Photonic torpedo

Photonic torpedoes in storage

Photonic torpedoes are missile weapons used on Earth starships in the 22nd century. They are essentially low-performance photon torpedoes. Like their descendants, they have variable explosive yield. According to Malcolm Reed, a maximum-yield photonic torpedo can "put a 3-kilometer crater into an asteroid," suggesting a high yield of between 1.3 megatons (mostly water ice), 5 megatons (granite composition), or 127 megatons (nickle-iron composition). The mean average of these estimates is 44.4 megatons.