How dangerous is a missed starship phaser shot?

WARNING! This is about to get downright nerdy.

During a recent Star Trek debate a horrifying thought came over me; do missed phaser shots from starships travel through space until they hit something? i.e. say the Enterprise gets in a firefight with a Romulan Bird of Prey and they firing wildly at each other while sailing around in space, many phaser shots miss and seemingly soar out into space... forever. How dangerous are those missed shots?

Obviously I'm not a physicist, and I do know lightwaves dissipate the farther they travel, but in a close, hornet's nest shootout missed phaser canon shots can quickly turn into friendly fire. Also, many of these shootouts occur in the vacuum of space, not inside a planet's atmosphere.


For recent illustration of this quandary, look no further than the Star Wars: Episode VII teaser trailer above. Around the one minute mark the millennium falcon is being shot haphazardly by two tie fighters. None of the tie fighter shots are landing, and based on their trajectory (up and seemingly headed for space), those wayward shots could hit an unsuspecting spaceship, a nearby moon or planet, possibly even sail into another solar system. That seems disastrous!

All too often Star Trek shootouts end up damaging starship defense systems and inevitably a tactical officer will announce "targeting systems are down." If this occurs in a huge engagement that is a horrific proposition. Who knows what that ships phasers will connect with? Foe, friend or innocent bystander. In a giant battle, say Ep 6 Battle of Endor or DS9's Dominion War (shown below, skip to 2:30ish) there must be hundreds –if not thousands– of missed phaser shots, and potentially just as many photon misses (which are much more deadly).



Of course this is all science fiction and totally pointless fictional conjecture, but the thought applies to Earthbound battles both fiction and non-fiction alike. Beyond the immediate carnage and life-loss, the collateral damage both seen and unseen is awful. Having just seen American Sniper (for my film podcast, Filmcast Without A Cause) this thought was reignited when one shot showed an insurgent RPG miss a U.S. tank only to blow up half a civilian building. That is an abhorrent prospect! Now who knows if that actually happened in that particular real-life scenario adapted for film, but it has most certainly happened in other situations that will never be part of a major motion picture.

At least in ground combat the threatened areas are relatively close-by and known to be war-zones. But if the Enterprise or any other starship misses on a single phaser or photon fire... they could be unknowingly eviscerating an unsuspecting civilization billions of miles away right? That's frightening. If there is one thing I laud American Sniper for its showing the tole war takes on those who wage it. I have to imagine if Captain Kirk, Picard, Janeway or others (commanders of peaceful starships) find themselves in fire fights and only to miss on several shots, those strays must haunt them.

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