Force Sub Winter 1941, Russian Front Tanks vs Mechs

[MKSheppard]

That was an uncontrolled blast. It has no application to the CONTROLLED
release of energy to power Gundam systems.

[MKSheppard]

All it shows is that a Gundam reactor set to overload can blast half
a mountain up. How much of that power is actually USEABLE by the
fucking gundam is another matter.

[Howedar]

LOL! That mountain is as tough as Mr. T. Certainly no material I know of could do that, let alone when its heated.

[SAMAS]

*PWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!*

Sheppard, that was the most ignorrant thing you've said yet!

That was not a blast. That was a shot from the Apsalus III, a mobile armor that's supposed to be powered by three reactors with a total output of only 3660 kW.

Storywise, they were taken from three MS-09RII Rick Dom IIs. In one episode, you can even see the parts of the suits they cannibablized.

[MKSheppard]

*PWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!*

Sheppard, that was the most ignorrant thing you've said yet!

That looked nothing like a controlled blast. Globular fireball indicates
uncontrolled blast. FUCKTARD

[SAMAS]

That's when the blast from the Mega Particle Cannon hit the mountain, dumbass!

Here, let me show you the second mountain that felt it's fury:

http://samas.freehosting.net/Shot2-01.jpg
The Gundam EZ-8 puts it's fist into the Apsalus's cockpit as it prepares to fire.

http://samas.freehosting.net/Shot2-02.jpg
The Cannon fires, vaporizing most of the EZ-8.


http://samas.freehosting.net/Shot2-03.jpg
The beam lances over the heads of the 08th Team as it hits the mountain.

http://samas.freehosting.net/Shot2-04.jpg
Without control, the beam quickly dies out, but the portions of the mountain are still glowing white-hot where the beam struck.

http://samas.freehosting.net/Shot2-05.jpg
On the other side of the mountain, Captain Ryer watches his doom approaching.

Get it?

[Darth Wong]

I'm not trying to say that Mobile Suit reactors are obcenely powerful(okay, so the Aspsalus III is, but that's a Mobile Armor, and it used the reactors of three Mobile Suits). I'm trying to say that the official numbers given are in error.

How so? I think it more likely that the reactor was deliberately designed to produce such a blast, and that it was effectively a clandestine nuclear weapon. This does not mean it could harness that energy in a controlled fashion; the designs of nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors are VASTLY different. The fact remains that the suits have never demonstrated any power requirements remotely approaching thermonuclear weapon yields.

Moreover, this "mountain" is obviously much smaller than it looks. The fact that the top half doesn't crack and fall down into the cavity proves that it cannot be a full-sized mountain. I suggest you go back and learn some more basic physics, SAMAS. Also note the lack of damage to the surrounding terrain; the kind of yield necessary to blow a hole through a full-sized mountain would incinerate most of the vegetation in the area.

You're just looking for semantic loopholes now; not exactly a testament to the quality of your debating tactics.

And didn't you just try to get after me for stating the obvious or already said at the beginning of this post?

I just wanted to make the extent of your dishonesty clear. You were trying to make it seem relatively harmless.

[SAMAS]

I'm not trying to say that Mobile Suit reactors are obcenely powerful(okay, so the Aspsalus III is, but that's a Mobile Armor, and it used the reactors of three Mobile Suits). I'm trying to say that the official numbers given are in error.

How so? I think it more likely that the reactor was deliberately designed to produce such a blast, and that it was effectively a clandestine nuclear weapon.

Actually, it's an oversized Particle-Beam Cannon, hooked up to a trio of Mobile Suit reactors They were modified at best. See the pics above of it firing.

This does not mean it could harness that energy in a controlled fashion; the designs of nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors are VASTLY different. The fact remains that the suits have never demonstrated any power requirements remotely approaching thermonuclear weapon yields.

[image snipped]

Moreover, this "mountain" is obviously much smaller than it looks. The fact that the top half doesn't crack and fall down into the cavity proves that it cannot be a full-sized mountain. I suggest you go back and learn some more basic physics, SAMAS. Also note the lack of damage to the surrounding terrain; the kind of yield necessary to blow a hole through a full-sized mountain would incinerate most of the vegetation in the area.

Take another look at the shot. Particularly the highlighted area.



See that little vehicle inside the circle? That's a Big Tray-class Land Battleship. Here's a closer picture of it. Note the Mobile Suits standing on top of it.



Now look again at the mountain that was hit.



None of the mountains shown in front of it in the first shot are anywhere near it, and the mountain in question doesn't even have vegetation on it in the first place.

You're just looking for semantic loopholes now; not exactly a testament to the quality of your debating tactics.

