Construction of ships in both verses

[Kane Starkiller]

Precisely that. The was only one truely complete (smaller) Death Star, Kane, and one partially built (larger) one. It's "in theory" that the second Death Star would have been a complete one. As it was, we saw no others.

Ah I see what you mean. It is of no consequence however since I only referred to the first Death Star.

Oh come on, Kane. It should be obvious. The Death Stars were not common vessels in the Imperial fleet the way, say ISDs or Venators are. They were terribly unique in size and number.

What did it cost the Empire? The EU doesn't really give us a clue to that, though it does mention toward the end of the novel Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader that it represented a signficant expenditure of the Imperial Navy budget. It is that large expenditure that tips off Mon Motha to it's existance, and she makes plans to find out what this secret project is.

Again how many Death Stars are there is irrelevant. We are comparing what kind of ship size can various factions accomplish. By the way could you point the page in which Death Star's expenditure is discussed?

The Galaxy class started out with a handful of ships in TNG, and became a nearly common sight during the Dominion War campaigns of DS9. The loss of 3 ships, while terrible, did not affect the Federation building numerous GCS simultaeously (as per the Utopia Planita shipyard scenes in VOY's "Relativity" showing at least 4 GCS). The Death Stars are not common ships, and it remains to be seen what it really cost the Empire to build them. I remind you that canonically it took over 23 years to plan and build the first Death Star, and the Empire did not get around to constructing a second one for about 5 years post-ANH and the destruction of the first (The RoTJ novelization on page one states that "many years" had gone by since the loss of the DS1).

You showed no evidence as to number of Galaxy class ships before or after the beginning of the Dominion war. "Handful" is not really helpful. What we know is that they have more than 5 or so.

Are you really saying that the four or so GCS seen at Utopia Planitia are the same 5 GCS in all of the known seperate fleet combats of the Dominion War where GCS are visually confirmed, or in VOY's "Endgame" with at least 5 GCS? There are quite a decent number of these ships out there.

According to the link there were actually two or three different Galaxy class ships in the Utopia Planitia. And I honestly don't know whether those Galaxies are the same we see in later instances during the Dominion war. There is no evidence either way.

Some were. The one in "Dark Frontier" that the Raven chases is 3 km. But that is neither here nor there as a Borg cube ship is a far more efficent design volume-wise regardless or whether it is 500, 3,000, or 5,000 meters wide. A wedge-shaped star destroyer of longer linear dimensions will just simply not be able to compete. It's that simple.

Again, the point of it is to illustrate a signficant design philosphy difference.

Star Destroyer will be smaller but then again Star Destroyer is a long way from being the largest ship the Empire fields.

Actually, the USSR before it's collapse was in the process of building a supercarrier of equivenent size and capability to the U.S. Navy's Nimitz class, the Ul'yanovsk class with the prior Kuznetsov class being laid down and one vessel completed that was comparable in size (300 meters) to the U.S. Navy's USS Midway.

That being said, the three powers (Federation, Romulan and Dominion) are close enough that it is concievable that the Federation, should it so choose, could build a D'Deridex or Battleship sized vessel. These are a point of comparison to three powers in the same univers and galaxy that are rough par with one another. The Galactic Empire, on the other hand, has no other signficant equivalent power to compare with in it's universe and galaxy.

Ul'yanovsk was never more than a project and Kuznetsov was much smaller and wasn't nuclear powered. Standard displacement was 67,500 tonnes full load compared to 87,000 tonnes Nimitz.
Romulans and Dominion are comparable to Federation, as I said, but again comparable is not identical. Which means that Romulan and Dominion capabilities cannot be assumed to naturally translate to Federation.

The Promethus class is under the saucer, as is one of the Sphere Builder ships when it is destroyed. There is also a fleeting view of a Prometheus flying past the window which clearly puts it under the E-J's saucer. All-in-all, the E-J is a really freaking huge ship.

There are no points of reference to peg the location of Prometheus. There is no way to determine how far away is Prometheus.

I think not. It has only traversed hyperspace and "maneuvered" (orbited at speeds marginally differentiable from a natural orbit) only close to a planet, something that can be done with antigravity drive. There is no indication that it has substantially fueled thrusters, necessary for maneuvering in deep space.

We clearly see it approaching Alderaan and aligning it's position. We see it enter the low orbit around Yavin and then orbiting. This is clear evidence the ship can manouver.

Not at all. They point out the many and varied standards by which we might choose to use one nomenclature or the other. It is not a question of colloquial vs technical; it is a question of choice of definition.

I already quoted the Merriam-Webster definition of a starship "a spacecraft capable of interstellar travel". You cannot arbitrarily change definition to suit your purposes. Not to mention that whether something is a base of operations has nothing to do with whether it's a starship.

The Empire spent over twenty years building a single probe droid, and some five more years passed before it could get halfway done with the next improved model? Probe droids are a feared superweapon that pose the question if conventional fleets have become obsolete?

I already explained the point of my analogy. The point is that they are not "special". Empire built them thus proving building them is within it's technological and industrial capacity. It is an example of a kind of starship Empire can build and it is 90 million times bigger than the starship Federation can build. Declaring the Death Star "special" because only one was seen completed is nothing but an attempt to ignore evidence.

It is the largest in the G canon, and the largest actually deployed by Palpatine's original Empire (Battle of Coruscant to Battle of Endor) unless we choose to count the Death Star as a ship. Which is a debatable point.

Death Star is the largest starship in G canon and that is not debatable unless you feel you can arbitrarily discard Merriam-Webster's definition of a starship that Death Star satisfies.

Not all Voyager type cubes. Cubes have varied wildly in size, from only about twice the size of a ISD (500m is 2.5 times the volume of an ISD) on up. A 1600m ISD [arguable but mostly accepted size] is equivalent in volume to a 375m cube or 450m sphere.

It is in Voyager, in fact, that we have one that the volume is explicit (28 cubic kilometers). Even the largest [disputed] scaling of the SSD only puts it at a bit under 16 cubic km, or equivalent to a 2.5 km cube. The smallest [disputed] scaling of the SSD puts it roughly on par with a 1050m cube, while the largest ship deployed in numbers by anybody in the movies (TF battleship) is volumetrically equivalent to a 1250m cube.

Just FYI for everybody who doesn't feel like whipping out a calculator to check their intuition.

