DSG2k

Very diplomatically put, Tyralak. My compliments. That is certainly one way of looking at it. Given what I have seen of his history, however, recent and distant, I see it rather differently. For starters, he only "agreed" inasmuch as he was able to cherry-pick and misapply what I said. I did leave that door half-open and anticipated someone walking through, but did not realize it would be done with such gusto, so kudos to him there. I say "half-open" because while it is entirely possible to generalize based on my examples (the many parts leading to a rule of thumb), it is (a) fallacious to declare the composition of the Holy Grate settled from those examples (the rule of thumb claimed as proof of a contested specific). Further, he ( conveniently ignores the follow-up paragraph in which I mention weight-saving measures like the hydrofoaming of permacrete on ships, which you quoted. Here is further reading: http://dsg2k.blogspot.com/2014/02/permacrete.html One would think that if weight is a concern on a vessel as 'small' as the Hand, it would be a vastly greater concern on a huge mobile battlestation. Besides which, if you have tachyonic mass reduction gobbledygook, you would hardly need to bother. And, of course, it hardly seems likely that Brian was pure-heartedly applying my name to his point merely for attribution's sake. Rather, it seems much more likely the goal was to goad a "fanatic", a la 'thanks for proving my point', however inaccurate that goad may be in this case. I laughed either way, since many of his videos are or are in part obviously meant to contest assorted pages and points of mine (usually the oldest pages, explicit conjectures (e.g. bullets and Borg), or pages marked as "incomplete" "brief notes" which he inexplicably claims I am using currently to counter whatever his latest claims were before he even graduated to my attention list a few months back (e.g. Leia's arm)). Through all that he only rarely identifies his target, making this reference to me stand out . . . and the feigned ignorance of my URL was icing on that cake. As for the Holy Grate itself, I will be addressing that in my own good time based on the rough outline I have in mind, in text, and in audio notes. As I have mentioned, Brian's claims on things like acceleration and blaster firepower were not a significant blip on my radar. Well, at least until his recent tantrums about me and StarfleetJedi.Net, such as people daring to comment on his presentation (while he discusses actresses and their lesser or greater attractiveness in some of his videos (funny, that)). Incidentally, while I have you here, I still haven't seen where someone supposedly says he's ugly, as claimed. So, I plan to tackle things as they come up while I work to update my antique site. I am sure he'll be watching, but I will try to post pertinent details here, too.

(* For instance, I fully anticipate Brian trying to make use of all the gobbledygook about magic clonetrooper helmets in the novel, for instance, which is why I was going through them all for NoLettersHome. Brian's always talking about all the super-duper built-in stuff that doesn't exist except on super-trooper Gregor, but it actually appears here on everyone. In the rest of the canon, even lights and night vision and binoculars aren't built-in like he claims, but instead are add-on pieces. Here, every trooper has 'em, which would've been awfully handy, except for the fact that it obviously doesn't exist.)

