Saxton and Star Wars

[Sunburst]

Question for all.

Did anyone here read over Saxton's website back in the day before the prequels and just call bull like I did?

I started reading them, and started thinking: There's lots if interesting info here, but it seems like he wasn't watching the movies I did and could even get the names of the ships right like the Imperial Star Destroyer. My logical progression was that if he couldn't even get something that simple correct than the reasoning he used to create his entire website must have quite a few flaws. It also didn't feel like a Star Wars website; there's no creativity, just lots of math and an attempt at reason.

Anyway, I get frustrated by the fact that his goofy ideas are now posted everywhere because they were published, Wookiepedia for one. I don't even go to that website because they have so many star destroyer classes and relegate the Imperial version to something along the lines of an escort. That just doesn't fit the movies or what I think of as Star Wars. It's like a snowball effect with fans that read Saxton's stuff and I wonder if some people forgot the actual movies and they have read so much Eu stuff they can't remember what Star Wars is.

I suppose I may have a strange point of view since I stopped reading Eu around 1999, back in college. And my personal canon is the original trilogy and most of the Zahn books. I like to include prequel tech, but the stories don't match up with original trilogy, especially the idea of the clone wars. Just think about the name "clone wars". It implies that the clones were the enemy in the conflict,l ike the Zulu wars, or the French & Indian war.

The tech in star wars is so inconsistent I don't understand how anyone can pretend to write a tech journal. Star Wars shields alone are so inconsistent I can't use logic to understand what they are doing.


I suppose I'm ranting a little. I'm just wondering if there's anyone else that gets where I'm coming from.

[Kor_Dahar_Master]

Saxon pretty much based his figures on a VISUAL of a asteroid getting shot, him and other fanbois decided on the composition and size ect and then added values ect........but they convieniently ignored that the roids in that particular area had a habit of exploding on impact with a variety of colours as well as oddly catching fire now and again, so were likely to be composed of a highly volitile material.

[Sunburst]

Saxon pretty much based his figures on a VISUAL of a asteroid getting shot, him and other fanbois decided on the composition and size ect and then added values ect........but they convieniently ignored that the roids in that particular area had a habit of exploding on impact with a variety of colours as well as oddly catching fire now and again, so were likely to be composed of a highly volitile material.

I heard he also scaled down DET Death Star superlaser power, and some of the more ridiculous/overpowered things from comics.

I'm not too concerned with how he came up with his numbers. I know they don't work. Any numbers that suggest fighters are useless vs capital ships are illogical and silly...why use fighters in capital ship combat? If that were true, Imperial Tactics make no sense in RotJ or the entire battle in RotS is just silly, and it invalidates "every" star wars video game known to man.

You don't need a PhD in physics to figure that out.

[Mike DiCenso]

Anyway, I get frustrated by the fact that his goofy ideas are now posted everywhere because they were published, Wookiepedia for one. I don't even go to that website because they have so many star destroyer classes and relegate the Imperial version to something along the lines of an escort. That just doesn't fit the movies or what I think of as Star Wars. It's like a snowball effect with fans that read Saxton's stuff and I wonder if some people forgot the actual movies and they have read so much Eu stuff they can't remember what Star Wars is.

There is a lot of good information to be had in going to Saxton's website, just as there is in going to Wookiepedia. However you do have to go wading in through the piles of stinking crap to find it. For the most part, Saxton made numerous mistakes early on in the writing of his website, but because of who he was getting much of his information from; Warsie Versus debaters, like Young, Wong, and Poe, that who had vested interests in wanking up Star Wars technology far beyond what is portrayed in any of the OT or PT movies, those early errors were compounded, and even later codified in the lesser canon materials.

For example, the use of Geoffrey Mandel's star destroyer blueprints from the late 1970's, which Saxton had been mistaken or mislead into believing they were offically licensed materials, when, in fact, they were simply unoffical fan material. Did Saxton correct this? No. Did he at least acknowledge he'd made a mistake? No.

Another issue, is Saxton involved behind the scenes with helping out his Versus debate buddies. We know the answer. It is indeed a resounding "YES" as RSA has detailed in his article here, and more recently our very own Mr. Oragahn found some interesting old files while going through Saxton's site and found quite a bit of information linking him to further possibe shenanagins behind the scenes as detailed in this thread.

