StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Reading Heir to the Empire for the first time, and I was just wondering what made that sun so darn special that they need a special umbrella ship to escort ships to the planet? I thought SW ships were a lot more robust than that. Or is this a very special sun?

Technically, I don't remember. Wasn't it just really close for some reason?

Keep in mind though, that the Star Wars universe that we know today is not the Star Wars that Zahn knew when he wrote those books. IIRC, weird shit like that pops up all over the place. Luckily though, the EU fanboys have made up lots of bullshit strides to rectify all the discrepancies in Zahn's books.

From what I can recall off the top of my head, there isn't anything particularly special about Nkllon's sun; it's just another star. What makes the umbrella ships necessary is the closeness of the planet to the sun. Unshielded ships would have their equipment/hulls melted off. I also recall the other incident about Nkllon when the Empire launched an attack against it with a Star Destroyer, which they had to refit at a shipyard in order to withstand the trip past the sun better. They removed sensitive or exposed sensors and other equipment so that they wouldn't get burnt off. The hull of the ship was strong enough to withstand the stresses.

This raises the question about the strength of a SD's shielding vis a vis the emissions generated by the sun at an unknown distance. Presumably, the sun's emissions would be more than what the ship's shields can handle, hence making the removal of sensitive equipment necessary. But I have no idea how to calculate those figures.

Does it really say anything about the strength of the shields? I would imagine that the sensors would need to be protected because of the intensity of the light from being that close. The shields, after all, are transparent. They are designed to let light rays through.

Short answer: Zahn was (and still is) not a technically minded author and most likely had (and still has) no idea of either shield strengths or magnitudes of stellar radiation, but threw something together to look cool. In fairness, there was not too much sensible technological material around for him to study at the time, so I would be more lenient with this than a lot of other stuff in his minimalism. Regardless, I think it can pretty much qualify as overridden by other sources (either that or there was something special going on, there).

On the topic of stars, SirNitram does some calculations on shields versus solar radiation in this thread, using the official ICS numbers. There are also some other EU examples that spring to mind, including an old Marvel comic in which the Rebel fleet uses some custom shield generators to hide inside a sun.

It's worth noting that the parts damaged on the Star Destroyer were solely areas like antennae and gun barrels that would require holes in the shielding to operate. (p.145) Interestingly, they are described as vaporized and they refer to "a fair part of its armament" being damaged by the star. This implies that at least part of its armament wouldn't be damaged significantly by Nkllon's star within the timeframe.

There is no particular need to rationalize Nkllon as being much else beyond a superhot star with a planet in close proximity, though I suppose we can invoke exotic radiation if we must, but the parts that explicitly are damaged are the parts of a Star Destroyer, or indeed of any ship, that must either extend beyond, or not be covered by the shields. The special shields that allowed a Rebel fleet to hide within a star probably were shields merely extended to cover sensory equipment and weapons, as the actual shield strength is indeed great enough for a typical warship or upgunned freighter to hide within a star's photosphere indefinitely.

This might be of interest.

Oh, and as for what SW solar radiation ships can withstand... there was this comic in which the rebel fleet hid inside a yellow star with some kind of shield as only protection. Don't ask, it's silly. I think Poe wrote a bit about it once.

nightmare wrote:This might be of interest.

Oh, and as for what SW solar radiation ships can withstand... there was this comic in which the rebel fleet hid inside a yellow star with some kind of shield as only protection. Don't ask, it's silly. I think Poe wrote a bit about it once.

Probably the most interesting thing is that Nkllon isn't considered unique; there are other coronal planets ("Vulcanoids", if you will) and they are common enough to be designated as superhot planets. There's no particular need to make the shield any more special than simply being extended to cover the antennae and gun barrels, unless of course it is a plot point that they're able to communicate or fight while in the star.

nightmare wrote:This might be of interest.

Oh, and as for what SW solar radiation ships can withstand... there was this comic in which the rebel fleet hid inside a yellow star with some kind of shield as only protection. Don't ask, it's silly. I think Poe wrote a bit about it once.

I actually remember that comic. It doesn't seem to be on Wookiepedia, do know what it's name was?

Darth Hoth wrote:Short answer: Zahn was (and still is) not a technically minded author and most likely had (and still has) no idea of either shield strengths or magnitudes of stellar radiation, but threw something together to look cool. In fairness, there was not too much sensible technological material around for him to study at the time, so I would be more lenient with this than a lot of other stuff in his minimalism. Regardless, I think it can pretty much qualify as overridden by other sources (either that or there was something special going on, there).

