A Venator is turned into a Rhydonium Bomb

[Lucky]

In season 5 episode 13 we see a Venator loaded with a large amount of Rhydonium used as a super weapon by the C.I.S. in order to destroy the fleet seen in the clip.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmEAE8KCff4

Rhydonium is a volatile fuel that is mined.
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Rhydonium

The Rhydonium on the Venator
http://starwars.com/img/explore/the-clo ... y/ep05.jpg
http://starwars.com/explore/the-clone-w ... /slideshow

Why would the CIS use Rhydonium instead of Hypermatter, antimatter, or even nuclear weapons?

What is Rhydonium fuel used to fuel?

What does this say about the defensive capabilities of Venator class ships?

Feel free to add anything relevant.

[359]

Why would the CIS use Rhydonium instead of Hypermatter, antimatter, or even nuclear weapons?

Probably because things like hypermatter and nuclear materials would be easier to detect by the Republic which increases the likelihood of the Republic intercepting the bomb in time.

What does this say about the defensive capabilities of Venator class ships?

Not very much, however this does:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywpGjqrxq6c
Why would the hanger doors still be open if they knew the droids were going to try and board through them?


At 0:33 in the Rhydonium clip, one can see a Republic frigate being taken out by a rather small piece of debris.

[Mike DiCenso]

The initial stages of the explosion starts off in a series of weird prismatic explosions across the exploding Venator's length that takes several seconds, suggesting a chain-reaction effect, not a straight up DET one. Also there seems briefly to be an implosion at 0:22 seconds before the final fireball and scattering of debris, which occurs at a surprisingly slow rate of velocity for all the awesome power that is supposed to be generated by Star Wars ships. Another blow to the ICS with the uber shields of the Venators were unable to properly repel such relatively slow debris strikes.
-Mike

[Lucky]

Why would the CIS use Rhydonium instead of Hypermatter, antimatter, or even nuclear weapons?

Probably because things like hypermatter and nuclear materials would be easier to detect by the Republic which increases the likelihood of the Republic intercepting the bomb in time.

They seemed to notice the Rhydonium rather quickly, almost as soon as they actually scanned the ship.

A star ship's hull should be able to easily conceal fissionable materials do to the need to protect the crew from stellar radiation.

Ships normally care a bleep load of hypermatter if the ICS is to be believed.

Come to think of it, I'm rather bothered by how easily they could spot the Rhydonium would point to the hulls being poorly shielded.

What does this say about the defensive capabilities of Venator class ships?

Not very much, however this does:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywpGjqrxq6c
Why would the hanger doors still be open if they knew the droids were going to try and board through them?

They had incoming friendlies, the doors are big and heavy, and the Venator was already damaged. I can point out a lot of things that are disturbing in that clip, but the hanger doors not being closed is not one of them, and this sort of thing has happened in different episodes.

I mean, where are the shields, where are the AA guns, how do the clones get overwhelmed so quickly? Why is the fire suppression system two astromechs?

At 0:33 in the Rhydonium clip, one can see a Republic frigate being taken out by a rather small piece of debris.

I missed that.

[Lucky]

The initial stages of the explosion starts off in a series of weird prismatic explosions across the exploding Venator's length that takes several seconds, suggesting a chain-reaction effect, not a straight up DET one. Also there seems briefly to be an implosion at 0:22 seconds before the final fireball and scattering of debris, which occurs at a surprisingly slow rate of velocity for all the awesome power that is supposed to be generated by Star Wars ships. Another blow to the ICS with the uber shields of the Venators were unable to properly repel such relatively slow debris strikes.
-Mike

Can't a guy get away with a bit of sarcasm?

[Khas]

You know, I did some calcs for that scene, such as when the ship or station Anakin and Obi-Wan are on gets shaken up by the debris, it really doesn't support the ICS. Assuming a mass of one million tons for each big chunk of debris (and that's being REALLY generous), and it was moving at about 2 km/s, it would total to half a megaton worth of energy. Yes, 500 kilotons is enough to shake up the ship or station (I only saw that scene, not the rest of the episode) significantly. And that's a generous assumption.

[Mr. Oragahn]

The initial stages of the explosion starts off in a series of weird prismatic explosions across the exploding Venator's length that takes several seconds, suggesting a chain-reaction effect, not a straight up DET one. Also there seems briefly to be an implosion at 0:22 seconds before the final fireball and scattering of debris, which occurs at a surprisingly slow rate of velocity for all the awesome power that is supposed to be generated by Star Wars ships. Another blow to the ICS with the uber shields of the Venators were unable to properly repel such relatively slow debris strikes.
-Mike

That's because they had already been saturated by an invisible exaton shockwave of neutrinos and other particles.

