Another nerf for SW firepower...

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Re: Another nerf for SW firepower...

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Wed Apr 19, 2017 6:30 pm

There's just a problem with the GBU-43. It's chemical and uses at lot of material to spread and ignite over a large area. It has little to do with proton cannons (the ones used by the CIS forces).
The GBU-43/M is ought to produce large and thick smoke clouds. Also, the fact that it explodes against the ground is going to pancake the fireball and spread it even wider.
Besides, the NATO forces used to destroy ammo and fuel depots at large (there are plenty of explosions of that on youtube), so what we see may have been enhanced by some munition caches blowing up.

All I could find in terms of information is that:
Wikipedia wrote:Description
A GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb strikes an ISIS-K cave and tunnel systems in the Achin district of the Nangarhar Province in eastern Afghanistan at 7:32 p.m. local time April 13, 2017. The strike was designed to minimize the risk to Afghan and U.S. forces conducting clearing operations in the area while maximizing the destruction of ISIS-K fighters and facilities. ISIS-K, also known as the Khorasan group, is based in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region and is composed primarily of former members of Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban. (DoD video)

Date
April 13, 2017
That being said, it's hard to peg the value of those proton-based projectiles but the diameter of the fireballs may be of use, although I dread using visuals from that show so strictly.
The only official width for an Acclamator I know of is 460 meters. At 1:37 you've got an explosion that is close to the belly of the Acclamator on the right of the screen. Close enough to illuminate its hull more than any of the four previous blasts (the fourth one somewhat mildly illuminates a small portion of the same ship's hull for a brief moment). With youtube's slow mo mode (.25), you can get a large fireball that seems about one fifth to one fourth of the width of the ship, making it 92 to 115 meters wide, but it could be a bit smaller if closer to the camera than the ship, although it so well illuminated the hull that it wouldn't have bursted much below the ship.
If you take a look at the video I posted before, specifically at this time index, we're told that the black disc on the ground is a 500 feet (152 m) wide bull's eye.
As you can see at 2 m 29 s, the already cooling fireball (partially darkened) is roughly a third of the disc's diameter and detonated 340 meters above the ground (data about the Tumbler-Snapper tests here). So the fireball is only 50 meters wide. The nuclear weapon for the second shot also had a yield of one kiloton.
In other words, based on this data, I may have been underestimating the yield of those shots.
Also, since 50 meters is really a small fireball in light of what we observe during the battle over Ryloth, going for a 1 KT yield per shot would easily be acceptable as a conservative estimate.
A smaller figure may be provided if we consider some of the fireballs to be close to the ships too and being about 1.5~2 times wider than the vertical edge of the lateral trenches at the farthest end point on the "wings". Perrhaps we'd get diameters in the 30~40 meters and allowing us to put the yields at several hundreds of gigajoules per shot, although none of those fireballs ever illuminate the hulls.
Another explosion that lights up a portion of a hull is the one resulting from the destruction of a thruster: one can easily see the gradient of red over the starboard side's slanted section of the ventral hull. However, we also see closeby explosions being surrounded by a red halo, quite far from any cruiser. The thing is, you could argue that it's a post prod effect applied in 2D anywhere where white pixels are detected, but if it were true, then the destruction of the thruster, which does create a mass of white pixels on the screen, would have also applied such a surrounding effect; yet it wasn't, since only the underneath 45° oblique hull was lit up.
All in all, yields in two figures in the gigajoule range appear too low to me.

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Re: Another nerf for SW firepower...

Post by 2046 » Thu Apr 20, 2017 1:22 am

Mr. Oragahn wrote: If you take a look at the video I posted before, specifically at this time index, we're told that the black disc on the ground is a 500 feet (152 m) wide bull's eye.
As you can see at 2 m 29 s, the already cooling fireball (partially darkened) is roughly a third of the disc's diameter and detonated 340 meters above the ground (data about the Tumbler-Snapper tests here). So the fireball is only 50 meters wide. The nuclear weapon for the second shot also had a yield of one kiloton.
In other words, based on this data, I may have been underestimating the yield of those shots.
Also, since 50 meters is really a small fireball in light of what we observe during the battle over Ryloth, going for a 1 KT yield per shot would easily be acceptable as a conservative estimate.


No, that is not correct.

The height of that burst was 1100 feet, as the narrator states. You have incorrectly assumed the black area behind the bullseye is the same as the bullseye using white and black alternating areas. That is false, as obviated by the relative low altitude of the burst were your assumption valid (which would make the black disc something like half a mile wide per the burst height). The bullseye is closer to the camera in the detonation scene, and the edge of the black area is even visible in the scene of the bullseye and testing lines at 1:44ish, and after the detonation. (Your assumption requires a miss.)

Ergo, your scaling is invalid, as are the claims you make from it.

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Re: Another nerf for SW firepower...

Post by 2046 » Fri Apr 21, 2017 10:55 am

An additional detail I forgot to mention is that one mustn't confound the flame of combustion from a detonation or deflagration and an actual nuclear fireball of superheated air. A fuel-air explosive, for instance, could easily create a vast flame, but applying nuclear fireball calculations to it will lead one far, far astray.

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Re: Another nerf for SW firepower...

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Thu May 04, 2017 8:54 pm

2046 wrote:An additional detail I forgot to mention is that one mustn't confound the flame of combustion from a detonation or deflagration and an actual nuclear fireball of superheated air. A fuel-air explosive, for instance, could easily create a vast flame, but applying nuclear fireball calculations to it will lead one far, far astray.
I beg to differ. If anything, a proton-based projectile from Star Wars ought to be closer to a nuke than a GBU bomb that carries a lot of explosive material and would have to weigh close to ten tons. The proton device will typically have a high energetic output for a lower mass of reacting material. I think that's the point and advantage of using anything proton based actually, relying on a fusion reaction to generate the explosion.

Besides, the projectiles are impossible to see the moment they're fired, which opens two options:

1. They're actually visible (and thus might be very heavy) but then they're extremely fast since we can't even spot a single projectile on the distant shots showing three cruisers.
2. They're turned into a self-contained bag of protons (and perhaps other stuff) with such a low density that it doesn't even begin to be remotely opaque to mere sunlight.