Video Synopsis: Having heard tell of my point from the TCW novelization regarding fuel density (though he doesn't seem to get it right, he does at least get the broadest strokes), Brian spends seven of eleven minutes proving the obvious insofar as that scene not being in the film itself, which is true of numerous scenes, both in this novelization and all the others. His goal in this case, I trust, was to try to argue that the scene's hooks to the rest of the narrative were contradicted by the film, under the theory that if the hooks don't exist then the scene doesn't exist and if the scene doesn't exist then the facts from it don't, either. Realizing his mistake, he then tries to explain why his chosen directly-contradicted facts are still useable material, such as the RotJ novelization's hyperbole of Wedge doing "barely sublight" coming out of the DS2 when he is clearly doing many meters or perhaps even kilometers per second, visibly in the film. Such directly-contradicted facts "corroborate" other details, whereas he claims the fuel thing does not. Perhaps realizing the apologetics are insufficient, he claims to be more scientific-y than thou, and ties it all together with one of his wide-ranging insults of anyone who might disagree with his view, attacking those who would dare question the concept of ultra-dense fuel for Star Wars, suggesting such a person is an idiot, physics-wise, slinging insults but not naming names . . . in other words, the usual behavior where those who disagree are wrong-headed fanatics, perhaps even egregious liars if they use prepositions in a wiki (e.g. answer vs. "answer to"). He also does that funny thing where he tries to suggest Roddenberry would've been on his side, or something, as if those 'silly Trekkists' (to paraphrase an associate of his) will somehow be moved to tears and change their ways while gazing at their WWGRD bracelets. Rebuttal: First, I'm not aware of anyone arguing that the scene appeared in the film, so that was kind of useless. I hadn't even watched the film again to check on that since it was, well, obvious. The novelizations are "canon where they align with what is seen on screen in the 6 films and the Clone Wars animated movie". That's a bit less specific than I would like*, but in any case I did not claim nor do I require that the scene be in the film to analyze it. And as noted, I don't find it to be aligning at 100% with the starship densities from "Sinking Ships" that were curiously ignored here (what with them being the main thrust of my point), as it makes the Twilight mass much lower than that example might suggest. Of course, that's the whole issue here . . . I don't disregard this merely because I worry it might not jive with my other conclusions. But that's something I'll come back to shortly. Second, as long as he's arguing the point and claiming that the scene is contradicted by the film, let's play devil's advocate. After all, I recall back in the day the EU-Completist ethic as used in inflationist circles was that contradictions could almost never be claimed, because there were an infinite number of ways to massage or reinterpret things. So, obviously, the ship is not being pursued by Vulture droids in the scenes he shows. However, it was under attack and pursuit when we last saw the Twilight in the film, when it was near the Republic Attack Cruiser. So where'd they go? Might they not have been outrun via the dumping maneuver? This would involve changes to the precise timing in the novel and other details (in other words, to deal with small easily-handled contradictions by adjusting the timing of certain elements, et cetera), but wouldn't require simply ignoring the canon source. And there's some logic to this thought, as well. The Republic Attack Cruiser fired on the Twilight thinking it was a Separatist vessel. It was ... it was the spy droid's ship and had battle droids on it. Why would the Vulture droids be firing on it at all? Obviously they were ordered to, and indeed the novel features Ventress ordering the Vultures to try to prevent the ship from docking with the Attack Cruiser, destroying the Twilight if necessary. It makes sense, since for both sides the Twilight was the most important thing in the fight at that point. The alternative is that we should believe the most important ship should be allowed to escape unchallenged after a single landing bay on the mothership was blown up. That hardly follows. (It's no big deal to me either way, of course, which is why some will fixate on this part.) Third, claiming the scientific high ground is audacious, but wrong. The problem with that point of view is a very old one I've brought up many times before . . . indeed, this has been the inflationist problem for a long time. This isn't ghost-hunting, UFO nonsense, creationism, quasi-religious numerological nonsense, or any other pseudo-scientific claptrap where the "evidence" itself is properly presumed false. We are pretending here to actually be watching documentary evidence of another universe, one which we can clearly observe to have certain technologies and capabilities far beyond our modern comprehension. The universe itself features a separate spatial domain we've never even heard of that allows for fantastic velocities, for instance, not to mention mystical energy fields that violate time and space. And yet, rather than accept that in this context we are stupid and should behave accordingly, not being too overbold in our assertions, some people think it best to ignore most all evidence in favor of our modern, limited comprehension of our own hyperspaceless, Cosmic-Forceless, Living-Forceless, Floating-Island-less, Crazy-Masked-Chicks-less universe. That's awfully silly. Can you imagine Ben Franklin watching a documentary of modern electrified life and outright rejecting pieces of what he sees because he can't imagine how they might work in reference to some of his pet theories about keys and kites? Or showing a car to someone who has no conception of gasoline and thus concludes the car is ultra-light and has bicycle pedals, rejecting all evidence to the contrary? The moment we start ignoring canon because we think we know real science and thus don't have to listen to that pesky canon thing anymore, we undercut the entire enterprise of analyzing a sci-fi universe. And, of course, at that moment we're just talking about our assumptions plus a few scenes from Star Wars we've deigned to bother discussing. Suffice it to say, that's not Star Wars anymore. The sci-fi universe the inflationists have created is nifty and might even be entertaining to watch, but calling it Star Wars is just unoriginal, and the Star Wars I can watch on blu-ray and Netflix, featuring nary a gigaton not fired by a Death Star, doesn't look anything like their version. Finally, a person isn't an idiot about physics merely for disagreeing with the inflationist point of view. If we set up a battle of canon versus crap-you-think . . . well, we're talking about Star Wars, so you lose, immediately and without mercy. The claim that physics might require certain things is an entertaining note of one's opinion, but does not override the canon facts for the purpose of this exercise. If it's canon that 1+1=3, everytime and everywhere, then it's canon in that universe . . . you can't just ignore it. If you don't like the universe anymore because of it, then that's your prerogative. But if you're analyzing the facts of the universe . . . well, that is one. Case in point . . . you know and I know that hyperdrive and transporters are impossible, and yet we accept them as canon facts of the universe instead of rejecting them because of their physical impossibility. The correct role of one's local astrophysicist fanboy at that point is to take his knowledge of science and use it to explore and discuss ways in which the canon reality could be possible, or point out where to our knowledge it just couldn't be. If the conversation turns to power requirements, then the correct behavior is to discuss it in terms of the known power technologies, not make up new ones. And if the stated fuel supply is inadequate, then we simply acknowledge that and move on, maybe going and finding a harder sci-fi universe to play with if that sort of irregularity pisses us of too much. That would be both educational and highly respective of the universe being discussed. This is the tack I take with Star Trek and Star Wars, but inflationists do not. I've noted many times and in many ways how Star Trek and Star Wars have elements that don't make sense, and I'll continue to do so. I take the universe for what it is, warts and all, and try to rationalize it, taking all the evidence and deriving a consistent whole. Brian talks a good game about how to treat a universe being analyzed, noting that it is only loony fanatics bent on winning Vs. Debates who would seek to ignore the truth about their preferred franchise, but seriously, if that were so, this video would not have been made. He just explicitly rejected a non-contradiction and defended use of a directly-contradicted scene. The way I figure, direct contradiction is obviously wrong. Something running contrary to a load of assumptions forced onto Star Wars is not. Put simply, inflationism was born from a perceived need for Star Wars to beat up other sci-fi universes, not from Star Wars itself. Some would say, though, that love of a franchise would best be served by respecting the franchise. Indeed, I think Brian has paid lip-service to that idea at some point, himself. So where should normal Star Wars tech fans draw the line? At what point do we decide "okay, here is where we start rejecting what the result of the combined effort of the writers and designers and artists involved tells us about the universe . . . indeed, what the universe tells us about itself, the rules of its game . . . and instead start injecting our own sensibilities." As far as I'm concerned, that should be a very rarely used maneuver, preferably in situations akin to a total blatant one-off error, like if Luke's lightsaber suddenly emitted its blade from the side or something. Perhaps at some point I'll try to concoct a logical list of how to deal with such issues, since so many people obviously just fly willy-nilly in that regard. However, for Star Wars, the liquid fuel issue is not a one-off error . . . it is what Star Wars fuel is, period. It does align nicely with all other instances of fuel, contrary to his claim that it doesn't merely because it doesn't fit his preferred belief system. The scene's bits about the fuel density correspond nicely with all other appearances of fuel elsewhere in the canon, where it gives every appearance of being a normal-density fluid (sometimes refined, clear, and flammable, sometimes dark and flammable, sometimes unrefined-and-glowy, but always a fluid). It is only in inflationist dogma where ultradense tachyonic fuel that futzes about with the complex mass of the ship exists (though, for reasons unexplained, the engineers supposedly refuse to use to diddle with the ship's mass at sublight, since that would be an evil Roddenberry-esque mass-reduction effect and that's not permitted). See, trying to shield themselves from rebuttal by claiming to be more scientific than you is unwise when they fail to follow perhaps the most basic element of science . . . observe. Instead of observing the universe, they cherry-pick and ignore what they don't like, and this is a classic example, right up there with the Death Star rings and reactors that are likewise handwaved away in favor of a set of assumptions about the superlaser and Death Star not represented in the canon. Having to disregard or reinterpret evidence is a last resort in the case of unmitigated contradiction. That's the very reason I went to such lengths in regards to the "Sinking Ships" final scene anomaly. Put simply, you don't just dismiss inconvenient evidence as Brian so clearly does, and you don't include convenient evidence as Brian so clearly acknowledges doing. It's not good form. It's a horrible idea in real life to ignore inconvenient data that doesn't jive with previous conclusions. You have to be willing to acknowledge that old conclusions might be wrong. That's why I sought to understand the difference and consider it with a wider range of mathematical and physical considerations. As one might rephrase, "the scientific investigation of science fiction relies on mathematics. While mathematics itself is precise, its application to the understanding of science fiction always involves an approximation. The approximate nature of mathematical application ultimately limits the scientific approach to science fiction, but the freedom to make appropriate approximations allows us to understand complex phenomena on the basis of a few simple principles in approaches that are limited only by imagination. In each case, the understanding offered by the mathematical model must be verified by fitting the model to data; this is part of the usual scientific method." Inflationists, curiously, do not bother with this last part in regards to this hobby, which suggests to me that claiming "moar siyenz!" for their side is rather silly. If they did follow the method properly, the curious lack of gigatons and other results of their inflationism would give them pause. Clearly, this is not the case, whether in regards to the power generation claims or in regards to the density of fuel in Star Wars.

