Another turbolaser calculation

[Mike DiCenso]

Evidence for Death Star being a chain reaction weapon = 0

Which is completely wrong as several threads and a metric ton of evidence have shown. The EU Death Star novel, as you well know, has the battlestation's superlaser doing it's dirty work via a hyperspace shunting method and the peculiar planar rings are a hyperspace after affect of that.

And you get 10^19 watts, about on par with the entire Enterprise.

Um, no. This shows that you do not understand what it is you are trying to cite (mixing up watt hours with watts per second), or that you are deliberately misquoting your sources. From Wikipedia's article we have this diagram here on actual wattage average for the world. At best the world as of 2005 was using 15 TW of power, which is many, many orders of magnitude lower than the E-D. If you want to play games by distorting the watt hours of the world with the E-D's watts per second, then that in fairness gets turned back on you by calculating the E-D's watt hours, which is an insanely huge amount of energy. Or about 87,714 gigatons of energy (3.6 x 10e22 w). By comparison, the U.S.A uses 20,181 TWh.

The Federation, for example, has many thousands of starships, some of whom can produce enourmous E-D and E-E-levels of power. The Federation also has at least hundreds of the gigantic Spacedock and SB 74 sized space stations, among many others, which in turn are worth tens of thousands of Galaxy class starships on their own, and even Deep Space Nine, a small, converted Cardassian station could hold it's own against fleets of 100 ships or more. Planetary shields, such as the one that protected Elba II's asylum is indicative of such enourmous power as discussed here. 10,803,059,273.4 gigatons to generate a shield of that magnitude, and all for protecting a dome that houses a dozen or so incurably, criminally insane beings. This is 4,896,988,229 times the E-D's output. Nearly 5 million times. How many planets are in the Federation again? How conservative are those Elba II calculations?
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

The barrel is 25 meters in diameter, which is remarkable in SW. That is literally a huge thick beam here.
The core is about 50 mters wide, by projecting the bore's own width onto the core's width. It seems to be encased inside a cylinder which, at best, could be about 35~40 meters tall.

Also, I have "The New Essential Guide to Weapons and Technology", not the "The Essential Guide to Weapons and Technology", and it doesn't come with the same text at all:

Protecting the platform is key, because it supports the turbolaser itself and holds the weapon's large power core with enough energy to power a small city.
(...)
Because of its size and energy requirements, the planetary turbolaser is susceptible to overheating and dangerous energy overloads.
(...)
The w-165 is quite capable of destroying a star destroyer in orbit.

So you can already scale down your numbers dramatically. Low terawatts at best is a good guess, and quite fitting with the showings of TCWS and even the movies in fact, as sad as it is.

From Wikipedia's article:

Energy is a static quantity and is denoted in joules. Power is a measure of energy transfer over time, and is denoted in watts (joules per second). The three levels of the Kardashev Scale can be quantified in units of power (watts) and plotted on an increasing logarithmic scale.

Type I — a civilization that is able to harness all of the power available on a single planet — has approximately 1016 or 1017?W available.[3] Earth specifically has an available power of 1.74?×1017?W (174?peta watts, see Earth's energy budget). Kardashev's original definition was 4?×1012?W — a "technological level close to the level presently attained on earth" ("presently" meaning 1964).[4]

Type II — a civilization that is able to harness all of the power available from a single star, approximately 4?×1026?W.[3] Again, this figure is variable; the Sun outputs approximately 3.86?×1026?W. Kardashev's original definition was also 4 ×1026 W.[4]

Type III — a civilization that is able to harness all of the power available from a single galaxy, approximately 4?×1037?W.[3] This figure is extremely variable, since galaxies vary widely in size; the stated figure is the approximate power output of the Milky Way. Kardashev's original definition was also 4?×1037?W.

Using nuclear explosion tests as a perspective, Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated, released an estimated 57 megaton yield; a Type I civilization makes use of roughly 25 megatons of TNT equivalent a second, the equivalent of one Tsar Bomba every 2.3 seconds. A Type II civilization controls 4?×?109 times more energy (4 billion hydrogen bombs per second), and a Type III 1011 times more yet.