In case 1, we're dealing with projectiles covering more than one kilometer if not two, or more, within one frame of video or less (at 25 fps?). That is literally slinging multi-ton projectiles close to –at the very least– 25,000 m/s, in one very short acceleration through a not so long barrel, from a ground position, without literally generating an air blast that may be enough to rupture eardrums (and one with enough time may even want to look into the overpressure part of this event and see what it reveals). The Twilek hostages didn't seem to suffer such problems but perhaps their anatomy makes them tougher in their capacity to withstand such noises (their ears are definitely different).
At a mass of 1 ton, you're looking at a kinetic energy of 312.5 GJ. Use a 10 tons projectile and cover a distance of 2 km, and we get 12.5 TJ of kinetic energy alone, likely rendering the concept of using a chemical explosive of any sort quite moot. Not to say that anything other than a very strong slab of matter might not withstand the acceleration (a bomb is quite a fragile device after all). That kind of mass driver is a little bit on the insane side.
Also, a detonating device moving at such speeds could simply not generate neat spherical fireballs simply because of momentum alone.

For case 2, it hints to a lightweight projectile that relies clearly on a very high energetic density and would be able to precisely burst in that spherical fashion because of the reversely very low mass of the whole thing, and would need to be moving as fast as the solid projectile either.

That is, of course, if anyone here is willing to be that faithful to the visuals. :)

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Re: Another nerf for SW firepower...

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Thu May 04, 2017 11:21 pm

2046 wrote:
Mr. Oragahn wrote: If you take a look at the video I posted before, specifically at this time index, we're told that the black disc on the ground is a 500 feet (152 m) wide bull's eye.
As you can see at 2 m 29 s, the already cooling fireball (partially darkened) is roughly a third of the disc's diameter and detonated 340 meters above the ground (data about the Tumbler-Snapper tests here). So the fireball is only 50 meters wide. The nuclear weapon for the second shot also had a yield of one kiloton.
In other words, based on this data, I may have been underestimating the yield of those shots.
Also, since 50 meters is really a small fireball in light of what we observe during the battle over Ryloth, going for a 1 KT yield per shot would easily be acceptable as a conservative estimate.


No, that is not correct.

The height of that burst was 1100 feet, as the narrator states. You have incorrectly assumed the black area behind the bullseye is the same as the bullseye using white and black alternating areas. That is false, as obviated by the relative low altitude of the burst were your assumption valid (which would make the black disc something like half a mile wide per the burst height). The bullseye is closer to the camera in the detonation scene, and the edge of the black area is even visible in the scene of the bullseye and testing lines at 1:44ish, and after the detonation. (Your assumption requires a miss.)

Ergo, your scaling is invalid, as are the claims you make from it.
Yes, there are problems I see now. But notice, also, that the bullseye at 1:44 doesn't look like the one we see a few seconds later, since its first inner ring is clearly painted white (and even seems to have a faint inner mid-ring), while we don't see that in the following target.
240p sucks really. If the video is of any indication at 1:52, the only large black area one can see is quite far behind the target.
Trouble is, I couldn't see the real black disc before the explosion. This was puzzling me so much that I had to assume that by bullseye, they meant the dark center alone, and assumed we'd actually see something right before the test (at that distance, it would be near impossible to see the outer circles, especially with such a miserable resolution).

So now, where exactly is the target? We only see two black things that might be discs after the explosion, one being offset to the left and most likely the fireball's shadow, the other perhaps being the bullseye's center I was looking for that, for some reason, decided to become visible. Why it only appears after the blast is anyone's guess; perhaps the explosion messed up with the camera's luminosity filtering? Maybe it's the black powder that's been pushed in all directions, so the bullseyse would have been very small, making the fireball very large.
In fact, the very idea that we could see anything on the ground is just as puzzling because the dust would have certainly not settled nor moved out of sight.
I wish I could at least use the height of detonation then but without seeing the true center of the bullseye, it's equally impossible to know the dimensions of anything.
Looking at the long white lanes seems to be useless too.

For further comparison of nuclear fireballs' sizes based on the Tumble-Snapper series, look at this picture of test Charlie in conjuction with data from this wiki page.

So regardless of the yield one would like to obtain and use as a means of comparison here, this footage seems to be rather useless. :/
A pity. It was the only one that displayed weapons that would be very close to what we'd expect from a proton device.

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Re: Another nerf for SW firepower...

Post by 2046 » Fri May 05, 2017 12:57 pm

Mr. Oragahn wrote: I beg to differ. If anything, a proton-based projectile from Star Wars ought to be closer to a nuke than a GBU bomb that carries a lot of explosive material and would have to weigh close to ten tons. The proton device {is} relying on a fusion reaction to generate the explosion.


That's an unsupported assumption. We don't know what the weapons are.
Besides, the projectiles are impossible to see the moment they're fired, which opens two options:


False dichotomy: there are many possibilities.
Yes, there are problems I see now.


I honestly didn't expect you to admit that. Kudos.
So now, where exactly is the target?


Directly below the fireball. You can see the 12,000 foot lines headed toward the bullseye in the detonation scene, and that's where the bomb exploded. You can also note the circular light pattern on the ground and estimate the target point from that.
I wish I could at least use the height of detonation then but without seeing the true center of the bullseye, it's equally impossible to know the dimensions of anything. {…} this footage seems to be rather useless. :/


Just because it doesn't match your earlier view, it isn't suddenly useless. A vertical line drawn from ground to detonation point is 1100 feet. Ergo, the visible burst is something like 300-400 feet across, per my eyeball.

Note that this doesn't match the SDN nuke calculator for a 1 kiloton device fireball. Either his figures don't work for low yields (likely per his source material), or the fireball he's referring to is the 'technical fireball' of superheated air rather than the 'big flamey ball' that a person could distinguish provided they could still see.

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Re: Another nerf for SW firepower...

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Mon May 08, 2017 6:12 pm

2046 wrote:
Mr. Oragahn wrote: I beg to differ. If anything, a proton-based projectile from Star Wars ought to be closer to a nuke than a GBU bomb that carries a lot of explosive material and would have to weigh close to ten tons. The proton device {is} relying on a fusion reaction to generate the explosion.


That's an unsupported assumption. We don't know what the weapons are.
Unless we have really good reasons to believe they're very, very unnatural weapons, even in the realm of SW (they're just named proton cannons and that proton part seems to be the only thing worth of mention), then we can safely assert that they oscillate between chemical and nuclear, the later ranging from fission to fusion. So the more chemical they get, the heavier and bigger they'll be for a given yield, in comparison to the nuclear-like weapons of similar yield.
Besides, the projectiles are impossible to see the moment they're fired, which opens two options:


False dichotomy: there are many possibilities.
Well, it is a very fair assumption, isn't it? Unless we want to claim that they cloak their shells. In which case kinetic calculations wouldn't be as relevant since we couldn't know the speed, but the necessary room taken for the cloaking system would limit the volume of reactants used for the destructive purposes of each shell, lowering their yields arbitrarily.
We can keep our mind open to such ideas but for the sake of reliable figures, it would be better to keep things more conventional for now.