Wow. I don't have time to get involved with a second thread, but I will simply comment. See, I read that title and I'm the exact opposite in my thinking . . . it makes perfect sense not to have sun-yield reactors, engines, and weapons in Star Wars. It doesn't even make sense to watch Star Wars and think such things, so near as I can tell. It's like if the thread title was "Star Wars without beyond-visual-range weapons. Would that make sense?" Of course it would, because we seldom if ever see BVR in SW. Imagining the contrary, so many things become questions or just plain nonsensical that it boggles the mind how anyone could claim to like Star Wars while also refusing to acknowledge what it is showing of itself. Star Wars is a universe of fusion and steel. It was a lived-in universe of banged up objects and realism of a sort uncommon in sci-fi prior to it. The battles were modeled on WW2, not light-minute ranges and magically-invisible gigatons. The Star Wars inflationism that developed from circa 1995 to the mid-2000s had no precedent before that . . . fans didn't even dream of much more than a kiloton for a proton torpedo or think there were more than a few thousand ships, and with good reason. Even "Blade Squadron", the latest addition to the new canon, notes that the Imperial fleet at Endor was "the largest flotilla of Star Destroyers ever assembled". Even restricting that to the Imperial Star Destroyer of the original trilogy, that's notable. Inflationism's genesis was due to a protracted effort to win the Vs. Debates. But by modifying Star Wars with their own imaginations, the inflationists warped Star Wars to their own ends. The canon, with its fusion and steel and short-range combat with reasonable and authentic yields, did not change a bit in that time.

Other than the fact that we don't see tumors erupt from Leia when Bail brought her home, suggesting at least a tolerable level of radiation and thus a magnetic field and thus a dynamo, do we have any evidence against Alderaan being rock-solid through and through? Just saying, maybe the sun's polite, and the local interstellar neighborhood free of nasty rays, for the most part, for all we know. I don't think it makes a difference for superlaser purposes, so it's no skin to me either way. In any case, though, I get nervous when I hear suggestions of releasing a planet's "stored energy". It's very kung fu, but usually the math fails or the idea is so impossibly impractical that TheForceDidIt is just as good. At least with the hyperspace domain there is a potential source of energy for our convenience. As for the explanatory power of DET, that's been the very problem for ages. I am shocked to see it claimed that other mechanisms would leave unexplained phenomena that "BFG" doesn't. Why the rings? Silence. Why the band? Silence. Why a more powerful secondary explosion at all? Silence. Where does material visibly disappear to? Silence. And now why the recurving/disappearing sparkles? Silence. So why stick with DET at all? DET just doesn't work. It is an assumption, and, as we have once again established here, not necessarily the logical one. (Even Seafort has acknowledged this by analogy, though he refuses to apply the logic to the Holy BFG Superlaser.) If taken as a hypothesis, DET clearly fails to match observations, isn't even based on much observing, rejects the facts of the universe in question, and yet it is rather amusingly claimed as the scientific high ground, with all who refuse to accept it are flamed as heretics. Sounds more like a religious belief to me.

