MythBusters does the AT-ST log smash

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sonofccn
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Re: MythBusters does the AT-ST log smash

Post by sonofccn » Fri Feb 07, 2014 3:16 pm

Firmus Piett wrote:my only real complaint was ever that you arbitrarily decided that the armour is likely fallible by energy weapons of similar energy.. like phasers.. despite there being evidence to the contrary. You'd need the Breen rifle at least.
Well ROTJ showed us an AT-ST could be destroyed by its own guns and they typically aren't estimated much above a megajoule or so to my knowledge. Obviously through I welcome any further evidence you may have on the topic.

Also let me offer, a belated, hello and welcome to the forum,Firmus Piett.

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Re: MythBusters does the AT-ST log smash

Post by Picard » Sat Feb 08, 2014 1:07 pm

I'd say that AT-ST armor can withstand cca 10 MJ of blaster fire:
http://picard578.hostoi.com/startrek-vs ... mpire.html

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Re: MythBusters does the AT-ST log smash

Post by Firmus Piett » Sat Feb 08, 2014 3:08 pm

sonofccn wrote:
Firmus Piett wrote:my only real complaint was ever that you arbitrarily decided that the armour is likely fallible by energy weapons of similar energy.. like phasers.. despite there being evidence to the contrary. You'd need the Breen rifle at least.
Well ROTJ showed us an AT-ST could be destroyed by its own guns and they typically aren't estimated much above a megajoule or so to my knowledge. Obviously through I welcome any further evidence you may have on the topic.

Also let me offer, a belated, hello and welcome to the forum,Firmus Piett.
Thanks for the welcome Sonofccn

True, the effects the blaster had on the tree were estimated at single digit megajoules, like the KE of the log smash, but we have seen hand-held blasters perform far greater feats of destruction in the films and the clone wars and expanded universe when blasting apart rock and metal targets, some of which also work out at megajoules. So the AT ST must have fired low yield anti-personnel shots at the trees and Ewoks, not anti-vehicular blasts. AT ST armour offers impunity to small arms blaster fire which would include their highest observed settings.

A multi-megajoule energy weapon like a blaster or phaser would most likely inflict a surface scorch not unlike the one seen on the cabin.
Image

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Praeothmin
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Re: MythBusters does the AT-ST log smash

Post by Praeothmin » Sat Feb 08, 2014 7:12 pm

We've also seen hand Phasers have similar effects on rocks at least a meter wide (deja Q I believe) and in Insurrection where they blow up quite a lot of rocks blocking off a cave exit...

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Re: MythBusters does the AT-ST log smash

Post by Firmus Piett » Sun Feb 09, 2014 3:29 pm

Praeothmin wrote:We've also seen hand Phasers have similar effects on rocks at least a meter wide (deja Q I believe) and in Insurrection where they blow up quite a lot of rocks blocking off a cave exit...
To which, to be fair, blasters compare favorably too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEnFTtPjGxc

Edit; oh you meant similar to blasters right? Not anti-tank stuff.

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Re: MythBusters does the AT-ST log smash

Post by Mike DiCenso » Sun Feb 09, 2014 6:42 pm

Praeothmin wrote:We've also seen hand Phasers have similar effects on rocks at least a meter wide (deja Q I believe) and in Insurrection where they blow up quite a lot of rocks blocking off a cave exit...
That was "Hide and Q", Praeo. The effects of the little Type-I phaser:

Image

There is also the effects of the phaser rifle Kirk uses from "Where no Man Has Gone Before":

Image

The initial effects of the "The Man Trap" phaser pistol:

Image

So there's quite a number of these megajoule range effects.

[quote="Firmus Piett" A multi-megajoule energy weapon like a blaster or phaser would most likely inflict a surface scorch not unlike the one seen on the cabin. [/quote]

Possibly. But then again, given what we see with the effects noted above with TOS-era rifle and hand phasers, the disintegration effect of some higher phaser settings, it might be higher damage, same with blasters since exactly what they do isn't made clear in the highest canon of the movies or even the TCW series. We can only guess. But there's another thing, a rocket propelled grenade, a large AP round projectile weapon (like a .50 caliber sniper rifle) or LAWS rocket could probably do much more damage than either the phasers or the blasters since we know for certain that the armor is destroyed within a bracketed KE range of 2.5 to 8 MJ, with much of the energy being spread out over a moderately large "foot print" area of just under 2 square meters, while many projectiles in that same energy range tend to be only a fraction of that and therefore the energy is focused into a much smaller area (10 cm2 give or take) and penetration is much more likely. It does surprise me that the Empire does not invest in field kits that allow for reactive armor or plates to be fitted onto their vehicles.
-Mike