Otherwise, what else could reasonnably explain the lack of visibility of the projectiles other than speed or tracer-less and almost lightweight bottled nuclear projectile?
Yes, there are problems I see now.


I honestly didn't expect you to admit that. Kudos.
As you do actually know, I have no problem doing so and already proved it in that other heated thread we shouldn't even mention by name lest we intend on unleashing the foulest demons in this quiet place.
So now, where exactly is the target?


Directly below the fireball. You can see the 12,000 foot lines headed toward the bullseye in the detonation scene, and that's where the bomb exploded. You can also note the circular light pattern on the ground and estimate the target point from that.
It's going to be very dirty. Each single wrong pixel will potentially add a lot to measurements. The single large white lane that seems to fan out a bit when approaching the bullseye is very blurry. Besides, it does not correspond to anything shown earlier on at 1:40. I can only assume that it is perfectly aligned with the bullseye's center.
Doing so, going full screen @1600x900, the fireball's center is 2.6 cm above the ground and 1.5 cm wide.
The official burst height was 340 m (wikipedia).
That would make the fireball about 196 meters wide.
Almost twice as big as the fireball I measured from the episode.
I wish I could at least use the height of detonation then but without seeing the true center of the bullseye, it's equally impossible to know the dimensions of anything. {…} this footage seems to be rather useless. :/


Just because it doesn't match your earlier view, it isn't suddenly useless. A vertical line drawn from ground to detonation point is 1100 feet. Ergo, the visible burst is something like 300-400 feet across, per my eyeball.
So that would make your measurement of the fireball's width something between 91.44 and 121.92 meters.
In other words, it would almost exactly be in the range of the fireball's size I measured from the show, thus supporting a near 1 Kiloton yield, almost identical to my former claim.
I don't know how we get so diverging results but then again the material is of poor quality.
I used the not-so-mushroomy-cloud as it was partially cooled (with some parts turning to grey, just to be sure it had reached its maximum size and luminosity wasn't adding extra pixels as a halo), but all in all the full white and partially white blobs are almost identical in size.

Note that this doesn't match the SDN nuke calculator for a 1 kiloton device fireball. Either his figures don't work for low yields (likely per his source material), or the fireball he's referring to is the 'technical fireball' of superheated air rather than the 'big flamey ball' that a person could distinguish provided they could still see.
Ah, that SDN calculator seems to prefer megaton-based values and probably becomes quite unreliable when hitting the high gigaton range (explosions so powerful that they'd immediately reach higher altitudes and therefore fan out at a faster rate, almost reproducing a pancaking effect but against the atmosphere's ceiling.
I don't think it's suited for our case here.

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Re: Another nerf for SW firepower...

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Mon May 08, 2017 6:19 pm

I may add a few measurements, this time more accurate, for fireballs produced by both a GBU-43(/B) and a small yield nuke (1 KT).

For the first one.
I tried to measure the GBU's fireballs since we can spot the weapon and we know it's nearly 9.2 meters long, but in both cases the explosions occur too close to the ground, which stretches the boundaries of the fireballs.
Still, attempting a measurement of the second fireball when it's pancaked against the ground (using the video link provided by Mike), a choice made possible we get to see the falling projectile with what appears to be minimal motion blur.
I measured the fireball at its widest, when it is most intense too, and tried to extirpate a hemisphere out of this shape: there's a bit of extra fireball volume on the right, a small protrusion that sticks out of the otherwise hemisphere-conforming shape.
I find the fireball at its widest to be some 176 meters wide (it would be wider than the bullseye of the second nuclear drop in the Tumbler-Snapper test series, as a reminder, since it was about 152 meters in diameter). So even if it would be more contained if the bomb had exploded a kilometer above the ground, it might have been around 120 to 150 meters wide? Not much less imho. Likely more than 100 m anyway. Although the design of the bomb remains a problem regarding what produces the fireball. By carrying so much material, it has definitive kinetic attribute to it that allows it to spread the ignited material, contrary to a nuke which has to heat up the very transparent and extremely close shell made of air up to opaque levels.
All in all, those proton based weapons may actually turn out to be less powerful than a single MOAB. That's not exactly damning for the weapon itself considering its design and the frequency at which such projectiles can be fired, but it is for the warships and their durability.
A comparison to the German Gustav cannon's shells might be interesting too if anyone can find their yield.

As for the low KT nukes, searching a bit on Youtube, I think I may have found some useful information.
Before the Tumbler-Snapper test series that occured in 1952, a former series was ran in 1951, named Operation Buster-Jangle. They're strongly related as both operations featured preleminary low yield tests. Even more relevant to us is that both operations' respective secondary tests shared the same name –Baker– and almost exactly the same coordinates.
I found a video related to the Baker shot from 1951, with recorded material from a plane flying above the bullseye and we can see the much larger black area too. Said area seams to be circular (on the video I initially used, seen from a distance it looks like an ellipsoid), featuring a pointy section, giving the whole thing the look of a comics' dialogue bubble.

Now, IF (and I stress on the IF part) the bullseye and black area are of the same dimensions as those from the 1952 series, then we can compare both videos.
In the new one (1951), if the bullseye is again 152 meters wide, then the black disc would be some 468 meters in diameter.
In the original video I linked to, I had erroneously used the black area as if the center of the bullseye (wasn't very comfy with that but that was all I thought I could get). Honestly, 50 meters really seemed too low even to me but considering my earlier mistake, that's all I had at that time.
This method wasn't without merits though.
I did gauge the size of the fireball at the time it started to cool down (although it was still partially luminous). I had found that the fireball was roughly a third of the black thingy.
Now that I know what black area looked like and that it was in the background, beyond the bullseye, the 1/3 figure remains a solid estimate more than ever.
So that would make the fireball's width be a third of 468 meters, i.e. 156 meters.

What this would then show is that with a yield considerably larger than a GBU, both weapons would tend to produce fireballs of similar sizes.

To conclude, the fireball from the TCWS I had measured, the one that illuminated the cruiser's hull, turned out to be 100 meters wide on average. Meaning that in both cases, regardless of the weapon type, it would make all the estimated yields thus far superior to what a proton-based shot is actually capable of.
That is, either it's below 1 KT and perhaps in the low-four to three digits gigajoule nuclear range, or it's even inferior to a GBU's worth of explosive chemical energy.

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Re: Another nerf for SW firepower...

