Hypermatter-powered trollercoaster (DS calcs were way off)

[Darth Tedious]

So, while looking throught the Death Star novel, I came across this:

He pulled the lever.
It would take a second or so for the tributary beams to coalesce. He wanted to look away from the monitor, but he couldn't.
The superlaser beam lanced from the focusing point above the dish.
The image of Alderaan on the screen was struck by the green ray.
It took no more than an instant. Tenn knew that the beam's total destructive power was much bigger than matter-energy conversions limited to realspace. At full charge, the hyper-matter reactor provided a superluminal "boost" that caused much of the planet's mass to be shifted immediately into hyperspace. As a result, Alderaan exploded into a fiery ball of eyesmiting light almost instantaneously, and a planar ring of energy reflux—the
"shadow" of a hyperspatial ripple—spread rapidly outward.

LOL they even explained the Shitty Praxis Effect We All HateTM with hyperspace reflux.

So here's the thing, we can interpret this a couple of ways:

Maybe they're saying that the Death Star hits the planet with so much overkill that it blasts a bunch of into hyperspace through the sheer obscene power of it all.
This would probably mean that Wong's calcs (even his upper limits) are actually far too conservative.

Or, they're saying that (ZOMG) the Trektards were right, and the Death Star really isn't a DET weapon after all, and that it just destroys the planet by shunting a bunch of it into hyperspace.
There's a couple of problems with this, the biggest being that your average Trektard says the EU doesn't count.

Other problems tie in with the first theory.

If the Death Star is majicking (or super-mega-killfucking) a large helping of the planet into hyperspace, we have a question of how much energy would be required. Apparently putting stuff into hyperspace isn't exactly cheap- I remember a reference to the power requirement for a single ISD jump being equivalent to whole plantary outputs, though they never gave Kardashev levels, the thoughtless writers!

The questions it raises: Would it take more energy to shunt a large portion of a planet into hyperspace than it would to simply destroy it?
Are there any actual numbered references to power requirements for a hyperspace jump?
If so, can we get a revised power estimate for the Alderaan sequence happening in light of this new information?
And is it all a Big Warsie Conspiracy to inflate firepower numbers?

[StarSword]

The questions it raises: Would it take more energy to shunt a large portion of a planet into hyperspace than it would to simply destroy it?

Since most if not all present-day physicists agree that FTL travel would require generating a great deal of negative energy (somehow), probably.

Are there any actual numbered references to power requirements for a hyperspace jump?

Not that I know of. The only thing close to it is an item in the X-Wing novels that states the hyperdrive is more fuel-efficient than the sublight engines.

If so, can we get a revised power estimate for the Alderaan sequence happening in light of this new information?

Probably not.

And is it all a Big Warsie Conspiracy to inflate firepower numbers?

Not going there.

[Jaevric]

Obviously, it takes enormously more power to move part of a planet into hyperspace than to simply blow it up; however, due to <insert technobabble here> the hyperspace transfer effect of the "superlaser" bypasses planetary shields. Reducing an unshielded planet to rubble would simply be a time-consuming nuisance for a squadron of Imperial Star Destroyers; after all, a single Star Destroyer is capable of a BDZ against an unshielded planet.

This neatly explains how it would take "more firepower than half the starfleet" to destroy a planet with a planetary shield but the Death Star is able to do so in a single shot.

Unfortunately, the Stupidly Uber Planetary Extinction Ray Laser didn't scale down enough to be mounted on a starship for use against other vessels.

[Connor MacLeod]

um yeah. The Death STar novel, and that scene in paritcular have been discussed to death since the novel came out. You're not posting anything new. Maybe you should have used the search function

[Stark]

any 'theory' that works by defining hyperspace mechanics as 'just like B5 and 40k' is a laugh in my book.

[Vympel]

This passage is as old as dirt, man. Also, wrong forum.

[Darth Tedious]

um yeah. The Death STar novel, and that scene in paritcular have been discussed to death since the novel came out. You're not posting anything new. Maybe you should have used the search function

You mean it's been discussed in detail in a single 9-page thread? Clearly it hasn't had nearly enough life flogged out of it!

This passage is as old as dirt, man. Also, wrong forum.

