Vince

 

Like many former Separatist bastions, Murkhana was a dying world. The lingering atmospheric effects of years of orbital bombardment and beam-weapon assaults had raised the temperature of the world's seas and killed off coastal coral reefs that had once drawn tourists from throughout the Tion Cluster. What had been wavewashed black beaches were now stretches of fathomless quicksand, and what had been sheltered coves were stagnant shallows, rife with gelatinous sea creatures that had risen to the evolutionary fore when the fish had died. Battered by relentless squalls of acid rain, the once graceful, spiraling structures of Murkhana City were pitted and cracked, and had turned the color of disease-ridden bone. Even when the rains ceased, menacing clouds hung over the bleached landscape, blotting out light and leaving the air smelling like rancid cheese. Descending through the atmosphere was like dropping into a simmering cauldron of witch's brew.

 

Below was what remained of the seaside hexagonal spaceport and the quartet of ten-kilometer-long bridges that had linked it to the city; the Corporate Alliance landing field was slagged and tipped on the massive piers that had supported it, and the bridges had collapsed into the frothing waters. Arriving ships were now directed to the city's original spaceport at the base of the hills.

 

"Governor Tarkin, we have a visual on the landing zone," the captain said as the ship pierced a final low-lying layer of dirty cloud, revealing the ravaged city spread out beneath them from sea to surrounding hills like some terrain exported from a nightmare. "Spaceport control says that it's up to us to find a place to set down, as their guidance systems are no longer in service and the terminal has been shut down. Immigration and customs have relocated to the inner city."

 

Tarkin shook his head in disgust. "I suspect no one makes use of them. What do our scanners tell us of the atmosphere?"

 

"Atmosphere is a mess, but breathable," the comm officer said, her eyes fixed on the sensor board. "Background radiation is at tolerable levels." Swiveling to Tarkin, she added, "Sir, you might want to consider wearing a transpirator."

 

Tarkin watched smoke pour into the sky from fires that might have been burning for six years. He considered the specialist's advice for a moment, gradually warming to the idea of being the only one among the mission personnel to be bare-headed, thus appearing more the commanding officer.

 

"Looking for an adequate site, Governor," the captain said.

 

Tarkin leaned toward the viewport to assess the landing field. It was impossible to tell the bomb craters from the circular repulsorlift pits that had once functioned as service areas for the Separatists' spherical core ships. The edges of the field were lined with ruined hemispherical docking bays and massive rectangular hangers, their roofs blown open or caved in. The facade of the sprawling terminal building had avalanched onto the field, and the interior had been gutted by fire. Ships of various size and function were parked at random, though most of them looked as if they hadn't seen space in a long while.

"Years of orbital bombardment and beam-weapon assaults". The Clone Wars lasted some years, so I'm assuming we're looking at the cumulative effects of many bloody ground wars and tactical bombardments from orbit.

Later we have 700-800 meter wide "bomb craters". So probably nuclear scale weapons in excess of 1 megaton yield were being used at some point. 

Interesting, although it's hardly a lower limit. Considering the world is artificial is it not possible that there is some kind of artificial gravity? 

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.

I agree with Tyralak, the Breen rifle would probably blast an AT ST easily, but not a hand-held phaser. AT ST's have been proven to be relatively susceptible to kinetic impacts like falling logs, but this tells us nothing about their resistance to DEW's like blasters or phasers. 

Iit can however be inferred that the AT ST is in-fact highly resilient to blaster fire, and phasers are not THAT much more powerful than blasters, when both weapons are set to maximum setting. Blasters, like phasers, would be anti-vehicular weaponry in the real world when on the highest settings, probably capable of taking out humvees and the like. 

Even a 2260's Type I style phaser was capable of dynamite-like effects.

So are blasters. It is pretty decisively demonstrated that blaster pistols and blaster carbines can rival modern day 40mm autocannons for per shot destructive firepower, when set to maximum setting. But to be fair if Han's shoot-out with the stormtroopers on Tatooine is anything to go by, then we could say that blasters are limited to perhaps only a half dozen shots or so when set to such high power, which is a limitation, but even light vehicles like AT ST's are virtually impervious to small-arms blaster fire regardless. So yes, phasers can destroy a larger volume of material by a marginal degree (although the method is more commonly disintegration) but the difference isn't great enough to start asserting that the standard hand-held phaser in star trek is an anti-vehicle weapon in star wars. especially when said vehicles handle blaster fire with such ease. Not unless you start arguing that AT ST's have little resilience to phaser-style magic disintegration, but such an assertion would be rather arbitrary and difficult to prove, since phasers (like most weapons) quite clearly vary in performance depending on the type of metal they are firing upon in star trek - and vehicles in star wars never face disintegration style weapons in the canon.