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Re: MythBusters does the AT-ST log smash

Post by Lucky » Mon Feb 10, 2014 10:38 am

Praeothmin wrote:We've also seen hand Phasers have similar effects on rocks at least a meter wide (deja Q I believe) and in Insurrection where they blow up quite a lot of rocks blocking off a cave exit...
Firmus Piett wrote: To which, to be fair, blasters compare favorably too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEnFTtPjGxc

Edit; oh you meant similar to blasters right? Not anti-tank stuff.
Destabilizing something that is unstable does not require a large energy input. You can even see artificial structures being needed to prevent cave-ins in those clips. For all we know, a clone trooper throwing a stone could have caused the cave-ins given loud sounds have been known to do the same.


Compare the examples in your clips to these:
TOS: The Man Trap
http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x01- ... phd549.jpg

http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x01- ... phd550.jpg

http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x01- ... phd551.jpg

http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x01- ... phd552.jpg

http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x01- ... phd553.jpg

http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x01- ... phd554.jpg

TNG: Hide and Q

http://tng.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x10/ ... hd_185.jpg

http://tng.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x10/ ... hd_186.jpg

http://tng.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x10/ ... hd_187.jpg

http://tng.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x10/ ... hd_188.jpg

http://tng.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x10/ ... hd_190.jpg

http://tng.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x10/ ... hd_191.jpg

Each example is an energy weapon causing stone the size of an adult human male to explode.

If you look in Deep Space: Nine: "Battle Lines", you can see Major Kira cause a cave-in similarly to how the clone troopers did.
http://ds9.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/ ... nes131.jpg

http://ds9.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/ ... nes132.jpg

http://ds9.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/ ... nes133.jpg

+++++

I think the best example of blaster firepower comes from episode 4 when Han is firing at storm troopers just before the Falcon takes off from the Tatooine space port.

The second best example is when Leia shoots the grate in the detention center on the Death Star, but this has a number of odd things about it.

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Re: MythBusters does the AT-ST log smash

Post by sonofccn » Tue Feb 11, 2014 2:16 pm

Firmus Piett wrote:To which, to be fair, blasters compare favorably too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEnFTtPjGxc
Not bad but, to be fair, the Clones were only causing the rocks to collasp compared to Hide and Q where a boulder was blown to kibble.

Or this from the Enemy Within, TOS-1, where Kirk's duplicate gouges open a conduit.

http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x05h ... nhd512.jpg

http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x05h ... nhd513.jpg

http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x05h ... nhd514.jpg

http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x05h ... nhd517.jpg

Or this from First Contact the movie where Worf vaporizes the deflector dish:

http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albu ... hd1403.jpg (For a sense of scale)

http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albu ... hd1533.jpg

http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albu ... hd1549.jpg

http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albu ... hd1550.jpg

http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albu ... hd1552.jpg
Firmus Piett wrote:True, the effects the blaster had on the tree were estimated at single digit megajoules, like the KE of the log smash, but we have seen hand-held blasters perform far greater feats of destruction in the films and the clone wars and expanded universe when blasting apart rock and metal targets, some of which also work out at megajoules.
Possibly. Which examples are you refering too, other than the rock blasting clip you have already provided,?

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Re: MythBusters does the AT-ST log smash

Post by Sandyin » Tue Feb 11, 2014 4:31 pm

I think we're all overlooking the obvious.

Clearly the AT-ST's main guns are capable of 4.184^15J – that's just obvious – and the Imperials are just dialing down the power to 0.00000000024 percent to save energy. Once Chewie commandeered his AT-ST, he turned the power all the way up to shoot the enemy AT-ST's and their armor was able to absorb most of the energy which is why the explosions are so much smaller then we would expect given the energy involved.

Obviously, AT-ST armor is just weak to KE.