Saxton simply did not get his figures from the single asteroid popping scene in TESB, he more or less with help from Poe and Wong created them from near whole cloth with erroneous and out of context EU information on the Base Delta Zero as well as the poor assumption that the Death Star superlaser must be a DET weapon and that Dodonna was refering to it when he stated that the DS carried a firepower "greater than half the starfleet", rather than looking more closely at the ANH novelization's version of the scene which clarifies it as him refering to the turbolaser emplacements, particularly the dense clusters around the circumpolar regions and the latitudinal axes.

Or going the with most ridiculously optimal upper limit interpretation of the Death Stars sizes; his own analysis of the averaging of the sizes place the stations at around 120 and 160 km, but instead he chooses the upper limit 160 and 900 km sizes.... just because some guy back stage said so.

Or look at the AoTC firepower for Slave-I, again offical EU wanking over what the actual movie shows us, and Saxton didn't even have access to the finished movie when he wrote the ICS book!
-Mike

[Praeothmin]

Yeah, the issue doesn't come from his calculations, because I'm sure they're all good (barring a minor unfortunate error), but from the premises of his calculations.

The majority of the SFX shots clearly show an MF in the 26-30 meter length, yet he uses the one shot of the MF on the tower of an ISD to scale it to 40+ meters in length.
In actuality, this one shot, when compared to the rest of the movies, should instead be used to reduce the ISD's length, since that scene is the first time we really can compare between two ships of which at least one was measured against "real" know measured "objects"...

[Mike DiCenso]

It's been a while, but I thought the calculated size was 30 meters, not 40 for the Falcon to ISD Avenger scalings.
-Mike

[Kor_Dahar_Master]

Another issue, is Saxton involved behind the scenes with helping out his Versus debate buddies. We know the answer. It is indeed a resounding "YES" as RSA has detailed in his article here, and more recently our very own Mr. Oragahn found some interesting old files while going through Saxton's site and found quite a bit of information linking him to further possibe shenanagins behind the scenes as detailed in this thread.

I really enjoyed reading RSA site and while i did not agree with every bit of it most of it was very good, i have read stuff by Mr. Oragahn on SB and he certainly knows his stuff as well.

In fact it was using material i learned from those two guys that led to me getting banned from wongs site, although i have now learned that getting banned from that site is pretty much gaurenteed unless you are a foaming at the mouth member of the cult of Wong.

I later got a short 3 day stint in the sin bin on SB but that was more like getting double teamed by a mod called facehugger initially and then a guy called leo1 who seemed to take over for him and lead his arguments with insults, while screaming about "style over substance" at the same time as claiming that the federation did not have the tech to explode suns (the "they did not use them in the dominion war so they do not have them argument"), anyway i pointed out that his personal opinion of federation policies regarding genocide is hardly a substansive argument in regards to proving they did not have tech they had actually used in a few episodes and a few back and forth posts later got banned for 2 days lol.

It was very odd.

[The Dude]

Look, heres what I recommend you do before you start to loathe VS debates and the participants in general (like I do); take what you like and agree with and turf the rest. Who cares if your right or wrong in what you keep or discard? It's a fictional universe and GL ain't gonna break down your door and gun you down.

You might get harassed by some folks though.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Another issue, is Saxton involved behind the scenes with helping out his Versus debate buddies. We know the answer. It is indeed a resounding "YES" as RSA has detailed in his article here, and more recently our very own Mr. Oragahn found some interesting old files while going through Saxton's site and found quite a bit of information linking him to further possibe shenanagins behind the scenes as detailed in this thread.

I really enjoyed reading RSA site and while i did not agree with every bit of it most of it was very good, i have read stuff by Mr. Oragahn on SB and he certainly knows his stuff as well.

In fact it was using material i learned from those two guys that led to me getting banned from wongs site, although i have now learned that getting banned from that site is pretty much gaurenteed unless you are a foaming at the mouth member of the cult of Wong.

I later got a short 3 day stint in the sin bin on SB but that was more like getting double teamed by a mod called facehugger initially and then a guy called leo1 who seemed to take over for him and lead his arguments with insults, while screaming about "style over substance" at the same time as claiming that the federation did not have the tech to explode suns (the "they did not use them in the dominion war so they do not have them argument"), anyway i pointed out that his personal opinion of federation policies regarding genocide is hardly a substansive argument in regards to proving they did not have tech they had actually used in a few episodes and a few back and forth posts later got banned for 2 days lol.

It was very odd.

I've read your recent dispute with CPL at SBC, and I must say that there was a logical flaw in your argument. Basically, you were saying it cannot be because it's too much technobabble.