I never disputed any of this. The point exactly is that not every Borg cube is 3km wide. And not even the largest 3km variant comes close to largest ship we have seen the Empire field.

[Jedi Master Spock]

We clearly see it approaching Alderaan and aligning it's position. We see it enter the low orbit around Yavin and then orbiting. This is clear evidence the ship can manouver.

"Orbiting" is not maneuvering. For all we know from the films, it is actually possible (albeit on the edge of normal parameters) to model the Death Star as having an almost completely ballistic trajectory - and, as I pointed out, it does nothing requiring thrusters. Simply things requiring at most an antigravity drive, which only functions within a gravity well.

I already quoted the Merriam-Webster definition of a starship "a spacecraft capable of interstellar travel". You cannot arbitrarily change definition to suit your purposes. Not to mention that whether something is a base of operations has nothing to do with whether it's a starship.

Craft, i.e., ship, the basis of which is disputable. Is the Death Star a craft, or a station? We can say yes; we can say no. Both are justifiable positions.

I already explained the point of my analogy. The point is that they are not "special". Empire built them thus proving building them is within it's technological and industrial capacity. It is an example of a kind of starship Empire can build and it is 90 million times bigger than the starship Federation can build. Declaring the Death Star "special" because only one was seen completed is nothing but an attempt to ignore evidence.

They are special. Only one was ever actually built, and it behaves completely differently from everything else. That fits "special" to a T. Any argument predicated on the assertion that the Death Star is not special is invalidated by this fact.

Death Star is the largest starship in G canon and that is not debatable unless you feel you can arbitrarily discard Merriam-Webster's definition of a starship that Death Star satisfies.

Not so. See above. Your argument is incomplete and does not address the original objection, namely, that whether or not the Death Star is a ship to start with is disputable.

I never disputed any of this. The point exactly is that not every Borg cube is 3km wide. And not even the largest 3km variant comes close to largest ship we have seen the Empire field.

The Death Star is, as I have pointed out, of debatable status - nor is, incidentally, 3 km necessarily the largest Borg cube.

Not all cubes are easily scaled, and some scale inconsistently; however, due to the vast difference in engineering requirements between a common vessel that maneuvers sharply and has fast STL speeds, and a unique station/ship that does not do either, it is not an appropriate comparison of construction techniques.

[Kane Starkiller]

"Orbiting" is not maneuvering. For all we know from the films, it is actually possible (albeit on the edge of normal parameters) to model the Death Star as having an almost completely ballistic trajectory - and, as I pointed out, it does nothing requiring thrusters. Simply things requiring at most an antigravity drive, which only functions within a gravity well.

Wrong again. Death Star had to enter the orbit first and align it's position under it's own power. And you still haven't addressed the Alderaan approach where no orbiting was involved.

Craft, i.e., ship, the basis of which is disputable. Is the Death Star a craft, or a station? We can say yes; we can say no. Both are justifiable positions.

Need I quote Merriam-Webster again?
Starship:a spacecraft designed for interstellar travel
Spacecraft:a vehicle or device designed for travel or operation outside the earth's atmosphere
Therefore a starship is "a vehicle or device designed for travel or operation outside the earth's atmosphere, designed for interstellar travel". Death Star qualifies.

They are special. Only one was ever actually built, and it behaves completely differently from everything else. That fits "special" to a T. Any argument predicated on the assertion that the Death Star is not special is invalidated by this fact.

How many were built is irrelevant as are it's specific characteristics other than those that define a starship, definition of which is provided above.

The Death Star is, as I have pointed out, of debatable status - nor is, incidentally, 3 km necessarily the largest Borg cube.

Not all cubes are easily scaled, and some scale inconsistently; however, due to the vast difference in engineering requirements between a common vessel that maneuvers sharply and has fast STL speeds, and a unique station/ship that does not do either, it is not an appropriate comparison of construction techniques.

Maneuvering ability depends on the size of the ship. Death Star is 32,000 times bigger than a 3km variant Borg cube, actually 76,000 times larger since 160km diameter was confirmed in the "Death Star" novel. Is 3km variant 76,000 times more maneuverable than Death Star? Death Star is 17 million times bigger than the 500m variant. Is that variant 17 million times more maneuverable?

[Jedi Master Spock]

"Orbiting" is not maneuvering. For all we know from the films, it is actually possible (albeit on the edge of normal parameters) to model the Death Star as having an almost completely ballistic trajectory - and, as I pointed out, it does nothing requiring thrusters. Simply things requiring at most an antigravity drive, which only functions within a gravity well.

Wrong again. Death Star had to enter the orbit first and align it's position under it's own power. And you still haven't addressed the Alderaan approach where no orbiting was involved.

Which could also be ballistic or nearly ballistic. Watch the films - there's not very much indicated about the details of the Death Star's path.

Need I quote Merriam-Webster again?
Starship:a spacecraft designed for interstellar travel
Spacecraft:a vehicle or device designed for travel or operation outside the earth's atmosphere
Therefore a starship is "a vehicle or device designed for travel or operation outside the earth's atmosphere, designed for interstellar travel". Death Star qualifies.

As a "device"? As a "vehicle"? We can continue along this vein forever.

A starship is a kind of space ship, which has the ability of interstellar travel. A ship is a kind of vehicle. Whether or not the Death Star is a vehicle is disputable.

Again, you're not addressing the base problem, which is to say that the Death Star is well within the fuzzy area.

How many were built is irrelevant as are it's specific characteristics other than those that define a starship, definition of which is provided above.

How many were built is quite relevant as to determining how special it is.

Whether or not we call the Death Star a starship proper is a simple issue of semantics; what we choose to conclude about Imperial starships based on the Death Star is wholly relevant on the actual behavior of the Death Star... and the fact that the Death Star is very much special.

Maneuvering ability depends on the size of the ship. Death Star is 32,000 times bigger than a 3km variant Borg cube, actually 76,000 times larger since 160km diameter was confirmed in the "Death Star" novel. Is 3km variant 76,000 times more maneuverable than Death Star? Death Star is 17 million times bigger than the 500m variant. Is that variant 17 million times more maneuverable?

The "Death Star" novel is on the same level of so-called "canon" as the rest of the disputed sources.

Re: Maneuverability... noting first that power supply is generally proportionate to mass, the moment of inertia of a uniform cube (about the normal axes) is proportional to 2/3 r^2, and the moment of inertia of a uniform sphere is proportional to 2/5 r^2, the Death Star's ability to turn is not so strange for its size. We'd expect about 4,000 times the turning acceleration for a cube, but since cubes behave the same on all facings, they usually don't rotate.

