DSG2k

Ooh, I like this editor. It allowed for perfectly good copy and paste without a lot of manual modification. Nice. But, rather than copy and paste the long posts, I'll simply summarize below. Anyway, given that there is not a great deal of overlap between communities currently, and given that ASVS is a bit slow at the moment, I thought it might be worthwhile to post this here for additional feedback. To summarize, "Water War"[TCW4] points toward vessel engine densities in the 500-1000 kg/m^3 range, and the newly-canon TCW novelization points to vessel and fuel densities that are far less still in the case of the Twilight. Even if we presume the Twilight's design was not known by Traviss owing to the greater lead time required for novelization-work versus production-work (and thus that the specifics as applied to the Twilight might not be valid), there is still the point that the fuel itself is not especially weighty. Put simply, then, I see no obvious way to maintain the claim of super-dense ships. The X-Wing suddenly sinking in muck on Dagobah certainly doesn't point to super-dense fightercraft. The X-Wing sinks all of the sudden . . . it sat on the ground beneath the not-terribly-deep water from the time of unsoft-landing until the middle of the stone-stacking exercise. Then R2 freaks because all of the sudden the thing is almost submerged. Presumably the ground beneath both it and the water gave way somehow, since not only did it sink all of the sudden but also turn by about 30 degrees, as well, given the apparent orientation of the guns versus the ship's prior orientation (with the big tree nearby as a guide). Perhaps the thing that tried to eat R2 had an underwater lair that collapsed? Who knows. But in any case, I'd say that's more a test of the ground pressure of the lake bottom. So do we have any canon evidence of massive ships that I'm missing? There's the crash of the Trade Federation core ship in AotC . . . assuming a 700m sphere that vessel's volume is 179,600,000 cubic meters, suggesting a probable mass of 90 million tonnes or less. I haven't worked the scene to get crash speed and whatnot, but I don't get the sense that it was hypervelocity. At 200 meters per second, for instance, the kinetic energy would work out to less than half a megaton, which doesn't seem too off from the scene as I remember it (and bearing in mind that not all of an impact like that would be in the form of air blast, owing to the comparatively low impact velocity, the fact that it was a strike on the deformable ground by a deformable ship, et cetera). What else is left?

Just to bookend this old conversation, here is what I said in 2010: "If one wants a specific estimate, I'd guess a density of 750kg/m³ and an ISD mass of 40,000,000 tonnes.". That's currently the #1 Google result for "star destroyer mass". Here is a recent Star Wars Marvel comic in the new canon: So, it seems both the Lucas canon and the Disney canon are in agreement. And, given wildly destructive low-velocity rammings and kyber crystal superlaser effects, the Disney canon actually seems to further agree with me . . . which is not a gloat at all, just a note of irony since I don't use it.

+1 to NX-01… the "what does God need with a starship?" line redeems several other minutes of wasted celluloid and visible cellulite in Star Trek V. The fact that it is still shown, as Seafort notes, is also potential proof that it is not as bad as the Holiday Special. ST5 might kill a few brain cells per person, and in aggregate may have been seen by almost as many people even 26 years later, but it is a 9mm to the SWHS's 2-gauge.

Uhura can actually sing, so SW wins easily.

4 5 6

Re: Lower limit We can stretch "similar" in regards to Earth to try to bring it down, but that's about it (other than those faked values obtained via discarding evidence). Re: artificial gravity That would bring up the question of how they established the mass via scans in the first place. To establish mass, you would generally either estimate based on volume and density or else you would look at the gravitational relationships. The crew apparently didn't know what the planet was made of until Sulu completed his analysis, so they couldn't have been estimating based on that. Thus, the mass was most likely estimated from the gravity (having an orbiting ship makes this easy). So if it walks like a duck and you don't know it doesn't have feathers, why say it ain't a duck? The only alternative is that there is some subspace mass-registering whatzit. But then having way less gravity showing (e.g. when their orbit was all wrong) would've been a notable discontinuity, and they wouldn't have been wondering if the place was constructed. Grav plating would tend to give that away. ;-)

A correction about diburnium-osmium ... that was from "That Which Survives" and the Catwoman planet (which probably orbits the Riddler sun, and has an average planetary density of 275,000 kg/m^3, it seems). The Kelvans used something similar to diburnium but considerably *more* dense. http://weblog.st-v-sw.net/2015/02/that-which-is-diburnium.html Suffice it to say, based on diburnium it takes significant density to be phaser-proof due only to density.