However, the irony of it is that the old warsie who argued against you had to basically prove that SW was filled with technobabble to prove you wrong. Which is funny considering that he and his pals love to dismiss theories because they involve technobabble.

/me likes that. :) They don't even notice how they're shooting their own foot.

[Kor_Dahar_Master]

I've read your recent dispute with CPL at SBC, and I must say that there was a logical flaw in your argument. Basically, you were saying it cannot be because it's too much technobabble.

However, the irony of it is that the old warsie who argued against you had to basically prove that SW was filled with technobabble to prove you wrong. Which is funny considering that he and his pals love to dismiss theories because they involve technobabble.

/me likes that. :) They don't even notice how they're shooting their own foot.

My actual intent was to point that irony out, im getting pretty sick of assholes spouting crap wong dreamed up and acting like they understand it.


He and they seem to feel that just because certain particles can have mass but not really interact that it justifies mentioning them evertime they require a scape goat for a problem their theories cause. They do JACK to show HOW they intend to turn billions upon billions of metric tonnes of matter into these particles but they have no problem acting like they have proven a fantastic theory just because they claim it is done "somehow".

The fact the particles exist does not mean they can be used or created in such a fashon and claiming the ability to do so is leaping over the laws of physics and right into technobabble land.

I maybe a uneducated git but im far from stupid and i know when im talking to a person who is repeating anothers words as well as jumping over inconvienient facts to a useful result rather than explaining them.

[Mr. Oragahn]

I've read your recent dispute with CPL at SBC, and I must say that there was a logical flaw in your argument. Basically, you were saying it cannot be because it's too much technobabble.

However, the irony of it is that the old warsie who argued against you had to basically prove that SW was filled with technobabble to prove you wrong. Which is funny considering that he and his pals love to dismiss theories because they involve technobabble.

/me likes that. :) They don't even notice how they're shooting their own foot.

My actual intent was to point that irony out, im getting pretty sick of assholes spouting crap wong dreamed up and acting like they understand it.


He and they seem to feel that just because certain particles can have mass but not really interact that it justifies mentioning them evertime they require a scape goat for a problem their theories cause. They do JACK to show HOW they intend to turn billions upon billions of metric tonnes of matter into these particles but they have no problem acting like they have proven a fantastic theory just because they claim it is done "somehow".

The fact the particles exist does not mean they can be used or created in such a fashon and claiming the ability to do so is leaping over the laws of physics and right into technobabble land.

I maybe a uneducated git but im far from stupid and i know when im talking to a person who is repeating anothers words as well as jumping over inconvienient facts to a useful result rather than explaining them.

The use of hypermatter as tachyonic matter is perhaps a clever attempt at making the energy production process sound close to science enough, with the extra benefit of making it be much more advanced than fusion or even bradyonic annihilation. I don't understand much of the tachyon blah blah safe that there's some imaginary mass involved in that which could happen to be way greater than some "real" mass, and that is verified in an equation wherein you calc the energy squared or something. Basically very few people could pretend having a clue about what's going on.
The problem is not trying to explain things with such advanced concepts, but to see if it's necessary or not.
I've read your post in the SBC thread, and I must say that I don't see where you're going with your point though. What you say here seems to be different than what you exactly argue over there.

For example:

1. "stores much of its mass in a nonconventional format". Translation: The concept of hypermatter is contrary to the laws of physics regarding mass and i have no idea how it can do that.

2. "storing it as tachyons ala hyperspace drives" Translation: I need other technobable science to even store it and i have no idea where the mass i need to convert into energy comes from in the first place nor do i explain how i can get away without refueling.

3. "or storing it as imaginary numbers" Translation: Shall i even bother?, i think "Imaginary" pretty much covered it in regards to yet another transformation of mass into a unknown component for storage.

4. "some sort of annihilation mechanism" Translation: I am way beyond the rationality now but il try to make it sound sciency.

So your theory about hypermatter involves you believing that vast quantities of mass can initially be created and then aparantly converted into "tachyons" or "imaginary numbers" for storage, and then can be released in a limited fashon and some kind of annihilation mechanism similar to anti-matter/hyperantimatter (meaning we need vast quantities of that created and stored in a simular fashon to our matter/hypermatter) converts it all (or in some cases smaller portions) into a almost unimaginable quantities of energy that some how we contain and direct so it is "then used for things like shooting people" and seemingly without needing to refuel very often if ever.