As Saxton has calculated, the most generous possible figure for the angular acceleration of any Death Star is 300 microradians per second squared. Multiply this by 4,000, and we have 1.2 radians per second squared - a rotation we would not be surprised to see a cube make.

Effective maneuverability? Since a Borg cube's sides are not distinct, it must rotate at most 1/4 as much as a Death Star. To have equivalent maneuverability at Death Star size, we must expect the 3 km cube to have less than 0.3 radians per second squared angular acceleration.

That's assuming the Death Star's exotic core is not significantly denser than the upper layers, but they have similar overall densities. Frankly, I expect the cubes to have an overall higher density, and the Death Star to have a core-weighted mass distribution.

We expect similar linear acceleration, however. That's proportionate to raw mass. The Death Star has a tiny fraction of a percent - 1/4400th, at most, of the of the linear acceleration of the cube in "Best of Both Worlds," and may not be able to provide this thrust outside of a gravity well. Push comes to shove, it is this ability to provide thrust which defines the thing as a vehicle as opposed to a stationary object - and standards vary.

[Kane Starkiller]

Which could also be ballistic or nearly ballistic. Watch the films - there's not very much indicated about the details of the Death Star's path.

I have watched the films. You'll notice that Death Star doesn't even point towards Alderaan at first. It obviously maneuvers into position. Not to mention that it needed to ultimately escape Yavin's gravitational field after a successful mission.

As a "device"? As a "vehicle"? We can continue along this vein forever.

A starship is a kind of space ship, which has the ability of interstellar travel. A ship is a kind of vehicle. Whether or not the Death Star is a vehicle is disputable.

Again, you're not addressing the base problem, which is to say that the Death Star is well within the fuzzy area.

You could've easily entered "device" and "vehicle" in the dictionary and see whether Death Star fits the definition yourself. But as you indeed seem intent on continuing "on this vein forever" I will obviously have to provide the required definitions:

Device

1: something devised or contrived: as a (1): plan, procedure, technique (2): a scheme to deceive : stratagem, trick b: something fanciful, elaborate, or intricate in design c: something (as a figure of speech) in a literary work designed to achieve a particular artistic effect darchaic : masque, spectacle e: a conventional stage practice or means (as a stage whisper) used to achieve a particular dramatic effect f: a piece of equipment or a mechanism designed to serve a special purpose or perform a special function <an electronic device>
2: desire, inclination <left to my own devices>
3: an emblematic design used especially as a heraldic bearing

Of interest is 1.f: "a piece of equipment or a mechanism designed to serve a special purpose or perform a special function".
Death Star qualifies unless you are going to dispute the fact that Death Star is a mechanism designed to serve a special purpose.

Vehicle

1 a: an inert medium (as a syrup) in which a medicinally active agent is administered b: any of various media acting usually as solvents, carriers, or binders for active ingredients or pigments
2: an agent of transmission : carrier
3: a medium through which something is expressed, achieved, or displayed <an investment vehicle>; especially : a work created especially to display the talents of a particular performer
4: a means of carrying or transporting something <planes, trains, and other vehicles>: as a: motor vehicle b: a piece of mechanized equipment

Of interest is definition 4: "a means of carrying or transporting something". Again Death Star fits the definition, it carried troops, starfighters, equipement etc.

As we can see Death Star qualifies both as a device AND as a vehicle.

How many were built is quite relevant as to determining how special it is.

Whether or not we call the Death Star a starship proper is a simple issue of semantics; what we choose to conclude about Imperial starships based on the Death Star is wholly relevant on the actual behavior of the Death Star... and the fact that the Death Star is very much special.

You have repeated that Death Star is "special" several times without explaining how that changes the fact that Death Star is an example of the kind of starship Empire is capable of constructing. That Death Star has further capabilities in addition to those that define a starship only make it that much more impressive.

The "Death Star" novel is on the same level of so-called "canon" as the rest of the disputed sources.

I am not aware of any sources above the novel other than the films. And films only allow scaling from the Millenium Falcon. Scaling something so large from something as small as Millenium Falcon whose size itself is not precisely set will lead to errors. Thus there are no sources that contradict the novel and supercede it at the same time.

Re: Maneuverability... noting first that power supply is generally proportionate to mass, the moment of inertia of a uniform cube (about the normal axes) is proportional to 2/3 r^2, and the moment of inertia of a uniform sphere is proportional to 2/5 r^2, the Death Star's ability to turn is not so strange for its size. We'd expect about 4,000 times the turning acceleration for a cube, but since cubes behave the same on all facings, they usually don't rotate.

As Saxton has calculated, the most generous possible figure for the angular acceleration of any Death Star is 300 microradians per second squared. Multiply this by 4,000, and we have 1.2 radians per second squared - a rotation we would not be surprised to see a cube make.

First moment of inertia for a sphere is Is=2/5*m*r^2 while moment of inertia for cube is Ic=1/6*m*a^2 where a is the side of the cube.
As we can see moment of inertia is proportional to square of radius AND mass not only to square radius as you suggested. Since mass is proportional to third power of radius and cube side respectively moment of inertia will be proportional to fifth power of radius/side.
Thus moment of inertia for Death Star will be over 100 million times greater than that of a 3km Borg cube variant.
This means that Borg cube (of a 3km variant) would have to spin at 100*10^6*300*10^-6 or 30,000 rad/s2 or 1,740,000 degrees/s2.

In other words after half a second of angular acceleration a cube should already be making 0.5*1,740,000/360 or 2400 complete rotations per second. I very much doubt we have ever seen a cube do anything remotely similar to that.

That's assuming the Death Star's exotic core is not significantly denser than the upper layers, but they have similar overall densities. Frankly, I expect the cubes to have an overall higher density, and the Death Star to have a core-weighted mass distribution.

What evidence do you have for this assertion?

We expect similar linear acceleration, however. That's proportionate to raw mass. The Death Star has a tiny fraction of a percent - 1/4400th, at most, of the of the linear acceleration of the cube in "Best of Both Worlds," and may not be able to provide this thrust outside of a gravity well. Push comes to shove, it is this ability to provide thrust which defines the thing as a vehicle as opposed to a stationary object - and standards vary.