Not nothing, but there are definitely other considerations. Again, the prior version had an open-air cockpit without even a windshield for branch deflection. So I imagine it is better than clone armor but when you get right down to it, we have no clue how blaster-resistant it is supposed to be. I am not aware of seeing one hit other than by Chewie's shot using AT-ST guns that blew one up. "Decisively" is a topic for another time, but even stipulating to that for the moment, it is funny you bring it up. See, my thought about Tyralak's suggestion that phasers would be expected to fracture rock ... besides that I had already pointed out that it can either fracture or cleanly vaporize ... was that his statement applied best to blasters. Being packets of radioactive particles with limited penetration commonly displayed, blaster hits that damage rock would presumably be doing so (to borrow from Tyr) by adversely affecting water content, air pockets, 'impurities', and such. However, we were all studiously avoiding blasters in favor of focusing on phasers, so I take your change of subject as an indication that the phaser points stand. Indeed. Safe to say that wasn't mere steel, either.

Hyperdense mashed potatoes in that pot, eh? I think not. Off the top of my head the references to density affecting phasers are Kirk on the Catwoman asteroid saying that the fact his phaser wouldn't dig out a tomb for d'Amato is because it looked like rock but was "infinitely denser", as well as Spock speculating that the Kelvan diburnium-osmium alloy jail bars were too dense for even their phasers to cut through. So yes, extreme density is a thing, the key word being "extreme". Is the toranium inlaid on some DS9 doors extremely dense? I wouldn't think so ... like duridium barrels, some things are just inherently resistant to the tech in use. For a very rough modern analogy, some of the latest electronic gizmos are much more fragile than older electronics ... a minor EM pulse or static event can kill them whereas an older object wouldn't notice. A minor bit of overpressure can knock out a hard drive temporarily whereas an older system based purely on integrated circuits wouldn't be affected, et cetera. Or for a better analogy, who would've ever thought that a mirror and heavy clothing would be useful against the latest military gear? Well, when you are being fired upon by dazzlers and those freaky skin-heating beam things, they are. Phasers, however, are seen to be effective against most any common target. Yes, the phasers can be tuned for certain things, e.g. killing carbon-based life versus silicon-based. But even in that same episode, the Horta was a hard target and yet Kirk was pondering using their phasers to dig their own tunnels in the rock to out-maneuver the fast-tunneling creature, so there was more to it than just silicon being troublesome ... 90% of Earth's crust is composed of silicates, after all, and we have no specific indication of that world being off-the-wall in that regard. As for the volume of noranium vaporized, I agree it was not an extreme amount. That was not the point. That they could heat a pile of it so that some of it was at temperatures higher that steel's melting point using a low phaser setting was the point. They were at less than half the maximum. So the point here, still, is that the suggestion that common metal will resist phasers is on untenable ground. I am not saying they could make a feet-thick steel wall blow up like the Insurrection limestone, but that is not required. We're talking about penetrating three inches of steel. There is simply no plausible argument yet presented that would suggest this is going to be more phaser resistant than several feet of rock. Given that the AT-ST probably features steel in its thin-walled cab construction (which still represented a major improvement over the prior generation's *open cab*), I would wager that the Sherman tank's three inch armor should be a fair guide, if not actually generous.