I told you I'll be presenting it and I shall, when I'm good and ready to do so. I want to do it all at once, properly written up. If you have no patience, that's too bad. Perhaps, in the meantime, you, as a user of the ICS, would care to explain why a starship with mass manipulation technology would suddenly refuse to use it at sublight, thereby refusing to alter the required energy for all these accelerations you're so excited about. However, let's ponder one of those accelerations, just as an example, in the hopes of whetting your appetite for a bit. For instance, A New Hope is claimed to show a near-ground-to-orbit event during the Falcon's escape from Tatooine, featuring approximately 11 seconds from post-take-off engine output increase to a scene of the ship in orbit. It is even claimed that when Han is looking at his instruments after the atmosphere shot, that he's only "just now" getting to look at them and hadn't beforehand, a clear (and all-too-common) injection of the claimant's own personal narrative into the film. However, the canon itself shows no such thing. What it does show is a clear cut from atmospheric flight to orbital flight with no time in-between shown on screen, but which obviously exists. While the light angles between the set and the CGI are not wholly consistent . . . there's a shadow on set not present in the CGI, though this could be explained with a large artificial light source that turns off as the ship is taking off . . . here's what the Falcon cockpit lighting looks like while the ship is within DB94: Then the ship takes off and flies away with the orange morning sun to its port side: And the next scene is of Han at the controls, supposedly just now looking at his instruments: Sun to port? Yes. But clearly no longer any atmospheric filtering. Indeed, the coloring of the light looks most like: Well, let's see what Han looks like after the above shot, when we know he's in orbit. Huh. Lighting's exactly the same. Let's ask Chewie: Yup, he agrees. And oh by the way . . . . . . who's the guy in the hallway walking off? Looks an awful lot like Obi-Wan . . . but we saw him strap in "just now", didn't we? Huh . . . maybe not. So basically, unless we make up in our heads the notion that Han's is "just now" checking his instruments, what we end up with is Luke and company running to strap in after Han runs down the cockpit corridor, then the ship takes off, then we see Han in the cockpit lit as if in space and with Obi-Wan walking off from the cockpit. It's enough to make you think there was unseen time in-between the take-off shots and the on-orbit shots. How much? Well, take a guess, but be warned that your guess is not canon. All we know for sure is that there is more time than what is seen, and thus any 11-second-esque jump-cut-ignoring claim is false. But hey, let's be fair and confirm this with the script and novel, eh? That basically sounds like the film, except that we know Han didn't get good and strapped in until the ship was already headed skyward. And we have Artoo showing up for no apparent reason. Other than that, the ship is zooming from Tatooine into space, but Tatooine is clearly still visible. The novel plays it about the same, but says of the stormtroopers watching the Falcon going into the sky that it "shrank to a pinpoint before any of them thought to bring a weapon to bear." Well, since we know how long it took to not even become a pinpoint, that's a quote regarding the timing of Stormtrooper mental processes more than a statement on acceleration. So, no points from the script or novel support the flawed claims in any way. The devil's in the details. The most you could possibly do is claim instantaneous or near-instantaneous jump-to-orbit in the time between frames, with requisite acceleration and deceleration to match the slow travel shown. Of course, you'd also have to claim such instantaneous action for Obi-Wan Kenobi in this case. Sadly, history suggests that some might be tempted to claim such things, but I, fortunately, am not one of them, and I hope no one here is, either. Now, as I said, I have a lot more stuff sketched out based on the other claimed examples, and I'll get to it in my own good time, including your Republic ship moving at 99.999 percent lightspeed (which is completely absurd if you actually watch the scene), other ground-to-orbit nonsense, et cetera. For the purposes of this thread, however, I consider acceleration claims like the ANH one discussed above a complete non-starter in regards to vessel density.

I had already caught it, thanks though. I tried to change to radius but the sentence flow broke, so I changed to the moon.

Okeedokee, so here are the relevant supporting images and the tale. Basically I was looking at this cap . . . . . . and I drew the line showing that it is flat. It's like white-girl-booty-joke flat. It's like EKG-of-poop flat. There's nothing there, curve-wise. But, being thorough, I was looking at the others and noticed something. Take a look here: Basically, the horizon seems to expand upward . . . my best guess for an in-universe explanation would be . . . well, I don't have one. See, at first I was thinking maybe that the apparent horizon is just due to our being very near the Death Star's terminator, meaning the apparent curvature could be dark areas getting lit up. However, that idea is total crap. Not only does this shot clearly show light from the left leaving shadows to the right, but remarkably this light angling is actually pretty consistent with the scene of the Executor falling out of position. So, that can't be it. Alternatives include a blow-off of dust or just a mirage effect of hot gases clinging to the Death Star surface, though none of those are emotionally satisfying. So, anyway, I looked at one which showed a touch of curvature, and stuck another straight line on it like this . . . . . . so that was odd. You can see that there's more red over the horizon on the edges than in the middle. If you can't see it that way, here's a difference-based overlay in which you should be able to see the white- or light-colored skinny crescent on the horizon. So there's definitely some something there. Interestingly, it is also present right around the Executor when it crashes in the earlier frame. And, it seems to dissipate in an irregular fashion, as seen a few frames later: Here's the difference between that frame and the bright blast frame: And here's the difference between that frame and that earlier frame I first drew a line on of the Executor knifing the Death Star: I note all of this not to simply wow you with hugemongous pictures of pretty explosions (but c'mon, who doesn't love that?), but to make the point that whatever the devil this is, I don't think it is actual Death Star surface. Nevertheless, since the middle bright blast scene is the best one showing curvature, I decided to pretend that it actually is Death Star hull showing, and fiddle with it accordingly. Thus, we ended up with me doing stuff like this: and this: Suffice it to say, it takes a very large circle to match what little curvature there is. Here's the result of a 90,000 pixel circle. As you can see, it's fairly close, but to my eye there's more red over the middle than at the edges, implying a larger circle is needed. So, here's a 100,000 pixel circle. I think there's still room for improvement, but it's a closer match to my eye. So, that suggests a Death Star of at least 100,000 pixels compared to the Executor. The visible Executor is about 520 pixels in height in the knifing frame, so even if we assume 80 more pixels are hiding inside the Death Star (giving us a round 600 pixels), that's a Death Star some 100000/600 times larger than the Executor, or 166.67 times the size. If you buy the 17.6km nonsense, that's basically a 3000 kilometer Death Star . . . in which case, it's only somewhat smaller than the Moon. With 100 meter-ish towers on it, which may also be like 10 kilometers, but not visible from afar, or something. Galileo would be amused. I'm just gonna go ahead and discount this shot as having any utility at all, mmkay? EDIT: Forgot to note, for those who want to play at home. Using the GiMP, the circles are as follows: The 90,000px circle is at position -46730 by 364 with fixed aspect ratio. (The positioning is unfortunately based on a rectangle's upper left corner rather than the center of the circle like I would prefer, but whatever ... it's convert-able if one cares.) I recommend turning off anti-aliasing since otherwise things bog down on slower processors. The more satisfying 100000px circle is at position -51984 by 360, and naturally also fixed aspect ratio.

