Commentary on Spock v Sothis

[Jedi Master Spock]

For all your kibbitzing needs. I know it may seem like I'm taking this much too seriously, but it's fun to engage in a more formal debate setting once in a while.

[Mr. Oragahn]

For all your kibbitzing needs. I know it may seem like I'm taking this much too seriously, but it's fun to engage in a more formal debate setting once in a while.

Since we can't post in the other thread, because it's just between you and Sothis, I suppose any comments are to be put here, right?

[Who is like God arbour]

I'll begin by setting forth what I think to be obvious.

In Star Wars, there are two different kinds of sublight drives - antigravity drives, and ion drives. Antigravity drives only work within a gravity well - inside the hyper limit, generally. Presumably they operate via a repulsing field of some kind, pushing back against a planet.

Ion drives are the giant glowing things we see on the back of Star Wars ships, e.g., as in the case of the Twin Ion Engine fighters of the Empire (TIEs). Ion drives operate by ejecting a small amount of high speed ionized gas; these ions are accelerated electromagnetically. An electron beam keeps the ship from accumulating too much charge.

The first kind is what's usually used for lifting off. Ion drives don't work very well in atmosphere. Apparently the antigravity drive can be used all the way to the hyper limit, meaning that if you have a cargo freighter, you don't actually need an ion drive.

But if you want to maneuver in deep space, you want ion engines - and to gauge by the performance of the Twin Ion Engine family of small craft, they are as good as you'll get in the Star Wars world.

Indications are that ion engines typically top out around 100 gravities of acceleration.

Similarly, we have both maneuvering thrusters and impulse drives in Star Trek. Maneuvering thrusters are for docking; impulse drives are for moving. Impulse drives are incredibly fast - in some cases, impulse drives seem FTL. They also do provide a large amount of realspace thrust when necessary. At top power, typical impulse drives pull on the order of thousands of gravities.

Most tellingly on the scale of in-system maneuver is that warp drive can also be used for slower than light travel, although it is rarely used in combat.

From this contrast, Star Trek ships clearly have an advantage in sublight speed - by a factor of ten to one - and they do so mostly because they use a drive system whose physics are more questionable.

• I'm missing specifications of Star Wars engines. All you have given is the acceleration capability: »Indications are that ion engines typically top out around 100 gravities of acceleration.« But the power of the thrust is interesting or to which velocities they can accelerate under consideration of relativistic effects. Furthermore, you have not given any sources for your claim, that they top out around 100 gravities of acceleration. In which movie or book was such an acceleration described?
• The last applies also for Star Trek impulse drives. You have said »Impulse drives are incredibly fast - in some cases, impulse drives seem FTL« and »At top power, typical impulse drives pull on the order of thousands of gravities« but you have not given the source of that conviction. In which movie or episode was such a velocity or such an acceleration shown?

[Mr. Oragahn]

Well, when it comes to accelerations in Star Wars, as far as the movies are concerned, only a single indirect evidence shows the Star Destroyers capable of a deceleration of 100g or so.

Otherwise, all other rather much more obvious and direct cases show much less.
Accelerations, from the top of my head:

TPM

- Nubian yatch escaping Naboo: slow.
- Podracers: certainly not thousands of gravities, yet they're just huge engines, bigger than all other engines seen on spacefighters, and the rest of the podracer weight nothing else. Considering that most podracers don't have sealed cockpits, it's understandable that they would be both limited in speed and acceleration. But then, why so many and huge engines?
- Nubian yatch exiting Tatooine: slow.
- N-1 fighters, including Anakin's, taking off: slow.

AOTC

- Zam Wessel's speeder: it moved fast, but the acceleration doesn't strike me as anything near the hundreds of gees.
- Padmé's ship leaving Tatooine: slow.
- Obi-Wan's and Jango's ships: slow.
- Dooku escaping Geonosis: slow.

ROTS

- Organa's speeder: slow.

ANH

- Millenium Falcon leaving Mos Eisley: slow. If not literally sluggish.
- X-Wings and Y-Wings taking off: slow.
- TIE fighters exiting the hangar bays of the Death Star: slow.

TESB

- ISDs slowing down before collision: 100 gravities.
- Millenium Falcon's U-turn against an ISD: slow.
- Millenium Falcon and Slave-I leaving the ISD's junk trail: slow.
- Slave-I leaving Cloud City: slow.

ROTJ

- Small gravicraft used to flee Jabba's barge: we don't see it accelerate, but we see it slow down once it's far in the dunes, before turning left.
- Some nebulous claim about the imperial fleet making a bold and fast move around the moon in no time, supposedly evidence of thousands of gees.
Seriously, do you see ISDs able to cover their own lenght several times, within one second, when starting from a relative null velocity?
I don't, and I wonder what kind of mushroom those behind those numbers have been eating.
- Imperial speeder bikes: good boost, but again, I doubt it's anywhere close to hundreds of gees either.

Understand by "slow" anything that is far far away from thousands of gees, or even multiple hundreds of gees for nearly all cases, eyeballed.
Come various accelerations seen during spacebattles, which are all showing lower accelerations. Barely in the hundreds of g, so there's certainly no large amount of evidence in the movies to ever claim thousands of g. On the contrary.

[Who is like God arbour]

Thank you, Mr. Oragahn.

But that should be a productive debate between Jedi Master Spock and Sothis, where Sothis has challenged Jedi Master Spock. Both have to argue alone. Otherwise it would be a debate between Sothis and all other members of this board. And that would be unfair.

It was not my intention, to get an answer to these questions. I merely wanted to show - as part of a review - where that first argument was deficient. It would have been the task of Jedi Master Spock to provide such evidence and to substantiate his statements.

