Rebuttal to darkstar's website

[Lucky]

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.

You do realize you could have just used the personal messaging system on this site to contact Darkstar, right?

[Mith]

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.

It's not the only map: http://yfrog.com/1nstardistancej

Calculations based off of it:

Red Line
Endor to Sullest
“Hundreds of Light years”
Pixels: 260
200 Light Years (minimum)
Galactic Size: 800 light years

500 Light Years (Average)
Galactic Size: 2,017.3 Light years

900 Light Years (High)
Galactic Size: 3,617.3 light years

2,000 Light Years (Highest Probable Figure)
Galactic Size: 8,069.23 light years

10,000 light years (Outright charity
Galacitc Size: 40,346.15 light years

Green Line
Naboo to Tatooine
“Just under a Parsec…”
Pixels: 156
Galactic Size: 20.17 Light years.

The highest canon source would naturally support the galaxy only being 20 light years in radius. However, if we assume it to be an "off-the-cuff-remark", then we could go with the other one. Simply put, the best size for the SW galaxy ranges from 10,000-30,000. Given how vague we want to be varies on the whole size of it all.

Keep in mind that Starfleet is spread over 8,000 light years. Assuming that's a perfectly sphereical shape and Picard was refering to the cicumfrance, Starfleet would be 1,273.89 Ly in diameter. Starfleet would still be rather small in comparison, but more than large enough for the Empire not to laugh them off. Especially when you consider that according to the image, the Empire doesn't encompass the entire galaxy.

[Who is like God arbour]

Yes, we had this map already in the thread: » Size of the Federation vs Galactic Empire's Size «.

• Stay polite.
  
  To say that you are disgusted by people who are saying that the Empire is small is a little bit harsh.
  
  Especially if your only argument is that it is stated in Star Wars cannon that the Galactic Empire spans the entire Star Wars Galaxy, and that it is 120,000 light-years wide.
  
  As JediMaster Spock has just elaborated, canonical information are often times contradictory.
  
  In such a case, higher ranking canonical information trumps lower ranking canonical information.
  
  According to the novel » A New Hope « by George Lucas, the Star Wars Galaxy is only a modest sized galaxy. That is a canonical information that can only be trumped by an at least coequal canonical information.
  
  Do you know any at least coequal canonical sources that are saying the Star Wars Galaxy is a large or even giant galaxy?
  
  If not you simply will have to accept that the Star Wars Galaxy is only a modest sized galaxy.
  
  Then there is the novel » Vector Prime « by R. A. Salvatore. The novel includes a map from the Star Wars galaxy.
  
  
  
  Regrettably it has no scale. But it shows inter alia the distance between Endor and Sullust.
  
  And from the novel » Return of the Jedi « it is known that 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 it 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.
  
  P.S.: To give credit where credit is due, it was SailorSaturn13 from which I have the information about the novel » Vector Prime « and its implications [O].

  
  
  According to that map, the star Wars Galaxy has a diameter less than four times the distance between Endor and Sullust and fifty times the distance between Geonosis and Tatooine.
  
  At least as far as the distance between Sullust and Endor is concerned, that map is compatible with the map of » Vector Prime «.
  
  It seems that the Star Wars Galaxy is a very small Galaxy with a very high density of habitable planets.

  If the Essential Atlas is wrong when it shows Sullust and Endor at a distance of more than 20.000 light years - definitely not only hundred of light years - than it is only consequent to take it as source only with outmost caution. The chances are good that other things are wrong too only because there have to be subsequent errors.
  
  Either the position of Sullust and Endor on that map are wrong or the scale of that map is wrong. But seeing that Sullust and Endor have the same relative position on other maps too, it seems more plausible to assume that the scale of that map is wrong. And of course, if one assumes a 120.000 light years large galaxy, it is only reasonable to assume accordingly many inhabitable planets. But that is nothing more than a subsequent error. If a 12.000 light years large galaxy had been assumed, consequently less inhabitable planets would have been assumed too.
  
  Insofar it is not the wisest thing to do to continue to use the Essential Atlas as a source to prove that it is correct.
  
  That does not mean that it is not canon any more. It means only that it is wrong because it is overruled by higher canon.

  Now, the erroneous placement of two planets on the chart wouldn't rule out the whole source, right?

  That's not what I said, is it?
  I merely said that it does compromise the whole source and one should be very careful when using it. And of course, if we are talking about the size of the galaxy and the amount of inhabitable planest in that galaxy, there are subsequent errors. In a small galaxy are less planets than in a huge galaxy. Insofar I think that the by that source given size is as compromised as the by that source given amount of inhabitable planets.
  

  Did you already post a picture/scan of the Atlas' map in this thread ? I'm not sure, I've seen one, but there just are so many on Internet, I can't recall.

