Is the Death Star II weaker than Death Star I?
Posted: 2007-10-15 01:05pm
Right before going into my reasoning, I'm going to state all of my unprovable assumptions up front.
1.) The DS II was fully armed and operational during the battle of Endor, or at least the main-beam was.
2.) The DS II was not intentionally set to a lower power setting during the battle of Endor.
[[this is the most easily challenged assumption, as not only would it make sense to lower the power setting, BUT...
During ANH, the DSI was shown waiting for its orbit to clear a planet before firing on the rebel base. While originally the idea was sound enough, when they fell under attack - and when they analyzed the attack and found that it may -indeed- pose a threat, they still neglected to simply blow the planet out of the way before firing on the rebel base.
Quite likely, then, the DSI in full power mode had some sort of re-charge phase that inhibited it from firing multiple shots. Since the DSII was seen doing just this, it's possible that it was intentionally set to a lower power setting, which refutes my argument.]]
3.) Although DW specifically states on the main page: "... that it is difficult to gauge the effect of weapons in any meaningful sense unless they are applied to inert objects ... ... we need to look for weapons striking inert objects such as rocks, planets, asteroids, etc." He in fact intended to imply that the resultant explosion may be overrepresented, not under. That is to say that if firing a handgun at a plane causes a massive megaton explosion, we don't assume the handgun caused the explosion, but if that handgun were fired against, say, a rock and it caused a megaton explosion, we could safely assume that firing the same handgun against a plane would cause a megaton explosion, or more.
[[ I don't know enough science to know if this is or is not refutable]]
4.) The literature does not talk in too much detail about the DSI or DSII outside of these six movies and does not differ significantly from it.
</unproved or unprovable assumptions>
Here's my summary argument, with no calculations. I do hope you'll be able to refute or accept it without full figures, and then calculating figures will be more to determine ramifications than anything else.
Anyways, take a look at the explosion at:
2:25 DSII firing on a ship
2:49 DSII firing on yet another ship; but off-axis this time.
in: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6G2gimprlwg
The way the blast is shaped, and - just eyeballing it - the speed of expansion of the explosion of the ship is significantly smaller than the speed at which Alderaan exploded even if they were in the same frame of reference. (http://stardestroyer.net/Empire/Tech/Be ... lassic.avi).
Add in the fact that from the Alderaan shot's frame of reference the slightest movement is significant, and what you're left with is this:
The DSII had a very very very very low yield shot by comparison to the DSI.
Furthermore, notice in the first of those anti-ship shots, the shot from the death star is not shown to be off-axis, but rather is done quite like the Alderaan shot (which we assume is not off-axis).
One thing that would have contributed to this lack of explosive energy would be if the entire power from the shot failed to fully connect with the ship. Alternatively, if the Alderaan beam were active longer (in order to first overcome the planetary shield and then the buildup knocked out the planet with even more force), it would explain a more aggressive planetary explosion. That is not the case, however, as evidenced by the actual image of the hyper-laser striking the target. In both the Alderaan case and the of the ship-ship shot, the hyper-laser is show striking the target, maintaining contact for about the same amount of time (1s or less) and then ceasing, as the target explodes.
Lastly, to further support my argument, I'm going to address one of my admittedly unprovable assumptions. In my third assumption I stated that the explosion could be aided, but would not mitigated, by the presence of fuel and other such volatile substances on board. As a result any explosive blast we saw may be made bigger by the fact that it's not an inert object, but certainly not smaller/slower. It occurs to me that unlike a planet, ships have shields that would lower the blasting power fractionally, however Alderaan had a shield of its own, apparently, and it still exploded far more powerfully than the comparatively tiny ship.
I know it's going out on a limb to think this argument hasn't already been made, so if it has, please just refer me to the debunking thread, and lock the topic. Thank you.
-AHMAD
PS: Just because I put the assumptions in the beginning doesn't imply that I 'assumed whatever I wanted to'. The assumptions I made are each with their own credibility, just not proven. I can explain my reasoning for each if so desired, except perhaps the second. That said, I've seen what happens when people try to pawn off their beliefs as proven and so I'm just stating it openly at the beginning.
