It's raining asteroids! TESB topic.

[Vexx]

Erm, let me elaborate.

If HTL's really did have 300GT of energy behind them, then a single shot on an unshielded target would have the same result as the DSII's superlaser hit on the Mon Cal Cruiser, at LEAST.

Also, in TESB during the Falcon chase scene several TL shots miss and explode like flak around the Falcon. The resulting explosion seems to be no larger than at most a ton of TNT, just small flashes around the Falcon. Are point-defense TL's supposed to be 300 billion times weaker than a HTL?

[Ghost Rider]

A. MTL are rated at 200GT...the HTL's are rated around2-3TT...possibly higher.

B. Why should a target vaporize like the DS2 superlaser given the orders of magnitude higher that the Superlaser is?

C. It was an LTL that hit the Falcon...which is rated at around 6MT.

[Vexx]

I'm just saying that if HTL bolts are 300GT then the effects of a single shot would be comparable to the Mon Cal being hit by the Superlaser. IE, a single shot would utterly destroy anything. Perhaps the Superlaser was on a lower setting. It would make sense, unless they want to use up a full-power shot on some stupid little ship.

Also, I'm not talking about the shots that HIT the Falcon, I'm talking about the shots that explode around it. Those are not multi-megaton explosions. A multi-megaton explosion would have been a hell of a lot bigger.

[Darth Garden Gnome]

If HTL's really did have 300GT of energy behind them, then a single shot on an unshielded target would have the same result as the DSII's superlaser hit on the Mon Cal Cruiser, at LEAST.

Armor may be enough to absorb the blast to ht epoint where it is less brilliant as the DS2/Mon Cal cruiser example, but it happens nonetheless.

In ROTJ when Ackbar orders the fleet to concentrate their fire on the Executor, through the window you see an ISD to the left of the Executor get hit by a turbolaser bolt and explode ina titanic fireball (you've probably seen it). The ship would've survived had its shields been up, and this was the first hit it had taken after losing it shields because the armor is spotless (until the ship is blown to smithereens, anyways).

Also, in TESB during the Falcon chase scene several TL shots miss and explode like flak around the Falcon. The resulting explosion seems to be no larger than at most a ton of TNT, just small flashes around the Falcon. Are point-defense TL's supposed to be 300 billion times weaker than a HTL?

"Flak bursts" are a work of fiction invented by SW fans who don't get it (I once believed in them too, but Connor Macleod gave me one hell of a smackdown, and I became a believer). These alleged "flak bursts" are a shield/bolt effect. Watch TPM; when the AATs fire on the Gungan shield they explode just like the ones in TESB. But one can easily deduce that this is a bolt/shield reaction and not a flak burst.

Therefore you CANNOT determine the yield of the blast based on this shield/bolt reaction.

[Darth Servo]

Also, I'm not talking about the shots that HIT the Falcon, I'm talking about the shots that explode around it. Those are not multi-megaton explosions. A multi-megaton explosion would have been a hell of a lot bigger.

And let me explain this to you AGAIN. The shots at the Falcon were NOT full power shots. They wanted to CAPTURE THE SHIP IN TACT. You do NOT use full power when you want to take prisoners.

And you wonder why we flame you after posting crap like this?

[Warspite]

Third:

I will state it again: Military protocal states that while in command the captain does not leave the bridge area. If command attention in another area is required, the Chief of the Boat or Executive Officer goes. This is a simple fact.

The Empire is not the United States Military. Trying to make the two seem the same is baseless and quite irrelevant. I don't understand how you can try to make an arguement by comparing two completely different things.

No, they aren't different things, Ender is talking about traditional Navy (a very traditionalist service) procedure found throughout the whole world navies, why should such procedures be different aboard military vessels in space?

So anyway, that's how I came up with those figures. What do you think? Do you see anything wrong with the calculations? Most importantly, how can an ISD, which is designed to take 300GT (according to SD.net) HTL shots, be destroyed (or atleast heavily damaged) by an equivilent 50 kiloton blast? I've heard the arguement, "The shields were weakened by asteroid hits", but that's not a very good excuse.. But even if it's assumed a Star Destroyer is only able to take a single of its own HTL shots before being destroyed, it would have to have been hit by 5,999,999,999 70 meter wide asteroids. That's not very likely.

Kinetic impacts can be more destructive (urgh, sorry for using such ambiguous word!) than straight thermal/radiation transmission impacts.
A HTL could possibly punch right through an ISD's tower (depending on its size, right?), delivering only thermal effects to the nearby affected region of the created hole. A kinetic impact not only creates heating effects, but also (and this is the important part) imposes structural stresses that transmit through the whole structure by material continuity. In the affected region, the impact may be strong enough to overcome material strenght, resulting in the structural collapse of the whole affected region, as opposed to a more concetrated damage done by the HTL. In short, a strong enough kinetic impact, even if with a lower energy than a HTL, may cause more damage than a HTL.

