"Star Wars: Death Star" and the destruction of Ald

[Trinoya]

No, I refer to the use of exotic and, till then, unmentioned abilities to draw even more and greater amounts of energy from hyperspace. They are literally stretching for an explanation in an arena that they need not even go to.

For example:

TLs shoot projectile ammunition, because only a projectile can carry the necessary technology to the target where it then can open up an entry into hyperspace to deliver more energy.


See, totally unneeded explanation. You can pretty much insert anything into it. It's technobable at its finest, Trek would be proud.

I'll let my suspension of disbelief wonder with the best of them, but even I can tell bad writing when it is set before my eyes.

What's next having the force be controlled by microorga-...

I'm leaving now. <_<

[Mr. Oragahn]

No, I refer to the use of exotic and, till then, unmentioned abilities to draw even more and greater amounts of energy from hyperspace. They are literally stretching for an explanation in an arena that they need not even go to.

For example:

TLs shoot projectile ammunition, because only a projectile can carry the necessary technology to the target where it then can open up an entry into hyperspace to deliver more energy.


See, totally unneeded explanation. You can pretty much insert anything into it. It's technobable at its finest, Trek would be proud.

I'll let my suspension of disbelief wonder with the best of them, but even I can tell bad writing when it is set before my eyes.

What's next having the force be controlled by microorga-...

I'm leaving now. <_<

A projectile with an hyperdrive won't cut it. It will explode, and thus not be able to maintain hyperspace as we understood it for quite some time.

What the system does is new. It creates a self sustained bridge into hyperspace. At this point, you can make it the way you want.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Wait, don't Spock and his gaggle of idiots say that the Death Stars use Hypermatter Reactors and ISD's use Fusion Reactors, disregarding that they're complete morons, the next run in with them should be interesting.

This is deformation. Not only are we all grouped into the same group, all connected to the same hivemind apparently, so we can't have different ideas, but what is written above is just completely missing out when words were spoken, the context and other cruciual elements. Of course, this dishonesty is necessary to paint people in a bad way.
Not surprising though.

Apparently, if the Imperial Star Destroyers were the first ships to ever be granted first generation hypermatter reactors (the story about prototypes), this would rather confirm that all ships before them, according to the EU, did used inferior power sources.

On the topic of Starfleetjedi I want to point out something I just read over there that made me go LOL

+ random smileys

If you could spend the same amount of time you actually waste calling us names, to think straight instead, you may be able to realize that the bunch of you have been being awfully oblivious to simple movie evidence since a while.

Anytime you're asked to explain the delay between the two explosions, in the vast majority of cases, the answer starts by "what delay?" (Kane Starkiller included), which generally just shows how much ignorant of the evidence you are.
You're spending an awful lot of time in threads and on a board that's about dissecting videos frame by frame, counting pixels and talking science, and you can't even see the simplest things.

How was there a claim that Alderaan had no shield?

Been living under a rock I see.
I can understand that you don't agree with that claim.
But to be so ignorant of the existence of that claim despite your involvement in Star Wars discussions is appaling.
At least, if you want to pretend to debunk arguments, you may wish to actually learn about them and their meaning first.

Its visible; and the beam is halted for a fraction of a second.

As we said, it's just an interpretation, not a fact.
ANH's novelization says nothing of this. Alderaan's defenses against any foe, Death Star or not, are identified as weapons and nothing else.

Even the OT:ICS interpretated the destruction of Alderaan that way:



Though it looks more like a Big Sauce Gun pouring something hot over Alderaan, than a superlaser destroying the surface of a world, the message is actually pretty clear: the concept behind the drawing was that the planet's surface was already being scorched while the beam was still hitting it, and above, while it was still being fired by the Death Star.
But above all, we notice that the artist was not given any directive to show the presence of a shield whatsoever, and the text next to the picture makes no reference to a planetary shield.
Knowing Saxton's habits to sneak small bits of wank here and there, we know such a reference would have made it if he had been writing that snipset.

Same goes for the EU's manga illustrations of the film. No shield.
All this is perfectly in agreement with the interpretation that there was no shield.
It only fails to work when you believe that there was a shield.

In the films, there's no evidence of planetary shields on any planet. Not even on Coruscant, mind you.
Coruscant, again, gets no mention at all of planetary shields. Once again, all the novelization talks about is the presence of a defense grid of cannons shooting down debris.
They're not even described as bouncing off one of the shields's layer.