By the definitions given here, and what we know properly about both the Federation and Galactic Empire's abilities to harness power, they would easily qualify as Type II's, and borderline into Type III's, depending on how you want to define the power useage of typical technologies. Also the Death Stars, as we have seen in the EU novel, as well as the movies and their novelizations, does not place the Empire at Type III since it clearly does not require the battlestations to generate anywhere near 4 x 10e37 watts with superlaser being a chain-reaction weapon of some sort. In the extremely best case scenario 1e29 W.
-Mike

Actually with that scale, the UFP is still on Type I, because until you have built a device that can harness the true power of a star, you're not Type II.
The Galactic Empire achieved that with the Death Star, which we can safely assert can achieve that amount of power in terms of DET.

That, unless the scale means ALL the power produced by all assets of said civilization, which is not the impression I get. The first impression is defined on a technological feat, the second one on a simple question of industrial might.

If we're going down the industrial might road, then I guess the GE is still way ahead if only because of its numerous worlds, planets and quite large fleet, military and civil.

Evidence for Death Star being a chain reaction weapon = 0

Please don't restart this. We have enough evidence piled by now to prove it is. It has a DET component, but it's not as glorious as some people think. If you want to dispute that, please refer to the threads on this forum, after having properly read them first.

[Admiral Breetai]

Evidence for Death Star being a chain reaction weapon = 0

your lying again

On my calculations, I have decently justified my calculations. \

no you haven't since your source is completely invalid

Actually with that scale, the UFP is still on Type I, because until you have built a device that can harness the true power of a star, you're not Type II.

they can revive dead stars, the Dominion used a local star to power its shipyards

If we're going down the industrial might road, then I guess the GE is still way ahead if only because of its numerous worlds, planets and quite large fleet, military and civil.

only the GE does not make use of it's planets in any smart way what so ever beyond bleeding 'em bone dry and nothing in the films show anything impressive at all fleet wise...compared to the feds minus the DS

If your talking to me I don't believe the GE is a type III, and again don't feel that scale works for fiction, and did not intend to suggest that I agreed with that ranking. My question was meant to be taken rhetorically not as a actual statment of inquiry.

I know that I was more adding to your post and providing examples of why the empire being there is crazy just rendering aid is all

[Mike DiCenso]

.
Actually with that scale, the UFP is still on Type I, because until you have built a device that can harness the true power of a star, you're not Type II.
The Galactic Empire achieved that with the Death Star, which we can safely assert can achieve that amount of power in terms of DET.

That, unless the scale means ALL the power produced by all assets of said civilization, which is not the impression I get. The first impression is defined on a technological feat, the second one on a simple question of industrial might.

If we're going down the industrial might road, then I guess the GE is still way ahead if only because of its numerous worlds, planets and quite large fleet, military and civil.

Technically by your interpretation, neither SW nor ST are, since neither of them have actually accomplished that feat. However, there is some room for fudging this since you can interpret the whole civilization thing. In essence, as I pointed out in my previous posting, the energy requirement for shielding a planet like Elba II from "Whom Gods Destroy" would require an insane power output given that the twin phasers on the E-1701 could not punch through the weakest parts of the shield, and even only 1 terawatt per square meter would equal well over 1e24 watts, which means that the Federation is more than capable of generating single-source power on the same scale as a star. Given how many planets are in the federation, this would mean dozens of member worlds with this much potential power generation capability, and thus the Federation is well up on the Type II scale.
-Mike

[Mike DiCenso]

only the GE does not make use of it's planets in any smart way what so ever beyond bleeding 'em bone dry and nothing in the films show anything impressive at all fleet wise...compared to the feds minus the DS

Kardashev's scale has been so badly abused that it's not even funny. The fact of the matter is that the assumptions made and how a civilization in terms of advancement were not solely the factors of power generation alone. A very advanced civilization might actually move down the ladder simply because they found more effficent means of making use of their energy, though they may possess the know-how to generate a higher level of power than they currently comfortably need. Kardashev also kept modifiying the definitions, as even he was not sure about the original assumptions in the first place.

The EU SW Galactic Empire could conceviably be a Type II civilization simply because of the way the Death Star is described in the novel, and the fact that Courscant has a planetary shield as well as other member worlds of the former Galactic Republic. But then, as I've pointed out previously, that's also true of the Federation in the highest canon given their ability to shield an entire planet so well that not even a Constitution-class starship could get through the weakest point, which at bare minimum means 1 terawatt per square meter, and thus the Federation must be capable of generating at least a small star's output to power such a thing.
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

.
Actually with that scale, the UFP is still on Type I, because until you have built a device that can harness the true power of a star, you're not Type II.
The Galactic Empire achieved that with the Death Star, which we can safely assert can achieve that amount of power in terms of DET.