I would like to know how you reached the 1/4400 figure. Not to mention that size of that particular cube is unreliable:

Notice that Enterprise is just exiting the nebula and is thus behind the cube.

[Roondar]

You have repeated that Death Star is "special" several times without explaining how that changes the fact that Death Star is an example of the kind of starship Empire is capable of constructing. That Death Star has further capabilities in addition to those that define a starship only make it that much more impressive.

Heh, nice one.

Well, it's obviously important. You are trying very hard to make it sound as if the DS is just another ship of the line. The implication being the empire can just build a whole lot of em if they so desire. Yet in reality they only ever managed to build 1 1/2 of em.

It's special in that the empire won't be making a ton of them. There won't be an Imperial Death Star class. They take years to make just a single one of them. Surely you can see that while they are capable of making them they won't be making them as standard ship class?

See, no one in his right mind will deny that the Empire built a complete Deathstar (and another half complete one). What JMS means is that suggesting this is 'par for the course' is a tad unfair. In fact, as far as I understand things even in the EU the ships built by any side are not that big ever again (though I could be wrong here).

That is why it is special. Because it's an extreme that not only takes ages to build but also is actually only constructed to completion once. Frankly, at the rate they've managed to lose the DS-es I wouldn't want to be bragging about them so much. Years of building for days of operation doesn't sound like wise budgeting to me ;)

[Kane Starkiller]

I'm not saying that Empire can build fleets of Death Stars. Merely that Death Star is an example of a kind of starship Empire can build. That is all. Empire can build ships 90 million times larger than what Federation can build.
Nothing more nothing less.

[Mike DiCenso]

On the other hand there is this series of screen caps from "Q Who?"where the E-D is seen flying in towards this particular cube, which might also be the same one as the cube seen in BoBW. Compare the damage holes the E-D flies by to the the rest of the cube in the other images on that page. That cube is easily on the order of 6 km to a side.

In DS9's"Emissary", the Excelsior class USS Melbourne is shown 4th row of thumbnails drifting in near the cube ship. The cube here being at least 1 km to a side here. Again, this is supposed to be the same cube ship in the other images you provided.
-Mike

[Kane Starkiller]

Actually in the closeup scene (qwho233.jpg) the hole is slightly less wide than Enterprise which accounting for the way it's facing the camera should be about 500m wide. According to the qwho237.jpg the hole is about 7 times less wide than the cube itself. This makes the cube 3500m wide not 6km.
But as I said the size is unreliable with different scenes pointing to conflicting upper and lower limits.

[Mike DiCenso]

I was actually measuring the E-D against the two smaller upper left damage holes, but it could also be flying by the two larger ones on the lower right as well.

As with the Millenium Falcon scaling issue, you can average out the disparate numbers, or you can assume in some cases we really are seeing different size cubes. If you average them out you would get at least 1.67 km to a side for that particular cube.

But JMS and my original point about the cube shape being more efficent volume-wise than that of the star destroyer "dagger" of the same or greater linear dimensions still stands.
-Mike

[Jedi Master Spock]

I have watched the films. You'll notice that Death Star doesn't even point towards Alderaan at first. It obviously maneuvers into position. Not to mention that it needed to ultimately escape Yavin's gravitational field after a successful mission.

The Death Star exits hyperspace at roughly the same distance it fires. It spends a number of minutes slowly rotating to bring the dish to bear. There is no significant maneuvering involved; nor did it need to maneuver in sublight away from Yavin, but rather engage hyperlight after some suitable recharge time.

You could've easily entered "device" and "vehicle" in the dictionary and see whether Death Star fits the definition yourself. But as you indeed seem intent on continuing "on this vein forever" I will obviously have to provide the required definitions:

Device

1: something devised or contrived: as a (1): plan, procedure, technique (2): a scheme to deceive : stratagem, trick b: something fanciful, elaborate, or intricate in design c: something (as a figure of speech) in a literary work designed to achieve a particular artistic effect darchaic : masque, spectacle e: a conventional stage practice or means (as a stage whisper) used to achieve a particular dramatic effect f: a piece of equipment or a mechanism designed to serve a special purpose or perform a special function <an electronic device>
2: desire, inclination <left to my own devices>
3: an emblematic design used especially as a heraldic bearing

Of interest is 1.f: "a piece of equipment or a mechanism designed to serve a special purpose or perform a special function".
Death Star qualifies unless you are going to dispute the fact that Death Star is a mechanism designed to serve a special purpose.

A device, however, is not necessarily a craft. Point irrelevant here; the sort of "craft" which can be a starship is solely the vehicular variety.

The superlaser is a "device." The Death Star is a "device" only in the loosest sense of the word, not being a particular piece of equipment or a singular mechanism. It is no more a device than an airport is a device.

Vehicle

1 a: an inert medium (as a syrup) in which a medicinally active agent is administered b: any of various media acting usually as solvents, carriers, or binders for active ingredients or pigments
2: an agent of transmission : carrier
3: a medium through which something is expressed, achieved, or displayed <an investment vehicle>; especially : a work created especially to display the talents of a particular performer
4: a means of carrying or transporting something <planes, trains, and other vehicles>: as a: motor vehicle b: a piece of mechanized equipment

Of interest is definition 4: "a means of carrying or transporting something". Again Death Star fits the definition, it carried troops, starfighters, equipement etc.

But only transports them on the scale of system to system. Thus, a vehicle only in the sense of hyperlight transportation, while failing to qualify as a "vehicle" by other measures (it does not really transport objects within real space, nor is that its main function; the Death Star is a means of destroying planets primarily.)

Things are carried to the Death Star and carried from the Death Star. Transport of troops, starfighters, etc is not its primary purpose, nor, by all intents and appearances, can it do so through normal space movement. It "carries" them no more than a starbase "carries" starships. If Deep Space Nine were able to generate wormholes that it fell through, we would have some difficulty in labeling it a ship.

Such reasons are why it is referred to within Star Wars itself as a station and referenced in the official SW Databank as a "location" - which are, as I have pointed out, in and of themselves reasons to regard the "starship" classification of the Death Star as dubious.

It's not really a proper "station" either, not being stationary. Being so large and effectively immobile but for hyperdrive and station-keeping places it in a very fuzzy zone - sort-of-starship, sort-of-not-starship. It is neither appropriate to completely ignore or, in anything more than the most loose conjectures, rely upon the notion of the Death Star being a starship.