I think there has even been an EU reference somewhere that said that if a Death Star superlaser hit a planetary shield, it would only completely scorch the surface. However, this remains to be verified.

I think what is being claimed is some funky shield-beam reaction like what happens when you hit a Shield with a Las-gun in Dune. This is a crazy comparison to make, because we have seen what happens when shields are hit by lasers in Star Wars, haven't we?

Not really. Especially since we don't acknowledge the existence of a shield to boot.

Of course the most humorous bit is they are trying to use EU to refute the movies. Ah the little chitterlings, it's amazing how much they devote to their obsession.

The following bit, "trying to use EU to refute the movies", just shows that you have no idea what you're talking about.
It's simply the last thing we'd ever do. In fact, I think no one here would ever use that form logic, even in a last resort.
It's stupid, and 100% what we do and believe in.

Mindless repetition of Scooter's original "argument" that was the subject of Mike's debate with him.

Scooter's argument was that the beam initiated some kind of genesis effect. I never agreed with that. I'm perfectly fine with the beam drilling through the crust.

However, his pages are well enough documented to provide enough information that can be used for debates.

For example, we can use the images at the top of the second page to show that even after several frames the beam had finished hitting the planet, we could still easily notice the planet's horizon (left side and low left corner in the latest frames).

This clearly puts a limit too how much energy the beam released on impact.
We can easily see that there's nothing like e32 joules poured in the planet.

And yet, even more amusing, according to the book, the apparition of the ring would indicate that the hyperspace rift has already been created, thus caping the energy requirements even more.

It almost certainly does increase it, probably by a few orders of magnitude;

The hyperdrive of a Star Destroyer consumes as much energy in a single hyperjump as many planetary civilizations will consume in their entire lifetimes

You estimated this as 3E25 J. The volume of an ISD is about 1.3E8 m^3. The volume of earth is 1.08E24 m^3. If an ISD is as dense as molten iron, or the power requirements for placing objects in hyperspace is volume-dependent, that implies an energy expenditure of 2.5E41J for placing the entire planet into hyperspace, as opposed to the 1E32J binding energy lower limit for disassociating it or the 1E38 estimate based on the observed velocity of the Alderann explosion.

Note that this assumes an ISD mass of a little over a billion tonnes, if hyperjump energy requirements are mass based. Unfortunately I couldn't find any reliable figures for actual ISD mass anywhere, but if it's less than this the energy requirements (for the planet) go even higher. Conversely if ISDs actually mass more than a billion tonnes the energy requirement will be lower.

It's the total energy. Not power. It is a fallacy often used by SDN people immediately use that total energy figure as a power figure.

Nothing is said about if the ISD needs to build up this energy beforehand, nor how long the hyperspace trip lasts.

The other fallacy is looking at how an hyperdrive works and how much energy it consumes, and consider that this is the same for what the Death Star has been doing in the middle of Alderaan.
The *slight* difference being that there's no hyperdrive in the middle of Alderaan, so even if the reaction is hyperspace based, it has nothing to do with an hyperspace/hypermatter controlled reaction.

It's prue technobabble, and apple and oranges.

Further, it suggests that the first quote is not in reference to normal reactor output, but probably a reference to what would happen if the magnetic-ring beam-director doodads failed to direct the hyperspatial effect accordingly. (I'd be interested to see the rest of the context to confirm.)

This is Darkstar trying to claim that the line about Death Star's reactor capable of providing energy burst equal to several stars actually describes "what would happen" rather than simply stating raw energy.
Curiously though "total weekly output of several main-sequencee stars" doesn't say a damn thing about "what would happen" it only gives us the number of Joules pure and simple. Can these guys get any more desperate?

You miss the fact that the output figure is given in a context of catastrophe.
The quote starts by "If it didn't work" and soon ends by "if anything went ownky, it wasn't liekly he'd be around long enough to notice."

So yes, this is a possible interpretation. But we have our fair share of disagreements on open ended descriptions, don't we?

It is correct that the phrasing of the first quote you refer to is actually interpretable both ways.
One can see that it may relate to what the hypermatter reactor would do when about to explode. That is, loose control over its reaction.

That would mean that under a controlled reaction, the reactor is incapable of producing such power.

Same applies with the Imperial Star Destroyer equipped with a prototype hypermatter reactor which blew up in her face and disintegrated the whole ship.

Gotta love these fanatics. And then Mr. Oragahn says he is not a Trekkie. No sir.

