Captain Seafort

I've always interpreted that as the Avenger continuing to target asteroids rather than the bolts bursting - they're small and dark enough to be invisible against the background.

The entire sequence shows a consistent shift of the centre of mass, as the remnants of the planet expand (outwards) and recoil (from right to left). Each image shows a progression from the previous one. This entire debate was initiated when I pointed out the inevitable implications of the Death Star's firepower for the quantity of fuel it must carry, and therefore its density. Ergo your entire argument has been talking about me. Not at all - if the explosion was caused by an arms dump on the surface of Alderaan cooking off, or similarly variable external factors, then there would be no possible way to guarantee that such a lucky shot could be repeated. The only way such confidence could be justified would be if the energy required was provided solely by the Death Star, and directed at the target planet by the superlaser.

In other words, what you really meant was "It will sink despite being less dense than water so long as it's more dense than water". Gotcha.

There's no mention of TIEs being shielded either, but we accept that they are, Probably because it crashed - faceplanting from 100ft up can't be good for it. The only "flak bursts" I'm aware of are the shield flashes.

I'm not talking about the minutea of the explosion - I'm talking about the result. Look at where the centre of mass of Alderaan is before the Death Star fired. Then look at where the centre of mass of the debris field ends up. Your own screencaps show a clear progression leftwards. Before the superlaser struck, Alderaan was sitting happily in one piece. After the superlaser had struck Alderaan was traveling in many different directions at high speed. Ergo the superlaser injected the energy that caused this change. Wrong. At no point have I made any claim about the period of time over which the superlaser is charged. I acknowlege no such this - I pointed out that Harry held such potential energy on his person in the form of propellent in the rounds, just as the Death Star held that energy in the form of fuel. Two solutions. a) Harry is using explosive rounds. Rather powerful ones. His opponent is carrying powerful explosives that were hit and cooked off. However, if is the case then Harry would not consider his obliteration of the bad guy a "thorough" demonstration of his weapon's capabilities, as he could not be assured of such assistance on subsequent occassions.

No it won't. If it's less dense than water it will float. Because the addition of the water will raise its density above the density of water.

Compare the position of the planet and the center of mass of the debris field in the last frame and there's a clear offset. Brian has demonstrated this repeatedly in his videos. It's far from recent - SWTC has referenced the planet's recoil and the minimum yield required to impart that momentum for over fifteen years. As for the planet holding together under that acceleration, I agree that its unlikely. I trust you will likewise agree with my observation that it didn't hold together. You would, however, draw the conclusion that Harry had the capability to impart the requistite KE to the bullet, and therefore would have to store that energy on his person until the bullet was fired. While you would mistakenly conclude that it was stored as body fat rather than propellant in the round, the fundamental conclusion is accurate. Likewise, the Death Star must store mass-energy before projecting it at a planet, even if the precise mechanism is unknown.

I'm glad to hear it, hence why I refer you to dimensions and power requirements derived directly from ANH. Steel's robust enough to do the job it needs to for that part of the station. It's a docking port, not the main belt, no why use something fancy when you don't need to? Indeed, I wouldn't be surprised if DS armour protection is considerably less than a typical warship - it's designed to withstand capital ship attack, and its shields can withstand energy releases sufficient to destroy planets. Why waste resources with high grade armour? Actually there are very few assumptions involved here - we saw Alderaan explode, violently, and we saw that the planet had been knocked back, hard. The energy requirements for the event are based on hard physics. The only area where there's a lack of hard numbers is in the size of the Death Star, and based on your figures the uncertainty there seem to tend towards a smaller, and therefore even more dense, vessel. The relevent calculations are here if you'd like to have a look.

Plus the film itself of course, which gives a diameter between 125 and 190 km - the 160km figure I used is bang in the middle of that. Huh. My understanding was that they'd simply binned everything below G-canon, which included the ICSes.

The only assumption it requires is that the energy density of hypermatter is limited to 9E16J/kg. The dimensions of the Death Star are provided in the original ICS, and the energy requirements to destroy Alderaan can be determined from the visuals, both from the rate of expansion of the debris field and the momentum recoil of the planet.

The Death Star. Minimum average density in excess of 5000 tons/m^3, just to fuel the Alderaan shot. However, it may be a slight outlier in this regard, given that scaling the DS power generation capabilties to capship size produces numbers one or two orders of magnitude above their actual capabilties.

Or, if you wanted a lower limit, you could go with 400km, which is about the bare minimum for a sphere.

Surface Detail.

It's a logical inference from the CW era visuals, but it's contradicted in the Imperial era, implicitly by Dodonna and explicitly by Ackbar. We've only got three explicit statements on the subject - Anakin's briefing, which gave mobility as the key reason for it and which therefore is inapplicable to space vessels, Dodonna's briefing, which all but states that starfighter-proof defences are possible and very strongly implies that the first Death Star's weakness was unusual, and Ackbar's comment that fighters might stand a chance if the shields are first disabled.

It's a nitpick, but I think there's at least a possibility that the Mon Cals are bigger than an ISD. Their proportions are roughly the same as HO, and assuming the models are on the same scale they're 1500m long. Assuming the same ISD assumptions as above, this would make them about 25 per cent bigger than an ISD by volume.

A bit too rough I think. Very roughly, HO is a 4km long, 800m wide cylinder while an ISD is a 1.6km long, 800m wide, 400m tall pyramid. This would give HO a volume of two billion cubic metres and an ISD a volume of 85 million cubic metres. Your initial estimate of HO being a couple of dozen times the volume is almost bang on.

By that token either a) modern rifles are effective against tanks, or modern soldiers don't carry rifles. A more logical conclusion would be that fighters are used, ergo fighters must be able to do something useful. This might be reconnaissance, ground attack, destroying enemy reconnaissance ships, or something else. During the Clone Wars, possibly, depending on whether those fighters were able to go in before the shields went up. Against ISDs, I've repeatedly pointed out Ackbar's explicit statement that fighters might stand a chance against them if the capships knocked out their shields first. If fighters were capable of inflicting severe damage on enemy ships, as they did with the Ex, without such assistance. 404

I'd say keep it the same - just get rid of the subfora.

These two statements sound remarkably similar to me, and the best way to go - pick and choose the technical bits that are reconcilable with the films (and basic maths), and treat the rest as a good read.

When have we seen an unshielded X-Wing do that?

I'm not talking about the ICS, or AU - I'm talking about your fucked-up claim that VenStars have a weapons range of about 15km, given that AT-AT's have a range of over 17km, per ESB.

And?

And the "windows" we see on the bridges of Trek ships. Just like bolts raced from from the NR cruiser outside the Coruscant system right down to Coruscant in the green belt in the EL duology. I see absolutely nothing in that clip as evidence that VenStars have a shorter weapons range than an AT-AT.

I'm sorry, I'm not familiar with those units. Could you rephrase that in terms of light hours please. So their viewports are TV screens that can magnify what's on them. Big deal.

At what altitude? Mercury and Pluto both orbit the sun. They're obviously outside the system, given that they're having to use specialised long-range weapons.