SDN TL firepower claims revisited

[Mike DiCenso]

So in effect the usual Startrek Photon Torpedo's lack of visible flash when it hits a shield or even some forms of object might not even be so much of a problem then, dependend on the framerate?

Photon torpedoes have never been much of a problem in that regard, they release their energy almost exclusively as either gamma rays or neutrions, meaning that you won't see much of anything. Of course some of those rays are going to interact with the vaporized casing... but overal photorps shouldn't look like nukes except inside an atmosphere.

In fact, if these and other Sci-Fi explosions are fast enough (i.e. nanosecond range) we'd expect to see very little 'flashes' in space then.. Or am I misinterpretting stuff here?

No, you're right. A single white frame should be seen.

And even that is debatable depending on how you chose to see the 'camera' which we see events from. Is it an actual camera and works as such? Is it an all-seeing eye that doesn't work on the same principles as the camera? Or is it an all-seeing eye seeing it transcribed to a camera with a low framerate? etc.

All of which would describe a free-space explosion more or less. However the previous examples, such as the U.S.S. Yamato stardrive explosion and the nuke hit on Galactica's port flight pod have all had something to interact with to some extent; the antimatter-matter explosion of the Yamato is obviously interacting with the millions tonne hull of the starship there, and the 50 kiloton nuke is interacting with the battlestar's hull (and the nuke missile that delivered the warhead).

Now for a free-space example, I can only think of the torpedo detonations seen in TNG's "Preemptive Strike" where the E-D warns off attacking Maquis ships with several photon torpedoes that are deliberately set to proximity blast. One torpedo detonates between two Maquis ships, knocking them aside, but the explosion is seen in only a few tenths of a second as a bright white flash, then an expanding "flash" of reddish-orange light.
-Mike

[Roondar]

So in effect the usual Startrek Photon Torpedo's lack of visible flash when it hits a shield or even some forms of object might not even be so much of a problem then, dependend on the framerate?

Photon torpedoes have never been much of a problem in that regard, they release their energy almost exclusively as either gamma rays or neutrions, meaning that you won't see much of anything. Of course some of those rays are going to interact with the vaporized casing... but overal photorps shouldn't look like nukes except inside an atmosphere.

In fact, if these and other Sci-Fi explosions are fast enough (i.e. nanosecond range) we'd expect to see very little 'flashes' in space then.. Or am I misinterpretting stuff here?

No, you're right. A single white frame should be seen.

And even that is debatable depending on how you chose to see the 'camera' which we see events from. Is it an actual camera and works as such? Is it an all-seeing eye that doesn't work on the same principles as the camera? Or is it an all-seeing eye seeing it transcribed to a camera with a low framerate? etc.

All of which would describe a free-space explosion more or less. However the previous examples, such as the U.S.S. Yamato stardrive explosion and the nuke hit on Galactica's port flight pod have all had something to interact with to some extent; the antimatter-matter explosion of the Yamato is obviously interacting with the millions tonne hull of the starship there, and the 50 kiloton nuke is interacting with the battlestar's hull (and the nuke missile that delivered the warhead).

On the other hand, dependend on the material for the hull you might still not get that much interaction. Suppose it's made out of 'Sci-Fi ablatives' that actually vaporise in a very controlled and low-energy fashion even when hit with megatons of firepower (after all, this is the same stuff that doesn't even glow when hit with 400GW of thermal energy).. You wouldn't see much interaction then even at relatively high yields?

Now for a free-space example, I can only think of the torpedo detonations seen in TNG's "Preemptive Strike" where the E-D warns off attacking Maquis ships with several photon torpedoes that are deliberately set to proximity blast. One torpedo detonates between two Maquis ships, knocking them aside, but the explosion is seen in only a few tenths of a second as a bright white flash, then an expanding "flash" of reddish-orange light.
-Mike

Quite true, I always found that a very interesting effect myself but it apperantly makes sense. Whadda ya know, Sci Fi artists getting it right. Wonders never cease :P

[Mr. Oragahn]

A simple rule would be less matter, less light and plasma blah blah.
This, of course, doesn't explore, as you said, the existence of materials which can take so much energy that even when damaged, their heat is barely brought up enough to heat them up to a point where the debris and particles would keep glowing after sheared from a hull. Basically, they'd just quickly cool down in space, so fast that you wouldn't see them. Not to count the ejection speeds.

