Mike DiCenso wrote:And you don't need necessarily to have a 1e38 or 10e38J anything, if you can accomplish the same amount of work via a chain reaction. This isn't that hard a concept to understand. Exactly how much energy the superlaser needs to actually impart to initiate the chain reaction is another question altogether. But being as it may, there is an alternative to just DET.
There is no alternative to DET. NONE. Therefore Death Star did need 10^38J of energy.
Mike DiCenso wrote:Then I respond in kind by asking you why would a DET explosion have strange material disappearence, secondary explosions long after the beam is expended into Alderaan, and why a DET caused explosion would result in strange, planar rings? Well, can you?
What is this DET explosion? Can you point me to some physics texbooks that explain the look of a "DET explosion"?
Once again: energy requirements are dictated by the target and not the weapon. If you want to claim that this particular weapon did not have to supply the neccesary energy it's up to you to explain why and provide an alternative power source, presumably within the planet.
Mike DiCenso wrote:Maybe because picking Mars is indeed a good place to start for lower limits, and then work our way up? Mars does meet the vauge critria here as much as any other of the terrestrial planets with an atmosphere capable of holding dust suspended into it.
So in other words your grievance with ICS is that it didn't use lower limits at every turn is that it? Not using lower limits is not the same as "wanking out" SW as I have already said. He could have used a planet the size of Neptune, now that you could call wanking.
Mike DiCenso wrote:Well, it does change things, particularly if a BDZ takes more than a day to accomplish, and now you have dozens, perhaps hundreds of extra TLs to spread the total energy out over.
But these are all assumptions on your part that are no more valid than one hour assumptions. Again it comes down to you insisting that Dr. Saxton should've made more pessimistic assumptions. That is not the same as wanking out SW or writing up numbers without no support. There IS support for the numbers, you can reach them by using reasonable timeframe for the operation and reasonable planet for benchmark.
Mike DiCenso wrote:He actually had overestimated the amount of energy required.
Which means that it
didn't require half dozen ISDs for a month to heat up the atmosphere. Which means that there is no contradiction with BDZ.
Mike DiCenso wrote:Mostly because we don't know what the medium limits should be! If you want true lower limit, then start there, but don't start at the upper medium or the upper possible limit, and not acknowledge it to be in the upper range for a firepower limit.
But we do know. BDZ reduces civilized world to slag. BDZ destroys or resources of a planet. BDZ is so violent that 40 years later it's easier to terraform a new planet than to rebuild the targeted world. BDZ blows off the atmosphere of a planet. BDZ atomizes the topsoil of the planet. Death Star can blow up a planet.
All those facts point to a certain firepower range.
Mike DiCenso wrote:I don't recall such a statement being the case. But the question still remains as whether or not such a maximum is even possible, hence my pointing out the use of Mars as a proper lower limits benchmark instead of the Earth.
Mars has a surface escape velocity if 5km/s and mass of it's atmosphere is 2.5*10^16kg. This means you'd need 3.125*10^23J to blow it's atmosphere off. That is 74,000 gigatons. Assuming 1 hour and 3 ships that is 6.9 gigatons/second just to blow off the atmosphere and not counting the atomization of topsoil and evenly cratering the surface. The trouble is that you can't extend this operation through a one hour interval because the atmosphere will have the time to shed it's energy as heat. In order to blow off the atmosphere you need a relatively small amount of huge blasts each of which will blow off a part of atmosphere.
Mike DiCenso wrote:No contradiction here, except what you are trying to create the illusion of. He did more than merely "consult" with Mike Wong. He was involved actively with a group of known versus debators with a clear agenda to wank out Star Wars firepower above Trek levels. That's all there is to it. That he tries to make some justification for it is only a part of the overall process strawman arguements of yours not withstanding, of course.
And your evidence that he tried to make SW firepower above the ST levels? Except for the fact that he made contact with the eeevil vs debators? You can slander people all you want it only makes you look dishonest.
Mike DiCenso wrote:Well duh! They are the only true canon instances of SW firepower we have to go on that we can at least try to come to some sort of an understanding with.
So I guess if we never saw ISD hitting an asteroid the benchmark you'd be proposing a benchmark of ZERO watts since "duh!" we never seen any other canon instances of SW firepower.
Mike DiCenso wrote:Everything else is spaceships hitting one another with energy shields and hulls armored with alloys we know nothing about. We can at least get a clearer look with the TESB asteroid destruction than we can with Dankayo, since Dankayo isn't portrayed in a visual medium, and not very well described. Not to mention the Dankayo incident conflicts with other EU examples. So given the choice, I'am going to error on the side of caution and pick the movie examples.
But the movies show that Imperial starship can blow up a planet. And it doesn't even have the firepower of the
entire fleet. Way to fo erring on the side of caution by pretending that ISDs don't have gigaton level firepower.