[Vexx]

Again?????

In any case it points to the fact that the Falcon can be rendered incapacitated by only tons of explosive power. Unless they were effectively shooting it with blanks, trying to scare the ship into damaging itself.

You're kind of ignoring the point that all of these yield figures are so much lower than the figures claimed that it's not even funny. Sure, there's an obvious difference between a light turbolaser shot or fighter-weapons and M/HTLs, but the differences shouldn't be in multiples of billions or hundreds of billions.

[Howedar]

A couple of things I'd like to say before I go on to crunching the numbers.

First, I'm disturbed that so many of you decided to try and flame me before I even put any numbers out. It just goes to show how unwilling most of you are to even consider other information. You're going to believe what you want no matter what.

You're being flamed because you have not put numbers out, yet dare to criticize other people's calculations.

Look, this is very easy. There are two possibilities.
1. You have run the calcs, and have a reason to say Brian Young's calcs are wrong. Solution: show us the fucking calcs post haste so we can bow before your wonderful numbers.
2. You have not run the calcs. You therefore have no reason to say Brian Young's calcs are wrong. Solution: put a gun to your fucking face because you are fucking moronic enough to criticize without cause.

[Warspite]

Again?????

In any case it points to the fact that the Falcon can be rendered incapacitated by only tons of explosive power. Unless they were effectively shooting it with blanks, trying to scare the ship into damaging itself.

You're kind of ignoring the point that all of these yield figures are so much lower than the figures claimed that it's not even funny. Sure, there's an obvious difference between a light turbolaser shot or fighter-weapons and M/HTLs, but the differences shouldn't be in multiples of billions or hundreds of billions.

They're lower limits!!!!!!

[Vexx]

No, they aren't different things, Ender is talking about traditional Navy (a very traditionalist service) procedure found throughout the whole world navies, why should such procedures be different aboard military vessels in space?

Kinetic impacts can be more destructive (urgh, sorry for using such ambiguous word!) than straight thermal/radiation transmission impacts.
A HTL could possibly punch right through an ISD's tower (depending on its size, right?), delivering only thermal effects to the nearby affected region of the created hole. A kinetic impact not only creates heating effects, but also (and this is the important part) imposes structural stresses that transmit through the whole structure by material continuity. In the affected region, the impact may be strong enough to overcome material strenght, resulting in the structural collapse of the whole affected region, as opposed to a more concetrated damage done by the HTL. In short, a strong enough kinetic impact, even if with a lower energy than a HTL, may cause more damage than a HTL.

Yes, but that depends on a TL shot not exploding on contact. TL shots have been seen exploding (like flak for instance), not simply travel on through space indefinately. THe 300GT has to be released somehow, and most TL's seem to release their energy in an explosion.

[Vexx]

A couple of things I'd like to say before I go on to crunching the numbers.

First, I'm disturbed that so many of you decided to try and flame me before I even put any numbers out. It just goes to show how unwilling most of you are to even consider other information. You're going to believe what you want no matter what.

You're being flamed because you have not put numbers out, yet dare to criticize other people's calculations.

Look, this is very easy. There are two possibilities.
1. You have run the calcs, and have a reason to say Brian Young's calcs are wrong. Solution: show us the fucking calcs post haste so we can bow before your wonderful numbers.
2. You have not run the calcs. You therefore have no reason to say Brian Young's calcs are wrong. Solution: put a gun to your fucking face because you are fucking moronic enough to criticize without cause.

Lmao. Dumbass, read the thread, I already did.

[Warspite]

Yes, but that depends on a TL shot not exploding on contact. TL shots have been seen exploding (like flak for instance), not simply travel on through space indefinately. THe 300GT has to be released somehow, and most TL's seem to release their energy in an explosion.

(Not this again...)

Flakburst is a brainbug. They're shield/bolt interactions.

We don't know what happens when the bolt loses its momentum, since all the combat seen so far has either occured at low ranges (less than a light-second, ESB), or at long ranges (in which case we don't see the bolts, ROTJ, scene in the DSII). In other words, we've never seen a bolt "expire", but that is irrelevant for this discussion..

[Vexx]

Flakburst is a brainbug. They're shield/bolt interactions.

Okay, fair enough. Forgive me for "bringing this up again", but what evidence is there that they're shield/bolt interactions..? The turbolasers seem to be exploding quite aways away from the Falcon.

[Warspite]

Okay, fair enough. Forgive me for "bringing this up again", but what evidence is there that they're shield/bolt interactions..? The turbolasers seem to be exploding quite aways away from the Falcon.

We don't know where the shield's end in the Falcon, do we?