But that asteroid impact was interesting, because it highlighted the chaotic nature of impacts and seems to show the varying speeds relative to such impacts, which in turn creates sort of continuous streams or streaks of luminous hot matter for quite some time, reaching out from the point of impact. Like a perpetual rocket, until the thing dies and cools down enough.

[Mike DiCenso]

On the other hand, dependend on the material for the hull you might still not get that much interaction. Suppose it's made out of 'Sci-Fi ablatives' that actually vaporise in a very controlled and low-energy fashion even when hit with megatons of firepower (after all, this is the same stuff that doesn't even glow when hit with 400GW of thermal energy).. You wouldn't see much interaction then even at relatively high yields?

I think there would be quite a bit of interaction given that the Galactica's hull around the forward port flight pod was not only rendered signficantly charred, but actually ruptured open to space and fires started. In Star Trek, we rarely see torpedo hits against bare hull, though we do see charred and vaporized hull in ST:Generations when the BoP hits the E-D twice in the stardrive with torpedoes.
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

On the other hand, dependend on the material for the hull you might still not get that much interaction. Suppose it's made out of 'Sci-Fi ablatives' that actually vaporise in a very controlled and low-energy fashion even when hit with megatons of firepower (after all, this is the same stuff that doesn't even glow when hit with 400GW of thermal energy).. You wouldn't see much interaction then even at relatively high yields?

I think there would be quite a bit of interaction given that the Galactica's hull around the forward port flight pod was not only rendered signficantly charred, but actually ruptured open to space and fires started. In Star Trek, we rarely see torpedo hits against bare hull, though we do see charred and vaporized hull in ST:Generations when the BoP hits the E-D twice in the stardrive with torpedoes.
-Mike

In FC, the Cube got direct hits, pretty colours, but terribly tame in lieu of what should have been seen.
We also had a similar incident which WILGA documented with his animations, an armed cargo firing a torp thing at a klingon ship and its cocky crew who had brought shields down.

[Roondar]

In essence Sci Fi/Magic materials could solve a big part of the 'yields seem to low' predicament.

I mean, if photon torpedoes can only be judged on their effects on enemy ships they'd be supremely weak weapons - far less powerful than what even the most lowly SDN calculations (though the same would go for any SW weapon hit on a hull of course).

Just look at the hits in ST:VI for an example what I mean. If no magic materials where in place even a photon torpedo with a few hundred kilotons of yield would have utterly destroyed the entire Enterprise-A and probably damaged the other ships in the region as well. Instead it just blows out a small round section of saucer hull.

Now naturally we also have other data, such as asteroids being blown up and starships being able to destroy all life in a civilization with only a couple of hundred of torpedoes so we know that something else is going on (or, dependent on the episode you view a small fleet can surgically remove a planet from existence all together).

In my view that discrepancy can be answered with superior (read: magical) materials that can take a hell of a beating compared to what we can make today. This is readily supported in the episodes of Startrek with hull temperatures reaching many thousands of degrees quite often without any visible damage afterward.

[Mr. Oragahn]

This does not really work so much when a barrage of high yield torpedoes and phaser beams strike the same point in the guts of a Cube venting atmosphere.

[Praeothmin]

This does not really work so much when a barrage of high yield torpedoes and phaser beams strike the same point in the guts of a Cube venting atmosphere.

If you mean ST:FC, the first explosions were on the surface of the Cube, so there might not have been atmosphere yet.
The other explosions (the ones were Picard leads the other ships in targetting a specific location), though, were much deeper in the Cube, thus perhaps the biggest parts of the explosions were insinde the ship, which would explain the fact that it explodes afterwards...

And things get even worse for SW, in AotC, on Geonosis, the Sphats fire at the Separatists vessels in an atmosphere, and yet the blasts are really low.
So we can use the same excuse as the Warsies to up the scale of the explosions in ST... ;)

[PunkMaister]

So we can use the same excuse as the Warsies to up the scale of the explosions in ST... ;)

In ST and in just about every other Scifi universe that annoys the heck out of Warsies not XORfor the win! :D

[Mr. Oragahn]

This does not really work so much when a barrage of high yield torpedoes and phaser beams strike the same point in the guts of a Cube venting atmosphere.