You have repeated that Death Star is "special" several times without explaining how that changes the fact that Death Star is an example of the kind of starship Empire is capable of constructing. That Death Star has further capabilities in addition to those that define a starship only make it that much more impressive.

It does not simply have further capabilities; it has more limited capabilities. It is, so far as we can tell, incapable or nearly incapable of sublight maneuver independent of planetary bodies, for example.

It is also a strong point of its "specialness" that it was unique. The Empire cannot and did not produce Death Stars with the sort of ease that the Borg produce cubes; being able to manufacture one thing that was somewhere in the range of 60 to 160 km over the course of 20 years is not necessarily as impressive in terms of starship manufacture as the feat of producing tens of thousands of actual mobile starships on the scale of single digit km.

I am not aware of any sources above the novel other than the films.

And screenplays, and novelizations.

And films only allow scaling from the Millenium Falcon.

And attack run, and diagrams, and feature comparison, and deck-counting, and comparison with the second Death Star... some methods more accurate than others.

And then there are many other sources sitting on the same level. So-called "C canon" is very common and contains many instances of 120 km scalings as well as 160 km scalings.

First moment of inertia for a sphere is Is=2/5*m*r^2 while moment of inertia for cube is Ic=1/6*m*a^2 where a is the side of the cube.
As we can see moment of inertia is proportional to square of radius AND mass not only to square radius as you suggested. Since mass is proportional to third power of radius and cube side respectively moment of inertia will be proportional to fifth power of radius/side.
Thus moment of inertia for Death Star will be over 100 million times greater than that of a 3km Borg cube variant.
This means that Borg cube (of a 3km variant) would have to spin at 100*10^6*300*10^-6 or 30,000 rad/s2 or 1,740,000 degrees/s2.

I already addressed this. Power generation, ejecta mass, etc, are proportionate to mass of the vehicle, bringing us back down to the exact figures I quoted... with, also, the caveats as quoted.

Using the lesser apparent rotational angle of the completed Death Star, and longer apparent time, and a strongly core-centered mass with slightly lower overall density (for which there is evidence) the Death Star does not appear at all maneuverable for its size, even disregarding its lack of linear acceleration.

I would like to know how you reached the 1/4400 figure. Not to mention that size of that particular cube is unreliable:

44,000 g is roughly the minimum BOBW acceleration. 10 g is roughly the maximum Death Star acceleration. You may find, after some calculation, that the ratio between these numbers is 4400:1.

I will not dispute that the size of that cube is not particularly reliable, although it definitely takes up more cubage than a typical Star Destroyer.

[Jedi Master Spock]

Actually in the closeup scene (qwho233.jpg) the hole is slightly less wide than Enterprise which accounting for the way it's facing the camera should be about 500m wide. According to the qwho237.jpg the hole is about 7 times less wide than the cube itself. This makes the cube 3500m wide not 6km.
But as I said the size is unreliable with different scenes pointing to conflicting upper and lower limits.

Well, the "Q Who" cube is probably not the "Best of Both Worlds" cube, IMO. Simplifies that a little bit.

However, even 3.5 km - bear in mind, the Enterprise is still somewhat closer to the camera; I haven't scaled that shot, but I'd bet it could easily turn out to be 4 km accounting for everything that can be accounted for) - is significantly larger than the cube that ate the Hansens. That's 43 cubic kilometers as opposed to a mere 28.

That the largest Borg cubes on long range missions are 5-10 km in diameter is a common suggestion, albeit one with relatively little hard evidence backing it up

[Mike DiCenso]

Precisely that. The was only one truely complete (smaller) Death Star, Kane, and one partially built (larger) one. It's "in theory" that the second Death Star would have been a complete one. As it was, we saw no others.

Ah I see what you mean. It is of no consequence however since I only referred to the first Death Star.

But you imply that the Empire could build numerous DS battlestations, or build something much larger, hence my eariler point.

Oh come on, Kane. It should be obvious. The Death Stars were not common vessels in the Imperial fleet the way, say ISDs or Venators are. They were terribly unique in size and number.

What did it cost the Empire? The EU doesn't really give us a clue to that, though it does mention toward the end of the novel Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader that it represented a signficant expenditure of the Imperial Navy budget. It is that large expenditure that tips off Mon Motha to it's existance, and she makes plans to find out what this secret project is.

Again how many Death Stars are there is irrelevant. We are comparing what kind of ship size can various factions accomplish. By the way could you point the page in which Death Star's expenditure is discussed?

Because they (the Death Stars) represent something highly unusual for SW ships in every possible way from their power plants to their shape, to their size, and most importantly, their frequency of construction and available numbers in the Imperial fleet.

I'll have to dig up the book again. But if you have it, it's towards the end of the book with Mon Motha and IIRC Bail Organa discussing the matter.

The Galaxy class started out with a handful of ships in TNG, and became a nearly common sight during the Dominion War campaigns of DS9. The loss of 3 ships, while terrible, did not affect the Federation building numerous GCS simultaeously (as per the Utopia Planita shipyard scenes in VOY's "Relativity" showing at least 4 GCS). The Death Stars are not common ships, and it remains to be seen what it really cost the Empire to build them. I remind you that canonically it took over 23 years to plan and build the first Death Star, and the Empire did not get around to constructing a second one for about 5 years post-ANH and the destruction of the first (The RoTJ novelization on page one states that "many years" had gone by since the loss of the DS1).

You showed no evidence as to number of Galaxy class ships before or after the beginning of the Dominion war. "Handful" is not really helpful. What we know is that they have more than 5 or so.

I did. You simply do not want to acknowledge it. More specifically, we know that there were indeed a "handful" of GCS known at the time of early TNG, with only the USS Galaxy, Enterprise-D, and Yamato. Theoretically, according to her registry number, the USS Challenger (NCC-71099) might also fit in this time frame, but with the occasional off registries, it might be best to leave that one out for the time being.

There are at least 5 GCS seen in four different campaigns of the Dominon War that we know of representing at least 3 seperate fleets, and the Endgame fleet had 4-5 GCS in it. I find it really hard to accept that each time it is the same exact GCS any more than you would except that the ISDs seen at Endor in RoTJ represent all the ISDs the Imperial Navy has at it's disposal.

Are you really saying that the four or so GCS seen at Utopia Planitia are the same 5 GCS in all of the known seperate fleet combats of the Dominion War where GCS are visually confirmed, or in VOY's "Endgame" with at least 5 GCS? There are quite a decent number of these ships out there.