It is wrong to bandwagon me with Trekkies just because I happen to disagree with the Star Wars wank perpetuated on SDN.
Tell me, do you label Star Wars fans on TFN who disagree with you a Trekkies? That's just sad.
I could point out to people I know who just disagree as much as I do about that wank of yours, yet they don't give a damn about Trek.
But yes, go on. You're not short of one extra fallacy.

That's it the reactors produces billions of times more energy when they malfunction. See I'm not at all emotionally attached to my position and always approach a problem with a scientific detachment. That's why I always keep spouting these far fetched theories that just happen to drastically lower SW power generation even though there are quotes EXPLICITLY stating them.

There is difference between a controlled chain reaction and an uncontrolled one, just as much as, for example, a nuclear power plant and a nuclear warhead.
Considering the exotic features hyperspace and hypermatter has been given in this EU book, if any hypermatter based reaction went wonky, yes, one interpretation says that we could expect a catastrophic overload to happen.
Again, you're free to disagree with that.

I guess those guys forgot to mention that Despayre got blasted apart earlier in the book, and we failed to see any "planar rings" when it happened? Or the only other taget (a Lucehulk vaporized by the DS) also failed to produce any magical planar rings which are attributed to the hyperspace effect?

And were those books written before the Special Edition added the rings of doom?
You can't only work from an in universe perspective when you know that even the films themselves went through some minor retconning. You have to consider that these rings also existed when Despayre got destroyed.

Let's not forget that every refreence to the hypermatter reactors (the Death sTar's, the ISD-2 that got turned into plasma, etc.) suggest it is merely a brute force energy approach like its always been. No magical "hyperspaital trickery" that they want to pretend it is.

You misunderstood what some of us at SFJN have been saying. We don't deny the energy. Actually, we pretty much consider that the exotic hyperspace based and uncontrolled chain reaction does release large amounts of energy, but is the fruit of some exotic chain reaction going on. One which has more to do with a bomb than with a stable power plant producing energy.
The thing is, no one, not even you or anyone else, can explain how this really happens. Even the creation of an hyperspace rift without the presence of an hyperdrive is something quite new, at least for me who's not been following the EU for a while.

Well, there was that sort of supergun that shot things in hyperspace, right? Did the projectiles have their own hyperdrive?
Wasn't that gun a Death Star knock off or something?

Besides as Starglider has pointed out, we have AMPLE proof that Hyperspace transitions are energy intensive. both going in and coming out. That's why you can't stay indefinitely in hyperspace (IE why there is a hyperdrive range.) Hell even the novel points to jumping to hyperspace involving a relatavistic acceleration as we've long known (VAder's TIE, much like Fett's ship in Bloodlines or the MF in Hutt Gambit.

Huh?

The quote, as you provided it, read as follows:

He managed to get the spin under control and then ready the little ship for the jump to lightspeed. A second or two would be enough. A couple of light-seconds would put him more than half a million kilometers away and give him a chance to get the TIE under control.

Where does it say that the TIE fighter would be subject to millions of gees?

The extract just says that Vader could use the hyperdrive within one or two seconds, enough to get far away from the Death Star, and give him time to finally retake control of his ship.
So again, where do you get your acceleration from exactly?

AFte rall, these are the same people who think that the Culture and 40K universes (the latter equal to SW and the former more powerful) would also be beaten by Trek. you can't reason with people who keep insisting their pet universe will beat all comers no matter how powerful they are. Ask anyone who'se dealt with Adarx or Rabid Fivers

Again, I'd like to invite you to actually pay more attention to each one's argument and stop describing us as an unique ensemble of absolutely single minded people.

[Praeothmin]

Again, I'd like to invite you to actually pay more attention to each one's argument and stop describing us as an unique ensemble of absolutely single minded people.

In psychology, what they're doing is called "projecting"... ;)

[Mr. Oragahn]

You don't say. :)

Anyway, since I'm being masochistic enough, let's adress a few more bits.

That's it boys and girls "total weekly output of several main sequence stars" is open ended so we can go on to conclude that it doesn't really tell us anything about energy output.

I didn't deny the energy output. Read correctly.
I question the conditions of this output.

They still cling to their precious chain reaction even though novel mentions no such thing. Naturally he provides not a shred of evidence that reactor failure would lead to millions of times greater power outputs. I guess shifting the burden of proof now comes automatically to these people.
Although he will graciously allow me to disagree with his fanatical no-evidence claims. How nice.