I posted it in the versus forum for a reason (probably the same reason D13 has his DS9 quotes thread there).
Also, it seems very few people have really picked up on that piece of text. There've been a few versus debates where it would have been quite pertinent, and wasn't brought up at all. Instead, the claims that could have been addressed with it were just scoffed at.

This seems to be symptomatic of a problem I mentioned to D13 in a recent discussion. If someone makes a pro-Trek claim (even if it is backed with numbers and analysis), it is simply dismissed out-of-hand rather than addressed.
If the versus debate is so dead that the SW side is able to say "We're not even going to bother arguing against it" and be taken seriously, why is the versus forum still open (if not to throw the same old ideas around)?

Saying it's all old hat kills the joy of thinking about it and tossing around new and different theories for fun.
I'm here to get my fill of sci-fi and science...

[Vympel]

??? What are you talking about? You're not being silenced, you can beat a dead horse some more if you wish. But it is in the wrong forum as far as I'm concerned, and it is as old as dirt. Talk about it all you like:-

Also, it seems very few people have really picked up on that piece of text.

Nonsense, its extremely well known. I've been involved in debates about what Death Star says more than half a dozen times at least on SB.com. The difference between here and there is that we don't have as many people who are keen on rehashing the same old issues over and over and over.

And you've missed the quote in the same novel talking about how the Death Star's reactor is capable of producing an energy burst equivalent to a week's output of several main sequence stars. The hypothetical "Trektard" you're referring to can't cherry pick his way through that novel, if he bothers to acknowledge the EU. The best that's happened in that regard is that some of the more dishonest ones have attempted to say that such statement only applies to the Death Star malfunctioning and exploding, which is as I've argued in the past a thoroughly ludicrous attempt to twist a clear quote out of all recognition in a desperate attempt to salvage their argument.

Further, the novel clearly and unequivocally says that the power for the destruction comes from the hypermatter reactor. There's no hint in any source, ever, that the Death Star is setting off some sort of chain reaction or some other thing. The capabilities of HM reactors doesn't change a whit, nor does it affect the statement in the OT:ITW that the DS2's reactor produced power equivalent to hundreds of supergiant stars to generate a planet busting shot.

Remember, the aim of your opponent is to try and pretend that the reactors aren't that impressive- if they've gone full retard they'll try and argue they're only capable of a few gigatons or whatever.

[Darth Tedious]

You're not being silenced, you can beat a dead horse some more if you wish.

That's good. I don't really feel it's beating a dead horse if some new thoughts and ideas can be thrown about for fun.

But it is in the wrong forum as far as I'm concerned,

Well, you're the mod, so here we are.

and it is as old as dirt. Talk about it all you like:-

Considering the Battle of Endor gets rehashed every other month, I think this passage has plenty of play left in it.

Nonsense, its extremely well known. I've been involved in debates about what Death Star says more than half a dozen times at least on SB.com. The difference between here and there is that we don't have as many people who are keen on rehashing the same old issues over and over and over.

It appears it only got discussed here once, and it wasn't delved into extremely deeply. The other thread Connor linked was discussions about it being brought up over at SFJ. As I said, there's times when it could have been brought up here in versus' and hasn't, which surprises me. Hence my moaning and bitching about complacency in the versus debate. But meh, who cares...

When a regular ship goes to hyperspace, it carefully shapes the window so none of these hypermatter particles can escape. Thus, the ship goes into hyperspace without leaving a massive ploom of death behind it. This is an imperfect process though - some still gets through, which is why a Star Destroyer spends more energy than a planetary civilization when hyperjumping. It's own reactor doesn't put it out - that's just the energy that escapes hyperspace when forming a SD sized hyperwindow. This can be very dangerous to the poor sucker too close to it though!

That would have amazing functionality as a weapon. If small ships (like snub fighters) could open gaping holes into hyperspace, they'd be able to blast giant waves of killfuck that could threaten capital ships. In a scifiverse where that kind of physical law applied, big ships would become almost a liability in a war.

Hypermatter reactors are similar: they open an insanely small hole and let this shit flow through at a controllable rate (this tends to be in the gigawatt range for most SW ships, because their engineering is not good enough yet to handle more than this in a controlled way for most applications. A hypermatter reactor can give more power though for an engine though, because the flow of propellant, heated by the energy coming from the wormhole carries it away instead of needing to worry about the inefficient process of harnessing it.)

