they called it ablative armour, not reactive armour. if they wanted armour that behaves as reactive armour does irl, then they would have called it reactive armour.

I made a mistake, I was thinking of something else, disregard my previous statement.

posted on August 24th, 2011, 10:56 pm

ablative armor is armor that uses thrust to push away torpedoes and such of the uss Defiant. The kind of armor that Janeway had was advanced armor from the future.

posted on August 24th, 2011, 11:13 pm

ablative armor is armor that uses thrust to push away torpedoes and such of the uss Defiant. The kind of armor that Janeway had was advanced armor from the future.

Nope. Ablative armor already exists and was in use on every space-shuttle... the heat-shield. Ablative armor is nothing more than disposable heat-resistant material that has to be replaced after use

posted on August 24th, 2011, 11:46 pm

posted on August 25th, 2011, 3:23 am

Nope. Ablative armor already exists and was in use on every space-shuttle... the heat-shield. Ablative armor is nothing more than disposable heat-resistant material that has to be replaced after use

This^

Or to bring in Wikipedia....
Ablative armor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ablation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Simply put it's designed to be burnt off, and generaly does not last as long in day to day wear, but for what it is designed for, it holds much more effectivley.

IRL ablative armor is designed to work regardless of if it (the armor) is damaged in the process as long as what it's protecting is protected, the older pre-shuttle command pods in the early space program basically had a big ceramic plate that would take some damage, but not transfer the heat too much, the space shuttle uses a more advanced tile that not only doesn't transfer the heat much but survives use much longer.

Now trek ablatave armor I'd imagine is basically designed to do that and then some, as it is in essence the exterior hull plating of the vessel, so I'd imagine that the way trek ablatave armor works is that it dissipates the energy from the area that was struck to nearby plates, and past that I'd imagine that it would work like IRL ablatives by basically being designed to fall apart when shot, but do so in a controlled fashion, so I imagine that they'd have built into the armor materials designed to gas out and somewhat dissipate the energy attack. Against torpedo attacks I imagine that they would be designed to transfer as much as the kinetic energy thru the design structure (IE: a big area buckles a tad rather than a single section getting a hole poked in it), however aside from the improved heat transference of the armor, I dont see it offering THAT much extra protection against most torpedo based weapons, aside from causing the torpedo to detonate early, as you'd rather it detonate outside (where the armor can do something against it) than inside where it does extra damage. Past that I imagine an interior detonation of a torpedo doing extra damage on an ablative armor equiped vessel DUE to the armor, as it'd serve to keep the blast effect inside the vessel.