Revised Death Star I Scaling

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Revised Death Star I Scaling

Post by 2046 » Tue Jun 12, 2007 2:53 am

I'll explain the situation as I did on my index:

Mea culpa. See, way back when on the STrek forum someone whose name now escapes me caught a math error of mine on the Death Star scaling page regarding DS1. And though it seemed like he had a point, something just didn't feel right with the way the math worked otherwise. Part of the problem was simply that the DS1 and DS2 sizes fit elegantly with the conclusion I had, whereas the alternative would force a contradiction. And some of it was just gut feeling.

And, too, some of it was sheer laziness on my part, since I tied the matter to the enormous task of determining the scales of Star Wars vessels based on the canon alone (instead of accepting out-of-universe stats like a 1600m Star Destroyer), and that's one project I've managed to procrastinate on quite efficiently. And though I've always said when the topic of the Death Star I size has come up that yes, there may be a problem there with my scaling, I never got around to doing anything more about it.

But at long last, the time has come. And there wasn't just one error . . . there were two. At one point I'd counted three pixels when I ought to have counted as many as five . . . which is a problem when each one counted for hundreds of meters and were being used to scale something else. It was entirely my fault for picking a too-distant image to scale from instead of something better.

As luck would have it, the two errors cancelled out to within a few percentage points. Sometimes, the gut is right. So, without further ado, take a peek at the revised Death Star scaling page, now with HD shots from ANH (no more 3px scalings for me).

http://www.st-v-sw.net/STSWdeathstarsizes.html

I would very much appreciate any suggestions, corrections, requests, comments, complaints, caveats, criticisms, admonitions, remarks, et cetera.

One thing I probably ought to do is show more math, given a problem from last time, and also photohop a bunch of lines in to show exactly where I'm scaling, but I decided to run with it as-is for the time being.

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Post by Mr. Oragahn » Tue Jun 12, 2007 12:56 pm

Is it me or a slight variation in the Millenium Falcon scaling would lead to a final, big, difference between two scalings?

The other point is that the HD screens really make the superlaser hole look like an anus hole, but that's just me.

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Post by GStone » Tue Jun 12, 2007 5:12 pm

It means you need to get laid. I was suffering the same thing long ago when it suddenly hit me that the ion cannon on Hoth looked like a breast.

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Post by Mr. Oragahn » Tue Jun 12, 2007 5:19 pm

GStone wrote:It means you need to get laid. I was suffering the same thing long ago when it suddenly hit me that the ion cannon on Hoth looked like a breast.
Yes, I already went through that phase as well... :D

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Post by Mike DiCenso » Tue Jun 12, 2007 7:46 pm

So far, so good on the revised DS1 scaling. I think the new HD images definitely help. However, as you stated, there is still more work to be done, and a more complete disclosure of the math would be appreciated, as would a revision of the color key image itself. Given that this whole revision appears to have been spawned from a big spat with Kane Starkiller on your weblog just a month or so ago, I don't think you can leave anything to chance here as you are essentially coming to a new conclusion that is not terribly significant in difference from your previous one.

A good stuff: I like how you actually give people the information to how to right-click and save the image files so that they can examine them for themselves before dwelving into the Falcon as Yardstick section.

As for the Death Star being an oblate spheroid instead of a perfect sphere, I recall on Strek a discussion over the issue, and it being determined that at several points throughout ANH that the DS1 kept shifting slightly in width one way and then the other (a possible camera lens artifact?), thus leading people to speculate that the DS1 in RoTS still being the same one in ANH, but was flexing for some reason or the other, possibly due to acceleration and or angular momentum (while rotating) forces.
-Mike
Last edited by Mike DiCenso on Wed Jun 13, 2007 10:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by GStone » Wed Jun 13, 2007 3:06 am

Mr. Oragahn wrote:
GStone wrote:It means you need to get laid. I was suffering the same thing long ago when it suddenly hit me that the ion cannon on Hoth looked like a breast.
Yes, I already went through that phase as well... :D
Did you go through a phase where everyone that has those large black helmets look like human size penises? I've heard of it, but I haven't gone through it.