Dynamite-like effects:

2K, do you still stand by all of your conclusions and assertions from STvSW? Would you still consider a handheld phaser capable of destroying an AT ST? 

Was this a response test?? 

Was this a response test?? 

. Also, the theory I have regarding Blasters and Turbolasers (which will be the subject of my second video, if I ever have time to make it) really renders the composition of the grate moot. 

From the way they behave they must be "magical space lasers" really, although the effects are usually relatively mundane (explosions, heating). Although I'd be interested to see your ideas. 

DSG, if and when I get around to fleshing out the acceleration pages I assure you they will contain neither the Falcon take off scene nor the broken TCW video . 

I wonder about the canonicity of that story arc, since it was never released? And I'm skeptical about assuming phaser style disintegration from the unfinished cartoon graphic. If such a crystal is used in the Death Star then it doesn't change all that much. My shield analysis on YouTube is still valid, since it was based on debris which we see moving at measurable velocities on screen. The energy needed to accelerate the planets mass to such incredible velocities still has to exist, and if it is created by the crystal, then the Death Star still had to handle such magnitudes of power during the firing sequence of it's superlaser; it still sets an incredibly high benchmark for the power handling capabilities of starships in Star Wars. 

http://www.galacticempirewars.com/death-star-firepower

They aren't unexplainable at all, actually. My personal theory is that blasters/lasers/turbolasers in SW are closer to Hellbores than actual lasers as we know them. A highly charged bolt of plasma temporarily contained within a magnetic field. They have a certain range before the field decays, and loses containment.  

Sorry, I never saw this till now. That single property would be explainable, yes, but when you take all blaster characteristics into account they become unexplainable. But yes, in principle, I agree. They must be some kind of containment, otherwise how would they pass through atmosphere and water without any interaction. But I'm reluctant to start calling them plasma, or laser, etc. 

Well, give the references, the most consistent trend would seem to be "metal? Steel. Metal? Steel. Metal? Steel. Steel? Metal". 

I had considered something similar before. since the fuel requirements for these things are so astronomically high, I had pondered some kind of power source that somehow derives the energy from outside the ship. Perhaps another dimension, or another point in the galaxy such as a black hole through like, a wormhole or something. I think the former is much more feasible and likely.

I'm not sure a "hyperspace tap" would work because if so much power could be drawn from hyperspace then that would mean that hyperspace is a energy dimension. I don't think you could fly through an energy dimension without getting destroyed utterly instantly. And hyperspace might not even be another dimension, it might just be normal speed perceived at FTL speed. 

It's worth considering that such a theory doesn't technically make ships less powerful, though. Their not using fuel to generate all the power they need to move or blow up planets, but would be deriving the needed power from outside the ship, probably outside the universe, somewhere in the multiverse. If a star destroyer didn't have to carry fuel to perform multi-thousand G accelerations and acheive relativistic speeds then it would only need about a tenth of the power to move. You would probably need conventional fusion or annihilation reactors to maintain the interdimensional power source, though. It would also explain why ships are not so nearly as volatile as the ones in Star Trek. 

 For me, the Death Star’s massively overkill destruction of Alderaan as well as the multiple accounts of huge accelerations are more than enough evidence for massive power generation in star wars. And firepower too, because energy weapons are powered by the starships. There has never been a planetary bombardment in star wars outside of the Death Star, so looking at the power ships wield is the next best thing to telling us what they can put to their weapons and shields.   

And just think about the work involved with accelerating a starship to thousands of times the speed of sound and back again within a few minutes. The kinetic energy of a ship impacting at this speed could devastate a country, or even a continent. So the laws of physics dictate that a mile long ship would need power equivalent to many millions of megaton nukes detonating each second to achieve the highest acceleration. Because accelerating mass into motion requires energy.

So many people argue that there is no connection between the Death Star and a star destroyer, but there’s nothing to suggest the power generating technologies of either, pound for pound, are orders of magnitude superior or inferior. 

