Construction of ships in both verses

[Jedi Master Spock]

What percentage of the surface have we seen at those resolutions? More specifically what percentage of equatorial area and poles where the engines are placed have we seen? What evidence do you have for your implicit assumption that engines were wider than 100m?

1 px = 100m or close? Most of it, actually, one point or another. See below.

Various ships had various relative size of their engines. This proves nothing.

Various sizes, all in the range of "large and visible."

When? All the time?

When orbiting at "maximum velocity."

One: Death Star 2 was incomplete thus not a reliable benchmark for upper limits.

Was incomplete and hence not at its full designed mass. Cuts both ways. It's not a wholly reliable benchmark, no; but it IS the highest angular acceleration figure you can squeeze out of any Death Star activity, period.

Two: Where is it stated that improvements to DS2 encompassed it's engines?

Nowhere.

This depends on the mass of the engine efflux and it's speed. A small amount of mass expelled at high relativistic speeds won't be as visible.

High relativistic speed actually tends to be pretty bright. You start getting energetic reactions with interstellar hydrogen and any local atmosphere the Death Star has accumulated.

This is your assumption. The technical manual mentions no such limitations.

Such limitations are inherent. The technical manual and the various blueprints have very little propellant lying around.

How does the headroom compare to Borg cube? What percentage of total DS volume do the shafts take compared to open spaces on Borg cubes such as large toroidal space seen in First Contact and later on various Borg ships? Quantify.

Quantify?

There is at least one shaft that runs all the way from the core to the surface. We see the opportunity for seemingly endless falls in both ANH and ROTJ, something not present in Borg cubes.

If it is "in all probability" then it's not a fact is it?

It's likely to be one.

To make things clear: There is a difference between saying that Death Star's core is more dense than Death Star's outer layers and saying that Death Star's outer layers are less dense than a Borg cube. What I am asking you is proof that Death Star's outer layers are less dense than Borg cube.

To make things crystal clear: The moment of inertia strongly varies with the distribution of mass. Assuming a uniform distribution, while simple, is not wholly justified.

You say it's an upper limit because thrust might not be freely vectored. You cannot declare something an upper limit based on your unsupported assumptions and theories. The same goes for your vague allusion about modeling other methods of rotation.

Actually, I can. The results of the most generous of the available models is indeed an upper limit of calculations made using the same techniques.

I don't understand what you mean with that first part.

"Wait, we don't see them... they're on the other side of the planet. Prepare to shoot after we orbit."

The point was they didn't expect to exit on the opposite side and had to adjust their heading. And "almost certainly" is not evidence.

Who says they DID actually adjust their heading? All they need to do is sling around Yavin until they have line of sight.

Yes we can. If it can operate in space and travel between starsystems then it's a starship. Obviously if you think up ridiculous concepts for starships you'll end up with ridiculous starships. What is your point?

Congratulations. Everything in the whole universe is now a starship. I ask you: What meaning is left to "starship"?

Yet another vague term. Not that it matters since you objected we cannot see the engines. Thus relevant definitions will involve evidence about size and brightness. Something you haven't provided.

Not at all. Please, by all means, tell me when the Death Star has ever exited one planetary gravity well and entered another without engaging hyperdrive.

I never claimed that it was called a starship. The point is that regardless of what it's called it is indeed a starship.

The point is that your definition is flawed and easily disputed. Why is it not called a starship? Because it is only a starship in a very broad sense of the term.

What you consider "reasonably complete" is your opinion. Consequently their failure to meet you own personal standards means nothing.

The very infrequent mention of ion drives is pretty damning. The Death Star has had, by now, dozens of technical treatments. How many mention ion drives?

I would like to see the name, page number and quote from the sources which set the acceleration to 1mm/s2.

The Technical Book of Science Fiction Films

And Saxton is right.

Implicitly here. Ask him how powerful the Death Star's thrusters need to be to orbit Yavin if you can pick your velocity vector on exiting hyperspace.

One: Death Star is indeed a military ship since it is operated by military and must satisfy every criteria set upon a military ship-sublight capability, supralight capability, weapon, defenses-

It is a military construction, but not a fighting military ship. There's an enormous difference between the two.

The US Navy operates a lot of vessels that aren't fighting ships. Are they military? Yes. In some cases, they even have light armament, but while military, they aren't dedicated warships.

Two:You have not proven Freedom Ship can be built seeing as wiki article doesn't contain a single blueprint or a calculation.

That it could be built is not under dispute

Three: The 600,000 ton ship is NOT a military vehicle nor is it comparable to the entire US Navy.

Fully loaded, it displaces as much as a quarter of the US navy's warships... or, in other words, about as much as all the ships nominally active in the Russian Navy, or one tenth of the displacement of all the warships in the world.

It was not considered a particularly incredible feat of engineering.

In other words you have no information about it's size and thus cannot derive any density from stated mass. Thus your claims of supposed Borg superior density are null.

It's a small scout vessel "similar" to a five man craft (large shuttle range) left by the Borg. It is almost certainly substantially smaller than the Enterprise. While Borg vessels of the same purpose vary in size, it is highly improbable that a scout vessel like the one that crashed was more than 100m on a side.

Now, is this a solid number for density? No. However, it's a strong indication that the Borg scout ship has a density greater than 1 g/cc.

So you are saying that 27 minutes were given as measured from Enterprise? How can we then determine the time as measured from Earth? There are no dilation equations for a ship traveling at warp as Enterprise was.

Enjoy!

As I said, 27 minutes, while possible in a relativistic frame (as the Enterprise could easily be expected to be after dropping out of warp, or may be in while in warp) implies very high speeds and therefore very high accelerations.

No it shouldn't since force required to accelerate the ship will rise with it's mass which will rise with the ship's volume or third power of radius.

And power available, and therefore force, rises with the cube power of volume.

This is why a 90,000 ton carrier and a 1,000 ton corvette have similar top speeds - they have very similar weight/power ratios.

The pressure the engine will exert on ship's construction will decline with it's cross sectional area or with the second power of radius. Thus a 1000 times bigger ship accelerating 10 times slower will still have it's engines apply the same pressure to the construction assuming engines have relatively same exhaust surface.

Which they generally don't.

Nor is the structure of the ship generally the limiting factor here in these particular cases. If you have inertial damping, you can apply pressure across the entire ship evenly.

What is a regular Imperial shipyard? What evidence do you have they didn't use regular ship construction techniques on Death Star?

We've seen the Death Star's construction. We've seen how many complications they ran into.

Now, is it possible that they do regular ships the same way? Sure. It's highly unlikely, however, given how much more quickly they built the second Death Star. It has all the signs of being a custom job.

That particular statement is obviously wrong since Empire built two Death Stars without bankrupting. Not to mention 25,000 ISDs and numerous other Executor class starships.

And that is a circular argument. On the order of a dozen SSDs existed, according to the EU, and had a great cost per unit. You may deny that, but it's explicitly there in the EU that the Executor turned out to be an expensive project... which requires the Death Star to be cheaper per unit mass. You don't get to import unjustified assumptions like the cost per unit mass remaining constant.

Sure, the Death Star is bigger, and probably cost more than the entire series of SSDs - but not by as much as you seem to be implying.

[Kane Starkiller]

While that is true, it still sets the strong possibility for the Federation to build such a large vessel, if they so chose. That combined with the Federation backing away for about a century's time from 600-800 meter sized starships and concentrating on moderate-sized, but vastly more advanced and powerful starships is very telling in the significant change in design philosophy that occured, and then the re-shifting back to larger as well as advanced capability vessels over the next intervening century.

"Strong possibility" is a qualitative meaningless term. There is no evidence. Secondly what evidence you have for your claim that Federation backed away from 600-800m ships instead of simply being unable to construct ships of such size but which would be able to travel at warp speeds which could match Romulans or Klingons for example. Quantify "vastly more advanced and powerful starships".

Another thing to consider; the Vulcan High Command built those 600-800 meter starships on their ownbefore there was a Federation, and a sharing of resources. Are you suggesting now that Federation somehow magically lost that ability? I doubt it. Even if the Vulcans chose not to build large starships anymore, there is nothing stoping Earth, Andor and Tellar from combining resources to do so.

There is nothing magical about loosing certain construction technologies. US for example no longer has the capacity to build supersonic bombers like XB-70. If you don't use it you loose it. Furthermore Vulcan ships seen in Enterprise seem no larger than Galaxy. So what ability is lost?

And as JMS has pointed out, there is a reason why the Death Star I (and likely the DS2) is called a "battlestation", not a "starship" by every authority with knowledge in the SW universe, and he has set out a few decent reasons why that would be the case.

The SSDs are true starships, on the other hand, and not refered to as "battlestations". Again, JMS has gone over this.

Again what it is called is irrelevant. It's a starship. Secondly SSD is 100,000 times smaller than Death Star so it's a pretty big leap from Death Star (as a pinnacle of shipbuilding capability) back to SSD.

Look, you can keep on being obtuse, or you can look at what I presented. There is ample circumstantial evidence. You just keep jumping through hoops to not acknowledge it. But here is another point:

At least twice in TNG's season one and into season two the Galaxy class is refered to as being brand new were likely just out of the testing phase, indicatiing there are only a few or so GCS at this time. In "All Good Things" [TNG, S7], we see that the E-D launched just prior to the events of "Encounter at Farpoint" [TNG, S1].

Therefore the class is certainly brand new as it is refered to as such, and the E-D herself was very new early on. It is highly unlikely that the Federation just went and built all 8 or so GCS all at once? Even back in the late 23rd century, the Excelsior was the only one of her class in existance for at least the first year or two as well as well the Defiant. They always start off with one prototype and then work up from there.

So the only other alternative you have here is that the Galaxy class had been around for a while and the E-D was only new in the sense that she was the latest of the GCS off the line. But that then flies in the face of statements concering the newness of the class in general, not just for one specific starship.

Again you present no evidence for more than 5 (or 8) Galaxies. I don't see how you can call me obtuse for not accepting your assumptions as evidence.

I would have hoped you would not need me to point out the obvious, but here it is; we have 3 GCS (Yamato, Enterprise-D, and Odyssey) lost prior to the timeframe shown in "Relativity", then we see
3 more ships in dry docks nearly complete or undergoing some kind of maintance, with the partially completed space frames of saucer sections for at least 1-2 more possible GCS. Therefore the only conclusion when you add in the three lost GCS with the three or so at the UP shipyards, and you get at least 6-7 GCS built from 2164 to 2171.

I asked you what evidence there is that Federation has "5 or so" Galaxies and you reply that they have at least 6-7? Maybe I'm not being clear when I say "5 or so" but it certainly includes 6,7,8 or 9 ships.

Not quite so as the USS Venture handily illustrates with her unique raised bumps and extra phaser strips on her warp nacelles.

What is so important about that? In all of the Utopia Planita scenes as well as the Dominion War scenes, we do not spot a single GCS with those unique modifications. Not once, even though the ship is mentioned by name in "Sacrifice of Angels". That means that the Venture was there
But elsewhere in the fleet deployments, and this matches up well with the dialog which refers to "Galaxy wings", and possible might refer to seperate GCS squadrons deployed throughout the 624 ship fleet. In addition, the SoA "big fleet" was made of elements of the 2nd and 5th fleets, and would have included elements of the 9th fleet had fleet not had to depart early due to the Cardassians and Dominion bringing down minefield. Therefore is very likely that we are seeing 2-5 GCS per each of the 10 fleets.

Did we see all Galaxies from above so as to be certain it is not Venture? But either way that adds 1 new Galaxy which hardly proves the supposed huge fleets of Galaxy class ships. Other than that you again present no additional evidence other than restating it is "very likely" there are 1-5 GCS per each of 10 fleets. Which of course brings us to another point: what evidence you have that Federation has 10 fleets. Numbering schemes are not necessarily consecutive.

Because the deployments are so disparate in location that you cannot possibly have all five of the ships showing up at all these locations by sheer conicidence. The Defiant being at several battles makes some sense as at least she was deployed to a base where she could make it to those particular frontlines readily enough as well she was the choosen flagship of the base's commander.

How distant were those locations? How do you know that they cannot possibly be the same. Provide evidence.

Which I have and the further proof is in the canonical names listed by JMS of GCS, which means at least 8 vessels were built. The other thing that argues for there being more is that the fleet deployments I've already mentioned would not always allow for the same GCS being deployed to such disparate locations. The USS Defiant being absent at the "Endgame" deployment showing that even a hero starship can't be everywhere.