That, unless the scale means ALL the power produced by all assets of said civilization, which is not the impression I get. The first impression is defined on a technological feat, the second one on a simple question of industrial might.

If we're going down the industrial might road, then I guess the GE is still way ahead if only because of its numerous worlds, planets and quite large fleet, military and civil.

Technically by your interpretation, neither SW nor ST are, since neither of them have actually accomplished that feat. However, there is some room for fudging this since you can interpret the whole civilization thing. In essence, as I pointed out in my previous posting, the energy requirement for shielding a planet like Elba II from "Whom Gods Destroy" would require an insane power output given that the twin phasers on the E-1701 could not punch through the weakest parts of the shield, and even only 1 terawatt per square meter would equal well over 1e24 watts, which means that the Federation is more than capable of generating single-source power on the same scale as a star. Given how many planets are in the federation, this would mean dozens of member worlds with this much potential power generation capability, and thus the Federation is well up on the Type II scale.
-Mike

It solely depends on the way you think the shield works. The shield may have had a weak spot of some kind, but it may be built as to spread the damage. For instance, it's not usual to claim that UFP shields on a ship run at near teratons per second because they can cope with multi-megaton contact detonations.

[Mike DiCenso]

Look, the numbers are there, let's face it, the numbers were highly conservative to begin with. We know a Connie can dish out far more than 1 stinkin' terawatt. That's a fact. Could the shields be some technobabble thing that blocks energy weapons and kinetic weapons without using as much power? Sure. But then, where's your proof of that?

But let's say for the sake of arguement that the shields use less power, but get more efficency. Okay, so by how much? Even a reduction by a thousand times the power still nets you around 1e20 W, which is pushing the power output of a small red dwarf star. This in turn gets back to my previous point about the Kardashev scale: a very advanced civilization can move down the scale because they are very good at making things efficent.

However, I think the point is made, the Federation is a Type II civilization given what I've demonstrated above.
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

Look, the numbers are there, let's face it, the numbers were highly conservative to begin with. We know a Connie can dish out far more than 1 stinkin' terawatt. That's a fact. Could the shields be some technobabble thing that blocks energy weapons and kinetic weapons without using as much power? Sure. But then, where's your proof of that?

But let's say for the sake of arguement that the shields use less power, but get more efficency. Okay, so by how much? Even a reduction by a thousand times the power still nets you around 1e20 W, which is pushing the power output of a small red dwarf star.

I wouldn't argue on that because it is not necessary, nor is a proof that you can jump from a weapon that deals Xe^n W to a shield means said shield has to be supported by a power core that provides Xe^n+12 W, or that the shield itself consumes that much power from some kind of buffered stock of energy just to cope with a shot 12 OoMs weaker.

It's also an amusing idea because if a terawatt beam might pierce a shield by depositing that much power over a square meter, then if the beam could be tightened to a smaller cross section, it could puncture the shield with gigawatts. In fact ships' beams are quite wider, even when focused (based on your idea, they'd have no reason to spread the beam during a battle against a shielded target). It gets so unlikely that in fact, a mere hand phaser and its megawatt beam that fits within a 1cm diameter could stand a chance of putting a hole through that shield. Heck, a iron ball the size of a hand fired at a very low c-frac speed, say 1%, would easily get through by virtue of concentrating its energy over such a small area.
That is also why I'm not in agreement with the idea that area directly relates to power consumption.

This in turn gets back to my previous point about the Kardashev scale: a very advanced civilization can move down the scale because they are very good at making things efficent.

I don't see how it meshes with your first point but I agree with you that a civilization could go down by cutting corners with much more efficient systems.
Still, actually it seems that the KS is about the sum of the energy produced by said civilization (after looking at the wiki page). That's not really a good scale at all. It would need to be divided in order to sort technological prowess in unique power production, and the average power production as the result of the total power production divided by some relevant units relative to the industrial might which would actually be presented in a table of many figures, some pointing at the amount of power consumed per capita, then per urbanized square meter, another about the amount of power per vehicle, compad, etc.
The addition of data, as put by Sagan, is not even sufficient, because technically, you can make things absurd and record everything on stone tables or floppy disks and spam them in droves over tens of thousands of years (or more) across a quarter of space and pretend having a lot of data which could just be drivel.