According to the link there were actually two or three different Galaxy class ships in the Utopia Planitia. And I honestly don't know whether those Galaxies are the same we see in later instances during the Dominion war. There is no evidence either way.

There are at least 3 GCS there at the time Voyager is under construction, and several partially completed saucer sectionsthat could be Nebulas or GCS saucer sections. But definitely are one or the other.

Some were. The one in "Dark Frontier" that the Raven chases is 3 km. But that is neither here nor there as a Borg cube ship is a far more efficent design volume-wise regardless or whether it is 500, 3,000, or 5,000 meters wide. A wedge-shaped star destroyer of longer linear dimensions will just simply not be able to compete. It's that simple.

Again, the point of it is to illustrate a signficant design philosphy difference.

Star Destroyer will be smaller but then again Star Destroyer is a long way from being the largest ship the Empire fields.

You're only example of a larger-than-SD type ship is to point to the highly unique DS battlestations. Even the SSDs do not compete with a 3 km Borg cube for volume as already demonstrated. The Borg, when needed, have demonstrated with the Unicomplex, the ability to build vast structures on the order of hundreds of km wide.

Actually, the USSR before it's collapse was in the process of building a supercarrier of equivenent size and capability to the U.S. Navy's Nimitz class, the Ul'yanovsk class with the prior Kuznetsov class being laid down and one vessel completed that was comparable in size (300 meters) to the U.S. Navy's USS Midway.

That being said, the three powers (Federation, Romulan and Dominion) are close enough that it is concievable that the Federation, should it so choose, could build a D'Deridex or Battleship sized vessel. These are a point of comparison to three powers in the same univers and galaxy that are rough par with one another. The Galactic Empire, on the other hand, has no other signficant equivalent power to compare with in it's universe and galaxy.

Ul'yanovsk was never more than a project and Kuznetsov was much smaller and wasn't nuclear powered. Standard displacement was 67,500 tonnes full load compared to 87,000 tonnes Nimitz.
Romulans and Dominion are comparable to Federation, as I said, but again comparable is not identical. Which means that Romulan and Dominion capabilities cannot be assumed to naturally translate to Federation.

The Ul'yanovsk was more than a mere paper study, it was laid down and was 40% complete when cancelled after the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991. But she would have been nuclear powered had she been completed, and she was hardly the first large Soviet vessel to have them. She also would have had a comparable loaded displacement nearly 80,000 tons that of the Nimitz class.

But even with conventional power plants, the hull of the Ul'yanovsk class, just as with any of the aforementioned fictional powers is what matters. Even the Kuznetsov, as I pointed out previously, matched the size and displacement of one of the earlier U.S. Navy carriers, which in turn were only some 100 feet (30 meters) shorter than a Nimitz class carrier. We are talking still about ships of a very comparable size catagory here.

The Promethus class is under the saucer, as is one of the Sphere Builder ships when it is destroyed. There is also a fleeting view of a Prometheus flying past the window which clearly puts it under the E-J's saucer. All-in-all, the E-J is a really freaking huge ship.

There are no points of reference to peg the location of Prometheus. There is no way to determine how far away is Prometheus.

Given that the Prometheus is of a fairly well understood size range, it should be possible to do trigonometry to determine that distance, and if nothing else, the Sphere Builder ship seen being destroyed actually is under the saucer as seen by the way the fireball reaches the E-J's saucer's ventral (sensor?) dome.

That ship is apparently a Vissian starship, which is larger than a 225 meter NX class starship. But assuming for the sake of being conservative that ship is only 100 meters long, it is four times smaller than the visible portion of the E-J's saucer to the right of the sensor dome it is under when it explodes (note the signficant glow being cast on the E-J saucer's underside by the exploding ship making it clearly underneath the saucer). This means that the E-J's saucer is at least some 800 meters wide, and likely a good deal larger given the Vissian ship being larger than the NX class, and the fact that we are not measuring the full starboard side of the E-J saucer section since it is not completely visible out the window that Archer and Daniels are looking out of.
-Mike

[Kane Starkiller]

The Death Star exits hyperspace at roughly the same distance it fires. It spends a number of minutes slowly rotating to bring the dish to bear. There is no significant maneuvering involved; nor did it need to maneuver in sublight away from Yavin, but rather engage hyperlight after some suitable recharge time.

It's dish was facing almost 180 degrees away from Alderaan. Rotating it in 10 minutes gives a speed of 5.23*10^-3 rad/s or a rotational energy of 7.5*10^22J (for a 1000kg/m3 density). Applying that energy to achieve translational speed would give Death Star a speed of 264m/s. Obviously the ship can move and accelerate under it's own power based on this observation alone. And are you saying that Death Star could engage hyperdrive as close to Yavin as it was?

A device, however, is not necessarily a craft. Point irrelevant here; the sort of "craft" which can be a starship is solely the vehicular variety.

The superlaser is a "device." The Death Star is a "device" only in the loosest sense of the word, not being a particular piece of equipment or a singular mechanism. It is no more a device than an airport is a device.

No a device is not necessarily a spaceraft. Device is a spacecraft IF it is designed to operate outside earth's atmosphere as the definition states.
And what you consider a loose sense is really your own subjective opinion. I am working with actual definitions as stated in the dictionary.

But only transports them on the scale of system to system. Thus, a vehicle only in the sense of hyperlight transportation, while failing to qualify as a "vehicle" by other measures (it does not really transport objects within real space, nor is that its main function; the Death Star is a means of destroying planets primarily.)

Firstly a transport plane, for example, only transports cargo "on a scale" of airport to airport. It won't fly you to your room. I don't see how that makes it any less of a vehicle. Secondly you are incorrect of Death Star only being able to transport on a scale of "system to system" since it obviously reached individual planets. And can maneuver as proven by Alderaan and Yavin approaches.

Things are carried to the Death Star and carried from the Death Star. Transport of troops, starfighters, etc is not its primary purpose, nor, by all intents and appearances, can it do so through normal space movement. It "carries" them no more than a starbase "carries" starships. If Deep Space Nine were able to generate wormholes that it fell through, we would have some difficulty in labeling it a ship.