I absolutely love the idea of using hyperspace as a form of sublight propulsion. It's like the most insanely overpowered thruster possible.

These are the kinds of thoughts I was hoping to cultivate: New and different sci-fi theories.

Back to the Alderaan sequence for a minute, was it ever established where the fuck the bits of planet went? We know they were shoved into hyperspace, but how far did they go? Did they exit hyperspace at some point, or did they just coast onwards, heading into intergalactic space in a day or so? Would they have become an insane traffic risk for a short time? It's not like they were mass shadows. Has it ever been established what happens in the event of an in-hyperspace collision?

[TC Pilot]

A couple of things: it's worth pointing out that the Death Stars make the Praxis-ring effect when they hit Alderaan and when they blow up. There's no such ring when destroying Rebel capital ships or when Despayre is destroyed. The quote itself also says it happens when the reactor's at full-power. Given that, and basically every canonical description of the superlaser, this Praxis-ring is probably nothing more than some weird side-effect of the Death Star's sheer size.

[Darth Tedious]

A couple of things: it's worth pointing out that the Death Stars make the Praxis-ring effect when they hit Alderaan and when they blow up. There's no such ring when destroying Rebel capital ships or when Despayre is destroyed. The quote itself also says it happens when the reactor's at full-power. Given that, and basically every canonical description of the superlaser, this Praxis-ring is probably nothing more than some weird side-effect of the Death Star's sheer size.

It does tie in perfectly with the quote that Despayre and the capships didn't produce Praxis rings, seeing as they weren't done at full power. The explanation given about the ring being a hyperspace side effect actually makes a decent excuse for a shitty special effect, IMO (one of the best EU band-aids I've seen).
Interestingly enough, in the bit about the destruction of Despayre, there was this:

Tarkin watched the projection as the effects of the beam manifested on the planet. By the time the second pulse was ready for discharge, there wouldn't be anything alive on the world below them to care. The chain reaction was massive. And at only one-third of the power that would be available when it was fully operational.

Yeah, they're probably referring to the volcanic/tectonic chain reaction caused by the level of damage inflicted on the planet, but TROLOLOL!
Where were the Trektards on that one?

Imagine a little fighter (or worse yet, a fucking missile drone) buzzing around you, opening up these energy holes at random angles. It'd be like laying mines and shooting you with superlasers all at once.

But, on the other hand, that's why it might not be a big deal: it's not really all that much different than a fighter launching several regular missiles at you.

Yeah, it all hinges on how mass-dependent it is. If it isn't particularly (mass-dependent), a little fighter (or even a missile) could do the job of the Death Star.
I would have thought the best counter wouldn't be to use conventional weapons, but to respond in kind, with sort of directional hypermatter thrusters, and blast giant spurts of nastyness at the fighters. They'd cover much more area than beam weapons (if they were blasted out conically) and be terribly hard to avoid. Of course, this is getting a bit away from SW tech, but weren't we already?

If they fixed their pathetically poor weapons systems though, the fighters might still have a hope: what if they hyperjumped right up the capship's ass and launched. It'd look like fighters are appearing and disappearing at random, leaving behind streams of tachyon death!

The level of precision required would be more about the navcomputers than the engines, I would think.

Then you reach into your ass and pull out an interdictor field making jumping in so close impossible, even if the engines were precise enough to try.

Which would bring conventional weapons back into play, because it would prevent you from using hyperdeathbeams yourself. Here's a fun thought: Even if they had the kind of death beams we're talking about, would MAD would force them to use laser cannons and turbolasers anyway?

Mang, they should just have fights in hyperspace though.

Well, yeah.

You could have weird natural and artificial barriers, damage means you drop out at some random point in the galaxy, the physics can be so utterly weird your ships coincidentally handle like WW2 planes, the visibility is poor, and you can still come to a stop and spin, so there's that hybrid of tv space and atmospheric flying. Add in explosive environments and wild currents and you have one silly video game on screen.

But Adam, wouldn't that cause risk causing mass epileptic seizures in the audience?
Seriously though, this is fun stuff. I hope somebody is taking notes for a fanfic...

We know one portion of it hit Buenos Aires (in the Starship Troopers movie).

YES!

[StarSword]

...damage means you drop out at some random point in the galaxy...

