Rebuttal to darkstar's website

[StarWarsStarTrek]

I tried sending darkstar an email refuting some of his points, but it blocked me out, apparently because it thought that I was spam.

The email read like this:



Ok, so I've read a lot of your site. I'll say that your calculations seem to be accurate for the most part and you're clearly knowledgeable on the laws of physics and make some good points. However, I do have a few criticisms to make:

1. Your FTL calculations are simply implausible. Star Wars is a galaxy spanning civilization. Casual travel across large portions of the galaxy is commonplace in Star Wars. However, by your calculations, traveling across the galaxy would take years, sometimes even decades, which Star Wars clearly shows isn't true for them:

a) Obi Wan goes to Kamino, stated to be in the outer rim, casually without any large amount of time passing. Based on your calculations, it would have taken him years to do that.
b) Darth Maul travels across a large portion of the galaxy in a matter of hours.
c) In many of the Senate meetings, you see senators representing solar systems across the galaxy. If your travel times were correct, those senators would have to have spent years just to get to Coruscant; which clearly isn't true, because otherwise Padme would have had to have started traveling to Coruscant right after TPM ended.
d) The Millennium Falcon is seen traveling across major portions of the galaxy without any large of time passing.
e) The Death Star could not possibly have been constructed as fast as it was with transport ships as slow as you claim they are.
f) Yoda travels to Kamino, examines the clone troopers, mobilizes them and brings an army to Geonosis in a matter of hours or maybe a day or two. This would have taken years if it were based off of your speed calculations.

2. Your weapons ranges are cherry picking the lowest Star Wars ranges and the highest Star Trek ranges. There are many cases in which Federation ships go within 10 km to hit a HUGE borg cube that wasn't moving that fast relatively either. Meanwhile, the Battle of Endor shows Star Wars ships battling at thousands of miles range.

3. Again, your blaster damage showings cherry picked the lowest showing and ignored the showing of them making giant holes and explosions in other scenes.

4. Your imperial fleet size estimates are sketchy, since they're based off of casual conversations in which the characters would not be speaking in precise.

5. Your debunking attempts of the ICS are ignoring the fact that the 2 kiloton figure is the MAXIMUM figure. I'll admit that perhaps the 2 kiloton figure is somewhat misleading, but from it still stands; in practical combat the ship would be firing at lower power settings in order to allow for rapid firing capabilities. Also, your "vaporize a small town" quote is not only taking a quote that isn't necessarily literal literally, but is the calculations are out of context. Mos Eisley is a town in Tatooine, a relatively unpopulated planet (a VERY unpopulated planet). The quote was about the battle of Coruscant. Coruscant's surface is basically one giant city, so it can be hard to determine any calculations from this quote.

6. You analyze the AT-ST, but not the many other more powerful Star Wars ground vehicles, and other Star Wars ground troops. I'll admit that the AT-ST is a joke of a vehicle, but it isn't the only military vehicle available to Star Wars; note that Star Trek doesn't have any.

7. You ignore the huge population and industrial disparity and how Star Wars is at least several thousand times larger than Star Trek. Star Wars would therefore have vast industrial capabilities and a vast recruiting pool, allowing them to overwhelm Star Trek even if the ship firepower were comparable.

8. While Star Wars hyperdrive is fast enough and long ranged enough for them to invade the Federation if the two sides are somehow close enough for this scenario to happen, the Federation would not be able to mount an invasion on any Star Wars galactic government. Federation warp drive wouldn't even have enough fuel to get to the core worlds, nor would they know how to get there (after centuries of exploring the Federation hasn't mapped out its own galaxy yet, so mapping out that of another one would be infeasible in any short amount of time) or sustain any supply line.

Thanks for reading.