What difference does it make what is Death Star's primary purpose? It's capabilities ADD on each other not override each other. Death Star can destroy planets AND transport objects. The latter satisfies the vehicle definition regardless of additional capabilities Death Star may posses.
By the way Death Star also carries a superlaser which is it's primary function since superlaser would be utterly useless without means to approach planets in the galaxy. Again Death Star neatly satisifies any requirements of being a vehicle.
I don't see what your DS9 introduction has to do with anything since it can't generate wormholes which makes it irrelevant to the discussion.

Such reasons are why it is referred to within Star Wars itself as a station and referenced in the official SW Databank as a "location" - which are, as I have pointed out, in and of themselves reasons to regard the "starship" classification of the Death Star as dubious.

"Location" category has absolutely nothing to do with actual nature of the entries in it since it encompasses starbases, planets, asteroid fields, cities etc.

It's not really a proper "station" either, not being stationary. Being so large and effectively immobile but for hyperdrive and station-keeping places it in a very fuzzy zone - sort-of-starship, sort-of-not-starship. It is neither appropriate to completely ignore or, in anything more than the most loose conjectures, rely upon the notion of the Death Star being a starship.

Death Star is a starship as proven by the definition I have quoted. Your "fuzzy zone" is your own subjective opinion.

It does not simply have further capabilities; it has more limited capabilities. It is, so far as we can tell, incapable or nearly incapable of sublight maneuver independent of planetary bodies, for example.

It is also a strong point of its "specialness" that it was unique. The Empire cannot and did not produce Death Stars with the sort of ease that the Borg produce cubes; being able to manufacture one thing that was somewhere in the range of 60 to 160 km over the course of 20 years is not necessarily as impressive in terms of starship manufacture as the feat of producing tens of thousands of actual mobile starships on the scale of single digit km.

Death Star can and has maneuvered at both sublight and supralight speeds whether you choose to admit it or not. Additionally I never claimed Empire can produce individual Death Star as easily as Borg can produce a cube. What evidence you have for the 10,000 1km scale cubes?

And attack run, and diagrams, and feature comparison, and deck-counting, and comparison with the second Death Star... some methods more accurate than others.

And then there are many other sources sitting on the same level. So-called "C canon" is very common and contains many instances of 120 km scalings as well as 160 km scalings.

Attack run also cannot provide such accurate scalings as to be able to reliably refute statements from novels. C canon I believe is under S canon in which this novel falls.

I already addressed this. Power generation, ejecta mass, etc, are proportionate to mass of the vehicle, bringing us back down to the exact figures I quoted... with, also, the caveats as quoted.

Using the lesser apparent rotational angle of the completed Death Star, and longer apparent time, and a strongly core-centered mass with slightly lower overall density (for which there is evidence) the Death Star does not appear at all maneuverable for its size, even disregarding its lack of linear acceleration.

Even using those figures Cube would have to rotate at 1.2 rad/s2 or 69 degrees/s2. I don't recall ever seeing a cube displaying such rotational acceleration.
Also you have simply restated your assertion that Death Star has lower overall density than a Borg cube without providing any evidence.

44,000 g is roughly the minimum BOBW acceleration. 10 g is roughly the maximum Death Star acceleration. You may find, after some calculation, that the ratio between these numbers is 4400:1.

You have yet to provide evidence for the Borg cube acceleration figure.

But you imply that the Empire could build numerous DS battlestations, or build something much larger, hence my eariler point.

No I don't. My point was always that there is no more or less evidence that Empire can build ships larger than Death Star than there is evidence of Federation being able to build ships larger than Galaxy.

Because they (the Death Stars) represent something highly unusual for SW ships in every possible way from their power plants to their shape, to their size, and most importantly, their frequency of construction and available numbers in the Imperial fleet.

I'll have to dig up the book again. But if you have it, it's towards the end of the book with Mon Motha and IIRC Bail Organa discussing the matter.

None of this changes the fact that Empire built it nor that it represents an example of Imperial ship building abilities. How "unique" or "special" you think it is is irrelevant.

I did. You simply do not want to acknowledge it. More specifically, we know that there were indeed a "handful" of GCS known at the time of early TNG, with only the USS Galaxy, Enterprise-D, and Yamato. Theoretically, according to her registry number, the USS Challenger (NCC-71099) might also fit in this time frame, but with the occasional off registries, it might be best to leave that one out for the time being.

There are at least 5 GCS seen in four different campaigns of the Dominon War that we know of representing at least 3 seperate fleets, and the Endgame fleet had 4-5 GCS in it. I find it really hard to accept that each time it is the same exact GCS any more than you would except that the ISDs seen at Endor in RoTJ represent all the ISDs the Imperial Navy has at it's disposal.

You claim that I don't want to acknowledge the evidence yet you have presented none. In TNG the fleet was dispersed while in DS9 there was a war and fleets were concentrated in a single place. Obviously we'll see more Galaxies. That you find it hard to accept is really your opinion and not evidence. As for ROTJ we know that it doesn't represent the Imperial Navy since it was "spread throughout the galaxy in a vain effort" to engage the Rebels. Not to mention that there are novels explicitly stating 25,000 ISDs alone were in the Imperial Navy.

There are at least 3 GCS there at the time Voyager is under construction, and several partially completed saucer sections that could be Nebulas or GCS saucer sections. But definitely are one or the other.

It occurs to me you don't accept DS2 as an example of Imperial ship since it wasn't completed. Should I accept these uncompleted Galaxies? But more to the point 3 GCS still doesn't exceed 5. Hence you still have no evidence of more than 5 or so GCS.

You're only example of a larger-than-SD type ship is to point to the highly unique DS battlestations. Even the SSDs do not compete with a 3 km Borg cube for volume as already demonstrated. The Borg, when needed, have demonstrated with the Unicomplex, the ability to build vast structures on the order of hundreds of km wide.

You are comparing the largest starship we have seen Borg construct with the one which is 200,000 times smaller than the largest Imperial ship. Apples and oranges. Unicomplex is irrelevant to the discussion since it is not a starship but merely modules connected to each other and built over an unknown period of time. Perhaps even over "a thousand centuries".

The Ul'yanovsk was more than a mere paper study, it was laid down and was 40% complete when cancelled after the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991. But she would have been nuclear powered had she been completed, and she was hardly the first large Soviet vessel to have them. She also would have had a comparable loaded displacement nearly 80,000 tons that of the Nimitz class.

But even with conventional power plants, the hull of the Ul'yanovsk class, just as with any of the aforementioned fictional powers is what matters. Even the Kuznetsov, as I pointed out previously, matched the size and displacement of one of the earlier U.S. Navy carriers, which in turn were only some 100 feet (30 meters) shorter than a Nimitz class carrier. We are talking still about ships of a very comparable size catagory here.

