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Ams Jendob
Moff
Joined: 14 Jun 2009
Posts: 1579
Location: The Gala
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 Posted: Mon, September 19th 2011 03:26pm Post subject: SCIENCE!!!!!! (And rants from Moff :p) |
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Some of you might know that I am a student of the sciences. And, if there's anything I've learned over the years... it's that basic laws of physics, chemistry, thermodynamics, and biology just don't apply to SW. Oh, sure, it's fun calculating the minimum yield of a turbolaser blast to melt an asteroid and throwing it the face of some Trek-supremacist... but actually working it out with reference to SW itself—that is, for something like an SW RPG or fanfic or novel—reveals just how bad of an idea undertaking the endeavor is. Putting aside questions of how a laser bolt can puncture a Stormtrooper's armor, strike him in the abdomen, and instantly kill him versus a Rogue Squadron pilot being shot in a similar location, wearing only pajamas only requiring first aid and a quick dip in a bacta tank, or how the same model rifle merely draws blood from a solid strike on the upper arm of a petite human female (and she still retains full use of the arm seconds after being hit), if we work out what ships and weapons SHOULD be capable of—especially in the Saxton era, given his injection of SI units—we quickly realize that the realities of guide books and novels do not sync up, at all, with films.
For starters, a small discussion on the Base Delta Zero: misconceptions, facts, and problems.
| Quote: | Now, what is a Base Delta Zero (BDZ)? According to the beginning of the Wookieepedia article:
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Base Delta Zero was the naval code used by the Sith Empire, Galactic Republic, Galactic Empire, and Confederacy of Independent Systems to order the complete surface destruction of a planetary target, eliminating all life, industry, and natural resources.
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In other words, it is the utter and complete destruction of a planet's usefulness as an asset. You kill all life, but you do not stop there. You burn into the deepest mines and obliterate valuable resources. It is scorched-earth, on a planetary scale. This serves no military function: the purpose is to teach a lesson to the remainder of the Galaxy. This is an "extravagant" waste energy and military resources; after all, conquering a planet avails its riches to the conquerer. This renders a planet worthless. How worthless, you might ask. The planet Caamas, a target—and arguably, the only proper example of an Imperial-issued Base Delta Zero command—was rendered an uninhabitable, toxic, radioactive wasteland. It was easier to terraform a new world than to try fixing it.
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It denoted the most severe of several levels of destruction that could be directed against a center of resistance, and involved laying waste to an entire planet by orbital bombardment, reducing the upper crust of a planet to molten slag or in extreme cases going so far as to atomize the planet's top-soil.
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Now, "slagging" or "glassing" a planet is the popular conception of a Base Delta Zero. However... it is a misnomer, popularized in later works and slowly the misconception seeps into canon. But, we return to Caamas.
This is Caamas before the Imperial bombardment.
And this is Caamas after.
Now, I would like to call your attention to something. This planet was not "glassed." The upper layer of crust was not melted. And this is as plain as day.
Now, someone might argue the image comes from after the planet cooled. Putting aside the tremendous heat that would need to leave a molten surface and the extremely long time span required to radiate, conduct, and convect this heat away... there are craters and debris. Were the surface reduced to a shimmering sea of molten silicates and minerals, then it would cool into a fairly flat, featureless plain, much like the Moon's mare. Instead, we see blast craters, with roads and pipes leading into them. We see mangled wreckage in the foreground. We even see a skull lying atop the debris. Were Caamas' surface a sheet of lava, that skull would not have survived. An argument might be made for the pipes and debris, due to the advanced metallurgy of the Star Wars galactic civilization, but bone is bone.
The Caamas Base Delta Zero is far from a "glassing." More likely, it's akin to a series of high-powered nuclear bombs falling across the surface. Turbolasers being contact energy weapons, that would explain the cratering and heat damages. But how much energy would it take to bombard Caamas' surface to the point of saturation?
Well...
According to Coruscant and the Core Worlds, Caamas has a diameter of 15,540 kilometers. As a result, it would have a surface area of 758,668,236.5 square kilometers. Now, here's where it gets tricky. How long did the bombardment take? How many ships were involved? What kind of ships were they?