[mojo]

Evidence for Death Star being a chain reaction weapon = 0

hahaha
is it my birthday or something? ok, swst, here it is, incontrovertible proof that you are both a liar and a dishonest debator of the first rank. and, i think it could at the VERY LEAST be argued that the fact that you are intentionally providing completely false information goes against the one big big rule here - reasonable discourse. lying intentionally is not being obtuse, it is not being stubborn, it is intentionally fucking up the conversation.
so? care to take it back or explain that comment?

[Admiral Breetai]

Mojo is the sheriff!

I like that though if SW was even remotely as powerful as SWST has been suggesting with his near constant lying and false calcs and using of the EU they are a universe of first rate idiots just as retarded if not more so then ST

I mean seriously

Tarkin:"We have the fire power to burn worlds inside of an hour with a single ship they are very large and costly let and we must maintain a fleet of hundreds of thousands of them! so what we'll do is build one gargantuan slow moving station with a fucking open easy targeted weakness that will take us decades to build and we will grant it the power to basically explode planets instead of burn them "

sidious: indeed, indeed but would that be worth millions of our single ships that basically do the same thing?

Tarkin: ah but this one will be all massive assplodetastic!!

sidous: sweet lets do this!!!

I mean seriously and don't give me "weapon of terror" nonsense either because a fleet of ISD's and you can build many for the price of one of these is just as terrifying and it's fucking cheaper and it does not have glaring fucking weaknesses

seriously...stupid either the ability to wipe out all life on a planet was revolutionary thing that was awe inspiring and a great equalizer...you had that tech and you idiotically wasted time and money building a huge expensive thing that basically can do only louder and flashier what your ships can

it's asinine..it's fairly obvious nothing supports the kind of fire power SWST is desperately trying to suggest in the films

[mojo]

noone knows the bible better than the devil.

[Jedi Master Spock]

I wouldn't argue on that because it is not necessary, nor is a proof that you can jump from a weapon that deals Xe^n W to a shield means said shield has to be supported by a power core that provides Xe^n+12 W, or that the shield itself consumes that much power from some kind of buffered stock of energy just to cope with a shot 12 OoMs weaker.

It's also an amusing idea because if a terawatt beam might pierce a shield by depositing that much power over a square meter, then if the beam could be tightened to a smaller cross section, it could puncture the shield with gigawatts. In fact ships' beams are quite wider, even when focused (based on your idea, they'd have no reason to spread the beam during a battle against a shielded target). It gets so unlikely that in fact, a mere hand phaser and its megawatt beam that fits within a 1cm diameter could stand a chance of putting a hole through that shield. Heck, a iron ball the size of a hand fired at a very low c-frac speed, say 1%, would easily get through by virtue of concentrating its energy over such a small area.

Actually, in the episode in question, it's implied that a narrower beam would have a better chance to pierce the shield. We've also seen some indications that when a shield is extended, it becomes weaker. Intensity and surface area certainly matter.

That said, I wouldn't expect that the same power is needed for the shield as for the weapons. There are indications ("Hero Worship") that Federation ships' shields are ordinarily only powered off of secondary fusion reactors, and not even all of the secondary fusion reactors. There are indications ("The Sound of Her Voice") that while weapons power is generally significantly lower than warp power, it's probably within an order of magnitude or two of warp power, which a small fraction of secondary fusion reactors should not be.

[Mr. Oragahn]

noone knows the bible better than the devil.

Sure, Christians don't even know the f--- how their own Bible was piled up to begin with. :)

@ JMS

I know in the dialogue they speak of narrowing the beam, but there are practical limitations to that which are needed otherwise we fall into the embarrassing conundrum I described earlier.

[StarWarsStarTrek]

The barrel is 25 meters in diameter, which is remarkable in SW. That is literally a huge thick beam here.
The core is about 50 mters wide, by projecting the bore's own width onto the core's width. It seems to be encased inside a cylinder which, at best, could be about 35~40 meters tall.

A star destroyer's reactor core is 140 meters long.

Also, I have "The New Essential Guide to Weapons and Technology", not the "The Essential Guide to Weapons and Technology", and it doesn't come with the same text at all:

Protecting the platform is key, because it supports the turbolaser itself and holds the weapon's large power core with enough energy to power a small city.
(...)
Because of its size and energy requirements, the planetary turbolaser is susceptible to overheating and dangerous energy overloads.
(...)
The w-165 is quite capable of destroying a star destroyer in orbit.

