What if the Empire invaded modern day Earth?

[D.Turtle]

With such a speed difference we should be seeing damage before tracer impacts, even with the naked eye, in pretty much every vehicle encounter. Yet that does not happen, and even a cursory glance at the DS attack - which conveniently shows quite a few shots almost barrel-to-impact - clearly shows that damaging portion of whatever mechanism turbolasers coincides perfectly with the impact of the visible, STL bolt. If that was launched simultaneously with an invisible FTL bolt the damage would occur before the visible bolt hit, and consistently at that.

What the ICS offers is an explanation that works for the exception and then requires a massive heap of coincidences for it to work in any situation that isn't one of those exceptions. And in doing so it contradicts the movies it's claiming to explain.

This is easily explained by the ramp-up I mentioned - there is first a low-powered beam, which the tracer starts moving along, and then some time later, the full powered beam is emitted.

Where does that help either theory?

Umm, if a turbolaser shot is simply a bolt, you would have to propose some additional mechanism that explains how they can adjust that bolt on-th-fly.

If the visible bolt is simply a tracer moving along a low-powered beam, when you move the beam, the tracer will move along with it.

[Bounty]

This is easily explained by the ramp-up I mentioned - there is first a low-powered beam, which the tracer starts moving along, and then some time later, the full powered beam is emitted.

... what in the name of all that's holy would the purpose of such a set-up be? To see what you're not hitting? To see what you would have hit had you pressed the trigger later?

[D.Turtle]

I can't recall all the details and arguments that flew around, but the AOTC ICS clearly states that turbolasers are lightspeed weapons, with a visible tracer traveling along the beam.

But as for the ramp up being a problem, I don't see whats so weird about a beam that sees a ramp up to maximum power, before powering down again.

There are other people out there who argued this extensively at that time (several years back).

This thread seems to include some good discussion about the characteristics of turbolasers.

Edit: there is also this link in the sticky of Pure SW.[/edit]

At this point, I would really advise either moving this thread into Pure SW, or making new threads about the various topics that came up here in Pure SW. Maybe then the people more knowledgeable about this stuff can contribute.

[Sinanju]

I was admiring the artistry of a bunch of totally incomprehensible equations with "you blithering retard" at the bottom.

I like how I did a volume calc, and Destructo tried to 'correct' my numbers by switching to energy. Our physics wiz at work, folks.

[Sinanju]

So, you did miss the point. And, apparently missed the volume equation in there, meaning your understanding wasn't even there for the first line.

Since it bears repeating: you were trying to dispute a volume calculation by solving for energy (remember when you got to here: E = PVArRT * (ΔHfus + ΔHvap + C*(T - T0) ?) and going from there. Way to completely stuff yourself up. Again. I like how you continue to act as if your scientific chops are unquestionable when so far it seems you couldn't find your own nose with a map and really good directions.

[Ford Prefect]

I can't recall all the details and arguments that flew around, but the AOTC ICS clearly states that turbolasers are lightspeed weapons, with a visible tracer traveling along the beam.

Yeah, it's extremely clear, but it's also catastrophically dumb. Seriously, the STL tracer + lighspeed invisible beam is literally the dumbest, the absolute dumbest thing to come out of fans of Star Wars. I realise it is a comprehensive attempt to incorporate all manner of special effect weirdness in the films, but at the same time you have to wonder at the logic behind such a weapon. I mean, what purpose does the 'tracer' serve? Can you imagine the thought processes of the person who first designed the turbolaser? 'Okay, yep, I have this invisible, lightspeed weapon, and what it really needs is a visible component that moves at five hundred miles per hour'.

Why? Why would anyone do this? You could say that if the tracer misses, then the turbolaser doesn't 'ramp up' to full power, thus saving some of its undoubtedly precious (?) fuel. Except ... the tracer makes it more likely that a turbolaser will miss its target in the first place, by virtue of it being extremely slow in comparison.

[Serafina]

Yeah, it's extremely clear, but it's also catastrophically dumb. Seriously, the STL tracer + lighspeed invisible beam is literally the dumbest, the absolute dumbest thing to come out of fans of Star Wars. I realise it is a comprehensive attempt to incorporate all manner of special effect weirdness in the films, but at the same time you have to wonder at the logic behind such a weapon. I mean, what purpose does the 'tracer' serve? Can you imagine the thought processes of the person who first designed the turbolaser? 'Okay, yep, I have this invisible, lightspeed weapon, and what it really needs is a visible component that moves at five hundred miles per hour'.

Why? Why would anyone do this? You could say that if the tracer misses, then the turbolaser doesn't 'ramp up' to full power, thus saving some of its undoubtedly precious (?) fuel. Except ... the tracer makes it more likely that a turbolaser will miss its target in the first place, by virtue of it being extremely slow in comparison.

