StarWarsStarTrek wrote:Ah, darkstar assumes that the turbolasers are viewable from the surface, or the rooftops (rooftops which are quite high indeed in Star Wars). This is a reasonable assumption, although the quote does specify the light scatter, not the turbolasers themselves.
The turbolaser bolts are visible from the surface, unless you think that "light scatter" is some magical thing that's really huge around a turbolaser bolt that we've never seen before, rather than just a "art techo" description of the visible bolt glow itself.
Star Wars itself - the quote is in the context of Coruscant...and yet he uses Tatooine as a benchmark? What? {...} Seriously?
Yes, quite seriously.
Had they said "city" and I used Ryloth's capital city of Lessu as the only example allowed, you might have a complaint, given that we've seen Coruscant the uber-city in Star Wars.
However, they said "town", so you have no complaint there.
At that time, and as far as I know until right now, Mos Eisley, Anchorhead, and Mos Espa were the only places explicitly called towns in Star Wars. There is also Coco Town on Coruscant (a division of unspecified size) and the "whole town" in the place where Padme grew up, though we never see nor hear description of the size of either.
Mos Eisley is even explicitly a bigger town than Anchorhead.
As of my downloads of closed caption logs of TCW until now, there is as yet no explicitly-mentioned town in TCW. However, we have seen that the Ryloth "capital city" is taller but not apparently much broader than Mos Eisley, and we saw what might be a town on Ryloth bombed by Separatists, though that was explicitly called a village.
In short, if you have an actual "small town" to use from Star Wars, feel free to recommend it. As it stands, I used a "town" larger than some other "towns" from the canon, so I feel pretty good about it.
Hiroshima - somewhat fair enough, but why did he assume that Hiroshima's "vaporization" to a non literal sense is what the author was referring to? Why did he assume that Hiroshima was even close to vaporization, and that this figure is the figurative vaporization? He seems to have guesstimated, to avoid literal vaporization, which would boost the numbers significantly.
Why would you assume "vaporization" in a particular thermally-interesting scientific sense is what is being described? I realize that here among geeks that's where our loyalties are, but Tom Dick and Harry don't know the middle guy about scientific jargon.
It's best to use the most common connotation in the absence of a reason to do otherwise.
Had the author said "powerful enough to melt all the buildings in a small town and vaporize the inhabitants", we might have a reason, but instead we get a phrase that goes along with the common connotation.
Bolts and bombs - somewhat fair enough, but turbolasers can't be detonated by flak. Those were flak cannons.
I didn't say turbolasers were detonated by flak. I said they could be detonated in a flak burst. That is, the bolt goes kablooey mid-flight.
If you're unfamiliar with that, go do more research. Some of your ilk argue against it for some reason, but whatever.
A. Burning Flesh - woah, he got 6.25 megatons...and yet his final conclusion is 1.5 megatons?
Yeah, 'cause of context, a concept which seems to elude you.
"Burning Flesh" shows 6.25 megatons to provide enough energy mathematically to vaporize a person at 3km.
However, quoting the page: "Recall that initially we were discussing Mos Eisley, a larger town on Tatooine. While Bastrop was some six kilometers in width, Mos Eisley appeared to be just one or two at maximum. If we assumed that Mos Eisley was 1.5 kilometers wide (possibly double the true value, but no matter), and again employed our human-centric vaporization standard, we would find that the energy release at the center of town would be some sixteen times less than what we calculated for Bastrop. In other words, the value for vaporizing humans in Mos Eisley would give us a 'mere' 400 kilotons per turbolaser bolt."
Also, "It's worth reiterating here that we've used an intensity value 50 times greater than what would cause flesh to flash into steam down to the bone in order to get our initial 6.25 megaton figure. We also ignored atmospheric effects altogether. Coupled with the fact that we're also vaporizing a much larger town of far sturdier structures with that figure by way of the massive overpressure, it seems our generosity has been extreme."
Detonating wood - what? Why is only taking wood into account? Pretty much every Star Wars habitat we see; contains some abundance of metal, usually lots of durasteel.
