scvn2812

I think it was yellow but I'll have to check it out when I get home tonight. Hooray capped data. Since he hasn't commented, I'd kick this clip over to Brian. He's floated the idea of Systems Commonwealth vs Empire a couple times and this has a lot to say about Star Wars and kinetics against unshielded hulls.

Bright flash of light then. Its not really contradicted. Firstly the Falcon isn't a military vessel and thus isn't equipped with military grade defenses, good shielding, reasonably resilient hull yes but perhaps not fly through a star with no power good. He also said these things in the context of being in hyperspace, which the movies don't really give us much to work with on how it works other than flying through physical objects or too near a massive, energetic object like a star = bad. Furthermore, iirc the crew of that craft wasn't thrilled about the prospect of crashing through a star, they just didn't have much choice. That was probably just a hair within the limits of that ship's tolerance and a less robust ship, even by degrees, wouldn't survive a similar trip. They also didn't quite go straight in, they cut across off center. Had they passed through the core, they likely, almost definitely wouldn't have survived, if not the pressure and heat, then the density of the core would likely wreck their day. For comparison, stealing some numbers from the thread about the video here the Ha'taks sitting in a blue giant incident was estimated at 37.6 kilotons / second at the low end for a much more massive and luminous star and a much larger ship with much greater surface area. If that were a high end, then for a small craft that would be a bit high but their engines with less than perfect efficiency would generate similar levels of waste heat assuming it can keep pace with fighters and star destroyers. At the end of the day, that quote no more disallows other ships from flying near a star in real space than him claiming it would be impossible to destroy a planet does until he realizes his instruments aren't faulty, that is the remains of Alderaan, there's an enormous space station that can do it and a character who has had time to study the station's blueprints says its just about as powerful as greater than half the starfleet. The most you can take away from that quote in light of evidence from The Clone Wars is that it would be a bad idea for the Millennium Falcon to do these things and that may or may not be while in hyperspace. If its the latter than we don't know how hyperdrive works or interacts with normal matter other than to say it would be bad for the Falcon to do these things. Another ship? Who knows.

A few things I found interesting about the video: There are two distinct "phases" of the Venator cooking off. The funky colored explosions rippling across the hull, presumably from the Rydonium since no Star Wars ship I've ever seen explodes purple. Then a titanic, bright white explosion vaguely like the ImpStar that exploded at Endor. The center of which seemed to be roughly around the reactor. The debris was rather large for that type of explosion. Probably the Rydonium explosions wrecked hull integrity and made it easier to break her apart in larger chunks. The outsized menace of flying debris versus energy weapons fire is consistent with Empire Strikes Back where an ImpStar got its command module caved in by an asteroid or my view on Revenge of the Sith that the deck guns on Invisible Hand that were ejecting shells were projectile weapons, either dedicated antiship guns or flak cannons repurposed out of desperation. It seems like The Systems Commonwealth vs the Galactica Empire would be a pretty good match up as Star Wars ships seem pretty vulnerable to kinetic damage if you can get past their shields. A small transport diving through a sun unpowered speaks of pretty insane heat tolerance but this is one more piece of evidence against extreme physical tolerance. The main structural members would have to be very strong to take the acceleration forces but the hull itself obviously doesn't have that degree of resilience.

Not fundamentally, the Omega has to get within 900 km of the planet to zap anything on the surface, maybe closer if its a hardened target like a bunker, ie something tougher than a capital ship. If Galactica is defending something on the surface, then the logical place for her to be is in orbit directly above it with a Viper patrol providing eyes to watch the other side of the planet. The Omega's ftl system enables her to avoid a fight with Galactica if the mission doesn't require it but given that the Omega at best has a firepower advantage over Galactica (more likely she's at a disadvantage) and how swift, brutal and decisive capital ship combat is in B5, this doesn't speak to me of the Omega surviving long enough to complete any meaningful objective that takes it within range of Galactica and her Vipers. A ship with similar firepower to an Omega but substantially greater durability will rapidly punch holes in the Omega until she's a burning hulk (should only take a few minutes judging by B5 engagement times) and take little damage in return.

