Galaxy Gun and Death Star - NDF

[Adam Reynolds]

Did anyone ever use this argument during the height of the debate? Given that the Galaxy Gun was canonically stated to use a chain reaction to destroy planets that the Death Star was doing the same thing. Obviously they are completely different principles but I could see a Trekkie using this idea.

[Jedipilot24]

Did anyone ever use this argument during the height of the debate? Given that the Galaxy Gun was canonically stated to use a chain reaction to destroy planets that the Death Star was doing the same thing. Obviously they are completely different principles but I could see a Trekkie using this idea.

How? Star Trek is all about technobabble; Star Wars isn't. Star Wars doesn't bother trying to explain how the technology because that's not the point of the story; it also gives the universe a much more 'lived in' feeling. Just think about that for a moment. Do you think about how the internal combustion engine works every time you turn on your car? Probably not. How many people actually know all the intricate details of how laptop computers work? Not very many, at least when compared to the total population of the world. Most people don't care how technology works as long as it does; and when it stops working, they take go find someone who does care and even then they don't want to know how its broken, they want to know if it can be fixed and how much that's going to cost.

Should we know more about how our technology works? Probably. Is that ever going to actually happen? Probably not, especially as it gets more and more complex.

But anyway the Galaxy Gun is mentioned as creating a 'Nuclear Chain Reaction' which doesn't necessarily mean that it works like a nuclear bomb; in fact, based on the description from the Wook, the warhead probably has something to with the strong and/or weak nuclear forces. However I know almost nothing about this area of science except for what I remember from the Science Channel and what I skimmed on Wikipedia five minutes ago.
But of the Star Wars fans who accept the EU, even most of them (at least in my experience) would be just as happy to slap an Infinities logo on Dark Empire. It's almost as bad as the Glove of Darth Vader, at least IMHO.
Someone feel free to correct me if I am wrong.

[Lord Revan]

here's a question is the mechanism of the Galaxy Gun common enough knowlage that the trekkies deperatly looking for ways to depower the empire (or any non-trek power for that matter) would know about it, they would consider it blashemy to actually read anything else then trek.

as for the non-fanatic trek debaters well, I'd think they'd first try to prove that DS and GG work on the same princibles.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

For planetary-level destruction, the Galaxy Gun has more in common with Species 8472's planet-busting ability or that of the Xindi Superweapon, than it does with the DS. Interestingly according to Wookiee, Death Star Designer had the option of adding Galaxy Guns to a DS.

[Connor MacLeod]

Here's a good question to ask yourself: WHY is 'chain reaction' weaponry (as an explanaton for the Death Star, Galaxy Gun, phasers, or whatever.) an inherently bad idea?

hint: It isn't the way it happens so much as the outcome/effects that matter.

[Ralin]

Here's a good question to ask yourself: WHY is 'chain reaction' weaponry (as an explanaton for the Death Star, Galaxy Gun, phasers, or whatever.) an inherently bad idea?

hint: It isn't the way it happens so much as the outcome/effects that matter.

I think that "The Empire has this super-huge battlestation that can blow a planet apart cold with one shot of its mighty superlaser" is somewhat scarier and a starker image than "The Empire has this super-huge battlestation that's 'superlaser' can set off a chain reaction that makes a planet blow up."

But no, nothing wrong with the idea. Somewhat less good in my subjective opinion, but same result.

[Stark]

The only reason anyone ever cared about chain reactions was because such a thing appeared to explain why phasers were so amazingly inconsistent in FX and might have given hints as to the cause. Trying to define a weapon as 'chain reaction' is now just a way of saying 'chain reaction THAT TOTALLY WON'T WORK LOL BECAUSE NEUTRONIUM XENO SHIELDS' because this context is lost and people just remember chain reaction = bad.

[Connor MacLeod]

I think that "The Empire has this super-huge battlestation that can blow a planet apart cold with one shot of its mighty superlaser" is somewhat scarier and a starker image than "The Empire has this super-huge battlestation that's 'superlaser' can set off a chain reaction that makes a planet blow up."


But no, nothing wrong with the idea. Somewhat less good in my subjective opinion, but same result.

I don't see much difference. You need some sort of magical chain reaction to generate the energy that blows up the planet, the only difference being argued over is whether it happens inside the ship, or inside the planet.

What's more, if the magical chain reaction inside the planet can STILL blow it up brute force, there is quite an easy way to weaponzie that into some sort of bomb or warhead, obviously, so aside from one detail it doesn't really change much about the outcome, does it?

That's sort of the problem here. People hear 'NDF' and then they assume for some reason that enegy and physics and shit stop applying, rather than that things are simply more complex/exotic than in a more conventional weapon.