[Praeothmin]

Here's my answers on your comments:

1-How large is the SW Galaxy?
We've had a debate here where many concluded (myself included) that the SW Galaxy was probably no more than 10 000 LY in diameter, due to:
The ANH novel specifically states (WILGA brought this up a few months back) that the SW galaxy is a modest-sized one.
Our very own Milky Way, at around 100 000 LY across, contains from 100 to 400 Billion stars, is not a modest-sized galaxy.
It is in fact a large galaxy.
Average-sized galaxies are around 15 to 30 thousands LY across, not 100.
Modest meaning “not great”, or “not big”, should even be smaller than the average galaxy size.
- It's a modest sized galaxy, which regarding the samples we can study nowadays, means it's certainly not anywhere close to 100,000 LY (which is considered Large, but more likely close to 10,000 LY which is less then the Average Galaxy size of 15,000 to 30,000 LY).
- The Republic, just before the Clone Wars, held a few tens of thousands of systems (less then 100 thousands). To fit with the film, we would have to consider that half the Senate was empty, with around +- 10K systems affiliated to the Separatists (with the possibility of a few seceding to remain neutral and fully independent).
- The Republic's Senate represents most of the galaxy's inhabitable worlds (also note that the pods representing likely systems in the Senate, several thousands of them, remained empty after joining Dooku's Separatists). So most of these inhabitable worlds were spread throughout those 10K + systems. Thus also highlighting how most of the galaxy was charted and explored.
- Jocasta Nu considers that if a world is not listed in the Jedi archives, it does not exist.
-As of ANH, the Empire controls at least 1 million systems, which should include both the Old Republic systems, and the systems that sided with the Separatists, since the war was won by the Republic.
- As per the Maps in every source I found, Endor and Sullust are 1/10th of the galaxy diameter away from one another, and since they are “Hundreds” of LY apart, then they cannot be more than 1000LY apart, for a Galaxy of 10 000LY…

2-He may be doing the exact opposite of most "Warsies" out there, who usually only use the shortest ST ranges and the longest SW ranges.
ST has seen battles at over 200 000km (The Wounded), a lot in the thousands of km ranges, and a lot in the km ranges.
A Tie fighter in ANH was considered out of range of the MF's main guns while it was clearly within visual range, and not that far off.

Meanwhile, the Battle of Endor shows Star Wars ships battling at thousands of miles range.

Really?
How, since they only started fighting once the Imperial fleet was within a few dozen km from the Rebel fleet?

3-And Phasers can vaporize alloys that require over 2400 degrees C to vaporize, they can heat materials up to 8000 degrees, explode rocks 1 meter in diameter, etc, etc...
So would you say that Blasters are more powerful than Phasers?

4-Don't remember his numbers and can't access the site from work, but I believe the Empire should have millions of ships to cover their territory. Though in the millions, I include all small patrol crafts and "police" ships, not just the big Capital Ships...

5-Yet how low would you have us believe they were firing at?
Nowhere do we see anything even approaching 200 tons of explosives, or 10% full power.
At most, we see damage and effects that point to a few tons of explosives, or something close to 1/1000th the maximum power.
How could you even hope to damage something needing KT power to damage, at such low power?
This does not make sense, and doesn't match with visual evidence...

6-Actually, while ST doesn't have walkers, they have shuttles that can be used as the speeders in SW were, and they have the Dune Buggy seen in NEM... :)
And the AT-AT isn't the best designed vehicule either, even though it is powerful...

7-Covered in the other thread...

8-Covered in the other thread, plus you ignore that SW sensors are crappy compared to ST ones. In ST, they can map their way using FTL long-range sensors, as they go along, while SW requires advanced mappings of their routes in order to plot Hyperspace routes...

[Who is like God arbour]

1. Your FTL calculations are simply implausible. Star Wars is a galaxy spanning civilization. Casual travel across large portions of the galaxy is commonplace in Star Wars. However, by your calculations, traveling across the galaxy would take years, sometimes even decades, which Star Wars clearly shows isn't true for them:

According to the novelization of » A New Hope «, the Star Wars Galaxy is a modest-sized galaxy (page 163) and a tiny portion of that galaxy consists of only a million star systems (page 111).

