NR's replacements for Stormtroopers

[Illuminatus Primus]

Second, it is generated by the detonator itself BEFORE it detnoates, and needs only last long enough to halt the expansion of the blast, which could be an incredibly short timeframe - even a 1 kiloton nuke's fireball lasts for only .2 seconds.)

It does occur to you that the reason they dissipate quickly is because they expand (why the fuck do you think it expands?), dumping it's energy into the surrounding enviornment, right?

Now if it does dissipate in the same time-frame without expansion, it is going to have to dump all that energy in the form of heat in the surrounding air--which is going to superheat it and cause an explosion anyway.

The only way to prevent this is if the fireball lasts long enough to slowly cool. This requires your containment medium to last just as long, and more problematically, it requires it to be somehow selectively porous, letting a gradual amount of heat energy through.

I think it would be simpler if its effects were mostly thermal with a blast radius of about 5 meters, outside of which the thermal effects aren't high enough to vaporize or incinerate most building materials, leaving them mostly intact.

[Connor MacLeod]

Second, it is generated by the detonator itself BEFORE it detnoates, and needs only last long enough to halt the expansion of the blast, which could be an incredibly short timeframe - even a 1 kiloton nuke's fireball lasts for only .2 seconds.)

It does occur to you that the reason they dissipate quickly is because they expand (why the fuck do you think it expands?), dumping it's energy into the surrounding enviornment, right?

Now if it does dissipate in the same time-frame without expansion, it is going to have to dump all that energy in the form of heat in the surrounding air--which is going to superheat it and cause an explosion anyway.

The only way to prevent this is if the fireball lasts long enough to slowly cool. This requires your containment medium to last just as long, and more problematically, it requires it to be somehow selectively porous, letting a gradual amount of heat energy through.

I think it would be simpler if its effects were mostly thermal with a blast radius of about 5 meters, outside of which the thermal effects aren't high enough to vaporize or incinerate most building materials, leaving them mostly intact.

Nice how you snipped away and quietly ignored the REST of my response in favor of just attacking this one point. Even though this one point is only a part of the overall response.

Now, did you miss where I pointed out the analogy to a "tiny projectile inside the bolt"? That is in fact entirely relevant, since the implied principles would be similar.

Further, TD's (at least under this mechanism) appear to operate more like some sort of sustained "incendiary" device rather than a simple bomb. The TD appears to operate on some sort of "field" effect (it says "particle field", but that isn't neccesarily "all" to it. We know of canon "shields" or other apparent forcefield tech that exhibit physical components as well) We know it heats up objects and "disintegrates" them. Further, the EGW&T also indicates the "field" lasts several seconds, implying that rather than exploding all at once (like a bomb), the TD does in fact persist beyond the initial triggering. To further reinforce the notion that the effect is not near-instantaneous (the way a nuke or any other kind of conventional explosive would be) - Emphasis mine:

http://www.starwars.com/databank/techno ... detonator/

Once activated, an internal fusion reaction starts within the sphere which eventually grows into a deadly explosion

Just to put another nail in the coffin, I'll point out that Seismic charges as well do not operate like conventional explosives by canon observation either, and in fact seem to imply either some sort of sustained containment even after detonation, or some sort of manipulated field effect (the brief expansion, followed by compression into a narrow planar effect.) - which may very well be similar to how TD's operate (Especially since the "12 gigaton" yield for the Seismic charge implies it DOES in fact have an energy release.

However, it is possible to note that not all Thermal detonators need operate on the above principle. A TD designed as a simple explosive device might ignore the "containment" requirements entirely. In the case of a pure explosive device, the "blast radius" might not indicate some sort of arbitray "wall" that magically halts the explosion, but defines the point at which the explosion ceases to be fatal. (I should point out that the SWVD does note that the spherical T'D's leia used indicate they have a fragmentation shell, which suggests there are in fact "pure explosive" variants.)

[Illuminatus Primus]

I didn't reply to the shielded-generator bit because that hadn't occurred to me, and you're right and thusly I had no rebuttal to it (though I did refer to it in my reply) and the rest was a flame, so why would I?

EDIT: I concede that there could be multiple types. However this is all tangetal to the original point, which was that there it may be premature to assume the breachings were via guns without being told or offered any evidence, particularly when thermal detonators in some situations could be ideal for that purpose.

[Connor MacLeod]

I didn't reply to the shielded-generator bit because that hadn't occurred to me, and you're right and thusly I had no rebuttal to it (though I did refer to it in my reply) and the rest was a flame, so why would I?

Because it was relevant to my argument, and you decided to ignore it for one reason or another, which in fact looks dishonest. A blaster bolt that uses the "tiny projectile inside the bolt" would require the projectile itself to be shielded from the destructive effects of the bolt it is in. The same can easily be true for the TD (its probably more accurate to liken it to that form of blaster technology in operation than to a bomb.)

EDIT: I concede that there could be multiple types. However this is all tangetal to the original point, which was that there it may be premature to assume the breachings were via guns without being told or offered any evidence, particularly when thermal detonators in some situations could be ideal for that purpose.

I don't particularily care whether they used blasters or not. I can point out that the ANH novelization implie Luke could destroy the detention block door with his stormtrooper blaster set on full power, but that isn't relevant since we don't exactly know the method, and even so, I don't see how the reference could be quantified anyhow.

In any event its irrelevant to the point *I* was addressing, which had no relevance to your question about "containing the blast". I don't see why you're mentioning a topic I did not even address.

Edit: Deleted double lines.

[Ender]

I'm aware of its mechanism (though its a bit more technobabblish then straight fusion), but the EGWT says that anything outside the defined balst spehre is untouched

I remember official counts of feeling the blast heat or gusts of air or something.

From SbS probably, he has them usign TDs for most of it but at a few points switches to concussion grenades. Not many cathc the switch and people thought there was yet another type of TD for a while.

How would one confine the fireball to a fixed radius after the charge already detonated?

Behold the power of technobabble. It's likely some mystery particle since it chews through anything regardless of material to a certain distance (won't hapen with a mini nuke) and the field collapses on itself afterwards. the fusion explosion is probably just to power it like how there are nuke pumped lasers