Star Wars vs Star Trek shields
Posted: Mon May 09, 2011 9:21 pm
Horray!
Star Trek shields
There are three pretty good calculations on shield strength:
The first two are courtesy of Mike Wong, here:
http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Tec ... ield1.html
Mike Wong calculates the shield strength of the Enterprise to be about 30 megatons, but another calculation turns out only 0.5 megatons.
Another one, courtesy of Qeveron:
http://forums.spacebattles.com/showpost ... stcount=11
Based on a showing, the shield strength of the Enterprise turns out to be half a kiloton.
So we have three showings:
1. 30 megatons
2. 0.5 megatons
3. 0.5 kilotons
There's also the well known among this debate quote about using the entire torpedo payload to vaporize a 10 km hollow asteroid; even not taking the hollow part into account, that would be 3 megatons optimistically, which fits well with the double digit megaton shields.
Showing 2 could be handwaved as the Enterprise being weak to plasma, which could be disastrous given that turbolasers are implied to be plasma based weaponry. Showing 3 is hard to rationalize, but supposedly it's simply an outlier.
So 30 megatons, eh? Sounds about right. Calculations for quantum torpedos from this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHTtOMWRysg
Imply double digit megaton yields, so this is reasonable.
Star Wars shield strength
You guys aren't going to allow the ICS, so let's use another calculation, shall we?
The asteroid field in ESB. It's a "steady hail of asteroids" (ESB novel) impacting like "multi megaton compression bombs" (RODV). The second quote tells us a few things:
1. There exist multi megaton yield bombs in Star Wars
2. A star destroyer can casually tank them for an entire day
So based on ESB, we see an asteroid hitting a star destroyer about once every second; very reasonable, given the very high density of the asteroid field coupled with the high surface area of a star destroyer.
By multi megaton, we could say 5 megatons, a decent middle number.
The star destroyers probably were in the asteroid field for a day, as the bounty hunters were traveling across the galaxy to meet them. If you go by low hyperdrive speeds, this ironically boosts the number.
This calculates to about 450 gigatons. Note that this is a lower limit; with one exception, all of the star destroyers were fine after the asteroid field, so it's really >=450 gigatons.
Granted, this calculation does include some big assumptions, such as every asteroid being megaton range. So let's say that only every 10 seconds a megaton level asteroid hit. That makes it about 45 gigatons. Still in the gigaton range, eh?
Death Star novel.
After Alderaan was blown up, the sensors of the Death Star picked up pieces of the planet ranging up to mountain chunks hitting the shields. As we can tell from the footage of the event, the debris was being flung apart by over 5,000 km/s, the debris covering the diameter of the planet each second.
The Death Star was hit by a HUGE amount of debris, many of which were mountains; we can safely assume that the combined debris would add up to a significant portion of Alderaan's upper crust, but let's assume just 20 Everests, VERY low end.
We get about 60 petatons in a ridiculously low end calculation, and the Death Star's shielding was said to have been reduced to rudimentary levels to compensate for the superlaser! 20 mount everests is not nearly as massive as it may seem when you're talking about a moon sized battle station within relatively close range to a planet's mass being scattered.
So we have:
1. 45 - 450 gigatons
2. 60 petatons, which scales down to 'just' 60 gigatons if you scale it down to a star destroyer by power reactor size, but the Death Star's power output was only applying a rudimentary amount of power to the shields.
Note that the Star Trek feats are not lower limits, but clear and defined upper limits; being able to withstand X factor for Y amount of time. The Star Wars feats are lower limits because they involve ships withstanding X energy, but with no signs of significant strain in doing so, implying much higher upper limits.
30 megatons for Star Trek (upper limit) vs 45 - 450 gigatons for Star Wars (lower limit)
Star Trek shields
There are three pretty good calculations on shield strength:
The first two are courtesy of Mike Wong, here:
http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Tec ... ield1.html
Mike Wong calculates the shield strength of the Enterprise to be about 30 megatons, but another calculation turns out only 0.5 megatons.
Another one, courtesy of Qeveron:
http://forums.spacebattles.com/showpost ... stcount=11
Based on a showing, the shield strength of the Enterprise turns out to be half a kiloton.
So we have three showings:
1. 30 megatons
2. 0.5 megatons
3. 0.5 kilotons
There's also the well known among this debate quote about using the entire torpedo payload to vaporize a 10 km hollow asteroid; even not taking the hollow part into account, that would be 3 megatons optimistically, which fits well with the double digit megaton shields.
Showing 2 could be handwaved as the Enterprise being weak to plasma, which could be disastrous given that turbolasers are implied to be plasma based weaponry. Showing 3 is hard to rationalize, but supposedly it's simply an outlier.
So 30 megatons, eh? Sounds about right. Calculations for quantum torpedos from this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHTtOMWRysg
Imply double digit megaton yields, so this is reasonable.
Star Wars shield strength
You guys aren't going to allow the ICS, so let's use another calculation, shall we?
The asteroid field in ESB. It's a "steady hail of asteroids" (ESB novel) impacting like "multi megaton compression bombs" (RODV). The second quote tells us a few things:
1. There exist multi megaton yield bombs in Star Wars
2. A star destroyer can casually tank them for an entire day
So based on ESB, we see an asteroid hitting a star destroyer about once every second; very reasonable, given the very high density of the asteroid field coupled with the high surface area of a star destroyer.
By multi megaton, we could say 5 megatons, a decent middle number.
The star destroyers probably were in the asteroid field for a day, as the bounty hunters were traveling across the galaxy to meet them. If you go by low hyperdrive speeds, this ironically boosts the number.
This calculates to about 450 gigatons. Note that this is a lower limit; with one exception, all of the star destroyers were fine after the asteroid field, so it's really >=450 gigatons.
Granted, this calculation does include some big assumptions, such as every asteroid being megaton range. So let's say that only every 10 seconds a megaton level asteroid hit. That makes it about 45 gigatons. Still in the gigaton range, eh?
Death Star novel.
After Alderaan was blown up, the sensors of the Death Star picked up pieces of the planet ranging up to mountain chunks hitting the shields. As we can tell from the footage of the event, the debris was being flung apart by over 5,000 km/s, the debris covering the diameter of the planet each second.
The Death Star was hit by a HUGE amount of debris, many of which were mountains; we can safely assume that the combined debris would add up to a significant portion of Alderaan's upper crust, but let's assume just 20 Everests, VERY low end.
We get about 60 petatons in a ridiculously low end calculation, and the Death Star's shielding was said to have been reduced to rudimentary levels to compensate for the superlaser! 20 mount everests is not nearly as massive as it may seem when you're talking about a moon sized battle station within relatively close range to a planet's mass being scattered.
So we have:
1. 45 - 450 gigatons
2. 60 petatons, which scales down to 'just' 60 gigatons if you scale it down to a star destroyer by power reactor size, but the Death Star's power output was only applying a rudimentary amount of power to the shields.
Note that the Star Trek feats are not lower limits, but clear and defined upper limits; being able to withstand X factor for Y amount of time. The Star Wars feats are lower limits because they involve ships withstanding X energy, but with no signs of significant strain in doing so, implying much higher upper limits.
30 megatons for Star Trek (upper limit) vs 45 - 450 gigatons for Star Wars (lower limit)