I'm away from my images at the moment, but to summarize, the Executor crash DS2 horizon is a straight line, at least until the explosion gets going at which point we can see some curvature (the horizon expands outward), though this partially dissipates by the time the mushroom cloud is at maximum, just looking generally splotchy. When the horizon is expanded at maximum extent, it is best matched by a 100,000px circle, give or take . . . the differences become somewhat negligible at that point, though 90000px doesn't look as good. Anyway, guesstimating a 600px Executor with her nose pointed in the station, then, we find that the Death Star would be 166.67 times the size of Executor. A 13.5km Executor would thus yield a Death Star of 2,250 kilometers. A 17.6km Executor would make a 2,933km Death Star . . . basically 3000 kilometers, but what's 67km between friends, right? This isn't exactly super-precise to begin with, but the point is made. Sooooo . . . yeah, you've picked the most egregious outlier by far upon which to plant your standard. Supporting pics soon.

Capped the relevant HD shots . . . Still can't actually see dudes, but the shuttle yardstick might work a bit better now. Also, found some problems with the Executor crash scene, and not just that it doesn't hold up well in HD. Suffice it to say the Executor is much too small. The surface of the Death Star has very little perspective to it . . . the forced perspective model I presume they used still provides visible towers even at Executor range. If that crash site was actually 30 or more kilometers away, then I'm pretty sure we ought to be able to see such details even in more distant shots because they'd be huge. Certainly when the fighters are skimming the surface we cannot see such towers. Since I mentioned the towers on my external page I'll give the pic of the towers first: They ought to be, what, 100 meters tall, ish? Look to the left of the flaming breach . . . you can see towers. If those are a yardstick, then the scene is broken. EDIT: Curvature discussion next message

He has a Holocaust-themed emoticon signature. I don't know about you, but that told me not to expect too much. I was tempted to leave when I realized that plus noted the Admin title under his name. In any case, as Obi-Wan might say, who's the more foolish? The fool who re-argues 15 year old debates, or the fool who is still reading them?

This mental exercise is, I think, a more worthwhile pursuit than becoming a drug-addled murderous whore-banger, thanks.

Okiedokie, here we go . . . I think I'm all caught up after this. First, let's just stop pretending there's any Saxtonian super-trench. Given the light angles, it would be casting a shadow on the top of the image here: As for the rest, I decided to be exceptionally thorough, here, since we were basically arguing over who had the most shots supporting them. Thus, it made sense to review all the scenes. So, I zipped through and took 95 screen captures of virtually every scene in which we see the DS2, which according to Brian is more than your stated half a dozen so I win, or something. But, since that's silly, let's actually review a few things. First, in all scenes featuring the Death Star and Endor together, we ought to see things looking a certain way. For instance, the Rebel hologram gives us a good view of the sort of relationship we should expect. Of course, that's not usually what we see. Here's an old image as an example showing what we basically ought to see for a 900km Death Star versus what we do see. This happens a lot. And it's worse since that red circle would be the view if the Death Star was actually on the horizon, rather than in front of the planet. Here's a zoomed-out view of the problem: Basically Endor is like 33.5 times bigger than the Death Star, still not accounting for the fact that the Death Star is far closer to the camera than the planet is. If Endor were Earth, the Death Star would top out at 380km, max . . . and, of course, smaller if you actually start accounting for the relative positions. There are scenes where it's a lot worse. The difference here is basically 100 times, assuming the Death Star is directly over the horizon. Except, as it turns out, it isn't. It's pretty close to the ships. Kinda like this one above. There are some other pertinent details, as well, which I had forgotten until I chanced upon a 2007 thread at StarfleetJedi.Net while looking for an Executor crash screencap in HD, merely because I was too lazy hit the big machine and make one. For instance, even your Executor crash stuff doesn't work. I was suspicious of you getting a workable curvature out of a flat table-top model, and with good reason, it seems: Yeah, he's working from a card, there, but I'll go out on a limb and say it won't get any better in HD. I'll check, though, because that's how I roll. Just not right now. Another detail is that when I came across this: . . . I was all like "Dude, we can scale the reactor off the X-Wing!" But Oragahn beat me to it by seven years or so. His result? A 9ish kilometer Death Star. The result's pretty solid, but even if he were an order of magnitude off, he'd still need to be off by yet another to get 900. http://www.starfleetjedi.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=449 Also in that thread, you'll see one more thing I'd forgotten I'd once discovered. As it turns out, that hyperspace exit shot you guys are so on about because it has the Death Star looking all huge against the planet? Yeah, that's crap. See, if you measure the Death Star and the planet throughout that scene, you'll find that Endor gets larger at a faster rate than the Death Star. In other words, the planet acts like it's closer than the Death Star, and not the other way around. Maybe that would be okay if Endor were mostly transparent, but it isn't. Or at least not last time I checked. So it's pretty obvious that's useless . . . the common thought is hyperspace exit distortion, and I really see no other explanation. Anyway, here's the link to the 95 screencaps. Some are multiple caps of different moments of the same scene, obviously. Additional notes are present there, as well as a tally of which side is supported by the caps . . . not to spoil it for you, but the winner, in a landslide, was me. http://st-v-sw.net/STSW-DS2scaling2.html All that fun having been had, there are a few scenes you might wanna follow up on in your pursuit to create an embiggened version of Star Wars. They are marked with question marks. And yeah, sorry for the jocularity of the post, but I had to entertain myself. This took a few minutes.

