Target practice (2008-07-22)

[Venator]

Ruinus is right, I remember the bit about the Lucrehulks being blasted - it's from the book titled The Death Star.

AD - a lot of the older EU fluff states that the DS1 couldn't target capships, but going by game mechanics isn't generally the best way to tell .

[atg]

As mentioned the DS1 does indeed have the capability to target capital ships. The Death Star novel p239-241 has the Death Star engaging a rebel Lucrehulk carrier. Range was stated to be 2209km from the Death Star with 4% charge on the superlaser. Following the shot at the lucrehulk the "Targeting Technician" at superlaser control stated "It-its gone, Chief. Nothing left".

[Venator]

As mentioned the DS1 does indeed have the capability to target capital ships. The Death Star novel p239-241 has the Death Star engaging a rebel Lucrehulk carrier. Range was stated to be 2209km from the Death Star with 4% charge on the superlaser. Following the shot at the lucrehulk the "Targeting Technician" at superlaser control stated "It-its gone, Chief. Nothing left".

Just out of boredom, and so people can tell me if I'm "doing it wrong"...

4% (0.04)*1e38 J = 4e36 J

4e36 J/4.2e6 J/kg = ~9.5e29 kg

9.5e29 kg/1000 = 9.5e26 tonnes

9.5e26 tonnes/1e10 = 9.5e16 gigatons to one-hit the Lucrehulk (probably with some overkill factor).

The last calculation is where I get hazy... could someone tell me if that's correct?

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

A simpler calculation would be to convert directly from Joules to Gigatons, with the conversion factor being 4.184*10^18:1.

4*10^36/4.184*10^18 = 10^18Gt (9.560*10^17 if you want to ignore 4significant figures)

[Venator]

Good point, I'm just used to the "show all steps" drill - just got out of first-year physics.

[Wyrm]

Guess who's back:

Why, with all those badass nuclear weapons we have, we should just
dispense with regular conventional armed forces entirely, and use only our
nukes because, obviously, if we have to develop nukes, then our regular
forces are useless. Oh wait... We don't, and you're an idiot.

Not every earthly millitary problem requires the use of nukes. Similarly,
not every galactic millitary problem will require the Death Star. You
always want something a little less ham-handed.

Another exampble of blockheadedness. your arguing about some thing when you
agree with me. Coundn't you understand I was saying we had been overly
dependent on nuclear forces? It makes you sound like an idiot when you do
that.

The movies aren't the whole SW universe. There's also the EU.

What was demoralizing about the Death Star was _not only_ that all those
people died, but *also* because they were snuffed out so quickly and
easily. The Death Star swooped in and blasted Alderaan to smithereens in
less than an hour. With a strong set of planetary shields, like those that
protected Alderaan, a planet could expect to hold off a fleet of SDs for
_months_. As TC Pilot (an SDN guy) noted, " Admiral Ackbar, in _Wedge's
Gamble_ was resigned to a months-long siege of the capital, as well."

Never read the book. If by capital you mean the Empire/Republic capital, you
would want to take it with minimal damage.

Now think about it: With a strong set of shields around your planet, you
can expect your peers on other worlds to protest the unjustified Imperial
bombardment of your planet (unless you've done something horrid and become
a galactic pariah). The Empire is discouraged from from blockading and
wiping you out wholesale unless it can paint your world as some sort of
galactic villian. If nothing else, it gives you a chance to negotiate a
surrender if worse comes to worst. Now along comes the Death Star. No
months' long seige, just... poof! You're dead. Now your protective shield
is naught but a security blanket. That's scary!

If you did have inpenitrable planetary shields the strategic logic of you
position would be valied. However the situation before ANH was not as you
discribe it. Their was strategic mobility. In the Clone Wars many importent
planets chaged hands in a short period of time.

Just like in the 50's, after Russia got the bomb and flew Sputnik, the US
as a whole realized it was very, very naked. That was some scary shit back
then.

What books were you reading?

Admittedly not many.

ANH novelization p.129-130: "The defense systems on Alderaan, despite the
Senator's protestations to the contrary, were as strong as any in the
Empire. I should think that our demonstration was as impressive as it was
thorough."

Who is making this statment, to who?

Planetary defense systems does not nessasarlly mean planetary shields.
Defenses could mean local shields on the scale of TESB, covering cities, and
major bases. Planetary defense batteries, again like Hoth.Fighter Squdrons,
orbital platforms, electronic jamming, both offensive and defensive, mine
fields. A local defense fleet. It could be almost any thing.

The FX frames were remastered, but the effect shown conforms to no
physical phenomenon currently known. There's still a spreading of energy
around Alderaan for a brief moment, coupled with a haze effect that is too
high to be an atmosphere for a planet inhabited by anything approaching
human.

You statement is not scientific, or objective, it's leaping to a conclusion.
You have no way of knowing what such an event would look like, thank god.
May be the ionishere was supercharged by the beam. Most likely the FX guys
just thought the planet would glow before it blow up.

The convergence of evidence points towards Alderaan having a shield.

Objection your honor. The witness is drawing conclussions not supported by
facts in evidence.

You mean _you've_ never seen or read about a long seige of a planet, but
even in the movies, there is implication that there exists strong
planetary shields. For instance, in the ROTJ, the mere fact that the
Rebels had to steal a shuttle and Imperial codes to lower the shields and
land in order for their gambit to work is clear evidence that there was a
planetary shield around Endor. Furthermore, in the novelization, it's
stated explicitly:

Not necessarily. the shield may just cover the area near the shield
generator. Pretty silly that the Empire had no one manning, or defending the
landing field, when a rebel strike team landed. When was the novelization
written? Was it after the fan looking frame by frame introduced the idea
into the SW mythos? In more then 30 years of talking to SW fans, yes even at
conventions, no one ever mentionioned planetary shields. It's never
mentioned in TV programs about SW Tech. It's never been mentioned in any
panel I was on discussing the science in science fiction. In every
discussion I ever had on this topic, the SW fans all ways conceded the
superiority of Trek tech, attacking it by calling it magic. They based their
position the Empire would win on it's militaristic mind set, numbers, and
the fact their ships are so much bigger.