Or perhaps the "tracer" is just a side-effect of the weapon and not deliberately engineered into it? Given their use of tibanaa gas, it even makes some sort of sense - the gas creates the damaging, invisible beam after it has been shot out of the barrel and travels into the same direction, but is actually just like a discared cartridge and not actually important after it's job is done.

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

Why? Why would anyone do this? You could say that if the tracer misses, then the turbolaser doesn't 'ramp up' to full power, thus saving some of its undoubtedly precious (?) fuel. Except ... the tracer makes it more likely that a turbolaser will miss its target in the first place, by virtue of it being extremely slow in comparison.

The idea is that the tracer doesn't move at a set speed at all. The turbolaser takes x time to charge up a full-power shot and the tracer travels from the barrel to the target over the time period of the start of the charge up period to when the shot is released. So if the target is 100m away and the charge up time is one second, the tracer travels at 100m/s; if it's a ten kilometers away it travels at 104m/s. IIRC it's supposed to manage this by being some sort of magic byproduct of the beam itself rather than a projectile of its own.

[Batman]

Oh, just for fun, at your alleged 2 gs

Observed 2g.

ALLEGEDLY observed 2 gs.

, the speeds we canonically see in the NJO would take them HALF A YEAR to get up to. Yet they're reasonably easily achieved in combat situations.

Do you have a quote for this?

Why would it matter if I had one? You're ALREADY blithely ignoring the HIGHER canon ICS numbers, you'd just ignore the NJO figures too.
(btw, 6 months at 2g puts it well into relativity territory)[/quote]
You mean like high fractional c? As stated in the NJO? As in the beyond 80 percentile fractional c?

Pretty much EVERYTHING spacegoing in Wars can go escape velocity in under a minute.

Except when the camera is actually following them, of course.

Which NEVER ACTUALLY HAPPENS unfortunately. We don't HAVE continuous shots following vessels from ground to orbit. Proving that the gaps in the cuts are LONGER than realtime is up to YOU.

How, pray tell, WOULD you go for maximum consistency as by YOUR OWN ADMISSION you don't KNOW the vast majority of the available evidence?

Not a single one of the wankers in this thread has brought up any evidence from the books, except for ICS. You've had plenty of opportunities to do so.

What would be the point? You're ALREADY ignoring higher canon, you'd ignore the book examples too because 'we never see that in the movies' despite having been given plenty of explanations WHY we don't (IF we don't, your critique of the acceleration figures essentially relies on blithely assuming that the cuts in the ground-to-orbit scenes last as long as you want them to).

Now, you claimed something about the NJO - have a full paragraph from that to back it up?

No, as that would require me to actually REREAD the NJO. Not that I see how it would matter-you'd dismiss it like you dismissed the HIGHER CANON ICS figures because you don't like them.
I'm not rereading that sorry excuse for SciFi to get a paragraph presenting numbers you're going to ignore anyway.
The ICS numbers are THERE, they're CANON, and NOTHING IN THE MOVIES CONTRADICTS THEM. Learn to live with that or stay out of the friggin' debate.

[Batman]

ALLEGEDLY observed 2 gs.

What, specifically, is your objection to my scaling? If you can't find a flaw in my reasoning, what the fuck are you questioning the observation on?

You know what, I'm conceding that one as it doesn't matter.

Why would it matter if I had one? You're ALREADY blithely ignoring the HIGHER canon ICS numbers, you'd just ignore the NJO figures too.

You're a mind reader now? Christ.
BTW, the ICS is not HIGHER canon. You'll note that the author isn't George Lucas. Anything he writes or allows into the movies overrides any other author, but the other authors are all equal according to the official canon policy.

You may want to update you knowledge on what the Canon policy IS then.

I just spent the last half hour reading every article and quotation I could find on that policy, and I don't have the first clue where you're getting this HIGHER crap. Care to provide a sourced quotation on that?

We don't HAVE continuous shots following vessels from ground to orbit. Proving that the gaps in the cuts are LONGER than realtime is up to YOU.

What horseshit. Let's try applying your method of analysis to other franchises.
So I'm watching NCIS right now. Gibbs and crew just got into the elevator. The door shut and the scene changed. Next thing, we saw them at the SecNav's house.
Is the NCIS office elevator a teleportation device? According to your retarded vision, it must be!

Wrong. according to YOUR retarded vision it must be. For NCIS , we have a plethora of evidence on how far lift cars move, how fast people get into cars, how long cars take to travel a certain distance (including them being stuck in traffic) and so on. YOU are assuming in a universe where CANON INFORMATION says they can move that fast-they can't move that fast.

Man, Gibbs was just inside the house, then it cut again and he was outside talking to Tony. Apparently, he can walk some 50 feet in a fraction of a second.
According to your retarded method, that means he is capable of pushing over 500g on foot!

No it doesn't, because there's no evidence he can. There's plenty for Wars, all of which you are ignoring.