Well I sort of intended for the question of whether or not it was possible to fight at such lop sided relative velocities to be an open question for both sides. From what I've seen, it seems that it is at least preferable if not mandatory that regardless of the actual velocities involved (meters per second, kilometers per second, relativistic) the RELATIVE velocities in a dog fight are never all that high. Which would be a similar issue for Star Wars fighters, Death Gliders etc. all have some pretty radical straight line acceleration but the relative velocities between the fighters and their targets are always pretty close. Otherwise, human reaction time wouldn't allow for pilots to be able to perform their duties if targets are zipping through each other's firing arcs in fractions of a second.

Bare in mind that at this point I am pleading ignorance on Galactica '78 so I'm taking your assumptions and running with them. Let's see if we end up in the same place or if we hit a fork in the road and one of us shouldn't have taken that left at Albuquerque. You've thus pegged Vipers within parity of where you pegged Omegas back in Babtech days. Unless your assumptions for an Omegas' fire power have changed, you didn't downgrade Galactica to sub-Omega firepower, if her per turret firepower is near a Viper's, then you still have Galactica with comparable firepower to the Omega, substantially greater acceleration, arguably superior protection and a wing of craft capable of orders of magnitude greater acceleration than Omega or her Starfuries with near-Omega firepower. If the Vipers have to slow down to fight due to not being able to target something that will be in their engagement envelope and out again in less than a full second, then I see no way Starfuries that can be menaced by a 200 megawatt pulse cannon can harm Vipers. Under attack by highly agile craft with capital ship firepower taking house sized chunks out of it with every pass, I see this going about as well for the Omega as trying to fight White Stars did in the EA civil war.

Vipers strafing a base: How small is small? What kinds of damage effects do we see? Are we talking the level of destruction that could be done by a fighter-bomber with a half dozen or so JDAMs? B52 carpet bombing? Fat Man and Little Boy? Bikini Atoll? Are there any signs that Apollo's strafing run might have resulted in a new volcano at the site by virtue of the over penetration of the crust? At the lower end of the spectrum, a couple meters of titanium is actually a pretty big deal for protection, at the upper end its about as much protection as Jack Sparrow seasoning himself with paprika when faced with the cannibal tribe and no way out. I still see the same problems. Depending on Galactica and the Viper's sensor ranges, if they can detect the Omega from far enough away to get up to speed or are already traveling at speed (because accelerating to relativistic speeds without 1 joule does the work of 1 terajoule technobabble or decelerating from them is a positively obscene amount of energy) then the question becomes can an Omega detect them far enough out to prepare and is there any way it can prepare to try and take shots at targets that will be in and out of its range in thousandths of a second? Assuming the Vipers and Galactica *can't* get up to their top speed, then they still have very formidable accelerations that are going to be a problem for Omega, assuming they can accelerate to relativistic speeds in a practical amount of time, we're still talking about targets moving dozens, even hundreds or thousands of times faster than what Omega normally engages. Maybe the Omega has longer than thousandths of a second to get it right, but how long? Hundredths? Tenths of a second? Is there any way to gauge the reaction time of their weapons by using footage of Omegas using their pulse cannons to intercept each other's fire? It is entirely possible that a Viper with a top speed in excess of light speed and a few minutes of acceleration time might actually be outrunning the pulse cannon fire Omegas can shoot down with their defensive batteries.