Mos Eisley is made of neither metal nor wood, but I discussed the wood issue both for its educational value (which was evidently a waste of time for some readers) and in reference to Bastrop specifically. However, as noted, "at 20psi even the heaviest concrete structures would be wrecked, if not demolished to dust and rubble altogether."
In TCW we've seen people living in giant coconuts or somesuch, so it isn't like every Star Wars town is gonna have the meter-thick durasteel walls you would want them to have.
Most buildings in Mos Eisley were part of the "haphazard collage of low-grade concrete,
stone, and plastoid structures", though we also hear that "they looked primitive from the outside, and
many were. But oftentimes walls and arches of old stone masked durasteel
double walls with circulating coolant flowing freely between." Meaning some of the buildings would be surprisingly badass.
And contrary to your BS about me "only taking wood into account", my page features that already:
" "Unlike Anchorhead, there were enough people in Mos Eisley to require movement in the heat of day. Built from the beginning with commerce in mind, even the oldest of the town's buildings had been designed to provide protection from the twin suns. They looked primitive from the outside, and many were. But oftentimes walls and arches of old stone masked durasteel double walls with circulating coolant flowing freely between." (ANH novelization, Ch. 6)
While there's no real way to calculate anything based on the above . . . we don't know any details of wall thickness, coolant efficacy, and so on . . . we can certainly presume that the destruction of some of the buildings would be a more energy-intensive affair than, say, blowing up a 20th Century wood-frame house. The towering spires of Coruscant are also built of durasteel and something called permacrete, suggesting that such materials as are used in Mos Eisley are probably pretty normal for robust buildings."
In any case, the best thing to do for making an estimate as I did is to get a fair median value. I realize that you want me to calculate the vaporization of a Star Destroyer at 3km in order to get an upper limit closer to what you want it to be, but that's not gonna happen on my watch for either Trek or Wars.
Original or Crispy - Where did those numbers come from? Where did the equation come from?
Had you clicked on any of the links you'd see where they came from, not to mention me referencing the source in the text. It's kinda embarrassing for you that you asked.
Conclusion - a better calculation would involve deducing the size of a Star Wars large town
Why a large town? Trying to wank it? The novel explicitly says "small town".
by comparing it with large Star Wars cities relative to modern large cities compared with modern small towns.
Ah, the "Everything's bigger in Texas" approach? Except that's silly. Why should the word "town" get applied to a bigger community in Star Wars? Just because they have cities larger than our own is no excuse for that. What name should we then call smaller communities whose names have graduated up the chain?
Also, many feats show Star Trek photon torpedos at yields even lower than this; some suggest sub kiloton yields, some more reasonable ones suggest high kiloton yields. Feats suggesting megaton level yields for photon torpedos are actually less common.
For the context of this page, nobody gives a damn what a torpedo does. And I'm not sure I give a damn what you think one does anyway.
What darkstar really did was actually set a lower limit for turbolaser yield, because his calculations are actually extremely low end;
Hardly. You just want to say so because the calculation is as fair an estimate as could be made.
(despite the fact that a modern small town would rival the size of classical Rome, showing the extreme increase in the size of small town as population and technology level rises)
Ancient Rome had something like a million people in it. That ain't a small town, kid. Yeah, the Aurelian Walls incorporate a smaller area than Bastrop, but that is not an indicator of Rome's true size at the time . . . it is said that as much as a sixth of those 3rd Century walls were built right atop existing buildings. If you built a wall all around Bastrop's city limits, I doubt the same could be said.
Yeah, the automobile and golf courses that are incorporated and rail right-of-ways and such means we can have sprawling towns, but with less stuff per area. But that doesn't really help you, and doesn't mean that a future town is going to be the size of a modern American state or something. There are limits to the concept, and having hypothetical single dwellings 20 miles out from the center of town doesn't really change the reasoning.
In any case, as far as Bastrop goes, I found references to "small town" and then went with a much bigger one, as made clear in the page.
And still you complain.
However, I don't really see anything in your complaints that has merit. Your desire for a higher figure (or to call my figure a low one) doesn't appear to have any rational basis.