So you can already scale down your numbers dramatically. Low terawatts at best is a good guess, and quite fitting with the showings of TCWS and even the movies in fact, as sad as it is.

Hmm, that's interesting. Although the logic that the "New" essential guide is prevalent over the original is sketchy, I can understand your logic that it would take precedence, being newer.

With that in mind, the more conservative calculation sort of give the planetary turbolaser a low score. However, if you use a higher end calculation, it still evens out.

I don't have the time to make them now. Maybe later. My calculations for the power generation of a large SW city was very, very low end.

From Wikipedia's article:

Energy is a static quantity and is denoted in joules. Power is a measure of energy transfer over time, and is denoted in watts (joules per second). The three levels of the Kardashev Scale can be quantified in units of power (watts) and plotted on an increasing logarithmic scale.

Type I — a civilization that is able to harness all of the power available on a single planet — has approximately 1016 or 1017?W available.[3] Earth specifically has an available power of 1.74?×1017?W (174?peta watts, see Earth's energy budget). Kardashev's original definition was 4?×1012?W — a "technological level close to the level presently attained on earth" ("presently" meaning 1964).[4]

Type II — a civilization that is able to harness all of the power available from a single star, approximately 4?×1026?W.[3] Again, this figure is variable; the Sun outputs approximately 3.86?×1026?W. Kardashev's original definition was also 4 ×1026 W.[4]

Type III — a civilization that is able to harness all of the power available from a single galaxy, approximately 4?×1037?W.[3] This figure is extremely variable, since galaxies vary widely in size; the stated figure is the approximate power output of the Milky Way. Kardashev's original definition was also 4?×1037?W.

Using nuclear explosion tests as a perspective, Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated, released an estimated 57 megaton yield; a Type I civilization makes use of roughly 25 megatons of TNT equivalent a second, the equivalent of one Tsar Bomba every 2.3 seconds. A Type II civilization controls 4?×?109 times more energy (4 billion hydrogen bombs per second), and a Type III 1011 times more yet.

By the definitions given here, and what we know properly about both the Federation and Galactic Empire's abilities to harness power, they would easily qualify as Type II's, and borderline into Type III's, depending on how you want to define the power useage of typical technologies. Also the Death Stars, as we have seen in the EU novel, as well as the movies and their novelizations, does not place the Empire at Type III since it clearly does not require the battlestations to generate anywhere near 4 x 10e37 watts with superlaser being a chain-reaction weapon of some sort. In the extremely best case scenario 1e29 W.
-Mike

The main Star Wars website:

The Death Star's prime weapon unleashed unthinkable levels of raw energy capable of tearing apart entire worlds.



Granted, only one Death Star was ever operational at a time, so it's hard to say. Star Wars is probably not a complete Type 3 yet, but is in between a Type 2 and a Type 3.

Actually with that scale, the UFP is still on Type I, because until you have built a device that can harness the true power of a star, you're not Type II.

The Enterprise is about 10^19 watts. Does the Federation's total power generation equal a billion Enterprises? It's possible, but I'd put the Federation just below, from an OOM standpoint, a type 2.

The Galactic Empire achieved that with the Death Star, which we can safely assert can achieve that amount of power in terms of DET.

That, unless the scale means ALL the power produced by all assets of said civilization, which is not the impression I get. The first impression is defined on a technological feat, the second one on a simple question of industrial might.

If we're going down the industrial might road, then I guess the GE is still way ahead if only because of its numerous worlds, planets and quite large fleet, military and civil.

Exactly. The Death Star is e32 - e40 joules depending on your interpretation, and the heavily populated Star Wars planets such as Coruscant would consume ridiculous amounts of energy.

Please don't restart this. We have enough evidence piled by now to prove it is. It has a DET component, but it's not as glorious as some people think. If you want to dispute that, please refer to the threads on this forum, after having properly read them first.

From the original SW ICS:

"the Death Star is built around a hypermatter reactor which can generate enough power to destroy an entire planet."

[Admiral Breetai]

From the original SW ICS:

"the Death Star is built around a hypermatter reactor which can generate enough power to destroy an entire planet."

cease using material not backed up by the movies