I can agree with the rest of it (battles in hyperspace aren't unprecedented in sci-fi, and they do look cool), but hyperspace in Star Wars definitely doesn't do the part I quoted. The tail end of Tyrant's Test (p. 319-321, to be exact) features a scene aboard one of the ships of the Imperial Black Sword Command, freshly recaptured from the Yevetha and traveling through hyperspace to join the Imperial Remnant. They also captured the Yevethan leader, Nil Spaar. One of the Imps reveals that a hyperdrive is required to both enter and exit hyperspace. "We even took a drone and blew it up in hyperspace, to see if that might open the door. None of the wreckage ever appeared again in realspace."

He then shoves Spaar into an escape pod (while still in hyperspace) and ejects him.

How that interacts with the Death Star passage, I'm not sure. Maybe Death Star indicates that a hyperdrive is required to exit hyperspace, but not necessarily to enter it. (We don't know how far the ring went or how long it lasted, after all.)

Ooh, ooh! What if the ring was really the "disturbance in the Force" that Obi-wan felt? Maybe hyperspace is traveling through the Force! (No, that's just silly.)

[StarSword]

Back to the Alderaan sequence for a minute, was it ever established where the fuck the bits of planet went?

Actually, yes. What the crew and passengers of the Millennium Falcon witnessed when they dropped out of hyperspace was the beginnings of the Graveyard of Alderaan. It becomes a place of spiritual significance to displaced Alderaanians, to the point where they make pilgrimages to it and leave offerings to the dead. I am not kidding. Tycho Celchu did exactly such a pilgrimage in The Bacta War. (It also becomes somewhat of a treasure trove for salvagers willing to brave the asteroid field.)

In the same novel, the Rogues also fought a battle against Isard's Thyferran forces at the Graveyard. It ends with Wedge disabling the Victory-class Star Destroyer Corrupter with the aid of an AI Alderaanian War Cruiser that was part of the fleet guarding the Another Chance. The Corrupter drifted into the Graveyard and was smashed to pieces. (Great line from a surviving Corrupter crewman: "Alderaan has its revenge on the Empire.")

[Darth Tedious]

Hehe, I was talking about the parts of the planet that were blasted into hyperspace, not the asteroids left in realspace.
But as you point out, they would have stayed in hyperspace without a hyperdrive to bring them back into realspace. In a little over a day, the parts that had not collided with mass shadows would be careening off into intergalactic space.
Only one of them actually did drop back into realspace, as D13 so astutely pointed out.

[StarSword]

Unfortunately, the Stupidly Uber Planetary Extinction Ray Laser didn't scale down enough to be mounted on a starship for use against other vessels.

(Missed this earlier.) Um, Eclipse-class star dreadnought, anyone? Not a 1E32 J weapon, no, but cracking a planet's crust is enough to cause a planetary depopulation by seismic effect. (The planet-cracking shot fired against Despayre demonstrates this handily, even if Dark Empire doesn't.)

Hehe, I was talking about the parts of the planet that were blasted into hyperspace, not the asteroids left in realspace.

Oops. My bad.

But as you point out, they would have stayed in hyperspace without a hyperdrive to bring them back into realspace. In a little over a day, the parts that had not collided with mass shadows would be careening off into intergalactic space.

Oddly enough, the reason a gravity well projector works is because the hyperdrive's own fail-safes drop the ship out of hyperspace to prevent drive damage. We never actually get a description of what happens when an object in hyperspace does interact with a mass shadow. (Although, given that the hyperdrive has fail-safes to prevent it, we can probably conclude that whatever happens would not be pretty.)

[Darth Yoshi]

The only instance of a hyperspace collision that I'm aware of is from DFR.

"It seemed the lesser of two evils at the time," Karrde said grimly. "As it turned out, we came close to being fatally wrong on that count. The ship hit the mass shadow of a large comet on the way out, blowing the main hyperdrive and nearly wrecking the rest of the ship on the spot. Five of our crew were killed in the explosion, and another three died of injuries before we could limp back to civilization on the backup hyperdrive."

The wording is slightly vague, but essentially either hitting a mass shadow in hyperspace will either damage the hyperdrive without necessarily affecting the rest of the ship, or it'll just plain fuck up the ship in general. Either way, the hyperdrive will be shot, which is obviously a bad thing if you need to get anywhere.

[StarSword]

Completely forgot that one. Certainly explains the existence of fail-safes to prevent mass shadow interactions.