I intend - as far as my time will allow it - to make a short review to each argument and advert both parties, where I think, that their arguments are not convincing or are lacking substantiation. But I want to stay neutral in that debate.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Thank you, Mr. Oragahn.

But that should be a productive debate between Jedi Master Spock and Sothis, where Sothis has challenged Jedi Master Spock. Both have to argue alone. Otherwise it would be a debate between Sothis and all other members of this board. And that would be unfair.

It was not my intention, to get an answer to these questions. I merely wanted to show - as part of a review - where that first argument was deficient. It would have been the task of Jedi Master Spock to provide such evidence and to substantiate his statements.

I intend - as far as my time will allow it - to make a short review to each argument and advert both parties, where I think, that their arguments are not convincing or are lacking substantiation. But I want to stay neutral in that debate.

Good, I'll do the same then.

[Who is like God arbour]

I'll start with the obvious about Imperial starship speeds- ROTJ demonstrates impressive straight-line speed for Star Destroyers- they had to move quickly from behind Endor (where they had been hiding out of sight) to swing round and then trap the Rebel fleet. To move around the moon like that is to cover thousands of miles in a matter of seconds- to do otherwise is to lose the element of surprise and risk the Rebels escaping.

• To preserve my neutrality, I will not further comment that part - although I think, it is simple to refute. At least, you should have brought already arguments to cut of obvious counter arguments (e.g.: ... one could argue that ... but that would be wrong because ...).

Fighters are extremely fast, able to cover a 400,000KM distance in five minutes, placing their acceleration in the region of 17,000 m/s. Star Destroyers can't match this- assuming Endor to be earth-sized (12,000 miles in diameter), and giving the Imperial ships 30 seconds to move around the moon to trap the Rebel fleet, we're looking at a few thousand m/s- several thousand m/s slower than a fighter, which is to be expected, given what we see in ROTJ.

• You should have explained, how or from what source you get 400'000 km, that fighters have covered in five minutes. If you want to conclude from the covering of a distance to an acceleration, you have especially to show the velocities of the fighters at the beginning of that five minutes. Otherwise you have only a velocity but no acceleration.
• It would be better, if you would explain the calculations, you have done. Explain the next time, how e.g. you get an acceleration of 17'000 m/s with a distance of 400'000 km, covered in five minutes.
• I can't understand, why you use in »acceleration in the region of 17,000 m/s« an unit of speed for an acceleration instead of an unit for acceleration like m/s².

The TNG TM states that impulse engines are capable of 0.75c, but this is rarely seen- a look at DS9 episodes like 'Sacrifice of Angels' or 'Tears of the Prophets' gives us relative speeds that are a lot slower. The acceleration of Federation ships appears to be in the region of between 10,000 and 15,000 m/s, making them nearly as fast as a fighter, but not quite. This would make them faster than Imperial capships, but such speeds are rarely seen in combat situations, bringing up the question of why. That is something only Captain Picard et all can answer :o)

• You should have agreed on what is canon before. The question now is, if the TNG TM is canon at all.
• Again, you use an unit of speed for an acceleration - here in »The acceleration of Federation ships appears to be in the region of between 10,000 and 15,000 m/s«.
• But the main question is - assuming that you mean between 10'000 and 15'000 m/s² - from where do you have these acceleration values. The passing mention of »'Sacrifice of Angels' or 'Tears of the Prophets' « is not enough substantiation.

[2046]

Ammunition for Sothis:

http://www.starfleetjedi.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=222

Ammunition for JMS:

http://www.st-v-sw.net/videos/peakperf.mpeg

[l33telboi]

A few comments.

First off, both should be a little more willing to give sources or links to whatever calcs they're getting their figures from.

Second, the TM isn't canon and as far as i know has never been considered such by either sides. It does even contain quite a few contradictions with later material published (like the power of the phaser array), so it's really no good to draw from it. Especially not when the debate is supposed to start at highest canon levels.

And one thing i'd like to direct more at Sothis, you do see the problem with taking the highest figures possible for the SW side and assuming that is the norm and then taking the lower figures for ST and assuming that is the norm for them?

Either compare the highest figures from both sources, or then take the normally seen ship accelerations/decelerations and compare those.

On a related note, velocities and accelerations used during battles seem to be very different from what has been displayed outside battles (this goes for both verses), so comparing engagement accelerations and speeds and then comparing top velocities and accelerations separately is the way i'd go about this whole thing.

[Socar]

Second, the TM isn't canon and as far as i know has never been considered such by either sides.

Actually, the TM was pretty much considered fair game back during the old days on ASVS.

[Praeothmin]

Actually, the TM was pretty much considered fair game back during the old days on ASVS.

Which is funny, considering that a lot of the information found inside is contradicted by the TV shows or the movies (the supposed 200 segments of the E-D's main phaser array, anyone?)...

[l33telboi]

Actually, the TM was pretty much considered fair game back during the old days on ASVS.

I wasn't around back then. But the stated canon on Trek these days (from what i hear, at least) is that only the filmed stuff is canon. Not even scripts are.

Besides, if the TM is canon, then all those novels that have small bombs blowing up planets and ships tractoring around planets would be, as well.

[Praeothmin]

Besides, if the TM is canon, then all those novels that have small bombs blowing up planets and ships tractoring around planets would be, as well.

Or ST: TAS, with their lifesupport belts... O_O!

[GStone]

If they make those trek webisode toons, TAS might well actually become canon. And no more 'there's no personal force fields in trek'.

[Mr. Oragahn]

If they make those trek webisode toons, TAS might well actually become canon. And no more 'there's no personal force fields in trek'.

Well, it would just make them real, not well spread or some near standard equipment.

More a one shot wonder, if you get my drift.