Supposedly, an ISD-I can conduct a bombardment of this scale, alone. If we say one day is sufficient to execute a Base Delta Zero operation before an enemy could gather forces in sufficient strength to neutralize the Star Destroyer, and we consider an ISD-I appears to have fifty-six small turbolasers mounted in the trenches along with hangar cannons and an aft-mounted, forward-facing turbolaser that, in the firefight with the Tantive IV, appear to have a cyclical rate of fire of 240 rounds per minute (we shall ignore cooldown time for a highly conservative estimate), and if we assume the ISD fires broadside to conduct this attack, that means the planet will suffer 10,713,600 impacts. As a result, each impact must cover (if we assume perfectly circular blasts and no overlapping) 70.8 square kilometers. If we define this radius to be a blast overpressure of 150 psi (sufficient to guarantee the death of a human or larger creature... but probably wouldn't kill significantly smaller creatures), each impact would have to simulate the effect of a 127 megaton TNT charge, or a turbolaser yield of somewhat over a 3.8-gigaton per shot (as death rays are actually less efficient than high explosives, dontcha know  ).
Now, say the window is only an hour, as Star Destroyer.net claims. Now, there's only time for 446,400 turbolaser strikes. Each must now cover an area of very nearly 1700 square kilometers, requiring a turbolaser yield of around 420 gigatons per shot. From supposedly light turbolasers meant for anti-fighter and small ship defense.
What if we used the WEG figures for ISD-I armament: sixty Taim & Bak XX9 Heavy Turbolaser batteries, aligned twenty port, twenty forward, and twenty starboard. Never mind that the XX9 is the model of turbolaser turret used on the Death Star at the Battle of Yavin to attack incoming Rebel fighters (and shoot down Porkins)... we'll assume these are fixed to their arcs. So, twenty twin-gun batteries on a facing means forty guns. XX9s demonstrate a rate of fire 60 rpm per gun and the guns are fire-linked, so 2400 rounds per minute. PHEAR TEH DAKKA.
Ahem, sorry.
Given that twenty-four hour window, we can ravage poor Caamas with 3,456,000 hits. Not too bad. Until you realize each bolt must lay waste to area 219.5 square kilometers. That means a yield—per shot, assuming perfectly even spacing—of 19.5 gigatons. If we have the bolts from each gun converging to combine their energies at impact, we increase to 55 gigatons per shot. Yet, that's not enough to utterly vaporize a titanium-hulled X-Wing? O_O
Of course, if we whittle the time down to one hour (Tarkin is impatient and he wants his tea, his slippers, and his Daala )... then we're talking 2.29-teraton evenly-spaced bolts or 6.48 teratons per bolt with harmonized batteries.
Now, these latter figures are actually well within the range established for turbolaser yields. Indeed, the medium quad turbolasers of an Acclamator-class frigate rate 200 gigatons per shot, with twelve such mounts across the ship. And we also didn't figure in the heavy turbolaser cannons flanking the superstructure of an ISD-I, but that's because they're never seen in action in the films and so no information exists on rate of fire or destructive potential.
But what if you really did want to glass a planet. What would that take? Well, by my calculations, to merely melt down the first meter of silcate-based crustal material (so, we're assuming no oceans, no thermally tougher materials in significant quantity...), then one only needs to pour about 770 teratons of heat energy into the planet. Of course, mines, fish, underground complexes, and the like often go much deeper than 39 inches under the surface. So "slag" the first kilometer of Caamasi crust—again, assuming no oceans to get in your way, even though they were there—just replace "teraton" with "petaton," or 770 million gigatons. I'll leave as an exercise for you to figure out what the power requirement for such actions would be, given an hour or two... or up to a full day to commit such a brutal and final act of violence.
Then you will get an appreciate for how insanely overpowered Star Wars ships are. |
Figures updated to reflect my latest calculations on turbolaser-to-explosive efficiency.
Next, we discuss Doctor Curtis Saxton...
| Quote: | If you're wondering who Curtis Saxton is, he is responsible for the Star Wars: Technical Commentaries, as well as some of the recent (i.e. last—holy crap, almost ten years) reference guides. Doctor Saxton has a PhD in astrophysics, and has decided to spend his spare time analyzing the Star Wars universe. His contributions include the SI figures from Attack of the Clones: Incredible Cross Sections as well as fuel consumption figures from Revenge of the Sith: Incredible Cross Sections as well as consultation with several novel authors. Some of his fan-based theories often gain wide acceptance among fans, though they're often poo-poohed by the official gatekeepers of canon, who don't appreciate applying Newton, Kepler, and Einstein to their space opera.