What are you even trying to refer to? I showed the solid rock from Insurrection. Worf's shot was against a "crack" in the igneous rock. Sisko's shot was against "a wall of stone". Do you wish to have me take you seriously? Source, please. But in any case, almost half a meter at 10km versus four meters at unspecified range is a difference of eight times, and we haven't even touched on how many sgells were fired. Comparing a crapload of inches to a handful of meters is hardly an honest-minded response in the context of three inches of steel versus feet of rock. You presume a contradiction where none need exist. Clean vaporization and explosive shots have both been observed. Does it not follow that Worf's shot is the former, whereas the latter would be more ... explosive? Finally, you clearly have no argument against Merik. He was washed out for a split-second of indecision in a psycho-simulator test. His knowledge of the tech of his own era is not in doubt. You are basically a 17th Century naval aficionado making sweeping declarations about modern aircraft carrier small arms in contradiction to an able sea captain who got booted from Annapolis for political-correctness-grade reasons. I know who I trust, and it ain't you.

That is an interesting theory. See, I have seen an 18-wheeler go to 17 at close range while in motion, and have seen dozens of lost treads and the remains of a handful or two of other blowouts. I have never seen a tractor-trailer lose it due to a blowout ... they have another wheel and tire *right there*. Even though this semi-trailer did not have tandem axles, the yield of tge blowout would have had to be remarkable to behave as you suggest. While I appreciate your artful dodge efforts, the simple fact is that in the context of killing a Sherman tank you asked if packing crates and mudflaps were tougher than the tank, which means you were suggesting that phasers were unable to deal with such targets. If you were claiming a particular bullet could penetrate a car engine and someone who actively tries to disagree with you all the time said "is an engine tougher than a ceramic plate? Or a few inches of ballistic gelatin? Yes or no?" ... well, it hardly follows that you are agreeing, and such questions make no sense unless you are suggesting those things can stop the bullet. Now maybe it was 1:30AM for you, and based on a similar thread at DITL from 2008 I would assume you didn't mean to put it that way (though at the time you also claimed Worf's shot took out 3-4 cubic meters so frankly there's no telling), but it is the *meaning* of what you said despite any later backpedaling, so don't go calling me a liar just because of another of your own errors. More later.

1. Please demonstrate that the referenced rock-eating events feature loose piles. 2. Inches of steel are not going to be more resistant than feet of rock. Already addressed. I read it as a clean, non-explosive vaporization of about two cubic meters of granite. They were trying to be stealthy, you know ... making Insurrection-style blasts would not have furthered that goal. His advisor Merik knew more than you or I. Perhaps you hve some evidence showing why we should disregard his statements?

Paris, 20th Century aficionado, tries the "shoot out the tire" sort of trick, and we see him hit the outer bolt holding on the mudflap before sparks and smoke obscure the scene. He is successful. The shot causes the vehicle to lose control briefly ... it had been traveling in a straight line but then is seen run off the road to its left and then engaged in an apparent rightward recovery maneuver with brakes on (intentionally or otherwise). Paris believes he has slowed/disabled the semi-trailer, turning his attention away from it. However, the vehicle is next seen in motion from the front, which is all we see until the tractor truck is destroyed. Even then, all we see is the trailer from the opposite side. The most likely outcome from Paris's shot is that the tire tread was blown out with sidewall remaining somewhat intact, and the rim heated to such a degree that the trailer brakes activated or the rim just locked on the axle at that point. Your claim that the vehicle was undamaged or specifically that the mudflap was undamaged is going to require proof, and after reviewing the scene I can tell you that you don't have it.

Steel would be a trick to show given the rare appearances. They didn't have a phaser when breaking out of the Nazi prison or the Roman cell with "fine carbon steel" bars. Of course we see them gently vaporize the junk metal noranium via thermal means at a mere setting 7 of 16 ... noranium's vaporization temp is less than that of steel, but the temp is far greater than the melting point of steel. And of course phasers eat rock like candy, the blasting of several cubic meters of rock in Insurrection being a nice example. Even a 2260's Type I style phaser was capable of dynamite-like effects. Riker, in "Frame of Mind"[TNG6], suggests that setting his phaser to level 16 on a wide field should be sufficient to destroy half of the building he is occupying. Though we don't know the exact size of the structure, we know based on the multiple wards and corridors that the building is quite substantial. It seemed to be a metallic-walled structure. And let's not forget that the Roman Proconsul believed phaser pistols would be sufficient to defeat the armies of a 20th Century Rome. Rome was hardly the type to eschew large destruction machines. So why would you think an old tank with a mere three inches of inert metal cladding would be sufficient?