ROTJ novelization p.071: At the center of the briefing room was a large,
circular light-table, projected above which a holographic image of the
unfinished Imperial Death Star hovered beside the Moon of Endor, whose
scintillating protective deflector shield encompassed them both.

That's what you call a Retcon, it's contradicted by what's shown on screen.
What's on screen is canon, because it's a movie. If it was a movie based on
a book the book would be canon.

Furthermore, the mere _existence_ of Torpedo Spheres (look it up on
Wookiepedia) points to planetary shields. The damn things were
purpose-built to take them out.

More stuff written after the retroactive introduction of planetary shields.

The first Death Star was ready to destroy Yavin IV about a day after it
had destroyed Alderaan. Therefore, the first Death Star needed at least
2.5462963x10^27 watts of power, minimum, to be able to destroy a single
planet each day. That's basic physics and basic math. Furthermore, it may
well have a higher power level.

Interesting calculation. I suggested in an earlier post that the DS might
have huge capacitors, and didn't nessacerly need to surge all the power
needed for the shot in one instant.

A fighter 6x10*20 watts, totally inconsistent with what we see, and generally absurd.

Cite the source you got that figure from, and show why is it inconsistent
with what we see.

In the reference to hypermatter they stated that 40,000 ton of hypermatter
produced 3.6x10*24 watts of power. They sited a P38 fighter using up to
6.2kg a second at full power. Dividing that you get about 6x10*20 watts. Are
you saying you think a SW fighter if it landed on earth today could power
the whole US power grid for years?

More then 100% energy conversion, just silly.

The "more than 100% energy conversion" is based on the premise that the
total energy availible in fuel to be limited by the mass-energy of the
fuel. True in this universe, proven to be false in the SW universe by the
mere existence of the Death Star and demonstration of its capabilities.

Are you caiming the same phyical laws in our universe don't aply in the SW
universe? In that case you could suggest any thing, such as you don't need
as much energy to blow up a planet. Lucas did't care how much power it took.
He just assumed it would take some thing really big to do it, like a huge
fusion powered DS. By your new lower out put figure fusion might work
because you came down 11 powers. Nice concession. Thank you.

The main reason for this, of course, was that WWII missles and bombs were
unguided. A bomb that misses doesn't do nearly as much damage as a bomb
that squares a direct hit. Also, WWII fighters had to score direct hits
on vulnerable parts of the ship to sink them. That requires getting
closer.

Actually a bomb near miss on a ship can do more damage then a hit.

Bullshit. By the laws of physics, a non-direct hit can _never_ do as much
damage as a direct hit can cause.

The laws of hydrodynamics say you can. Explosions send greater shockwaves
though water then they do though air.

Skip bombing sets off a bomb under water next to the ship, and an
underwater blast could blow the bottom out of a ship. Underwater damage
of ships is almost always worse. The most heavily armored battleship has
more to fear from torpedoes then bomb.

The analogy is obviously imperfect, idiot. There's no "below water" in
space. All other things being equal, a hit to the underside of a
spacegoing warship is just as deadly as a hit to the topside. This is why
I limited the discussion to bombs and missles, as they're the closest
analogues to what you'll find on a space fighter.

Again a smart guy being an idiot. read what I said jerk, I was talking about
ships in the water. I guess you just zoned out when you wrote that.

So you've identified one instance where a battleship can be superior to a
carrier. Concession accepted.

Some times you say things that have nothing to do with what were talking
about, or counter an argument I never made. What was the concession your
babbling about? I never made any evaluation about battleships vs carriers.
They each have advantages, and vulnerabilities, and they have very
different functions. So what the hell are you talking about?

In other words, fire, *boom*, rinse and repeat. Compared to
fighter-vs-fighter battles, they're boring. In WWII dogfights, you have
one man against another, maneuvering about to try to outsmart each other.
Capitol ships just impersonally pound away at each other until one sinks,
and have far less dramatic color. Fighter-vs-capitol ship battles are
similarly boring. Unless a fighter gets shot down, or scores a hit on a
vulnerable spot, it's trite.[/qoute]

That's because you imaging it like a video game. In a movie you would show
men in action, being killed and wounded, dealing with damage, and fighting
back. Modern effects would be great for the externals. Men I know who fought
in the Korean War told me about 16" rounds sounding like freight cars going
over head. At night they could see the shells glowing, in the air. Gun ships
turn night into day, allot more spectacular then the light specks from SDs.
I guess you slept though the battle scenes in "Tora, Tora, Tora", or "In
Harms Way". How about sailing ship actions, like "Master & commander", "Damm
the Defiant", or the "Hornblower" series.

And how does this answer my point that Lucas only borrowed the dogfighting
from WWII?

The fighter vs ship action is out of WWII. Calling Stupid Troopers Storm
Troopers, giving them, along with Vader German style helmets, before GIs got
their Fritz helmets. Anti fighter weapons mounted on "flak towers".

Please state your proof that the capitol ships' fire misses a lot. And
for that matter, define what you mean by misses a lot.

In a ANH most of the SDs shots at Lea's ship miss, we only see one solid
hit. Most of the shots at the MF miss.

Ah, another idiot who doesn't understand what "bracketting fire" is.

So they miss on purpose? What an idiot. Bracketing fire, or straddling in
naval terms is were you shoot over, then under, so you have them zeroed in
to get a hit on the third shot. You do that because of the inherent
inaccuracy of guns, your not trying to miss, your just correcting your fire.
With missiles and beam weapons you don't bracket, you go for one shot one
hit. You are conceding my point that turbo lasers are as inaccurate as the
WWII naval guns their modeled on. If they have to bracket it means their
slaving of the beam emitter and their targeting system is off, or the
targeting system sucks.