When have you provided proof Federation was mass producing Galaxies? You have assumptions that it couldn't have been the same Galaxies, a list of names of 8 ships (3 of which were destroyed) which hardly contradicts with "5 or so" ships I said we've seen. Finally you still haven't shown any evidence as to whether those Galaxies were the same as the ones seen in Doninion War. More evidence less supposition.

The thousands of structures quote is important as we see cube ship sized structures (some even appearing to surpass a cube in size that flies by them). In the establishing shots we see them spread out quite a ways as the Delta Flyer approaches the complex. The 600 km quote is very important as Paris speaks this while they are deep inside the complex itself, and the location were they go to is not at the edge of the complex, but still deep within it Thus the absolute minimum possible size for the Unicomplex is 600 km, which is vastily larger than the DS in terms of linear size, and may well surpass it in volume, if it is double or even triple the minimum size.

What evidence do you have that the structure is continuous throughout it's 600km rather than being several disconnected structures? Axum specifically mentions the Primary Unicomplex as a place where the Queen resides. Either way 600km is still a single dimension and due to it's shape it is extremely low in density and thus mass. There is no evidence it dwarfs the Death Star.

Yes it was. A Nimitz full loadout is only 20,000 tons greater. But the two ships' measurements were not that far off: 1,050 feet (320 meters) versus 1,115 feet (339m) . They are very comparable.


But before the Soviet collapse, they still managed to build two ship hulls of 1,000 feet (300 meters) and 67,000 tons, and also comparable in the same rough size range. For a comparison in size difference equal to that of the GCS versus a D'Deridex or battleship, we would need as an analogy a much smaller real-world ship versus a Nimitz. Something that is just less than half it's length, and eight times smaller in volume and displacement. A Moskva class carrier, for instance with a displacement of about 17,500 tons and a length of 620' (189m). But look at the huge jump between the Moskva and Admiral Kuznetsov class ships. Clearly the Soviets were able to make a signficant leap there. Nearly double the length and 4 times the displacement tonnage.

Are you now using Soviet leap from Moskva to Kuznetsov as evidence of Federation ship building abilities? You keep restating that Kuznetsov and Nimitz are comparable which doesn't address the point since Kuznetsov is 77% of Nimitz' mass. Difference between D'Deridex and Galaxy may be greater but analogy is not supposed to be perfectly identical.

Look at the first image showing the inital starting breakup of the vissian ship, the glow is still there, though weak, and illuminating parts of the sensor dome's structure that should be shadowed, were the ship as far away as you suggest it could be. The second image only confirms this as well as illuminates it more highly, the explosions still not having expanded very far from the destructing vessel. Finally, the third image shows the fireball actually reaching the dome. No that ship is nearly underneath, if not right under the dome.

Also another thing: the vissian ship is double the length of the 225 meter NX-01, or about some 450 meters long, which in turn makes the E-J saucer much, much larger. About 3.6 km wide total.

Yes the saucer is illuminated when the explosion starts. This still doesn't prove the ship itself is underneath it. The light could easily be reflected off the hull to illuminate other parts of the ship. And again all this depends on your assumption that explosion has not expanded very far towards the camera. Something which you have no way of knowing.

1 px = 100m or close? Most of it, actually, one point or another. See below.

Where below?

Various sizes, all in the range of "large and visible."

And Death Star's were not visible due to it's large size and comparatively small engines. Your point?

When orbiting at "maximum velocity."

After Death Star starts orbiting the planet we only see it two times from front and long range. After that there is the X-Wing approach scene and then the final battle. No engines could be seen then.

Was incomplete and hence not at its full designed mass. Cuts both ways. It's not a wholly reliable benchmark, no; but it IS the highest angular acceleration figure you can squeeze out of any Death Star activity, period.

You admit it is not a reliable benchmark and then immediately claim that it "IS, Period"? Why because you say so? Unfinished ships are not a reliable benchmark.

High relativistic speed actually tends to be pretty bright. You start getting energetic reactions with interstellar hydrogen and any local atmosphere the Death Star has accumulated.

Local atmosphere which remained after the hyperspace jump? In any case this is more of your usual unsupported claims. Again you make no attempt to provide information about the mass of the efflux but continue to make claims that it will be bright.

Such limitations are inherent. The technical manual and the various blueprints have very little propellant lying around.

Define "very little" otherwise this is yet another of your vague qualitative claims which provides no useful information whatsoever.

Quantify?

There is at least one shaft that runs all the way from the core to the surface. We see the opportunity for seemingly endless falls in both ANH and ROTJ, something not present in Borg cubes.

A shaft roughly 10m wide. Assuming it runs to the core (by the way could you provide the source for that claim) we are talking about a volume of 4.7*10^6m3 or 1/192,000,000 of the total Death Star's volume. In comparison that fraction of a 28km3, or Borg cubes volume, comes out at 146m3 or a 6x6x4 room. I believe we have seen larger empty spaces on a Borg cube than that.

To make things crystal clear: The moment of inertia strongly varies with the distribution of mass. Assuming a uniform distribution, while simple, is not wholly justified.

I know but if you take a low overall density (like that of water) then the final number is conservative. If there are higher density objects near the core that only increases the number.

Actually, I can. The results of the most generous of the available models is indeed an upper limit of calculations made using the same techniques.

Present those models then and explain why the must be an upper limit.

Who says they DID actually adjust their heading? All they need to do is sling around Yavin until they have line of sight.

They didn't even know where the base is. "The rebel base is on a moon orbiting Yavin on the far side". Did they just luckily happen to exit hyperspace on such a trajectory that conveniently took them straight to Yavin? Either way since Death Star's ability to move through normal space and ion engines have been explicitly stated I don't understand what purpose your endless unproven assumptions serve.

Congratulations. Everything in the whole universe is now a starship. I ask you: What meaning is left to "starship"?

Really? So everything in the universe was designed to operate in space? Who exactly designed the hydrogen atom and what operations exactly does it perform?

Yet another vague term. Not that it matters since you objected we cannot see the engines. Thus relevant definitions will involve evidence about size and brightness. Something you haven't provided.

Not at all. Please, by all means, tell me when the Death Star has ever exited one planetary gravity well and entered another without engaging hyperdrive.

What does size of Death Star's engines have to do with whether we have ever seen it exit a planetary gravity well? Define the size of the engines or understand that your claims about their invisiblity are meaningless.

The point is that your definition is flawed and easily disputed. Why is it not called a starship? Because it is only a starship in a very broad sense of the term.

So you keep repeating without providing any evidence other than appeals to Star Wars databank.

The very infrequent mention of ion drives is pretty damning. The Death Star has had, by now, dozens of technical treatments. How many mention ion drives?

Very damning? According to who? You again? You really should try to understand that your personal opinions as to how often ion engines should or should not be mentioned are not evidence of anything.

The Technical Book of Science Fiction Films

Is that an official Star Wars book? You still haven't provided quotes and page numbers. I never heard of it, not even google comes up with anything.

It is a military construction, but not a fighting military ship. There's an enormous difference between the two.

The US Navy operates a lot of vessels that aren't fighting ships. Are they military? Yes. In some cases, they even have light armament, but while military, they aren't dedicated warships.

But Death Star is as it carries numerous turbolasers, ion canons, rail guns, star fighters and even capital ships. And there is the planet destroying superlaser.

Two:You have not proven Freedom Ship can be built seeing as wiki article doesn't contain a single blueprint or a calculation.

That it could be built is not under dispute

This is not evidence it can be built. Provide the blueprints and calculations.

Fully loaded, it displaces as much as a quarter of the US navy's warships... or, in other words, about as much as all the ships nominally active in the Russian Navy, or one tenth of the displacement of all the warships in the world.

It was not considered a particularly incredible feat of engineering.

But not AS THE ENTIRE FLEET which was my point. Again a ship which would displace as the entire fleet or close to it would be more impressive. And of course I'll repeat the requirement that it is an actual warship.

It's a small scout vessel "similar" to a five man craft (large shuttle range) left by the Borg. It is almost certainly substantially smaller than the Enterprise. While Borg vessels of the same purpose vary in size, it is highly improbable that a scout vessel like the one that crashed was more than 100m on a side.

Now, is this a solid number for density? No. However, it's a strong indication that the Borg scout ship has a density greater than 1 g/cc.

Yet more assumptions and no evidence. How do you know what is highly improbable?

Enjoy!

As I said, 27 minutes, while possible in a relativistic frame (as the Enterprise could easily be expected to be after dropping out of warp, or may be in while in warp) implies very high speeds and therefore very high accelerations.

Enjoy? You made the claim you do the calculations. And you have no way of determining what speeds the assumption of time dilation in warp points to since there is no way of knowing how time dilation works in warp.

And power available, and therefore force, rises with the cube power of volume.

This is why a 90,000 ton carrier and a 1,000 ton corvette have similar top speeds - they have very similar weight/power ratios.

Power has nothing to do with structural strength. Because structural strength rises with second power of diameter and mass with third strength will ultimately loose. This is why large starships cannot accelerate as fast as smaller. Two your carrier-corvette example involves speed not acceleration not to mention that in Earth's environment water and air drag play a pivotal role.

Which they generally don't.

Nor is the structure of the ship generally the limiting factor here in these particular cases. If you have inertial damping, you can apply pressure across the entire ship evenly.

Really? Then how does relative size of engines to their entire cross ectional area behave as the ships grow? Secondly inertial dampers works by transferring inertia from people to various devices. They cannot simply deactivate it. Which means that absorbing inertia from engines would simply transfer it to inertial dampers and the problem remains.

We've seen the Death Star's construction. We've seen how many complications they ran into.

Now, is it possible that they do regular ships the same way? Sure. It's highly unlikely, however, given how much more quickly they built the second Death Star. It has all the signs of being a custom job.

So according to you they ran into many complications and it was a custom job. How exactly does that make Death Star easier to construct than standard Star Destroyers?

And that is a circular argument. On the order of a dozen SSDs existed, according to the EU, and had a great cost per unit. You may deny that, but it's explicitly there in the EU that the Executor turned out to be an expensive project... which requires the Death Star to be cheaper per unit mass. You don't get to import unjustified assumptions like the cost per unit mass remaining constant.

Sure, the Death Star is bigger, and probably cost more than the entire series of SSDs - but not by as much as you seem to be implying.

It is not a circular argument: the movies blow that statement right out of the water. You may argue that Death Star is cheaper than SSD per unit of mass but ultimately as a whole it will be far more costly. Two of them didn't bankrupt the Empire and therefore SSD won't come even close.

[Mike DiCenso]

The Wookiepedia entry on the SSD Executor states:

"The incredible cost to fund the construction of such a large ship had practically bankrupted several star systems."

The citation for this is apparently from the EU novel "Therefore I Am: The Tale of IG-88".

So building the SSD Executor apparently bankrupted several star systems, but not the whole of the Empire?
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

The Wookiepedia entry on the SSD Executor states:

"The incredible cost to fund the construction of such a large ship had practically bankrupted several star systems."

The citation for this is apparently from the EU novel "Therefore I Am: The Tale of IG-88".

So building the SSD Executor apparently bankrupted several star systems, but not the whole of the Empire?
-Mike

If the Empire counts thousands of systems, plus assimilated or allied banks, it can eventually easily spread the cost. However, when you put the SSD volume into a Death Star, it's just impossible that the budget on the Death Star projects couldn't weigh a hell lot on the Empire's financial resources.

Ed. Just for the record, to Kane: why don't you apply the same good level of analysis and observation to Star Wars as you do to Star Trek?

[Jedi Master Spock]

"Strong possibility" is a qualitative meaningless term.

You keep asking for absolute proof when you yourself have none. Strong possibilities are the best you will get.

Where below?

... for discussion of how large ion thrusters are in SW.

And Death Star's were not visible due to it's large size and By "comparatively small," meaning "practically non-existent."

After Death Star starts orbiting the planet we only see it two times from front and long range. After that there is the X-Wing approach scene and then the final battle. No engines could be seen then.

No engines and no gas plume. By rights they should be going full steam during the battle. Precisely the point.

You admit it is not a reliable benchmark and then immediately claim that it "IS, Period"? Why because you say so? Unfinished ships are not a reliable benchmark.

It is the best upper benchmark.

Local atmosphere which remained after the hyperspace jump?

Unless you'd care to claim the Death Star's hyperdrive field is skintight, that will happen. Also, the Death Star is highly likely to leak a small amount.

If you hit interstellar hydrogen hard enough it glows brightly. Here, we're talking about the much denser "vacuum" that surrounds planets.

Define "very little" otherwise this is yet another of your vague qualitative claims which provides no useful information whatsoever.

Very little meaning "not visible on blueprints," which in turn means, given the resolution in question, on the order of billionths. Very little indeed.