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Tue May 09, 2017 10:31 am

I found some discrete calculator that provides values almost as identical as those from SDN: http://www.alternatewars.com/BBOW/ABC_W ... ulator.htm
Figures for 1 KT remain rather small, with radii of 34 m and 44 m, respectively for air burst and ground contact. We'll see if there's any validity behind those formulae. That is, if it's supported by other sources.

Moving on to a better tool, one seldom used (hardly ever presented to support evidence during debates), perhaps because of the way it presents its results. Surely, it's not as clear as a table of values, but it's still relevant here. So here's the online nuclear calculator.
Read the end of the Instructions page, Maximum Fireball Radius and Minimum Height of Burst for Negligible Early Fallout (Ch. II), to see where to read the figures for fireball radius (in miles) on the "computer".
The maximum fireball radius presented on the computer is an average between that for air and surface bursts. Thus, the fireball radius for a surface burst is 13 percent larger than that indicated and for an air burst, 13 percent smaller.
Typically, 1 KT returns an average radius of 0.045 miles (72.42 meters). Diameter: 144.84 meters.
Which is already very, very close to my final width figure for the 1 KT nuke's fireball (use of two videos: Baker test's bullseye, 1951; Baker test's nuke, 1952).
But since we're studying an air burst here, the final value is 87% of this figure and results in a diameter of 126 meters.
In other words, when compared to my video-to-video figure, it seems that this computer may lowball the dimension of an aerial nuclear fireball a bit. But I suppose it may be safer to use the results of that computer (itself being modeled on data from 1962).

If we were looking for a yield producing a 100 meters wide fireball, we'd need a radius of 50 meters, 0.031 miles (164 feet). How do we get a yield from that?

As a reminder, The Effects of Nuclear Weapons (1977) states that "35 % of the energy yield of an air bust is emitted as thermal radiation energy."
This already hints at why (in case of your usual nuclear warhead) the nuclear fireball would not be able to generate much coupling with other parts of the weapon itself in order to energize large amounts of materials.
More importantly, this '77 manual also provides the useful formula for estimating the radius of a fireball for air bursts, with a caveat though:

R = 110 W^0.4
With R the radius of the fireball in feet and W the yield of the weapon in kilotons. However, this is calculated for the fireball size at the "breakaway" moment, something not intuitively clear to the non-nuclear physicist.
This breakway phase begins at a moment when the fireball is still ought to grow in size, so we cannot use the formula above right off the bat. Breakway is described in detail in the chapter 5.3.1.2 Blast Wave Development and Thermal Radiation Emission, also at the Trinity Atomic Website; the later stating:
2.120 For some time the fireball continues to grow in size at a rate determined by the propagation of the shock front in the surrounding air. During this period the temperature of the shocked air decreases steadily so that it becomes less opaque. Eventually, it is transparent enough to permit the much hotter and still incandescent interior of the fireball, i.e., the isothermal sphere, to be seen through the faintly visible shock front (see Fig. 2.32). The onset of this condition at about 15 milliseconds (0.015 second) after the detonation of a 20-kiloton weapon, for example, is referred to as the "breakaway."

2.121. Following the breakaway, the visible fireball continues to increase in size at a slower rate than before, the maximum dimensions being attained after about a second or so. The manner in which the radius increases with time, in the period from roughly 0.1 millisecond to 1 second after the detonation of a 20-kiloton nuclear weapon, is shown in Figure 2.121. Attention should be called to the fact that both scales are logarithmic, so that the lower portion of the curve (at the left) does not represent a constant rate of growth, but rather one that falls off with time. Nevertheless, the marked decrease in the rate at which the fireball grows after breakaway is apparent from the subsequent flattening of the curve.
For a 20 KT nuke, we see from the figure 77b27 that this moment happens before the fireball has finished growing.
Although the scale isn't nuclear, we may infer that for yields not too dissimilar –and then 1 KT or a bit less might be pushing the enveloppe– the curve remains similar, with breakaway happening at a similar time too.

On the figure, by using it in some image editing tool featuring a measuring tool, we see that the curve start at 68 px (measuring from the lower border of the picture, going upwards) and flattens at 339 px, with said breakaway shown to happen at 264 px.
Removing the initial 68 px from all values, we get:

Beginning: 0 px
Breakaway: 196 px
Stagnation: 271 px

Making the breakaway happen at 72.32 % of the fireball's growth. For a 20 KT nuke, the figure seems to hint at a breakaway radius of ~360 feet and seems to plateau around 750~760 feet.

Therefore, we can already test the initial formula from the 1977 book and see if we get a correct size for a 20 KT nuke. We're looking at a breakaway radius of ~360 feet.
I'll identify the breakaway radius as Rb, and the final radius as Rf.

Rb = 110 W^0.4
Rb = 110 * 20^0.4
Rb = 364.59

364.59 feet? Ace, it works.
Obviously, we can immediately see that for 1 KT, we'll get Rb = 110 feet (33.528 meters). If that's supposed to represent 72.32 % of the final fireball's radius, then Rf = 152.1 feet, or 46.36 meters. Making the final diameter about 92.72 meters wide.
This alone would give the proton-based projectile a yield of 1 KT or a bit more.

Now, let's reverse the formula and try to obtain the yield for the fireball seen in the episode, which radius was Rf = 164 feet (50 meters), and therefore Rb = 118.6 (36.16 meters):

W^0.4 = Rb / 110
W = (Rb / 110)^2.5
W = (118.6 / 110)^2.5
W = 1.207

The yield would actually be around 1.207 kilotons, or 5,050 gigajoules of total energy for such a nuke (with roughly more than a third of that energy going into thermal radiation, again).

There obviously is a discrepancy between the results based on the formula (1977) and the breakaway percentage (same source, the page just displays it in a modern way so a few lines below, one can retrieve the equation I used), and on the other side the older computer (1962) and videos (1951-1952) that show a fireball to be larger.

If both sources were valid, then it's possible that the mitigating parameter could be found in the bombs' design itself, with the old models having considerably heavier casings and thus providing more potential for coupling between the inert matter and the produced energy.

If anything, bombs built on twenty years newer and more refined designs would be more efficient at minimizing the amount of energy absorbed by the bomb's structural materials.
As such, calculations obtained from the 1977 formula may represent significantly conservative figures for a variety of science fiction projectiles that would be nuclear-like bombs, but so advanced that they'd use little to no inert shell at all; essentially, the concept of the bottled projectile with explosive stuff inside.