And didn't you just try to get after me for stating the obvious or already said at the beginning of this post?

I just wanted to make the extent of your dishonesty clear. You were trying to make it seem relatively harmless.[/quote]

No, this is a matter of the Pot calling the Kettle black. Only I don't deny my blackness, so to speak. The entire scenario was dishonest from the get-go, so trying to call any one person out on it is meaningless.

[Dendrobius]

Lord Wong, that image actually has a pretty good sizing thing for it.

If you notice directly underneath that hole, there seems to be some sort of structure. That's the mobile base the Federation were using. Size, it's no more than 200 metres in length. So, not compensating for depth, the diameter of that hole would be easily 200m in radius!

The beam it fired out was circular in cross section. You see that the exit hole is a lot 'smaller' than the entry, so the depth must be quite substantial. Say 200m in depth? Do the numbers, and that's almost 25 cubic kilometers of rock that was vaporised!

No matter how you look at it, that's one crapload of a lot of rocks that got vaporised. It doesn't matter if the vegetation didn't get incinerated around it. Going by the rules you set for canon and official, we see that canon has a Mobile Armour of that era being able to blow away a hill of at least 500m height with a reactor officially only capable of putting out 3660kW!

Oh yeah, as an aside on the none blasted vegetation, the remainder of the 08th MS Team was quite a distance away from the blast (at least 1km), and they experienced the shockwave/thermal blast from this hit, so much so that their armoured hovercraft was heated up to the point where they were worried about ammo cooking off!

And before you say anything about pre-charging and whatnot, the Apsaras III was shown to be able to fire consecutively without anything more than a five second power up time. The three reactors, lifted straight from the Dom series MSs, were not modified significantly, and were its only source of power. This thing was activated only moments before it's first sortie, and the base it was in was busy powering up its escape cruiser, so there was no way that this cannon has pre stored power to use. It was all drawn from the on board reactors.

Thus, the stats for all the MSs are a bit dodgy. Kinda like the Technical Manuals for Star Trek.

[Darth Wong]

OK, let's say 25 cubic km of rock was actually blasted away. Explain:

1) Why the top part of the mountain is not falling down. Do you realize that the only way to reconcile this with physics is to conclude that it's ultralight, and not made of rock at all?

2) The energy requirement for vapourizing 25 cubic km of rock is roughly 150 gigatons. This would cause GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS and wipe out all vegetation for hundreds of kilometres in every direction. So no, the fact that they were supposedly a few km away doesn't mean shit.

3) I asked SAMAS how long this fireball lasted, and I explained why this is important. He has failed to answer.

Sorry, but you can't pick and choose which pieces of science you're going to apply. You can't generate an energy estimate based on a series of assumptions while ignoring all of the side-effects of that energy, or indeed, the physical structure of rock (you have indicated that you are studying materials science; do the math on that piece of mountain holding together despite that overhang if it's made of rock). Is it an optical illusion? Is the scaling wrong on the foreground object? Is the mountain made of styrofoam? One way or another, there's a GIGANTIC problem with this scene as described, and any claims on what happened are falsified by the fact that they have predictive aspects, and those predictions don't come true.

[Dendrobius]

Oh, adjustment to calculations. Big Tray is around 100m, not 200m

So that brings it down to 6 cubic km of vaporised rock.

pi * 100^2 * 200 = 6283185 m^3

[SAMAS]

OK, let's say 25 cubic km of rock was actually blasted away. Explain:

1) Why the top part of the mountain is not falling down. Do you realize that the only way to reconcile this with physics is to conclude that it's ultralight, and not made of rock at all?

2) The energy requirement for vapourizing 25 cubic km of rock is roughly 150 gigatons. This would cause GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS and wipe out all vegetation for hundreds of kilometres in every direction. So no, the fact that they were supposedly a few km away doesn't mean shit.

3) I asked SAMAS how long this fireball lasted, and I explained why this is important. He has failed to answer.

Oh, Right! Remember, these are the minutes and seconds from the beginning of the episode:

10:52 -- First appearance of the explosion

10:11 -- Shockwave hits the 08th Team

11:33 -- Last of the Shockwave passes the 08th Team.

11:44 -- Last shot of the fireball. Shot switches to the Apsalus III standing on the mountain as clouds are still pushed past it by the blast.

11:52/53 -- Last rumblings from the blast fade.

[Dendrobius]

I'm actually an Aerospace Engineering student, so with regards to materials I've got what basics of they teach all engineers but no particular aptitude for it. I'm mostly good with fluid mechanics, which definitely doesn't apply here.