You mean the turbolasers that were designed around a "large scale
assault"? That is, _capitol ships_? That they hit any fighters at all,
which they were not designed to target, is a miracle.

They don't seem much better against bigger slower targets ether,
bracketing fire.

Except you don't know that. It could easily have been Lucas showing the
tipping point of the battle in a dramatic way. After grinding against each
other long and hard, the Rebels gained the upper hand in the battle by
taking the Executor, the Imperial flagship, out of commission. After
concentrating fire on the Executor, the Executor's shields weakened to the
point where one-man fighters could penetrate their shields. This was the
culmination of everyone's will and effort, and enabled the small
contribution of nameless A-wing pilot to tip the balance in the Rebels'
favor. The cooperation of the Ewoks' manpower and the Rebels' training
enabled them to gain access to the shield bunker and blow it up, enabling
the MF and Red Leader to fly into the Death Star and blow it up, the goal
of everyone involved.

You might be right, but your conclusion is trying to fit a premise. We have
no idea what damage the Cruisers did to the SSD, we only know what the
fighters did.

See? Where you see "the difference of the one" wankery, I see "the triumph
of the team." Yet it's the same film. What Lucas wanted to show doesn't
matter. What he did show does.

Yes we only see what the fighters did. You are surmising what the Cruisers
did.

You first said that because the only damage being caused was by fighters,
capitol ships are useless. This was based on the moronic assumption, if
you don't see it, it didn't happen. When I called you on that... IT'S THE
INCREDIBLE MOVING GOALPOSTS! That's dishonest fuckwittery, fella.

Your inferring what I didn't imply. I never said the Cruisers did no damage
to the SSD, I said we don't know what they did, because we never saw any of
their hits. I said we saw fighters deliver the fatal blows. I said if Lucas
wanted us to think the Cruisers did most of the damage he would have shown
it, and he didn't. You are the one trying to prove some thing not shown on
screen, the burden of proof is on you not me.

Bullshit. The Death Star survived being in close proximity to a 1e38 J
explosion without damage (Alderaan), no further than 300,000 km. That's at
least 2000 teratons per square kilometer. If it's not shielded, it has
very sturdy armor, which WOULD make an X-wing more powerful than any
Federation ship. And the Empire _does_ know how to shield a ship 160 km in
diameter, your protests notwithstanding. They can shield entire planets. A
mere 7 gigatons is not going to do squat.

Wrong on several counts. First you your self stated the explosion wouldn't =
the full energy release. Second most of the energy would have been absorbed
by the mass of the planet. Third the DS was more like 900,000 km away.
Alderaan was much smaller in the sky then the Earth is from the Moon, so it
must have been at least twice as far, as the moon is from the Earth. Finally
the DS has no shields, as clearly shown in ANH, and the fact the second one
needed a ground based shield. The fact it has none is more evidence
contradicting planetary shields.

The next 24 are directed against engine systems, knocking out
propulsion. The last 84 are directed in volley's of 12 blanketing the
whole surface of one hemisphere. The first volley would destroy almost
the whole surface of it, and blast about 1/2 mile into it. Each new
volley would blast deeper and deeper into the interior. After the torpedo
barrage, the DS would be an immobile wreak, suffering from massive
secondary explosions.

Given that the surface of the DS is designed to be smacked in the face
with at least 1.7 billion teratons, this is a little hard to swallow.

This silly statement was just dealt with. By this logic one DS could shoot
another and it would survive. Or that it would survive an impact with a
dinokiller asteroid. Silly

Sigh. Can we stop the wankery now? Photon torpedoes have never shown to
execute the 9000 g turns that proton torpedoes are able to demonstrate,
which seems to be necessary to trigger the precise hit that sets of the
chain reaction that destroys the Death Star.

Why do they have to pull 9,000 g turns? They would blow it to peaces
straight on. The Proton Torpedoes didn't need to either. The fighters in ANH
are only going down the trench at about 1km a second, about mach 3. The
missiles don't need to do loops. Mach 4 missiles pull less then 30 Gs doing
full loops. It would have made more sense to show the missiles doing pop ups
into the exhaust port. At any rate ships and missiles can't turn like that
in space any way, so to talk about g forces is pointless. In ROTJ they just
needed to destroy the plasma containment field

Precisely. Your entire previous argument on this matter was 'fighters
score the killing shots, therefore, capitol ships == teh weakness'. It's
right up there in your (quoted) section: You say, "The only specific
damage on the SSD is from fighters."

Your concession is gratefully accepted.

You have miss understood my argument, and are setting up strawmen. You do
that allot. I never said capital ships were weak. They fill a roll in a
combined arms task force. My point is that capital ships are vulnerable to
attack from light forces. Their own defenses are inadequate, and they need
fighter support. Just like real capital ships have to be screened by escort
ships, and aircraft.

My point is that the DS is an anomaly in the SW universe as far as power
requirements are concerned.

An _anomaly_?! A full third of the filmed saga revolves around the Death
Stars and their threat to galactic peace!

When we saw the DS2's reactor core, we saw plasma held in a magnetic
field. They blow out the field generator, and we see the plasma expand
out blowing out the DS in the process. Since your so good at math please
calculate the size of an explosion that releases 1x10*38j of energy?

An explosion continues forever until stopped by something, idiot.

I asked you to figure a megaton yield idiot. To say an explosion in space
continues forever is literally true, but tells us nothing about the range it
would cause damage at. Use that great brain to come up with some thing that
helps advance the debate.

The fact that the free energy of a system is limited by its mass-energy is
also very important. If it weren't true in general, the universe would be
a crazy place. Atom smashers wouldn't work either, and we use them to
probe the workings of the universe.

