Starfleet Jedi

No offense to darkstar, but this is one of the most ridiculous calculations on his site.

1. Introduction

Darkstar's main argument, that lighter turbolasers cannot be seen from such a distance, is very weak given that, from whatever distance the event is being witnessed from, starfighters are still visible. It is not unreasonable for MTL's or LTL's to be visible.

infinite lattice of shining hairlines that interlock planetoids and track erratic spirals of glowing gnats

1. An "infinite lattice of shining hairlines" implies a very large quantity of turbolasers, far too large to be accomplished by the slow firing HTL's.

2. The big one; "track" spirals of glowing gnats, which are confirmed to refer to starfighters. Since when do HTL's track fighters?


2. Preliminaries

Things start to get ridiculous.

Darkstar attempts to equate Mos Eisley to a "standard SW small town". Yes, he thinks that a backwater desert planet made up of small farmers is representative of a space age civilization.






1. A desert planet is hot, so therefore towns have to be very small.
2. Tatooine is extremely poor, and therefore cannot afford noticeable towns.
3. Tatooine is not very populated, and therefore does not need noticeable towns.
4. Tatooine is made up of farmers, who do not live in towns.

Mos Eisely may be less of a town as it is a large village.


2. Small Town America


He claims that you can use a modern small town as a basis for a Star Wars small town for absolutely no reason whatsoever other than that he does not want to consider how big a SW small town would be, which is very large.


C. Defining Vaporization


1. Hiroshima - somewhat fair enough, but why did he assume that Hiroshima's "vaporization" to a non literal sense is what the author was referring to? Why did he assume that Hiroshima was even close to vaporization, and that this figure is the figurative vaporization? He seems to have guesstimated, to avoid literal vaporization, which would boost the numbers significantly. Although it is not clear that the quote is talking literally, there is no proof that the author is being figurative, and if he is, why would you use a figurative prose to scientifically derive an upper limit? Such a tactic is silly and does not make much sense, given the vast mound of other evidence available.

2. The Thermal Problem - fair enough

3. Bolts and bombs - somewhat fair enough, but turbolasers can't be detonated by flak. Those were flak cannons.

Running the Numbers

Ah, "running the numbers". How is this going to do?

A. Burning Flesh - He got 6.25 megatons...and yet his final conclusion is 1.5 megatons?

B. Detonating wood - what? Why is only taking wood into account? What about metal? Cement? Nah, just wood.

C. Original or Crispy - Where did those numbers come from? Where did the equation come from?

D. Remembering Mos Eisley - see above.

IV. Conclusion - Even if darkstar's calculations, which contain more assumptions than the anti-Obama attack ads, were correct, since we know from the fact that HTL's do not track starfighters that the turbolasers were light turbolasers, we have established 1.5 megaton light turbolasers. This is not a victory for Trek, to say the least.

it's one and a half megs divided by what several hundred turrets? what's wrong with that figure that's still pretty damn powerful

StarWarsStarTrek wrote: 2. Preliminaries

Things start to get ridiculous.

Star Wars itself - the quote is in the context of Given ...and yet he uses Tatooine as a benchmark? What?



vs



Seriously?

Given Coruscant is one giant city the quote has to be in the context of the Republic, Galaxy Far Far Away in general in which case Tatooine fits perfectly, or the real world.

StarWarsStarTrek wrote:Star Wars itself - the quote is in the context of Coruscant...and yet he uses Tatooine as a benchmark? What?

It is in context of turbolaser firepower. Everything else is "massage" of canon. And if we go with "writer's intent", then we use US small town. If we go with in-universe context, we use Mos Eisley.

And Coruscant is ecumenopolis, there are no "small towns" on Coruscant.

Picard wrote:

StarWarsStarTrek wrote:Star Wars itself - the quote is in the context of Coruscant...and yet he uses Tatooine as a benchmark? What?

It is in context of turbolaser firepower. Everything else is "massage" of canon. And if we go with "writer's intent", then we use US small town. If we go with in-universe context, we use Mos Eisley.

And Coruscant is ecumenopolis, there are no "small towns" on Coruscant.

