Battlestar Pegasus vs. NX-01

[l33telboi]

That said, I've been literally omiting to consider the NX's own armor. It has no shielding, that's right?

No shielding, but they can 'polarize' the hull to make it stronger.

And some of the phasers output 500 gigajoules top, so the power might be even lower than 500 gigawatts?

500GJ is a low estimate. In the episode where this number is introduced, they fire at a ship with a full 500GJ blast to no effect. Then they find a way to overload this in some funky way, to the degree where a single shot brings down shields and severely damages the ship.

Is that enough to damage the NX?
If that's true, it's going to be interesting.

Not sure, the NX seemed to be less advanced then most ships out there. And it was able to take quite a beating from other ships before finally going boom.

[AFT]

Regarding the number of nukes the Pegasus has. I'm willing to bet quite a lot. Why? Because we know the ship had enough nukes to rearm even galactica with ground bombardment nukes. And the Pegasus was the one usually used for war, so it would make sense that it had the majority of the nukes.

That would make sense, except that it doesn’t bond well with the events on Exodus Part 2. If they have plenty of nukes, why didn’t they use those to take out the baseships? No need to sacrifice the Pegasus and while we’re at it, why they didn’t just transfer some of those nukes to the Galactica prior to the attack? That would have made the rescue mission a lot easy. No need fro the Pegasus to salve the day. As a matter of fact, the Pegasus never used nuclear weapons AFIAK.

As for yield of those nukes. I'm guessing we're talking about 20-50MT nukes for cap-ships, based on the episode where Adama was threatning to nuke a planet and the description of the damage involved. The description i of course don't have on hand.

Do you know the name of the episode? Maybe we can get a plot summary or something to check it out.

And one more thing. The Viper missiles are undoubtedly considerably smaller in yield then capship launched missiles. Which is why i said it's possible for them to get up to Phase-canon yields. Accounting for size-differences and using that to peg a yield for the larger missiles would be tricky though.

If you check Mike’s post, capital ship grade missiles with conventional warheads would have to being 15 times stronger than the missiles normally carried by Vipers to equal a phase cannon on normal yield, not to mention that they probably made the yield on overload standard, after all they found a way to manage that on the very same episode and since the normal yield wasn’t quite enough it would make sense for them to do just that. In that case the scaling would have to manage a yield 150 times stronger to match a phase cannon. That would be interesting enough, no doubt.

Edit: Going with this line of thought, Vipers and Raptors armed with conventional missiles would have to launch simultaneously 30 missiles to equal a dual blast of the phase cannons on the original power output but since more advanced and presumably more powerful ships need a lot more than a couple of shots to place the NX-01 at risk, we’re talking about hundreds of missiles fired simultaneously, never mind that they would have to make impact at the same time to equal the firepower than the NX-01 can take. Unless the Vipers and Raptors can carry missiles armed with nuclear warheads they would be next to useless on this battle.

[Mike DiCenso]

The phase cannons were enhanced by the overload to about ten times their normal expected yield, which means 500 GJ x 10 = 5,000 GJ x 2 = 10,000 GJ/1000 = 10 TJ/4.2 = 2.3 kilotons per shot from the forward phase cannon batteries.
-Mike

[l33telboi]

That would make sense, except that it doesn’t bond well with the events on Exodus Part 2. If they have plenty of nukes, why didn’t they use those to take out the baseships? No need to sacrifice the Pegasus and while we’re at it, why they didn’t just transfer some of those nukes to the Galactica prior to the attack? That would have made the rescue mission a lot easy. No need fro the Pegasus to salve the day. As a matter of fact, the Pegasus never used nuclear weapons AFIAK.

I still think it's kinda iffy to use that as a reasoning. "We never saw them use the nukes ergo they don't have any". Mainly because we know galactica had nukes but never used them. I dunno though, could go both ways i suppose.

Do you know the name of the episode? Maybe we can get a plot summary or something to check it out.

This episode and the next one. You can find a brief summary on what happens in the episode there as well.

If you check Mike’s post, capital ship grade missiles with conventional warheads would have to being 15 times stronger than the missiles normally carried by Vipers to equal a phase cannon on normal yield, not to mention that they probably made the yield on overload standard, after all they found a way to manage that on the very same episode and since the normal yield wasn’t quite enough it would make sense for them to do just that. In that case the scaling would have to manage a yield 150 times stronger to match a phase cannon. That would be interesting enough, no doubt.

He accounted for size? Didn't notice that, my bad.

[Mike DiCenso]

Actually, in some ways I over-estimated the viper missle yeilds since the asteroid calculator assumes the entirety of the fragmented asteroid is broken up into even ten meter sized chunks, and that the asteroids are perfectly spherical. The asteroid, is of course, not spherical, but pretty lumpy looking, and the amount of vaporization and even heating of the rock to the glowing point is pretty minimal.
-Mike

[Mike DiCenso]

Mr. Oragahn wrote:

The Galactica was hit by those 50 MT but it survived, though badly damaged, with internal fire and all that.
However, let's remember that large areas of the ship have been stripped off their battle armour.

To the best of anyone's knowledge, the Big G was never hit by a 50 MT nuke, and the events of the mini-series suggests that 50 KT is the standard anti-ship nuke yeild carried by the Cylon raiders.
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

Any opinion regarding the refined tylium's enthalpy?