1. Let's say that a tiny portion of a galaxy is 1 percent. If this 1 percent consist of a million star systems, the whole galaxy would have only 100 million star system.
   
   This assumes a consistent distribution of star systems in the galaxy. But the tiny portion of that galaxy is that portion where Alderaan was. And Alderaan was a core world of the Star Wars Galaxy. And the density in a galaxy gets stronger the further to the core you get. Therefore the density in that tiny portion was very high while other tiny portions of the Star Wars Galaxy would have a lesser density - with other words: they would have fewer star systems. Insofar the Star Wars galaxy would have - under the above mentioned assumption - even less than 100 million star systems.
   
   Even if you assume, that a tiny portion of a galaxy is only 0,1, 0,01 or 0,001 percent of said galaxy, the Star Wars galaxy would still have only 1, 10 or 100 milliard star systems.
   
   I know that » tiny portion « is not an exact term. But ask yourself if you would call something, that is only 0,1 percent of the whole still a tiny portion of it?
2. Furthermore, a modest sized galaxy can not have diameter of hundred thousand light years or more. Such a galaxy would already be a giant galaxy - as the milky way is. The by far most galaxies are not bigger than 20.000 light years (7130 parsec) in diameter. The smallest galaxy known, POX186, is only 1.600 light-years (490 parsecs) in diameter and has only 10 million stars. For example: The Local Group comprises more than 30 galaxies. But the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy together have 95 % of the visible mass of the local group. That means that the other 38 known galaxies have only 5 % of the visible mass of the local group and therefore are very small in comparison to the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy.
   
   With that in mind, we have to assert that most EU sources, which are lower canon than the novelization, are wrong when stating that the Star Wars galaxy is with a 120 thousand light year diameter even bigger than the milky way.
   
   That means that we can only use EU sources to determine the size of the Star Wars galaxy, that are considering that the Star Wars galaxy is only a modest sized galaxy.
   
   The only source I know that considers this is a map from the novel » Vector Prime « by R. A. Salvatore:
   
   
   
   According to the novel » Return of the Jedi «, the distance between Endor and Sullust is hundreds of light-years. That means that the distance should be maximal a few thousand light years because otherwise not hundreds of light-years but thousands of light-years would have been used as a phrase. Even if a distance of 10.000 light-years is assumed - and that's very generous because that would be already 100 hundred light-years - the Star Wars galaxy would be far smaller than 50.000 light years in diameter.
   
   That fits into what we would expect of a modest sized galaxy.
   
   How a smaller diameter affects the size of the whole galaxy can you see here:
   
   
   
   As you can see, a galay with a diameter of 30.000 light years is smaller than a whole quadrant of the milky way.
   
   If you now consider the fact that there are Unkown Regions in the Star Wars Galaxy and that the Empire does not hold the whole galaxy, you have to come to the conclusion, that the distances, starships are flying in the Star Wars movies are not much bigger than the distances, starships in Star Trek are flying - in more or less the same time.

a) Obi Wan goes to Kamino, stated to be in the outer rim, casually without any large amount of time passing. Based on your calculations, it would have taken him years to do that.

You know neither how far away Kamino is from Couruscant nor do you know how much time Obi Wan needed.

b) Darth Maul travels across a large portion of the galaxy in a matter of hours.

Really?
How far did he travel and how much time did he need?

c) In many of the Senate meetings, you see senators representing solar systems across the galaxy. If your travel times were correct, those senators would have to have spent years just to get to Coruscant; which clearly isn't true, because otherwise Padme would have had to have started traveling to Coruscant right after TPM ended.

Really? How far away are their home systems from Couruscant? How far away is Naboo from Couruscant?

d) The Millennium Falcon is seen traveling across major portions of the galaxy without any large of time passing.