WOW your educated scientists really did a job on that one...lol...i doubt if they even know how many of their own laws they broke.

Of course CPL displays a lack of honesty. Example, on point 1, instead of saying yes, he doesn't understand what's going on -and there's no problem with that as far as I'm concerned- he prefers to gloat about is relative superior intellect or honesty since apparently you're too dumb to understand what he meant, or you're too dishonest to reformulate his sentence without changing the meaning:

If you were as intelligent as you claim, you'd be able to parse that sentence properly, because what you just "translated" it into loses much of the meaning. :\

You were right since I doubt he had any idea how this works, but your wording literally made it sure that he would be on the defensive.
In the end, I don't see why you're arguing about the presence of technobabble. They don't understand it, so be it, we often invent theories to rationalize what we observe. Well, we try. Some prefer to regurgitate "facts" put down by people dressed up in white blouses.

I don't understand your problem with claiming the use of neutrinos and so on. The use of of neutrinos is not the problem. The problem is the logic behind this. You don't need to be a genius to point out the flaw in the theory that shielding systems suck energy and then radiate it out as super charged neutrinos.

Most matter we know and can find hardly stops neutrinos, but artificial structures may prove to contain dense enough components which would be affected by neutrinos.
Which means you wouldn't want a shield to radiate such high energy neutrinos in your direction, and certainly not through your base, ship or any sensitive piece that is part of, say, a droid's composition if it had any such part.
This is just an aspect of it. Even if the interaction with neutrinos is low, there basically are two factors related to neutrino radiation to make the shield system work: generate enough neutrinos, and then charge them with that extra energy that your shied system magically sucked out after intercepting energy bolts . A concept used to explain the distant explosions around ships, instead of accepting the canonical concept of high-tech flak -but they didn't like that.

Also, the problem with neutrino radiation is that a planet's basic bedrock interaction with neutrinos is low, but not non-existent. For any neutrino that interacts, it's so light weight that no one notices it. But now, imagine that a system would supercharge those neutrinos, and now imagine that a small amount of those high energy neutrinos do interact with surrounding matter like their normal cousins do. You could expect some noticeable effects.
It's a point that's not much addressed though. That said, I suppose that different frequencies would have neutrinos behave differently, the higher the frequency of this type of particle, the greater the energy (the other part that defines energy is the Planck constant).
Or perhaps they don't charge neutrinos and merely to fart a shit lot of them. :D
Which would probably not solve the problem at all, since you'd increase the quantity of neutrinos, and although the percentage of interactions would remain the same, its value would be higher.
Surely, when radiating teratons of energy with neutrinos, I'd really like to know how you can be certain that the surrounding landscape will not get a least several kilojoule per cc out of that.

Finally, the concept is silly: if you have a system which can absorb energy and shoot it out as neutrinos, why the heck not actually shoot it out as photons back to your enemy?

Besides, dumping antimatter at a planet would surely be a good weapon, but in the context of a superlaser, would hardly be any better than the brutish design they dream of since it would equally fail at explaining all the oddities.

[Kor_Dahar_Master]

You were right since I doubt he had any idea how this works, but your wording literally made it sure that he would be on the defensive.
In the end, I don't see why you're arguing about the presence of technobabble. They don't understand it, so be it, we often invent theories to rationalize what we observe. Well, we try. Some prefer to regurgitate "facts" put down by people dressed up in white blouses.

It was rather obvious he had no idea what he was talking about and was likely repeating what he had seen others say without really understanding it.

The really entertaining factor is that he truely believes that those he is getting these ideas from fully understand them (and im sure you agree that its obvious they do not either) and as such he puts huge faith in them and as you noticed made insulting comments about my education even when i had clearly pointed out earlier that i have none.

I am not against technobabble i am against educated individuals claiming to be above it while just being better and hiding the fact they are using it just as much as the rest of us.

The idea that the superlaser beam contained/carried hypermatter to the planet and that it reduced the conditionsthe Lawson criterion says is needed for a fusion reaction was a theory i got from several places.

It has the benifit of allowing the DS to be powered by the fusion reactor that is seemingly refered to in the ANH novelization and is supported by the musings of Luke in regards to mass-energy conversion in the same book. It also means that the effects from weapons ect are more in keeping with what we see on screen instead of what certain individuals claim they are due to the power limitations imposed by fusion power generation although a advanced version.

It all fits quite nicely actually and is probably why im likely to become the focus of yet another rabid warsie jihad from the cult of Wong.