1) I KNOW that the mountain should have collapsed pretty much immediately. Anybody with half a brain can see that. However, it doesn't. I can't explain that. As for ultralight mountains or mountains of styrofoam, has there ever been anything like that seen on Earth, or more specifically in SE Asia where this series was set? And styrofoam doesn't glow afterward being subjected to such heat either, nor does any ultralight material I know of. Rocks do.

2) Well, I just adjusted the thing down, it's only 6 cubic km, how many gigatons is that? If it's a linear relationship, then it's 84 gigatons. Still a pretty major thing, but one question. Would not the fact that this blast was directed be a mitigating circumstance? Kind of like for a given amount of explosives, shaped charges will do less damage on the surroundings than just a stick of it? So that behind the mountain, we see a trail of carnage which goes halfway across the globe or something silly like that, but those guys who were 1km or so away on the side be able to withstand it?

3) We don't see enough of the fireball to make a good prediction of the time, probably around five seconds is my best guess. The problem is that we see impact, then a HUGE expanding fireball, and then the shockwave, then a persistant fireball of 5 seconds. Very weird.

[SylasGaunt]

Just thought I'd throw in, that in the Episode with the 10 kilometer beam rifle engagement (by my timing the BR shot took I think 2 seconds from firing to arrive on target, check my DVDs when I get home), one of the Zakus in the scene was armed with a Magella cannon (hand-held version) and returns fire against the 08th MS team wit hthe shells covering the distance in a second or two.

[Sea Skimmer]

I'm actually an Aerospace Engineering student, so with regards to materials I've got what basics of they teach all engineers but no particular aptitude for it. I'm mostly good with fluid mechanics, which definitely doesn't apply here.

1) I KNOW that the mountain should have collapsed pretty much immediately. Anybody with half a brain can see that. However, it doesn't. I can't explain that. As for ultralight mountains or mountains of styrofoam, has there ever been anything like that seen on Earth, or more specifically in SE Asia where this series was set? And styrofoam doesn't glow afterward being subjected to such heat either, nor does any ultralight material I know of. Rocks do.

Have we ever seen massive physics and thermodynamics defying explosions or giant mecha on earth either? Hint, there is a reason why we call them laws...

2) Well, I just adjusted the thing down, it's only 6 cubic km, how many gigatons is that? If it's a linear relationship, then it's 84 gigatons. Still a pretty major thing, but one question. Would not the fact that this blast was directed be a mitigating circumstance? Kind of like for a given amount of explosives, shaped charges will do less damage on the surroundings than just a stick of it? So that behind the mountain, we see a trail of carnage which goes halfway across the globe or something silly like that, but those guys who were 1km or so away on the side be able to withstand it?

A shaped charge actually does a lot of damage to the surrounding area, the amount of the blast that gets focused inwards is limited. However the fact remains that the same amount of energy gets dumped into the environment. In the case of HEAT hitting a tank, much of it gets contained within the tank. However in this case all that energy is going into vaporizing a huge amount of rock, not slicing into a near sealed steel box. That rock must expand into the surrounding area. The massive overpressure would do to say the least, a fuck load of damage.

3) We don't see enough of the fireball to make a good prediction of the time, probably around five seconds is my best guess. The problem is that we see impact, then a HUGE expanding fireball, and then the shockwave, then a persistant fireball of 5 seconds. Very weird.

An understatement. And part of the reason why any firepower calculations derived from it are pretty meaningless.

[Dendrobius]

Hmm, a 5km/s 175mm KE penetrator, with the vehicular mounted version shooting a Gundam with in the chest with no effect.

This refutes the 'low velocity' argument I think Vympel put up?

[SAMAS]

Just thought I'd throw in, that in the Episode with the 10 kilometer beam rifle engagement (by my timing the BR shot took I think 2 seconds from firing to arrive on target, check my DVDs when I get home), one of the Zakus in the scene was armed with a Magella cannon (hand-held version) and returns fire against the 08th MS team wit hthe shells covering the distance in a second or two.

*checks DVD*

Hey, you're right!

[Sea Skimmer]

To celebrate the tank's defeat of the Zeon mechs, I'd like to present a bit more idiocy from IRL mecha fanboys:

'T-90? What series is that from? Who pilots it? Which faction built it?'

Provide forth the link to the morons should they dwell online.

[Sea Skimmer]

Hmm, a 5km/s 175mm KE penetrator, with the vehicular mounted version shooting a Gundam with in the chest with no effect.

This refutes the 'low velocity' argument I think Vympel put up?

And it's made of what? Massing what? Most materials at that velocity will just shatter when they hit RHA plating.