Obviously, in SW, the breaking of this limit is confined to black boxes,
so the universe appears otherwise normal. However, the existence of the
Death Stars demonstrates that the SW universe is NOT normal.

So you are saying the SW universe is based on sillyness? So you would rather
accept the violation of the mass-energy equation with all that implies to
the nature of the universe, then accept that the power requirements is a
plot anomaly? Or that you use you own idea that the power can be stored over
a days time, and so might be generated by fusion.

Of course it's nonsense. But its fun to speculate. Don't be jealous
because I have the intellectual chops to find speculation more fun than
chore, even when solving ordinary differential equations in
thermodynamics. I even learned under what conditions hydrogen turns
metallic.

Wow Tom I'm so impressed, you learned about the hydrogen matallic core of
Jupiter. Only the smartest people on earth know about that.

Note: I was talking about physical conditions under which hydrogen turned metallic, not where hydrogen is metallic. Dumbass.

Yes tom I can tell your smart, it's wisdom were arguing about. Some people know the value of every thing, but the worth of nothing.

I consider the ability to think through the implications of _any_
observation to be very worthwhile. Being able to understand why a Death
Star is impossible in our universe and what has to change to make it
possible is good, fun mental exercise. It's like cross-country biking for
your brain!

What your doing is more like sophistry, a form of intellectual dishonesty.

When I didn't fall into the trap and called you a liar, you point out the
truth that you were hoping I'd forget and then accuse me of calling you
names. Only you _are_ a liar. You lied by trying to misdirect me; by
trying to pretend that lasers had anything to do with turbolasers.

You talk like a paranoid delusional. If I wanted to be dishonest, I wouldn't
have mentioned SW laser don't act like laser, thus conceding the point, that
they may not be lasers. It's a sign I was trying to be objective. Your
reacting like a nut who's delusions are being attacked. You lash out at the
one attacking the delusion. "Your only trying to trick me". "I know you want
to kill me, I'll kill you first".

Nether of us is lying we are iterpating things differently. It's like arguing about politics. It reflects how you see the world.

Arguing about science is not anything remotely resembling arguing about
politics. Science has a gold standard: the real world. The real world is
not required to conform to your beliefs or wants. With Suspention of
Disbelief, the "real world" of your chosen sci-fi franchise is not
required to conform to your beliefs or wants either.

Tom were not talking about science, were contrasting works of fiction.

Except for this small little matter called the first law of
thermodyamics, also known as the conservation of energy. The energy you
absorb from the EM bands you block has to go *somewhere.* If you cannot
store 200 GT of energy in your shielding system, you cannot defend
against a laser weapon the same power as the light turbolasers on a Star
Destroyer. Either the remaining energy slips past your shields, or your
shielding system blows up in your face with the force of 200 GT.

Wrong. Shields could work like stealth does.

Shields work _nothing_ like the stealth of Star Trek, and only one aspect
of real stealth - that is, absorbing the energy of an emitted active
signal, which works by detecting the return signal.[/quote]
What are you talking about. Stealth is not a major element in ST. Real
stealth absorbs and scatters radio waves. Some does bounce back, so stealth
aircraft are detectable, but at much shorter ranges, or only at certain
angles. When ever Fed ships installed cloaking devices they plugged them
into the deflector system. Romulan Cloaks were described has "The selective
bending of light". Not absorbing light, if it absorbed light a cloaked ship
would be a black spot, but it's not, it's a distortion field. Obviously
sensor beams are effected the same way, or you would still be able to track
them. If cloaks work as part of a shield system they have to work in a
similar way. Phasing cloaks are a whole other mater. Both work by scattering
or bending energy, that explains the effect of beams spreading out, and
lighting up a shield. External effects were limited in TOS, but we saw many
planet based shields hit with phaser fire, and we saw the light up effect,
and the beams breaking up and some of it bouncing off. In "Tomorrow Is
Yesterday", and "Assignment Earth", the Enterprise used it's shields to
defeat 1960s early warning radar. Shields have been used many time to block
sensor probes, so they can perform some cloaking functions already. Cloaking
gives shields the ability to deflect a wider range of energies.

Some energy is absorbed, some deflected around the shield radiating back
into space. They call them deflector shields for a reason, deflecting
energy, and matter.

Rate of energy dispersion is limited, you know, again by thermodynamics
(second law, this time). Until you disperse that energy, you have to store
it somewhere. If you can't? Bye bye, shield system.

Unlike SW shields that can with stand "Any bombardment". Since hypermatter
is used on ships, and not on planets, ground based systems use a lesser
power system, like fusion. However ground based shields are stronger then
ship based shields. In TESB 6 SD, each more powerful then the ground based
generator, can't beat down the shield. What happened to the Second law of
thermodynamics? May be this is another physical law that doesn't apply in
the SWs Universe?

Vorlon, and Shadow ships have energy absorbing skins.

The physics of Vorlon and Shadow ships do not interest me.

To absorb, or not to absorb. That is the question.

ST shields are not called absorbers, they talk about them dispersing
energy.

As the "turbolaser" lesson shows, names can be deceptive.

To laze, or not to laze. That is the question.

Are you saying a light TL puts out a blast = to 200 GT of energy? You are
F ing nuts. One shot from a light Turbo laser would wipe out the whole UK?

_Any_ interesting spacefaring race should be able to easily cause
planetary destruction. Google "Kzinti lesson".

The Kzinti are part of the ST Universe. They were added in the 1970s
animated series, which is canon, and considered the 4th year, of the 5 year
mission. The ST Earth beat back the Kzinti, in the well named "Earth Kzinti
Wars".

Note: How do you like that? I ask him to look up "Kzinti lesson", and he throws a lecture about the ST Kzinti.

What a joke. What is that based on? did we ever see any thing like that from a SD?

