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Chris OFarrell wrote:Its slightly different from what I did recall, far less detailed, so I'll withdraw the claims, but here is the quote at any rate:

"The Empire has embarked on a new military project", Melan began. "We do not yet know what or where the project is, but we do know it is vast, the Emperor has diverted huge amounts of money, material and men for this secret enterprise".

I mean at this point the Empire is in the throes of a gigantic military buildup post Yavin, but this is a significant enough change to warrant sending Leia an urgent summons to meet a high level officer in the Bothan spynet.

Huge amounts but not huge percentage. As an example to you or me a billion dollars is a huge amount of money. Alot can be bought or built witha that much money. But when compared to the total US Federal Budget a billion isnt that big of a deal.

So it could be a massive amount of money and still be less than 1% of the actual budget.

This might be a candidate.

so large it was mistaken for a planet

I was wondering if anyone had any information on the Star Forge? Like, what possible dimensions it could have had, or how big it was compared to other things like the Death Stars. Any info is appreciated.

ArcturusMengsk wrote:The Death Star is probably the largest mobile vessel constructed in the GFFA, but there may well be stationary constructs that are larger yet.

"It's too big to be a space station."

Yeah but they still call it that even after they're clear that its a gigantic mobile siege craft. I wouldn't harp on the terminology too much. Most larger even stationary constructs are probably drilled into or incorporate planetoids or asteroids or existing moons - ref. Hosk Station.

I guess artificial planetary rings like Kuat's could be called "shipyards" and not be thought of as regular "space stations". Then of course there's any structure built long before Han's time that he doesn't know about or was destroyed long before then.

Galvatron wrote:

ArcturusMengsk wrote:The Death Star is probably the largest mobile vessel constructed in the GFFA, but there may well be stationary constructs that are larger yet.

"It's too big to be a space station."

This from a guy whose entire home-system is an artificial construct.

FTeik wrote:

Galvatron wrote:

ArcturusMengsk wrote:The Death Star is probably the largest mobile vessel constructed in the GFFA, but there may well be stationary constructs that are larger yet.

"It's too big to be a space station."

This from a guy whose entire home-system is an artificial construct.

If I understood the story that's in correctly they didn't know that until around that time.

Illuminatus Primus wrote:Yeah but they still call it that even after they're clear that its a gigantic mobile siege craft. I wouldn't harp on the terminology too much. Most larger even stationary constructs are probably drilled into or incorporate planetoids or asteroids or existing moons - ref. Hosk Station.

But Han didn't know it was mobile when he said that.

We are assuming that HAN knows the max size of space stations rather than him talking out of his ass because...

The Original Nex wrote:We are assuming that HAN knows the max size of space stations rather than him talking out of his ass because...

Because he was in the Imperial Navy and has working knowledge of their military equipment and scale.

CaptainChewbacca wrote:

The Original Nex wrote:We are assuming that HAN knows the max size of space stations rather than him talking out of his ass because...

Because he was in the Imperial Navy and has working knowledge of their military equipment and scale.

Damnit... Always took him for the hotshot smuggler he seemed to be...

Galvatron wrote:

Illuminatus Primus wrote:Yeah but they still call it that even after they're clear that its a gigantic mobile siege craft. I wouldn't harp on the terminology too much. Most larger even stationary constructs are probably drilled into or incorporate planetoids or asteroids or existing moons - ref. Hosk Station.

But Han didn't know it was mobile when he said that.

And you're assuming he's being tight with the meaning of space station when he calls it that still, after he knows its mobile. Clearly whatever definition or idea Han is using for "space station" is not specific to it being stationary. Still, being in the Imperial Navy does not mean you're a naval planner or expert on deployed stations or any of the following. A person from New York could still think Tapei 101 is "too big" to be a skyscraper if they'd never been there, etc.

Han could have been looking at mass readings - to resist the recoil from the planet killer beam the Death Star has to mass more then an Earth Sized planet.

You think it outmassed Alderaan?

We have no definitive data on its strength per average unit of mass characteristics, so how can you be so assured of that? (I don't necessarily disagree; I think the recoil dampening of the Death Star is one of its most extreme engineering feats.)

Illuminatus Primus wrote:You think it outmassed Alderaan?

I think it is likely, yes.

We have no definitive data on its strength per average unit of mass characteristics, so how can you be so assured of that? (I don't necessarily disagree; I think the recoil dampening of the Death Star is one of its most extreme engineering feats.)

Well, Alderaan suffered a change in momentum of 4*10^31 kgm/s, so so did the Death Star. We know it can pull 100 Gs, so the engines going full out as it fires can knock 3 orders of magnitude off that. So the question is how fast, it at all, was it sent back? 100 m/s? 1 km/s? 10 km/s? There is nothing for it to brace against, so it's mass has to be the limit here.

Illuminatus Primus wrote:You think it outmassed Alderaan?