A shaft roughly 10m wide.

And that's just a single shaft.

Assuming it runs to the core (by the way could you provide the source for that claim)

Rebel diagram.

we are talking about a volume of 4.7*10^6m3 or 1/192,000,000 of the total Death Star's volume. In comparison that fraction of a 28km3, or Borg cubes volume, comes out at 146m3 or a 6x6x4 room. I believe we have seen larger empty spaces on a Borg cube than that.

In comparison? No, think in the absolute sense. Giant empty spaces are giant empty spaces. That's similar to a 150m cube here.

I know but if you take a low overall density (like that of water) then the final number is conservative. If there are higher density objects near the core that only increases the number.

As opposed to generous.

Putting the mass near the center drops the moment of inertia without reducing the mass; hence, dramatically reducing the acceleration possible by reorienting thrusters, which is invariant of absolute mass.

Present those models then and explain why the must be an upper limit.

The most generous plausible model is that the Death Star has a uniform density.

The most generous plausible model is that the Death Star rotates via thrusters which may be freely reoriented and thrust in any direction (fact: Half the thrusters will be unable to vector in any given direction due to the Death Star being in the way. This is very generous indeed, being almost certainly at least twice too high.)

They didn't even know where the base is. "The rebel base is on a moon orbiting Yavin on the far side". Did they just luckily happen to exit hyperspace on such a trajectory that conveniently took them straight to Yavin? Either way since Death Star's ability to move through normal space and ion engines have been explicitly stated I don't understand what purpose your endless unproven assumptions serve.

If they jump into a fast orbit of Yavin, they will either be able to (a) shoot or (b) orbit and then shoot in fairly short order regardless of where the moon is. Obviously they wound up with (b).

Really? So everything in the universe was designed to operate in space? Who exactly designed the hydrogen atom and what operations exactly does it perform?

If you apply the same to "device" it can indeed go that far. "This device is a collection of hydrogen atoms, designed to disperse en route as they travel. Poof!"

Pens exist that are designed to work in space. Et cetera, et cetera. Your definition of starship includes far too much to be useful.

What does size of Death Star's engines have to do with whether we have ever seen it exit a planetary gravity well? Define the size of the engines or understand that your claims about their invisiblity are meaningless.

This is the qualification. Inappropriately sized/fueled engines are simply inadequate to the task.

So you keep repeating without providing any evidence other than appeals to Star Wars databank.

... and the G canon itself, which is very consistent on the point. Would you like a collection of movie, script, and novelization quotes?

They're quite consistent.

Very damning?

Yes. In fact, is there any other treatment which puts ion thrusters of any size on the Death Star?

Is that an official Star Wars book? You still haven't provided quotes and page numbers. I never heard of it, not even google comes up with anything.

Early publication. Saxton, incidentally, spends a few pages talking about it.

It's a classic fit for what we call "S canon." Officially licensed older materials that don't fit too well. (It also puts the DS at sixty-odd km.)

But Death Star is as it carries numerous turbolasers, ion canons, rail guns, star fighters and even capital ships.

Like a floating naval base would.

And there is the planet destroying superlaser.

... with a missile silo tacked on for the heck of it.

This is not evidence it can be built. Provide the blueprints and calculations.

Actually, it is. The Freedom Ship project has undergone some review by expert engineers. This is evidence that it can be built.

Is it absolutely conclusive? No. Is it pretty convincing? Yes. The state of modern engineering is pretty good. Where the project has floundered appears to be the question of finance, not plausibility of design.

But not AS THE ENTIRE FLEET which was my point. Again a ship which would displace as the entire fleet or close to it would be more impressive. And of course I'll repeat the requirement that it is an actual warship.

Not as the entire US fleet, no, but as the entire Russian fleet. I repeat the fact that the Death Star is not a proper warship any more than a military floating base ala Freedom Ship would be.

Yet more assumptions and no evidence. How do you know what is highly improbable?

It's called common sense.

Seriously. This is a small Borg scout ship, a close cousin to a very small one that we saw onscreen.

Enjoy? You made the claim you do the calculations.

I have. Every adjustment of the model brings it past that figure.

And you have no way of determining what speeds the assumption of time dilation in warp points to since there is no way of knowing how time dilation works in warp.

In which case you can still compute from the E-D's exit into normal space. Which still indicates high relativistic speeds.

Power has nothing to do with structural strength.

But everything to do with thrust, which is the true limiting factor here.

Because structural strength rises with second power of diameter and mass with third strength will ultimately loose. This is why large starships cannot accelerate as fast as smaller. Two your carrier-corvette example involves speed not acceleration not to mention that in Earth's environment water and air drag play a pivotal role.

Raw linear acceleration is similar as well. (Rate of change of acceleration, no.)

Really? Then how does relative size of engines to their entire cross ectional area behave as the ships grow?

Still missing the point, which is to say that's not the primary limiting factor.

Secondly inertial dampers works by transferring inertia from people to various devices.

Not just people, but everything in the ship. Structural members included. Meaning that you can transfer the thrust directly to the entire structure of the ship through your inertial dampers.

This capability is essential to them being able to function as they are observed to. Again, making your claims that larger ships should have smaller linear accelerations moot.

So according to you they ran into many complications and it was a custom job. How exactly does that make Death Star easier to construct than standard Star Destroyers?

It is not a circular argument: the movies blow that statement right out of the water. You may argue that Death Star is cheaper than SSD per unit of mass but ultimately as a whole it will be far more costly. Two of them didn't bankrupt the Empire and therefore SSD won't come even close.

Who is to say that two of them DIDN'T effectively bankrupt the Empire? The thing fell apart before the second one was completed.

And perhaps we're looking at something more along the lines of the relative cost per kilogram of the Freedom Ship vs the B-2 stealth bomber - a small class with extensive design issues driving the price tag through the roof. The class of B-2 bombers far exceeds the cost of the proposed Freedom Ship. Who are you to judge just how much - or little - the Death Stars cost relative to conventional warships, pound for pound?

Just a fan. And as a fan who likes to consider the EU, you are faced with the problem that the Executors gave the Imperial budget some issues.

[SailorSaturn13]

"a spacecraft capable of interstellar travel"

Well, this definition fits Starbases nicely. Even at 1 m/s^2 they will reach another star in a couple of years, and they have resources to survive that long, if "voyager" did.


Which is the point. Either we call a starship EVERYTHING that can move in space... somehow. Then Starbases are ships. OR we require they move on par with normal ships and then Death Star is a station. Note that DS9 could move at warp (Emissary) but this did not make it a ship.


As for cubes, we have (thousands of planets, millions of cubes) from Scorpion. Together, this oversizes BOTH Death Stars.

And in "Unimatrix Zero II", we see a cube shifting facets(90 degree turn) in less than 5 secs.[/quote]

[Kane Starkiller]

Ed. Just for the record, to Kane: why don't you apply the same good level of analysis and observation to Star Wars as you do to Star Trek?

I do. That you choose to reject or reinterpret explicit statements and demonstrations of Star Wars power only speaks about your own objectivity.

You keep asking for absolute proof when you yourself have none. Strong possibilities are the best you will get.

Of course I have none. That's the point: there is no evidence Federation can build ships larger than Galaxy hence I have none and neither have you. Thank you for proving my point.

... for discussion of how large ion thrusters are in SW.
And Death Star's were not visible due to it's large size and By "comparatively small," meaning "practically non-existent."

You messed up the quotes a bit but I can still see you have no evidence about the size of Death Star's engines.

No engines and no gas plume. By rights they should be going full steam during the battle. Precisely the point.

Again I have to ask: what percentage of Death Star was seen during the battle? What was the intended trajectory in relation to the location of the X-Wing fleet? In other words what evidence do you have that Death Star should've fire the engines in the vicinity of the actual battle.

It is the best upper benchmark.

You simply stating it does not make it true. The ship was unfinished and you have no evidence as to how many engines it had installed. Thus DS2 manuverability is completely unreliable.

Unless you'd care to claim the Death Star's hyperdrive field is skintight, that will happen. Also, the Death Star is highly likely to leak a small amount.

If you hit interstellar hydrogen hard enough it glows brightly. Here, we're talking about the much denser "vacuum" that surrounds planets.

I'm still waiting for evidence of "local atmosphere", the density of hydrogen, and the mass of the engine efflux.

Very little meaning "not visible on blueprints," which in turn means, given the resolution in question, on the order of billionths. Very little indeed.

Describe those blueprints in more detail. Do they show every deck of Death Star or simply the cross section? In that case how can you tell that fuel is not located "above" or "beneath" the crossection.

And that's just a single shaft.

Provide evidence that Death Star has more.

Assuming it runs to the core (by the way could you provide the source for that claim)

Rebel diagram.

Rebel diagram showed the exhaust port. Is that the shaft you meant? Because that one was 2m and not 10m wide which makes it 1/4,800,000,000 of Death Star's volume.

In comparison? No, think in the absolute sense. Giant empty spaces are giant empty spaces. That's similar to a 150m cube here.

Wrong. Density will depend on the fraction of total volume being empty space. Assuming a hypothetical situation of Death Star being composed of solid iron it's density would be 7870kg/m3. Now how much does it's density decrease if we carve out an empty space the size of 28km3? Mass of the solid Death Star was 7.120608*10^18kg. Mass of the 28km3 chunk of iron is 2.2036*10^14. Therefore after carving out the chunk the mass will be 7.120608*10^18kg-2.2036*10^14kg or 7.120387*10^18kg. Volume remains the same in both cases: 9.0477868*10^14m3. Thus the density of Death Star with 28km3 chunk taken out is mass2/volume or 7869.755kg/m3.
As we can see the existence of 28km3 empty space decreased the density from 7870kg/m3 to 7869.755kg/m3. Utterly insignificant.
Now what happens if we carve out 28km3 chunk from a Borg cube? Obviously the density decreases from 7870kg/m3 to zero.
I hope this illustrates why fraction of space is important when discussing it's impact on density and not direct volume comparison.

As opposed to generous.

Putting the mass near the center drops the moment of inertia without reducing the mass; hence, dramatically reducing the acceleration possible by reorienting thrusters, which is invariant of absolute mass.

You still provided no evidence that outer layers of Death Star are less dense than Borg cube. Whether Death Star's outer layers are less dense than Death Star's inner layers has nothing to do with it.

The most generous plausible model is that the Death Star has a uniform density.

The most generous plausible model is that the Death Star rotates via thrusters which may be freely reoriented and thrust in any direction (fact: Half the thrusters will be unable to vector in any given direction due to the Death Star being in the way. This is very generous indeed, being almost certainly at least twice too high.)

It would be generous if I used the high density core as being uniformly spread throughout Death Star. I didn't. I used the relatively low density outer layers (density of water) and assumed the core is no more dense. Hence it is conservative. Secondly what evidence do you have that thrusters were originally built in such a position as to only be able to facilitate the rotation? Why is the assumption they are simply built perpendicular to the surface of Death Star generous? If they are build perpendicularly and the ones on the same hemisphere fire the Death Star will move in the opposite direction.

If they jump into a fast orbit of Yavin, they will either be able to (a) shoot or (b) orbit and then shoot in fairly short order regardless of where the moon is. Obviously they wound up with (b).

How will they get into orbit? As opposed to slamming into Yavin itself? Again what evidence do you have they just conveniently jumped in in such a fashion as to be perfectly aligned for orbiting Yavin without firing any engines?

If you apply the same to "device" it can indeed go that far. "This device is a collection of hydrogen atoms, designed to disperse en route as they travel. Poof!"

Pens exist that are designed to work in space. Et cetera, et cetera. Your definition of starship includes far too much to be useful.

Again who designed the hydrogen atoms? How can pens operate in space? If there is no human hand to propel them they are useless and immobile.

This is the qualification. Inappropriately sized/fueled engines are simply inadequate to the task.

I still await for evidence that the engines are inappropriately sized or fueld for their task.

... and the G canon itself, which is very consistent on the point. Would you like a collection of movie, script, and novelization quotes?

They're quite consistent.

Did I ever deny Death Star is called a battlestation in the films? What does that have to do with whether it's a starship?

Yes. In fact, is there any other treatment which puts ion thrusters of any size on the Death Star?

I ask you to explain why it is very damning and you just repeat "Yes". Your opinions are irrelevant. What difference does it make how many books explicitly mention Death Star novels. Provide some information or a law that states what percentage of books must mention a certain piece of equipment.

Early publication. Saxton, incidentally, spends a few pages talking about it.

It's a classic fit for what we call "S canon." Officially licensed older materials that don't fit too well. (It also puts the DS at sixty-odd km.)