Picard, if you were to read more Star Wars books you'd realize that the author never breaks the fourth wall or makes any mention to real life except for in sections like about the author. As for in universe, you really don't seem to get it, do you? A small town in Tatooine is not representative of the Star Wars galaxy's small towns, because Tatooine is rather backwater even by modern standards. It's like comparing a "large" city in Zimbabwe to a large city in the United States.

A small town in Tatooine is not representative of the Star Wars galaxy's small towns

Burden of proof is on you to prove that the towns on tatooine are not 'small towns.'

As it stands, there are numerous shots of numerous planets in G-Canon... they show that there are cities that are not planet-wide... meaning a planet-wide city is not the norm. They show cities that are not the sizes of continents or even small countries, meaning those are not the norm.

What they DO show are cities that are comparable in size to modern day cities, therefore we have no reason to believe that there are towns the size of the entire United Kingdom....

So please provide proof other than conjecture, that those are not the equivalent of a small town (hell, one of them even has a space port for crying out loud). I'm reasonablly sure for ever 'mega city' in star wars I could easily find a smaller city. In fact, one of the LARGEST cities ever seen is Cloud City, and one would presume that has a lot to do with the lack of land.


In fact, I'll start it off. Here are a list of cities that are NOT mega cities the size of major earth landmasses.


* Theed (Human capital)
* Otoh Gunga (Gungan capital)
* Otoh Raban
* Otoh Urs
* Otoh Langua
* Otoh Jahai
* Otoh Sancture
* Otoh Mandassa
* Oxon City
* Umberbool City
* Vis
* Keren
* Moenia
* Selton
* Kaadara
* Dee'ja Peak
* Parrlay
* New Centrif
* Spinnaker
* Harte Secur
* Bestine (capital)
* Anchorhead
* Fort Tusken
* Mos Eisley
* Mos Entha
* Mos Espa
* Mos Gamos
* Mos Ila
* Aldera (capital)
* Terrarium City
* Crevasse City
* Chianar
* Belleau-a-Lir
* Gehenbar hive
* Golbah hive
* Stalgasin hive (capital)
* Rwookrrorro (capital)
* Royal City
* Kachirho
* Kepitenochan
* Thikkiiana
* Okikuti
* Chenachochan
* Coronet City (capital)
* Kor Vella
* Doaba Guerfel
* Bela Vistal
* Kolene
* Tyrena
* Anoat City
* Tipoca City
* Feiya


Edited for grammar.

Trinoya wrote:

A small town in Tatooine is not representative of the Star Wars galaxy's small towns

Burden of proof is on you to prove that the towns on tatooine are not 'small towns.'

As it stands, there are numerous shots of numerous planets in G-Canon... they show that there are cities that are not planet-wide... meaning a planet-wide city is not the norm. They show cities that are not the sizes of continents or even small countries, meaning those are not the norm.

What they DO show are cities that are comparable in size to modern day cities, therefore we have no reason to believe that their are towns the size of the entire united kingdom....

So please provide proof other than conjecture, that those are not the equivalent of a small town (hell, one of them even has a space port for crying out loud). I'm reasonablly sure for ever 'mega city' in star wars I could easily find a smaller city. In fact, one of the LARGEST cities ever seen is Cloud City, and one would presume that has a lot to do with the lack of land.


In fact, I'll start it off. Here are a list of cities that are NOT mega cities the size of major earth landmasses.


* Theed (Human capital)
* Otoh Gunga (Gungan capital)
* Otoh Raban
* Otoh Urs
* Otoh Langua
* Otoh Jahai
* Otoh Sancture
* Otoh Mandassa
* Oxon City
* Umberbool City
* Vis
* Keren
* Moenia
* Selton
* Kaadara
* Dee'ja Peak
* Parrlay
* New Centrif
* Spinnaker
* Harte Secur
* Bestine (capital)
* Anchorhead
* Fort Tusken
* Mos Eisley
* Mos Entha
* Mos Espa
* Mos Gamos
* Mos Ila
* Aldera (capital)
* Terrarium City
* Crevasse City
* Chianar
* Belleau-a-Lir
* Gehenbar hive
* Golbah hive
* Stalgasin hive (capital)
* Rwookrrorro (capital)
* Royal City
* Kachirho
* Kepitenochan
* Thikkiiana
* Okikuti
* Chenachochan
* Coronet City (capital)
* Kor Vella
* Doaba Guerfel
* Bela Vistal
* Kolene
* Tyrena
* Anoat City
* Tipoca City
* Feiya