Does that mean this refind ore is kept under huge pressure, within tight sealed containers? What about the volume of 1 kg of refined tylium?
0.5 billion megajoules for 1 kg... plus we don't know what "billion" he's talking about. That said, for some massive enthalpy, I'd think we'd be talking about dense material.
We're floating between many kilotons or megatons, depending on the parameters.
Tylium could be used for the production of highly explosive warheads.

That said, arguing 50 kt for anti capital ship warheads is absurd. If Cylon basestars can fire 50 MT at Caprica City, why can't they do the same against a slow ship, instead of wasting nuclear ordinance many orders of magnitude weaker, so the battle can last forever?
That's weird.

Colonials use plutonium. I'd suspect that they could, at least, reach the same level of efficiency as we do.

[l33telboi]

In "The Captain's Hand" we see the Pegasus take at least three nukes directly to the hull with only moderate damage. And by moderate i mean that the ship remained combat effective after the hits. Just something i thought might be interesting.

Another little something i was wondering on the NX-01, how wide is the saucer section? In singularity, we see the ship cracking apart two asteroids with a diameter almost as large as the ship's saucer section.

[Mr. Oragahn]

The problem with Captain's Hand is that I didn't find any way to know the yield of those nukes.

Now, I didn't see season 3, but people have mentionned that bit of dialogue about how he talks about the G's nukes could be used to level a city, with a nice crater in the middle, suggesting 2 digits megaton yields.

However, in Captain's Hand, the Pegasus not only remained combat effective, but even under the cylon assault, it retaliated, heavily damaging a basestar, and gave enough time to the techs to repair the FTL drive and other sensible parts to leave the zone.

The Pegasus was hit twice, then twice more, and again and again, with more nuclear rounds coming in.

Ok, good thing, I refreshed my memory and am relieved to see the Pegasus able to flak the zone around with fair ease.

The Pegasus main front cannons fire sort of large rockets with no evidence for cornering, and they're probably a nice mix of piercing rounds with explosives inside.

I think that claiming the NX to be the winner here seems hasty.

[l33telboi]

The problem with Captain's Hand is that I didn't find any way to know the yield of those nukes.

Indeed, but they are undoubtedly a bigger yield the ones launched from fighters. Since they are probably much more massive and launched from capital ships.

Now, I didn't see season 3, but people have mentionned that bit of dialogue about how he talks about the G's nukes could be used to level a city, with a nice crater in the middle, suggesting 2 digits megaton yields.

Adama says something like "i will obliberate everything within x miles of that temple."

I don't have the episode on me anymore so i can't check though.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Ah, was he talkin' about Kobol's ruins?

[l33telboi]

Ah, was he talkin' about Kobol's ruins?

Nope. Do you really want to be spoiled? In any case, i think i linked to a description of that two-parter earlier in this thread. I glanced through it but saw no mention of dialogue i was refering too, but if you want specifics on the episode, check it out.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Ah, was he talkin' about Kobol's ruins?

Nope. Do you really want to be spoiled? In any case, i think i linked to a description of that two-parter earlier in this thread. I glanced through it but saw no mention of dialogue i was refering too, but if you want specifics on the episode, check it out.

Nope, I'll try to avoid spoilers. I know it's a hard thing to do with a versus debate, but contrary to other shows, I feel guilty downloading episodes for BSG. I don't like knowing the story before the rest of my family. :)
I used to do that in the ol' days of Stargate.

[Mike DiCenso]

Mr. Oragahn wrote:

That said, arguing 50 kt for anti capital ship warheads is absurd. If Cylon basestars can fire 50 MT at Caprica City, why can't they do the same against a slow ship, instead of wasting nuclear ordinance many orders of magnitude weaker, so the battle can last forever?
That's weird.

From what we see in "The Eye of Jupiter", the launch process, at least for a battlestar, is an exceedingly slow process, and the missles themselves are fairly large things. The dialog for Lt. Gaeta stating a 50 kt thermonuclear dedonation is canon, and no one, least of all the Cylons, thought anything unusual about it. The 50 kt raider-launched missles are considerably smaller and faster than the bigger capital ship-based ones.
-Mike

[Mike DiCenso]

I have to correct my earlier estimates of the viper-launched nuke missle. I only quickly scanned through the episode "Home, Part I", and had scaled the asteroid just as Kat's viper flew right up to the asteroid as it was breaking up from the hit by Hot Dog's missle. I went back and looked as Kat's viper (an 8 meter Mark II) was doing an initial strafing run,w hich puts her in harms way in the first place.

The asteroid in those brief scenes appears to be much, much larger, at least 4.5 to 5 times larger on the long axis than Kat's viper, or about 40 meters wide, and we don't see the whole of it, either, except in an all too brief establishing shot with nothing to scale it against. Just rough guess would place the rock around 50-80 meters. Some problems exist in that the asteroid (like a lot of things in SF shows) is portrayed inconsistantly. When an earlier missle target run by Hot Dog "wings" the asteroid, it looks only about around 20 meters based on the 2 meter long missle that hits it. A similar instance occurs just before Kat's near-fatal run.

So a rough average of 40-60 meters I think is in order here (the low-end being 20 meters and the very upper limit being 80-100 meters). So 64 tons or 264 gigajoules to fragment a 40 meter asteroid. To fragement a 60 meter diameter asteroid is 264 tons, or 1,089 GJ. This is much more favorable for the Pegasus' Viper-launched nukes, but still leaves them decidely sub-kiloton.
-Mike