Well, considering that you didn't even pay attention to what I said in the post above, I'm just going to make it simpler for you.
The novel, if you mind, actually says:

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

Which is actually funny, cause we know that the ring, now identified as a side effect of the hyperspace "rift", appears at a moment when the level of destruction on the planet is this:



(Image from st-v-sw.net, copied not to steal bandwidth.)

Rate to low to mid petatons, at best. That's the maximum power of your (16 km wide) hypermatter reactor... and again, if this is not already influenced by that hyperspace related gizmo reaction going on, which would already account for the energy distributed there, considering that the ring is already present!

That's nice, because it is exactly what I've been saying for quite some time. A mix of DET, enough to ruin a planet, and some exotic reaction that builds up and finally generates the overkill effect.

Yes, if you still want to downscale your super-duper-laser-with-funky-physics into a turbolaser, you're going to have to work from 10^24 joules, and likely less. Top.

Besides, this remains, of course, an energy output that's way above any matter-energy conversion occuring within realspace.
Which is an interesting wording, because it clearly implies a difference between realspace, and that "other space", where apparently you get more energy.
Hyperspace is, duh, another "space".
Not "realspace turboboosted many times above c", like tachyonland.
OMG, hypermatter could be... exotic matter?

*Oh noes.*

It also means that precedent ships, notably the Acclamators, used fusion cores, and had nothing to do with hypermatter. And thus we have a problem, I think, when tying fusion cores to 200 GT per salvo for one quad cannon turret, not including all the ship's other power hungry systems.

We also note that the extract describes Alderaan as exploding "almost instantaneously", as the ring appears (a planar ring). Well, if that's the explosion... because the real tough one actually occurs later on.

We notice that the book doesn't even mention the second ring. This would, however, just reinforce the theory of a much exotic reaction at play, considering the delay between the two explosions, and actually the two rings.
Not only the book fails to mention it, but you're back to square one where you have to explain how the second ring appeared, long after the beam was gone.

Ironically, the SFJ site also seems to be a refuge for alot of the weider Stargate folk (Oraghn and L33telboi both post over there frequently, and do extensive stargate "analysis" over there.. for whatever the hell tht is worth. I'm sure you'd be more aware of stargate analysis than I am Razz)

Just having reasonable fun with Stargate. Any problem with that?
And why do you call this a refuge, exactly? It's not like I limit my Stargate talk to SFJN. Nor that it would be your business an'way.
But right now, you're lingering to find more absurd excuses to take cheap shots at people. Typical of SDN.

Btw, considering that you're reading this, you may also care to explain your "millions of gees" claim about Vader's TIE. I'm still interested to know.

[Mr. Oragahn]

There's a new one for me.

Besides being a retarded argument (using a book image to try and over-ride the movie, which is, obviously, highest canon) it STILL proves fuck all.

I hoped it would be quite clear.

Step 1. I do not consider that there's a firm evidence of a planetary shield over Alderaan. I consider that even on the conceptual plan, it poses just too much issues, and anyone who believes that there's a shield over that planet is actually welcomed to go to that link, read the text, and debate it.
Otherwise, you're only making the same old circles, and it's going nowhere.

Step 2. Considering the position presented in step 1, it's therefore pretty clear that the use of EU references is not to override the movie.
It is, on the contrary, the fruit of an amusing experiment, an analysis of standards.
See, considering that many of the wank originates from conceptual interpretations of EU elements, I just wanted to know what the EU had to say about Alderaan's defenses.

This is just meant to show the conflicting stance on that point. I say conflicting, because it's likely that there are EU references which also firmly claim the existence of a shield.

Firstly one can argue that the "hot sauce" IS the shield, it's not like we would know what the hell a planet-sized field of deflective energy would look like and we know it illuminates as it fails as seen in the movies more than once.

No. The picture actually shows that from the get go, the surface of the planet is getting melted by the beam. The drawing is actually horrible, but the concept is clear. The damage is already happening, while the beam's still hitting the planet.

Even more, it shows no sign of what one could, even with a high level or artistic liberty, represent as a planetary shield. We see no special kind of effect used on the drawing to even put into evidence the presence of some forcefield at play.

That painting could correspond to only one specific moment: when the beam is still being fired, while it already touches the planet.

Well, considering the speed at which the beam travelled, the distance which the DS was at (6 planetary diameters) and considering that we can see both ends of the beam, it seems rather impossible that such an event could occur.