Mos Eisley is a small town, or smaller. Where darkstar is wrong is assuming that Mos Eisley is a standard sized "small town", and not, say an extremely small town. More ridiculous commences as you ask me to prove a negative. Darkstar made the claim that Mos Eisley is a standard Star Wars small town, he has to prove it. He hasn't, and common sense implies otherwise.

You might ask why. Classical era Rome was considered to be a very large city, the largest in the Roman Empire and one of the largest, if not the largest, in the world. However, it's population was about 500,000 within the city walls. To put that in comparison, Baltimore, a major modern city, has a population of about 8.4 million residents. Yet both are large cities.

"But Mos Eisley existed in the same time as the quote was in!" you might say. From a time standpoint, yes. However, from a social development standpoint, Mos Eisley was far, far behind most of the rest of the galaxy. As a modern day comparison, New York City has a population of about 22.2 million people. Meanwhile, the largest city and capital of Zimbabwe is Harare, with about 2.8 million people. Both would count as "large cities" and "metropolitans" by their own standards, but compared to other countries, what Zimbabwe thinks is a major metropolitan really isn't, because Zimbabwe is a 3rd world nation. Tatooine is analogous to this, being a 3rd world/backwater planet, and is therefore hardly representative of the Star Wars galaxy.

But to use some of your examples, Tipoca City is hundreds of KMs wide according to its wookieepedia article. Let's estimate at 500 kms. Based on the relative sizes of New York City and Bastrop, the large city: small town ratio would be about 41.78 to one. Even if we were to assume that Tipoca City is considered to be as large of a city in Star Wars terms as New York City is in our terms, that's a "small town" diameter of about 11.97 kms. Which is far larger than Mos Eisley or Bastrop.

StarWarsStarTrek wrote:Where darkstar is wrong is assuming that Mos Eisley is a standard sized "small town", and not, say an extremely small town.

Why not assume Mos Eisley is an extremely large small town, it is a starport afterall, and that the average small town on your average Star Wars world is even smaller and more of a dung heap. I mean if you are going to speculate without backing or evidence why can't I?

Darkstar made the claim that Mos Eisley is a standard Star Wars small town, he has to prove it.

Lets see is Mos Eisley a "small town"? Check. Are there noticably larger "small towns" displayed in the higher cannon? No. Any reason to assume by "small town" it was meant massive sprawling cityscape? No. Any evidence presented to the contrary? Not so far. So your protestions aside I see no wrong in assuming a small star wars town is a small star wars town unless you have evidence Mos Eisley is unique in a bad way.

However, from a social development standpoint, Mos Eisley was far, far behind most of the rest of the galaxy

So it should be frighteningly easy for you to provide screencaps, transcripts, etc of "small towns" of humongous size. I await this most eagerly.

Tipoca City is hundreds of KMs wide according to its wookieepedia article

Glancing at the wookieepedia page Tipoca city stretches over a hundred KMs singular and without citation so off the bat your 500 is grotesqely overshooting. As to your calc itself do you have any evidence, at all, to suggest your speculations are anything other than mere speculations? Do you have any small towns bigger than Mos Eisley?

sonofccn wrote:

StarWarsStarTrek wrote:Tipoca City is hundreds of KMs wide according to its wookieepedia article

Glancing at the wookieepedia page Tipoca city stretches over a hundred KMs singular and without citation so off the bat your 500 is grotesqely overshooting. As to your calc itself do you have any evidence, at all, to suggest your speculations are anything other than mere speculations? Do you have any small towns bigger than Mos Eisley?

I just checked, and once again SWST failed to properly check sources, not to mention this is very likely another case of blatent dishonesty on his/her/it's part. A link is provided here

I quote from the start of the second paragraph of the article:

"The city consisted of a network of stilt structures that spanned more than a hundred kilometers along Kamino's western equator and was considered by many to be the heart of Kaminoan society."