They are just two starships of different scale. One has relatively big engines and numerous weapons. So imagine if you scaled a star destroyer up to the size of a Death Star, do you think that’s its power generation and shields would be orders of magnitude weaker? Or do you think they would be just a little weaker? Perhaps the star destroyer would generate ten times less power, thanks to the DS being more efficient or ‘state of the art and cutting edge’? Remember all sources suggest hours to charge the superlaser, this is a lower limit in the films. 

People argue that there are scenes contrary to massive firepower in star wars, bringing forth atmospheric battles as evidence, which gets debated, as well as kinetic impacts. But kinetics is very often the Bane of high sci fi with otherwise comparatively ridiculous levels of power generation and DEW based firepower (star trek, virtually all of them besides 40K). But we have never planetary bombardment besides from the Death Star, which was of planet destroying magnitude. Much less anything that is certainly “maximum firepower” beyond the most intense capital ship combat. 

So I think it’s fair to say that there may be some discrepancies with the Death Star's size. It must be more than 900 Km according to the super destroyer crash scene, yet it's size relative to Endor is inconsistent; sometimes it's much smaller, and sometimes implicitly consistent. I'll take a closer look at all those scenes sometime. 

Edit GK5, I don’t see how you can so easily dismiss these very magnificent feats of acceleration.  In A New Hope the X wings flew past the radius of the gas giant Yavin within less than half a minute [all within a continuous shot], and they covered the giants diameter in much less than five minutes when they were already engaged above the Death Star, having flown all the way from Yavin's fourth moon. 

So in Star Wars can fly past gas giants within minutes ~ Battle of Yavin. 

This indicates velocities thousands of times the speed of sound and multi-thousand gravity accelerations.

It’s generally conceded that the way these super-G acceleration are used indicates there may be some build up time in most cases, unless a ship is already prepared for flight – expecting the need for super velocities. Otherwise you could easily flee beyond visual range within moments of the maximum thrust need for some of these other scenes to even work. 

Edit 2 And there are several scenes throughout the films and the Clone Wars where such speeds are observed. Take Han Solo’s trip from between two systems without any hyperdrive. The Falcon must have accelerated to a sublight velocity approaching the speed of light in order to achieve this within only a few years, or at best, months even if these two stars were especially close.

You haven’t yet offered up any feasible alternatives to explain the TCW evidence. A ship travels between the corona of a yellow star and one of its inhabitable planets within a few seconds of uncut footage. Even light takes a matter of minutes to reach the Earth within the Sun’s goldilocks zone. That was a ship that lacked any FTL and that was traveling at sublight speeds.

A feasible explanation is that they had accelerated to near light speeds, so that the effects of time dilation had the crew (and the audience) perceive only a few seconds, even when the trip really took several minutes. This is plausible given a relativistic velocity. And decelerating from almost a million times the speed of sound to subsonic velocity within minutes suggests even higher acceleration than these other instances or any of the numbers in the ICS. 

*shakes head*

It's sad that you think none of us have fulfilling lives going on outside of this topic. 

I'd be interested to see any counter hypothesis you have for the goldilocks inference in Brians video. I'd recommend creating new threads for any additional things outside of density. Considering there are no cuts between the ship leaving the star and reaching the planet, and that they explicitly lacked FTL, I don't see any other valid explanation outside of high relativistic velocity and time dilation. 

Ok 2K, your posts are very long, especially the first one. I don't mean you any offence but I might not even read them fully for a few days. 

Who gives the 30 minute warning, I forget? If the Imperial screen shows contradictory information regarding distance over time then that is noteworthy yes. When I redo the relevant page I'll write up both. Either is impressive considering the timeframe involved. The X-wings achieved massive speeds quickly to reach the DS so fast too, high rates of acceleration are unavoidable there. 

I'll have to look at the DS tac screen myself when I have time. I aint been working on this stuff so much recently. It's nice in B'mouth this time of year. 

 

The only "flak bursts" I'm aware of are the shield flashes.

 

To be fair I think the case for flak-bursting laser bolts in sw (as stupid and retarded and unexplainable as it is) is pretty compelling I think. The Falcon chase sequence in the asteroid belt for example. Shots which stray far from the Falcon appear to burst in the blackness of space. 

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.

No, it is you who uses a couple of inconsistent outliers to low ball the size. Virtually every shot (like more than half a dozen screen captures) with Endor and the DS in orbit depict a scale not unreasonable considering a 900+ km wide battle station and a planetary diameter large enough to have comfortable gravity. And the Executor scene explicitly demands a 900+ kilometre wide station. 