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Post by 2046 » Wed Jun 13, 2007 7:59 am

1. This thread has taken a turn for the surreal. Egad.

2. I wouldn't say Starkiller spawned the revision, 'cause it's been in the pipe for a long time, but it did cause me to just go ahead and make it happen and not wait for the rest of the rescale project. It's bad enough when punks make up errors out of whole cloth . . . I certainly don't want to give them any actual ammo.

3. If the Death Star shape differences were within a handful of percentage points of one another (e.g. 7-9%), I'd try to consider them as all the same. While I'm sure it would be difficult to keep such a structure perfectly rigid, the idea that they'd have it as a flexible structure is just unappealing to me on many levels.

(I'm reminded of Okuda's comment on structural integrity fields, where he notes that without them firing the impulse engines might make the ship bunch up like a balloon being poked bunching around the poking finger. It might be a realistic method of travel, he noted, but would look pretty silly.

Similarly, I just can't take the idea of a bouncy-ball Death Star.)

If we do reject flexibility, then getting from the RoTS weapon to the ANH one is easily done . . . a built-up equator region on a spherical frame doesn't stretch the bounds of credibility at all.

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Post by Mr. Oragahn » Wed Jun 13, 2007 2:46 pm

Compensating the inertia and flexibility of the different components of the endoskeleton should be doable within an universe able to cast gravity beams and create artificial gravity.

It could be that there are very large and main spines, at specific poinst, and that they're structurally enhanced internally with similar technologies.

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Post by Mike DiCenso » Wed Jun 13, 2007 10:21 pm

2046 wrote:
3. If the Death Star shape differences were within a handful of percentage points of one another (e.g. 7-9%), I'd try to consider them as all the same. While I'm sure it would be difficult to keep such a structure perfectly rigid, the idea that they'd have it as a flexible structure is just unappealing to me on many levels.
Well, to my recollection, the thread on Strek I mentioned earlier had uncovered variations from 5% to 12%. That's a pretty fair margin in the station's flexibility, which again, I attribute perhaps to len artifacts, or transfer to the video and DVD mediums.

As for the DS1 being flexible, I personally don't have that much of a problem with it any more than I would in learning that very tall skyscrapers actually do sway a few feet in response to the horizontal forces imposed on their structures by wind. Being billions of times larger than most real-world structures, that the DS1 flexes a little bit is hardly suprising, especially since it is a mobile one.

(I'm reminded of Okuda's comment on structural integrity fields, where he notes that without them firing the impulse engines might make the ship bunch up like a balloon being poked bunching around the poking finger. It might be a realistic method of travel, he noted, but would look pretty silly.

Similarly, I just can't take the idea of a bouncy-ball Death Star.)

If we do reject flexibility, then getting from the RoTS weapon to the ANH one is easily done . . . a built-up equator region on a spherical frame doesn't stretch the bounds of credibility at all.

In real-life, there are some interesting mechanical dampers that are being considered for earthquake-proofing tall buildings:

http://www.howstuffworks.com/smart-structure.htm

It is possible that the Empire may also use something like this, rather than just dampening force fields, and gravity control.
-Mike

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Post by Mike DiCenso » Wed Jun 13, 2007 10:59 pm

Mr. Oragahn wrote:
Is it me or a slight variation in the Millenium Falcon scaling would lead to a final, big, difference between two scalings?
What exactly do you mean by a "slight variation" here? Making the Falcon a bit wider or shorter a fraction won't change things very much. You have to have a very significantly wider or shorter Falcon (33 or 18 meters wide respectively), to have much of an effect on the outcome.

So for example, you can up the Falcon's width to 26 meters, which makes the bay up to 19 meters tall, and the wall around 500 meters. The tall column becomes 1,400 meters. So then 660 pixels divided by 7 gives us 94 to 1 as a ratio for the trench height to DS height. So therefore 94 x 1.4 km = 132 km. The width of the DS is 715/7 = 102 to 1 ratio. 102 x 1.4 = 143 km. That's about an 8% increase in size.
-Mike

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Post by Mr. Oragahn » Thu Jun 14, 2007 1:53 pm

Mike DiCenso wrote:
Mr. Oragahn wrote:
Is it me or a slight variation in the Millenium Falcon scaling would lead to a final, big, difference between two scalings?
What exactly do you mean by a "slight variation" here? Making the Falcon a bit wider or shorter a fraction won't change things very much. You have to have a very significantly wider or shorter Falcon (33 or 18 meters wide respectively), to have much of an effect on the outcome.