This is a scenario with a lot of unknowns. Is there any footage of Galactica '78 craft attacking targets with properties we can realistically describe such as asteroids, planetary surfaces etc. ? Otherwise, the only thing we have to go off of for firepower would be her acceleration, which would result in some pretty obscene numbers. There is no technobabble that I know of to hint that they cheat at the energy cost of acceleration but on the other hand, we don't have a Death Star to provide corroborating evidence that the setting has some very extreme energy densities. I'm assuming that each ship for arbitrary reasons genuinely wants to destroy the other no matter the personal or material cost. I'll set firepower to the side for the moment because I don't know '78 well enough to feel comfortable making claims about its firepower without more data than just engine speeds. Possible scenario: I call this one warp strafing redux This one hinges on the fire control of both ships. Galactica can hit relativistic speeds, the speed of light or better. In this scenario, I assume she does just that on her approach. Given that she can hit such speeds and that we can observe something as bright as a space shuttle engine as far away as Earth with Hubble. If the Omega has a built in telescope that is as capable as Hubble (she certainly has the volume to sneak one in somewhere, though we'd be hard pressed to find it unless one of the objects in the busy front aspect could be a telescope) then she ought to see Galactica ignite her engines. The moment Galactica does this, she ought to be the brightest object in local space except for any stars in the system they're fighting in. It takes at least some moments for Galactica to accelerate up to near light speed so there will be a bit of light outrunning her by a few seconds to give her away. Perhaps enough to give the Omega time to prime weapons and plan a firing solution for the fractions of a second that Galactica will be within her very limited 900 kilometer engagement range. This will involve orienting the ship and weapons so that they are along Galactica's flight vector. Galactica likewise will need to plan an automated firing solution for the fractions of a second the Omega is within her effective range (which I have no idea how far we can realistically say it is.) Problems with this scenario: * Galactica will pass through the effective range of Omega's weapons in 3 thousandths of a second at light speed. * Any unpredictable variation that can be measured in plus or minus a few thousandths of a second or more between the computer giving the command to fire to the weapons and the actual firing of the weapons or the speed at which the beams move will result in a miss. So if the delay between pushing the fire button and the actual firing is as high as thousandths of a second or the velocity of the beams vary by as much as thousandths of a percent, hits are very unlikely. * Galactica's engines do not outshine the brightest stars in the sky when she accelerates, therefore her engines may work in a manner which may make them difficult to detect using traditional optical and thermal sensors. * It could also be that their engines kick out such tremendous power that they emit mostly gamma rays which would be invisible to the naked eye but be extremely obvious on any even remotely plausibly useful sensor suite for space navigation and warfare. * We have no evidence that Earth Force actually equips their ships with decent optics. There are no big obvious telescopes on any of the ships that I am aware of, they may rely primarily on radar, lidar, whateverdar. Which means that the odds plummet dramatically for the chance of actually successfully detecting Galactica before she hits relativistic speed with enough time to orient the ship, orient her weapons, charge the weapons and tell the computer to open fire the moment Galactica is within range. * If Galactica accelerated past the speed of light from far enough out, she might actually outrun her own light cone and catch the Omega totally unprepared. However, any problems with fire control as described above, are even further exasperated. * Do Earth Force ships have any sort of FTL sensing equipment? Tachyon or gravity based sensors? I don't remember, I know B5 had a tachyon comm but I don't know if there's a basis for inferring that there is a version of that system that is militarily useful as a sensor or that it can be used on a starship. The presence of such a system would give the Omega a lot more time to prepare for Galactica but she still has .003 seconds or less to react when Galactica is actually in range. I do not touch on fighters because all issues that Galactica and the Omega would have would be shared by their fighters. I am not prepared to debate a battle in which Galactica slows down to a similar speed relative to Omega as I do not feel I have the information to make an informed opinion on their relative firepower.

kryptonradio.com/2013/01/17/sweet-lightning-kickstarter-for-dragon-empire-seeks-to-fund-it/ Here's a scientist trying to get funding to develop an electro laser by writing a science fiction novel. It's an interesting premise if the prose is decent.

http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20944726 50 kw laser shoots down two drones, cuts a steel girder at a mile away.

This isn't going to make the Tesla death ray conspiracy theorists any less fervent.