In other words outdated and overridden by higher ranking material.

Like a floating naval base would.

I don't see why you insist in going in circles. We have already established that Death Star is not a free floating installation.

And there is the planet destroying superlaser.

... with a missile silo tacked on for the heck of it.

I'm afraid you lost me.

Actually, it is. The Freedom Ship project has undergone some review by expert engineers. This is evidence that it can be built.

Is it absolutely conclusive? No. Is it pretty convincing? Yes. The state of modern engineering is pretty good. Where the project has floundered appears to be the question of finance, not plausibility of design.

Show me those reviews then. And again: I'll believe it when I see it.

Not as the entire US fleet, no, but as the entire Russian fleet. I repeat the fact that the Death Star is not a proper warship any more than a military floating base ala Freedom Ship would be.

You can repeat what you think is a fact all you wish. It doesn't make it true for the reasons I stated many times.

It's called common sense.

Seriously. This is a small Borg scout ship, a close cousin to a very small one that we saw onscreen.

The Sphere from "Dark Frontier" Janeway decided to rob was also identified as a scout ship by Seven. What is your point?

I have. Every adjustment of the model brings it past that figure.

How? Assuming that time dilation for whatever warp speed Enterprise was traveling at is equal to,say, the one experienced when traveling at 99.9999% light speed 27 minutes of Enterprise's time will be 13 days Earth time. Again I ask how can you know how warp drive behaves in relation to time dilation?

In which case you can still compute from the E-D's exit into normal space. Which still indicates high relativistic speeds.

And when did E-D exited from warp? If you are going to point to the fact that we see E-D coasting near Saturn at sublight speed then the obvious objection is that it would take E-D at least 80 minutes to reach Earth from that position which blows their own 23 minute intercept estimate out of the water. Not to mention that 300,000km/s range would have them crossing 2.5 Saturn's diameters per second. Something we obviously don't see as E-D passes near Saturn.

But everything to do with thrust, which is the true limiting factor here.

The limiting factor is whatever is your weakest link. What evidence do you have that thrust strength as opposed to material limitation is the weakest link?

Raw linear acceleration is similar as well. (Rate of change of acceleration, no.)

You still haven't addressed the fact that drag plays a pivotal role on Earth. Not to mention that size difference between a carrier and a corvette is nowhere near the size difference between a Borg cube and Death Star. A ship 32,000 times smaller than a Nimitz carrier masses about 3 tonnes.

Really? Then how does relative size of engines to their entire cross ectional area behave as the ships grow?

Still missing the point, which is to say that's not the primary limiting factor.

Provide evidence for your assertion.

Not just people, but everything in the ship. Structural members included. Meaning that you can transfer the thrust directly to the entire structure of the ship through your inertial dampers.

This capability is essential to them being able to function as they are observed to. Again, making your claims that larger ships should have smaller linear accelerations moot.

Provide evidence that inertial dampers protect "everything" in the ship and that you can transfer the trust to the "entire structure" as opposed to the devices providing the counter inertia.

Who is to say that two of them DIDN'T effectively bankrupt the Empire? The thing fell apart before the second one was completed.

Because Emperor died. You'll notice that nothing happened after the destruction of the first.

And perhaps we're looking at something more along the lines of the relative cost per kilogram of the Freedom Ship vs the B-2 stealth bomber - a small class with extensive design issues driving the price tag through the roof. The class of B-2 bombers far exceeds the cost of the proposed Freedom Ship. Who are you to judge just how much - or little - the Death Stars cost relative to conventional warships, pound for pound?

You are of course neglecting the fact that B-2 is a plane which requires far higher power per unit of kilogram, has high maintenance high cost stealth sheeting and generally involves cutting edge technology which is not mass produced unlike the Freedom Ship wich is A. Only a fantasy B. Nothing more than a really large barge.
Your own claims about Death Star being unique, custom job, complicated , not built in a regular shipyard only underscore that it is more like a huge B-2 or better yet XB-70 rather than the floating barge like Freedom Ship.

Just a fan. And as a fan who likes to consider the EU, you are faced with the problem that the Executors gave the Imperial budget some issues.

Unless EU is directly contradicted by the films. Which it is.

Well, this definition fits Starbases nicely. Even at 1 m/s^2 they will reach another star in a couple of years, and they have resources to survive that long, if "voyager" did.

Let me know when we actually see a Starbase accomplishing anything like that. Until that this is nothing but your fantasy.

As for cubes, we have (thousands of planets, millions of cubes) from Scorpion. Together, this oversizes BOTH Death Stars.

I would like to see some evidence they have millions of cubes. Also evidence as to what is the average size of those cubes. They are not all 3km as I have already established.

And in "Unimatrix Zero II", we see a cube shifting facets(90 degree turn) in less than 5 secs.

When exactly and how big was the cube in question?

[Mr. Oragahn]

Ed. Just for the record, to Kane: why don't you apply the same good level of analysis and observation to Star Wars as you do to Star Trek?

I do. That you choose to reject or reinterpret explicit statements and demonstrations of Star Wars power only speaks about your own objectivity.

My objectivity is fine.
I'm still waiting for you in that Death Star thread you know, just to see you defend your claims you made elsewhere on that forum.

http://www.starfleetjedi.net/forum/view ... 0265#10265

As usual, you'd rather reset the discussion everytime in off topics rather than clearly adress the issue in the appropriate place where the discussion is much more detailed and advanced.

[Jedi Master Spock]

Of course I have none. That's the point: there is no evidence Federation can build ships larger than Galaxy hence I have none and neither have you. Thank you for proving my point.

Yes, there is. You are not grasping the distinction between evidence and proof.

By your definition of starship, we have proof, as SailorSaturn13 has pointed out, since a starbase meets your low standards. However, we have reasonably strong evidence of this in any event.

You messed up the quotes a bit but I can still see you have no evidence about the size of Death Star's engines.

I do. They're too small to be seen in any of the shots and approaches.

Again I have to ask: what percentage of Death Star was seen during the battle? What was the intended trajectory in relation to the location of the X-Wing fleet? In other words what evidence do you have that Death Star should've fire the engines in the vicinity of the actual battle.

Half during the approach. A significant length of the equatorial regions during the trench run (these would be a prime location for thrusters.)

You simply stating it does not make it true.

Nor does your denying it. The simple fact remains that although the reliability is limited, it remains the highest reasonable estimator of Death Star angular acceleration.

If we care to dispense with the evidence, we should go strictly from the original's observed rotations, which are not as swift.

I'm still waiting for evidence of "local atmosphere", the density of hydrogen, and the mass of the engine efflux.

Greater mass means the ionized gas will be visible due to the size of the ionized plume. Greater velocity means it will be visible due to high-energy interactions with gases.

In the areas the Death Star is orbiting, we expect on the order of 5 particles per cubic centimeter at a minimum if it has no local atmosphere.

It will inevitably have one - albeit very thin, probably at least as thin as our moon's atmosphere - due to the laws of entropy and its own gravity well.

Describe those blueprints in more detail. Do they show every deck of Death Star or simply the cross section? In that case how can you tell that fuel is not located "above" or "beneath" the crossection.

That good quantities of propellant simply happen to be missed in all the blueprints and cross-sections?

It's quite silly, really.

Provide evidence that Death Star has more.

Luke swings over a giant chasm. Obi-wan crosses over a seemingly bottomless shaft. The Emperor is pitched down a convenient bottomless shaft.

Everywhere in the Death Star, we see a lot of large open spaces.

Rebel diagram showed the exhaust port. Is that the shaft you meant? Because that one was 2m and not 10m wide which makes it 1/4,800,000,000 of Death Star's volume.

Out of how much of the volume we have accounted for?

Our sample of the Death Star's interior includes a lot of wide open spaces.

Wrong.

You're still not grasping the problem, are you? We don't see the entire Death Star, and yet we already know, after seeing a tiny bit of it, that it has a number of positively enormous open spaces bigger than anything we've seen in any Borg cube after a huge number of explored cubes.

As opposed to generous.

Putting the mass near the center drops the moment of inertia without reducing the mass; hence, dramatically reducing the acceleration possible by reorienting thrusters, which is invariant of absolute mass.

You still provided no evidence that outer layers of Death Star are less dense than Borg cube. Whether Death Star's outer layers are less dense than Death Star's inner layers has nothing to do with it.

You are still completely missing the point. In order to go from angular acceleration (using thrusters) you must know two things.

First, how mass is distributed within the Death Star. The most generous plausible assumption is uniform distribution.

Second, how the thrusters are distributed. The most generous possible assumption is the one you have taken. The most generous plausible assumption is half that.

It would be generous if I used the high density core as being uniformly spread throughout Death Star.

Which you did implicitly in going from rotational kinetic energy to translational kinetic energy. Apparently without understanding that you were doing that.

Why is the assumption they are simply built perpendicular to the surface of Death Star generous? If they are build perpendicularly and the ones on the same hemisphere fire the Death Star will move in the opposite direction.

Actually, if you have a uniformly distributed equatorial ring of thrusters, all of which are set perpendicular to the surface, you cannot rotate, and your maximum thrust in any given sideways direction is in fact slightly under 32% of your total thrust.

If you have a full 180 degree traverse, you still only can use half of your thrust in lateral directions. If you have a limited traverse less than 180 degrees, you will have between 32-50% of total thrust available for lateral acceleration.

How will they get into orbit? As opposed to slamming into Yavin itself? Again what evidence do you have they just conveniently jumped in in such a fashion as to be perfectly aligned for orbiting Yavin without firing any engines?

By displaying elementary competence in interstellar navigation.

Again who designed the hydrogen atoms?

The assembly thereof.

Or perhaps they should be a plot device, something the dictionary also lists. Now "time travelers from the future are preventing wars by taking over Kirk's brain" could a spaceship, since it is a device intended to operate in space, provided that the non-existent episode in question involved more than one star system and hence traveled from one system to another.

How can pens operate in space?

Ask NASA. Or Fisher. Zero-g pen design is interesting, but not a hobby of mine.

If there is no human hand to propel them they are useless and immobile.

Who said a starship has to provide all its own power?

I still await for evidence that the engines are inappropriately sized

Already given.

or fueld for their task.

Already given.

Did I ever deny Death Star is called a battlestation in the films? What does that have to do with whether it's a starship?

With whether or not it is appropriate to call it a starship, actually. Everything.

I ask you to explain why it is very damning

Because in this vast bulk of evidence, we should see more than that.

In other words outdated and overridden by higher ranking material.

Quite possibly, in certain selected matters.

I don't see why you insist in going in circles. We have already established that Death Star is not a free floating installation.

We have not, actually, nor am I referring to a completely immobile floating platform. (Proposed FS speed: 10 kts.)

I'm afraid you lost me.

Perhaps you should re-read what I have written on this tangent carefully. If you understood what I was talking about in the first place, you should not have been lost by that.

Show me those reviews then. And again: I'll believe it when I see it.

Correction: Limited review of the project has happened.

You can repeat what you think is a fact all you wish. It doesn't make it true for the reasons I stated many times.

It remains true for the reasons I have pointed out.

The Sphere from "Dark Frontier" Janeway decided to rob was also identified as a scout ship by Seven. What is your point?

That it is considered similar to a vessel that is remarkably small.

How? Assuming that time dilation for whatever warp speed Enterprise was traveling at is equal to,say, the one experienced when traveling at 99.9999% light speed 27 minutes of Enterprise's time will be 13 days Earth time. Again I ask how can you know how warp drive behaves in relation to time dilation?

See below:

In which case you can still compute from the E-D's exit into normal space. Which still indicates high relativistic speeds.

And when did E-D exited from warp? If you are going to point to the fact that we see E-D coasting near Saturn at sublight speed then the obvious objection is that it would take E-D at least 80 minutes to reach Earth from that position which blows their own 23 minute intercept estimate out of the water.

Not with normal dilation effects. We're looking at an average speed very near c, as I've pointed out repeatedly.

Not to mention that 300,000km/s range would have them crossing 2.5 Saturn's diameters per second. Something we obviously don't see as E-D passes near Saturn.

Right, which means that they dropped out of warp at low sublight speed, and must then accelerate to high relativistic speed (in short order), then decelerate (in short order.)

The limiting factor is whatever is your weakest link. What evidence do you have that thrust strength as opposed to material limitation is the weakest link?

Good inertial compensation for ships that accelerate much more than the Death Star does.

You still haven't addressed the fact that drag plays a pivotal role on Earth.

Pivotal, yes... but not critical to the point, which is that engine volume is generally linearly related to engine power.