Hell, its even silly to assume phasers are ZERO ENERGY, because we know that they impart a physical knockdown (sometimes) to people hit, generate thermal effects (heat rocks, cause burns, ignite flammables, etc.) So its clear there is SOME energetic effects associated with phasers, its just not an effect that is quite as visibly 'brute force' as with the Death Star.

For example if one adopted Mike's NDF theory as the explanation of how phasers worked, the knockdown effect means that you have to eject enough neutrinos as a high velocity to push the guy backwards. Which is going to require those neutrinos to have CONSIDERABLE KE. It can be massively energetic, its just not in a form that interacts readily with the enviroment (and thats what distinguishes the phaser from other weapons really.)

[Jedipilot24]

In the 'Death Star' novel, 1 shot at 1/3rd power is enough to render Despayre uninhabitable (think Mustafar only worse). One of the characters in this novel is the gunner for the superlaser (he's the guy who pulls the lever and says 'standby')
The weapon was described as very difficult to calibrate, even the tiniest mistake during the firing sequence would destroy the station. What this tells me that whatever the weapon does and how it does it, it's probably a brute-force method. In fact it's even mentioned that the reason for the explosion ring was because the superlaser beam was actually more powerful than was necessary.

Here's the quote: Spoiler

It took no more than an instant. Tenn knew that the beam's total destructive power was much bigger than matter-energy conversions limited to realspace. At full charge, the hyper-matter reactor provided a superluminal "boost" that caused much of the planet's mass to be shifted immediately into hyperspace. As a result, Alderaan exploded into a fiery ball of eye-smiting light almost instantaneously, and a planar ring of energy reflux-the "shadow" of a hyperspatial ripple-spread rapidly outward.

[Batman]

What, exactly, does 'most' of the mass mean? Because there seemed to be an awful lot of Alderaan still there in ANH (granted, it was a little more spread out, but it was still in realspace, and was apparently still there by the time of the X-Wing novels).
And I don't see how the tiniest mistake destroying the station says anything about whether it was brute force or chain reaction.

[jwl]

It says "much", which to me implies less than most, more like 40% or something.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

As far as I'm aware, shifting even a portion of the planet's mass into hyperspace is simply going to increase the energy requirements even further. As for the debris of Alderaan, seemed the remaining pieces were incredibly small, does anyone have figures for the sizes of the remaining rocks?

[Jedipilot24]

As far as I'm aware, shifting even a portion of the planet's mass into hyperspace is simply going to increase the energy requirements even further. As for the debris of Alderaan, seemed the remaining pieces were incredibly small, does anyone have figures for the sizes of the remaining rocks?

There were some large enough and numerous enough to destroy a Victory-class Star Destroyer that had lost its bridge.

What, exactly, does 'most' of the mass mean? Because there seemed to be an awful lot of Alderaan still there in ANH (granted, it was a little more spread out, but it was still in realspace, and was apparently still there by the time of the X-Wing novels).
And I don't see how the tiniest mistake destroying the station says anything about whether it was brute force or chain reaction.

One of the many problems that the Death Star gunnery crew faced was the risk of a feedback explosion if they screwed something up. I admit I'm no engineer but it seems to me that if there's a serious risk of a catastrophic explosion that is far more than the safety systems can handle, then they've either got inadequate safety systems or they're using a lot more energy than is necessary. I suppose a case could be made for either but given that so much of Alderaan's mass described as 'shifted into hyperspace' the latter explanation seems more plausible.

[Metahive]

Leave it to the EU to pile on the stupid. So, the Death Star isn't just working like an extremely powerful shotgun, it actually shunts whatever it fires at into another dimension? So, why not make the same excuse for ST phasers to explain why we never see the effects molecular deconstruction and the resulting release of energy should have? They're soooo powerful, they throw people affected right down the rabbit hole into Wonderland!
And yes, I know that some boobs used that dimension shifting shit as explanation for why the Endor Holocaust didn't happen.

[chitoryu12]

As far as I'm aware, shifting even a portion of the planet's mass into hyperspace is simply going to increase the energy requirements even further. As for the debris of Alderaan, seemed the remaining pieces were incredibly small, does anyone have figures for the sizes of the remaining rocks?

What we saw in Episode IV was small enough that a freighter could simply fly through it with what equates to bad turbulence in a modern airliner. This image shows the size of some of the rocks relative to some ships, with one of the explosions visible on the frigate (established as 250 meters long) being probably about the size of a car. The perspective makes it difficult to actually eyeball the sizes, though.