Okay, I think I'm all caught up except for the DS2 rant. Let me know if I missed anything. Maybe at some point I'll also bring back up a list of all the points of mine being skipped, too . . . but, as noted, I don't see this thread going on for much longer at the moment.

No, I'm afraid that is not the only logical way to explain it, though the note about time dilation was a nice touch in the recent video. My question was "do we have any other evidence for relativistic velocity from the sublight engines, i.e. not when making the jump into or out of hyperspace?" The reason is, we don't know the mechanics of hyperspace entry and exit. In the first episode of the Ryloth trilogy, for instance, starstreaks observed from within the ship precede any observable acceleration on the part of the ships in the following scene of the jump, which is fairly consistent with, say, the Falcon's first jump in ANH in which a longer take of starstreaks are followed by a scene of the Falcon rushing away. So, that sort of thing doesn't seem to be indicative of sublight-engine-based acceleration. Given that ships usually have a similar velocity on entry and exit, one would presume the same to be true on exit, as well. Why would that be needed? In low orbits, dependent on altitude, the distance to emerge from behind the limb of Endor and arrive at the battle is only like 2000-4000 kilometers. That's not some super magic circumnavigation of Endor. At 200 m/s^2 accelerating and decelerating from and to dead stop, 3000 kilometers will take about three minutes. So there the scene works and we haven't even boosted velocities or ship behavior generally with antigravs at all. Given that there was fair warning of the approach of the Rebels thanks to spies and such, the event could've been timed even better so that they were already on the move and ready to swing out from the limb by the time the Rebels arrived at the Death Star's doorstep, removing the need to actually accelerate and *then* decelerate per the figures above. So, that's not a great example of Star Wars acceleration, since it readily fits within the Falcon afterburner acceleration figures, not to mention other examples not involving ignored scene cuts. The utility of the Falcon example, as I hinted at on the page ages ago when it was written, is that it is an open space example not relating to antigrav technology, which as established is a boosting engine and not merely a gravity-nullification effect. For the record, as I have noted repeatedly, I happen to think that performance near a planet with antigravs should be superior to the reaction-drive engines. However, it certainly is not in the thousands of g, as I will go into in more detail soon. (Quite frankly, I'd ignored the claims of high acceleration in the past as mere inflationist tomfoolery, not recognizing its import to power generation claims because, previously, folks recognized that the hypermatter stuff represented mass-lightening. Only recently (from my perspective) has the mass-lightening been explicitly dropped.) Well, this presumes that they achieve relativistic velocities on a regular basis. Other than the obvious (and contradicted) hyperbole of "barely sublight" from a novel, and the whole bit about Han and the near-Anoat-to-Bespin trip of unknown distance and duration (hence the duration of TESB being unclear), I'm not aware of any occasions where high sublight speeds can even be argued to exist. Not at all. In what way? As it turns out, I do have a boo-boo on that page, so it needs a rewrite, stat. I find this funny, of course, given that despite all these years and all these attempts at takedown and misrepresentation of my work, it seems it always falls to me to be the one to find a basic boo-boo. But I digress . . . First, there are five displayed positions for the Death Star, not three, though only three are timed. Second, the 15 minute position is wrong . . . the unnamed one before it is marked as 15. Despite the boo-boo, the Rebel screen is still not positionally accurate. For instance, upon the Death Star's arrival we see a nice wide shot of it some distance from Yavin. The Imperials note that the moon is on the far side. It makes sense that the Imperials would know where the moon is, just from orbital mechanics and galactic record-keeping. However, it seems to me that the Rebels were unable to accurately determine the Death Star's position from behind the gas giant. So let's recap. 1. After R2 is plugged in, the Death Star arrives in Yavin space, with the Rebel moon on the far side of the planet which they are preparing to orbit. The world is at a good distance. 2. After the Dodonna briefing, the Death Star is very much closer to the supposedly-gassy world, and said to be orbiting the planet at maximum velocity, with the firing on the Rebel base 30 minutes away. 3. After assorted hangar scenes and fighter takeoff, Leia arrives at the command center and the Rebel 15 minute warning goes off, and the position of the Death Star on the Rebel display moves from directly opposite the planet to slightly less opposite by, say, 15-20 degrees, with no change in distance from the gas giant. That, of course, makes little sense . . . so much for positional accuracy. 4. The next scene is of the fighters approaching the Death Star transiting beside Yavin. There is a pretty obvious course change involved, given that if the fighters did not change course during the scene then the moon and Death Star already had line-of-sight. After that scene, I don't think we ever see Yavin again. Skipping forward a bit, after Porkins dies the Imperial screen is seen with 20 on the rapidly-spinning dial, and a voice intones that it is 7 minutes until firing position. As a Y-wing trench run is in progress, the Rebels have a five minute warning and the position of the Death Star changes slightly on the display from the last view to the one below. After the "Evacuate" conversation, the Imperial screen is seen again and three minutes is stated. After Red Leader is shot down, the Imperial screen is seen again and one minute is stated . . . the moon, per the screen, is now partially visible around the limb of Yavin. A bit later, though we don't see the screen, we get a 30 second note on the Death Star. After R2 takes fighter weapons to the face, the Death Star clears the planet. This involves a big jump on the Rebel display, and no such thing on the Imperial one. Put simply, the Imperial screen makes more sense in context. The Death Star executed an orbit of Yavin starting at a good distance and circling gently around the limb to get a shot at the moon. Even with the timer running funny on the Imperial screen, it still makes for a more sensical event. The Rebel screen has the Death Star executing a completely different orbital trajectory, and behaving in a much different manner. The Imperial screen looks like this: And here is what the Rebel screen would produce if it were done in the Imperial style: Even if my old page has errors (at least temporarily), the conclusion is still correct . . . the Rebel screen is crap for the purpose you're pressing it into.