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Re: MythBusters does the AT-ST log smash

Post by Firmus Piett » Thu Mar 13, 2014 12:01 pm

The rocky bridge is the only formation to show any signs of weakness. The other formations were obviously robust, since hundreds or thousands of tons of rock could not be supported above the ground in a cave like structure if it weren't. You'd have to be doing some serious fragmenting to get hundreds or thousands of tons of previously solid rock to come down in chunks like that. Gravity is only gonna pull the rocks to the ground, not pull them into fragmented chunks.

I don't really care if phasers or blasters can potentially destroy marginally more rock than one another, I don't feel there's much difference either which way. My arguments originally addressed a couple of Darkstar's pages. His phaser page implied that he felt bullets from modern rifles are more effective than blasters; I contend that blasters have caused thousands of times more damage than bullets to inorganic targets on more than one occasion. His Imperial armour page concludes that phasers could drop AT ST's; I contend that they'd merely pockmark them, like blasters. Leia's arm and all the other scenes like it are obvious examples of low energy blasting. The highest settings are thousands of times more powerful. This isn't exactly a controversial never ending topic subject to debate like power generation seems to be, it's pretty straight-forward and I don't see why there should be any major disagreement about it.

I know you guys will refute any megajoule calculations I present on the grounds that you do not accept the premise that SciFi energy weapons in all the big shows consistently cause much less collateral than bombs, and can melt large sums of material with ungodly amounts of energy without explosions remotely comparable to similarly energetic bombs. So instead I'll present some images from my site which scale the damage blasters have inflicted on stone and metal against Han Solo; phasers are not hundreds or thousands of times more powerful than blasters and so they will not destroy armoured vehicles in star wars. http://www.galacticempirewars.com/effects-on-the-body

Meter wide hole in metal deck from Banes LL30.
Image
Tens of kilos of previously solid "reinforced wall" reduced to pebbles.
Image
Another large apparently melted hole in metal.
Image
Image
Image
sonofccn wrote:
Firmus Piett wrote:To which, to be fair, blasters compare favorably too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEnFTtPjGxc
Not bad but, to be fair, the Clones were only causing the rocks to collasp compared to Hide and Q where a boulder was blown to kibble.
/quote]
Those cubes, if you look closely, were actually hollow. That example is not as impressive as those in the video, but perhaps some of the others were.

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Re: MythBusters does the AT-ST log smash

Post by 359 » Thu Mar 13, 2014 8:24 pm

Firmus Piett wrote:Meter wide hole in metal deck from Banes LL30. Image
That's quite an overstatement of the chunk's size, from the episode it is clearly only a clone's stance in diameter, less than one meter.

Here's an image from your site showing the size of the chunk, you calculate it to around four feet, yet in the image above you compare a much larger chunk to Han, a chunk the size of 6' 1" Harison Ford.
Image

Also the material most certainly is not metal. The blaster bolt fragmented the material which then fell as large pieces. Metal does not do that, the closest thing it does is tear. The material is far closer in physical properties to concrete based on how it fragments and crumbles, even leaving behind a cloud of dust at the site of the fracture.

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Re: MythBusters does the AT-ST log smash

Post by Firmus Piett » Thu Mar 13, 2014 9:00 pm

359 wrote:That's quite an overstatement of the chunk's size, from the episode it is clearly only a clone's stance in diameter, less than one meter.
Here's an image from your site showing the size of the chunk, you calculate it to around four feet, yet in the image above you compare a much larger chunk to Han, a chunk the size of 6' 1" Harison Ford.
I scaled the hole based on the feet. The diameter of the region fragmented by the bolt is ~4.6 times the length of a clone troopers boot, substantially greater than the space between his feet. Thats over a meter. The chunk on the ground is just one of the fragments. The total sum amounted to several of these large chunks. The hole looks bigger in the Han pic because its so dark, the jagged outline of the actual hole is smaller than the dark oval in the picture.
359 wrote:
Firmus Piett wrote: Also the material most certainly is not metal. The blaster bolt fragmented the material which then fell as large pieces. Metal does not do that, the closest thing it does is tear. The material is far closer in physical properties to concrete based on how it fragments and crumbles, even leaving behind a cloud of dust at the site of the fracture.
Okay. That makes sense. I shall make amendments.

But there are two more problems. The clone trooper remains fixed to the ceiling, even when there's gravity, and when he falls, bits of material remain fixed to his feet. He is obviously magnetically sealed to the material. Furthermore the chunks make metal on metal sounds when landing. This is even more evident later on when a shells detonation brings the whole roof down.

