SWTC and Saxton's distance from versus debates

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2046
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Re: SWTC and Saxton's distance from versus debates

Post by 2046 » Mon Sep 07, 2009 5:38 pm

Aha, so they've been removed. Good catch.

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Re: SWTC and Saxton's distance from versus debates

Post by 2046 » Wed Nov 11, 2009 4:02 pm

http://www.theforce.net/swtc/corruption.html ("Power Technologies") just came up in a Google search. The cache was available, but the page itself is gone. The page seems to be an early exploration of Star Wars power generation technology as discussed in more depth at http://www.theforce.net/SWTC/power.html . . . not for any specific ship, but just in general terms.

You see the brainstorming on all the various EU-mentioned power sources as possibilities (plus zero point and black holes, besides, though the latter being called "quantum singularity" was rejected because it sounded like Trek). Solar ionization, fusion, antimatter, and hypermatter are bandied about. Perhaps the most interesting thing is Saxton's initial insistence on avoiding labelling the technology in favor of merely describing what he believes it can do.

This is actually quite proper in regards to sci-fi analysis, in my opinion, because it leaves open the possibility of technologies beyond current thinking. For instance, showing a supersonic jet to someone from an earlier century might produce speculation about its mass and energy requirements, and one can imagine discussions of its fuel source. Fanciful notions of how much coal it burned, whether it was powderized or burned in some sort of liquid form or perhaps as a solid rocket, or alternate calculations based on whale oil and such would seem utterly silly to us now, and most would probably result in the idea that the jet was little more than a flying fuel tank. Of course, this is generally not the case.

But that sort of thing is precisely what Wong types do to analyze science fiction. They apply modern technology, methods, and physics knowledge ... with all the limitations that imposes ... to far-future science fiction tech that explicitly commands physics well beyond anything we know. It's sort of a Rumplestiltskin effect . . . by naming a technology they discount its observed capabilities, especially in Trek's case, while giving Wars the benefit of the doubt in regards to bypassing technological restrictions.

That's how they chose hypermatter, of course, and assigned to it all manner of unusual properties. It was a blank slate that sounded better than "solar ionization reactor", and could have more wildly varying properties drawn onto it. Amusingly, they were either unaware or unconcerned about the existence of real hypermatter (referring to hyperons and such), and instead declared Star Wars hypermatter to be a tachyonic matter from the hyperspace domain with imaginary complex mass or whatever, even though the very nature of its properties rather contradicted the existence of big honking thrusters on the back of the ships. After all, if you have mass reduction technology that allows you to reduce your mass even beyond zero, you shouldn't need anything but the barest minimum of thrusters.

But anyway, here are some interesting notes from the page. You can compare also with the actual power.html page for more insight. I think the below is Saxton, in a discussion of trying to settle on a conclusion for the power generation of
You could make solid or liquid deuterium, but it would involve vast pressures. If you punctured your container, the deuterium would decompressively evaporate and the gas expansion would mimic the violence of a nuke.

Michael will say that this is better than any imaginable antimatter scheme, despite the fact that you'll need to carry fifty times as much fuel mass. He'll be worried about how to keep exploding starships unspectacular.

I would prefer to consider more imaginative antimatter schemes than the fairly simplistic one used in 'Trek. And I don't necessarily commit myself to antimatter per se. My position is that the SW fuel source (at least for big warships and Death Stars) should be at least as good as antimatter. I would also entertain suggestions involving tamed mini black holes, for instance. (With mini black holes, the problem is in keeping them from vanishing altogether; black holes have a tight surface and aren't at risk of spilling all over the place or breaking into unmanagable bits. When a black hole accidentally touches and gobbles up part of its container, it just becomes bigger and cooler. Etc. Pardon my parenthetical rambling.)
Here's another, after going on about the required energy a Star Destroyer must produce (note that the maximum inflated BDZ theory's numbers were employed for this):
None of these quantities is too great for the antimatter (or equivalent) to be stored at normal, water-like densities. The ISD would only need a few 100m holds full of anti-water, anti-hydrogen or some such substance. When examining the interior schematic of a star destroyer, it is important to remember that not every important piece of equipment sits in the plane of the cut-away. There may be many fuel containers off to the sides of the ship.

I guess that a star destroyer does not perform a Base Delta Zero (crustal melt) order very often, but the fuel stocks of a fully laden destroyer must be at least this great. Note that the value for melting the crust to a depth of one metre (a conservative minimum) is approximately equivalent to a few hundred or a few thousand hyperjumps. This is a fortunate coincidence! It means that we can suppose that the fuel capacity of an ISD is (say) a couple of times the BD0 energy, and a ship operating under normal conditions (doesn't execute a BD0) is expected to make several thousand jumps before refueling at a space station.