But just as much as absurd this drawing is, it tries to paint the initial devastation of the planet, and yet utterly misses the shield reference.

Now, don't think beyond that point, because it was just as simple as that.

Secondly even IF that shows no shield exists, it does not disprove the scale of Death Star firepower. Weather or not Alderaan had a shield is utterly irrelevant as to the firepower of the Superlaser. It would not decrease the amount of energy the laser has to generate to blow a planet apart, which is a very specific level of power. Congrats you just proved the Death Star can...blow up a planet. Yay.

You miss the point. The question is not if the beam has the power to blow up planets. This has been settled two decades ago.
The question is... *sigh ... *breathes* ... how it does it.
Read what has been posted for your fellow members.
Yes, I know. They just ignore it. It's convenient. But at least read it once. And try to pay attention.

Thirdly, of course, the whole argument is moot. Movies are highest canon. Period.

Unfortunately for you, this has never been disputed by me. There's probably more purists of the movie here than at SDN, by the way.

[watchdog]

I think the main thing all of those folk miss is that there is no in-movie evidence of full planetary shields, that idea came exclusively from EU books and has simply been inserted into the movies by wishfull thinking on the part of the warsies.
Many will counter this by claiming that Endor was fully shielded, but there is no proof of that either. The graphic of the shield protecting the Death Star does not show a full planetary shield, only a small part of the planet protected by the shield, no doubt part of the perimeter where the rebels landed. So who exactly is using the EU over movie evidence?
Personally I have very little trouble accepting the EU, but these people like to cherry pick to much, hell star trek has more on-screen proof of planetary shields than star wars does.

I can hardly believe this part of the debate is taking place like this, someone over there reads a post here, cut-and-pastes them there and responds, and someone here does the same. Can't any of them come here to debate us directly, we wont bite.

[SailorSaturn13]

Interesting quotes (verbatim, errors and all, from SDN):

If it didn't work - well, the hypermatter reactor was capable of generating an energy burst equivalent to the total weekly output of several main-sequencee stars;l if anything went ownky, it wasn't liekly he'd be around long enough to notice.

This is the quote they're using to estimate the reactor's nominal output. But look here:

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

The phrasing is of interest. Note that the "hyper-matter reactor" is the source of the "superluminal 'boost'" causing mass to shift into the hyperspace domain, which is how the destructive power is so much greater than a "matter-energy conversion limited to realspace" . . . i.e. fusion, antimatter, et cetera.

This makes it sound as if the beam itself is merely a sort of conduit for some sort of wacky hyperspace-related energy or particles derived from the reactor itself.

Further, it suggests that the first quote is not in reference to normal reactor output, but probably a reference to what would happen if the magnetic-ring beam-director doodads failed to direct the hyperspatial effect accordingly. (I'd be interested to see the rest of the context to confirm.)

A weekly output of a Sun is 10^32J. So yes, most of energy is coming direct from hyperspace. Note that "bursts" mean it is not a normal output, but shows how much energy it can store and release.

Which is implying that they tap in hyperspace both onboard DSs and on Alderaa itself to produce 10^38 J.

P.S. How about incorporating this on website?

[Mr. Oragahn]

I think the main thing all of those folk miss is that there is no in-movie evidence of full planetary shields, that idea came exclusively from EU books and has simply been inserted into the movies by wishfull thinking on the part of the warsies.

Indeed. But that's also largely due to EU authors not paying enough attention to the films and the novelizations (Sulust is descried as a blue planet, which is problematic with the EU's representation of this world).

Many will counter this by claiming that Endor was fully shielded, but there is no proof of that either. The graphic of the shield protecting the Death Star does not show a full planetary shield, only a small part of the planet protected by the shield, no doubt part of the perimeter where the rebels landed. So who exactly is using the EU over movie evidence?

It is actually the novelization which says that the shield protected both the station and the moon. However, it's derived from someone who's looking at the tactical hologram. The one which in the film shows that no shield extends over Endor.

However, arguing that there was a planetary shield over Endor would put an end to the Endor Holocaust nonsense as well, though we've seen that based on movie evidence, it would take thousands of shield generators to protect the whole moon, contrary to the idea that one, two or three are enough.

But remember that Zahn went into his story while ignoring restrictions Lucas gave. For example, Lucas didn't want EU authors to fiddle with the clone wars and anything related to it. Which Zahn did.