  No, I did not yet post a scan of the map of the Essential Atlas.
  
  But here it is:
  

  • • 

  The distance between Endor and Sullust is less than four times the diameter of that galaxy in that map.
  
  If that galaxy is supposed to have a diameter of 120.000 light years, the distance between Endor and Sullust has to be 30.000 light years.
  
  That would contradict the in the novel » Return of the Jedi « given information that the distance between Sullust and Endor is only hundred of light years. No one would speak of hundred of light years if 30.000 light years are meant.
  
  It would be as if one would say that London, UK is only hundred of kilometers away from Sydney, Australia.
  
  Everyone would say thousand of kilometers as thousand of light years would have been used if the distance between Endor and Sullust were 30.000 light years.
  
  Logical conclusion: the scale is wrong and the galaxy has maximal a 50.000 light years diameter. Even that would mean that the distance between Endor and Sullust is still more than 12.500 light years.
  
  If we assume a distance between Sullust and Endor of only 5.000 light years (50 times hundred light years), the galaxy would have a diameter of only 20.000 light years.
  
  And of course, the amount of inhabitable planets are depending on the size of the galaxy.
  
  If the size of that galaxy in that source is wrong, it is only plausible to assume that the amount of inhabitalbe planets are also wrong. At least this information is compromised.

As you can see, it was all already done. It's not new.



Another point:

• Do not confuse the United Federation of Planets and StarFleet. The United Federation of Planets as a political body has a certain dimension (e.g. 8.000 light years from one side to the other side). But StarFleet-ships can operate outside of this area. The Enterprise has often-times visited planets that were no members of the Federation - e.g. the Klingon Homeworld and the Romulan Homeworld. For that the Enterprise had to leave the area of the Federation.

[StarWarsStarTrek]

Star Wars The Essential Atlas lists the size of the Star Wars galaxy at 120,000 LY across; other sources say that Star Wars has 100 quadrillion inhabitants. The ESSENTIAL ATLAS is probably more reliable in terms of the size of the galaxy than some sketchy implication from a novel.

The size disparity between Star Wars and the Federation is staggering.

[Praeothmin]

Star Wars The Essential Atlas lists the size of the Star Wars galaxy at 120,000 LY across; other sources say that Star Wars has 100 quadrillion inhabitants. The ESSENTIAL ATLAS is probably more reliable in terms of the size of the galaxy than some sketchy implication from a novel.

The size disparity between Star Wars and the Federation is staggering.

Ok, in other words, you ignore th many examples of higher canon sources in order to keep your beliefs intact...
Is that it?
'cause, you see, there are more than 1 higher canon sources, there's the ANH novel, the TESB novel, and the AotC onscreen statement by Padme that Tatooine and Geonosis are less than a Parsec apart from one another.
In every EU map, they are less then 1/200th of the total size of the Galaxy, so that means a Galaxy sixe of around 6 520 LY...
Can you provide some evidence as to why the Atlas is actually more reliable?

[Picard]

http://picard578.blogspot.com/2010/11/s ... -size.html

[Khas]

Whoah whoah whoah whoah whoah whoah whoah.

Is StarWarsStarTrek basically saying that I can't use the New Essential Guide to Weapons and Technology (which is where I got the 15-to-100 km TL ranges from), but he can use the Essential Atlas? I smell hypocrisy...

[Mith]

Star Wars The Essential Atlas lists the size of the Star Wars galaxy at 120,000 LY across; other sources say that Star Wars has 100 quadrillion inhabitants. The ESSENTIAL ATLAS is probably more reliable in terms of the size of the galaxy than some sketchy implication from a novel.

The size disparity between Star Wars and the Federation is staggering.

You seem unfamiliar with how canon layers work.

[Lucky]

Star Wars The Essential Atlas lists the size of the Star Wars galaxy at 120,000 LY across; other sources say that Star Wars has 100 quadrillion inhabitants. The ESSENTIAL ATLAS is probably more reliable in terms of the size of the galaxy than some sketchy implication from a novel.

The size disparity between Star Wars and the Federation is staggering.

That isn't how Star Wars canon works. In the Star Wars canon system G-canon is always right, and it does not matter what T,C,S, or N canon say.

[User1460]

I'm familiar with DS's website, so I'd like to answer this:

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.

But there's no proof that ship-time is the same as real-space time. From the time Obi-wan sends the message, to the time for Yoda to go to Kamino and back, it could have been months for all we know; in any event, we know that Dooku wasn't going to kill anyone

before

Yoda got there, since it was purely staged for that reason, i.e. make the Jedi think that the Clones were on their side.

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.