[SAMAS]

Just thought I'd throw in, that in the Episode with the 10 kilometer beam rifle engagement (by my timing the BR shot took I think 2 seconds from firing to arrive on target, check my DVDs when I get home), one of the Zakus in the scene was armed with a Magella cannon (hand-held version) and returns fire against the 08th MS team wit hthe shells covering the distance in a second or two.

It should also be noted that the 150mm cannons on the Guntank Mass Production Type were being used to fire on the mountain from the city below.

http://samas.freehosting.net/Mountainviev.jpg
The Guntank itself was slightly behind the hovertruck.

The shots hit the mountain entrance about five seconds after the fired.

Later, a Dom took a close-range hit to the back from a Guntank, and took very litttle damage to it's armor.

http://samas.freehosting.net/Domback.jpg

The Guntank that shot it is easily visible behind it.

[Dendrobius]

That's all the info we HAVE! For crying out loud, it says KE penetrator. It ain't gonna be made of bloody Kleenex paper, will it?

All we know, is that it says it's a 175mm cannon, firing sabot rounds. We also now know that it travels at a substancial speed, around 5km/s.

We don't know what it's made of, we don't know the mass. And we never will. We do see the effects of the round, which is that hitting the ground near the Gundam, it was able to shake the Gundam with concussion WITHOUT any explosive effects. In other words, purely by KE power.

[Sea Skimmer]

That's all the info we HAVE! For crying out loud, it says KE penetrator. It ain't gonna be made of bloody Kleenex paper, will it?

All we know, is that it says it's a 175mm cannon, firing sabot rounds. We also now know that it travels at a substancial speed, around 5km/s.

We don't know what it's made of, we don't know the mass. And we never will. We do see the effects of the round, which is that hitting the ground near the Gundam, it was able to shake the Gundam with concussion WITHOUT any explosive effects. In other words, purely by KE power.

We'll then you can't claimed it would be effective against the T-90. It could easily be solid steel shot. That would simply shatter on impact with more then or so 30mm of armor. Annoying but not even remotely lethal against anything with a Spall liner or composite armor.

Mecha are already unstable and this type clearly quite light. Its ability to shake one is not somthing to be impressed with.

[Dendrobius]

The ability to shake one that has braced itself onto the ground by the fact that it's sitting Japanese style (legs folded underneath itself) and further stabilised by its knee spikes isn't something to sneeze at. It didn't shake the MS, it shook the ground underneath the MS! No tank mounted sabot firing cannons I know of can do that.

There simply can be no comparison between a Zaku II and a T90 if you're unwilling to give reasonable doubt but instead put the absolute worse thing possible in place even if the reasonable doubt has plenty of collateral evidence on screen and in the background story to suggest that it is indeed reasonable and not just fanboy wankdom.

The Zeons are not idiots. They started the One Year War, and in less than a month they wiped out half the human race. They're not pansies like Starfleet or the UFP. These guys are ruthless. Nerve gas, nuclear weapons, colony drops which in the series obliterated (wiped off the map) 1/6 of the land mass of Australia, they did it all.

And in the light of this, you're telling me that they equip their tanks with cannons that are worse than tanks over a hundred years ago (their time) using materials that would be shameful even in WWII when tungsten core was used already?

[Howedar]

If thats what the data tells us.

[Sea Skimmer]

The ability to shake one that has braced itself onto the ground by the fact that it's sitting Japanese style (legs folded underneath itself) and further stabilised by its knee spikes isn't something to sneeze at. It didn't shake the MS, it shook the ground underneath the MS! No tank mounted sabot firing cannons I know of can do that.

There simply can be no comparison between a Zaku II and a T90 if you're unwilling to give reasonable doubt but instead put the absolute worse thing possible in place even if the reasonable doubt has plenty of collateral evidence on screen and in the background story to suggest that it is indeed reasonable and not just fanboy wankdom.

The Zeons are not idiots. They started the One Year War, and in less than a month they wiped out half the human race. They're not pansies like Starfleet or the UFP. These guys are ruthless. Nerve gas, nuclear weapons, colony drops which in the series obliterated (wiped off the map) 1/6 of the land mass of Australia, they did it all.

And in the light of this, you're telling me that they equip their tanks with cannons that are worse than tanks over a hundred years ago (their time) using materials that would be shameful even in WWII when tungsten core was used already?

It may very well have been designed for short range HE work with an AP round added as after thought, such has happened countless times in real life. The fact that they use mechas period indicates a massive degree of stupidity, wouldn't suprise me if they just thought a big tank gun would scare the enemey but ignored the acutally effects.

Hell the Soviets built fake ICBM's and TEL's just to parade around on May Day to ive the West somthing to waste time thinking about.