Actually, if you watch the glowing-bit 'sparkles' as I mentioned already, you'll find that even ones shot out toward the up and right curve back left. Well, the ones that don't go all the way right and disappear altogether before leaving the frame, that is. Looks like I've got a few more tidbits to add to the old Superlaser Effect pages, after all, in addition to updating the screencaps. Oh, wait, I'm sorry, were you still trying to argue this was a bog-standard directed energy weapon? This is a very unique point of view. Evidently one cannot talk with you without talking about you? I, for one, had no idea that at this forum a discussion of ideas constituted a discussion of the man. Perhaps this explains some of Brian's egregiously-stated confusion about StarfleetJedi.Net. Then follow it logically . . . it wasn't a lucky shot or based on variable external factors, but perhaps controllable, repeatable, exploitable ones. Your second option regarding external sources can still be true with that in mind, you know. You're doing very well . . . . . . well, mostly, anyway.

I'll catch the DS2 rant where I am a terrible evildoer in a bit. I also am still one response behind regarding another message of yours. First, though . . . It appears that you may have some confusion with density. That said, let us first note that we never saw the water's surface after the ship exploded in "Water War", but from the way the ship exploded I really don't think any airtight sections existed. As for solid pieces of armor floating atop the water (being the part where your density confusion is most obvious), that is conceivable, but not especially likely. A copper penny (post-1982) has a density of just under 7000 kg/m^3. Pound it good and flat (a train works wonders here) and it will still sink like a coin. However, if you have a flattened penny and bend up the edges properly, it will float like a ship. The density of the penny has not changed, nor has its material undergone some sort of transformation. It is simply that the volume of water displaced by the penny now includes both the penny-hull and 'empty' air volume contained in the penny-hull space. Thus, the density of the penny-hull and the air together is now less than that of water. Now, let's apply this lesson to a ship. Let's say a Republic Attack Cruiser is made of hammered-together pennies. But, all that landing bay space and whatnot is air. So, the total density of the vehicle can be less than that of water. (Certainly the Death Star with its assorted gaping shafts and vast empty spaces also has an awful lot of air volume.) Bear in mind, however, that it may not be able to float. If the density is close to that of water and there are enough non-airtight spaces . . . engineering stuff, outer hull gaps, gunnery-related stuff, those broadside guns that use forcefields that could fail, et cetera, then the ship could quite readily take on enough water to start sinking, albeit probably slowly. More to the point, if you fill the ship with water, the ship's density as a whole will now be much more than water. It's the difference between trying to float an empty cola can versus a full one. Now, as I said, floating hull pieces are not likely. They are, however, not impossible . . . for instance, if you had a hull section that was of the proper shape to achieve buoyancy, or one that had a trapped air pocket or even a less dense material reducing the overall density or increasing the surface area of the part in just the right way, et cetera. But again, as we don't see the top of the water, we don't know what may or may not have been left behind. Surely some debris was likely to remain up there, but we didn't see it . . . I don't think we even saw any bodies or parts thereof, for instance. Not very fast. Did you even read the blog post where all that is calculated, and even alternative views are calculated? It seems you didn't. Don't worry . . . as noted, the thousands-of-g nonsense is coming up on my to-do list. Indeed, I'll be needing to go spend time with that fairly soon . . . it appears that this thread, though mostly enjoyable thus far, isn't resulting in any significant counterevidence regarding my original question.

You do realize that the glowing bits in the last cap are moving to the left from the right on top of that gas cloud from the last frame, right? I just don't see how the gas cloud overrides all other data, like big chunks. The center of gas mass is a lot less relevant than the center of mass, and not equal to it. Non sequitur. The superlaser was, logically, the cause of the change. Anything more than that is an assumption on par with Dirty Harry and The Exploding Badguy. When did I switch to talking about you specifically in that paragraph? See, you can do it. You've taken your first step into a larger world. Dirty Harry is the cause of the explosion, but not necessarily the source of the energy, in that he, at least potentially, caused a release of energy stored elsewhere, or a localization of available energy, or what-have-you. That is an assumption -- the reality depends on how the explosion was generated.

I was responding to Vince being perplexed that something with an overall density less than that of water could sink. I understand you missed that context as well as half my sentence, but suffice it to say that there was nothing wrong with my statement, thank you. As already observable from this thread I am happy to stand corrected and even admit my own error when it exists. However, the criteria is that it must exist. So, sorry to disappoint you in your points quest, there.

Yes, it will, if you don't cut my sentence in half and thus skip the part about filling with water, which you then handled separately.