Vaping 40m diameter asteroids in ESB. The task requires energy on the
order of 200 GT. I may be misremembering the exact figure, but the
required energy is definitely orders of magnitude more than the 400 GJ
that the Enterprise-D had trouble with in The Survivors (400 GW * less
than 1 s = no more than 400 GJ).

The figure is absurd. In a Voyager episode "Rise" a Photon Torpedo is
considered sufficient to vaporize an asteroid more then 200 meters wide and
390 meters long. It has been calculated that to do that to an to iron nickel
asteroid that you would need a 44 megaton blast, well with in the range of
a PT, up to 64 megatons. 200 GT to take out some thing a fraction of that
side shows the kind of megalomaniacal thinking on SW tech sites.

400 GJ won't melt a cube of iron 6 meters on a side. Absolutely pathetic.

These figures sound nuts, considering the electro processing I have seen in
aluminum plants. The way you talk they would need terawatts of power.

Go back to school, kid. Temperature isn't heat.

At my age it's nice to called a kid.

Any thing in that zone is vaporized.

Stop pretending to know anything about how an atomic bomb works, kid. The
zone where the detonation reaches millions of degrees C is in the small
uranium/plutonium core, and vaporizes it. The rest of the energy escapes
as gamma rays. That's what vaporizes the outer bomb casing, and it's
immediate surroundings.

Since we have never set off nukes in space all are experience, and terms are
based on atmospheric effects. We know that most of the energy would be in
the form of heat . When you mock some one for using the only terms we have
you sound like an asshole. What terms would you use? You would have to make
them up jerk. Do you think that zone is 5' across?

The surroundings of a proton torpedo detonation would be armor plating
with an unknown specific heat function, an unknown melting point and heat
of fusion, and an unknown vaporization point and heat of vaporization,
_and on top of that_ an unknown albedo in the gamma rays. In other words,
we don't know how much heat it takes to vaporize a cubic meter of Death
Star armor, or even how much energy it will absorb. (The Death Star might
be SHINY in the gamma ray spectrum!)

Fighter guns have no trouble blasting though it. A big rock has no trouble
smashing it. It seems the plasma in the reactor core needs a magnetic field
to contain it. If they could build a solid casing they would, for safety
reasons, so reactor plasma can melt it.

We saw how little damage the armor actually took, so this must be _tough

Took from what? Fighters had no trouble shooting it up. Get over it, it's
main defense is it's size.

Yes, that is 10 kilometers every second - in one twentieth of a second,
about one frame of film, the main body of the vapor cloud would be about
the size of a Star Destroyer! Assuming we started from a 1 metric ton
warhead (as we've seen, the Death Star itself makes up very little of the
cloud), that's a cloud that is 200 µg per cubic meter in density. Yes,
MICROGRAMS per cubic meter. Not very dense.

It took a lot longer for the DS to blow up in ROTJ, and that one was bigger.

So, yeah. We _should not_ see a fireball!


You don't know how much the armor would be heated. Heat transfer would be
dominated by radiation, which is an unknown value since we do not know the
albedo of the armor in the gamma ray spectrum. Flying through a sun's core
is a different feat altogether.

And what about the crew dying from the gamma rays. no shield remember

Mostly water.

What, you didn't know that? They spray water underneath the shuttle when
they launch. That's what absorbs the heat and keeps the underlying
concrete from damage. The big billowing white cloud that sprays out the
sides underneath the launchpad is steam. You really didn't think that was
all engine exhaust, did you?

Yes smart guy I know about the water. The Shuttle is putting out 4.5 million
pounds of trust. The old Saturn V put out 7.5 million. The structure has to
with stand that. If it was just a matter of heat ceramics could handle the
job. I thought what so impressed you was handling the blast effect, not the
heat since that would be more relevant in dealing with Han's blaster.

[qoute]did you see Han shooting the bounty hunter, in a ANH?

He was wearing armor of unknown composition, and therefore unknown heat
capacity, melting point and heat of fusion, vaporization point and heat of
vaporization.[/quote]
More delusions, he was wearing a shirt, and open vest.

And blasters have a setting knob. They can be tuned for the occasion.

We know the blasters of Stupid Troopers can be set to stun.

The blast went right though him, killed three other people in the bar,
went though the wall, passed though 5 more buildings, till it reached
open ground. It kept going until the curviture of the planet carried the
blast out into space narrowly miss some space ships. Oh wait that didn't
happen. Actually we can't gauge that, because both universes use anti
gravity devises to help them land and take off.

If the concrete walls are even _remotely_ like modern concrete, Han's
blaster *still* delivers two-ton bags of kick and ass.

The blast didn't even pass through his body.

In most fights we see Stupid Troopers standing in the open shooting with poor accuracy, and taking heavy losses.

You mean ANH, where the MF was equipped with a tracking device to lead the
DS to the Rebel base, meaning that it was essential that _the crew escape
alive_?

Their armor never protects from anything, blasters, or even sling shots.

You mean the same blasters that would get more and more powerful to
penetrate better and better protection? How do you know the troopers were
killed? Armor does its job if it prevents a fatal wound.

We never see them moving around wounded. They never call for medics, they
just drop dead.

And you mean the sling shots that wrapped around the soft-socked necks of
the stormtroopers, where there would be a weak point due to its design?

Face it their chumps, defeated by teddy bears. They would have a tough time
conquering Munchkinland. Hobbits are tougher then the Teddy Bears, and much
smarter. They better keep out of the Shire.

All it seems to do is make them impersonal, and limit their field of vision.

Stormtrooper HUDs are canon.

May be but they just don't use them well. Do you think they use them with
the effectiveness of "Mobile Infantry". It would be unfair to compare them
over all, the ST would have no chance, I'm only referring to their use of
HUDs.

We have only seen small "Away Team" shoot outs. Characters do hug the ground, unlike stupid troopers.