And, really, his figures do sit well with a universe that has hundred-mile wide battlestations that can vaporize, ionize, and scatter the mass of an entire planet in the span of a fraction of a second, mile-long battleships that go from indistinct points of light to looming colossi of death and doom in seconds, ships that streak from the ground to six planetary diameters out in the time it takes to change scenes, and near-magical materials with superconductive properties. Granted, they suck [eggs] for an RPG, but they fit.
However, he entered the game fairly late, and many authors had already put in their two cents... which worked nicely for the video games and nascent role-playing community. They also said a German Messerschmitt could outperform a starfighter capable of spaceflight, breaking free of a gravity well, and traveling faster than light. Computer games, in turn, suggest that a single bolt from an X-Wing's laser cannon will remove around a quarter of a million metric tons of mass from a Star Destroyer's hull. Whoops!
Still... Saxton's "assistance" has made more things worse than better. So, without further adieu, the Star Wars Galaxy according to Curtis Saxton:
-Venator-class Star Destroyers can engage a moving target with its subluminal turbolasers at ten light minutes. The Death Star, however, is limited to two and a half light minutes with its superlaser.
-A TIE Fighter accelerates at around 40 kilometers per second squared. A Jedi Interceptor, despite being replaced by the ostensibly superior TIE, accelerates at 51 KPS2. And what does that mean? Well... a TIE could go from the surface of Alderaan to its repulsor limit in just over a minute (61.11 seconds). It can reach hyper limit in 98.7 seconds. Which also means any fleet dropping from hyperspace to attack Alderaan can have its fighters hitting ground targets in two minutes.
That would suck in an RPG.
-The laser turrets on the LAAT and AT-TE have lethal concussion radius of six meters (twenty feet). Shrapnel radius is roughly (depending on the surface being hit) 8.5 meters. With a rate of fire of around 180 rounds per minute on an LAAT... and yet, an AT-TE has a range of only 20 km more than an M-1 Abrams. <_<
-The missiles of an LAAT are almost five times as powerful as the bombs dropped on Nagasaki, with the following estimated effect radii:
Thermal Radius (Death by Fire) 2,439 meters
Blast Radius (Building collapse) 2,065 meters
Pressure Kill Radius (Die by concussion)785 meters
Fireball Radius (airburst) 115 meters
Fireball Radius (groundburst) 151 meters
Did anyone see clones and Jedi being burnt to a crisp for a mile and a half around each impact point? No? <_<
-The 200 gigaton turbolasers of an Acclamator--alleged medium turbolaser—when used as an orbital bombardment weapon, would kill everything by fire for 239.5 miles around the impact point. Buildings would be blown to rubble (not considering damage from fire, mind you) for almost 79 miles around the impact point. Any human being exposed to atmospheric pressure variations for thirty miles around—even if they weren't a charred cinder—would be killed immediately by brain and lung hemorrhages from the blast wave...
-Which pales in comparison to the main forward twin mount of the Munificent Star Frigate. It can "blast-melt an ice moon a thousand kilometers across." At the low end, this would require over 190,000 times the energy as an Acclamator turbolaser bolt (38.316 Petatons, or 38 million gigatons). If such a blast were to strike a planet...
Thermal Radius 56,128.84 kilometers
Blast Radius 7,263.18 kilometers
Pressure Kill Radius 2,760.14 kilometers
Fireball Radius 2,725 kilometers
Fireball Duration 13.75 hours
In other words... EVERYONE DIES! THEY ALL DIE! These are positive changes folks. WHO'S FRAKKIN' WITH MAH MEDICINE...?
But on the bright side, with its reactor output, it would take a whole twenty minutes of full power for the frigate to charge up any capacitors for this cannon to fire once.
-A Venator, if it diverts all power to its sixteen heavy turbolasers, could have throughput firepower of 53,702 gigatons per second per cannon. Note that this is a tiny fraction of what a supposedly lesser vessel can accomplish. But there's also no delay in getting the pain from the reactor to the turbolasers. Still...