Not to mention that size difference between a carrier and a corvette is nowhere near the size difference between a Borg cube and Death Star. A ship 32,000 times smaller than a Nimitz carrier masses about 3 tonnes.

Hence we expect an even greater gain in efficiency for cost per kilo for the Death Star, as compared to the carrier.

Provide evidence for your assertion.

Already provided.

Provide evidence that inertial dampers protect "everything" in the ship and that you can transfer the trust to the "entire structure" as opposed to the devices providing the counter inertia.

Simple. Nothing within the ship accelerates or strains, including loose parts that can be broken off relatively easily. The Falcon's dish, for example, ought to fly off. The droids should be crushed. The electronics Han fiddles with by hand should be all awry.

Et cetera. Inertial dampers effectively "lock" everything - the ship and all its squishy contents - into a single object.

Because Emperor died. You'll notice that nothing happened after the destruction of the first.

Which does not rule out the near-ruin of the Empire's finances. In case you haven't noticed, it's possible to spend well beyond your means for a few years before everything catches up with you.

You are of course neglecting the fact that B-2 is a plane which requires far higher power per unit of kilogram, has high maintenance high cost stealth sheeting and generally involves cutting edge technology which is not mass produced unlike the Freedom Ship wich is A. Only a fantasy B. Nothing more than a really large barge.
Your own claims about Death Star being unique, custom job, complicated , not built in a regular shipyard only underscore that it is more like a huge B-2 or better yet XB-70 rather than the floating barge like Freedom Ship.

A Freedom Ship would be singular and unique, which is part of the relatively high estimated costs. Subsequent FS would be less expensive.

Note that with about a dozen total units, SSDs are less numerous than B-2s, and may well be every bit as sophisticated in relation to their tech base.

If I were a Grand Admiral or Sith Lord looking for a shiny command ship, I'd include all the bells and whistles too.

Unless EU is directly contradicted by the films. Which it is.

The films say nothing about the budget. There is no direct contradiction. In fact, any contradiction is highly indirect and relies on the assumptions I've already debunked as unnecessary.

And in "Unimatrix Zero II", we see a cube shifting facets(90 degree turn) in less than 5 secs.

If this is a "snap" turn (stopped to stopped), this is a turning speed of >.3 radians, and an angular acceleration of >.25 radians per second.

[Mike DiCenso]

While that is true, it still sets the strong possibility for the Federation to build such a large vessel, if they so chose. That combined with the Federation backing away for about a century's time from 600-800 meter sized starships and concentrating on moderate-sized, but vastly more advanced and powerful starships is very telling in the significant change in design philosophy that occured, and then the re-shifting back to larger as well as advanced capability vessels over the next intervening century.

"Strong possibility" is a qualitative meaningless term. There is no evidence. Secondly what evidence you have for your claim that Federation backed away from 600-800m ships instead of simply being unable to construct ships of such size but which would be able to travel at warp speeds which could match Romulans or Klingons for example. Quantify "vastly more advanced and powerful starships".

- The Federation, via the Vulcans have warp 7 technology.

- The Vulcans had large (600-800m) vessels which could reach warp 7

- The Constitution class USS Defiant demonstrated a very significant weapons, speed and defensive capability over even the most advanced starships in the Mirror universe, even though several of those ships were much larger, and were the best ships that could be fielded in the 22nd century Mirror universe (as per ST:ENT's "In a Mirror, Darkly, Parts I & II").

- Consitutions were reaching warp 9+ by the late 2260's.

I would say though, based on the Vulcan's D'Kyr sized compared to the 225 meter NX-01, that it is actually closer to 900 meters given that it is some 4 times longer. Thus even in the 22nd century, a future Federation member demonstrated tthe capability to construct a ship of 900 meters.

It would seem that the Federation decided that building bigger was not always better, and instead went for technological improvements over size.

Another thing to consider; the Vulcan High Command built those 600-800 meter starships on their ownbefore there was a Federation, and a sharing of resources. Are you suggesting now that Federation somehow magically lost that ability? I doubt it. Even if the Vulcans chose not to build large starships anymore, there is nothing stoping Earth, Andor and Tellar from combining resources to do so.

There is nothing magical about loosing certain construction technologies. US for example no longer has the capacity to build supersonic bombers like XB-70. If you don't use it you loose it. Furthermore Vulcan ships seen in Enterprise seem no larger than Galaxy. So what ability is lost?

Again wrong. The U.S. has never lost the ability to build a super-sonic bomber as evidenced by the ability to construct and maintain the fleet of B-1 Lancer bombers. Whether the U.S. will bother building a new fleet of super-sonic bombers is another matter. But The evidence at any rate points towards the Federation going more for quality advancements, not size in their starships.

And as JMS has pointed out, there is a reason why the Death Star I (and likely the DS2) is called a "battlestation", not a "starship" by every authority with knowledge in the SW universe, and he has set out a few decent reasons why that would be the case.

The SSDs are true starships, on the other hand, and not refered to as "battlestations". Again, JMS has gone over this.

Again what it is called is irrelevant. It's a starship. Secondly SSD is 100,000 times smaller than Death Star so it's a pretty big leap from Death Star (as a pinnacle of shipbuilding capability) back to SSD.

It is relevant as JMS has pointed out. Your definition of "starship" is so flimsy that almost anything that can be propelled between interstellar distances at any velolocity is a starship.

It is quite generous to call the Death Star a starship in the normal sense of the word. It is also telling that building a ship supposedly 100,000 times smaller than the DS1 bankrupted "several star systems". Maybe the Empire did nearly exaust it's economy after all on the Death Stars if starships are so taxing to build at a smaller scale.

Look, you can keep on being obtuse, or you can look at what I presented. There is ample circumstantial evidence. You just keep jumping through hoops to not acknowledge it. But here is another point:

At least twice in TNG's season one and into season two the Galaxy class is refered to as being brand new were likely just out of the testing phase, indicatiing there are only a few or so GCS at this time. In "All Good Things" [TNG, S7], we see that the E-D launched just prior to the events of "Encounter at Farpoint" [TNG, S1].

Therefore the class is certainly brand new as it is refered to as such, and the E-D herself was very new early on. It is highly unlikely that the Federation just went and built all 8 or so GCS all at once? Even back in the late 23rd century, the Excelsior was the only one of her class in existance for at least the first year or two as well as well the Defiant. They always start off with one prototype and then work up from there.

So the only other alternative you have here is that the Galaxy class had been around for a while and the E-D was only new in the sense that she was the latest of the GCS off the line. But that then flies in the face of statements concering the newness of the class in general, not just for one specific starship.

Again you present no evidence for more than 5 (or 8) Galaxies. I don't see how you can call me obtuse for not accepting your assumptions as evidence.

Because they are not merely "assumptions", Kane. They are carefully spelled out and numerous pieces of evidence. Circumstantal to be sure, but still they tend to point towards more than five GCS. The conclusions are unavoidable.

I would have hoped you would not need me to point out the obvious, but here it is; we have 3 GCS (Yamato, Enterprise-D, and Odyssey) lost prior to the timeframe shown in "Relativity", then we see
3 more ships in dry docks nearly complete or undergoing some kind of maintance, with the partially completed space frames of saucer sections for at least 1-2 more possible GCS. Therefore the only conclusion when you add in the three lost GCS with the three or so at the UP shipyards, and you get at least 6-7 GCS built from 2164 to 2171.

I asked you what evidence there is that Federation has "5 or so" Galaxies and you reply that they have at least 6-7? Maybe I'm not being clear when I say "5 or so" but it certainly includes 6,7,8 or 9 ships.

But that is still more than 5 ships, and still provides for the possibility more even more ships when coupled with the other evidence provided. I don't understand why you get more and more stringent with your demands of evidence when it is provided to you, or why you keep acting in denial.

Not quite so as the USS Venture handily illustrates with her unique raised bumps and extra phaser strips on her warp nacelles.

What is so important about that? In all of the Utopia Planita scenes as well as the Dominion War scenes, we do not spot a single GCS with those unique modifications. Not once, even though the ship is mentioned by name in "Sacrifice of Angels". That means that the Venture was there
But elsewhere in the fleet deployments, and this matches up well with the dialog which refers to "Galaxy wings", and possible might refer to seperate GCS squadrons deployed throughout the 624 ship fleet. In addition, the SoA "big fleet" was made of elements of the 2nd and 5th fleets, and would have included elements of the 9th fleet had fleet not had to depart early due to the Cardassians and Dominion bringing down minefield. Therefore is very likely that we are seeing 2-5 GCS per each of the 10 fleets.

Did we see all Galaxies from above so as to be certain it is not Venture? But either way that adds 1 new Galaxy which hardly proves the supposed huge fleets of Galaxy class ships. Other than that you again present no additional evidence other than restating it is "very likely" there are 1-5 GCS per each of 10 fleets. Which of course brings us to another point: what evidence you have that Federation has 10 fleets. Numbering schemes are not necessarily consecutive.

We saw the GCS quite frequently above as well as below. None of them display the characteristic bumps of the Venture.

The fleets seem to follow a numerical order:

2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th, 7th, 9th, and 10th. Seven named out of a possible ten fleets, and they seem to be proper in their numerical order.

Because the deployments are so disparate in location that you cannot possibly have all five of the ships showing up at all these locations by sheer conicidence. The Defiant being at several battles makes some sense as at least she was deployed to a base where she could make it to those particular frontlines readily enough as well she was the choosen flagship of the base's commander.

How distant were those locations? How do you know that they cannot possibly be the same. Provide evidence.

Near Sol-system space!? Deep within Cardassian territory!? Come on Kane. the locations speak for themselves. You provide evidence they are all the same location within a hop-skip-and-a-jump of each other.

The few canon maps place Cardassia further away than a mere few light years.

Which I have and the further proof is in the canonical names listed by JMS of GCS, which means at least 8 vessels were built. The other thing that argues for there being more is that the fleet deployments I've already mentioned would not always allow for the same GCS being deployed to such disparate locations. The USS Defiant being absent at the "Endgame" deployment showing that even a hero starship can't be everywhere.

When have you provided proof Federation was mass producing Galaxies? You have assumptions that it couldn't have been the same Galaxies, a list of names of 8 ships (3 of which were destroyed) which hardly contradicts with "5 or so" ships I said we've seen. Finally you still haven't shown any evidence as to whether those Galaxies were the same as the ones seen in Doninion War. More evidence less supposition.

Many times, Kane. But you keep sticking your head into the proverbial sand and saying I need to provide evidence. This is an all too common
tactic with you; beat down the opposition by claiming they have not shown any evidence, or if they do, demand more and with more stringent levels.

The thousands of structures quote is important as we see cube ship sized structures (some even appearing to surpass a cube in size that flies by them). In the establishing shots we see them spread out quite a ways as the Delta Flyer approaches the complex. The 600 km quote is very important as Paris speaks this while they are deep inside the complex itself, and the location were they go to is not at the edge of the complex, but still deep within it Thus the absolute minimum possible size for the Unicomplex is 600 km, which is vastily larger than the DS in terms of linear size, and may well surpass it in volume, if it is double or even triple the minimum size.

What evidence do you have that the structure is continuous throughout it's 600km rather than being several disconnected structures? Axum specifically mentions the Primary Unicomplex as a place where the Queen resides. Either way 600km is still a single dimension and due to it's shape it is extremely low in density and thus mass. There is no evidence it dwarfs the Death Star.

What evidence do you have that the Death Star is continuous in it's internal structure? None. In fact, the first Death Star looks rather hollow during it's early construction. That there is a primary Unicomplex may refer to there being more than one, or the main part of a single whole. But the visuals I left links to, show a vast complex, which at minimum is stated to be 600 km (at least from where the Flyer had to traverse to get from where it was inside the complex to where 7 of 9 was being held by the Queen). Not to mention there are at least "thousands" of structures, which are shown to dwarf even the cube ships shown flying around inside the Unicomplex.

Yes it was. A Nimitz full loadout is only 20,000 tons greater. But the two ships' measurements were not that far off: 1,050 feet (320 meters) versus 1,115 feet (339m) . They are very comparable.


But before the Soviet collapse, they still managed to build two ship hulls of 1,000 feet (300 meters) and 67,000 tons, and also comparable in the same rough size range. For a comparison in size difference equal to that of the GCS versus a D'Deridex or battleship, we would need as an analogy a much smaller real-world ship versus a Nimitz. Something that is just less than half it's length, and eight times smaller in volume and displacement. A Moskva class carrier, for instance with a displacement of about 17,500 tons and a length of 620' (189m). But look at the huge jump between the Moskva and Admiral Kuznetsov class ships. Clearly the Soviets were able to make a signficant leap there. Nearly double the length and 4 times the displacement tonnage.