Personally I have very little trouble accepting the EU, but these people like to cherry pick to much, hell star trek has more on-screen proof of planetary shields than star wars does.

I can hardly believe this part of the debate is taking place like this, someone over there reads a post here, cut-and-pastes them there and responds, and someone here does the same. Can't any of them come here to debate us directly, we wont bite.

They're just too happy to ignore this. It's been years since they've been asked to pay attention to the real arguments, and actually look at the films for what they show, not what they want to see.
You're not going to get anything new from such brickwalls, really.

[Jedi Master Spock]

I can hardly believe this part of the debate is taking place like this, someone over there reads a post here, cut-and-pastes them there and responds, and someone here does the same. Can't any of them come here to debate us directly, we wont bite.

Well, I can understand why it's happening. We have very different rules as to what constitutes acceptable conduct on our two distinct forums. The long and the short of it is that with the exception of a few hardy souls like Kane Starkiller, most of those on one forum are unwilling or unable to register - let alone post - on the other forum, for whatever reason.

Which is a pity, because I would like to see more direct dialogue happen.

[Mike DiCenso]

With the notable few exceptions, that will never happen. For the SDNers, in their general mindset, they have long since won the debate, especially since they got Saxton to codify into "canon" (read: the EU's ICS books) their wanked out view of SW weaponary and technology in general.

It is usually far easier to sit in their safe place and snipe at those who oppose their viewpoint.

The few SFJ and pro-Trek people who have tried to have direct dialogs cannot or will not try anymore because of the SDN propensity for attacking anyone who does not hold their sacred point-of-view. So I guess you'll just have to settle for the indirect debating, except for going to places like ST.com where you have to deal with the SDN special attack dogs such like Servo.
-Mike

[watchdog]

Yeah, I tried to get on SD.net when it first appeared but was stopped by not allowing hotmail accounts. I dont bother now because I cant stand the type of mind-set MW encourages at his site. I disagree with their tactics and their lack of debating decorum. I understand that they THINK they have won the debate, but only through their heavy cherry-picking habits. They could never win a real debate with their habits.

Getting back to the topic at hand, as of yesterday I found a RTF copy of the new Death Star book on my news reader (I love alt.binaries.e-books). I dont know what the policy is here about posting such things however, I'm not certain how to post the book anyway. I can try to copy some interesting paragraphs though, I read one about how watching the swerling tunnel of hyperspace will drive you crazy. I will post the part about Alderaan's destruction as soon as I can locate it.

[watchdog]

The Hyperspace bit I found interesting;

Darth Vader stood on the bridge of his warship, staring out through the forward viewport at the kaleidoscopic chaos of hyperspace. The effect, even moving at the relatively stately speed of a Star Destroyer, was akin to tumbling down an endless tunnel of amorphous, whirling patterns of light—starlight and nebulae smeared into impressionistic blotches by the ship's superluminal speed. He knew that even experienced spacers and navy personnel often hesitated to look out at it. Standard operating procedure was to keep the thick slabs of transparisteel opaqued while traveling through the higher-dimensional universe. There was something profoundly wrong about hyperspace, composed as it was of more than the three spatial and one temporal dimensions that most sentient species were used to. Looking too long into hyperspace promised madness, so the stories went. He had never heard of anyone actually succumbing to "hyper-rapture," as it was called. Nevertheless, the legends persisted.
Vader enjoyed staring into it.

The first test of the Superlaser;

A flash of pale green glimmered briefly from the holo.
The room shook, vibrating enough to rattle the chairs. She felt her viscera become momentarily buoyant, and realized that the ship's gravity field had flickered.
"What is that?" Memah stood, fighting sudden, inexplicable panic. After all, what could possibly pose a danger to—
Ratua held up a hand to quiet her. Those green eyes watched the 'proj. "Wait a second," he said. "Something's wrong."
The image of the planet Despayre seemed to shiver as a thin beam of emerald green—nearly the same color as Ratua's eyes, she thought— from off the edge of the 'proj lanced into the center of the single huge continent.
They both watched disbelievingly as an orange spot blossomed on the image of the planet. It seemed no bigger than Memah's thumbnail at first, but it grew rapidly, spreading in an expanding circle. The center of the orange turned black.
"Kark," Ratua said. He sounded stunned.
"What? What is it?"
"They—they're firing at the planet. With the superlaser."
The orange and black spread in irregular waves now, continuing outward from the center. The blue of the ocean didn't even slow it down.
"The atmosphere's on fire," Ratua said. Calmly, as if he were discussing the weather. Going to be a warm day today, temperature around five thousand degrees . . .
She felt a horrifying urge to laugh. It didn't seem real—it couldn't be real. Ratua must've tuned in to some future-fic holo by mistake. It wasn't a real planet she was watching burn. No. Things like that just didn't happen.
Memah stared at the image. She could not look away.