You keep posting this. I think this is probably the third time now. The answers are the same: The inability to use LIGHT guns to break up the asteroids is contradicted by Empire Strikes Back. Yes these are bigger asteroids but it's not as if they actually need to vaporize them when fragmenting them with continuous bombardment with Hoth level firepower will do the job if not as fast as with the smaller asteroids. Grievous' ship gets smacked by an asteroid with no apparent damage. The AT TEs are firing into the unshielded and unarmored portions of the ships after Grievous specifically ordered full shields to the front. Given the circumstances, there is no reason to believe that AT TEs couldn't inflict some damage, not having to worry about shields or armor from that angle. After all, fighters are vastly smaller than capital ships by a factor of millions but as seen at Yavin and Endor, they can hurt unshielded, unarmored targets on ships. The Munis are more vulnerable than most because they have virtually no armor beyond the big front plates. All of these excuses are possible reconciliations with the scene but once more, Hoth conclusively shows that ships have the firepower to pulverize asteroids if they want. I think I'm just going to find my responses to this scene and save them. I don't see the point in typing an original response to the same argument a fourth time when you inevitably repost this in two or three months. I suppose I could turn this around. Yes it does mean ICS is wrong. It radically understates the firepower of walkers that can legitimately menace capital ships. Capital ships having the firepower to destroy small asteroids in one shot using guns we can't even see. By your own reasoning if walkers can threaten capital ships and you're assuming for no rational reason that capital ships are equally well protected across their entire surface and have zero exposed systems fighters or walkers could target, then it stands to reason that walkers have capital ship firepower. Or we remember that at Yavin and Endor fighters millions of times smaller than Star Destroyers could attack poorly defended targets of opportunity on major warships without actually causing major structural damage. And that small asteroids die in moments to the guns of ISDs and Slave I, big ones would just need more shots.

Please let it be Gul Dukat, Seinfeld might be one of the most overrated shows in the history of overrated shows. Although Kramer was fairly interesting. I just loathe Jerry Seinfeld. I can't stand his voice or humor.

After thinking about it a bit, I don't think the comparison to the real world changing over to icons over written words for signs is a valid comparison. After all, all but the most ardently isolationist countries are now or are on their way to being de facto multilingual societies in many regions. Whether because of increased travel for business and recreation or migration, being multilingual is the name of the game. Where I live, we have large Russian, Ukrainian, Haitian and of course Hispanic minority populations and a lot of international tourism so it's not really feasible to write men's bathroom in a dozen languages.

It seems a bit goofy on the face of it but its a well thought out piece. I don't know that I buy its conclusion, absence of evidence not being evidence of absence and all that, but its certainly an interesting idea. There was another thought provoking piece I read about the strong likelihood that R2 and Chewie were rebel agents the entire time and knew who Leia, Luke and Vader were (R2 having lived through it.)

That's pretty cool. I definitely agree with that internet meme that Up tells a better love story in 8 minutes than Twilight does in 2 hours. Last day before Christmas break, for reasons there were no classes at the school I was working at, just movies. I'm not sure what was harder, my final exam or trying not to get choked up in front of middle school kids.

Based on the scene of Spock and Kirk swimming back to the Enterprise, I suspect the scalings that put the big E as an even bigger E (bigger than the Sovereign) will not hold water. (rim shot)

1. I didn't accuse you of not bothering to watch them this time, I cited Brian as an example of someone putting out their criteria for what to include and what not to include in a clear statement of intent. 2. Nearly everything is compatible with higher canon with enough hand waving. I dislike the antimatter conversion + chucking planetary mass into hyperspace theory on the grounds that its a transparent attempt to water down the energy requirements of this event (that fails due to actually requiring MORE not less energy to pull off due to the enormous energy cost of making antimatter) but were I of a mind to consider the EU a reasonable source for debate, I'd be forced to concede that I cannot find a direct contradiction in the films and it is therefore of equal footing to the idea of the Death Star being a giant laser cannon rather than some sort of quantum hyperspace voodoo Rube Goldberg machine. 3. I didn't question the authenticity of Chee's quote.