So not likely much more than a hundred km. For a comparison, New York city is about 50 km from the tip of Staten Island to the northern most border of the Bronx.
-Mike

More ridiculous commences as you ask me to prove a negative. Darkstar made the claim that Mos Eisley is a standard Star Wars small town, he has to prove it.

And "I" have provided you with a list of small cities, SOME OF WHICH are smaller in size then Mos Eisley.

What I asked you to do was provide evidence that Mos Eisley wasn't a small town. You failed to do so. Your presumption that I'm asking you to prove a negative is meaningless, I asked you to provide evidence for what constitutes a small town in star wars, nothing more, and I did so when you made the direct statement, AND I QUOTE,

A small town in Tatooine is not representative of the Star Wars galaxy's small towns

THAT is an opinion, if you want it to be fact you have to prove it. Show me a small town. I've shown you cities that are SMALLER.

An opinion? That Mos Eisley is not representative of the Star Wars galaxy's typical small towns is a conclusion based on logic and common sense. You seriously are trolling if you actually need evidence to suggest that a backwater planet's small town would not be the same size as a developed planet's small town. Do you seriously think that a small town on, for example, Fondor would be the same size as a small town on Mos Eisley. That a small town in one of the most major shipbuilding planets in the Star Wars galaxy is equal in size to a small town in one of the most backwater planets in the Star Wars galaxy? Are you this ignorant about real life?

I said nothing about what I think. I'm demanding evidence for what constitutes a small town. You have still yet to provide it. If you are unable to provide evidence then your conclusion that Mos Eisley is not representative of a small town is pure conjecture. Nothing more, nothing less.

As near as I can tell all you're doing is handwaving saying, "well star wars has some big cities so its towns have to be big too!" I disproved that assessment by providing you with numerous non planet wide or continental sized cities.


Also, thank you so much for this gem:

You seriously are trolling if you actually need evidence

StarWarsStarTrek wrote:Ah, darkstar assumes that the turbolasers are viewable from the surface, or the rooftops (rooftops which are quite high indeed in Star Wars). This is a reasonable assumption, although the quote does specify the light scatter, not the turbolasers themselves.

The turbolaser bolts are visible from the surface, unless you think that "light scatter" is some magical thing that's really huge around a turbolaser bolt that we've never seen before, rather than just a "art techo" description of the visible bolt glow itself.

Star Wars itself - the quote is in the context of Coruscant...and yet he uses Tatooine as a benchmark? What? {...} Seriously?

Yes, quite seriously.

Had they said "city" and I used Ryloth's capital city of Lessu as the only example allowed, you might have a complaint, given that we've seen Coruscant the uber-city in Star Wars.

However, they said "town", so you have no complaint there.

At that time, and as far as I know until right now, Mos Eisley, Anchorhead, and Mos Espa were the only places explicitly called towns in Star Wars. There is also Coco Town on Coruscant (a division of unspecified size) and the "whole town" in the place where Padme grew up, though we never see nor hear description of the size of either.

Mos Eisley is even explicitly a bigger town than Anchorhead.

As of my downloads of closed caption logs of TCW until now, there is as yet no explicitly-mentioned town in TCW. However, we have seen that the Ryloth "capital city" is taller but not apparently much broader than Mos Eisley, and we saw what might be a town on Ryloth bombed by Separatists, though that was explicitly called a village.

In short, if you have an actual "small town" to use from Star Wars, feel free to recommend it. As it stands, I used a "town" larger than some other "towns" from the canon, so I feel pretty good about it.

Hiroshima - somewhat fair enough, but why did he assume that Hiroshima's "vaporization" to a non literal sense is what the author was referring to? Why did he assume that Hiroshima was even close to vaporization, and that this figure is the figurative vaporization? He seems to have guesstimated, to avoid literal vaporization, which would boost the numbers significantly.

Why would you assume "vaporization" in a particular thermally-interesting scientific sense is what is being described? I realize that here among geeks that's where our loyalties are, but Tom Dick and Harry don't know the middle guy about scientific jargon.