SUPERLASER FIRE CONTROL, THETA SECTOR, DEATH STAR

Tenn looked at the images from the targeting cam. He still had his hand on the firing lever. He released it and stared, watching as the very air on the prison world caught fire in a runaway planetary holocaust. Seismographic sensors showed that massive groundquakes had begun, rumbling down into the bowels of the planet. Giant waves in the ocean, generated by the shifting of tectonic plates, rushed for the shores of the big continent. Volcanoes spewed lava. Clouds of steam and volcanic ash began to rapidly obscure the surface from view—but not fast enough.
He had just killed everything on the planet Despayre. If all life wasn't dead already, it would be soon.
The CO moved to look over his shoulder. He didn't congratulate Tenn on the shot; he just stood there.
"Stang," Tenn said.
The CO nodded. "Yeah."



COMMAND CENTER, OVERBRIDGE, DEATH STAR

Motti said, "Engineering says the capacitors will be recharged in an hour and thirteen minutes."
Tarkin watched the projection as the effects of the beam manifested on the planet. By the time the second pulse was ready for discharge, there wouldn't be anything alive on the world below them to care. The chain reaction was massive. And at only one-third of the power that would be available when it was fully operational.
Amazing.
"I hope you're right about this," Motti said. "Politically, I mean."
"Of course I am, Admiral. The population of that world consisted of condemned criminals sentenced to life imprisonment. They were never going back to civilization. It was a constant drain on Imperial resources to transport them and to maintain them. Those troops will now be freed up for service. Nobody will mourn the murderers or the filthy planet on which they lived."
"And where will the Empire send its major criminals now?"
Tarkin turned away from the images of carnage and looked directly at Motti. "Unless I am seriously mistaken, the death penalty will be used more frequently. Imperial justice is about to become swift and sure, Admiral."
He turned back to watch the image of the dying world.
SUPERLASER FIRE CONTROL, THETA SECTOR, DEATH STAR

An hour and fifteen minutes after the first beam, Tenn fired the second one.
The planet Despayre, already scorched lifeless and beset with cataclysmic groundquakes and volcanism, began to shake like some tormented creature in its death throes. Massive cracks, thousands of kilometers long and tens of klicks wide, striated the world. Mountains collapsed in one hemisphere as they jutted up and rose in another. It was impossible to see all this directly, of course, because of the cloud cover that had blanketed the surface, but the IR and VSI scopes showed everything all too clearly. The molten core of the globe, already venting through innumerable new volcanoes, oozed to the surface and produced oceans of lava that spread across the land. This was how the planet had been born, and this was how it was dying.
An hour and nineteen minutes later, when Tenn fired the third beam that blew the charred and burned-out cinder apart, shattering it into billions of pieces, it seemed almost pointless. Everybody and everything on it had already been roasted, scalded, or drowned. The system's gravity twisted as the planetary well ceased to exist. Shield sensors quietly recorded the thousands of fragments, from the size of pebbles to that of mountains, deflected from the station.
Sweet Queen Quinella. A whole planet, destroyed. Just like that. No matter how tough you thought you were, that was hard to stomach.
Especially when you were the one who had pulled the lever.

Alderaan;