Still not seeing a direct answer to what in your mind makes one equally canon in the eyes of Lucasarts source more or less valid than another for your purpose. You may dislike his conclusions but if you took the time, it wouldn't take long for you to become familiar with Brian's criteria for including something in analysis. Brian has one whole video dedicated to his methods and sources and repeats the rules he has laid down for his analysis in practically every video. They're out there very transparently so that viewers of the videos or readers of his posts know what is in and out of bounds. So what are your rules, what's your criteria for weighting one source against another for public comment and criticism? What makes one cherry suitable for picking and another rotten?

If the Falcon were merely as capable as the space shuttle at making orbit instead of many times faster and she relied only on conventional drives, she should have roasted anyone and everyone in the docking bays in A New Hope and the Empire Strikes Back. Instead, she takes off without even a strong breeze. Does this defy physics as we know? Definitely. Is that a reason to assume that the act of rocketing out of the atmosphere doesn't still have the same energy cost? If so, then how do we even begin to understand what happened and what it might imply for the rest of their technology base? The second we start invoking magic free energy explanations for things, we might as well call it a day and declare debating useless because we might as well be debating Gandalf versus Dumbledore for all the ability we have to understand what they are really capable of. Except that we debate them with the same premise: we measure their feats and quantify them where we can even though we don't understand how they did it. The how is ultimately irrelevant, that they did it is the important part. The movies give us no reason to assume that while their method of propulsion clearly breaks physics to a degree, that they are not still bound by other aspects of it. You can't arbitrarily decide they break more rules than they explicitly break. As far as the accelerations out of atmosphere, you'd have a point if not for the fact that we see Obi Wan rocket out of an atmosphere and cross lunar orbit in the time it takes to have a casual conversation. The Rebel fighters cross from lunar orbit, circumnavigate a planet and then destroy the Death Star in under 15 minutes. You cannot invoke a micro-jump here because then you'd have to explain why the Death Star couldn't do the same to clear its line of sight of Yavin IV. That the Death Star couldn't just arrive above the plane of the ecliptic with a clear line of fire to Yavin IV immediately rather than spending 15 minutes slogging it on STL drives while the Rebels can be attempting to escape tells us that the mechanics of hyperdrive are a bit more complex than "chart course, push button, arrive!" Instantaneous, clearly not, but fast nonetheless. Every use of FTL in the movies strongly imply same day travel from the core to the outer rim. No one ever changes clothes and in the case of the transit from Tattooine to Alderaan, everyone was exactly where we left them in the last scene when they arrive. "This day has seen the end of Kenobi and soon it will see the end of the Rebellion." - Vader, there's no hint as to where in the galaxy Yavin is from Alderaan yet where ever it is, it took less than a day. How long do you think Anakin was laying there on Mustafar with burns I'm not even sure there's a degree for with only the force and sheer will to keep him from succumbing to his wounds, heat and dehydration? You keep dodging the issue of justifying your use of parts of the EU to overwrite the parts you don't like. So what's your method for deciding what EU source is legit and what is not? If its all equally canon, how do you justify saying that the Essential Guide to Weapons and Warfare is a more valid source than Incredible Cross Sections or Into the Worlds of the Original Trilogy? What is your criteria for deciding that "Death Star" or Essential Guides rank higher than Into the Worlds of the Original Trilogy's presentation of the Death Star or its comments about the power output of Executor? What makes the ranges of hundreds of kilometers for turbolasers as quoted in that guide you like to invoke more valid than Lusankya and other heavy warships bombarding a Yuuzhan Vong battle fleet from several orbits away? Or your interpretation of Jacen firing on Kashyyk as struggling to even start a forest fire over Lusankya killing every Vong soldier on a planet in 4 minutes? (Been doing a bit of Wookiepedia research today.)