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Re: SWTC and Saxton's distance from versus debates

Post by Mike DiCenso » Wed Nov 11, 2009 5:22 pm

Interesting stuff, but not terribly suprising, really. What this material does is give a good look at the oddball thought processes Saxton and his followers (and yes certain pro-Wars debators) employ. They decide what the capabilities of the star destroyer are, and then work backwards, twisting and turning every which way to make the evidence and rationale fit their pre-made conclusion rather than follow the evidence and then see if they can fit a workable hypothesis to it, or modify it as new or better evidence is made available. I wonder if Saxton even knows or cares that the idea of a BDZ is not even what Poe and Wong told him it was, or that things like the ISD blueprints Jeff Mandel made in the 1970's was an unlicensed fan work?
-Mike

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Re: SWTC and Saxton's distance from versus debates

Post by 2046 » Tue Feb 04, 2014 4:08 pm

Hey, who else saved these? My hard drives are an organizational nightmare at the moment with stuff strewn about and I haven't located my saves.

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Re: SWTC and Saxton's distance from versus debates

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Wed Feb 05, 2014 11:48 pm

2046 wrote:That's how they chose hypermatter, of course, and assigned to it all manner of unusual properties. It was a blank slate that sounded better than "solar ionization reactor", and could have more wildly varying properties drawn onto it. Amusingly, they were either unaware or unconcerned about the existence of real hypermatter (referring to hyperons and such), and instead declared Star Wars hypermatter to be a tachyonic matter from the hyperspace domain with imaginary complex mass or whatever, even though the very nature of its properties rather contradicted the existence of big honking thrusters on the back of the ships. After all, if you have mass reduction technology that allows you to reduce your mass even beyond zero, you shouldn't need anything but the barest minimum of thrusters.
It was considerably worse. From the beginning their methodology was immensely dishonest.
For one, the term hypermatter wasn't a blank slate, since it had already been attached to the power core of the Death Star in the OT:ICS. More precisely, the first page dedicated to the Death Star mentionned the "hypermatter reactor" twice already, and once on the third page.
This is to be coupled to the fact that numerous sources, some of them even predating the ICS, identified that reactor as a fusion core, no more no less.
Then, as they absolutely wanted to slap their hard(on) SF spin onto their selective picking, instead of going with hypermatter = some kind of fusion and therefore the destruction of planets is to be relativized, they went for the biggatons^999.

You know how selective they were when the entire SDNdom never acknowledged even the odd double explosion and the delay between the impact of the beam's latest portion and the delay with the second and much more massive explosion.
Wasn't it funny that the levels of energy of the first explosion would be rather coherent with the capabilities of a fusion generator of that size, but they chose to focus on the second explosion, the one that blows the planet to bits, despite their claim of the most brutish design of a DET weapon?

Here's another, after going on about the required energy a Star Destroyer must produce (note that the maximum inflated BDZ theory's numbers were employed for this):
None of these quantities is too great for the antimatter (or equivalent) to be stored at normal, water-like densities. The ISD would only need a few 100m holds full of anti-water, anti-hydrogen or some such substance. When examining the interior schematic of a star destroyer, it is important to remember that not every important piece of equipment sits in the plane of the cut-away. There may be many fuel containers off to the sides of the ship.

I guess that a star destroyer does not perform a Base Delta Zero (crustal melt) order very often, but the fuel stocks of a fully laden destroyer must be at least this great. Note that the value for melting the crust to a depth of one metre (a conservative minimum) is approximately equivalent to a few hundred or a few thousand hyperjumps. This is a fortunate coincidence! It means that we can suppose that the fuel capacity of an ISD is (say) a couple of times the BD0 energy, and a ship operating under normal conditions (doesn't execute a BD0) is expected to make several thousand jumps before refueling at a space station.
I wonder where all that anti-fuel goes when, say, the power generators of Echo Base were destroyed. Or I equally wonder what happens to that same fuel when that Star Destroyer blew up in ROTJ. Surely, we'd want a bit more boom for such events.
Besides, isn't it funny that their entire work group was so focused on incorporating as many EU sources as possible that would support their goal, and miss out some rather obvious cases such as the popular Star Wars RPG supplement, D6: Black Ice and its very clear references to a type of fuel which was certainly nowhere like what they wanted it to be.
I know that this source would be known to them. It dealt with massive fuel super tankers and I was introduced to that type of ship by one of the people listed in the AOTC:ICS, about the same time Saxton and his comrades were most likely bringing the latest touches to the background data that would serve to construct the AOTC:ICS.

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Re: SWTC and Saxton's distance from versus debates

Post by 2046 » Fri Feb 07, 2014 4:32 pm

2046 wrote:Hey, who else saved these? My hard drives are an organizational nightmare at the moment with stuff strewn about and I haven't located my saves.
Have located the saves for the first three, but still looking for that extra one I noted a few posts ago. Given that it was a cache I have no idea what the name could be, so I figure I'll just keep sorting and eventually I'll come across it.

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Re: SWTC and Saxton's distance from versus debates

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Sat Feb 08, 2014 10:25 am

2046 wrote:
2046 wrote:Hey, who else saved these? My hard drives are an organizational nightmare at the moment with stuff strewn about and I haven't located my saves.
Have located the saves for the first three, but still looking for that extra one I noted a few posts ago. Given that it was a cache I have no idea what the name could be, so I figure I'll just keep sorting and eventually I'll come across it.
If you saved it at the same time, sort by date.

