Right, but that his site is devoted to Star Trek versus Star Wars, still makes Curtis Saxton's involvement rather interesting. The Return to Grace exchange has Saxton appearing to respond to Young on the issue of the TESB asteroids, but then, almost as an afterthought, he appears to respond to Sean with the following:Socar wrote:Here is the whole thing:Mike DiCenso wrote:I bold high-lighted the statement of contention here. But the sentence is being asked in the form of a question, Socar.
"It is possible that we undercalculated this for the ICS, or some of the larger ones may have been hit twice. Things happen so fast, it's hard to tell even frame by frame. But the scaling here is more reliable than most of the ones in TESB, they all either fragmented or vaporized (most of them), and this is fighter-scale weaponry. These things make it a better comparison to Trek."
It seems to me that it's just Brian Young just giving some alternative explanations. I don't really see him asking anything.
Well, since Wayne Poe already stated that he was asking the group as a whole to look at updates that he was going to put on his website (presumably the Trek vs Wars part of his website, obviously), I'm not really sure what kind of explanation you're looking for. Perhaps they were just trying to find good examples of Wars' asteroid destroying capability compared to Trek's for Wayne's page.Mike DiCenso wrote:That last sentence in quotes there is another curiosity, too, that I'd like a good explanation for.
"
Brian,
> The bolt hits one side, and superheats it. This superheated material
> superheats the next part, which superheats the next part, until all of
> the mass is superheated. This happens faster than the expansion stress
> can shatter the asteroid.
Mostly right, but needs clarification of the mechanism of heat transfer.
A small mass in the path of the beam receives the initial heat deposit.
This mass expands (due to its overpressure) at a rate that exceeds the
sound speed within the solid. Thus solid matter is swept up by this blast
wave (the correct physics term) without feeling any precursor disturbance.
(The blastwave outruns any vibration or conductive warming.) Kinetic
energy of the expansion is thermalised directly within the upswept
material; it is instantly vaporised at the blastwave if the energy is
great enough.
NB. the mechanism of heat transfer within the asteroid is blastwave
expansion, not passive heat conduction. The expanding gas simply sweeps
up the material in its path, dissociating it at the atomic level upon
contact. In the SW case, there's no chance for solid fragments to
survive.
If you input somewhat less than the vaporisation energy of the whole
asteroid, then the blastwave will grow to the radius where the shock
temperature is diminished below the vaporisation temperature of the rock.
Propagating outwards from that stage: a disruptive shockwave or vibration
in the solid. Fragmentation is likely throughout the surrounding,
surviving solid matter.
If the energy from the weapon is injected too slowly then passive heat
conduction and vibration may be efficient enough to spread the heat
throughout the asteroid without a violent blastwave.
Curtis.
sean:
Lord Poe's correct, though: the asteroid Groumall destroyed with the planetary disruptor is very close to the first asteroid's size--maybe just a hair larger.
I measured the disruptor bolt's size relative to the BoP's keel, right before impact (see McC's "Battle038." Outstanding vidcaps btw, McC!).
As we established, the Bird's engineering hull is about 25m wide. The bolt is easily a fifth that--almost 6m wide by my measurements.
Compare that to McC's "Asteroid09," a frame or two before the bolt actually connects. In that image, I find the asteroid is 61 pixels by 73 to the bolt's 15. Thus, the second asteroid's ~24m high and 28m wide vs. the first's 10-20m diameter."
Now is this Saxton, or is this someone else slipping in a comment, but pasted it right behind Saxton's comment without attribution? I'am open to a reasonable explanation, but I'd like proof. But otherwise it does look like Saxton is involved with a behind-the-scenes versus exchange for the purpose of wanking up SW over ST. In particular, if this is indeed Saxton's commentary, he is specifically doing so about the "Return to Grace" asteroid destruction. That he made these comments, apparently knowing that it would be used on a known versus debate site, only raises questions concerning his [Saxton's] neutrality, which is a part of the issue. Also we still have the "It is possible that we undercalculated this for the ICS", be a question or statement. "We calculated", not "Curtis calculated" for ICS. Interesting.
-Mike