Obviously point-blank range is more effective than maximum, particularly when dealing with an enemy that adapts to your attacks rather than deflecting them, and since closer means less time to adapt to the incoming attack. The Defiant, for example, was designed to get even closer, possibly even ramming the ship and going righ through it at full phasers: that's why it had a cloaking-device, i.e. so that a huge number of them could move in and shoot while cloaked, and knock out the entire Cube before the Borg had a chance to adapt.

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

Who said they couldn't? 5km is about 3000 miles, which is exactly what DarkStar said.

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.

Like Darth Vader's ship knocking R2D2 out of commission for a few hours-- something that a Jawa did earlier with a hand-held taser? Doesn't sound too frightening.

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.

You don't provide counterclaims, so it's better than nothing.

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.

A small town is a small town.

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.

Or need 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.

Star Trek's is over a thousand planets, and I didn't see several hundred million seats in the Senate on Coruscant.

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,

Unless it were "far, far away" in terms of intergalactic space, which is pretty far indeed.
While "The Rise of Darth Vader" mentions intergalactic hyperdrive-units, there's no mention of such in the movies.
Likewise, Star Wars hyperlanes are constructed, not due to their ship-speeds. In Star Trek, they plot courses and go, they don't need to access a conduit.

the Federation would not be able to mount an invasion on any Star Wars galactic government.

Transwarp drive was stated in the STIII novel to have already reached another galaxy; however if the Empire encountered the Defiant, then they'd have no problem capturing it and all of its data.

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.

The invading Empire-ships would contain such a map, and the Vulcan mind-meld could supply everything the crew knew.
In contrast, the Empire would have no space-lanes in our galaxy, and would be crippled once they got here since they have no warp-drive and no space-lanes.

Finally, in ANH Han Solo brags that he's been from one side of the galaxy, to the other; this woudn't be a big deal if it only took a few hours.

[Khas]

Um, 5km is 3 miles. Slight goof there.

[Khas]

And how come when Han says "Kid, I've flown from one side of the galaxy to the other, seen a lot of strange stuff", no one ever thinks that he's referring to his combined journeys?

[Nowhereman10]

And how come when Han says "Kid, I've flown from one side of the galaxy to the other, seen a lot of strange stuff", no one ever thinks that he's referring to his combined journeys?

Or it's just more of Han's boasting. Or some combination of the two. Also remember that we've heard similar statements in Star Trek, like what Capt. Pike says to the Talosian keeper in "The Cage" ("The Menagerie") about coming from a star group on the other side of the galaxy. Or the The Next Generation episode "Conspiracy" where Picard tells the other captains that the Enterprise-D has been "on the outer rim".

Transwarp drive was stated in the STIII novel to have already reached another galaxy

What? Where in the book? Even if that was stated, it's not canon.

Like Darth Vader's ship knocking R2D2 out of commission for a few hours-- something that a Jawa did earlier with a hand-held taser? Doesn't sound too frightening.

Those are two totally different things. R2 recovered on his own from the Jawa gun's effects. While the lasers from Vader's TIE were not terribly impressive, they at least did actually burns through the casing of his dome, and he most certainly would not have come back, if not for the Rebel technicians repairing him. Otherwise the little droid was effectively "dead".

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.

Casual conversations? Darkstar was primarily basing them off of a military briefing in the Rebel base on Yavin IV from Dodonna himself where the guy clearly states in the novelization that he was speaking in terms of turbolaser gun emplacements that the Rebel pilots were going to have to deal with. From there Darkstar made his calcs based on the actual visual densities of TLs as seen in the movie, and goes from there in a series of though exercises as to what that would mean.

[User1460]

Um, 5km is 3 miles. Slight goof there.

You know what I meant.

And how come when Han says "Kid, I've flown from one side of the galaxy to the other, seen a lot of strange stuff", no one ever thinks that he's referring to his combined journeys?

Because that would be "I've been all over the galaxy," if the Galaxy's small in terms of travel-time. Like going from one side of our world to another is no biggie, since it's a 16-hour flight: but being all over it is something else. So being from one side to another in all his travels, implies it takes a lot longer to get there.

[User1460]

Transwarp drive was stated in the STIII novel to have already reached another galaxy

What? Where in the book?

Page 123, Paragraph 4-5.

Even if that was stated, it's not canon.

My point exactly: neither is the intergalactic hyperdrive in the EU which they want to claim would allow the Empire to invade our galaxy and take it over 1-2-3.

the lasers from Vader's TIE were not terribly impressive,

[/quote]
Again: my point exactly. EU-figures brag them at like 50 kilotons/shot or something. I don't see Hiroshima and Nagasaki there- but I do see a fat man and a little boy hehe (i.e. Luke and Vader).