Mike DiCenso wrote:http://theforce.net/jedicouncil/interview/saxton.shtml
He didn't have access to the completed movie by his own admission.
Then there is Ender's quote from SDN:
"I emailed him about how he achieved the values for the 900 Gigajoule
Blaster at the tail of Slave 1. He said that he went by the damage it is
shown to do to other vessels in the comics in battles and assumed that Boba
dialed down the power in the movie [...]. He chose official over canon."
Comicbook visual placed before the movie visuals, then tried to justify it by claiming Slave I's weapons were dialed down, even though the secondary canon of the novelization states that the power packs on Slave I were drained just from firing a few megajoule level shots at Obi-Wan.
I find it very interesting that Saxton would choose to do such a thing.
This is all backstage information. You still provided no evidence that Saxton "cheated". The tendency to try and reconcile various evidence is natural and I see no problem in him assuming that Boba dialed down the power while his father was on the platform.
Mike DiCenso wrote:I don't angrily insist. I merely point out that his work is flawed. The fact that the Death Star SL does not operate on DET as Saxtonites and Warsies insist is not my problem. When Lucas had the DS SL explosion of Alderaan changed for the SE, it forever altered the how of what it was doing.
The matter of planet was scattered at 10,000km/s in both versions. To do that you need 10^38J. It cannot possibly come from the planet therefore it came from the Death Star. You can pretend that basic laws of physics are the invention of "Warsies" and "Saxtonites" all you want.
Mike DiCenso wrote:Ah, while that may be true, he does engage in the Return to Grace thread:
http://www.st-v-sw.net/text/freaks/returngrace.txt
That specifically is a Star Wars versus Star Trek discussion, which he did engage in. Saxton also chose to be part of a group or consult with one that was specifically discussing things a versus debate context. There is simply no way to get around this.
But he commented ONLY on SW weaponry didn't he? And only provided advice and discussion on heat conduction of asteroids didn't he? Obviously he was on the mailing list and only decided to engage in the discussion if sw material. Never did he show any inclination to discuss Star Trek and even if he did so what? Are you saying that any person involved in vs debate is suddenly untrustworthy?
Mike DiCenso wrote:Also, while I was a bit suprised at some slight honesty, let's look at Brian Young's comment again:
Not really necessary. Fragments a centimeter in diameter are still
fragments. Thus, the asteroid was expected to be fragmented, as it was,
just more so.We're looking at a lower limit of about 9 1/4 kilotons, assuming the
asteroid was that size. 210 meters seems like a lot, but it is about
Voyager's size - 100 meters shorter than Voyager's length.
It would take a lower limit of about 290,000 terajoules to vaporize an
asteroid that size, if I calculated correctly, which is about 70 megatons.
That isn't particularly impressive compared to turbolasers. Consider that
this is like hits from all of an Acclamator's point defense guns
simultaneously. It would take over 2850 of these to equal one shot from an
Acclamator's heavy guns.
Note where I emphasized. He gives in a bit, but then turns around and points out that the asteroid is smaller than Darkstar's scaling, that the asteroid was expected to be fragmented, not vaporized (false considering Chakotay's statement about vaporization), and that even with a 70 megaton yeild, the torpedo will not compare at all to an Acclamator heavy gun.
And your point is? He said nothing dishonest merley that one guy said vaporization and other fragmentation so they didn't really know how much of the asteroid would be vaporized.
Nonamer wrote:Like I said previously, a VFX error can be considered if an event doesn't make sense. Given the larger body of evidence of a smaller DSII, between 160-270km, than the bigger ones as well as consistency with previous movies, the smaller DS is much more reasonable. And it is the MF alone, but just about every combat scene in SW that suggests a much lower acceleration speed, including the opening battle scene of ROTS, the slow escape of all the other SW ships in the ending battle scene of AOTC, etc.
In addition to Endor and Geonosis incidents here is an excerpt from TPM novelization:
page 90 wrote:The Nubian shot through the hangar doors, ripping past battle droids and laser fire, lifting away from the city of Theed into the blue, sunlit sky. The planet of Naboo was left behind in secondy, the ship rising into the darkness of space, arcing toward a suddenly visible cluster of Trade Federation battleships blocking it's way.
The planet was left behind in seconds. If we assume it to mean just leaving the atmosphere that's say 10 km in 10 seconds or 1km/s2.
Whooops. But hey I'm sure you'll explain how this is also an error.
Nonamer wrote:Prove that there isn't a unicorn in my closet first. This old tactic is getting increasingly ridiculous and unteniable.
You've got it backwards. You are the one makign the claim, the burden of proof is on you.
Nonamer wrote:It flat out stated the size of the DS II. If it said 2000km you would just all over it as it's just as credible as anything else. Note that the problem here is not the validity of this particular source, but the decisions of Saxton to choose bigger over smaller.