Oh and these were tests for FISSION weapons, not strictly FUSION ones, which is what seems to be hinted at by the name of what the CIS used as heavy duty DCA against the Republic's cruisers. With even less materials available to participate to the production of the opaque fireball –the advanced fusion weapon would almost strictly rely on air heating alone– the real yield would be even greater, as per the relation between different types of energetic densities:
If matter–antimatter collisions resulted only in photon emission, the entire rest mass of the particles would be converted to kinetic energy. The energy per unit mass (9e16 J/kg) is about 10 orders of magnitude greater than chemical energies, and about 3 orders of magnitude greater than the nuclear potential energy that can be liberated, today, using nuclear fission (about 200 MeV per fission reaction or 8e13 J/kg), and about 2 orders of magnitude greater than the best possible results expected from fusion (about 6.3e14 J/kg for the proton–proton chain). The reaction of 1 kg of antimatter with 1 kg of matter would produce 1.8e17 J (180 petajoules) of energy (by the mass–energy equivalence formula, E = mc²), or the rough equivalent of 43 megatons of TNT – slightly less than the yield of the 27,000 kg Tsar Bomb, the largest thermonuclear weapon ever detonated.
A near perfect fusion bomb could be as much as 7.875 times more powerful than the equally near perfect fission one, pound for pound.

This, interestingly enough for anyone looking into now outdated data from the old EU, would fit nicely with the proton torpedoes used by X-wings and which were described as one kiloton devices.
If anything, considering the sizes of both a torpedo and a proton shell (or whatever is fired by those huge proton cannons), the yield of said shell would logically be a multiple of that of a torpedo.

Also, to conclude, I suspect that both SDN's and altwars' calculators give a radius that is exactly (or close to) the breakaway one, not actually the final one, which all in all tends to provide yields higher than what they really are, and are therefore in error.

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Re: Another nerf for SW firepower...

Post by 2046 » Wed May 10, 2017 1:03 pm

Mr. Oragahn wrote:
2046 wrote: That's an unsupported assumption. We don't know what the weapons are.
Unless we have really good reasons to believe they're very, very unnatural weapons, even in the realm of SW (they're just named proton cannons and that proton part seems to be the only thing worth of mention), then we can safely assert that they oscillate between chemical and nuclear, the later ranging from fission to fusion.


No.

1. "Photon torpedo" is an example of your nomenclature assumptions falling flat. See also "lightsaber"/"laser sword", "turbolaser", et al.

2. Trek and Wars both feature weapons that show a greater-than-modern-basic-chemical yield while not being nuclear (e.g. the chemicals from the green flying Troi ep), and there are various ways in which modern Earth stretches the bounds as best it can (thermobarics, fuel-air, etc).
False dichotomy: there are many possibilities.
Well, it is a very fair assumption, isn't it?


If I thought so I wouldn't have protested. Your apparent assumption of a WW2-style metallic shell is not valid. The guns shot thick red bolts, not visible against the sky but visible in the shot of Windu on the bridge with a transport's shadowed belly out the window. Those are not consistent with droid tank shots, though tanks were also visible in the final battle at the AAA site.
I honestly didn't expect you to admit that. Kudos.
As you do actually know, I have no problem doing so and already proved it in that other heated thread


Cool story, bro.

I gave kudos. Let's just leave it there.
You can see the 12,000 foot lines headed toward the bullseye in the detonation scene, and that's where the bomb exploded. You can also note the circular light pattern on the ground and estimate the target point from that.
It's going to be very dirty.


Oh well. There's no point getting precise about apple measurements when talking oranges.
A vertical line drawn from ground to detonation point is 1100 feet. Ergo, the visible burst is something like 300-400 feet across, per my eyeball.
So that would make your measurement of the fireball's width something between 91.44 and 121.92 meters.


No, not the fireball, but the entire burst . . . but I defer to your ~200m burst measurement based on pixel-counting a full screen rather than my ballpark off of a handheld. I also estimated when it was still all bright, compared to your inclusion of smoke.
Also, to conclude, I suspect that both SDN's and altwars' calculators give a radius that is exactly (or close to) the breakaway one, not actually the final one, which all in all tends to provide yields higher than what they really are, and are therefore in error.


No, this is what I was talking about when I mentioned confounding a nuclear fireball with, well, fire. I also referred to the 'technical fireball' versus the big flamey burst. And again, your measurements seem to also include smoke, which is yet another thing.

The technical descriptions in the online literature refer to isothermal spheres and smog layers, et cetera, but it is the same principle I was describing from memory. You cannot measure the smoke and flame of the maximum extent of the mushroom cloud and call that the fireball for calc purposes.

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Re: Another nerf for SW firepower...

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Sat May 13, 2017 10:31 pm

2046 wrote:
Mr. Oragahn wrote:
2046 wrote: That's an unsupported assumption. We don't know what the weapons are.
Unless we have really good reasons to believe they're very, very unnatural weapons, even in the realm of SW (they're just named proton cannons and that proton part seems to be the only thing worth of mention), then we can safely assert that they oscillate between chemical and nuclear, the later ranging from fission to fusion.


No.

1. "Photon torpedo" is an example of your nomenclature assumptions falling flat. See also "lightsaber"/"laser sword", "turbolaser", et al.
Words used to described weapons usually refer to what they look like, what they do, how they do it or what they are. The more layman the use of one of the words composing the complete name, the more it tends to tilt towards metaphor, or at least an average Joe's visual description more than anything truly technical. The perfect case being that of a lightsaber. It's a melee weapon that looks like a saber made of light and is particularily good at slashing moves. Zweïhander refers to the fact that you use two hands to control the long sword. Crossbow? Seems to have gotten its name because the bow is mounted crosswise from the rail section (the string also crosses said section) so the need for speculation is rather reduced. Bunker buster. Busts bunkers.
Then we have more technical terms, like, for example, thermal detonator. The jury is still out on what a turbolaser really is. The most problematic part being the laser, but we have no reason to ignore the possibility that a laser-like attribute, behaviour or function is involved in the weapon at some point. Nor do we have any good reason to dismiss the turbo part either that hints at a spinning and accelerating process, possibly to supercharge a reaction. Flamethrower? Quite explicit.
Or should we dismiss the fusion word in "fusion furnace"? It made no doubt to you that it meant nuclear fusion. Did you also reject the use of some kind of seemingly naturally generated plasma as part of Theed's "plasma-fueled generator core"? Not as I can see on your Imperial power page.
The more specific the words, the higher the chances that they really do mean what they mean.

As for your photon torpedo, the part of a matter-antimatter reaction that is relevant to military purposes does produce –to a great extent– gamma ray radiations. In other words, very high energy photons. Of course one could argue that nukes initially release their energy as X-ray, so they could be called photon bombs too. Now, the fact that photon torps glow in space may have inspired scientists or military personnel to focus on the glowing aspect and put an emphasis on that, but then gave it a more scientific sounding aspect and going for photon torpedo instead of glowball or light-torpedo. And then again, unless people in the UFP are idiots, there's probably a very good reason why they insist on calling them photon torpedoes.
That's talking about in-universe reasons of course.

