A ton or metric ton is a unit of mass. One metric ton is equal to 1,000 kilograms, whereas one ton (or short ton) is equal to 2,000 pounds.
- Several of the below references are unclear whether they refer to the "U.S. ton" or the "S.I. metric ton."
Comparative references
Units of mass
- A Rectyne monopod can weigh as much as 2 tons. (TNG: "The Icarus Factor")
- A single humpback whale has a mass of "about 40 tons." (Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home)
- The Ares IV had a mass of 92 metric tons. (VOY: "One Small Step")
- Balok's cube had a mass of "about 2,000 metric tons." (TOS: "The Corbomite Maneuver")
- The Balok's pilot vessel had a "mass, a little under 11,000 metric tons." (TOS: "The Corbomite Maneuver")
- An Intrepid-class starship has a mass of 700,000 metric tons. (VOY: "Phage", "Relativity")
- A Constitution-class starship has a mass of almost 1 million tons. (TOS: "Mudd's Women")
- A Borg scoutship had a mass of 2.5 million metric tons. (TNG: "I, Borg")
- Penk's starship had a mass of 5 million metric tons. (VOY: "Tsunkatse")
Units of volume
- A humpback whale consumes "2 tons of shrimp per day." (Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home)
- In 2268, Deep Space K-7 had 2 tons of quadrotriticale in its silos, on hold for Sherman's Planet. (TOS: "The Trouble with Tribbles")
- The captain's yacht of the Enterprise-E carried 7 tons of ultritium explosives in 2375 (Star Trek: Insurrection).
- The cave-in caused in the caverns by the Son'a on the Ba'ku planet had almost 4 metric tons of rock blocking the entryway. (Star Trek: Insurrection)
- Prior to its destruction, the Bok'Nor delivered 14 metric tons of golside ore to the Regulon system. (DS9: "The Maquis, Part I")
- Fort Knox stored over 50 metric tons of gold prior to the 22nd century. (VOY: "Dark Frontier")
- Vosk demanded 86 tons of aluminum plating and 170 tons of carbon steel from his Nazi allies. (ENT: "Storm Front")
- The Vidiian asteroid discovered by Voyager contained "anywhere from 500 to 1,000 metric tons of dilithium. (VOY: "Phage")
- In 2373, Voyager discovered a gallicite vein with "a yield of nearly a kiloton; enough to completely refit the ship's warp coils." (VOY: "Blood Fever")
- Two Bolian freighters carried several thousand tons of selenium and rhodium nitrite when they disappeared near the Badlands in 2373. (DS9: "For the Uniform")
- The Ferengi market price of 2,000 tons of Kohlanese barley was 182 bars of gold-pressed latinum in 2371. (DS9: "Prophet Motive")
- The USS Equinox had a 2 kiloton supply of kemacite ore. (VOY: "Equinox")
- The Xepolite freighter commanded by Drofo Awa claimed to have 5 kilotons of Regrean wheat husks in his cargo hold. (DS9: "The Maquis, Part II")
- Voyager retrieved 8 kilotons of debris from the Borg probe, mostly fragments of its hull. (VOY: "Dark Frontier")
- The Quarren facility was capable of producing 8,000 metric tons of tylium per second at 94% thermal efficiency. (VOY: "Workforce")
- A Y class freighter can haul at least 20 kilotons. (ENT: "Fortunate Son")
- Terok Nor processed about 20,000 tons of uridium each day. (DS9: "Civil Defense")
Explosive equivalents
A metric ton is also a unit of energy. In this way, one metric ton is equal to the energy released by an explosion of 1 metric ton of TNT, or 4.184 gigajoules.
- "A fusion explosion of 97.835 megatons will result if a starship impulse engine is overloaded." (TOS: "The Doomsday Machine")