SUPERLASER FIRE CONTROL, DEATH STAR

Tenn heard the order crackle over the speaker. He couldn't believe it, but there it was:
"Commence primary ignition."
He hesitated a second. Could it be some bizarre kind of test? To see if he had what it took?
No, that was foolish. He had already killed the prison planet, hadn't he? They couldn't have any doubts about his loyalty, both to the Empire and to Governor Tarkin.
But in a way that made it worse—because it meant the order was real. He was about to destroy yet another world—and it wasn't a virulent jungle planet swarming with criminals this time.
This time it was a world all too similar to his own homeworld.
He was aware of his CO watching him. He reached up, grabbed the lever. All systems were green.
His crew once again performed their functions flawlessly, adjusting switches, checking readouts, balancing harmonics. All too soon, everything was in readiness. All systems were go.
Tenn felt sweat dripping down his neck, under that blasted helmet. He looked at the timer: 00:58:57.
He pulled the lever.
It would take a second or so for the tributary beams to coalesce. He wanted to look away from the monitor, but he couldn't.
The superlaser beam lanced from the focusing point above the dish.
The image of Alderaan on the screen was struck by the green ray.
It took no more than an instant. Tenn knew that the beam's total destructive power was much bigger than matter-energy conversions limited to realspace. At full charge, the hyper-matter reactor provided a superluminal "boost" that caused much of the planet's mass to be shifted immediately into hyperspace. As a result, Alderaan exploded into a fiery ball of eye-smiting light almost instantaneously, and a planar ring of energy reflux—the "shadow" of a hyperspatial ripple—spread rapidly outward.
The timer read: 00:59:10.
So little time. So much damage. It was incredible.
If, somehow, the Rebel Alliance were to win this war—not that Tenn Graneet could see how that would be possible, given what he had just witnessed, what he had just done—then surely this act would condemn his ashes to the deepest pit they could find after he was executed.
It was his job, and if he hadn't performed it, someone else would have, but his belly roiled with the enormity of what pulling that lever had caused.
Billions of lives snuffed out. Just like that.
There was no sense of triumph in it, none. He had not destroyed a Rebel base or a military target. Instead, a planet full of unarmed civilians had been . . . extinguished.
And he had done it.
It made him feel sick.

Not to keep interjecting star trek technobabble into everything, but the so-called reflux ring that comes from the explosion is reminiscent of the sub-space shockwave from ST 6. I'm sure that Lucas got the idea for the shockwave from star trek as his SE came out way after trek 6. What I'm getting at is that I think there is a similarity to the sub-space explosion on Praxis and the Hyperspace reflux from Alderaan. I dont know what it might all mean but thats my thinking.

[watchdog]

One last bit;

Tarkin stared at the incomplete spheroid, floating serenely in the void, eerily backlit by the solar glow reflected from Despayre. It wasn't even a complete skeleton yet. When done, however, the battle station would be 160 kilometers in diameter. There would be twenty-four zones, twelve in each hemisphere. Every zone, called a sprawl, would have its own food replicators, hangar bays, hydroponics, detention blocks, medical centers, armories, command centers, and every other facility needed to provide service for any mission deemed necessary. In an emergency, auxiliary command centers located in each sprawl provided full weapons and maneuverability control, for a redundancy depth of twice a dozen. When fully operational, the battle station would be the most powerful force in the galaxy, by far.........Aside from the fearsome, world-destroying "superlaser" itself—which was based upon the Hammertong Project and used a power source secretly taken by the 501st Stormtrooper Legion on Mygeeto during the Clone Wars—the station would mount a complement of craft, both space and ground, equal to a large planetside base: four capital ships, a hundred TIE/In starfighters, plus assault shuttles, blastboats, drop ships, support craft, and land vehicles, all ultimately totaling in the tens of thousands. It would have an operational crew numbering more than a quarter million, including nearly sixty thousand gunners alone. The vessel could easily transport more than half a million fully outfitted troops, and the support staff—pilots, crew, and other workers—would be half that number. The logistics of it all were staggering. Oh, it would be a fearsome monster indeed. But a monster tamed and under Tarkin's control; a monster sheathed in quadanium steel plating, invulnerable and impervious.
Well, almost invulnerable. Lemelisk had disappointed him in that instance. The greatest challenge in designing the battle station, he had said, was not creating a beam cannon big enough to destroy a planet, nor was it building a moon-sized station that would be driven by a Class Three hyperdrive. The greatest challenge was powering both of them. There must be trade-offs, he had said. In order to mount a weapon of mundicidal means, shielding capabilities would have to be downgraded to a rudimentary level. Power, Bevel had said, was not infinite, even on a station this size, fueled by the largest hypermatter reactor ever built. However, given the surface-to-vacuum defenses, the number of fighters, turbolaser batteries, charged-particle blasters, magnetic railguns, proton torpedo banks, ion cannons, and a host of other protective devices, no naval ship of any size would be even a remote threat. A fleet of Imperial-class Star Destroyers—even a fleet of Super-class Star Destroyers, should such a thing ever exist—would offer no real danger to the battle station once it was fully operational. Given all that, a shield system that was less than perfect at times wasn't such a high price to pay for the ability to vaporize a planet.

[GStone]

Before this new book and the ICSs, was the SL just a big ass laser in the EU?