ICS: Good Representation of the SW Universe?

[Knife]

But I think it's safe to say that you don't need to be a professor in order to realize that this isn't the easiest thing to reconcile.

Why? According tot he dialouge, the whole fleet needed to be positioned to destroy the whole of the planet, not just the flagship. So, I'm assuming you are referring to the fact that the flagship didn't wipe out large swaths of continent at a time with that bombardment.

[l33telboi]

Why? According tot he dialouge, the whole fleet needed to be positioned to destroy the whole of the planet, not just the flagship. So, I'm assuming you are referring to the fact that the flagship didn't wipe out large swaths of continent at a time with that bombardment.

Pretty much, yes. Though I'm not sure what you mean with the fleet positioning, the vessel started blasting away at the planet some time after the initial dialogue, indicating that at that point the fleet was positioned (why would they have started blasting otherwise?). It’s weird though, memory tells me that Malak at some point ordered the bombardment to start even though the fleet wasn’t in position yet, but at the moment I can’t find any evidence of that, and I’ve watched three different videos of the play-through of that particular part of the game. My mind must be playing tricks on me.

[Ender]

The OP only asked whether it's my opinion that the ICS is a good representation of the rest of the universe. The stance you're taking now is that 'everything fits, no matter how contrived the explanation to make it fit would be'. If that had really been the intent of the OP, then the question would've been a moot one. And I do indeed try to rationalize any problems that may arise, that much is true in regards to any and all verses I might be debating, but at some point the problem just becomes too big and the contradiction too blatant to not be acknowledged. Such is the case with the ICS, at least in my opinion...

No, the stance I'm taking is that you manufacture contradictions to serve your own ends.

...And KotOR is a good example of what I said above. During this time-period we've seen as many as five orbital bombardments, Taris (twice), Telos, Serroco and whatever the planet was called where the Mandalorians were mustering their forces, none of those mesh with the petaton per second figures that would hold true for the 1,6km long ISD. I mean, according to the KotOR SE:RPG, the biggest weapons the forces have at their disposal are fission-based nukes, which we see in use on planetary targets on two occasions. Granted the only hard figures provided for any of those bombardments was during the first Taris bombardment, which was said to have seen kilotons rained down on the city during one of the more destructive phases of bombardment. But I think it's safe to say that you don't need to be a professor in order to realize that this isn't the easiest thing to reconcile.

No, you just need to not be willfully ignorant. I've covered this against you before child. Mike also has a page up covering this. Explosive scaling is only useful for lower limits. We do not know the power of the weapons, only the energy. Further, we do not know the van der Waals parameters for the materials being vaporized (it is empirically derived, hard to do that for sci fi substances). So without those 3 variables you simply cannot work back to an accurate assessment. Even against something like iron, without knowing the time frame it is useless. 1 teraton will look like a few kilotons is the energy is applied over 1/15th of a second instead of the milliseconds it takes for a bomb to release the same energy.

You are screaming "contradiction!" at the top of your lungs when anyone who applies some elementary thought can tell that there is nothing inherently contradictory about it. You don't need to be a professor, you just needto not have an axe to grind.

You want to show that is a contradiction? Do the math. Prove the power figures.

From what I gathered from the OP, this thread was never about showing a contradiction, just about stating your opinion on the matter, indeed it says as much - and that's exactly what I did.

The OP is not the rules of the board, so you should stop trying to cower behind that now. The board rules are very clear on this regard, and the Administrator made it explicitly, unambiguously clear that claims are required to be supported in this thread.

[l33telboi]

No, you just need to not be willfully ignorant. I've covered this against you before child.

I don't think so. If memory serves, then last time we discussed this particular issue you made an argument in regards to recoil, but that was it.

Mike also has a page up covering this. Explosive scaling is only useful for lower limits.

I've seen the page before, yes. Granted I'm no expert, but I was always wondering about something, and since I'm here I might as well ask and learn. Regarding this bit of the page you linked too: "Since gas behaviour is predominantly controlled by the number of moles, we can conclude that in order to closely simulate the effect of a 1kg RDX charge with some sort of sci-fi raygun, we would need to produce roughly the same number of moles of gas that the RDX would produce, at the same pressure, in the same amount of time." Why would the moles be so important? Isn't temperature just as important, for instance? The ideal gas law would suggest as much. Or perhaps there's something I'm missing?

And one more thing - and this is something I really don't know much about, so I'm probably wrong somewhere or missing something - but in regards to this bit: “But we also need to produce 33.8 GPa of pressure. If we use the Ideal Gas Law approximation PV=nRT and solve for T, temperature is PV/nR, where P is 33.8E9 N/m², V is 5.7E-4 m³ (the volume required for 4.5 kg of iron at 7870 kg/m³), n is 40.5, and R is the universal gas constant 8.314 J/(mol•K). This works out to over 57000 K!”