There is also the bolt splintering effect in ANH, when the Tantive IV loses it's main reactor, in AOTC, the Geonosian fighter bolts don't impact directly on the gunship, exploding behind the craft, and before anyone else tries to pull it, in ROTJ, those explosions we see from the DSII may be missiles, or craft exploding.

As a personal point, how do you control an energy beam to explode at a certain distance from a target? By varying it's power (or containment field), so that when it reaches a certain point it explodes? But that would require the beam to mantain it's power (or containment field), but if you're lowering it to explode, then you're lowering it's yield, making this contradictory. It is illogical.

[Colonel Olrik]

Anyway, onto the bridge tower asteroid hit.

For this I used the asteroid impact calculator. It has 3 main criteria for determing the relative yield in TNT that an asteroid will create through impact on something. The 3 criteria are: Diameter, Density and Velocity.
The diameter, according to SD.net, is 70 meters. The average density of iron is 8.0grams/cm^3, according to earthsci.terc.edu. The velocity I figured was about 500 meters per second.

The resulting energy according to the calculator was 179594380030216 joules. That equals about 50 kilotons of TNT. How?

Always use scientific notation. Not doing that labels you automatically as an ignorant moron, and discredits all your work [meaning that people will be much less interested in even considering to read it]. That's engineering protocol for you.

[Phil Skayhan]

The velocity I figured was about 500 meters per second.

How did you determine that? Also did you take into consideration the motion of the ISD itself?

[Alyeska]

Or the bridge tower was torn out of the way somewhat but the structural integrity was not compromised. We only know that the bridge tower does not appear from the dust cloud ontime, we don't know that it was destroyed.

And just what the hell happened to the bridge tower if its no longer visible? Torn to shreds and pushed back by more then a hundred meters is as good as destroyed.

[Mad]

SD.net claims the asteroid had a kinetic force of 5 x 10^14 joules, which actually is only 2.5 times larger, and equals 125 kilotons of TNT.

Mike used a higher velocity (1 km/s) than you did.

Most importantly, how can an ISD, which is designed to take 300GT (according to SD.net) HTL shots, be destroyed (or atleast heavily damaged) by an equivilent 50 kiloton blast? I've heard the arguement, "The shields were weakened by asteroid hits", but that's not a very good excuse.. But even if it's assumed a Star Destroyer is only able to take a single of its own HTL shots before being destroyed, it would have to have been hit by 5,999,999,999 70 meter wide asteroids. That's not very likely.

The shields were down, because they were using HoloNet communications and the HoloNet does not work with shields up. So the rock struck bare hull. Shields are the major protection against attacks in SW, and a ship that loses shields is in big trouble with the power of SW weaponry.

Further, that an object can withstand lots of themal energy does not imply that it also can withstand an equivalent amount of kinetic energy.

That would mean that a single HTL bolt could vapourize billions of TIE fighters.

It's widely known that HTLs can easily vaporize starfighters... if they hit.

[Darth Garden Gnome]

And just what the hell happened to the bridge tower if its no longer visible? Torn to shreds and pushed back by more then a hundred meters is as good as destroyed.

There must have been some left fairly well intact; the officer making the report wasn't sucked off into space or even knocked down.

A question: what part of the bridge are the officers in when making a report? If there near the bridge window (the weakest area of the ship), then the tower musn't have damaged to any significant degree, because if something were to damaged the window would be it.

[Alyeska]

And just what the hell happened to the bridge tower if its no longer visible? Torn to shreds and pushed back by more then a hundred meters is as good as destroyed.

There must have been some left fairly well intact; the officer making the report wasn't sucked off into space or even knocked down.

A question: what part of the bridge are the officers in when making a report? If there near the bridge window (the weakest area of the ship), then the tower musn't have damaged to any significant degree, because if something were to damaged the window would be it.

Actually a very large portion of the bridge is destroyed. The entire bridge itself is completely destroyed and only the neck structure survives.

[Darth Garden Gnome]

Actually a very large portion of the bridge is destroyed. The entire bridge itself is completely destroyed and only the neck structure survives.

Do we have any idea where officers go on the ship to have a holo-conference? If so, that could be the best judge for the damage done. Otherwise I have seen the visuals on Darkstar's site, and they're pretty convincing.

[Grand Admiral Thrawn]

A couple of things I'd like to say before I go on to crunching the numbers.

First, I'm disturbed that so many of you decided to try and flame me before I even put any numbers out. It just goes to show how unwilling most of you are to even consider other information. You're going to believe what you want no matter what.

You made accusations but didn't bother to back them up, until now at least.

Second, I'm surprised by Ossus. I had heard he was one of the worst "rabbid Warsies" but he was one of the only ones (if not THE only) that's actually willing to look at and consider my figures. Hats off to you Ossus, and I owe you an apology, you actually seem to be a fair person.

