Kane Starkiller wrote:Evidence that they "commonly" have stationkeeping thrusters. DS9 is one starbase, one smaller than an ISD.
What, and you think it's that special?
Many starbases are close to planets and have a need for stationkeeping thrusters.
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.
Incorrect. We should be able to see active engines down to clusters the size of the one driving the ISD, or alternatively a very large number of small ones distributed about the equatorial trench (which the closer shots rule out as well.)
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.
As they would have to be, given SW ion thruster technology as seen on screen - either that, or extremely numerous, which is also ruled out.
Oh it's OK to use DS2 turning ability.
As an outer ballpark, yes.
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.
As I have pointed out, the DS2 being incomplete means it is noticeably less massive as well.
Ion engines expel matter by use of electromagnetic and electrostatic fields not by thermal reaction like current engines.
No matter how you propel it, relativistic ionized gases ejected from a tiny nozzle at high rates will end up being superheated. You can't squeeze the plume problem away.
Either you have larger quantities of gas, which would be visible (clouds of ionized gases tend to be), or you have incredibly high energies, which ends up meaning a luminous corona.
Then of course there is your assumption that Death Star should've fired it's engines just in the moments we have seen it.
It is in the process of "orbiting at maximum velocity." The engines should be at full through the approach.
No it isn't.
Yes it is.
You are again confusing your personal opinion of what is important as fact.
You are again confusing justified opinion with unjustified opinion.
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".
As far as the eye can see is a goodly distance. In this case, we're talking about hundreds of meters, generally. Great big open volumes constituting a very significant fraction of the sample of the DS2's interior we have seen.
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 are again completely off-base.
The only fraction that really matters is the fraction of our observed sample, not the entire Death Star. It is more important for us to catalog the size of the typical open space, in comparison with the thickness of interior walls/supports.
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?
No... although the scenario I gave is hardly unusual in turns of moments. You can have a much more gradual distribution with a similarly sharp drop in moment of inertia.
Assuming uniform distribution is not conservative. You're losing a factor that could easily be up to 2. Add in the thruster location problem, and claimed possible accelerations drop floorward by a probable half order of magnitude.
There is conservative and there is robbery. High density equipment could've just as easily be placed in the outer layers.
The reactor and its fuel - hyperdense or not - are centrally located.
In fact, minimizing the moment of inertia by keeping heavier equipment along its axis of rotation in order to maximize turning speed is a sound design principle for something as awkward as the Death Star.
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.
With perfect efficiency with a uniform mass distribution, an ample fuel supply, et cetera.
It's most likely only half an order of magnitude too high - meaning we're actually talking about 15 cm/s^2 rather than 44 - but if you like such things as Saxtonian hyper-dense matter in the core, you get much further.
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?
I'm afraid your objection is not well thought out.
Every fast elliptical orbit will give it a decent line of sight to Yavin IV at some point. A perpendicular one at almost
all points.
I see. So you continue to think up ridiculous concepts for a starship and then accuse me of them being ridiculous?
Until you realize that your abuse of definition makes the term meaningless.
Those definitions are not relevant. They are not physical objects. They don't have mass, density, volume, structural strength etc. etc.
So? The dictionary says they are devices, and only requires them to be devices in order to be spacecraft. Nothing is said of density, volume, et cetera.
By all means show me the model under which evaporation of ink produces the thrust.
Gas expands uniformly, except in the direction of the pen. This produces net thrust via conservation of momentum. QED.
No it isn't.
Yes it is.
It is different in scale. It fulfills each and every definition of starship as GCS and ISD whether you admit it or not.
It is capable of travel within as well as without a system? It can fly within lower atmosphere? It can maneuver within combat? It is capable of evasive action? It can dock at space stations?
That may be your opinion. Opinions are not evidence.
Only founded upon them in some cases. Such as here.
Tactical manouver next to what? Ships millions or trillions of times smaller than it is? Of course it isn't. What does that prove?
That it does not have the sublight capability to qualify it as a spaceship in the first place.
Not unless you'd be so kind and explain it.
A strategic weapon does not turn a military base into a warship. Comprende? If I built a Freedom Ship and launched an ICBM from it, it would not become a fighting ship in the way that a cruiser is.
I mean see it finished and coasting.
I suppose next you're going to say that you wouldn't believe the Chinese capable of putting a man on the moon, given the budget and motivation, until you see it - because they've never built an Apollo rocket.
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.
Which I debunked, you may recall. It shows no indications of being able to break out of orbit of, say, Yavin without using hyperdrive.
Evidence please.
See TrekCore for screenshots of crashed Borg scout.
Why not?
Because the stated (and ever-reducing) intercept time is given as the fastest they could catch the Borg. If slowing to impulse was not required by the situation, then there would be a faster possible intercept time.
Especially given that high warp speeds, such as are used in desperation, are generally
much faster than that.
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.
Inertial compensators are still limited by structural strength of the material they are fastened to as Newton's third law dictates.
Inertia is transferred... namely, evenly across the
entire ship.
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.
Which we never see, which in turn requires materials strengths that render structural concerns regarding
engine pressures moot.
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.
You still don't even understand what I'm trying to explain to you, nor do you grasp the physics particularly well.
Inertia is not a force. It is the resistance to force. By communicating the force accelerating the ship evenly to the entire ship and its contents, as a spatial field, an inertial compensator eliminates internal collisions caused by uneven acceleration of different parts of the ship. A crewmember is fine not because they are not accelerating, but because all of their body is being accelerated in the same direction at the same time along with the walls surrounding them - hence behaving as if no force is present (locally) just as in a free fall.
Of course, then there's artificial gravity, and the occasional "lurch" when the field fluctuates by a small fraction while adjusting to an unexpected vector change.
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.
It's not as critical relative to size as much as hull form... and in the case of naval vessels, affects top speed much more than acceleration.
Death Star's weapons are order of magnitude more numerous and powerful,
The turbolasers are most likely a small fraction of the cost of either the Death Star or the
Executor.
Although the Death Star does not have too many orders of magnitude more surface weaponry than the
Executor, surprisingly enough, by most counts.
it's hyperdrive is designed to move a ship 100,000 times larger, it uses up 100,000 times more material,
Does it? What's the relative density of the two?
Unknown.
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.
Straining the budget. And mind you, there was an entire class behind it, and not a word was said about how much of that was sunk into R&D.
It is more likely along the lines of "the straw that broke the camel's back" than something that, in and of itself, the Empire could not afford. Indubitably, without the Death Star project consuming so much in terms of resource, the
Executor project would have probably
not strained the military budget.
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.
No, that doesn't do it.
It isn't unjustified. Death Star's firepower, size, durability (first one's shield absorbed exploding planets) speak for themselves.
It is. You know next to nothing about the actual cost.
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.
Certainly more than 7 were built, and it is very strongly suggested that there were a good number more than that operational.
Your claims about there only being 5 were downright ridiculous.