Just a quick note for Vince, re: "How do you arrive at <1 ton per cubic meter? Why do ship debris sink so rapidly to the bottom of oceans is they are less dense than water?" I arrived at that from the opening link I gave. As for ship densities and sinking, I hope you are aware that a section of a modern ship will sink despite having less density than water just as is the case with the rest of the ship as a whole . . . if it is a section of the ship that is not airtight, it will fill with water then go down. If we're talking about a hull plate instead and there's no air or what-have-you allowing for buoyancy, it will drop like the steel that it is, albeit perhaps at a slow rate if it is not exactly the most hydrodynamic shape. Take the Titanic, for instance, whose forward section apparently went down in a unique "bouncy" manner with the nose pitching up and down, altering the speed as she went. In "Water War", we see hull plates and frame sections also going down . . . they do not go down any faster than the engines. More later.

And I have demonstrated that the planet was in the same place when the secondary blast began, a blast which began to the left and above-center albeit still within the planet's pre-beam area. That hardly seems to match the momentum viewpoint given that the beam struck above and to the right, unless the superlaser beam speaks billiards English. Even the second ring is only offset to the left by a smidgen . . . . . . which follows the whole aspect of planar effects being at the center of mass . . . . . . with consideration of the violence of Alderaan's primary blast. Moreover, the so-called debris field in the final frame hardly seems to contain the majority of debris . . . the large dark chunks which blast away and seemingly disappear, for instance, seem to come from the approximate location of the planet pre-beam. In other words, in which image do you think you see the most significant portion of the remnant mass? Some small portion of debris or a gas cloud or whatever it is being the focus of attention at the expense of the big dark chunks hardly seems a worthwhile argument, and certainly proves very little in regards to the Death Star's fuel density requirement. Yep, it has been there for years. I stand corrected. It has, however, been the subject of a lot more than a passing paragraph recently, becoming a centerpiece of inflationary Death Star arguments, as you yourself demonstrated earlier. However, I don't find it particularly relevant. Its relevance is only in the context of . . . and I hate to say it again, but it is what it is . . . a certain set of assumptions which I do not share. Put quite simply, the inflationist viewpoint on the Death Star is to take the yield of a single event based only on a small smattering of its details (ignoring all the rest, which I consider a big no-no), give that yield exclusively to the superlaser (effectively treating it like a laser despite evidence to the contrary, which I consider a big hot mess of assumption at the expense of canon), and then assign that value with a short time-average to the Death Star reactor (a la Dirty Harry's finger, which I consider to be a bad idea). I think a far more logical way of going about it is to gather all the information about the Death Star and its firing events first (plus obviously-related events such as DS explosions), and only then to start deciding what is or isn't going on based on a comparison of events and a reasonable synthesis of the evidence. I rather think the good Sherlock Holmes would prefer the latter technique to the former, especially if he's being confronted with (to him) quasi-magical technologies he knows little about. Or, in other words, ST-v-SW.Net and the Death Star Research Project. So no, I don't view the superlaser destruction of Alderaan as evidence of an ultra-massive Death Star or fuel for it, and as it seems we're not likely to get anywhere on that point at the moment, we'll simply have to agree to disagree that it is a useful example in that context. That rather depends . . . looks like the planet was in place and still relatively round until the secondary blast. After that, not so much. Well, you have at least conceptually acknowledged that the reactor (body) may not necessarily have had the energy itself via its fuel (food) to do the deed, but that instead it could have been a release of energy stored elsewhere (gunpowder). Now, let us also ponder an explosion that completely destroys the badguy Dirty Harry fired upon, going off like a multiton bomb. And we ponder this in the context of how we now know about muscle, fat, guns, gunpowder, and bullets, and densities thereof. Most would agree that continuing to insist that Dirty Harry was storing that explosive energy on or in his person and transmitting it via the bullet seems a rather noteworthy assumption, at the very least. In any case, it is fairly apparent that we are not going to agree on the Death Star topic. I prefer to take the canon for what it says and shows from the rings to the reactor, whereas your arguments are based on trying to override the canon using what you believe to be scientific assumptions (though this is debatable, to put it mildly), thereby modifying Star Wars. Thus, I am talking about Star Wars and you are talking about something else, so we aren't really talking about the same thing. But still, thanks again for the merry go-round.

I think there are a couple of inconsistently-scaled DS2 shots, yes. The better shots, including scaling against people rather than ships which themselves are of unclear size, point lower.

The planet's still in the same place when the secondary blast occurs. This recent claim of Alderaan being blown back is incorrect, and, I would think, physically unlikely. What's the claim, that it was knocked back at a million g or something? I think it seriously unlikely that a planet would hold any shape at all even if you were very careful with your million-g acceleration effort. The yield of the event is based on hard physics. The energy requirements you argue inasmuch as what the Death Star provided and what its reactor generated are based on assumptions. If I watch a Dirty Harry movie, I can calculate that, to blow a hole in the badguy of such-and-such size, a projectile of a certain energy and certain characteristics was used. However, if I have no understanding of gunpowder or clockwork-style mechanics, I may end up making assumptions that require Dirty Harry's trigger finger to be capable of twitching at that energy level in order to throw the projectile using the trigger as a simple lever. Naturally, I would be mistaken. Similarly, if most all other direct evidence -- such as observing sinking parts, reading direct statements of vessel and fuel mass, pondering the materials from which the vessels are constructed, noting that ships are built with weight-saving measures -- points toward normal densities for fuel and vessels, the notion of a superdense Death Star . . . drawn as a conclusion from assumptions . . . suggests that the assumptions that led you to that conclusion are wrong.

I prefer http://st-v-sw.net/STSWdeathstarsizes.html