Were you even paying attention in the battle of Endor?

We have never seen a big ground battle in ST.

No wonder they're out of practice!

There just off camera. Millions of ground troops on each side died in the
Dominion War.

Cause they wanted to save on the squibs, not because of any need to tone
down of the badassness of the phaser. On the contrary, you want your
weapons to be as badass as possible.

It's a TV show. The writers say they did that.

It doesn't matter _why_ they depowered phasers, because they didn't want
to spring for squibs or because they wanted to make "clean kills." The
producers depowered the them. Sorry. Baddassery is messy. Accept it, and
move on.[/quote]

wrong, phasers still can do what they always did, there just used at lower
setting in most stories.

The Ewoks also had the advantage of surprise, terrain, millitary
engineering, air support, and guerilla tactics. Their tactics were not
stand-up slugfests between Ewok forces and Imperial troopers; they popped
out of nowhere, killed or severely injured a few troopers, and then faded
back into the forests.

Air support? You are funny. A Teddy Bear dropping rocks from a hang
glider. I thought that was one of the funniest scenes in the movie.

It's air support, no matter how primitively implemented. They grasp the
importance of the high ground.

Those swinging logs, wouldn't crush a bradly. See below.

Logs that big? Yes, they would.[/quote]

Very wrong. They can crash through brick walls. and have a house fall down
on them and keep going. A car can ram them and it won't take it out, they
need to be loaded with explosive to do that.

The rolling logs would have no effect on tracked vehicles, you can't trip them. You might damage a wheel on a Striker, but they have 8.

AT-STs aren't tracked.

You zoned out again, I was talking about a Bradley.

I'd like to see Chewie try to swing onto the top of a vehicle with a
machinegun on top. He might try to shoot the commander on top, and then
try to jump up, still a dangerous move.

A Bradley carries 6 riflemen, who would dismount in this type of
terrain.

An AT-ST is legged.

They still need infantry support.

Armor needs infantry support.

The AT-ST is a scout.

So is a Bradley. The M3 version is a Cavalry vehicle.

And your point is?

Empire tactics are piss poor, and these are elite troops?

The Emperor is an idiot blowhard, remember?
Blah blah blah. AT-ST's are not equivalent to bradleys, moron. They're
scouts, whose main defense is their speed and active balance. You see an
AT-ST weather several meter-wide boulders being lobbed at them, because
they could ride the punch, as it were, and soften the blow. Riding the
punch would enable them to get away with less armor and be lighter and
quicker. It would also leave them more vulnerable to pancaking.

Bradley's are scouts to moron. Armored Cavalrey uses M3 Bradleys. A recon
unit of an armored unit is offen made up of Bradleys. AT-ST like Walkers are
stupid machines, You can see them from miles away in any kind of open
country, and their high profile makes them easy targets. A scout unit you
can see miles away is not to effective. The speeder units are better scouts,
like the motor cycle units in WWII.

I also like to see a bradley survive a freakin' boulder being dropped onto it.

Depends on the mass of the boulder.

Probably because he couldn't work the HUD Stupid farmboy.

Silly lab boy, what do you think the Hud shows? Does he use radar, inferred,
a type of sonar? Or does he just share data with other units, a tactical
display? It's sure not a targeting system, because their shooting sucks. You
like to use magic catch all phrases with out really under standing what it
really means. Talk about nukes in space.

You mean the same phasers against which PACKING CRATES are adequate cover?
THOSE phasers?

We have seen phasers cut through stone arches, knocking them down, "Man
Trap". take down stone wall's "Return of the Archons", Vaporize a metal
robot "Requiem For Mathusali". Vaporize a metal cabinet injuring Spock at
the same time, "Omega Glory". Chip off chunks of Tritanium (21 x the
hardness of diamond) "Obsession". Said to be able to knock out the side of a
20th century office building "Piece of the Action". There's no objective way
any one can claim a SW blaster is a more destructive hand weapon than a hand
phaser. Phasers can be set for wide angle bursts, sweeping a room or
corridor. taking out several opponents.Firing multiple beams from one
phaser. In DS9 we have seen targeting tricorders on phaser rifles.

Tom don't be a moron. At the start of the battle the Imperials send in
their fighters to attack the Rebel Cruisers. The SDs stay out of range.
The fighters are attacking on their own with out support, other then moral
support. The SD are only engaged after the DS starts firing, and the
Rebels attack the SDs to make it harder for the DS to fire with out
hitting their own ships. Didn't you see the movie?

Sorry, I thought you were talking about the Rebels.

Your memory is faulty. Only the SD hold back. Do you think the TIE
Interceptors just flew by the Rebel Cruisers at point blank range with out
shooting? Just exposing them selves to enemy fire to scare the enemy?

Listen, kid. Putting aside the fact that obeying your superiors is drilled
into the core of every millitary head, if your Emperor could Force choke
you over a comlink, you wouldn't dare disobey him, either.

Blockhead, why did they give the order? If they can't hurt the Rebel
Cruisers why order the attack? How many times and ways do I have to ask the
question? What was the reason for the attack? Are you saying they ordered a
futile charge? Was it a mistake? Were they incompetent? The only logical
conclusion is that they thought they could damage the Rebels. What's your
alternative theory? You don't want to accept the logical answer because it
invalidates your position.

The Imperial capitol ships' orders were to not engage the Rebel ships
unless they tried to escape. In the millitary, you obey ORDERS, dispite
your better judgement.

Not many. At the start of the battle the Rebels seem to have about 50
fighters or less, with the MF.

The operative word here is "seem". You have no solid count of how many
fighters there were. You also realize that there could've been plenty of
fighters mixed in with the capitol ships, which would be nearly invisible
at that scale.

