How do I calc this?

[Darksider]

I'm trying to set up a Vs. between the Galactic Empire and the major powers from the Anime "Heroic Age" (Not including the super-beasts, 'cause that would just cause any thread to devolve into a no limits wankfest), but I'm trying to come up with some solid calculations for their ships beforehand.

In one of the episodes, a combined human fleet fires on Jupiter's moon IO, vaporizing a chunk that (By my own estimates) can't be more than 1/10th of the moon's surface, or less than 1/50th the moon's surface, and knocks it out of it's orbit enough for it to get sucked into jupiter's gravity.

This feat is performed by the combined firepower of no less than several dozen ships, but likely the combined firepower of several hundred, including some kind of mega-hyper-death-cannon on the fleet's flagship.

Now, I suck at math, and haven't had a physics course in quite a while, so exactly how do I figure out the rough firepower levels for each ship in the human fleet from this?

Here's a Youtube video with the scene in question, it starts at around 2:22.

any help with this from the more scientifically minded would be much appreciated.

Ghetto EDIT: That's what I get for not watching the damn video and doing this from memory. The combined barrage vaporized more than 1/10th of the moon's surface. It looks like 1/5th or 1/4th during the scene where the moon is falling into jupiter

[Lord Relvenous]

That's not 1/4 of the moon's surface, as the cut took off what my calculus professor called a "cap" (end of a sphere), so it'll be an indeterminate amount of volume. To figure out the volume of Io that was vaporized, we'll have to compare the whole to the result.

The black circle is to show the full planet, with the lines being the diameter.

The full diameter of Io in this picture is 126 pixels (give or take a few pixels). The removed portion of the diameter is 23 pixels or 18% of the diameter. Using the actual diameter of Io, 3642.6 km, the removed portion of the diameter is 655.668 km. We can now use this to find the volume of the area removed, as you now have a cap with a height of 655.66 km and a radius determined by the height, so it's some simple calculus to find the volume.
However, it's getting late, so I'm going to leave it at that for now. After you find the volume, you can calculate how many kg of molten silicate was vaporized. Because the shot came in at an oblique angle, it missed the core of the moon, so we can leave out the iron and simplify it as silicate alone. Then you just take the vaporization energy of silicate and apply it to your amount in Kgs and you should get the amount of energy added to Io.

Hopefully that works. It's my first real crack at analyzing something, so I could very well be wrong. If there's anything wrong in my thinking, someone will surely point it out.

If you haven't worked on it by the time I can get back to it, I'll finish it.

EDIT: If you have problems with my numbers, the process should still stay valid with a change.

[Darksider]

Or I can cheat and plug the 18% Diameter figure into the main site's Asteroid Destruction calculator to come up with a figure of about 1.8 exotons for a combined bombardment from anywhere from 26 to 26,000 ships (I know you only see a dozen plus change ships firing, but when the beams seem to combine into a single massive energy wave, it seems like a lot more beams than those few ships can fire.)

Keep in mind that this figure is for hard granite, not sillicate, but it's good enough for an opening estimate, and it's late where I am too, and i'll need sleep before I can do that kind of math. (assuming I can do that kind of math at all. It's been a while since i've taken any calculus, and my memory's a little foggy.)

[fusion]

Just a word of caution though..., some of the new figures of Star Wars peg a star Dreadnought... such as the new ship that fractalsponge1 is making is similar to the fire power of that entire combined fleet....
So, while the star dreadnoughts are not that common, the notion that one ship from the star wars galaxy can destroy a "large fleet" from that universe... So yes be careful....

[Darksider]

Star Dreadnaughts can also destroy entire flotillas of smaller SW ships.


I think the ratio was something like one thousand to one for Rescuant-class destroyers against a single Mandator or Procurator class.

Also, I'm not sure about the relative densities of sillicate and granite, so the figure may be less than that. I believe it requires less energy to vaporize sillicate than it does to vaporize solid granite, but I know both are less than nickel-iron, which is why I used the smaller figure.