Ul'yanovsk was never built and I note that you are using a 40% built craft as an example of Soviet naval industry while you refuse to do the same with DS2. Secondly as you say the hull is what matters and hull of Kuznetsov is not as large as that of Nimitz.

Given that the Prometheus is of a fairly well understood size range, it should be possible to do trigonometry to determine that distance, and if nothing else, the Sphere Builder ship seen being destroyed actually is under the saucer as seen by the way the fireball reaches the E-J's saucer's ventral (sensor?) dome.

That ship is apparently a Vissian starship, which is larger than a 225 meter NX class starship. But assuming for the sake of being conservative that ship is only 100 meters long, it is four times smaller than the visible portion of the E-J's saucer to the right of the sensor dome it is under when it explodes (note the signficant glow being cast on the E-J saucer's underside by the exploding ship making it clearly underneath the saucer). This means that the E-J's saucer is at least some 800 meters wide, and likely a good deal larger given the Vissian ship being larger than the NX class, and the fact that we are not measuring the full starboard side of the E-J saucer section since it is not completely visible out the window that Archer and Daniels are looking out of.

First of all it is possible that debris and fireball reach the saucer without the ship being under it itself. Explosions are not necessarily symmetrical so this is not evidence. Evidence would be a ship itself actually overlapping with the saucer. Something we don't see.

[Jedi Master Spock]

It's dish was facing almost 180 degrees away from Alderaan. Rotating it in 10 minutes gives a speed of 5.23*10^-3 rad/s or a rotational energy of 7.5*10^22J (for a 1000kg/m3 density). Applying that energy to achieve translational speed would give Death Star a speed of 264m/s. Obviously the ship can move and accelerate under it's own power based on this observation alone. And are you saying that Death Star could engage hyperdrive as close to Yavin as it was?

Assuming uniform high density, a particular disputable size, and also assuming that the mechanism used for rotation can be applied directly to linear acceleration. These are dubious assumptions. The acceleration you cite is also ridiculously small to start with. We're talking about 44 cm/s^2 and on the order of a tenth of the angular acceleration I mentioned earlier.

And yes, the Death Star can engage hyperdrive while in orbit. I've pointed out the typical limits for that before.

No a device is not necessarily a spaceraft. Device is a spacecraft IF it is designed to operate outside earth's atmosphere as the definition states.

An astronaut's helmet is a device designed to operate outside Earth's atmosphere. It is not, however, a spacecraft, although it meets your qualifications.

By your abuse of definitions, if I launch a helmet into deep space, and it winds up in Proxima Centauri, that helmet is a starship. You may wish to reconsider this absurdity.

And what you consider a loose sense is really your own subjective opinion. I am working with actual definitions as stated in the dictionary.

Very poorly.

Firstly a transport plane, for example, only transports cargo "on a scale" of airport to airport. It won't fly you to your room. I don't see how that makes it any less of a vehicle. Secondly you are incorrect of Death Star only being able to transport on a scale of "system to system" since it obviously reached individual planets. And can maneuver as proven by Alderaan and Yavin approaches.

It exited quite near Alderaan and quite near Yavin.

A plane moves through real space in the same way that a truck or car does. The Death Star, in real space, is essentially immobile, possibly nearly ballistic in all its motion. I may as well be throwing things through a gate or wormhole.

What difference does it make what is Death Star's primary purpose? It's capabilities ADD on each other not override each other. Death Star can destroy planets AND transport objects. The latter satisfies the vehicle definition regardless of additional capabilities Death Star may posses.
By the way Death Star also carries a superlaser which is it's primary function since superlaser would be utterly useless without means to approach planets in the galaxy. Again Death Star neatly satisifies any requirements of being a vehicle.
I don't see what your DS9 introduction has to do with anything since it can't generate wormholes which makes it irrelevant to the discussion.

You can't? It's a hypothetical which speaks directly to the situation. Consider it carefully.

What is the difference between a station with a hyperdrive slapped on, and a starship? If you don't think there is one, then I can turn DS9 into a starship by the simple expedient of inventing a wormhole generator, or a long range transporter beam, or any similar device.

"Location" category has absolutely nothing to do with actual nature of the entries in it since it encompasses starbases, planets, asteroid fields, cities etc.

All of which, curiously, are immobile sites. Locations, in fact, aptly enough.

Death Star is a starship as proven by the definition I have quoted. Your "fuzzy zone" is your own subjective opinion.

If you care to be that naive as to claim "proof" from an inadequate interpretation of a definition, the fact that variance exists in our opinions is in and of itself proof that the Death Star's status is debatable - as I have asserted. We are even now debating about it.

Death Star can and has maneuvered at both sublight

It has turned. It has not been seen to make definite controlled maneuvers at sublight, or independent of a planetary gravity well.

and supralight speeds whether you choose to admit it or not. Additionally I never claimed Empire can produce individual Death Star as easily as Borg can produce a cube. What evidence you have for the 10,000 1km scale cubes?

I was actually talking about the Empire (the Borg have millions of vessels); the Empire's Star Destroyer fleet is quite potentially a more impressive feat regarding starship construction.

Attack run also cannot provide such accurate scalings as to be able to reliably refute statements from novels. C canon I believe is under S canon in which this novel falls.

The Death Star novel and nearly all other EU sources fall under C canon ordinarily. Including those which label the Death Star a different size.

Even using those figures Cube would have to rotate at 1.2 rad/s2 or 69 degrees/s2. I don't recall ever seeing a cube displaying such rotational acceleration.

0.3, actually. Remember, the cube, unlike the Death Star, has symmetry of facing. What that doesn't mention is that is pretty slow looking - and at that, Borg cubes, due to their symmetry and wide angles of attack from each face, don't need to rotate at all.

Also you have simply restated your assertion that Death Star has lower overall density than a Borg cube without providing any evidence.

You did not challenge it. The Death Stars show little indication of being strong sources of gravity, and every indication (power core) of having a denser core than outer layers.

The Borg have been noted to use high density materials and in some cases to have silly ship densities.

You have yet to provide evidence for the Borg cube acceleration figure.

I did that long ago. BOBW gives times, and the distances between the planets in Earth's solar system are quite well known. The speed with which the Borg cube travels at impulse is extraordinarily high.