Why would they do that? They weren't expecting an Imperial Fleet, with waves
of fighters waiting for them. Only the fighters, lead by the MF could do the
task at hand. The plan was to go right in get the job done, and get out
quick. What would be the reason for holding back most of their fighters?
They only needed to be separated from the fighters for a few minutes, for
the plan to work. This was a maximum effort, they put in every thing they
had to make sure it would work.

They get caught up in the furball, and most of them seem to be there
when the shield came down. A few were lost inside the DS, but most of
them seemed to make it out. They did a lot better then the attack on the
first DS, were they lost 27 out of 30 fighters. I have no idea how many
Imperials were lost. If the SDs had full groups there would have been
1,800 fighters present. They clearly don't have that many in the battle,
so you can only assume many groups are way under strength.

Under strength, but you can't assume that there were as few as 50
fighters. Do you really think that the survival ratio between TIEs and
Rebel snubs could improve by over two orders of magnitude in just four
years? If there were really 1,800 TIE fighters vs 50 rebels, it would've
been a slaughter.

My God can't you read. I said the Empire clearly did not have 1,800
fighters. It seemed they had only a hundred, or so. The figure of 60
fighters, and 12 bombers per SD is in books and games. We never saw that
many in action. At Hoth I don't think we saw any. As far as we know the
first DS had only 13 fighters.

And furthermore, why bother with fighters when there's a capitol ship
vomiting huge blasts of energy at you?

I notice you didn't answer this either. Do you want to answer why a
capitol ship would bother with fighters when there are bigger fish to fry?

To save them selves. The fighters have clearly been shown to be a threat to
capital ships. Some questions answer them selves. The Rebel Fighters get
into a fur ball with the TIE Interceptors to protect their Cruisers. If they
were no treat why bother? All the characters in the movie think and act on
the assumption fighters can hurt big ships. Are you saying their all wrong?
Their deluded? You know better then the people who made the movies? They
were showing it wrong? It doesn't matter what we see on screen, you have a
different view of what should be the reality? Mike has done the numbers and
his ideas on what SW should be matters more then what George Lucas thinks,
and shows us?

Did you see TESB? The asteroid field? The Admiral reporting heavy damage?
A SD losing it's bridge to a house sized rock? Vader telling him to keep
taking it, It's more important to find my "Little Boy".

You don't know that the bridge was taken off, moron. All we know is that
damage was severe enough to disrupt communications. We don't get a clear
view of the bridge after the hit, but we also don't see any bridge debris.
Secondly, that's not a "house-sized" asteroid. That was 70 fucking meters
of rocky kickass. The damn thing is clocked at 5e14 J, or half a megaton,
as a lower limit. The EU has this ship surviving the impact as a whole,
even after enduring several days of murderous impacts.

As the image fads you see the bridge crew, and captain. The Captains
screams, covers his face, and falls over. The bridge was destroyed, your
dreaming if you think that was just a communication failure. The bridge is
on a raised tower so getting it smashed off might not be fatal to the main
hull. CCC would be badly effected, and secondary explosions, and explosive
decompression could be very serious. If they suffered any other hits like
that, I doubt the ship was battle worth.

Can the Enterprise survive even one such impact?

Yes and it has many times. The ship has flown into asteroid fields many
times. In "Mudd's Women" the Enterprise projects it shields over a small
ship in an asteroid field. The range is about 2 minutes away at full
impulse. so it's about 1 light minute, 18,000,000 KM. The effort burns out 3
of their 4 dylititium crystals, and at the last moment the ship suffers a
direct hit from one at least as big as the TESB rock, and is destroyed.
Voyager flies though the rings of a gas giant in the credits. In "Hell Year"
Voyager is badly damaged in a large meteor storm, when their shields are
down. When they get the shields up they ride it out with little trouble. In
"Balance of Terror an unshielded Enterprise survives a nuclear explosion 100
meters off their bow.

In "The Changeling". Nomad hit's the ship with a bolt = to 9 PT. (They say
90 in the episode, but that was a script mistake.) Assuming the Torpedoes of
TOS were half the power of MK VI of TNG on we get 288 megatons. The ship is
badly damaged, shields are about gone, and they say they will not survive
another hit like that. In ST TMP V-Ger hits the Refitted Enterprise with a
plasma sphere that converted Klingon D 7Ms into electrical impulses for
storage in it's imaging chamber, a kind on memory bank. Later V-Ger sends
out 12 more spheres each hundreds of times more powerful, to do the same
thing to the whole Earth. This means the Refit Enterprise withstood a force
that might have been 1/5,000 of a force that would have converted the whole
Earth into energy. The shields barely held. 8 ships from species 8472
combined their power to break up a planet. One of them hit's Voyager a
glancing blow, which sends the ship tumbling in space, but they survive, and
are able to warp away. USS Excelsior survived the shock wave from the
destruction of Praxis. What ever it was they joked about it compared with a
meteor shower. Sulu "That was no meteor shower". The TOS Enterprise along
with the Constellation, survived mutable hits from the "Doomsday Machine",
Pure anti proton beams, that were used to carve up planets.

Trek ships take a lot more guff, then SW ships. I have watched both for
30 years, 40 for Trek, and have formed a good appraisal of both. Trek is
more centered on it's tech, it's it's strong suit. SW is about the Heroic
legend, the tech is back ground setting, and props. SW tech is more Flash
Gordon based. That's not an insult. The tech is about big flashy plot
devices, how they work is not important to the story. Trek takes it's tech
more seriously, even when it's bad science, because it's about a utopian
future, that will never be reached, but can be dreamed about. The technical
progress of man, goes hand in hand with the social progress. Light Sabers
are magic swords, in a space based story. Phasers are weapons that might
some day exist, even if they never do. No solider would pick a blaster, over
a phaser. You would ask a scientist to invent a phaser, not a blaster.
Concluding SW has higher technology then ST is emotional. If you include
elements like Transporters, replacators, time travel, multidimensional
mechanics it just obvious.