Are you now using Soviet leap from Moskva to Kuznetsov as evidence of Federation ship building abilities? You keep restating that Kuznetsov and Nimitz are comparable which doesn't address the point since Kuznetsov is 77% of Nimitz' mass. Difference between D'Deridex and Galaxy may be greater but analogy is not supposed to be perfectly identical.

Why not? You brought up the analogy in the first place. I have shown that the Kuznetsov class was two completed ship hulls that are in the same approximate size class as the Nimitz class. You then try to change the subject, or deny the examples given as usual. Now do you wish to retract the U.S.-Soviet ship building comparsion?

Look at the first image showing the inital starting breakup of the vissian ship, the glow is still there, though weak, and illuminating parts of the sensor dome's structure that should be shadowed, were the ship as far away as you suggest it could be. The second image only confirms this as well as illuminates it more highly, the explosions still not having expanded very far from the destructing vessel. Finally, the third image shows the fireball actually reaching the dome. No that ship is nearly underneath, if not right under the dome.

Also another thing: the vissian ship is double the length of the 225 meter NX-01, or about some 450 meters long, which in turn makes the E-J saucer much, much larger. About 3.6 km wide total.

Yes the saucer is illuminated when the explosion starts. This still doesn't prove the ship itself is underneath it. The light could easily be reflected off the hull to illuminate other parts of the ship. And again all this depends on your assumption that explosion has not expanded very far towards the camera. Something which you have no way of knowing.

For that to be the case, the intitial explosion glow would have to be reaching as far away as the hull section where Archer and Daniels' window is located. We see no glow cast on their faces until very late in the explosion's progress. If the explosion is so close as to reflect a glow around the hull like that, then it is likely underneath the saucer.

As for the explosion's expansion. Look at the debris being carried by the fireball. A piece of one of the lower "vanes" of the vissian ship is being pushed by the explosion, and yet it is not signficantly changing size relative to camera's and Archer and Daniel's position, but the fireball itself is reaching the dome and the superstructure it is mounted on. Thus the ship is likely close to or underneath the saucer dome. At the very least it is underneath the saucer. Regardless, it sets the lower limit for the E-J saucer at 3.6 km.
-Mike

[Kane Starkiller]

Yes, there is. You are not grasping the distinction between evidence and proof.

By your definition of starship, we have proof, as SailorSaturn13 has pointed out, since a starbase meets your low standards. However, we have reasonably strong evidence of this in any event.

Starbase does not meet my standards since it is a free floating object. It has no sublight or supralight engines SailorSaturn13's fantasy notwithstanding.

I do. They're too small to be seen in any of the shots and approaches.

What is the resolution of the wide shots? What is the percentage of the surface shown is closeup shots? I'm still waiting for evidence. Not that it matters since you continue to fail to provide any quantification of the Death Star's engines size.

Half during the approach. A significant length of the equatorial regions during the trench run (these would be a prime location for thrusters.)

What is the resolution during which we see half of Death Star. You continually fail to give any useful information. How much is "significant" length of equatorial regions.

Nor does your denying it. The simple fact remains that although the reliability is limited, it remains the highest reasonable estimator of Death Star angular acceleration.

If we care to dispense with the evidence, we should go strictly from the original's observed rotations, which are not as swift.

Burden of proof is on you to back up your claims. What is the status of completion for DS2 engines?

Greater mass means the ionized gas will be visible due to the size of the ionized plume. Greater velocity means it will be visible due to high-energy interactions with gases.

In the areas the Death Star is orbiting, we expect on the order of 5 particles per cubic centimeter at a minimum if it has no local atmosphere.

It will inevitably have one - albeit very thin, probably at least as thin as our moon's atmosphere - due to the laws of entropy and its own gravity well.

Five particles per cubic centimeter of mostly hydrogen atoms. In other words their crossectional area will take up 2.88*10^-15 fraction of the crossectional area presented by the cubic centimeter. At the distance of 1000km there will be 10^8 such cubic centimeters lined behind one another. So the total fraction of are taken up by hydrogen atoms assuming no atoms are behind one another as seen from the engine is 2.88*10^-7. Now you need an actual mass of the engine efflux to begin calculating how many particles released from engine will actually collide with the hydrogen atoms within the 1000km distance. I am still waiting for that information. As for your evidence that Death Star will inevitably have atmosphere as well as information about it's density.

That good quantities of propellant simply happen to be missed in all the blueprints and cross-sections?

It's quite silly, really.

There is 60km of space on each side of the 2-d blueprints. The tanks could be many kilometers in size and still be obscured. And finally what you think is silly is your own opinion.

Luke swings over a giant chasm. Obi-wan crosses over a seemingly bottomless shaft. The Emperor is pitched down a convenient bottomless shaft.

Everywhere in the Death Star, we see a lot of large open spaces.

Emperor's room is on DS2 which is not the subject of discussion. Provide evidence as to the depth of the two chasms Luke and Ben encounter.

Out of how much of the volume we have accounted for?

Our sample of the Death Star's interior includes a lot of wide open spaces.

Your assumptions are your business. If you wish to claim Death Star has more chasms then provide evidence for them as well as evidence for their depth.

You're still not grasping the problem, are you? We don't see the entire Death Star, and yet we already know, after seeing a tiny bit of it, that it has a number of positively enormous open spaces bigger than anything we've seen in any Borg cube after a huge number of explored cubes.

Interesting how you completely ignored my calculations which explicitly show that percentage of empty volume is what matters and not total volume. We also haven't visited the entire Borg cube have we and yet we have seen large empty spaces. And finally I still await evidence for further empty spaces on Death Star, your assumptions aren't it.

You are still completely missing the point. In order to go from angular acceleration (using thrusters) you must know two things.

First, how mass is distributed within the Death Star. The most generous plausible assumption is uniform distribution.

Second, how the thrusters are distributed. The most generous possible assumption is the one you have taken. The most generous plausible assumption is half that.

No it isn't. The most generous assumption is to assume lower density outer layers extend all the way to the core. If the core is more dense than outer layers inertia increases. Secondly you keep restating that my assumptions are generous without explaining why.

Which you did implicitly in going from rotational kinetic energy to translational kinetic energy. Apparently without understanding that you were doing that.

No I didn't since I used low overall density. If I used low outer layer density and high core density that would increase the rotational kinetic energy. Had I used high overall density that would increase it even more. Hence my calculations are conservative.

Actually, if you have a uniformly distributed equatorial ring of thrusters, all of which are set perpendicular to the surface, you cannot rotate, and your maximum thrust in any given sideways direction is in fact slightly under 32% of your total thrust.

If you have a full 180 degree traverse, you still only can use half of your thrust in lateral directions. If you have a limited traverse less than 180 degrees, you will have between 32-50% of total thrust available for lateral acceleration.

In which case they could've built some of them angled and some not. Either way it makes more sense then your assumption that they built the thrusters angled in such a fashion that they can only rotate the ship. And yes I know that not all thrusters will be available but they will move the shop.

By displaying elementary competence in interstellar navigation.

Without knowing on which planet the base was?

The assembly thereof.

Or perhaps they should be a plot device, something the dictionary also lists. Now "time travelers from the future are preventing wars by taking over Kirk's brain" could a spaceship, since it is a device intended to operate in space, provided that the non-existent episode in question involved more than one star system and hence traveled from one system to another.

What are you talking about? I ask you who designed hydrogen atoms and you reply "the assembly thereof". That is not an answer. Do the time travelers have engines installed on their bodies? If so they are starships. If you make up ridiculous concepts for starships I don't see why you are so surprised they are ridiculous.

Ask NASA. Or Fisher. Zero-g pen design is interesting, but not a hobby of mine.

And they write by themselves? Can independently operate in space and have sublight and supralight engines for travel between systems?

Who said a starship has to provide all its own power?

It needs to be able to move between starsystems and operate. What operation can a pen perform while floating through space?

I still await for evidence that the engines are inappropriately sized

Already given.

No it isn't.

or fueld for their task.

Already given.

No it isn't.

With whether or not it is appropriate to call it a starship, actually. Everything.

Again what difference does it make what it is called? What it is is the issue and we can determine that simply by looking at it. That that civilization uses different terminology is completely irrelevant.

Because in this vast bulk of evidence, we should see more than that.

Should we? Says who? You? We've been over this: your personal opinions do not carry any weigh in analysis of EU.

We have not, actually, nor am I referring to a completely immobile floating platform. (Proposed FS speed: 10 kts.)

Then you deny it can travel between systems? Because that alone means it's not immobile.

Perhaps you should re-read what I have written on this tangent carefully. If you understood what I was talking about in the first place, you should not have been lost by that.

I'm afraid I still don't get it. What does a missile silo have to do with Death Star?

Correction: Limited review of the project has happened.

Limited naturally being yet another vague term. As I said: I'll believe it when I see it.

It remains true for the reasons I have pointed out.

The reasons being it's not mobile which it is since we have seen it move.

That it is considered similar to a vessel that is remarkably small.

Could you convert the "remarkably small" into metric system and provide evidence for conversion while you're at it? That would be really helpful in determining the density which you suggest is large.

Not with normal dilation effects. We're looking at an average speed very near c, as I've pointed out repeatedly.

Which means that intercept time from Earth's perspective remains unknown. Assuming it deccelerated from near c velocity starting from Saturn then the deceleration would be 3000g. But there is no evidence for this as I expand below.

Right, which means that they dropped out of warp at low sublight speed, and must then accelerate to high relativistic speed (in short order), then decelerate (in short order.)

Or they dropped out of warp to perform more specific calculation and then went back into warp.

Good inertial compensation for ships that accelerate much more than the Death Star does.

I ask you for evidence as to what is the weakest link on a starship and you continue with yet more unsupported claims.

Pivotal, yes... but not critical to the point, which is that engine volume is generally linearly related to engine power.

I know that engine volume is generally lineraly related to engine power. What does that have to do with structural limitations?

Hence we expect an even greater gain in efficiency for cost per kilo for the Death Star, as compared to the carrier.

Interesting how the speedboats are faster than carriers.

Provide evidence for your assertion.

Already provided.

When have you provided evidence that crossectional area of engines are not the weakest link?

Simple. Nothing within the ship accelerates or strains, including loose parts that can be broken off relatively easily. The Falcon's dish, for example, ought to fly off. The droids should be crushed. The electronics Han fiddles with by hand should be all awry.

Et cetera. Inertial dampers effectively "lock" everything - the ship and all its squishy contents - into a single object.

Really it "ought"? Provide evidence that it would fly away. And I already stated that the crew areas are being dampened. You didn't think I was saying that inertial dampers were targeting each person individually? They provide an are effect and the momentum is transferred to the devices projecting it.

Which does not rule out the near-ruin of the Empire's finances. In case you haven't noticed, it's possible to spend well beyond your means for a few years before everything catches up with you.

It is. That still doesn't changes the fact that if Executor caused economic hardship Death Star should have bankrupted the Empire long before it was 5% finished.

A Freedom Ship would be singular and unique, which is part of the relatively high estimated costs. Subsequent FS would be less expensive.

Note that with about a dozen total units, SSDs are less numerous than B-2s, and may well be every bit as sophisticated in relation to their tech base.

If I were a Grand Admiral or Sith Lord looking for a shiny command ship, I'd include all the bells and whistles too.

Freedom ship was never built. When it is built (and if) we'll see how those cost estimates shape up. Secondly what evidence do you have that Executor got equipped with bells and whistles Death Stars didn't have.

The films say nothing about the budget. There is no direct contradiction. In fact, any contradiction is highly indirect and relies on the assumptions I've already debunked as unnecessary.

No you didn't. The Death Stars directly contradict any claim about Executor bankrupting the Empire since they themselves would bankrupted it long before the first one was finished.

- The Federation, via the Vulcans have warp 7 technology.

- The Vulcans had large (600-800m) vessels which could reach warp 7

- The Constitution class USS Defiant demonstrated a very significant weapons, speed and defensive capability over even the most advanced starships in the Mirror universe, even though several of those ships were much larger, and were the best ships that could be fielded in the 22nd century Mirror universe (as per ST:ENT's "In a Mirror, Darkly, Parts I & II").

- Consitutions were reaching warp 9+ by the late 2260's.

I would say though, based on the Vulcan's D'Kyr sized compared to the 225 meter NX-01, that it is actually closer to 900 meters given that it is some 4 times longer. Thus even in the 22nd century, a future Federation member demonstrated tthe capability to construct a ship of 900 meters.