However, trying to figure out just how many ships fired that barrage may be an exercise in futility, since the scene where the ships open fire only depicts around 20 ships onscreen (with more partially appearing). But when the beams converge, they are able to nearly combine into a single wall of fire almost as large as the area being vaporized. No hard numbers are given for the respective fleets, but I honestly believe that the barrage is the combined work of several hundred or several thousand vessels, which would put the rough firepower for single ships around the single-digit petaton, or triple-digit teraton level respectively.

Keep in mind these are from the ships main weapons, which are almost one-shot kills against ships of similar size, and when charging them they are unable to properly power their shields.

[Connor MacLeod]

Is there neccesarily proof that it was completely vaporized? I couldn't tell from a youtube clip but it did looklike there might have been debris, which coupled by the jagged appearance of the impact point would suggest some fragmentation occured - I'd be highly skeptical if it was outright vaporization.

What also bugs me about that scene is how the moon is apparently "knocked out of its orbit" - one could calc the KE required to do that (minimum) by the orbital velocity times the mass of the moon, but it looks like it was falling inwards rather than outwards, which is what confuses the hell out of me (from the location of the point of impact, its falling in the wrong bloody direction.)

I'm not even going to speculate on why the planet started having an expanding orange glow inside it.

[Darksider]

Upon watching a clearer version of the shot, It looks as though there is substantial solid debris. I had initially assumed vaporization because of the glowing edge of the affected area, but It appears as though I was wrong.

As for being knocked out of it's orbit in the strange manner, I can only assume that the creators of the show assumed that removing that much mass from IO would cause Jupiter's gravity well to pull it inwards (Which, even if it were so, wouldn't it take weeks or months for it to be sucked into the planet?).

That whole episode kinda weirds me out because of what happens when IO falls into Jupiter (Would adding IO's mass be enough to ignite Jupiter into a star?)

To say nothing of the fact that I still can't tell how many goddamn ships were firing. I count 48 plus the flagship in the scene where they fire, but when the beams converge on the target, It appears as if there are anywhere from hundreds to tens of thousands of beams in the volly.

Suffice to say that there's a later episode in the series where they use their smaller, laser-based weaponry to bombard the surface of an enemy planet, and there is very little melting effects of any kind. It's certainly sub-BDZ level given that they have hundreds of ships bombarding the surface, but aren't causing any fireballs, Ejecta, ETC.

However, this (The IO scene) is the only scene in the series that can be reliably used to calculate the firepower of their ships main weapons.

[Connor MacLeod]

Upon watching a clearer version of the shot, It looks as though there is substantial solid debris. I had initially assumed vaporization because of the glowing edge of the affected area, but It appears as though I was wrong.

It's not neccesarily goign to be just either/or. You can have fragmentation, melting and/or vaporization or some combination thereof, I'm just saying treating it as 100% vaporization is going to be, at best, an upper limit.

As for being knocked out of it's orbit in the strange manner, I can only assume that the creators of the show assumed that removing that much mass from IO would cause Jupiter's gravity well to pull it inwards (Which, even if it were so, wouldn't it take weeks or months for it to be sucked into the planet?).

This requires far more knowledge of orbital mechanics than I know or want to bother anyone who would know about, but I'm pretty sure that there's no way you could remove the mass without triggering some sort of reaction (the fragmented/molten/vaporized material will spray out in one direction, pushing the moon in another.) which is going to alter its motion somehow.

Which actually brings up another point. all that vapour/ejecta probably WILL have a reaction like effect of some kind, so you might want to check if it would affect the moon visibily at all. That could be a potential hole in your calc.

But in any event you still would likely have to explain this bit of orbital weirdness somehow or someone is likely to scream "technobabble".

That whole episode kinda weirds me out because of what happens when IO falls into Jupiter (Would adding IO's mass be enough to ignite Jupiter into a star?)

No, Jupiter is far too tiny to actually behave like a star, despite having a huge amount of hydrogen in it. You'd have to add many many MANY times Jupiter's own mass in hydrogen to actually turn it into a star. Plenty of explanations abound if you google it, too, so you don't have to take my word for it.

To say nothing of the fact that I still can't tell how many goddamn ships were firing. I count 48 plus the flagship in the scene where they fire, but when the beams converge on the target, It appears as if there are anywhere from hundreds to tens of thousands of beams in the volly.

