A T-65 X-Wing (Star Wars) could defeat the USS Enterprise NCC 1701-D (Star Trek)

There are several different species of reasons I'll use to argue that Pro won't prove the tactical superiority of the T-65 over a Constitution class heavy cruiser such as the USS Enterprise. As is often the case, the most compelling arguments are the least entertaining and may to some extent despoil the levity with which Pro has no doubt submitted his resolutions. Therefore, I shall drop these unhappy bores first at the doorstep in the expectation that they shall secure Con's victory and need not further hinder our geekfest. I. Star Wars and Star Trek are both works of Science Fiction.A. The physical properties of either the X-wing or the NCC-1701 are both ill-defined and mostly at the mercy of the storyteller's necessity. As both franchises have been elaborated upon for decades by generations of storytellers, contradictions and uncertainties develop for which there can be no satisfactory real-world testing. If we wished to contrast the relative qualities of the English longbow vs. the Mongol Composite bow, for example, we could research historical and archaeological findings, construct authentic replicas and measure those qualities in the physical world. Star Wars vs. Star Trek offers no such avenue for resolution.B. We can be reasonably confident, however, that were any such conflict written into the canon of either franchise the Enterprise would necessarily be the victor. Why is that? Fan politics, if nothing else. Consider that X-wings only describe a make of mass-produced star fighter with multiple models. Any given X-wing need not be piloted by any character from the franchise and the loss of a single X-wing in some intergalactic battle would not necessarily impact the fortunes of any beloved protagonist. The Enterprise, on the hand, is a specific ship populated by a large number of popular characters. The history of that ship and her crew is well-documented in fiction, detailing her commission from her construction at the San Francisco shipyards to her destruction over the Planet Genesis 40 years later. Sure, one might imagine greedy executives from Paramount and Disney conspiring to construct such a cross-over battle, but even greedy executives would know better than to kill the gold-laying goose by inserting some bewildering tale of alternative destruction for the Enterprise and her crew. No fan base, no matter how loyal or rabid, would long endure such corporate meddling. Logically then, the X-wing would be the only possible loser in any fictional conflict between these two spacecraft. II. Star Wars and Star Trek are too distant in space-timeA. Only slightly less compelling and therefore marginally less dull is the idea that if both spaceships were not fiction, then they would be too far separated by space-time to ever believably find reason to fight one another. 1. The Enterprise's location in space-time is pretty well documented: Milky Way Galaxy: 2245-85 AD [1]2. We have far less information about the T-65's location. We mostly only know that those stories take place in the rather relative "long time ago in a galaxy far, far away." We do know that the Galaxy is a spiral galaxy with multiple, small, satellite galaxies. The closest spiral galaxy, Andromeda, fits that description and is very close to the Milky Way on a universal scale- only 2.4 million light years from us. [2] Although Andromeda is really too close to qualify as "a galaxy far, far away" we might use it to get a sense of the distance such a battle would need to breach.B. We'll take a deeper look into spaceship speeds later, but just for purposes of proving this point let's get a decent estimate of hyperspeed vs. warp speed.1. Star Trek data is again more consistent but nevertheless contains a number of contradictions between shows and even between episodes of the same show. If we go by the writer's guide for The Original Series, where warp factors are expressions of multiples of of c with a cubic function, then v = w3c (velocity equals warp factor cubed multiplied by the speed of light). Or we can go by the more elaborate Okuda scale which makes Warp 10 an unachievable infinite. [3]On the Original Series scale, the time it would take the Enterprise to travel to Andromeda at Warp 6 (216c, standard cruising speed) would be roughly 11,100 years. The Okuda scale cuts that time in half to 5,096 years. Either way, they'd be boldly going where no one has gone before for far longer than the lives of any protagonists (violating I.B. above).2. Hyperspeed, on the other hand, is notoriously difficult to define. None of the stories seem interested in maintaining a consistent scale. Some ships travel between the outer rim of the galaxy and the inner core in less than a day, implying speeds up to 100,000 times the speed of light, while comic books define journeys between relatively nearby planets of the inner core as sometimes taking weeks. After much pondering, I've decided to use one scale that employs more reasoning than most and offers ranges of speed so volatile that at least the illusion of science is maintained. [4] This site estimates that a spaceship with a hyperdrive rating of 1.0 (such as the T-65) travels at roughly 8,300c which reduces the travel time between Andromeda and the Milky way to a paltry 289 years. Unfortunately for the X-wing pilot, his ship can only sustain life support for up to 5 days. [5]C. We can see by using even the most liberal estimates from either multiverse that any conflict between these two forces would require that some reason for conflict be ignited across centuries if not millennia of vacuum, necessitating that the will to battle be sustained from one generation of fighters to the next or else that the original combatants be preserved for centuries. Neither ship seems to be particularly well equipped for cryostasis although the Enterprise is obviously familiar with the technology and ought to be able to construct some kind of sustainable system given time and materials. Imagining how a some plausible causus belli might arise between cultures so spectacularly separated by time and space must strip any remaining credibility from the notion of combat. III. Other Hyperdrive vs. Warp Drive ConsiderationsA. In fact, the extreme strategic limitations of hyperdrive when compared to warp drive ought to advise any Admiral of even Ackbar's achievement to advocate for a more diplomatic solution.Hyperdrive is much faster than warp, but is inferior in combat to warp, which allows ships to travel in proximity to stars, planets, and even inside nebulae and wormholes. Ships with hyperdrive must always pause to calculate the straightest path that precludes the gravity wells of celestial objects as small as asteroids. The gravitational threat to ships in the Star Wars multiverse was so substantial in fact, that after one million years of space flight, travel was still overwhelmingly clustered around a few well-worn spacelanes and accurate astrogation maps were valuable commodities. [6] Whole galactic regions such as the western quarter and the inner core were considered too gravitationally dense to transit. B. T-65s were unable to initiate hyperdrive inside any gravitational pull. In any region of space likely to be inhabited or support resources worth protecting a hyperdrive has no superluminal options while a warp drive is fully operational.C. Ships in hyperdrive have no ability to sense or influence regular space, while a Constitution class ship can manoeuvre and fire faster-than-light weapons, all the while sensing and targeting FTL targets. We'll start looking at armaments, armor, speed, sensors, and tactics in Round 3.[1] http://en.memory-alpha.org...(NCC-1701)[2] http://en.wikipedia.org...[3] http://en.wikipedia.org...[4] http://www.st-v-sw.net...=[5] http://starwars.wikia.com...[6] http://starwars.wikia.com...