All in all, we have no valid reason to reject the presence of protons at some point in the proton cannon's mechanism or use for creating or firing a projectile, since nothing appears to conflict with the idea of protons being related to said mechanism or use.
Therefore protons hint rather well at the weapon being nuclear or involving a nuclear stage, perhaps sharing a likeliness with the hydrogen bomb, where the fusion stage is used to boost and revitalize the less powerful fission reaction. Unless we have good reasons to believe otherwise, there's no practical reason to dismiss the use of such a specific term as if it wasn't directly related to the weapon mechanism or use.
2. Trek and Wars both feature weapons that show a greater-than-modern-basic-chemical yield while not being nuclear (e.g. the chemicals from the green flying Troi ep), and there are various ways in which modern Earth stretches the bounds as best it can (thermobarics, fuel-air, etc).
Well, just be careful with the use of that word stretch here, because the processes you refer to are just plain physics, not bullshitium. ;)
The shows and movies we're thinking of (science fiction, fantasy), on the other hand, tend to indeed push things out of bounds.
But realize that what you're saying is that there are substances in SW and ST that release 20 units of energy per kilogram instead of the normally feasible 10 units. You're considering a reactant that will simply provide more energy per unit of matter, therefore require and use less matter per unit of energy to participate to the intial phase of the creation of a fireball, so more of said creation will hinge on the greater energetic release heating up the surrounding independant medium, like air.

The rule is quite simple: the more powerful the reactant, the less of it is needed. So the fireball will have more to do with other stuff being energized than the reactants being both propelled at high speeds and put on fire. And things shift to a whole other league when we enter the nuclear reaction domain, where the matter of the bomb itself is largely irrelevant to the constitution of the fireball other than being the sole source of energy, contrary to the MOAB for examples.

Besides, the cannons themselves and the entire deployment of hardware relevant to their use, including the complete lack of any semi-automatic feeding mechanism, quite obviously tells us that there are far less reactants used than in a GBU-43 that's over 9 meters long. We do see in the show use by CIS forces of things such as proton bombs, but they're nowhere to be seen on Ryloth.
False dichotomy: there are many possibilities.
Well, it is a very fair assumption, isn't it?


If I thought so I wouldn't have protested. Your apparent assumption of a WW2-style metallic shell is not valid. The guns shot thick red bolts, not visible against the sky but visible in the shot of Windu on the bridge with a transport's shadowed belly out the window. Those are not consistent with droid tank shots, though tanks were also visible in the final battle at the AAA site.
What about those "many possibilities" then?

First of all, the notion of a shell is just one of two options I suggested, the other one dealing with a more classical approach regarding science fiction weapons, particularly in Star Wars and relying on the usual bottled advanced stuff that's energized and is explosive too. That's been the basis of descriptions for what the flaking projectiles could be in SW.

Secondly, if the shots seen from the bridge are not consistent with something, it's with numerous other views from the same battle scene wherein no projectile can be seen at all; even more so as those seen from the ship's bridge are particularly slow and not thin nor transparent enough to be invisible in the several external wide shots.
That said, with projectiles such as missiles and torpedoes known to come with particle fields around them at times, you can never be sure if the projectiles fired by the proton cannons are solid or not: they could be shells wrapped in similar energized particle fields.

If anything, this just reminds me why I dislike using this show's visuals.
I honestly didn't expect you to admit that. Kudos.
As you do actually know, I have no problem doing so and already proved it in that other heated thread


Cool story, bro.

I gave kudos. Let's just leave it there.
OK. But then why didn't you expect me to admit having made a mistake?
It's going to be very dirty.


Oh well. There's no point getting precise about apple measurements when talking oranges.
Aside from our disagreement over the nature of a proton cannon's projectile, the data obtained there would be used for any other case though, it's useful data. Also, nuclear calculators have been routinely used by about everyone here and elsewhere to gauge the firepower of heavy weapons in atmosphere. A correct information would always be relevant for another time.
So that would make your measurement of the fireball's width something between 91.44 and 121.92 meters.


No, not the fireball, but the entire burst . . . but I defer to your ~200m burst measurement based on pixel-counting a full screen rather than my ballpark off of a handheld.
The fireball and the entire burst are one and same thing AFAIK.
I also estimated when it was still all bright, compared to your inclusion of smoke.
There is virtually no smoke related to the nuclear reaction for there is no combustion.

I look at the moment the 1952 Baker shot's fireball begins to cooldown to some visible degree so that it starts to darken in some spots only while its overall shape hasn't changed; its outer shell starts to become grey, an indicator in my opinion that the fireball's growth is ought to be complete simply because it doesn't have enough energy of its own to expand at a fast pace.
When this visual transition begins during this final and long cooldown, the width of the fireball remains roughly the same in this case.
By this case, I mean the study of those low-yield shots and low altitude, because other parameters such as the blast wave bouncing off of the ground and back to the fireball would start to push it up and flatten it a bit, potentially widening too.
Doing some measuring at a further later stage –several frames after the entire fireball's visible external layer turned to grey– would introduce other disturbing factors related to the environment, winds, humidity, etc.
Just to hammer the point: the not-so-white layer is just the outer layer of the fireball already starting to cool down so it's not even luminous anymore, thus confirming that it has reached maturity in size (which we can see anyway as, yes, it does not grow beyond that stage). I consider it the safest moment for that kind of very low yield as seen during daytime.
Measuring the fireball at the very beginning of that transition also prevents using an area of saturated white pixels on screen that could include the flaring aura due to the fireball's high luminosity at that earlier moment.
Without surprise, we know that without specific filters one cannot make any measurement of the fireball when it is at its maximum brillance and smaller.

As a sidenote, there's an additional element that could contribute to reducing the correct yield of the explosions in the CW episode: altitude.
The higher the explosions happen, the lesser the air density. These are just two speculations on my part but with lesser air density, energy could be radiated further away before being largely absorbed. Also, the growing fireball would meet less resistance. It looks like the Acclamators were flying something like 2~3 km above ground.
Also, to conclude, I suspect that both SDN's and altwars' calculators give a radius that is exactly (or close to) the breakaway one, not actually the final one, which all in all tends to provide yields higher than what they really are, and are therefore in error.


No, this is what I was talking about when I mentioned confounding a nuclear fireball with, well, fire.
The fire is the fireball. What else would you want it to be or where else would you want that fire to come from?
The official literature makes no such distinction either.