Is *that* what he was talking about? I wasn't gonna use shuttle or 29th Century phasers. In any event, duridium barrels were sufficient against Jem'Hadar polaron beams. That material is also known to have been used in high-quality darts (we commonly use common metals like steel today but titanium and tungsten darts are available as high-end items), and is presumably not easily replicated given the shipment of ore the Norkova once carried. We never hear of iron ore being hauled about. Rocks and barrels were also used as cover against stun beams in "Too Short A Season"[TNG1], though we never saw Tasha try anything more than aim to defeat them. Meanwhile, large chunks of solid rock can be blown away or cleanly vaporized. Temperatures of thousand of degrees can be generated in rock and metal with low-level shots. But all of the sudden, Shermans are phaser-proof? I think not. But please, do show me the simple packing crates you have in mind, and be prepared to explain the more numerous examples of this from TCW. Also, to quote myself: 2. The "Packing Crate" TheorySome claim that phasers are weak and useless based on the fact that cargo containers have been used for cover in combat. They argue that since these "packing crates" are not penetrated by phaser fire, then phasers can't penetrate anything. The mental image they want you to have is of someone diving behind a wooden crate which then holds off phaser fire indefinitely, which is of course invalid. While it's true that we've seen people dive for cover behind cargo containers, the logic behind the claim itself is flawed. The claim itself makes no distinction in regards to what is being used for cover, and not just any container will do. "Who Mourns for Morn?"[DS9-6] shows us a perfect example of that. When a latinum exchange goes bad, Quark dives into the container that held the numerous bars of gold-pressed latinum loose inside. Though one might expect this container to be sufficiently tough to survive shifting bars of latinum slamming against the side, it was nevertheless ineffective for Quark's purpose, which he discovered to his chagrin when raybeams zipped back and forth right through it. On the flip side of the coin, we have "Blaze of Glory"[DS9-5]. Sisko and Eddington are surprised at the Maquis version of the Alamo by two Jem'Hadar soldiers. Taking cover behind barrels, Sisko comments that "these barrels are made of duridium. That should hold them off for awhile." By analogy, the difference would be like taking cover in a modern gunfight behind a plywood sheet versus taking cover behind a thick-walled steel drum. The objector would have us believe that the modern gunfighters, because they are taking cover behind something, must be taking cover behind the plywood sheet, and that therefore bullets are useless. That claim is absurd.

Do you not think a phaser can kill a tank? Say, an old Sherman? If you think it could, what evidence do you have that an AT-ST would be more difficult?

Off-topic, but yes* and yes. (* There are caveats, mostly related to rather dated material, but the overall view is still sound.)

When I had only seen the first three, I was also not keen on the phaser-esque vaporization idea. A guy disappears off a speeder but that could've been an issue of modeling a fall, or putting sufficient smoke in to cover his fall, et cetera. However, after seeing the fourth one, where a battle droid is standing beside Grievous, is hit by the beam, and then becomes partially transparent with a green embossing effect before disappearing completely, his gun then dropping unaffected to the floor, and Grievous standing there with no ill effect . . . well, put simply, I don't see how it could have been understood any other way. All those things, even in pre-vis form, required effort. Had he simply not been there anymore like someone hitting a delete key, then the argument would have no legs. As for the canonicity of the episode, even though it is ostensibly an unfinished episode and so one ought to give more than a little leeway to the visuals . . . e.g. Anakin does not have a hollow neck, shadows still exist in Star Wars, et cetera . . . I think the general idea can be derived from it (which is the whole point of this prototype version anyway), and it is a released story in the new canon per the related introductory video.

Just looks like structure in the center to me. Considering how much of our horizon view is blocked, how close we are to said horizon, and so on, I wouldn't go too far with that. Besides which, out-of-universe, it seems unlikely they'd build a flat bit for the distant shot then be all like "dude, where's my curvature?" for the close-in stuff.