-Speaking of Venators and their prodigious power output, to carry sufficient fuel for its 60,000 light year range—assuming the reactor must be at full power for a hyperspace jump—it needs to carry 1,271,808,000 tons of fuel. Yes, over a billion and a quarter tons of fuel... which translates to eight hours of full power running.
And that, gentlemen, is the Star Wars Galaxy according to Curtis Saxton. I became interested these calculations because of my attempts to create a "realistic" (that is, conforms to canon standards of power and energy harnessing) RPG years back. Had I known of Doctor Saxton's work—and the equations that let you figure out how a thermal lance interacts with a target material—at the time, I feel that game would not have survived the first battle... let alone run for four years. |
A small corollary to that calculation on Venator fuel consumption. If we figure that hypermatter costs as much as crude oil (yes, the magical better-than-antimatter tachyonic particles used as fuel in SW cost as much as well-aged and squeezed dinosaur juice...) at $518.09 per ton (that's eighty bucks a barrel)... then it would cost $658,917,668,571.43. Before New York State taxed the living crap out of it. >_>
Maybe we should've had fuel costs in VIII, eh?
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Emperor Ams Jendob, Ruler of the Imperial Remnant
----"Moff", CMAC Dreamcrusher, Official Administrative Waldorf and Statler---- |
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Ams Jendob
Moff
Joined: 14 Jun 2009
Posts: 1579
Location: The Gala
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| Posted: Tue, September 20th 2011 06:55pm Post subject: |
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Hmm... just noticed something in some pictures.
Executor bridge 1...
Executor Bridge 2
Now, the Executor is 19 kilometers long, yeah...? So uh, where's the rest of it? Shouldn't there be a massive, ten-mile long chunk of ship visible from the command tower?
Also, they're really close to the Death Star... in fact, that ISD is hovering around one ship-draught (that's not a term you use everyday ) off the surface! Now, ISDs are about 450 meters tall... so, that ISD is around 400-500 meters away from the Death Star. The problem is... the Executor is about two kilometers from keel to bridge tower. Meaning... bad, bad things are going on. <_<
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Emperor Ams Jendob, Ruler of the Imperial Remnant
----"Moff", CMAC Dreamcrusher, Official Administrative Waldorf and Statler---- |
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Xerros Orade
Cheapy
Joined: 31 Oct 2009
Posts: 125
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| Posted: Sat, November 05th 2011 09:41pm Post subject: |
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A better question regarding the Executor is what the hell else are they cramming into a bridge tower the size of a cruiser?
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Whosaywhatta?
| Quote: | "Que?" - Me
"Queso?" - Jase
"Che Cosa?" - Alex
"Who say what now?" - Space Jawa
"...Remind me again why I don't set you all on fire?" - Moff |
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Ams Jendob
Moff
Joined: 14 Jun 2009
Posts: 1579
Location: The Gala
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| Posted: Sun, November 06th 2011 12:30pm Post subject: |
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Puppies and orphanages. Yeah, when Arvel Crynyd went all "ALLAHU ADMIRAL ACKBAR" on the bridge tower... HE WAS KILLING PUPPIES AND ORPHANS.
It's science, thus it's true. <_<
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Emperor Ams Jendob, Ruler of the Imperial Remnant
----"Moff", CMAC Dreamcrusher, Official Administrative Waldorf and Statler---- |
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Ams Jendob
Moff
Joined: 14 Jun 2009
Posts: 1579
Location: The Gala
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| Posted: Tue, December 13th 2011 01:32pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | Jacen: "Hey, Jaina – you know why TIE fighters scream in space?"
Jaina: "Sure, their twin ion engines set up a shock front from the exhaust—"
Jacen: "No! Because they miss their mothership!"
―Young Jacen Solo, telling a joke to his literal-minded sister |
I can only say this. And I hate that show.
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Emperor Ams Jendob, Ruler of the Imperial Remnant
----"Moff", CMAC Dreamcrusher, Official Administrative Waldorf and Statler---- |
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Shayera Jendob
Moff
Joined: 14 Jun 2009
Posts: 513
Location: All along the Watchtower
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| Posted: Thu, December 29th 2011 04:57pm Post subject: |
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Don't worry, no cramming astrophysics and thermodynamics where they don't belong this time. But this is really cool: one trillion frames per second:
And this is what it looks like 1.2258 instants after you burst someone's bubble:
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Empress Shayera Jendob
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