As for the calculators, let's remember that they have always been used, without any contradiction by anyone nor even Wong himself as far as I know, to measure the visible whitish fire "cloud" which everybody kept refering to as the fireball.
They even provide figures for ground (surface) or close to ground (very low altitude) detonations by accounting for the pancaking effect, which implies the fact that a fireball does not strictly mean a nicely round sphere of fire.
I also referred to the 'technical fireball' versus the big flamey burst.
Uh-huh.
Please define "big flamey burst".
We should get clear on what you mean by those other things you identify and name in various ways in opposition to the fireball or "technical" fireball.

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Re: Another nerf for SW firepower...

Post by 2046 » Sat May 20, 2017 6:01 am

Mr. Oragahn wrote:Or should we dismiss the fusion word in "fusion furnace"? It made no doubt to you that it meant nuclear fusion. Did you also reject the use of some kind of seemingly naturally generated plasma as part of Theed's "plasma-fueled generator core"? Not as I can see on your Imperial power page.


Fusion is a process. Plasma-fuelled is what it says. (We later learn that Naboo mines plasma, whatever the hell that means.)

The name "proton (torpedo/cannon/bomb)" is neither of those sorts of examples, and it is alarming you'd suggest otherwise. To take that and then run with your assumption of fusion is a leap, unlike taking one of many references to fusion and ever so daringly assuming fusion was involved, or taking an explicit statement of what fuels a generator and stating that is the fuel source. Your proton assumption goes further than a mere leap, taking a flight of fancy altogether when you factor in the point that there's nothing else remotely fusion-y to the weapons insofar as yield, radiation, et cetera.

C'mon.
As for your photon torpedo, the part of a matter-antimatter reaction that is relevant to military purposes does produce –to a great extent– gamma ray radiations.


Any highly energetic event will do similar. Antimatter warheads have other unique outputs that would be more reasonable at that point. And in any case, if photon suddenly refers to output here, why treat protons any differently? For all we know the proton weapons just puff hot plasma.
Therefore protons hint rather well at the weapon being nuclear or involving a nuclear stage, perhaps sharing a likeliness with the hydrogen bomb, where the fusion stage is used to boost and revitalize the less powerful fission reaction. Unless we have good reasons to believe otherwise, there's no practical reason to dismiss the use of such a specific term as if it wasn't directly related to the weapon mechanism or use.


You basically just say that your evidence-free and self-contradictory assertion should be accepted unless contradicted. That's not how this works. That's not how any of this works.
But then why didn't you expect me to admit having made a mistake?


Empiricism.
The fireball and the entire burst are one and same thing AFAIK.


You have noticed the usual references to fireball size are smaller than the actual mushroom cloud top, yes?
I also estimated when it was still all bright, compared to your inclusion of smoke.
There is virtually no smoke related to the nuclear reaction for there is no combustion.


If you object to the term, then you come up with one to describe the dark, opaque gas or suspension that occludes the incandescent center later in the test..
As a sidenote, there's an additional element that could contribute to reducing the correct yield of the explosions in the CW episode: altitude.


The ships were lower than WW2 high-altitude bomber runs, so I can think of no good reason why you're planting a standard there.

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Re: Another nerf for SW firepower...

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Sat May 20, 2017 2:53 pm

2046 wrote:
Mr. Oragahn wrote:Or should we dismiss the fusion word in "fusion furnace"? It made no doubt to you that it meant nuclear fusion. Did you also reject the use of some kind of seemingly naturally generated plasma as part of Theed's "plasma-fueled generator core"? Not as I can see on your Imperial power page.


Fusion is a process. Plasma-fuelled is what it says. (We later learn that Naboo mines plasma, whatever the hell that means.)

The name "proton (torpedo/cannon/bomb)" is neither of those sorts of examples, and it is alarming you'd suggest otherwise.
You miss the point. They're rather specific references. I said they could refer to several things about the weapon (or a piece of technology generally).
There are chances the technical part is relevant, unless something specifically contradicts this notion. What is contradicting the notion of use of protons for the CIS weapon? Need I remind you that you sided with Mike on the idea that it had a chemical yield, based on a particularly heavy and large chemical explosive weapon?

Also "alarming"?... Really?
To take that and then run with your assumption of fusion is a leap, unlike taking one of many references to fusion and ever so daringly assuming fusion was involved, or taking an explicit statement of what fuels a generator and stating that is the fuel source. Your proton assumption goes further than a mere leap, taking a flight of fancy altogether when you factor in the point that there's nothing else remotely fusion-y to the weapons insofar as yield, radiation, et cetera.

C'mon.
Let's pick the fusion furnace example. It is quite metaphorical as a description of a fusion-based power plant and yet that didn't stop you from concluding that it was a fusion-based power plant of some sort, in lieu of the more literal meaning in that it's a place to melt stuff (another way to use the word fusion), simply because it was said to power machines. This kind of logic that allowed you to go from irrelevant (if not quite contradictory) metaphor —the fusion furnace— to literal interpretation of an advanced power generation sytem —a fusion power plant— actually requires more work than the rather straight forward interpretation that proton —and specifically proton, not hydrogen or dihydrogen— is the hydrogen ion and that in the context of a weapon, it is more than heavily hinting at a nuclear reaction being at play, simply because without the addition of any other element, there precisely happens to be a natural fusion reaction based on protons only. It's quite glaring imho.
Another interpretation would infer a reference to the use of extremely energetic plasma that would contain protons too (and possibly be about a volume of hydrogen gas heated up by a laser as seen here) but for the protons to remain free said plasma would have to share much with solar winds, but you would then need to find a way to explain where the very important amount of energy comes from and where the possibly equally important energy necessary to entrap this plasma into something stable also comes from too.
As for your photon torpedo, the part of a matter-antimatter reaction that is relevant to military purposes does produce –to a great extent– gamma ray radiations.


Any highly energetic event will do similar.
Hence the rest of the paragraph I wrote...
Antimatter warheads have other unique outputs that would be more reasonable at that point.
Why is annihilation reactions generating photons not "reasonable"?
And in any case, if photon suddenly refers to output here, why treat protons any differently?
For all we know the proton weapons just puff hot plasma.
1. Because I covered that several times already. Unless there's a reason to ditch the very clear reference to something technical, we can safely assume the technical reference is correct.
2. See above regarding plasma temperature.
Therefore protons hint rather well at the weapon being nuclear or involving a nuclear stage, perhaps sharing a likeliness with the hydrogen bomb, where the fusion stage is used to boost and revitalize the less powerful fission reaction. Unless we have good reasons to believe otherwise, there's no practical reason to dismiss the use of such a specific term as if it wasn't directly related to the weapon mechanism or use.