First note the exact names of the files you've found.
More precisely, if that's an html file, then do a search at the root of your pc, with *.html as the keyword.
Once you have the complete list of all HTML files on your computer, partitions and eventually external hard drives, sort by date.
Then look for the known files by typing the first caracters of their name.
Normally this should take you to the entry in the list where those files are and chances are that the one you're looking for is one of the html files located a couple notches above or below. That should narrow it down sufficiently.

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Re: SWTC and Saxton's distance from versus debates

Post by 2046 » Sun Feb 09, 2014 4:42 am

I appreciate your effort there, but when I say "organizational nightmare", I mean multiple computers, multiple temporary drives and other media, et cetera. I am the digital equivalent of that hoarder show, but finally got set up with adequate space and am slowly organizing as time permits.

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Re: SWTC and Saxton's distance from versus debates

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Sun Feb 09, 2014 4:52 pm

LOL. I generally wouldn't suggest it but would you try some cloud solution to sort out your issues? :)

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Re: SWTC and Saxton's distance from versus debates

Post by 2046 » Mon Feb 10, 2014 5:46 am

I try not to leverage buzzwords like "cloud" going forward, though holistic approaches could bring to the table synergistic benefits toward aligning with my organizational sustainability goals.


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Re: SWTC and Saxton's distance from versus debates

Post by Picard » Fri Feb 21, 2014 8:09 pm

Just few things... maybe this should go to another thread but I don't remember if such thread exist and if things have been mentioned:
http://www.theforce.net/swtc/isd.html#weaponry-novels
The Imperial Star Destroyer has enough firepower to reduce a civilized world to slag
Imperial Sourcebook, p.61
This has been adressed in another thread... civilized world.
These colossal, wedge-shaped behemoths, bristling with turboweapons and carrying entire TIE squadrons within them, each possess more firepower than the entire planetary forces of most worlds, and can reduce a planet surface to smoking debris in a matter of hours.
Reducing planetary surface to a smoking debris requires far less energy than melting it... a widespread forest fire can do that.
... to rendezvous at Dankayo and reduce the tiny base to molten slag. Even before the last of its atmosphere drifted away, before the dense clouds of atomized topsoil could begin to settle, Imperial transports Elusive and Timely, as well as a complement of TIE fighters, moved in to perform "mop-up" operations and a through search of Dankayo's now evenly-cratered surface.
Tiny base reduced to slag, and "its atmosphere" seems to be referring to atmosphere of the base. From that, Dankayo seems to be an asteroid. (Looking now at Wookiepedia, it was a planet... funnily, while orbital bombardment stripped away its atmosphere, it failed to either fully destroy a minor base or even detonate charges Rebelas have set. NDF, anyone?)

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Re: SWTC and Saxton's distance from versus debates

Post by 2046 » Fri Feb 21, 2014 10:02 pm

Oh, I thought you had found more proto-pages there for a sec, which would have been a surprise.

However, it seems right now that I cannot access the index, which may be just as interesting.

Ah, I see… without explicit pointing to index.htm or html it doesn't work like it used to. See, with any website in the universe, that is a default. I am not even sure how you screw that up … guess he went overboard trying to keep us out.

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Re: SWTC and Saxton's distance from versus debates

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Fri Feb 21, 2014 10:44 pm

Picard wrote:Just few things... maybe this should go to another thread but I don't remember if such thread exist and if things have been mentioned:
http://www.theforce.net/swtc/isd.html#weaponry-novels
The Imperial Star Destroyer has enough firepower to reduce a civilized world to slag
Imperial Sourcebook, p.61
This has been adressed in another thread... civilized world.
These colossal, wedge-shaped behemoths, bristling with turboweapons and carrying entire TIE squadrons within them, each possess more firepower than the entire planetary forces of most worlds, and can reduce a planet surface to smoking debris in a matter of hours.
Reducing planetary surface to a smoking debris requires far less energy than melting it... a widespread forest fire can do that.
... to rendezvous at Dankayo and reduce the tiny base to molten slag. Even before the last of its atmosphere drifted away, before the dense clouds of atomized topsoil could begin to settle, Imperial transports Elusive and Timely, as well as a complement of TIE fighters, moved in to perform "mop-up" operations and a through search of Dankayo's now evenly-cratered surface.
Tiny base reduced to slag, and "its atmosphere" seems to be referring to atmosphere of the base. From that, Dankayo seems to be an asteroid. (Looking now at Wookiepedia, it was a planet... funnily, while orbital bombardment stripped away its atmosphere, it failed to either fully destroy a minor base or even detonate charges Rebelas have set. NDF, anyone?)
Hell, no need to bring something that complex. The moment you have access to ALL data, it's even simpler. ;)

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Re: SWTC and Saxton's distance from versus debates

Post by Lucky » Sun Feb 23, 2014 10:51 am

2046 wrote:I try not to leverage buzzwords like "cloud" going forward, though holistic approaches could bring to the table synergistic benefits toward aligning with my organizational sustainability goals.
Have you tried using something like the Internet Wayback Machine or something similar?http://archive.org/web/

This appears to be one pages that was delete?
http://web.archive.org/web/200708072248 ... fleet.html

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