Where did we see that?
and how big are these » major portions of the galaxy « and how much time has passed?

e) The Death Star could not possibly have been constructed as fast as it was with transport ships as slow as you claim they are.

Really? How fast was the Death Star constructed? And how far away from the construction side were the planets from which the mentioned transport ships started?

f) Yoda travels to Kamino, examines the clone troopers, mobilizes them and brings an army to Geonosis in a matter of hours or maybe a day or two. This would have taken years if it were based off of your speed calculations.

Really? How far away is Kamino from Couruscant? How far away is Geonosis from Kamino?

[Mike DiCenso]

6. You analyze the AT-ST, but not the many other more powerful Star Wars ground vehicles, and other Star Wars ground troops. I'll admit that the AT-ST is a joke of a vehicle, but it isn't the only military vehicle available to Star Wars; note that Star Trek doesn't have any.

The thing is ST does have various ground vehicles. The Argo shuttle's buggy from ST:Nem has already been mentioned. We also know of a Klingon "ground assault vehicle" as mentioned in VOY's "Elogium", and Major Kira in DS9's "The Darkness and the Light" mentions a Cardassian "skimmer", while Garak in "The Wire" talks of having served in the Cardassian "Cardassian mechanized infantry", and "Business as Usual" makes reference to a sale of 2,000 Cardassian skimmers in an arms merchant's deal.
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

I'm curious about the claim of engagement ranges in the thousands of km for SW ships, from ROTJ, in point [2].
They just all seem packed in a region that's some few hundred km long at best, and that there's no proof that the most distant ships can hit each other.

As for the galaxy size, I must admit that there are some odds things. The movie precisely states that Tatooine is less than a parsec from Geonosis. That's less than 3.261633 LY. Yet all recent EU maps I've seen seem to take a certain pleasure in showing Tatooine and Geonosis being very distant from each other, instead of having them located in the same pimprick. I'd expect a smaller window zooming on that point to show the "real" distance, but that doesn't happen.
When you see that, it makes the SW galaxy very, very small. Even if there's a variation on where both planets exactly are positioned, they're never shown to be stacked in the same region of space.
It's in line with the 100 LY long trip between Sullust and Endor.

That said I'm pretty sure the EU is full of details that would show that the galaxy is about 100,000 LY wide. You just can't ignore that, the EU has been written over decades with most likely such a conception of the galaxy in mind.
Besides a smaller galaxy wouldn't explain why some ships still take hours to travel small distances when Maul departed from Coruscant, supposedly on the other side of the galaxy, and managed to reach Tatooine very fast. It's even worse with Palpatine coming to Mustafaar.
Same with Yoda going from Coruscant to Kamino and arriving at Geonosis after assembling a fleet and army. And we can't really say that Kamino is located on a well used route: the Jedi database was never corrected since Dooku's departure, that is, ten years ago.

Perhaps both Jedi and Sith know how to use the Force to fly to some point faster? I've read in one of the D20 book that there were Force disturbances around Endor which hampered FTL travel.

It would seem to fit. In "Shadow of Malevolence", it's largely shown that FTL speeds aren't fast, and not particularly precise either in regions of space which aren't necessarily well charted.
From RSA's website: "There are many star clusters in that area. With a ship that big, he will be unable to chart a course that's less than 10 parsecs."
Interestingly, this evokes Han's comment about the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs. Apparently managing to FTL through the Kessel sector with such a short route is quite an achievement.

[StarWarsStarTrek]

Can somebody show me the quote claiming that the SW galaxy is a modest size one? What's the context? Who says it?

[Praeothmin]

Since the Parsec is an Earth measure, it may be that the SW Parsec is longer then the Human Parsec...

Besides a smaller galaxy wouldn't explain why some ships still take hours to travel small distances when Maul departed from Coruscant, supposedly on the other side of the galaxy, and managed to reach Tatooine very fast. It's even worse with Palpatine coming to Mustafaar.