So for example, you can up the Falcon's width to 26 meters, which makes the bay up to 19 meters tall, and the wall around 500 meters. The tall column becomes 1,400 meters. So then 660 pixels divided by 7 gives us 94 to 1 as a ratio for the trench height to DS height. So therefore 94 x 1.4 km = 132 km. The width of the DS is 715/7 = 102 to 1 ratio. 102 x 1.4 = 143 km. That's about an 8% increase in size.
-Mike
When the difference ends adding more than ten kilometers, it doesn't sound minor to me, even if it's a fraction of the whole thing. A difference of 8% is actually big.

That said, they're still close enough to the 120 km figure to sit back on it.

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Post by Jedi Master Spock » Thu Jun 14, 2007 5:55 pm

Mike DiCenso wrote:
Mr. Oragahn wrote:
Is it me or a slight variation in the Millenium Falcon scaling would lead to a final, big, difference between two scalings?
What exactly do you mean by a "slight variation" here? Making the Falcon a bit wider or shorter a fraction won't change things very much. You have to have a very significantly wider or shorter Falcon (33 or 18 meters wide respectively), to have much of an effect on the outcome.
Problematically, I believe most figures in that range have supporters arguing for them. Frankly, I don't think the Falcon's length is really determined by a MOE of less than 10% at best.

If we take the MOE for the scaling to be +/- 1 px - as good as it's going to get with pixelated images, the overall error for the scaling (propagating error normally) somewhere in the neighborhood of 16%, so we're really talking about 100-140 kilometers for the height of the Death Star. Don't expect too much precision, folks - and this is as direct a method as you can get from the film alone.

IMO, the horizontal diameter is a bit more important than the height in thinking generally about the size of the Death Star.

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Post by Mike DiCenso » Thu Jun 14, 2007 10:16 pm

Mr. Oragahn wrote:
When the difference ends adding more than ten kilometers, it doesn't sound minor to me, even if it's a fraction of the whole thing. A difference of 8% is actually big.
I would say it makes a much bigger difference from a volumetric standpoint, which has a greater impact on industrial capacity estimates than does the linear measurements alone.
That said, they're still close enough to the 120 km figure to sit back on it.
Yes, especially since if the lower end width for the Falcon is used as a yardstick instead of the upper one, and the end results are averaged out. You still wind up with a DS1 of about 120 km.
-Mike

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Post by Mike DiCenso » Thu Jun 14, 2007 10:23 pm

Jedi Master Spock wrote:
Mike DiCenso wrote:
Mr. Oragahn wrote:
Is it me or a slight variation in the Millenium Falcon scaling would lead to a final, big, difference between two scalings?
What exactly do you mean by a "slight variation" here? Making the Falcon a bit wider or shorter a fraction won't change things very much. You have to have a very significantly wider or shorter Falcon (33 or 18 meters wide respectively), to have much of an effect on the outcome.
Problematically, I believe most figures in that range have supporters arguing for them. Frankly, I don't think the Falcon's length is really determined by a MOE of less than 10% at best.

If we take the MOE for the scaling to be +/- 1 px - as good as it's going to get with pixelated images, the overall error for the scaling (propagating error normally) somewhere in the neighborhood of 16%, so we're really talking about 100-140 kilometers for the height of the Death Star. Don't expect too much precision, folks - and this is as direct a method as you can get from the film alone.

IMO, the horizontal diameter is a bit more important than the height in thinking generally about the size of the Death Star.

I think a much more important point here is that it quite effectively casts serious doubt on the Saxtonian estimates for a 160 and 900 km DS1 and 2 respectively, if the upper limit for a DS1 can only be around 140 km.
-Mike

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Post by Mr. Oragahn » Fri Jun 15, 2007 12:34 am

The 900 km wide DS2... that needs its own thread.

I have a few things to say there. Anyone feeling like opening a new thread?

Maybe it already exists in fact.

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