The case for a sub 900 kilometre battle station makes little sense and is in direct conflict with the indisputable evidence for >900 kilometre diameter. It is based on trenches (which is hardly concrete evidence compared to the Executor scene, trench within a trench and all that jazz) and perhaps a couple of orbit shots which are inconsistent with the other, more numerous in orbit shots. 

No, because if this were the case then we would expect any airtight sections and /or solid pieces of debris and armour to float atop the water. Instead the ships in TCW invariably sank to the bottom of the oceans, fast. And again, accelerating even ships made of very light weight materials at thousands of G's or / and upto relativistic velocity requires extraordinary energy and fuel. This increases the mass by a good order of magnitude.

Other than the conclusion that this is how the Falcon got from Anoat to Bespin, 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?

Han's journey is a pretty solid example, but there are a couple more. 

Brian uses examples from TCW which you may have seen. A ship flies past a star in a matter of seconds before flying to a planet in the goldilocks zone within moments. The ship then decelerates to relatively mundane velocities just before they reach theplanets atmosphere. Both scenes are shot in real time, yet they were clearly moving at sub light according to dialogue and plot. The effects of time dilation at high percentages of lightspeed mean that those seconds could actually have been minutes, which is the only logical way to explain how they could have reached the goldilocks zone so very quickly. Even if the star was very small. 

If Endor is smaller than Earth (which it is based on comparison to the DS II) then the Rebel fleet was traveling at sublight speeds after exiting the hyperspace effects. The ships would have been traveling at a high percent of lightspeed in those few seconds as the moon rapidly multiplies in size in the cockpit view. They decelerate after having left hyperspace, which would have required thousands of g's in order to halt before crashing into the DSII or the planet. Similarly there is nothing to suggest that the Imperial fleet made tactical hyperspace jumps to flank the rebels.

 

 

And besides which, if ships are averaging somewhere in the neighborhood of 750 kilograms per cubic meter (assuming the engines are the most dense components), they hardly qualify as superlight. They qualify as pretty "normal" and comprehensible in a universe of fusion and steel.

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? If ships only massed 1 ton per cubic meter (including fuels) then they would not have enough energy to achieve relativistic velocities. They would run out of fuel. Same with the high accelerations, those require extraordinary power and fuel. With such little density and so little energy they could not achieve such feats. This only makes sense if you think that ships in SW are limited to only single or double digit G's, but the Battle of Yavin would cease to make any sense if that were true, and the Battle of Endor would be more difficult to explain. The trip to the goldilocks zone in what is perceived as seconds at sublght would be flat out impossible. 

 

This concept was addressed circa 2002: http://st-v-sw.net/STSWdsaccel.html

 

Suffice it to say that the Rebel screen is contradicted by the Imperial screen of the same event.

 

Indeed, something I've been considering lately is whether or not there's any evidence of a powered orbit in that case at all. I have yet to run the numbers regarding orbital mechanics to determine that. So far as I'm aware, the only other evidence is the note about "orbiting the planet at maximum velocity" given early in the scene (which suggests antigrav use), which itself is a second contradiction to 

The rebel tac screen clearly shows that the speed had been constant until the last five minutes of the journey. Then the DS accelerated with at least 100 G's (probably hundreds) to cover the final length of the journey. So what does the Imperial tac screen show? What is the distance moved over time and what is the potent contradiction.

The second Death Star can't possibly be less than hundreds of kilometres in diameter otherwise the curvature of the horizon in the Executor crash scene would have been far more dramatic. 

Welcome to the Forum DSG2K 

These ships can accelerate to and from relativistic velocities, and such requires a huge quantity of fuel. To be successful the fuel carried would have to outmass the ship by ~10 times, otherwise you would run out of fuel long before achieving such velocities. The example in the novel is inconsistent with these other [onscreen] examples where ships easily achieve very high velocities orders of magnitude faster than the speed of sound, such as the X-wings very fast navigation past the diameter of a gas giant named Yavin, before decelerating to "combat velocities" and remaining relative to the moving Death Star. 

The Rebels tac-display also demonstrates that the Death Star massively accelerated within the last five minutes of its navigation around the planet. Strangely, but clearly, it's speed had remained constant for the entire trips duration before those final five minutes. This is further evidence for very high acceleration. 

http://www.galacticempirewars.com/starship-hulls-and-anti-grav

http://www.scifights.net/ics5.m4v

The ships sink rapidly to the bottom of oceans. They are not superlight. They are dense. 

Amazing