Since the Death Star yield was used as evidence of density, it is pertinent to note that the new TCW story reels recently released demonstrate that the weapon yield was tremendously amplified via the use of kyber crystal(s), which are themselves not especially dense. Literally, minimal input produces tremendous output. It violates all sorts of stuff, but there it is in the canon. It even seems to vaporize people like a phaser, and shows the planar effects we've come to expect. "Out of the stories of old, this crystal comes. Long ago in forgotten times when the Sith and Jedi fought for control of the galaxy. Weapons, there were of unimaginable power. Always at their heart, a Kyber Crystal was just like the one you described." - Yoda More on the kyber crystal's effect is found in this thread at StarfleetJedi.Net . . . especially look for Lucky's post with extensive quotes. Basically, as I state there, "short of an Adult Swim scene of Palpatine cursing into the phone about the delay this was gonna cause to the Deathticle (not to mix my metaphor there), it couldn't have been more clear." "And just to make sure the point is clear, even if you are feeling charitable and grant your local inflationist's claim that the Death Star was a DET weapon, said inflationist still cannot have a reactor that generates energy commensurate with the yield, because of this crystal power amplification whatzit." That's the final nail in the coffin of inflationist claims related to the Death Star, fellas. I proved long ago that it was not DET . . . I theorized it was a Superlaser Effect related to some sort of hyperspace energy tap. Now, we have a crystal as the medium for that (assuming the energy comes from hyperspace and not just thin air). Without DET, you cannot make a claim about the reactor energy which you then scale down to ships. Without DET, you have no recoil argument, nor any clear indication of the amount or velocity of debris that are claimed to have hit the Death Star offscreen (over and above the odd debris trajectories and effects noted in this thread), and thus no shield argument. The only other thing left that I can think of is the claim of Death Star acceleration at Yavin, but so far as I recall there are no actual solid numbers for that. Put simply, even moreso than before, inflationists have nothing to work with here . . . even if some other desperate argument is available, the preponderance of evidence is clear. The Death Star is a fusion-powered battlestation capable, thanks to one or more massive kyber crystals, of destroying a planet. That is all. It does not equate to megaton blasters or any other scale-down effort. The Death Stars will forever own the versus debates because of what they can do and the massive industrial capacity they represent, but even if inflationist claims could be taken seriously before "The Big Bang", they cannot after.