Faster ships, better astrogation computers, more direct route, wormholes...
We cannot ignore the high speeds in SW, because there are a lot of these examples, such as the Sullust to Endor trip, which could not have taken many days to do, and which points to very high speeds...
But a small Galaxy goes a long way to explain the small number of ships used in space battles, in patrol, etc...
In fact, a densely populated, but small Galaxy, would easily explain the millions of smaller ships, and only 25 000 SDs of any size, and it would also explain the small number of ships and soldiers involved in all the battles, in space and on land...
It would be just as in ST, where a ship is not something you lose lightly, because they are so little of them to cover such immense territory...

Can somebody show me the quote claiming that the SW galaxy is a modest size one? What's the context? Who says it?

It was the first line of WILGA's answer:

According to the novelization of » A New Hope «, the Star Wars Galaxy is a modest-sized galaxy (page 163) and a tiny portion of that galaxy consists of only a million star systems (page 111).

[Mike DiCenso]

It was the first line of WILGA's answer:
Quote:According to the novelization of » A New Hope «, the Star Wars Galaxy is a modest-sized galaxy (page 163) and a tiny portion of that galaxy consists of only a million star systems (page 111).

Actually, that's slightly incorrect. It's actually a number of different passages, none of which appear on page 111. Here are the quotes I'm aware of and where they are found:

ANH novel, ch. 6, page 87


"The tridimensional solid screen filled one wall of the vast chamber from floor to ceiling. It showed a million star systems. A tiny portion of the galaxy, but an impressive display nonetheless when exhibited in such a fashion."


Tarkin's speech to Leia from the ANH novel, ch. 7, page 116 :


"This station is the final link in the new-forged Imperial chain which will bind the million systems of the galactic Empire together once and for all."

After Alderaan's destruction, Vader checks the display again. From Chapter 8, page 129:

"Vader stared at the motley array of stars displayed on the conference-room map while Tarkin and Admiral Motti conferred nearby. Interestingly, the first use of the most powerful destructive machine ever constructed had seemingly had no influence at all on that map, which in itself represented only a tiny fraction of this section of one modest-sized galaxy.

It would take a microbreakdown of a portion of this map to reveal a slight reduction in spatial mass, caused by the disappearance of Alderaan. Alderaan, with its many cities, farms, factories, and towns -- and traitors, Vader reminded himself.

Despite his advances and intricate technological methods of annihilation, the actions of mankind remained unnoticeable to an uncaring, unimaginably vast universe."

So there you have it, the SW Galaxy and the Empire in a nutshell.
-Mike

[Nowhereman10]

Meanwhile, the Battle of Endor shows Star Wars ships battling at thousands of miles range.

What? Where in ROTJ did we ever see any Rebel or Imperial ship fight at distances greater than a few kilometers? When Piett brings the Imperial fleet to a halt, the Rebel fleet is clearly visible, not much more than a hundred or so km away.

8. While Star Wars hyperdrive is fast enough and long ranged enough for them to invade the Federation if the two sides are somehow close enough for this scenario to happen, the Federation would not be able to mount an invasion on any Star Wars galactic government. Federation warp drive wouldn't even have enough fuel to get to the core worlds, nor would they know how to get there (after centuries of exploring the Federation hasn't mapped out its own galaxy yet, so mapping out that of another one would be infeasible in any short amount of time) or sustain any supply line.

In TCW's "Supply Lines", we hear of Republic blockade runners that can't reach Ryloth because it's too far out of range, and earlier in the episode Admiral Doa's fleet is low on fuel and ammo. Furthermore, we know from the TCW movie, that SW ships require hyperspace lanes to get anywhere quickly, which is why the Republic went out of it's way to save Jabba's son so that they could use the Hutt's hyperspace routes.