Perhaps the deck is concrete with two, thin metal sheets covering either side of it? This would bring this feat of firepower more into line with the others on the page...

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Re: MythBusters does the AT-ST log smash

Post by 359 » Fri Mar 14, 2014 12:50 am

Firmus Piett wrote:I scaled the hole based on the feet. The diameter of the region fragmented by the bolt is ~4.6 times the length of a clone troopers boot, substantially greater than the space between his feet. Thats over a meter. The chunk on the ground is just one of the fragments. The total sum amounted to several of these large chunks.
I read your work, and the work is good, but I think there were a couple of small problems with the image you used.

First, the aspect ratio in the picture with the clone's feet is distorted. Which makes it unreliable for any measurement.

And second, in this frame it is difficult to see the right-side bound of the fracture, a couple frames earlier it is much easier (Some animated dust starts to get in the way). Your measurement extends out to a jagged end, not the 'normal' diameter.

I've attached a couple of images, one is the frame you used and the other more clearly shows the fracture line. They're both lighter for some reason and are screenshots from the episode on netflix. Using a slightly rougher method of estimation (within five or so pixels) I get a horizontal distance of about 3.75-ish boot lengths. Although given it is a fracture type event the difference probably isn't too important.

Firmus Piett wrote:The hole looks bigger in the Han pic because its so dark, the jagged outline of the actual hole is smaller than the dark oval in the picture.
Ah, I thought the entire ellipse was supposed to represent the fragment, I can't really see it in the oval.

Firmus Piett wrote:But there are two more problems. The clone trooper remains fixed to the ceiling, even when there's gravity, and when he falls, bits of material remain fixed to his feet. He is obviously magnetically sealed to the material. Furthermore the chunks make metal on metal sounds when landing. This is even more evident later on when a shells detonation brings the whole roof down.

Perhaps the deck is concrete with two, thin metal sheets covering either side of it? This would bring this feat of firepower more into line with the others on the page...
I had thought about it being plated in metal, but even 1/16 inch sheet steel should have held those chunks in place unless they are really dense. Also the bits don't stick to the clone's feet after he falls. The just appear to by virtue of all things falling at the same rate (9.8 m/s^2). This is seen when he hits the ground after being caught by Anikin, the bits of debris are not attached to his feet at this point.

The bang as they hit the floor could still occur were the floor made of several layers of sheet metal. But then again, maybe this is some advanced material which contains metal, but is physically like concrete. Or somehow the boots were sticking to a layer of metal beneath the 'concrete', or it did have a layer of metal.

When the roof comes down later and Anikin wakes up, as he is lifting it off there are two distinct materials. Layered metal sheets with conduit between some layers and some more of that concrete-like stuff. If the floor were made of a similar layering structure it would explain the sound of metal hitting metal when the chunks hit the floor. Given the chunks that fell after the explosion are showing expected bends and tears, the animation team clearly took this into account, so it seems unlikely that there was a layer of metal over the concrete stuff.
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Re: MythBusters does the AT-ST log smash

Post by Firmus Piett » Fri Mar 14, 2014 11:44 am

Perhaps this is an example of the "ferrocrete" mentioned in the EU. A concrete / ferrous metal composite that acts like concrete but contains enough iron to magnetically suspend a clone trooper against gravity.

I did try tweaking the lighting to make the jagged outline clearer, but it didn't go very well. I might have another go when I update the page, to make it clearer.

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Re: MythBusters does the AT-ST log smash

Post by 2046 » Fri Mar 14, 2014 12:27 pm

I would stick with non-EU material like steelcrete unless ferrocrete shows up in the radio plays. (A quick search of the novelizations and scripts doesn't provide me with any reference to ferrocrete.)

http://dsg2k.blogspot.com/2014/02/permacrete.html
http://dsg2k.blogspot.com/2014/02/steel ... doors.html

Perusing the latter, steelcrete seems a good option, as it might behave as desired. This would be especially true if, like permacrete, it was hydrofoamed on Separatist vessels to save weight. Such a use would certainly make sense on a ceiling which, as a rule, is probably not bearing a lot of load under normal conditions. (Common ceiling tiles today are foamy or fibrous stuff resting on a flimsy metal framework.)

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