Why not? A large part of the mass is the fuel (if it's being stored as mass rather than as relativistic tachyonic matter -- how's that for stating assumptions?); if the ship carries enough fuel for 1000 shots, then it's on the order of the Earth's mass already. And even if the mass is stored as relativistic KE, why wouldn't that contribute to the station's mass and inertia when viewed from a resting frame?

I don't suppose there are any canonical examples of Dyson spheres in the GFFA? (granted, hypermatter reactors would make them into mere vanity projects)

Who said it had 1000 full-power shots? That would put it way above Ender's peak power duration for most warships. We already considered this. And you curiously imply that relativistic hypermatter fuel (the canonical power source of the Death Star and implicitly, all major combat starships) wouldn't contribute to the inertia of the Death Star in your first sentence - why's that? I understand it as SW is at the high-end of E=mc^2 limits, with hypermatter simply being a non-volatile way to store mass-energy for direct annhiliation that conveniently also serves to fix the complex mass of SW ships during transitions to and fro hyperspace, and not a get-out-of-inertial-limitations-free card.

their military equipment and scale

So, you're saying he might be referring to military installations and not space stations in general?

Pelranius wrote:I don't suppose there are any canonical examples of Dyson spheres in the GFFA? (granted, hypermatter reactors would make them into mere vanity projects)

Hypermatter is a novel form of energy storage; its not an energy source.

Saxton proposed that stellar corpses are a likely source of energy to their compact state; rotating black holes permit energy mining by means of the Penrose process. Neutron stars that rotate with powerful magnetic fields may be accessed just a dynamo functions. Alternatively, if they have arbitrarily refined control of direct mass annhiliation through engineered black holes or a more exotic process like the "nucleonic" chain-reactions that the Galaxy Gun warheads function by, they could simply use any supply of matter. Though the bleeding-edge nature of this technology suggests that is not so. Though if they're desperate enough it'd still be worth it to Dyson Sphere black holes, neutron stars, and white dwarves that cannot be accessed by the aforementioned means. Basically I think pulsars and rotating black holes are probably the major primary energy sources of the galactic civilization.

Illuminatus Primus wrote:Who said it had 1000 full-power shots? That would put it way above Ender's peak power duration for most warships. We already considered this.

I'm not familiar with Ender's calculations, but why would having enough stored fuel for 1000 full-power shots put it way above peak power duration? I'm not saying that they can generate enough power for 1000 full-power shots at once.

And you curiously imply that relativistic hypermatter fuel (the canonical power source of the Death Star and implicitly, all major combat starships) wouldn't contribute to the inertia of the Death Star in your first sentence - why's that?

Did I imply that? I had meant simply to state the assumption that the energy is being released by direct matter-energy conversion rather than in an object's speed. Didn't my last sentence make clear that energy stored as relativistic KE still contributes to mass and inertia?

Surlethe wrote:I'm not familiar with Ender's calculations, but why would having enough stored fuel for 1000 full-power shots put it way above peak power duration? I'm not saying that they can generate enough power for 1000 full-power shots at once.

Well Saxton figures your average ship has peak power duration of less than a whole day. So 1000 shots averaged over the peak power output of the reactor would seem to yield such a result. But that's guess work.

Surlethe wrote:Did I imply that? I had meant simply to state the assumption that the energy is being released by direct matter-energy conversion rather than in an object's speed. Didn't my last sentence make clear that energy stored as relativistic KE still contributes to mass and inertia?

Relativistic KE is really not meaningfully different in this case from raw mass, is it? I agree; I think that SW ships store a relatively low rest mass of tachyons (whatever an imaginary figure like that means) but its decelerated to near light-speed where it has enormous mass-energy equivalence from its relativistic velocity (the mirror image of high relativistic velocity bradyonic matter). I suspect the work to do this is done by energy extraction from black holes and pulsars. How they harness or confine the circulating tachyons is anyone's guess. All tachyons would tend to lose energy and accelerate to infinite speed due to energy loss to Cherenkov radiation by any interaction, be it gravitational, electromagnetic, etc. I suspect they use stasis fields to slow that tendency to a near stop, and its relinquished under controlled circumstances to yield up all its energy in the annhiliation reactor. I'm partial to Mike's "invisible cloud" storage mechanism because it frees up the silos for propellant but who knows. One can only hypothesize so much since relativity obviously breaks in a universe where FTL information transmission is practical.

If the DS is as massive as Alderaan, that implies that they could take those sublight engines, put them on the planet, and drive it into the sun. Also, it would have a surface gravity of about 11000 G. That's... quite a lot.

Illuminatus Primus wrote: One can only hypothesize so much since relativity obviously breaks in a universe where FTL information transmission is practical.

What on earth are you talking about? Relativity is only incompatible with FTL if casualty is not violated. But we know that casualty is routinely violated in this universe - the impacts of it are just limited by the Force itself.