Given all of that, I don't see Star Wars hyperdrive doing very well in the Star Trek Milky Way galaxy when they haven't got anything mapped, and most people are probably unlikely to trade with them. Even during the Dominion crisis and later war, the Ferengi never once sold out to the Dominion. The Federation and allies, on the other hand, have very extensive knowledge on the Alpha Quadrant (basically 25% of the Milky Way), and the Beta Quadrant (remember the Federation, Romulans and Klingons span two quadrants), plus whatever Voyager has transmitted back about the Delta Quadrant, and the Federation as well as other Alpha and Beta Quadrant powers managed to map of the Gamma Quadrant before the war.

We can see a canon map in "The Chase" , (you know that episode that Warsies hate because of Picard's old professor who draws a route on the map that spans 40 thousand light years would only take "weeks" to follow on a starship), that shows the political boundries of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants. You can hear Galen and Picard talk about the time it would take here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cl8LV9QYgnE at 7:55 and here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxo4NdhW ... re=related at 2:45 onward you can see the map and the good Prof. Galen trace the route. So in their own well charted territory, Federation ships would be very fast indeed. Better than a million times c in speed. They'd run circles around Imperial ships that are struggling to try and map an unknown galaxy.

[Who is like God arbour]

That said I'm pretty sure the EU is full of details that would show that the galaxy is about 100,000 LY wide. You just can't ignore that, the EU has been written over decades with most likely such a conception of the galaxy in mind.

We not only can ignore details of EU sources, which are implying or outright stating that the Star Wars galaxy is 100.000 light years or more in diameter.

We even have to ignore them.

Because these from the EU stemming details are lower canon than the novelization » A New Hope « - officially written by George Lucas.

Although it may be true, that Alan Dean Foster was the ghost writer for George Lucas, the hopefully undisputed fact remains that this novelization is higher ranking canon than anything from the EU - and even if only because, by putting his name as author under it, George Lucas has made it as a whole to G-canon, while that may be disputable for anything created by the authors of the other novelizations, that hasn't been shown in the movies.

But canon superior derogat canoni inferiori.

Actually, that's slightly incorrect. It's actually a number of different passages, none of which appear on page 111.

Depending on which book you have. The pages may differ from redaction to redaction. Especially here, there are the pre-theatrical releases, the theatrical releases, the special edition releases and later releases. To expect that each redaction and each release will be page-wise identical is a little bit silly.

[Picard]

So entire SW galaxy is around sime size as Federation... at best.

[Khas]

Actually, I might be able to clear things up here. We know that the SW galaxy is a modest-sized spiral galaxy. The lower limit of spiral galaxy diameter is 50,000 light-years. So, we'd be safe saying that that is the SW galaxy's size.

[Picard]

Not really.

http://www.daviddarling.info/encycloped ... algal.html

10 000 light years in diameter is lower size limit for spiral galaxy.

[Who is like God arbour]

Actually, I might be able to clear things up here. We know that the SW galaxy is a modest-sized spiral galaxy. The lower limit of spiral galaxy diameter is 50,000 light-years. So, we'd be safe saying that that is the SW galaxy's size.

No.

We know that the Star Wars galaxy is a modest-sized galaxy.

And it is a spiral galaxy.

But not that it is a modest-sized spiral galaxy.

There is an important difference. If it were true that the minimum diameter of a spiral galaxy is 50.000 light years, a modest-sized spiral galaxy would be larger than this 50.000 light years in diameter.

Besides that, I'd like to see evidence for the claim that » the lower limit of spiral galaxy diameter is 50,000 light-years «.

According to Wikipedia, it is possible that the galaxy NGC 3109 is a small spiral galaxy. If it is a spiral galaxy, with a diameter of 21.000 light-years, it would be the smallest in the Local Group. The fact, that this is presumed possible, shows, that spiral galaxies with a diameter of less than 50.000 light years are deemed to be possible. That would contradict your notion that spiral galaxies have to have a diameter of at least 50.000 light years.

[Khas]

Whoops. That just came from a book I remember reading that said that 50,000 LY was the minimum Spiral Galaxy Diameter. My mistake.