It's best to use the most common connotation in the absence of a reason to do otherwise.

Had the author said "powerful enough to melt all the buildings in a small town and vaporize the inhabitants", we might have a reason, but instead we get a phrase that goes along with the common connotation.

Bolts and bombs - somewhat fair enough, but turbolasers can't be detonated by flak. Those were flak cannons.

I didn't say turbolasers were detonated by flak. I said they could be detonated in a flak burst. That is, the bolt goes kablooey mid-flight.

If you're unfamiliar with that, go do more research. Some of your ilk argue against it for some reason, but whatever.

A. Burning Flesh - woah, he got 6.25 megatons...and yet his final conclusion is 1.5 megatons?

Yeah, 'cause of context, a concept which seems to elude you.

"Burning Flesh" shows 6.25 megatons to provide enough energy mathematically to vaporize a person at 3km.

However, quoting the page: "Recall that initially we were discussing Mos Eisley, a larger town on Tatooine. While Bastrop was some six kilometers in width, Mos Eisley appeared to be just one or two at maximum. If we assumed that Mos Eisley was 1.5 kilometers wide (possibly double the true value, but no matter), and again employed our human-centric vaporization standard, we would find that the energy release at the center of town would be some sixteen times less than what we calculated for Bastrop. In other words, the value for vaporizing humans in Mos Eisley would give us a 'mere' 400 kilotons per turbolaser bolt."

Also, "It's worth reiterating here that we've used an intensity value 50 times greater than what would cause flesh to flash into steam down to the bone in order to get our initial 6.25 megaton figure. We also ignored atmospheric effects altogether. Coupled with the fact that we're also vaporizing a much larger town of far sturdier structures with that figure by way of the massive overpressure, it seems our generosity has been extreme."

Detonating wood - what? Why is only taking wood into account? Pretty much every Star Wars habitat we see; contains some abundance of metal, usually lots of durasteel.

Mos Eisley is made of neither metal nor wood, but I discussed the wood issue both for its educational value (which was evidently a waste of time for some readers) and in reference to Bastrop specifically. However, as noted, "at 20psi even the heaviest concrete structures would be wrecked, if not demolished to dust and rubble altogether."

In TCW we've seen people living in giant coconuts or somesuch, so it isn't like every Star Wars town is gonna have the meter-thick durasteel walls you would want them to have.

Most buildings in Mos Eisley were part of the "haphazard collage of low-grade concrete,

stone, and plastoid structures", though we also hear that "they looked primitive from the outside, and
many were. But oftentimes walls and arches of old stone masked durasteel
double walls with circulating coolant flowing freely between." Meaning some of the buildings would be surprisingly badass.

And contrary to your BS about me "only taking wood into account", my page features that already:

" "Unlike Anchorhead, there were enough people in Mos Eisley to require movement in the heat of day. Built from the beginning with commerce in mind, even the oldest of the town's buildings had been designed to provide protection from the twin suns. They looked primitive from the outside, and many were. But oftentimes walls and arches of old stone masked durasteel double walls with circulating coolant flowing freely between." (ANH novelization, Ch. 6)

While there's no real way to calculate anything based on the above . . . we don't know any details of wall thickness, coolant efficacy, and so on . . . we can certainly presume that the destruction of some of the buildings would be a more energy-intensive affair than, say, blowing up a 20th Century wood-frame house. The towering spires of Coruscant are also built of durasteel and something called permacrete, suggesting that such materials as are used in Mos Eisley are probably pretty normal for robust buildings."

In any case, the best thing to do for making an estimate as I did is to get a fair median value. I realize that you want me to calculate the vaporization of a Star Destroyer at 3km in order to get an upper limit closer to what you want it to be, but that's not gonna happen on my watch for either Trek or Wars.

Original or Crispy - Where did those numbers come from? Where did the equation come from?

Had you clicked on any of the links you'd see where they came from, not to mention me referencing the source in the text. It's kinda embarrassing for you that you asked.

Conclusion - a better calculation would involve deducing the size of a Star Wars large town

Why a large town? Trying to wank it? The novel explicitly says "small town".

by comparing it with large Star Wars cities relative to modern large cities compared with modern small towns.