1.) The DS II was fully armed and operational during the battle of Endor, or at least the main-beam was.
2.) The DS II was not intentionally set to a lower power setting during the battle of Endor.
[[this is the most easily challenged assumption, as not only would it make sense to lower the power setting, BUT...
During ANH, the DSI was shown waiting for its orbit to clear a planet before firing on the rebel base. While originally the idea was sound enough, when they fell under attack - and when they analyzed the attack and found that it may -indeed- pose a threat, they still neglected to simply blow the planet out of the way before firing on the rebel base.
Quite likely, then, the DSI in full power mode had some sort of re-charge phase that inhibited it from firing multiple shots. Since the DSII was seen doing just this, it's possible that it was intentionally set to a lower power setting, which refutes my argument.]]
3.) Although DW specifically states on the main page: "... that it is difficult to gauge the effect of weapons in any meaningful sense unless they are applied to inert objects ... ... we need to look for weapons striking inert objects such as rocks, planets, asteroids, etc." He in fact intended to imply that the resultant explosion may be overrepresented, not under. That is to say that if firing a handgun at a plane causes a massive megaton explosion, we don't assume the handgun caused the explosion, but if that handgun were fired against, say, a rock and it caused a megaton explosion, we could safely assume that firing the same handgun against a plane would cause a megaton explosion, or more.
[[ I don't know enough science to know if this is or is not refutable]]
4.) The literature does not talk in too much detail about the DSI or DSII outside of these six movies and does not differ significantly from it.
</unproved or unprovable assumptions>
Here's my summary argument, with no calculations. I do hope you'll be able to refute or accept it without full figures, and then calculating figures will be more to determine ramifications than anything else.
Anyways, take a look at the explosion at:
2:25 DSII firing on a ship
2:49 DSII firing on yet another ship; but off-axis this time.
in: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6G2gimprlwg
The way the blast is shaped, and - just eyeballing it - the speed of expansion of the explosion of the ship is significantly smaller than the speed at which Alderaan exploded even if they were in the same frame of reference. (http://stardestroyer.net/Empire/Tech/Be ... lassic.avi).
Add in the fact that from the Alderaan shot's frame of reference the slightest movement is significant, and what you're left with is this:
The DSII had a very very very very low yield shot by comparison to the DSI.
Furthermore, notice in the first of those anti-ship shots, the shot from the death star is not shown to be off-axis, but rather is done quite like the Alderaan shot (which we assume is not off-axis).
One thing that would have contributed to this lack of explosive energy would be if the entire power from the shot failed to fully connect with the ship. Alternatively, if the Alderaan beam were active longer (in order to first overcome the planetary shield and then the buildup knocked out the planet with even more force), it would explain a more aggressive planetary explosion. That is not the case, however, as evidenced by the actual image of the hyper-laser striking the target. In both the Alderaan case and the of the ship-ship shot, the hyper-laser is show striking the target, maintaining contact for about the same amount of time (1s or less) and then ceasing, as the target explodes.
Lastly, to further support my argument, I'm going to address one of my admittedly unprovable assumptions. In my third assumption I stated that the explosion could be aided, but would not mitigated, by the presence of fuel and other such volatile substances on board. As a result any explosive blast we saw may be made bigger by the fact that it's not an inert object, but certainly not smaller/slower. It occurs to me that unlike a planet, ships have shields that would lower the blasting power fractionally, however Alderaan had a shield of its own, apparently, and it still exploded far more powerfully than the comparatively tiny ship.
I know it's going out on a limb to think this argument hasn't already been made, so if it has, please just refer me to the debunking thread, and lock the topic. Thank you.
-AHMAD
PS: Just because I put the assumptions in the beginning doesn't imply that I 'assumed whatever I wanted to'. The assumptions I made are each with their own credibility, just not proven. I can explain my reasoning for each if so desired, except perhaps the second. That said, I've seen what happens when people try to pawn off their beliefs as proven and so I'm just stating it openly at the beginning.