So? One of the early scripts for SW had the Star Destroyers as one man fighters. And for the record I always use 160km DS2 because I don't have the will to fight over every detail with fanatic Trekkies but that doesn't mean Dr. Saxton is lying when he uses 900km figure.
Nonamer wrote:It's been said many times that Dankayo may not be Earth sized, nor does the final destruction suggest something that would blow off an Earth-like atmosphere. And the second is as open to interpretation as you wish. You could say it means slagging merely the civilized parts, or slagging everything down to the upper mantle. It is not very clear and not useful either.
It specifically stated blowing off atmosphere so really now you are again throwing out evidence you don't like.
Nonamer wrote:Not the same thing. Saxton literally scaled the concept art. That's a pretty bad way to find the size of an object.
It's better. Since special effects crew and the director rarely think in terms of numbers but in visual terms of something being huge or small. Which means that the actual scetch will be a lot closer to home than some number.
Nonamer wrote:And what exactly does this jamming do to one's acceleration ability or one's ability to aim at "up"?
I love how you ignored the part about craft surrounding you in the heat of battle. Here is a quote from ANH novelization where Dodonna is briefing his men:
page 181 wrote:"Also, their field generators will probably create a lot of distortion, especially in and around the trench. I figure that maneuverability in that sector will be less than point three." This produced more murmurs and a few groans from the assembly.
See that? Distortions that affect manuverability. And jamming affects your ability to determine the distance to the nearest object so how will you know how long can you accelerate?
Nonamer wrote:To bad you are posting at SFJ.net and you should follow the rules and guidelines of this site.
If you are interested in discussing the SW universe then you should follow the rules of it's creators. Otherwise you are arbitrary picking and choosing what to use.
Nonamer wrote:You should quit it with the Naboo ship bomb. It doesn't help your case. And the ship that was hit by the SPHA-T later crashed back down to the planet. If it was massive enough to absorb the 10^23 some joules of energy, it would flatten the whole region when it crashed.
And you should really start producing some evidence. And the core ship
did flatten the region. Didn't you notice the shockwave?
Nonamer wrote:Hypermatter violates E=MC^2 whereas mass-energy conversion does not.
How does hypermatter violate that formula? And how can you convert planetary mass to energy without supplying a comparable amount of energy?
Nonamer wrote:While there is no known mechanism to easily turn matter to energy, we do know that black holes do it just by crushing the matter through gravity and high energy photons can spontaneously turn into matter. I'm not suggesting that what the DS did was anything like those two examples but that it is totally within real world physics that there exists another mechanism that can do mass energy conversion.
No it isn't within the real world for Death Star to convert large amount of planetary mass to energy without supplying a comparable amount of energy itself.
Mike DiCenso wrote:Thanks for reminding me of that, Nonamer. That's another good example of the flawed methodologies that Saxton has often used in his work. In addition to taking the word of FX technicians who don't really care, or don't really know the size of the ships, and just want to make things "look cool", he takes concept art that suggests a larger Death Star 2 than artwork which is equally numerous that shows it at a smaller size.
It's picking and choosing the evidence, and going for the ones that make Star Wars look more impressive. Never mind that this backstage evidence is contradicted by the highest canon: the movies themselves.
Except that the concept scaling is only one of the numbers he used. Except the movies themselves are inconsistent and sometimes show 900km Death Star.
AnonymousRedShirtEnsign wrote:I'm actually glad Kane used the "it's canon, deal with it argument." That means that 20 Alpha/Beta quadrant ships = the Death Star in terms of firepower, and 40 AQ/BQ is enough to defeat the entirety of the Imperial Starfleet.
By all means show your calculations.
AnonymousRedShirtEnsign wrote:A refit constitution class can traverse the galaxy in a few days.
And yet Voyager needs 70 year. Not that you have any proof they actually went to the center of the galaxy since that place looked nothing like it.
AnonymousRedShirtEnsign wrote:Dr. McCoy can jog 100+ mph (see st-v-sw.net the blog).
How much time passed between Spock catching Kirk and McCoy arriving? Did he have any means of transportation nearby that we haven't seen? A transportation unit?
AnonymousRedShirtEnsign wrote:A single TOS constitution can preform a BDZ (called general order 24),
Uhuh a bulff that Kirk made to some guy keeping him hostage is reliable information. Sure. And I didn't say "It's canon, deal with it" I said "IT HAPPEND. It's canon. Deal with it." General order 24 never HAPPEND.
AnonymousRedShirtEnsign wrote:and its shields can take around 10 teratons worth of TNT before failing.
This is from an actual event or character dialouge stating the number?
AnonymousRedShirtEnsign wrote:Need I go on?
No I think you made quite enough of invalid examples.