Ah, the "Everything's bigger in Texas" approach? Except that's silly. Why should the word "town" get applied to a bigger community in Star Wars? Just because they have cities larger than our own is no excuse for that. What name should we then call smaller communities whose names have graduated up the chain?

Also, many feats show Star Trek photon torpedos at yields even lower than this; some suggest sub kiloton yields, some more reasonable ones suggest high kiloton yields. Feats suggesting megaton level yields for photon torpedos are actually less common.

For the context of this page, nobody gives a damn what a torpedo does. And I'm not sure I give a damn what you think one does anyway.

What darkstar really did was actually set a lower limit for turbolaser yield, because his calculations are actually extremely low end;

Hardly. You just want to say so because the calculation is as fair an estimate as could be made.

(despite the fact that a modern small town would rival the size of classical Rome, showing the extreme increase in the size of small town as population and technology level rises)

Ancient Rome had something like a million people in it. That ain't a small town, kid. Yeah, the Aurelian Walls incorporate a smaller area than Bastrop, but that is not an indicator of Rome's true size at the time . . . it is said that as much as a sixth of those 3rd Century walls were built right atop existing buildings. If you built a wall all around Bastrop's city limits, I doubt the same could be said.

Yeah, the automobile and golf courses that are incorporated and rail right-of-ways and such means we can have sprawling towns, but with less stuff per area. But that doesn't really help you, and doesn't mean that a future town is going to be the size of a modern American state or something. There are limits to the concept, and having hypothetical single dwellings 20 miles out from the center of town doesn't really change the reasoning.

In any case, as far as Bastrop goes, I found references to "small town" and then went with a much bigger one, as made clear in the page.

And still you complain.

However, I don't really see anything in your complaints that has merit. Your desire for a higher figure (or to call my figure a low one) doesn't appear to have any rational basis.

SWST wrote:based on logic and common sense.

Perhaps all of us here have a different definition of logic than you do, because my logical conclusions don't agree with yours...
Although mine are based off of facts, and not unsupported wishful thinking like yours... :)

Seriously, is there a reason why you ignore all the facts and evidence others provide and keep repeating the same points over and over, points which have been defeated, debunked, demolished over and over again by many people here?

Coruscant is an exception, as many people have pointed out to you.
There are more examples à la Mos Eisley than there are Coruscants, yet you persistently ignore those examples everytime they are given.
Why?
Is it because they destroy your representation of what SW is?
And why do you never provide a single shred of evidence for your claims, instead coming back with gems like this:

You seriously are trolling if you actually need evidence

The problem is, you never provided any evidence to the contrary, while they have provided much evidence destroying your little scenario...

Are you here just to troll, or are you really that bad at debates?

when one person tells you that you're being an idiot, you can feel free to ignore him, ie, me. when it happens OVER AND OVER AGAIN, WITH THE EXACT SAME COMPLAINTS EACH TIME, YOU'RE BEING AN IDIOT.

when i first came here a few years ago i was so convinced of star wars superiority that my first post was actually to ask the question, 'why do you even bother to continue to debate?' do you know what happened? the members of this forum created a new thread in which they explained, in sometimes exhausting detail, why basically every single point in the 'star wars vs star trek in five minutes' page on sdn was wrong. i took those arguments back to my shiny new sdn account, and do you know what happened there? the members of that forum called me an idiot for listening to the members of this forum. there were no counter-arguments to be had except for 'those jerks don't know what the fuck they're talking about'. i was told that all the info i needed was already on the page. except it isn't. there ARE no arguments against the responses i received in that thread, which still exists, btw, if you want to do it yourself. you are a perfect example of the stupidity breeding itself at sdn. here's how it goes:

me: hey, i read where you said blah blah blah STATEMENT ONE. but those guys at sfj say that doesn't matter because blah blah blah STATEMENT TWO. how do you respond to that?
sdn: STATEMENT ONE.
me: wait, what? what about STATEMENT TWO?
sdn: STATEMENT ONE. YOU ARE A MORON. STATEMENT ONE!!

give me a break already.