Convergence is an issue, as is ship spacing. The distance looked to be quite big (hundreds of thousands or millions of miles) but to focus it all on one point would result in a huge wedge-shaped beam/arc more than likely, not a slender beam like thing (like the death star beam.) \

Unless, of course, the "solidity" of the beam at a distance is merely a trick of the eye, and it literally WAS composed of countless parallel beams fired in unison.

One way you might do that is to figure out the "big" beam's diameter (the one that hits the moon) and then figure out the spacing of the ships we do see and try to work out how many ships from that. The spacing did appear to be fairly regular and close, so you might be able to figure out how many ships by how many are needed to fire enough beams to make it look nearly solid (I'd be guessing alot tho. The beam has to be tens/hundreds of km in diameter, and the spacing doesnt look to be more than a couple ship lenghs per ship, tops.)

Suffice to say that there's a later episode in the series where they use their smaller, laser-based weaponry to bombard the surface of an enemy planet, and there is very little melting effects of any kind. It's certainly sub-BDZ level given that they have hundreds of ships bombarding the surface, but aren't causing any fireballs, Ejecta, ETC.

May or may not be a problem. Are they firing "bursts/pulses" or short duration beams, or are they long-duration sustained beams? You might not neccesarily get nuclear-like fireballs or ejecta or very little in the way of an explosive effect if the duration is prolonged enough (there would still be lots of other effects to account for, though, like heating of the atmosphere and whatnot.)

There's also a faint possibility they could be drilling down into the surface, but that has its limits as well.

However, this is the only scene in the series that can be reliably used to calculate the firepower of their ships main weapons.

I assume you're using "reliabily" in a very loose sense.

[Darksider]

The beam's "Solidity" as you call it, IS a trick of the eye. There are portions of the firing sequence where you can make out individual beams within the volley, so it is being fired by a shit-ton of ships in a circular formation.
Relvenous (Who is clearly better at math than I am) estimated the diameter of the affected area of IO to be about 655KM in diameter, and the combined beam volley appeared to be about the same size as the affected area.

Given how close the ships were during the shot of them firing, the answer is probably somewhere between a shitload and a fuckton, but that's the only estimate i'm comfortable giving since there aren't any solid calculations of ship length to base a comparison on.

Either way were looking at a combined volley from anywhere from 48 (Minimum, but It's likely way more) ships to tens of thousands partially fragmenting, and partially vaporizing or melting, 18% of IO's surface diameter (Probably closer to the latter) that's way too vague for me to get a definite gauge of a single ships capabilities. But either way, It doesn't seem to me like they could match SW firepower levels. I mean, what would a group of say, 200 ISDs firing on a moon of similar size do to it?

Further evidence can be depicted here
(I know the subs are in spanish, but the visual evidence is still there. The bombardment begins at 4:48)

Oh, and by the way, I just ran into something ELSE that might fuck up a potential calculation. I thought that all the beams were coming from the same type of ship, barring the flagships uber-mega-death-cannon, but upon further review of the episode, the human fleet contains at least one (probably more given how prodigiously they deploy them later) of a type of giant cannon-ship that's basically a huge beam cannon in space that's as wide as the cruisers are long.

[Darksider]

However, this is the only scene in the series that can be reliably used to calculate the firepower of their ships main weapons.

I assume you're using "reliabily" in a very loose sense.

No shit.

I won't even start to talk about the wierdness that occurs when the Silver Tribe's ships form a giant magic chain-link fence in space and collapse jupiter into a solid mass of some sort (Dwarf Star?)

By the way. Something somewhat inconsequential, but it's just been nagging on me constantly since I saw the episode and i'd like to get a better informed opinion on it. After jupiter's ignition, at about 3:40 in the first video, some sort of plume, or CME from Jupiter smashes into a silver tribe ship and shatters it like glass. Is it just my untrained eye speaking, or does that ship appear to suffer no heat damage or thermal effects of any kind from getting smacked in the face with a giant plume of ignited helium? It looks as though it is destroyed purely via kinetic damage. WTF?