Right, soooooo . . . I have no patience either. Pardon me for half-assing it a bit, but here are the facts about the "Jedi Crash". To summarize, unless we just up and pretend things about what we see to try to shoehorn what we believe into the canon, then it doesn't follow the inflationist line at all. Cross-posted from http://dsg2k.blogspot.com/2014/08/jedi-crash-and-space-ecqos.html ====================== Jedi Crash and Space ECQOs So I've been seeing some really strange claims about "Jedi Crash"[TCW1] lately. Basically, a Republic Frigate crashes on a planet, hence the episode title. To get to that point, however, the ship seemingly hyperdrivesalmost into a star then comes out of hyperspace, whips around it, and only then meets the planet. The strange claims are numerous, but let's deal with a few parts first. Claim 1. The ship was traveling at relativistic speeds between the star and the planet. This claim is based on the fact that there is one continuous shot from the ship coming from behind the sun to the ship and planet being visible in the same frame. Thus, it is argued, the ship must've traveled from the vicinity of the sun to the habitable zone of the solar system in the time of that scene. Of course, since the scene is only four seconds in length, and in the case of our solar system the habitable zone is around eight light-minutes away, some bright spark got the idea to claim relativistic velocities so as to enable this time compression. Thus, the trip "really did" take eight and a half minutes (assuming an Earth-like solar system), but it only seemed like four seconds to the people in the ship. How fast would that be? Well, the time for light to reach Earth from the Sun averages about 8 minutes and 20 seconds, or 500 seconds. But if 500 seconds seems like only 4 seconds to the people on the ship, then they must be moving at a rate sufficient to cause time's rate of passage to alter by 125 times or so. Doing the math, that works out to about 0.999968c for an average velocity. So, this is all very clever. However, it is also insane. I can say that because the ship was seen to crash with an impact velocity measurable in the dozens or low hundreds of meters per second range. So we would have to presume one of the following: 1. The ship was at 0.999968c or thereabouts until hitting the planet's atmosphere. This doesn't work out too well, since even if we assume that somehow the atmosphere was thick enough to stop the ship in the required amount of time, it would still involve a huge amount of kinetic energy being dumped into it. A Republic frigate is basically an upgunned Republic space cruiser, so we can guesstimate a mass somewhere in the 10,000 to 20,000 tonne range. Even ignoring relativistic considerations, the kinetic energy of the ship moving at even .75c would be a minimum of 60 teratons. (That's 10,000,000 kilograms at 224,844,343.5 meters per second, resulting in about 2.53E23J.) Even if we treated it like a meteor and recognized that this 60 teratons would be spread out along the entire flight path (over, say, 30 kilometers of worthwhile atmosphere), that would still be about two teratons per linear kilometer, which just doesn't fly. A teraton is a million frickin' megatons, and two teratons per linear kilometer would be the equivalent of 125,000,000 Hiroshimas per kilometer. Instead, what we actually see is undisturbed clouds and atmosphere along the ship's path, a path highlighted, not by nuclear effects, but by a boring smoke trail left behind as the damaged ship passes. 2. The ship was decelerating for the entire voyage from the star and only just barely failed to stop. You're moving at almost lightspeed and decelerate to almost zero, but you can't stop? Really? And you can't even do anything to avoid hitting the planet? Really? No, sorry. And don't forget here that trajectories in a gravitational field are usually curved . . . if you've ever played a game involving orbital trajectories (or even a decent artillery game) you know that the speed can determine the final placement as much as the direction can. All you'd have to do to avoid the planet is quit decelerating before you're on top of it. So basically, that whole idea is broken on its very face. We must literally assume an intentional crash, which hardly makes sense in context. It is completely ludicrous to suggest that the crash was necessary or prudent if they had the capacity to avoid it. Ergo, they couldn't avoid it, ergo they could not accelerate or decelerate to prevent it, ergo they did not accelerate to a hair away from light-speed for two seconds then slow down only enough to gently crash, because if they could do that then they could have just stopped, or even hovered, et cetera. But wait! It gets worse. First, once the planet comes into frame, it is many thousands of kilometers away, and unlike a planet being approached at a significant fraction of lightspeed (what, you thought that was just random?) it gives the appearance of being stationary, with no closing speed evident. So, any near-lightspeed velocity must've been confined to the three seconds prior to that. Oh, well, except we can also see the sun for a few frames, and it isn't receding at near-lightspeed either. Oops. Of course, there are almost exactly three seconds of time in which the sun is not visible and the planet has not yet come into frame. One could argue that the ship accelerated and then decelerated, but then there's that whole crash thing again. Oops. So how fast was the ship really going? Well, there are different ways of estimating it. One technique might be to simply check the planet's rate of apparent size change in a scene about five seconds after the planet initially comes into view . . . Ahsoka notes they're going to crash into the planet, at which point we see the planet looming in the window. The shot lasts about three seconds. As with the approach at lightspeed above, I chose to roughly model this in Celestia. Of course, all the same caveats apply, but even moreso since we're trying to match an existing scene. Unfortunately, after many hours spent driving around in Celestia approaching Earth with the window at half-transparency and the real second or two scene from Jedi Crash looping in the background, I was forced to give up. It's tough to do, not simply because the camera is shaking or because Celestia is somewhat ill-suited to this particular task, what with not having the finest control of speed or direction. It's tough because, although I can match the curvature change to some extent, I cannot simultaneously match the motion of the cloud formation on the left which