It would seem that the Federation decided that building bigger was not always better, and instead went for technological improvements over size.

How does any of that provide evidence that Federation can build ships larger than Galaxy? They built 600m dropped to 300m and then slowly rose back to 600m. What evidence is there for ships larger than 700m?

Again wrong. The U.S. has never lost the ability to build a super-sonic bomber as evidenced by the ability to construct and maintain the fleet of B-1 Lancer bombers. Whether the U.S. will bother building a new fleet of super-sonic bombers is another matter. But The evidence at any rate points towards the Federation going more for quality advancements, not size in their starships.

Which doesn't come close to XB-70 in capability namely payload and speed. Other example is building B-52 which also doesn't exist today.

It is relevant as JMS has pointed out. Your definition of "starship" is so flimsy that almost anything that can be propelled between interstellar distances at any velolocity is a starship.

It is quite generous to call the Death Star a starship in the normal sense of the word. It is also telling that building a ship supposedly 100,000 times smaller than the DS1 bankrupted "several star systems". Maybe the Empire did nearly exaust it's economy after all on the Death Stars if starships are so taxing to build at a smaller scale.

It is not my definition. The only ones insisting on using their own personal definitions of starship are you. This enables you to discount Death Star as a starship even though it is. If the Executor bankrupted several starsystem then that is obviously different than nearly bankrupting the entire Empire.

Because they are not merely "assumptions", Kane. They are carefully spelled out and numerous pieces of evidence. Circumstantal to be sure, but still they tend to point towards more than five GCS. The conclusions are unavoidable.

They are not unavoidable since it is entirely possible all those Galaxies were one and the same. You still provided no evidence they were not.

But that is still more than 5 ships, and still provides for the possibility more even more ships when coupled with the other evidence provided. I don't understand why you get more and more stringent with your demands of evidence when it is provided to you, or why you keep acting in denial.

You can pretend you showed evidence of more than 5-8 Galaxies all you wish. You haven't.

We saw the GCS quite frequently above as well as below. None of them display the characteristic bumps of the Venture.

The fleets seem to follow a numerical order:

2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th, 7th, 9th, and 10th. Seven named out of a possible ten fleets, and they seem to be proper in their numerical order.

Did we see all five Galaxies from above at once to be able to determine none of them is Venture? Even if we have you do realize that this only pushes the number for one not to supposed large fleets of Galaxies.
Secondly US navy has five fleets: Second, Third, Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh.
They also appear consecutive, that doesn't mean there are no gaps.

Near Sol-system space!? Deep within Cardassian territory!? Come on Kane. the locations speak for themselves. You provide evidence they are all the same location within a hop-skip-and-a-jump of each other.

The few canon maps place Cardassia further away than a mere few light years.

How much time passed between the final battles of the Dominion war and Endagame? Could they reach Earth within that time?

Many times, Kane. But you keep sticking your head into the proverbial sand and saying I need to provide evidence. This is an all too common
tactic with you; beat down the opposition by claiming they have not shown any evidence, or if they do, demand more and with more stringent levels.

All I am asking is for you to observe the same evidence standard you yourself put up for Empire. You don't accept DS2 as evidence of Death Star type ship why should I accept anything more than I have seen? You assume there are more ships, you assume those are not the same ships. What is your evidence?

What evidence do you have that the Death Star is continuous in it's internal structure? None. In fact, the first Death Star looks rather hollow during it's early construction. That there is a primary Unicomplex may refer to there being more than one, or the main part of a single whole. But the visuals I left links to, show a vast complex, which at minimum is stated to be 600 km (at least from where the Flyer had to traverse to get from where it was inside the complex to where 7 of 9 was being held by the Queen). Not to mention there are at least "thousands" of structures, which are shown to dwarf even the cube ships shown flying around inside the Unicomplex.

We have seen Death Star from all sides as well as various blueprints and cutaway diagrams and building process from DS2. The very screencaps you link to provide evidence it was being filled up. Besides we can continue this line of reasoning for every ship. The point is Tom merely stated that signal is 600km away. No one ever stated it is the same unicomplex or that it spreads that far.

Why not? You brought up the analogy in the first place. I have shown that the Kuznetsov class was two completed ship hulls that are in the same approximate size class as the Nimitz class. You then try to change the subject, or deny the examples given as usual. Now do you wish to retract the U.S.-Soviet ship building comparsion?

"Approximate" is again your subjective opinion. They are not the same size. Kuznetsov is 75% the volume of Nimitz. 87,000!=67,000. I don't know how can I get more clear.

For that to be the case, the intitial explosion glow would have to be reaching as far away as the hull section where Archer and Daniels' window is located. We see no glow cast on their faces until very late in the explosion's progress. If the explosion is so close as to reflect a glow around the hull like that, then it is likely underneath the saucer.

So what? Who says the intensity will be the same during the entire explosion?

As for the explosion's expansion. Look at the debris being carried by the fireball. A piece of one of the lower "vanes" of the vissian ship is being pushed by the explosion, and yet it is not signficantly changing size relative to camera's and Archer and Daniel's position, but the fireball itself is reaching the dome and the superstructure it is mounted on. Thus the ship is likely close to or underneath the saucer dome. At the very least it is underneath the saucer. Regardless, it sets the lower limit for the E-J saucer at 3.6 km.

Who said that debris is traveling at the camera? Again explosion is not perfectly symmetrical and ordered. Parts of the superheated matter could've been shot farther and faster than others.

[Jedi Master Spock]

Starbase does not meet my standards since it is a free floating object. It has no sublight or supralight engines SailorSaturn13's fantasy notwithstanding.

Actually, starbases commonly do have stationkeeping thrusters. As DS9 illustrates, this can be parlayed into a good bit of movement without much modification.

And any amount of movement can produce interstellar travel... eventually.

What is the resolution of the wide shots?

Depends on what version of the film and what scaling for the Death Star you prefer. Range for "full body" shots will be on the order of 100 m/px to 1000 m/px, generally.

The attack run? We're talking about up to m/px range resolutions on close approaches.

We also get similar good look at selected portions of the Death Star's trenches courtesy of the Falcon. Never do we see any sign of engines, although we see easily hundreds of square kilometers in closeups.

What is the percentage of the surface shown is closeup shots? I'm still waiting for evidence. Not that it matters since you continue to fail to provide any quantification of the Death Star's engines size.

The quantification is simply this: "Too small to be seen." (Unlike, say, the trenches themselves.) These are <100m features with certainty (i.e., smaller than ISD engines) and if present at anywhere near close intervals on the trench, <10m features.

Burden of proof is on you to back up your claims. What is the status of completion for DS2 engines?

You don't seem to understand what I've been saying, so I'll put it into two blunt points.

Without using the DS2 turn, we use only the DS1 turn to estimate its turning ability.

This is one tenth as much. Therefore, if we dispense with the DS2 turn as unreliable, we do not have any reason whatsoever to estimate more than, oh, 30 microradians per second squared or so.

Five particles per cubic centimeter of mostly hydrogen atoms. In other words their crossectional area will take up 2.88*10^-15 fraction of the crossectional area presented by the cubic centimeter. At the distance of 1000km there will be 10^8 such cubic centimeters lined behind one another. So the total fraction of are taken up by hydrogen atoms assuming no atoms are behind one another as seen from the engine is 2.88*10^-7. Now you need an actual mass of the engine efflux to begin calculating how many particles released from engine will actually collide with the hydrogen atoms within the 1000km distance.

Collide with hydrogen atoms ... or each other. Bear in mind we are dealing with a plasma of charged particles, at the sorts of energy levels required for there to be relatively little matter. For that matter, the individual atoms, ejected at high speed from a tiny nozzle, will be in very excited modes in addition to being ionized.

Each collision will be quite lively and energetic. Lose 1e-7 of the energy being spat out by a c fractional gas stream with enough energy to shift a 3e17 kg object by, say, 1 m/s^2, and we're talking about at least 1e10 watts shining out into space. And that's a ridiculously small fraction of energy to lose to thermal radiation.

It would look like a little trailing luminous corona.

I am still waiting for that information. As for your evidence that Death Star will inevitably have atmosphere as well as information about it's density.

Already given.

There is 60km of space on each side of the 2-d blueprints. The tanks could be many kilometers in size and still be obscured. And finally what you think is silly is your own opinion.

"They're there, just missing in all the blueprints coincidentally, even though they would be an important item to take note of."

Emperor's room is on DS2 which is not the subject of discussion. Provide evidence as to the depth of the two chasms Luke and Ben encounter.

"As far as the eye can see." Meaning, in other words, greater than the volume of solid material we're actually fairly sure of having seen on the interior.

Interesting how you completely ignored my calculations

Interesting how you ignored the fact that I debunked their relevance.

No it isn't. The most generous assumption is to assume lower density outer layers extend all the way to the core. If the core is more dense than outer layers inertia increases.

Only a tiny bit. Mass, however, increases much more substantially, and it is the ratio between those two that allows you to go from rotational motion to translational motion.

Look. You need to read up on how angular momentum actually works.

No I didn't since I used low overall density. If I used low outer layer density and high core density that would increase the rotational kinetic energy. Had I used high overall density that would increase it even more. Hence my calculations are conservative.

You still don't understand the problem.

Let me give you some hard numbers as an example.

A Death Star with twice the mass, half of which is concentrated in a uniform core 1/10th of its diameter, has 1.01 times the moment of inertia, meaning that for the same angular acceleration, it has 50.5% of the linear acceleration.

In which case they could've built some of them angled and some not. Either way it makes more sense then your assumption that they built the thrusters angled in such a fashion that they can only rotate the ship. And yes I know that not all thrusters will be available but they will move the shop.

But not by as much as you're claiming. You can easily be off by a whole order of magnitude.

Without knowing on which planet the base was?

Knowing exactly where the Falcon jumped to - which was to say somewhere in orbit around the gas giant Yavin.

What are you talking about? I ask you who designed hydrogen atoms and you reply "the assembly thereof".

Yes. I put a bunch of hydrogen atoms together in a glob which I will fire at high speeds from a cannon.

That is the assembly thereof.

That is not an answer.

Yes, it is. Examine, if you will, the definition of device. Mechanical objects are devices, but so, for that matter, are plot points in a story.

And they write by themselves? Can independently operate in space and have sublight and supralight engines for travel between systems?

A starship remains a starship whether or not a pilot is actually on board at the moment... and a pen still is designed to operate in space whether or not anybody ever writes with it.

Nor is "operating independently" any part of the definition you offered, nor having actual engines of any significance.

The slow evaporation of ink from the pen produces a minor amount of thrust, for example.

It needs to be able to move between starsystems and operate. What operation can a pen perform while floating through space?

Being written with by any passers-by.

No it isn't.

Yes it is.

Again what difference does it make what it is called? What it is is the issue and we can determine that simply by looking at it. That that civilization uses different terminology is completely irrelevant.

Making an undue fuss over what it should be called is precisely why you're trying to lump it in with completely different objects like GCS and ISD.

Should we? Says who? You?

I do indeed say so. And I am, of course, correct.

Then you deny it can travel between systems? Because that alone means it's not immobile.

Just like the analogy referred to something that's not completely immobile - simply incapable of tactical maneuver.

I'm afraid I still don't get it. What does a missile silo have to do with Death Star?

Perhaps you never will.

Limited naturally being yet another vague term. As I said: I'll believe it when I see it.

See it? OK, if watching is your game, go watch the Discovery channel documentary. It's available online. I didn't find it too interesting, though.

The reasons being it's not mobile which it is since we have seen it move.

Only from system to system, and within an orbit that could well be ballistic.

Could you convert the "remarkably small" into metric system and provide evidence for conversion while you're at it? That would be really helpful in determining the density which you suggest is large.

On the order of 10-50m on a side. Thus "similar" being as much as 100m on a side is a stretch.

Which means that intercept time from Earth's perspective remains unknown.

Known to a certain degree of precision, actually. The minimum dilation factor requires an average realspace velocity very close to c relative to Earth, which in turn means that the actual travel time, from Earth's perspective, is close to the travel time of light, meaning around 80 and 45 minutes.

Or they dropped out of warp to perform more specific calculation and then went back into warp.

No, dropping back into warp is not an option here.

I ask you for evidence as to what is the weakest link on a starship and you continue with yet more unsupported claims.

It is not my fault if you do not understand how inertial compensation has to work.

I know that engine volume is generally lineraly related to engine power. What does that have to do with structural limitations?

Since the structural limitations are not a concern relative to size with inertial compensation, it means that linear acceleration can be directly related to size.

Interesting how the speedboats are faster than carriers.