[Mr. Oragahn]

They seemed to notice the Rhydonium rather quickly, almost as soon as they actually scanned the ship.

A star ship's hull should be able to easily conceal fissionable materials do to the need to protect the crew from stellar radiation.

Ships normally care a bleep load of hypermatter if the ICS is to be believed.

Come to think of it, I'm rather bothered by how easily they could spot the Rhydonium would point to the hulls being poorly shielded.

Let's assume that the fuel suffers a kind of decay with particles which cannot be stopped by anything but layers upon layers of extremely dense armour. Could be neutrinos or something alike you know.
That fuel is not stored inside some specialized tanks apparently, just containers piled up in the hangars.
Besides, the weird nature of this material opens the door to a myriad of other problems.
Perhaps there's some kind of hyperspace related decay as well. In the EU, there were some chrono-something particles, I think, ships left as they arrived into realspace. It was the case in the Thrawn trilogy, maybe when Luke X-wing's returned to normal space I think.
The fact that the whole mass of the reacted fuel cascaded into some kind of singularity would tend to remind me of all the weird implosion/constriction effects relative to superlasers on targets. There's even some kind of ring, again, although not as flat as usual.
You could even say that it's a less refined form of seismic mine, on steroids.

I mean, where are the shields

Perhaps the initial rainbow blast just disabled the shield generators on the hull?

where are the AA guns

Screwed, like acquisition systems?
After all, sensors wouldn't be in a good shape after taking such a bang in the face.
That's what happens with nukes and sensors on Earth.

how do the clones get overwhelmed so quickly?

Understaffed, obviously. CGI budget against the Republic (traitors!), in other words and plot fiat.

Why is the fire suppression system two astromechs?

Because they can?
Perhaps they have other systems as well to suppress fire, but those two droids seemed to do well. The thing is, as usual, those hangars are so damn empty. Nothing like the cramped hangars of Echo Base or Yavin IV which, paradoxically, looked much more equipped.

[359]

Here's a calculation for the impact against the frigate.

The frigate is probably on the order of ~200 m. And that means that the piece of hull that struck it, being near a rectangular prism, is on the order of 40m*20m*20m; for a volume of 16,000 m^3. Venators have an average density of about 6945 kg/m^3 (11,000,000,000 kg/15,838,619 m^3). That makes the chunk have mass of about 111,120,000 kg. Looking at the clip frame-by-frame, the chunk appears to travel ~100 m in five frames. Probably 25 fps for the clip, so the chunk is traveling ~500 m/s.

KE = (1/2)mv^2
KE = (1/2)(111120000 kg)(500 m/s)^2
KE = 1.3890*10^13 J or 13.89 TJ or 3.3198 kt

So 3.3 kilotons was sufficient to blast a hole in a frigate with sufficient damage to result in the complete destruction of that vessel.

[Mr. Oragahn]

I wonder if the explosive device Luke stuffed the AT-AT with didn't contain rhydonium as well. It generated plenty of colorful explosions in a very similar fashion, at various points inside the vehicle (could be energy bouncing around, the explosions on the Venator produced energy arcs).
Two green explosions, a small yellowish one, a pretty luminous blue one and then two reds, followed by a white one, then a much more powerful one which quickly went from blue to blinding white and then dimmed to red, while another one occurred on the right side with a very faint green hue.
Or it's just stuff, explosives, ammo and else that went up. But that's still weird. Especially since it all finishes with a big explosion that nearly beheads the walker.

On a sidenote, this alternate version of the battle of Hoth is rather good:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73CD3qHlr4c

[Mr. Oragahn]

Here's a short montage of the AT-AT's demise after being stuffed with that canister of rainbow pops.



Rhydonium charge?

There is nothing lewd here btw.

[2046]

Fantastic catch on associating this blast and Hoth 'nade.

Elsewhere, I am very curious as to the mass and density figures for the Venator. Where'd that come from?

[359]

Elsewhere, I am very curious as to the mass and density figures for the Venator. Where'd that come from?

Your page on volumetrics, with the upper and lower masses averaged to roughly 11,000,000 Mg.

[2046]

The SW masses given are based on Intrepid and Constitution class ships so should not exceed a density of ~4000 kg/m³. Perhaps I have an error?

Also, per the text on SW masses, I would aim for about 750kg/m³ for the whole ship. I suppose for a solid chunk of it your figure is good, though.

[2046]

Correction: that mention of Trek masses is out of date. The chart matches the text for the most part.