On the topic of stars, SirNitram does some calculations on shields versus solar radiation in this thread, using the official ICS numbers. There are also some other EU examples that spring to mind, including an old Marvel comic in which the Rebel fleet uses some custom shield generators to hide inside a sun.

Mike I think also suggested the with the Nkllon planet being full of such exotic and expensive resources it was literally worth it to build a specialized plant and crawl across it to pick goodies off the crust when you could just mine the billions of high-metallicity worlds like those owned by the Mining Guild, or better yet protostellar/planetary discs with young stars and lots of not-yet-coalesced raw materials, that clearly there was and is something exotic and unique beyond your first 92 elements native to the Nklllon system, and taking that into account Nkllon could be significantly more exotic than your bog-standard star formed from a normal protostellar cloud of gas and dust. Whatever freak-exotic-rare materials made the superlative mining operation economical could also make the star's emissions uniquely distruptive or hazardous.

I may be noteworthy that nowhere in the description of the shieldships is there any mention of them (despite the name) having exceptionally heavy shielding. They're said to have very extensive COOLING equipment which indicates that more powerful shields likely wouldn't have been worth it.
Furthermore, as there is a size limit on the ships that can hide behind a shieldship that means they have to get in close enough to Athega for the radiation to get AROUND the shieldship's shadow which even for something as relatively small as OUR sun means getting seriously close to the star. Single figure million kilometer close. Yes, Athega is probably a lot larger AND hotter than that (at least I remember it being described that way) but that only means its 'you're fucked' zone is much larger.

That's a good point, and it could be as simple as a dedicated crudetech cool-ship was a better, more practical, more economical solution for particularly exotic or intense emissions than technically feasible but uncompetitive ship-modification or hardening. No reason this has to be like ST with a force field for a can opener.

Its worth noting that in the HTTE sourcebook WEG put out a Nkllon year was listed as being a mere five days long (with a ninety day rotation period). The Athegan sun is also described as a "giant" although whether thats a formal reference to a "giant" star of some kind or it just means its a big star (assuming that matters much) isn't specified. The only definite is that its not blue or blue-white star (from the comic adaption) but that leaves alot of wiggle room. The HTTe novel IIRC also mentioned the star's corona being quite close and visible from the planet.

Connor MacLeod wrote:Its worth noting that in the HTTE sourcebook WEG put out a Nkllon year was listed as being a mere five days long (with a ninety day rotation period). The Athegan sun is also described as a "giant" although whether thats a formal reference to a "giant" star of some kind or it just means its a big star (assuming that matters much) isn't specified. The only definite is that its not blue or blue-white star (from the comic adaption) but that leaves alot of wiggle room. The HTTe novel IIRC also mentioned the star's corona being quite close and visible from the planet.

Mercury has an year of eighty-eight days, by comparison. If we knew a little more about Athega, we could use Kepler's Third Law to determine the radius/semimajor axis of its orbit. As it is, though, I am loathe to guess based on "giant" and a color that could range from red to yellow.

Alas, edit timed out.

Looking at a panel from the HTTE comic didn't help much, as it was multicolored, with either a visible corona or a constant stream of flares across its surface. To be honest, it more resembled a cross-section than a star. If we take the outermost layer, than it is red-orange in color. This, combined with the mention of it as a "giant" star, suggests that it falls into the giant section of the Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram, which conveniently ranges in color from yellow to red. Aldebaran or Arcturus seems like a good example for a preliminary look at the possible orbital radius of Nkllon, as both are orange giants. Calculations will be forthcoming.

Preliminarily, it looks like the "giant" classification and the orbital period are rather inconsistent with each other.

If Athega is equivalent to Aldebaran; then

It would have m=3.38147e30 kg, and rmean=30624000 km.
Nkllon has an orbital period of five days. The Coruscant day is apparently identical to our own, at 86400 seconds.
Using Kepler's third law:
T2 = 4pi2/GMAl * r3
gives us a semimajor axis, and therefore mean distance, of 10214492 km. This however, is the distance from the center of the star. Subtracting the radius of the star from this gives us a distance for Nkllon of -29599508 km from the surface of Aldebaran. This is problematic, to say the least, as it seems to make the shieldship pointless if they're diving 67% of the way into Athega already. Further, I question Nkllon's ability to survive in those conditions. It seems like it would have been pulled apart, or rather, never been formed period.

For a star the size of Aldebaran, in order to orbit at its surface (bad enough), Nkllon would require an orbital period of 26 days. To orbit at the distance of Mercury would require an orbital period of 127.6 days. To be honest, there doesn't seem to be enough information readily available to reconstruct the distance of Nkllon by gravity alone. Does the Heir to the Empire Sourcebook happen to offer any more information?