If you mean ST:FC, the first explosions were on the surface of the Cube, so there might not have been atmosphere yet.
The other explosions (the ones were Picard leads the other ships in targetting a specific location), though, were much deeper in the Cube, thus perhaps the biggest parts of the explosions were insinde the ship, which would explain the fact that it explodes afterwards...

And things get even worse for SW, in AotC, on Geonosis, the Sphats fire at the Separatists vessels in an atmosphere, and yet the blasts are really low.
So we can use the same excuse as the Warsies to up the scale of the explosions in ST... ;)

Nope, the sheer amount of energy and power liberated by the torps and phasers inside the Cube couldn't be contained in such a way that the ejecta making it out (...) would be that tame. The whole thing should have been spitting rays of white matter, like for the probe impact.

As for SW, there's not much evidence that armour could take such insane amounts of power anyway. My stance is that shields can take, eventually, low to mid megatons of energy, to make things simple, but the armour is not that strong.

[watchdog]

I know I am coming into this a bit late and the discussion has moved on but, I recall in my early days in this debate the few times I actually debated MW directly this was one of the subjects. I pointed out that it made more sense that Lukes shots set off an explosion because it hit something volatile on the DS surface, MW insisted that the idea the imperials would leave power conduits or something on the surface of the DS was silly. But then again we are talking about people who haven't discovered rails for the many deep pits they build on all of their facilities.
The actual scene you see single shots impacting in various areas and only raising a few sparks and then several shots all converge on one spot causing the explosion. You could probably still make a case for vaporisation I suppose, but then that calls into question why a fleet of large starships with far more powerful weapons couldn't do the same thing on a much grander scale.
I mean if one little X-wing can vaporise a big chunk out of the Death Star so easily, then whats to stop a large fleet from BDZ'ing the shit out of it?

[Mike DiCenso]

Nope, the sheer amount of energy and power liberated by the torps and phasers inside the Cube couldn't be contained in such a way that the ejecta making it out (...) would be that tame. The whole thing should have been spitting rays of white matter, like for the probe impact.

So how would the magical structural integrity fields that ST ships have in them affect that? We're not just talking shields and hull materials here.
-Mike

[Mike DiCenso]

I know I am coming into this a bit late and the discussion has moved on but, I recall in my early days in this debate the few times I actually debated MW directly this was one of the subjects. I pointed out that it made more sense that Lukes shots set off an explosion because it hit something volatile on the DS surface, MW insisted that the idea the imperials would leave power conduits or something on the surface of the DS was silly. But then again we are talking about people who haven't discovered rails for the many deep pits they build on all of their facilities.
The actual scene you see single shots impacting in various areas and only raising a few sparks and then several shots all converge on one spot causing the explosion. You could probably still make a case for vaporisation I suppose, but then that calls into question why a fleet of large starships with far more powerful weapons couldn't do the same thing on a much grander scale.

Wow, that's an amazing thing for Mike Wong to be saying since anyone who's watched ANH and RoTJ can see for themselves all the nifty greeblings that just happen to look like pipes lining various parts of the Death Star's surface, and many of the targets that the X-wings hit, such as Luke's second one, are turbolaser emplacements which probably are loaded for bear with power conduits and ammunition stores that can be set off by the starfighter lasers.

I mean if one little X-wing can vaporise a big chunk out of the Death Star so easily, then whats to stop a large fleet from BDZ'ing the shit out of it?

That magnetic shield that the starfighters had to slip beneath?
-Mike

[watchdog]

Wow, that's an amazing thing for Mike Wong to be saying since anyone who's watched ANH and RoTJ can see for themselves all the nifty greeblings that just happen to look like pipes lining various parts of the Death Star's surface, and many of the targets that the X-wings hit, such as Luke's second one, are turbolaser emplacements which probably are loaded for bear with power conduits and ammunition stores that can be set off by the starfighter lasers.

I could say that this was early in the great debate (around 96 or 97 or so), but I've seen your point being made back on SB way back then as well.

That magnetic shield that the starfighters had to slip beneath?
-Mike

Yeah I know, but I just wanted to make a pont. What if a sizeable fleet slipped under the magnetic field as well?

[Mike DiCenso]

In order for a sizeable fleet to get under the shield, they'd have to avoid being blasted by all those thousands of turbolasers. The whole point of using the small starfighters is precisely because they could slip past the defenses due to the Empire not considering them a threat to the battlestation, but the Imperial designers did consider captial ships to be a real threat and so designed accordingly.
-Mike