You basically just say that your evidence-free and self-contradictory assertion should be accepted unless contradicted. That's not how this works. That's not how any of this works.
I'm saying it's the likeliest interpretation when considering all parameters.

Also, what is self-contradictory?
But then why didn't you expect me to admit having made a mistake?


Empiricism.
So, an ad hominem after all, one that directly mirrors a silly accusation you threw several times in the planetary defenses thread. Not only your kudos hardly were of the nice kind —more of the "I didn't expect you to be able to spell potato based on former debates, kudos" kind— but you certainly did have to drag former personal issues into this new thread. *sigh*
Just stop there. thx
The fireball and the entire burst are one and same thing AFAIK.


You have noticed the usual references to fireball size are smaller than the actual mushroom cloud top, yes?
Citation please.
I also estimated when it was still all bright, compared to your inclusion of smoke.
There is virtually no smoke related to the nuclear reaction for there is no combustion.


If you object to the term, then you come up with one to describe the dark, opaque gas or suspension that occludes the incandescent center later in the test..
DOG (dark opaque gas)? :P
As a sidenote, there's an additional element that could contribute to reducing the correct yield of the explosions in the CW episode: altitude.


The ships were lower than WW2 high-altitude bomber runs, so I can think of no good reason why you're planting a standard there.
The nuclear tests I used as references are all hundreds, perhaps sometimes thousands of feet above ground at most.
A far cry from the altitude those Republican cruisers were hovering at.

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Re: Another nerf for SW firepower...

Post by 2046 » Sat May 20, 2017 6:00 pm

Mr. Oragahn wrote:
2046 wrote:Fusion is a process. Plasma-fuelled is what it says. (We later learn that Naboo mines plasma, whatever the hell that means.)

The name "proton (torpedo/cannon/bomb)" is neither of those sorts of examples, and it is alarming you'd suggest otherwise.
You miss the point. They're rather specific references. I said they could refer to several things about the weapon (or a piece of technology generally).


Well, make up your mind. Is it specific or referring to several possibilities generally?
Need I remind you that you sided with Mike on the idea that it had a chemical yield, based on a particularly heavy and large chemical explosive weapon?
Cut that out. Your statement is false and an attempt to strawman. I called MOAB "a much closer match in scale and appearance" to the SW shot, which is not claiming anything at all about the bomb's technology.

However, in the context of present-day chemical versus nuclear *yields*? Sure I would agree. What possible attack vector do you think that represents?
Let's pick the fusion furnace example. It is quite metaphorical as a description of a fusion-based power plant


No, it is a heater and power source. There is no metaphor there. Stop trying to obfuscate.
and yet that didn't stop you from concluding that it was a fusion-based power plant of some sort, in lieu of the more literal meaning in that it's a place to melt stuff (another way to use the word fusion)


You're right, of course. I should've refused to go with the most reasonable take based on direct statement and waited for you to explain to me how a melting apparatus was useful as a power source and heater. Maybe the novel was supoosed to say "battery-powered stuff-melting pot with convenient 12-volt droid recharger port" but the editor got careless?

Note also that just as you contradict yourself with photon torpedoes versus proton torpedoes, now you once again contradict yourself by getting cranky about fusion furnaces. Literally, you are taking three different approaches.

Photon torpedo - a generic output common to everything warm is the source of the name
Proton torpedo - must mean hydrogen fusion
Fusion furnace - a leap to suggest fusion rather than melting

I presume your concern for the latter is based in part on the fact that "fusion (tech)" is a common modifier, undercutting your claim that "proton (tech)" is exactly the same thing.
Antimatter warheads have other unique outputs that would be more reasonable at that point.
Why is annihilation reactions generating photons not "reasonable"?


In the context of nomenclature, a thrown flashlight is a photon torpedo by your measure. If we're sticking with output instead of explosive tech (thus precluding "antimatter torpedo"), tossing out more unique products like pions makes more sense.
And in any case, if photon suddenly refers to output here, why treat protons any differently?
For all we know the proton weapons just puff hot plasma.
1. Because I covered that several times already.


When? All I have seen is you claiming it must and can only be nuclear fusion, and this post in which you say plasma would have to be carried along. Give (or quote) a defense against the notion that the weapon generates and/or unleashes ionized, probably-hot hydrogen gas.

Indeed, given the known existence and behavior of ion weapons in Star Wars, the proton weapons as ionized hydrogen makes the most sense given the shield penetrations at Ryloth. The attempt to wank the weapons into fusion warheads may have thus just resulted in a better understanding of them that's completely opposed to the wanking.
Unless there's a reason to ditch the very clear reference to something technical, we can safely assume the technical reference is correct.


Your assertion /= the technical reference.
But then why didn't you expect me to admit having made a mistake?


Empiricism.
So, an ad hominem after all


You begged for explanation; I told you to leave it be.
As a sidenote, there's an additional element that could contribute to reducing the correct yield of the explosions in the CW episode: altitude.


The ships were lower than WW2 high-altitude bomber runs, so I can think of no good reason why you're planting a standard there.
The nuclear tests I used as references are all hundreds, perhaps sometimes thousands of feet above ground at most.
A far cry from the altitude those Republican cruisers were hovering at.
Oh god, now you're going to keep arguing that the transports were high up? Seriously?

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Re: Another nerf for SW firepower...

Post by 2046 » Sat May 27, 2017 2:26 pm

Got directed to an old thread on Spacebattles and came across a similar discussion, and thought I'd share this part by Ralson that touches on the discussion:

"Wong's calculator says a 1 mt nuke has a fireball duration of 4.5 seconds. In real life, such a weapon's mushroom cloud takes about one minute to stop glowing in the visible spectrum. (source: http://www.atomicarchive.com/Effects/effects8.shtml )"

After a full minute you're talking about the mushroom cloud, not the initial fireball.

You'll also note that Wong's 4.5 second fireball extends out to a maximum of 1.4 kilometers diameter for a ground-contact airburst, the highest value compared to "minimum", presumably surface-burst (860m diameter) or airburst (1060 meters). The ten second fireball (not specified as to detonation altitude) at Ralson's link is 5700 feet, which should be something like 1.8 kilometers. To get that figure in an airburst on Wong's calculator would require 3.5-4.0 megatons (YMMV).

So if you are trying to get yield from measurement of burst, it is important to know where you are in the process, assuming the method can work reliably at all as more than a ballpark estimate the way we laymen might do it.

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