Interesting how they have a shorter range and a larger engine relative to their size...

... and, also, skip across waves when at high speed, substantially reducing their drag.

What would you like to talk about next? Hydrofoil craft?

When have you provided evidence that crossectional area of engines are not the weakest link?

In explaining inertial compensators.

Really it "ought"?

Yes, without inertial compensation, the dish would be subject to the sort of sheer stresses that cause TIE fighters to lose wings when they brush asteroids, and the wires would be subject to forces far greater than Han yanking on them, et cetera.

Provide evidence that it would fly away. And I already stated that the crew areas are being dampened. You didn't think I was saying that inertial dampers were targeting each person individually? They provide an are effect and the momentum is transferred to the devices projecting it.

In which case all you need are multiple generators... and which has no logical reasoning behind it, and which - due to the amount of mass present within such areas, and the much smaller size of the inertial dampers relative to the engines, mean that the structural strength of SW materials so far exceeds that necessary to mount the engines as to make the issue moot.

And in which case you additionally need them to operate in a wholly illogical fashion in which they are unable to overlap fields for some further technobabble reason, et cetera et cetera. Occam's razor strongly suggests you not open that box of worms; the method I described is preferred in relatively "hard" sci-fi for a good reason.

It is. That still doesn't changes the fact that if Executor caused economic hardship Death Star should have bankrupted the Empire long before it was 5% finished.

Not necessarily.

Freedom ship was never built. When it is built (and if) we'll see how those cost estimates shape up. Secondly what evidence do you have that Executor got equipped with bells and whistles Death Stars didn't have.

What evidence do you have that it wasn't?

Nothing.

The films say nothing about the budget. There is no direct contradiction. In fact, any contradiction is highly indirect and relies on the assumptions I've already debunked as unnecessary.

No you didn't. The Death Stars directly contradict any claim about Executor bankrupting the Empire since they themselves would bankrupted it long before the first one was finished.

Only if we apply your completely unjustified assumptions.

You can pretend you showed evidence of more than 5-8 Galaxies all you wish. You haven't.

You still haven't read the EAS article which explains, at length, why there are almost certainly more than twelve?

[Kane Starkiller]

Actually, starbases commonly do have stationkeeping thrusters. As DS9 illustrates, this can be parlayed into a good bit of movement without much modification.

And any amount of movement can produce interstellar travel... eventually.

Evidence that they "commonly" have stationkeeping thrusters. DS9 is one starbase, one smaller than an ISD.

Depends on what version of the film and what scaling for the Death Star you prefer. Range for "full body" shots will be on the order of 100 m/px to 1000 m/px, generally.

The attack run? We're talking about up to m/px range resolutions on close approaches.

We also get similar good look at selected portions of the Death Star's trenches courtesy of the Falcon. Never do we see any sign of engines, although we see easily hundreds of square kilometers in closeups.

In other words when we see the entire Death Star the resolution could easily be too small to see any engines and the percentage of the surface seen at close range is maybe 1% if we use your "hundreds of square kilometes" which you haven't backed up yet.

The quantification is simply this: "Too small to be seen." (Unlike, say, the trenches themselves.) These are <100m features with certainty (i.e., smaller than ISD engines) and if present at anywhere near close intervals on the trench, <10m features.

In other words the only "evidence" for the lack of engines is your assumption that if there were they would have to be bigger than 100m.

You don't seem to understand what I've been saying, so I'll put it into two blunt points.

Without using the DS2 turn, we use only the DS1 turn to estimate its turning ability.

This is one tenth as much. Therefore, if we dispense with the DS2 turn as unreliable, we do not have any reason whatsoever to estimate more than, oh, 30 microradians per second squared or so.

Oh it's OK to use DS2 turning ability. The point is that since it is uncompleted it cannot be used to say it's an upper limit. Your insistence that we use either DS2+upper limit or no DS2 at all is a false dilemma.

Collide with hydrogen atoms ... or each other. Bear in mind we are dealing with a plasma of charged particles, at the sorts of energy levels required for there to be relatively little matter. For that matter, the individual atoms, ejected at high speed from a tiny nozzle, will be in very excited modes in addition to being ionized.

Each collision will be quite lively and energetic. Lose 1e-7 of the energy being spat out by a c fractional gas stream with enough energy to shift a 3e17 kg object by, say, 1 m/s^2, and we're talking about at least 1e10 watts shining out into space. And that's a ridiculously small fraction of energy to lose to thermal radiation.

It would look like a little trailing luminous corona.

Ion engines expel matter by use of electromagnetic and electrostatic fields not by thermal reaction like current engines. As I said using sufficiently powerful fields you can expel a small amount of particles at great speed which will have much lower probability of reacting with hydrogen atoms or each other. Then of course there is your assumption that Death Star should've fired it's engines just in the moments we have seen it.

Already given.

No it isn't.

"They're there, just missing in all the blueprints coincidentally, even though they would be an important item to take note of."

You are again confusing your personal opinion of what is important as fact.

"As far as the eye can see." Meaning, in other words, greater than the volume of solid material we're actually fairly sure of having seen on the interior.

Is that a quote out of somewhere? You know it would be helpful if you stop playing games and simply provide the names and pages of the things you quote. Either way quantify how for is "as far as the eye can see".

Interesting how you ignored the fact that I debunked their relevance.

You will honestly insist that fraction of empty space is not as important as total empty space for the purpose of determining it's impact on density? Even after I illustrated why this is incorrect?

You still don't understand the problem.

Let me give you some hard numbers as an example.

A Death Star with twice the mass, half of which is concentrated in a uniform core 1/10th of its diameter, has 1.01 times the moment of inertia, meaning that for the same angular acceleration, it has 50.5% of the linear acceleration.

In other words unless I assume that half of Death Star's mass is contained within 1/1000 of it's volume I'm not being conservative? There is conservative and there is robbery. High density equipment could've just as easily be placed in the outer layers.

But not by as much as you're claiming. You can easily be off by a whole order of magnitude.

Not as much as I'm claiming? I merely assumed that Death Star's engines can direct as much energy to achieve translational acceleration as to achieve rotational acceleration.

Knowing exactly where the Falcon jumped to - which was to say somewhere in orbit around the gas giant Yavin.

Which orbit? There isn't just one orbit around a planet. What distance to the planet is the orbit? It's position and orientation? It all just accidentaly worked in Death Star's favour so it doesn't have to fire it's engines to reach Yavin 4?

Yes. I put a bunch of hydrogen atoms together in a glob which I will fire at high speeds from a cannon.

That is the assembly thereof.

I see. So you continue to think up ridiculous concepts for a starship and then accuse me of them being ridiculous?

Yes, it is. Examine, if you will, the definition of device. Mechanical objects are devices, but so, for that matter, are plot points in a story.

Those definitions are not relevant. They are not physical objects. They don't have mass, density, volume, structural strength etc. etc.

A starship remains a starship whether or not a pilot is actually on board at the moment... and a pen still is designed to operate in space whether or not anybody ever writes with it.

Nor is "operating independently" any part of the definition you offered, nor having actual engines of any significance.

The slow evaporation of ink from the pen produces a minor amount of thrust, for example.

By all means show me the model under which evaporation of ink produces the thrust.

Yes it is.

No it isn't.

Making an undue fuss over what it should be called is precisely why you're trying to lump it in with completely different objects like GCS and ISD.

It is different in scale. It fulfills each and every definition of starship as GCS and ISD whether you admit it or not.

I do indeed say so. And I am, of course, correct.

That may be your opinion. Opinions are not evidence.

Just like the analogy referred to something that's not completely immobile - simply incapable of tactical maneuver.

Tactical manouver next to what? Ships millions or trillions of times smaller than it is? Of course it isn't. What does that prove?

I'm afraid I still don't get it. What does a missile silo have to do with Death Star?

Perhaps you never will.

Not unless you'd be so kind and explain it.

See it? OK, if watching is your game, go watch the Discovery channel documentary. It's available online. I didn't find it too interesting, though.

I mean see it finished and coasting.

Only from system to system, and within an orbit that could well be ballistic.

How does this change the fact it is mobile? And sources which I presented explicitly state it can move through normal space with it's own engines.

On the order of 10-50m on a side. Thus "similar" being as much as 100m on a side is a stretch.

Evidence please.

No, dropping back into warp is not an option here.

Why not?

It is not my fault if you do not understand how inertial compensation has to work.

If I knew how inertial dampers work I would be a very rich man. But I do know that they cannot cheat newton's third law. Inertia must be transfered from objects within the ship (crew, equipment) and to the inertial dampers and then to the bolts to which it is fastened to the ship's hull.

Since the structural limitations are not a concern relative to size with inertial compensation, it means that linear acceleration can be directly related to size.

Inertial compensators are still limited by structural strength of the material they are fastened to as Newton's third law dictates.

Interesting how they have a shorter range and a larger engine relative to their size...

... and, also, skip across waves when at high speed, substantially reducing their drag.

What would you like to talk about next? Hydrofoil craft?

Ah so drag IS critical isn't it? Besides ever since astronauts dropped the feather and hammer on Moon's surface I would've thought it is clear that terrestrial behavior with respect to acceleration is not readily applicable to space.

Yes, without inertial compensation, the dish would be subject to the sort of sheer stresses that cause TIE fighters to lose wings when they brush asteroids, and the wires would be subject to forces far greater than Han yanking on them, et cetera.

I already stated that internal crew quarters are all protected. I certainly never stated that individual crew members only are protected by inertial dampers. Even if the dish is protected what does this have to do with inertia being transferred to the devices that provide protection? If acceleration exceeds certain limit the devices will be ripped out from walls.

In which case all you need are multiple generators... and which has no logical reasoning behind it, and which - due to the amount of mass present within such areas, and the much smaller size of the inertial dampers relative to the engines, mean that the structural strength of SW materials so far exceeds that necessary to mount the engines as to make the issue moot.

And in which case you additionally need them to operate in a wholly illogical fashion in which they are unable to overlap fields for some further technobabble reason, et cetera et cetera. Occam's razor strongly suggests you not open that box of worms; the method I described is preferred in relatively "hard" sci-fi for a good reason.

So you think you can scatter a bunch of inertial dampers around the ship and completely eliminate inertial force? The ship accelerates by ejecting a mass from it's engines. This at the same time causes engines to be pushed forward and the entire ship with it. The force that pushes the engines has the engines press against their bracings. If your theory worked and your strategically placed inertial dampers completely eliminated that force then the ship would not accelerate. Do you understand this? There is no acceleration if there is no force acting upon the object. If a force is to act upon the object it must be braced somewhere on the object. And if you apply strong enough force that something will eventually get ripped off from the object.

Not necessarily.

Death Star's weapons are order of magnitude more numerous and powerful, it's hyperdrive is designed to move a ship 100,000 times larger, it uses up 100,000 times more material, it has more crewmembers. There is no way that Death Star could've been built and not bankrupt the Empire while Executor did. In any case I thought the quote was been clarified as a few systems bankrupted.

What evidence do you have that it wasn't?
Nothing.

Because I didn't see it vaporize enemy vessels with one shot or the Rebel fleet having to fly inside it's unfinished structure in order to have prayer of destroying it.

Only if we apply your completely unjustified assumptions.

It isn't unjustified. Death Star's firepower, size, durability (first one's shield absorbed exploding planets) speak for themselves.

You still haven't read the EAS article which explains, at length, why there are almost certainly more than twelve?

Actually the only thing he provides is 7 Galaxies seen at once in Endgame so I accept that this would be a lower limit. I still see no reason why I should accept significantly larger fleets.

[Mike DiCenso]

You still haven't read the EAS article which explains, at length, why there are almost certainly more than twelve?

Actually the only thing he provides is 7 Galaxies seen at once in Endgame so I accept that this would be a lower limit. I still see no reason why I should accept significantly larger fleets.

Actually, if you look closely at the ship firing the phaser at the Borg sphere, it looks to be an eighth GCS. So eight as a lower limit, and with the three, previously mentioned destroyed ships, plus the "dark neck" GCS varients (none of which are seen after 'Favor the Bold", it is likely there are 13 or more GCS that the Federation has built.

I am assuming you have read the article fully here and understand what it is he (Bernd) is presenting as evidence.
-Mike

[Roondar]

Only if we apply your completely unjustified assumptions.

It isn't unjustified. Death Star's firepower, size, durability (first one's shield absorbed exploding planets) speak for themselves.

Since we now know that -despite any other arguments- the DS 'transports' part of the planet into hyperspace to do it's work, you'll certainly agree that any statements regarding the DS's shield absorbing exploding planets are both false and unquantifiable.