Anyways, I think the reason some people harp on about how the Death Star "must have" used a chain reaction is because they really don't want to admit that the Empire HAS the ability to brute force it. Handwaving it away as some kind of trick lets them justify calling it a weakness, since they assume that there must be "some way to beat it" if it's not as simple as shoving enough energy into a planet to cause it to blow apart. If you have powerful enough tech to simply shoot that unfathomable amount of energy (which can't be handwaved away like a vague chain reaction, since you can't simply make energy go away) and build multiple space-going vessels capable of holding that level of power, you're talking an almost obscene power gap that they can't overcome. A trick that somehow uses a minuscule amount of energy to cause a planet to explode itself can be technobabbled away, but "A really honking huge energy weapon that pumps enough energy into a planet to blow it to bits like a hand grenade" means that there's energy that has to be deflected, absorbed, or dodged. It can't be avoided.

[Connor MacLeod]

Leave it to the EU to pile on the stupid. So, the Death Star isn't just working like an extremely powerful shotgun, it actually shunts whatever it fires at into another dimension? So, why not make the same excuse for ST phasers to explain why we never see the effects molecular deconstruction and the resulting release of energy should have? They're soooo powerful, they throw people affected right down the rabbit hole into Wonderland!
And yes, I know that some boobs used that dimension shifting shit as explanation for why the Endor Holocaust didn't happen.

Dude, the problems with the Death Star were going to have to be handwaved pretty heavily regardless, so complaining that someone didn't do it the way you liked is pretty absurd. I mean the way they did it is no less energetic (moreso quite likely, becuase Hyperspace translations are not zero energy, and if it involves a relativistic run up like some sources hint, thats even more energetic than Mike's calcs.) but it also doesn't suffer from the massive problems of recoil that a brute force approach does (or some of the odder aspects of the planet's destruction. A hypervelocity/relativistic shockwave should, I believe, pretty much vaporize the whole thing.)


And what Death STar describes is nothing like the 'dump into hyperspace' excuse used to explain why the Endor Holocaust didn't happen. (Although you have to explain it SOME way, as the novelization at least provides some strong proof that it didn't happen. Nevermind that noone was fried when the debris should have impacted mere minutes after its destruction.)

[Metahive]

Actually I'm against these heavy-handed attempts to "rationalize" (as in "make scientifically plausible") 70's/80's movies' special effects as a whole. That's why I'm not all that fond of Vs. Debates that boil down to beancounting and schoolyard style "My big brother can beat your big brother". In a scenario that pits fictional universes against each other I'd rather have an epic clash than a boring one-sided curb-stomp.

[Connor MacLeod]

How is 'analyzing fictional special effects' different from any other sort of arbitrary analysis, whether its thematic, literary, or what the fuck ever? You seem to think that it only ever happens PURELY in context of vs debating, or something? There are shit-tons of people who do the silly analysis thing without ever setting foot into a vs debate ever (although they may get dragged in regardless because people find their numbers convenient excuses to bolster their own side of the argument.)

[Metahive]

How is 'analyzing fictional special effects' different from any other sort of arbitrary analysis, whether its thematic, literary, or what the fuck ever?

Did I say I'm a big fan of literary analysis either? Both are annoyingly arbitrary (don't even get me started on all the garbage that people read into Shakespeare), but the former I consider especially futile since, well, how for example would you explain away a change in special effects caused by a movie of the same series being done twenty years later with much improved FX tech while using the watsonian approach so appreciated on this website? I'm sorry, but I'd rather go full Doylist and instead consider sci-fantasy tech to be purely based on narrative needs instead of some sort of objective standard.

[Connor MacLeod]

Fine, you get annoyed by any attempt at 'analyzing' stuff. Good for you. Doesn't bother the rest of us one bit, and it doesn't even have to involve silly vs debate shit either.

[Adam Reynolds]

Regarding the Endor Holocaust, one idea that has been suggested is that of a repulsorlift cradle that pushed away the debris. This fits with the Death Star's orbit as well. The only issue was to be sure that the Rebel's didn't blow up that installation.

There is a thread on it here: http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=125043
Connor was actually a participant in that thread as well.

[Metahive]

Fine, you get annoyed by any attempt at 'analyzing' stuff. Good for you. Doesn't bother the rest of us one bit, and it doesn't even have to involve silly vs debate shit either.

Yeah and more power to you for that. Doesn't mean I have to accept the often rather silly and forced explanations these analysis bear out from time to time.

[Omeganian]

Here's a good question to ask yourself: WHY is 'chain reaction' weaponry (as an explanaton for the Death Star, Galaxy Gun, phasers, or whatever.) an inherently bad idea?

hint: It isn't the way it happens so much as the outcome/effects that matter.

The difference might be in the amount of energy required to block the effect. Besides, most people's idea of a chain reaction is a nuke, where if you throw in a wrench at any of half a dozen stages, you'll get a weaker bang or even a fizzle. Of course, aside from blocking the beam itself with shields, there is no indication any ST civilization is capable of doing that with NDF effects.