Why doesn’t it work when you do the same for RDX? If we use the density figure for RDX provided there, i.e. 1.76g/cm^3, and that a kg would take up about 5.7e-4m^3. Then when solving for temperature, you’d get: T = PV/nR = (33.8e9*5.7e-4)/(40.5*8.31) = ~57,245K, right? But that’d also mean that you’d have to use more energy to heat the thing then what you eventually get out… so, how does that work? Like I said, I’m probably shooting in dark about that one and just missing something obvious, but it can’t hurt to ask.

We do not know the power of the weapons, only the energy. Further, we do not know the van der Waals parameters for the materials being vaporized (it is empirically derived, hard to do that for sci fi substances). So without those 3 variables you simply cannot work back to an accurate assessment. Even against something like iron, without knowing the time frame it is useless. 1 teraton will look like a few kilotons is the energy is applied over 1/15th of a second instead of the milliseconds it takes for a bomb to release the same energy.

Well you’d still expect some heat even if you’re not getting shockwaves. I mean it’d a bit silly to have the energy equivalent of several teratons of TNT going off a few hundred meters in front of you with nothing major happening to you yourself or just the air surrounding it. As it is though there doesn't appear to be much melted material involved at all, making me wonder whether we should assume the primary means of dealing damage is by directly heating the target at all.

You are screaming "contradiction!" at the top of your lungs when anyone who applies some elementary thought can tell that there is nothing inherently contradictory about it. You don't need to be a professor, you just needto not have an axe to grind.

If that’s how you see it…

The OP is not the rules of the board, so you should stop trying to cower behind that now. The board rules are very clear on this regard, and the Administrator made it explicitly, unambiguously clear that claims are required to be supported in this thread.

Well if the thread has been changed from what it was then there was really no need to post here at all, I guess. In any case, I need to get some sleep now, I’ll check back tomorrow.

EDIT: Corrected a spelling error.

[Murazor]

Good news: After several months of unemployment, I just got a job.

Bad news: Yes, I am perfectly aware of what this sounds like. It is an awfully convenient excuse to get out of a debate where I would have gotten mauled within a couple more posts.

So for my (probably) final intervention in this thread, I'll just clarify my position a bit and will hope that this is enough to placate those who have taken issue with my previous posts.

Somebody around here has a signature about how not all opinions are equal and some have a far greater amount of reflexion behind them. This is the case here. Although my opinion is as stated, people who have a far greater understanding of science than I do and who have done far more extensive analysis of the materials being discussed than I have disagree with me.

Meaning that it is exceedingly likely that my current opinion (expressed from relative ignorance and based in a comparatively shallow study of EU materials) is simply wrong. Considering that I don't have the means, the inclination and now the time to make a solid case to defend my position, I think that it'll be better if I simply concede all points in contention.

[SCVN 2812]

Although something tells me the quick and dirty answer to this question will likely be "use the search function," I was curious if anyone knew of links to threads discussing elements of the EU that could be interpreted as supporting the ICS? I have quietly followed the debate raging on SB.com about the ICS and feel the pro-ICS faction has not exactly done a great job of making its case. I recall some good discussions about the ICS and how it could be tied to pre-existing canon when the Ep 2 and 3 ICS and ITW:OT first came out but of late there seems to be very little new under the sun in terms of tech discussion, the engineering constraints thread excepted. Specifically I'm interested in support for the petaton range yield figures for ISDs besides accelerations.

As for where to find the information I'm interested in, I have to admit I'm at a loss for search terms.

[consequences]

See, at this point, there's very few people who care to make the effort any more, and fewer still with the appropriate background to really make it stick(I fall into neither category), this was all fought out and effectively settled more than half a decade ago. Literally, it's long enough that the current crop of debaters generally don't even know about the utterly batshit rubbish that's been thrown out and discredited, in some cases repeatedly.

[SCVN 2812]

See, at this point, there's very few people who care to make the effort any more, and fewer still with the appropriate background to really make it stick(I fall into neither category), this was all fought out and effectively settled more than half a decade ago. Literally, it's long enough that the current crop of debaters generally don't even know about the utterly batshit rubbish that's been thrown out and discredited, in some cases repeatedly.

Regrettably there seems to be no place to go then for a down to earth explanation of what works and what doesn't work and what can be kludged into line with the ICS Star Wars universe when having a discussion outside of the context of Lucasarts's official canon policy (which every side in an argument seem to selectively quote for their benefit.) Rather than hear "its canon and that's the end of it" I'm genuinely interested in rereading some of these arguments but there seems to be no way to go about doing it besides spending days I will never have back mining the archives of SB and SD.