Interesting that it only took the mass of a comet to cause that kind of damage, rather than a planetary mass. They must've hit it almost head-on. (Not entirely surprising since they were jumping blind, but talk about lousy luck.)

EDIT: Although, there is a passage in Rogue Squadron (just after the first attack on Borleias) that suggests capital ships can have this effect (preventing a ship from jumping). I say "suggests" because the character (General something-or-other) was using the idea as a fib to explain his disobeying an order to withdraw.

[Darth Tedious]

Interesting. If the damage to the ship was only caused by the hyperdrive blowing up (note the 'if'), then the fragments of Alderaan would pass harmlessly through any mass shadows that got in their way, and would continue to fly on through hyperspace indefinitely.

I wonder what would happen in the event of a mid-hyperspace collision (now that would be some really shitty luck)...

[StarSword]

I wonder what would happen in the event of a mid-hyperspace collision (now that would be some really shitty luck)...

Probably roughly the same thing as would happen in a realspace collision. Except any survivors are probably thoroughly screwed if the hyperdrive is damaged.

[Darth Yoshi]

IIRC, according to Vector Prime hyperspace is really bad for normal matter, and if not for shielding jumping to lightspeed is suicide. So, unless the collision leaves the shields intact, presumably it'd be fatal for the ships involved.

[Darth Tedious]

IIRC, according to Vector Prime hyperspace is really bad for normal matter, and if not for shielding jumping to lightspeed is suicide. So, unless the collision leaves the shields intact, presumably it'd be fatal for the ships involved.

Well, that would mean that the fragments of Alderaan would have most likely been annihilated...

Any more new information coming?

[Darth Yoshi]

Okay, I've just looked up the quote, and it appears I remembered wrong.

With a sigh, followed quickly by a determined grunt, [Kyp] pulled himself over the edge of the fuselage back to his cockpit. He steadied the ship with attitude jets, then began a general inventory, trying to get a fix on where he was and on the extent of the damage. His hyperdrive seemed to be working, but with no canopy, he didn't dare engage it. He reached instinctively for his emergency kit, but stopped abruptly, realizing that, with his entire canopy gone, there was nothing to patch.
[...]
Working on his own, with no astromech and only a basic engineering manual to guide him, Kyp altered the power grids of the ion drive, bring them more completely to his shielding power. Then, holding his breath, he eased it back on-line. It offered no thrust this time, but, rather, created a bubblelike shield about him, one that he hoped might allow him to survive hyperspace. He laid in a course for Dubrillion. He kept searching the records as he went, though, and soon determined there was another possibility, a remote planet named Sernpidal.

Prior to this Kyp's x-wing had been stripped of its shields by a dovin basal, but there's no mention if the shields were restored before he jumped to hyperspace. Presumably not, though, as shortly after he loses his shields Kyp realizes that almost his entire squadron has been wiped out, and orders the survivors to attempt a retreat. So it seems that hyperspace is bad for organic matter, but not necessarily normal matter in general. Which unfortunately says all of nothing WRT to the Alderaan fragments.

[Darth Tedious]

Ah, dammit!

So we're back to "they probably coasted on without end" (unless there's drag in hyperspace...).

[StarSword]

Ah, dammit!

So we're back to "they probably coasted on without end" (unless there's drag in hyperspace...).

I know you were being facetious, but actually, considering that in the shot of the Falcon flying through hyperspace in ANH, her sublight engines were still running, there might be drag in hyperspace.

[Connor MacLeod]

There's a passage in the EGW&T about objects in hyperspace being "vaporized" without some sort of protection, and an unshielded person in Han Solo at Star's End disintegrated once he left the boundary of the shield. Something similar happens in "Han solo's REvenge" when the ship was sabotaged whilst in the midst of a hyperspace transition.

And the "drag" bit exists too - it's the interaction of relaspace objects with objects in hyperspace (nebulae, dust, any sort of particles or particulate matter, hydrogen, etc.) that can actually slow a ship down. It's mentioned in the Lando Calrissian novels (which one I don't exactly remember, the first one I think.) I also believe the Swarm WAr novels had a case of the Falcon having some drag going through a dust cloud/nebula while in hyperspace.

(*mutters something about people checking sources rather than relying on wikis and other peoples work and walks off*)