PS: I do not really have much of a issue with any particle i was just using it and other things to point out that just because a educated person can dream up a cleverly worded theory that is impossable but sounds plausable that a person with no education but a reasonable amount of intelegence can do so as well, even though both are "alchemy magic shite" as the delightful DrStrangelove now refers to my theory.

SDN guys lol, they need to get out more.

[Mr. Oragahn]

You were right since I doubt he had any idea how this works, but your wording literally made it sure that he would be on the defensive.
In the end, I don't see why you're arguing about the presence of technobabble. They don't understand it, so be it, we often invent theories to rationalize what we observe. Well, we try. Some prefer to regurgitate "facts" put down by people dressed up in white blouses.

It was rather obvious he had no idea what he was talking about and was likely repeating what he had seen others say without really understanding it.

The really entertaining factor is that he truely believes that those he is getting these ideas from fully understand them (and im sure you agree that its obvious they do not either) and as such he puts huge faith in them and as you noticed made insulting comments about my education even when i had clearly pointed out earlier that i have none.

The idea that the superlaser beam contained/carried hypermatter to the planet and that it reduced the conditionsthe Lawson criterion says is needed for a fusion reaction was a theory i got from several places.

It has the benifit of allowing the DS to be powered by the fusion reactor that is seemingly refered to in the ANH novelization as well as the musings of Luke in regards to mass-energy conversion. It also means that the effects from weapons ect are more in keeping with what we see on screen instead of what certain individuals claim they are due to the power limitations imposed by fusion power generation although a advanced version.

It all fits quite nicely actually and is probably why im likely to become the focus of yet another rabid warsie jihad from the cult of Wong.

PS: I do not really have much of a issue with any particle i was just using it and other things to point out that just because a educated person can dream up a cleverly worded theory that is impossable but sounds plausable that a person with no education but a reasonable amount of intelegence can do so as well, even though both are "alchemy magic shite" as the delightful DrStrangelove now refers to my theory.

SDN guys lol, they need to get out more.

Lol. Let's not be over dramatic here. Your discussion is largely insignificant.
The only way to become a subject of interest by Wongies would require that you either turn into a "village idiot" on SDN's boards, or, after making yourself known after a while I suppose, you engage a 1 vs 1 debate with a renown warsie, and you won't find much of them. Wong won't bother. Perhaps Leo/Vympel, CPLF, or eventually Ender.
Lord Vespasian, I doubt he'd care (or dare?). You would probably find yourself being more pissed off by his attempt at mocking and circling you than addressing the points. This kind of behaviour wouldn't pass in a face to face debate, he'd be too exposed. The others may pis you off at times, but they don't seem to abuse this methodology so openly.
Perhaps some blokes from SDN, if you go over there, but I don't really see what could motive them to exchange arguments with you.
You could try some lesser known warsies from SBC. It would be your call.
Most of all, you'd have to have some very clear subjects to debate on.

[Kor_Dahar_Master]

Lol. Let's not be over dramatic here. Your discussion is largely insignificant..

Im 39 i own a successful ground work and landscaping company and im posting in between pricing up jobs so i can send quotes to potential customers, this entire subject is insignificant compared to that. However i do use it as a relaxing distraction now and again and i like annoying the "rabid ones" because of the foul abuse i receieved from them when i first got into it.

Most of all, you'd have to have some very clear subjects to debate on.

That is highly unlikely considering im not even clear on my own stuff let alone others, i prefer the KISS method and enjoy the fact that most of the relavant math has already been done regarding what can be reasonably quantified. I think my theory is as good as any others i have seen or better AND it allows for G canon visual and verbal components to be included and not disregarded, ignored or poorly reinterpreted.

I do enjoy reading your stuff though as you seem well on top of your game even from my perspective that is one of understanding roughly 5%-20% of what is going on without actually looking into it and researching properly.

[Praeothmin]

I do enjoy reading your stuff though as you seem well on top of your game even from my perspective that is one of understanding roughly 5%-20% of what is going on without actually looking into it and researching properly.

You got that right:
Most Rabid fans of anything hate debating with Mr. O because he comes prepared, doesn't take shit from anybody, and will take apart bad arguments faster then a weedwacker took apart my mother's flowers so very long ago... :)

And what's even worse for them is that they know their usual red herrings of calling someone a Rabid Trekkie while ignoring the points that were brought up doesn't work, because Mr. O isn't one...