Third:


The Empire is not the United States Military. Trying to make the two seem the same is baseless and quite irrelevant. I don't understand how you can try to make an arguement by comparing two completely different things.

Anyway, onto the bridge tower asteroid hit.

For this I used the asteroid impact calculator. It has 3 main criteria for determing the relative yield in TNT that an asteroid will create through impact on something. The 3 criteria are: Diameter, Density and Velocity.
The diameter, according to SD.net, is 70 meters. The average density of iron is 8.0grams/cm^3, according to earthsci.terc.edu. The velocity I figured was about 500 meters per second.

What asteroid impact calculator?

The resulting energy according to the calculator was 179594380030216 joules. That equals about 50 kilotons of TNT. How?

According to www.csulb.edu, 1 kilogram of TNT equals 4x10^6 joules (4000000). I used a rounded 200000000000000 (2x10^14) figure for the amount the calculator gave, divided that by 4x10^6 to find out how many kilograms of TNT it would take to create that much energy, and then multiplied that by 1000 because there are 1000 kg in a metric ton. That came out to 50,000(tons), or 50 kilotons, the same figure given by www.csulb.edu. SD.net claims the asteroid had a kinetic force of 5 x 10^14 joules, which actually is only 2.5 times larger, and equals 125 kilotons of TNT.

According to my Master Converter program, 179594380030216 J is roughly 43 kilotons, but you did round off.

So anyway, that's how I came up with those figures. What do you think? Do you see anything wrong with the calculations? Most importantly, how can an ISD, which is designed to take 300GT (according to SD.net) HTL shots, be destroyed (or atleast heavily damaged) by an equivilent 50 kiloton blast?

It is a bridge. In ROTJ, a detonating A-Wing did significant damage as well. Bridges are not armored.

I've heard the arguement, "The shields were weakened by asteroid hits", but that's not a very good excuse.. But even if it's assumed a Star Destroyer is only able to take a single of its own HTL shots before being destroyed, it would have to have been hit by 5,999,999,999 70 meter wide asteroids. That's not very likely.

Again, it was hit in the bridge, which is not armored. Furthermore, most people figure Vader, in his typical disregard for Imperial personnel, ordered the holo-converence, which is said to have to lower shields.

On a related side-topic, in TESB a TIE fighter is destroyed by a meteor crashing into it. I don't have screen-caps on hand but I can estimate a generous 10 meter diameter for the asteroid, and the same 8mg/cm^3 density, and, let's say, 200 meters a second velocity. That equals to being only 19 tons of TNT! Even if every variable is included, that number won't be going up very much. What the hell good is a TIE fighter in a universe where capital ships are designed to take many hundreds of gigatons of energy? That would mean that a single HTL bolt could vapourize billions of TIE fighters.

Tie Fighters are designed for FIGHTER combat. A HTL would destroy one anyways.

Anyway, these are just the figures I've come up with. If you see anything wrong, tell me and I'll do my best to answer to them.

Where is this asteroid calculator?

[Alyeska]

Actually a very large portion of the bridge is destroyed. The entire bridge itself is completely destroyed and only the neck structure survives.

Do we have any idea where officers go on the ship to have a holo-conference? If so, that could be the best judge for the damage done. Otherwise I have seen the visuals on Darkstar's site, and they're pretty convincing.

One of the few things people can agree with in regards to Darkstar. In all likelyhood the captain of the ship was in the secondary bridge or the CIC. Both are locations the captain can command from and they would likely have the proper communication centers.

[Grand Admiral Thrawn]

Erm, let me elaborate.

If HTL's really did have 300GT of energy behind them, then a single shot on an unshielded target would have the same result as the DSII's superlaser hit on the Mon Cal Cruiser, at LEAST.

Also, in TESB during the Falcon chase scene several TL shots miss and explode like flak around the Falcon. The resulting explosion seems to be no larger than at most a ton of TNT, just small flashes around the Falcon. Are point-defense TL's supposed to be 300 billion times weaker than a HTL?

I didn't see any flak shots, and I doubt they were a ton of TNT (space TL explosion wouldn't like one in atmosphere anyways). Besides, you forget those same "ton of TNT" blasts vaporized asteroids dozens of meters in diameter.

[Grand Admiral Thrawn]

I'm just saying that if HTL bolts are 300GT then the effects of a single shot would be comparable to the Mon Cal being hit by the Superlaser. IE, a single shot would utterly destroy anything. Perhaps the Superlaser was on a lower setting. It would make sense, unless they want to use up a full-power shot on some stupid little ship.

Also, I'm not talking about the shots that HIT the Falcon, I'm talking about the shots that explode around it. Those are not multi-megaton explosions. A multi-megaton explosion would have been a hell of a lot bigger.

The fact those same blasts were PROVED to be hundreds of kilotons minimum means TLs do not look like nukes.