TPM explosions

[nightmare]

I'd like to state from the start that I don't intend to participate in the ongoing flak burst debate. I was just looking up things in TPM due to interest in a thread on sw.com about TFB vs. SD and I came up with a couple pictures I found interesting.



Now, this first explosion translates to 154 m diameter (7 pixels / 144 pixels * 3170 m). By non-adjusted scaling, it took place 286 m from the surface of the TFB. Actually it should most likely be more due to the angle, and while you can't properly line it up in this picture, you get an approximate sense of position with all the other explosions going off around it. There's no way it can be much closer.

You can either chalk this up to flak bursts or energy torpedoes fired from the N-1s or the Vultures while dogfighting, I don't care which you subscribe to. It is clear, however, that the effective shield of the TFB ship does not extend several hundred metres from the surface since we after a cutscene see N-1 fighters pass over the ship at extremely close range, impacts directly on the hull, etc. This happens reasonably only seconds later due to the speeds we can observe.



This second explosion is a bit larger than the first, estimated at 177 m diameter by me. It also clearly occurrs further away from the viewer than the first explosion.

On to the point.. I don't know how large a nuclear fireball would be in space, this is the part I'm interested in. A lot of it would be thermal radiation, neutrons, gamma rays etc if this was a nuke; invisible stuff. I'm going to look for references, but if anyone have one handy, feel free to step up for an estimate. With the advent of AOTC, we have a good mearure of missile firepower, but this may yet be one.

EDIT: Oh, and I'm going to leave for x-mas soon, so don't expect me to reply later than tonight.

[K. A. Pital]

I don't know how large a nuclear fireball would be in space, this is the part I'm interested in.

I think you meant lightburst? Fireballs in vacuum need materiel to burn.

154 m diameter

In the atmosphere this lightburst diameter would correspond to a less-than kiloton yield. Atmosphere actually absorbs light poorly enough for the dependancy to be near the inverse-squared dependancy which occurs in vacuum, so the yields required for a particular lightburst range will somewhat diminish. However, not much. So we can be estimate teh lightburst by it's diameter.

O1 - range of first-grade burns (light burns)
O2 - range of second-grade burns (severe)
O3 - range of third-grade burns (with death of tissues)
X - yield in kilotons

My guess would be X kiloton, where 0,1<x<1,0. The upper rather unlikely - a 1 kt yield would cause a lightburst which would inflict 3th-grade burns on people in the radius of 0,7 km (which is a 1,4 km diameter).

As for shockwave - it's senseless in vacuum - and direct ionization - it dissipates quickly in the air, but there's vacuum and nowhere to dissipate thus. The shockwave would be non-existant, the rays would probably have a collosal impact radius.

That's off-hand what I thought on the yield estimation. I'm not a nuclear scientist of any kind, though.

[nightmare]

I didn't have a proper word for it since "fireball" is the only term available; there's not exactly a huge amount of data on nuclear explosions in space from what I gather, but "lightburst" seem fine to me. The atmospheric estimate is not very appliable, so I'm not sure how much trust I should put in your figure. Well, thanks for trying anyway.

EDIT: So far the only thing I've found is the (seemingly educated) opinion that a nuke in space would be less impressive visually than a corresponding chemical explosion due to the large amount of invisible effects.

[Darwin]

couldn't those be exploding fightercraft or warheads?

not every flash is a shield interaction.

[nightmare]

The very fact that we see hits on the direct hull (or extremely short distance from it) plus that fighters are swarming basically through the TFB at point blank shows that they can't be shield interactions.

Energy torpedoes is a distinct possibility. Exploding fighters not so much, there weren't that many N-1s. The number of Vultures was much greater, but it's hard to imagine them to be owned so completely by the Naboo when we don't see this in closeup.