suggests a low range. Even when I switched to Mars I couldn't get a satisfactory result. I finally concluded that the shot is obviously zoomed compared to prior shots of folks in the cockpit, or otherwise has issues. The only alternative is that the planet itself is tiny. This means that at best I can only guesstimate based on a range of possible matches . . . and this refers to much more than the usual guesstimation level. Suffice it to say that if the planet is Earth-sized then the vessel was probably a few thousand kilometers away from the planet and traveling at dozens of kilometers per second. (The ship crashed 14 seconds after the end of the scene, but we know there's missing time. Why? Because we go from the bridge shot of the looming planet immediately to a shot of the ship completely engulfed in re-entry flames, and from there to a shot of the bridge showing re-entry plasma in the window. Of course, in the Brian Young universe where a ship taking off and then being seen in space equals INSTANT UBER-ACCELERATION, the concept of missing time might be debated, but whatever.) But, this gives us at least an extremely rough guide, and tells us that either (a) the ship passes next to a star then suddenly accelerates to near-lightspeed for no good reason and then decelerates from it in time to crash rather gingerly into a planet ('gingerly' being compared to crashing at near-lightspeed, anyway), or ( the star and planet aren't very far apart at all. If the ship had the capacity to accelerate in such a fashion, striking the planet wouldn't have occurred. The merest touch of the proverbial accelerator pedal and an attitude control thruster would've allowed them to peel away from the planet fairly readily. Thus, it seems clear to me that the planet and its stellar neighbor weren't very far apart. And, given that this would be remarkably unhealthy in most cases, we would have to posit that the star itself was exceptionally dim or otherwise non-Sol-like. The only alternative is that we ignore the shot of the sun with the ship emerging from behind it. But that brings us to another claim. Claim 2. The Republic Frigate survived a solar corona transit, proving remarkable durability Following on from the above, the so-called star was not very Sol-like. As it happens, this is fairly easily demonstrable. How so? Well, the star here is presented as absurdly tiny. Unlike our own sun which is approximately 1.4 million kilometers across, meaning that a 115 meter ship sitting near it wouldn't even show up at the craziest of zoom levels, this so-called star is sufficiently tiny that it is only about 60 times larger than the Republic Frigate that goes behind it. In other words, the entire star is only a handful of kilometers across, something like seven kilometers wide. We can safely call it less than ten. This is readily provable via another tack, as well. Note that the cockpit invariably gets pretty hard shadows on it. Indeed, there's even a whole scene seemingly dedicated to showing the hard shadows circling around the control panel as the lights on it came on and Ahsoka could finally act. When she does, the scene shows her from the cockpit floor showing the hard shadows circling around her, as well, until the light source is behind them. Hard shadows simply would not be the case if you were close to a real sun, because you'd be receiving light from almost 180 degrees of the sky all around you, rather than a distant point source. Clearly, this makes little sense from any realism-oriented standpoint. Either it was a full-size star which the ship did not come very close to (which requires that we ignore the scene of the ship emerging from behind it completely, as well as assuming that the scales here in the going-behind-it shot are simply wrong or gravitationally-lensed or something), or else it was a tiny star. Unfortunately, the precedent here is in favor of a tiny star-like object. Recall, if you will, the mysterious Abregado Object, a very small red-glowing sphere surrounded by a low-pressure atmosphere. Its tiny size was demonstrable by the debris field and other details. This object is definitely brighter and perhaps even smaller, but fits the same narrative, however odd it might seem. Now, we obviously have no precedent for this sort of thing in real life. Certainly a nuclear-fusion star could not exist at such a tiny size without outside influence . . . without several hundred thousand more kilometers of gas to produce pressure on the interior due to gravity, there's no reason for such a small gasball to have fusion afoot, and a burning ball of tibanna or somesuch hardly makes sense. Nevertheless, this is the situation we're left with, so other than a tiny black hole that captured a rogue planet or somesuch, I don't have a lot of educated guesses at the moment. Perhaps there's some other class of compact luminous objects which, if close enough to a planet, can sustain life on it. As for me, flying close to a ten-kilometer-or-less quasi-stellar object is a bad idea no matter whose ship you're riding on, but certainly we can't claim miraculous resilience from such a peculiar event . . . indeed, we can't claim much of anything. Given that the ship came partially apart on re-entry a short time later and featured breaking glass or transparisteel upon contact with the ground in a relatively low-velocity impact (compared to lightspeed or other similarly high velocities, anyway), the claim of super-resilience was an odd one to start with. Those who prefer to ignore the canon in favor of cherry-picked elements of it and mix those with claims of rigorous science will no doubt have issues with the conclusions here, but the first step in any scientific investigation is to observe the universe. Peculiar as it may seem to our thinking, we must acknowledge that what we observe is an extremely compact quasi-stellar object (an ECQO, if you will) very close to a habitable planet. To claim otherwise is to suggest that all our powers of observation of the universe in question are suspect, at which point we might as well just start making things up anyway, as our inflationist friends do. Claim 3. The Republic Frigate showed great resilience in surviving the crash mostly intact. Since I was the first to make this claim, I naturally agree . . . it did much better than we might commonly expect. The structure failed in the engine area and there were assorted broken hull parts and broken transparisteel, but the ship didn't completely break apart on impact, which is quite remarkable. Smart inflationists would focus on this rather than trying to create hypervelocity events.