May the force be with you Bob

My response will be forthcoming. I've decided to do a bit of cleanup of all the arguments so far.

[Batman]

By all means do. Valen knows you're a lot better qualified to trash him on the underlying science than I ever will be.

[Stark]

Oh my god, like a dozen pages of line breaks for no reason.

WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT? My eyes hurt.

[Batman]

I might be reaching here but maybe he's even MORE ignorant about proper text formatting than he is of the involved technology? Especially if we consider his (lack of) proper spelling?

[Stark]

It's not even consistent, he's just pressed return at random, it's not being cut off by a window or anything. Ugh.

[Batman]

Well since I've already had the last of MY e-mail replies rebuffed as 'spam' I'm perfectly willing to let Wyrm have a go. Fat lot of good it will do him I suspect.

[skies]

Actually a bomb near miss on a ship can do more damage then a hit.

Bullshit. By the laws of physics, a non-direct hit can _never_ do as much
damage as a direct hit can cause.

The laws of hydrodynamics say you can. Explosions send greater shockwaves
though water then they do though air.

And this from someone who is trying to lecture about not being able to get more than 100% efficiency from a reactor. Tell moron bob that an explosion underwater transmits the explosive power as a shock wave more efficiently than in air, it doesn't add to the explosive power. A direct hit will still be more damaging because most of the energy is being directed directly against the target, rather than via a shock wave through a secondary medium.

There are two ways in which a near miss would cause more critical damage. One is that the shock wave spreads the energy over a larger area of the target, and so may damage a weakened area. Second is by spreading the energy across the entire hull, it may cause the ship to snap. This is an actual tactic (where a torpedo is set to go off under a ship) that takes advantage of the fact that ships hulls are not designed to resist an upward force.

Since there are no shock waves in space, and ships will be designed to resist damage from all directions, only a direct hit will cause maximum damage in any case.

[Peptuck]

No solider would pick a blaster, over
a phaser. You would ask a scientist to invent a phaser, not a blaster.

[Batman]

Actually a SCIENTIST might very well pick the phaser over the blaster out of sheer curiosity

[phred]

The Soldier thats staying here at my friends house says he would take a blaster over phaser

[The Vortex Empire]

No solider would pick a blaster, over
a phaser. You would ask a scientist to invent a phaser, not a blaster.

I think a soldier would very much prefer an accurate weapon with the power of a grenade launcher to an inaccurate remote shaped gadget with no sights.

[Batman]

*sigh*
As per TOS ergonomical phasers are perfectly feasible. The problem is not with the principle of the weapon but the TNG+ implementation of it WRT infantry (for lack of a better word).

[Chardok]

So...when does this debate die? We can accurately predict not only every ARGUMENT he will make, but every single tactic he will use to present said arguments. I guess...well, at what point do we just resign ourselves to eye-rolling and walking away?

[Darth Wong]

I just think it's hilarious that, like so many trolls before him, he claims he's against "fanboyism" and then he goes on to prove himself an absolute fan-whore, clinging desperately to every conceivable shadow of an argument for his preferred side.

[Aratech]

Actually a SCIENTIST might very well pick the phaser over the blaster out of sheer curiosity

And for its swiss army knife capabilities.

As has been stated countless times throughout the years, the blasters ergonomic design, user friendly features like a trigger guard, sights, rangefinders, scopes, smart links, etc, etc, and actually not being stopped cold by things like packing crates means that the intelligent soldier will chose the blaster every time.

[TC Pilot]

Since my name came up near the start of the post, I figure I'll respond:

Never read the book [Wedge's Gamble]. If by capital you mean the Empire/Republic capital [duh?], you would want to take it with minimal damage.

It is pretty obvious he's never read the book, or thought out his argument. Ackbar's strategy (which was the only realistic conventional strategy to take Coruscant, given the presence of the planetary shield) was ruled out precisely because the New Republic provisional government believed millions (bilions?) of non-human civilians would end up starving to death as a result of the siege.

So instead, they raided Kessel and released convicted felons, including murderers, rapists, and arsonists onto the capital in order to sow chaos prior to the effort to sabotage the planetary shield.

Notice that once the planetary shield, which prevented an assault, came down, the rebel fleet jumped in-system and immediately began an invasion. As an aside, the rebels were rightly baffled to discover much of the capital's defenses had been stripped away.

Certainly, minimal damage was desired, but that would not stand in the way of taking the most important planet in the galaxy.

[TC Pilot]

[ghetto edit]: And might I suggest you bring up Lando's "He'll have that shield down in time... or this will be the shortest offensive of all time."

[Xess]

There just off camera. Millions of ground troops on each side died in the Dominion War.

So the hardcore ST soldiers exist off screen but the hard core SW soldiers don' huh.


Moron.

[Peptuck]

There just off camera. Millions of ground troops on each side died in the Dominion War.

So the hardcore ST soldiers exist off screen but the hard core SW soldiers don' huh.


Moron.

Is this the same army that shit itself when two thousand Romulan assault troops were going to invade all of Vulcan?

The same army where a company-sized force started suffering complete mental breakdowns while defending a sensor array while not even being attacked and only suffering injuries and deaths every couple of days?

[Aratech]

There just off camera. Millions of ground troops on each side died in the Dominion War.

So the hardcore ST soldiers exist off screen but the hard core SW soldiers don' huh.


Moron.

Is this the same army that shit itself when two thousand Romulan assault troops were going to invade all of Vulcan?

The same army where a company-sized force started suffering complete mental breakdowns while defending a sensor array while not even being attacked and only suffering injuries and deaths every couple of days?

Of course, my man! Surely, you are familiar with the Romulan Uber Troops? The ones with 24 inch biceps, personal transport buffers for storing enough weaponry to take on a conventional company of soldiers, and personal forcefield generators?