And what unique ground do you think you can tread seeing as it is all supposedly equally canon (and if you ask a movies only fan or George Lucas, equally BS)? It also seems like a bit of a Quixotic quest if most of your audience dismisses the relevance of EU based arguments in favor of starting with the movies and maybe thinking about reconciling the EU with what's on screen rather than accepting EU interpretations of what is on screen as their starting point. If they can even be bothered to give much consideration to content that the series creator feels free to overwrite as he pleases on a good day and outright rejects as part of his story on a bad day. Not to mention that individual authors feel free to go to great lengths to imposed their own visions rather than trying to harmonize their work with the past. I'm sure even Saxton was conscious that he was imposing a harder scifi veneer over Star Wars than many authors had before but he had the opportunity to put a more science based interpretation on his corner and he took it. Anyone who had the opportunity to participate in their favorite fandom would no doubt try to re imagine it in the way they preferred, whether it was skewed more towards weaving in more real world science or invoking their favorite science fantasy tropes or trying to be scientific and getting it wrong. Trying to weave in more science I can respect, throwing in magic crystals and transmuting part of a planet to antimatter (which in the real world takes ridiculous amounts of energy for amounts smaller than a speck of dust) seems like a very transparent attempt to retcon something you don't care for rather than trying to understand where any of those conclusions came from. It's a pity in many ways ICS wasn't accompanied by one of those The Science of books to explain where the numbers came from. Although the labyrinthine EU material surrounding the Death Star, the many game plots and books, probably tied the authors' hands to a degree. I mean seriously, who honestly thinks that if you asked Lucas how Alderaan was destroyed he would reply that it was done with a beam that turns part of the planet into antimatter then kicks it into hyperspace? Or would he say: with a really big, really powerful laser. Same with the asteroid fields, would he tell you that they are comets or big rocks? Or that no, he didn't mean to imply Dooku's ship could make lunar orbit before Yoda could even catch his breath.

You also didn't answer my question directly. How do you justify using one EU source against another if all are equally canon yet as you say, it's inconsistent. How is your cherry picking from the EU to explain away higher numbers than you find pleasing more justified than Wong or Saxton cherry picking to interpret the films in their way?

Khas, watch Brian's shield video or look up TIEs on Technical Commentaries, there are repeated instances of exploding bolts from the Falcon's guns detonating between the wings of the TIEs in much the same way as there were close but off the hull detonations from TIE lasers on the Falcon. The Slave I swatting asteroids is gone through frame by frame in the first or second ICS video.

With regards to the asteroid, how large is large? After all, one gun and not even one of the largest one the ISD, made short work of some the size of houses. Sustained fire should be able to break up larger asteroids considering they have dozens at least of the largest guns. And Slave I lit up quite a few like the fourth of July and outright demolished some smaller asteroids with its guns. The mines bisected asteroids far larger than Slave I or Obi Wan's fighter. Also the no shields thing with Ties is verifiably false in A New Hope at least. That has been debunked years ago yet it will not die in the EU because no one writing these book does their homework, they just repeat what they're told. So how exactly does this work anyway, trying to use one source of equal canon standing to overrule another? The logical thing in my mind would be to try to reconcile as many sources as possible (the route Saxton takes on his site) or discard the EU entirely. (Brian's solution) Yet you are cherry picking your canon to get the results you prefer in exactly the same way you accuse others of doing, the only difference being the end result. Considering your comments on the EU in bold text at the top of every page, does it not strike you as just a bit silly to be invoking the EU, which you take every opportunity to criticize for its absurdities and lack of quality control, to get the outcome you prefer?

Volatility is neither necessary for a powerful reactor nor necessarily a sign of stupidity. If you shoot a nuclear reactor with enough force to breach the core, the result is not a tremendous explosion that consumes the entire power plant or ship. On the other hand, the only access to space the greatest minds of the world have been able to come up with given our technology and infrastructure is to bolt a payload to a bomb and hope all the million things that have to go right in order for it to go into space instead of going up like a MOAB go right. Every hundred or so times, something goes wrong and you get a massive explosion instead of space flight. Does this mean NASA is stupid or is it the best they can do under the economic, technological and political limitations they are working under?