Let's just say your earlier excess of diplomacy had me concerned. When has anyone involved in this sort of thing done accurate calculations? I jest there to some extent, but usually even if it is crystallized unicorn farts (nice) our sort of nerd just says "if it was iron, at such and such thickness, it would take X joules to penetrate as seen". You're preaching to the choir. Recall that I rather clearly never subscribed to the neutronium (or part-neutronium) hull theory of the inflationists. It would, after all, hardly make sense for me to be all Mr. Fusion and Steel while also being Mr. Dude ISDs Are Totally Made Of That Crap The SunCrusher Was Made Of. Good eye.

That's a bit of a subject-change deflection, but we'll roll with it. At least there was no attempt to defend the fallacy itself. I don't claim to know the composition of an ISD's superstructure, hull, or armor. Indeed, the perilously low ship counts indicated by Dodonna's quote (at least including the novelization reference which Brian totally skips over when discussing it) might make more sense if we presume that the Death Star was constructed as simply as possible whereas the fleet was made of greater materials which required more lead time or resource acquisition or what-have-you. It's one thing to make a steel warship, but quite another to make a carbon fiber boat. But, that's purely conjectural. That said, steel would not be terribly inconsistent with the way in which Grievous's claw dug into the Invisible Hand's hull, or the way the ISD bridge tower was obliterated by an asteroid, et cetera, but you could say the same about any number of materials. However, I'm more interested in demonstrated capability than assigning names. If a name's assigned in canon then we have to roll with (e.g. fusion), but other than that the Rumplestiltskin game is only useful for pondering purposes and conjecture. It's not a good idea to assign a name to something in your own head and then try to limit the canon from that. This is certainly true in regards to the Holy Grate. In that instance, an event which no one would reasonably assume to be related to iron or steel is assigned that designation, requiring all manner of ad hoc rationalizations (e.g. "all the vapor of metal expanding hundreds of times in volume was sucked down the chute, leaving only a puff of smoke giving no indication of that wind-tunnel velocity") to try to keep afloat. It's silly. If you're bent on Rumplestiltskinning it, I'd just as soon call it hydrofoamed permacrete. Certainly the behavior would be more consistent. Have you ever seen red- or recolored-back-to-the-pre-SE-version-white-hot metal cool in 1/24th of a second? (Of course, that's where it would be helpful to abandon the whole yarn where anything that has a red or magenta coloration to it due to red light falling upon it is suddenly red-hot, but that's another story.) Besdes, we wouldn't bother making a real-life detention-block garbage chute grate out of wrist-thick bars of iron or steel, and we certainly wouldn't do so if our shipbuilding technology featured techniques like hydrofoaming (and poorly-framing) wall material to save weight. But in any case, as I said, "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." The points above only scratch that surface.

Hence my reference to armor in the mix, right after blue milk. That sequence was supposed to obviate the fallacy of distribution (division, specifically, but really the composition one's page is far more descriptive, if you merely invert the points) wherein my rule of thumb generalization based on many parts was claimed as proof of a separate and unequal specific. By Brian's reasoning, the Star Destroyer's an ironclad, for all intents and purposes. If I wanted to play tit for tat, I'd attribute the point to Brian, noting that he just made that argument without realizing it.

Here's more demonstration of both the fallacy and the rationale for my take on the video compared to the diplomatic version: Blue milk? Made of steel. Armor? Steel. Clothes? Steel. Fallacy.