It is funny that Gibbs never uses this amazing speed to chase down cars though. Maybe there's heavy jamming.

Maybe you should PROVE Wars ships need eons to do all the stuff we IN THE MOVIES see them do in SECONDS?

[Batman]

You may want to update you knowledge on what the Canon policy IS then.ong. according to YOUR retarded vision it must be. For NCIS , we have a plethora of evidence on how far lift cars move, how fast people get into cars, how long cars take to travel a certain distance (including them being stuck in traffic) and so on. [/quote]
So you just don't LIKE the numbers. We SAW him do 500g IN THE SHOW. PROVE the scene change was NOT real time or GET OUT OF THE DEBATE.

No it doesn't, because there's no evidence he can. There's plenty for Wars, all of which you are ignoring.

"Plenty", but all that's been presented, over 677 posts in this thread now, is
a) The ICS[/quote]
which are decidedly unrefuted canon,

b) Select space launches using a dumbass interpretation of scene changes

consisting the majority OF Wars movie space launches where you have so far FAILED to prove they were NOT realtime,
c) A nebulous claim about a book[/quote]
4 figure g accelerations. Single figure KT firepower numbers on the fighter level. You have yet to show evidence CONTRADICTING those numbers.
And yes, you DO have to show evidence contradicting those numbers. The movies failing to support them doesn't work.

[D.Turtle]

Yeah, it's extremely clear, but it's also catastrophically dumb. Seriously, the STL tracer + lighspeed invisible beam is literally the dumbest, the absolute dumbest thing to come out of fans of Star Wars. I realise it is a comprehensive attempt to incorporate all manner of special effect weirdness in the films, but at the same time you have to wonder at the logic behind such a weapon. I mean, what purpose does the 'tracer' serve? Can you imagine the thought processes of the person who first designed the turbolaser? 'Okay, yep, I have this invisible, lightspeed weapon, and what it really needs is a visible component that moves at five hundred miles per hour'.

Why? Why would anyone do this? You could say that if the tracer misses, then the turbolaser doesn't 'ramp up' to full power, thus saving some of its undoubtedly precious (?) fuel. Except ... the tracer makes it more likely that a turbolaser will miss its target in the first place, by virtue of it being extremely slow in comparison.

Basically, turbolasers require a short ramp-up time to get to full power. Why is it then stupid to utilize this ramp-up time in order to increase accuracy a small bit by including a tracer?

And there are several mentions of turbolasers as lightspeed weapons, its not just the AOTC ICS (though it would be enough if it were only mentioned there).

The quotes come from this post in Pure SW, since I don't have the books myself:

Episode II: Incredible Cross-Sections wrote:
Energy weapons fire invisible energy beams at lightspeed. The visible "bolt" is a glowing pulse that travels along the beam at less than lightspeed.

Shadows of the Empire, page 326 wrote:
A hard green beam of light flashed between the two ships. The sighting ray of a big ship's cannon--you couldn't see the laser itself in vacuum, of course, but it followed the ionized marker you could see precisely.

Destiny's Way wrote:
He triggered the first pair of concussion missiles, knowing that unlike the laser cannon, they did not strike at the speed of light.

The Essential Guide to Weapons and Technology, page 3 wrote:
The final particle beam, or "bolt," contains high-energy particles that cause tremendous damage to anything they hit; the bolt's visible light is a harmless by-product of this reaction.

[Terralthra]

The quotes you cite contradict each other. One says the pulse travels along the beam after the damaging beam goes at light speed, the other says the marker goes first and the laser follows it.

[D.Turtle]

Easily explained by the ramp-up. The one quote talks about the full-strength pulse, the other one about the low-powered initial pulse.

[D.Turtle]

Lets take the script.

DEATH STAR INTERCOM VOICE

Orbiting the planet at maximum velocity. The moon with the
Rebel base will be in range in thirty minutes.

VADER
This will be a day long remembered.
It has seen the end of Kenobi and it
will soon see the end of the
Rebellion.

INT. MASSASSI OUTPOST - MAIN HANGAR DECK

Luke, Threepio and little Artoo enter the huge spaceship
hangar and hurry along a long line of gleaming spacefighters.
Flight crews rush around loading last-minute armaments and
unlocking power couplings. In an area isolated from this
activity Luke finds Han and Chewbacca loading small boxes
onto an armored speeder.

So, when the Death Star arrives, it is 30 minutes from firing range. After the scene where it arrives, is the scene in the hangar area.

Lets check when they leave:

EXT. MASSASSI OUTPOST - JUNGLE

All that can be seen of the fortress is a lone guard standing
on a small pedestal jutting out above the dense jungle. The
muted gruesome crying sounds that naturally permeate this
eerie purgatory are overwhelmed by the thundering din of ion
rockets as four silver starships catapult from the foliage
in a tight formation and disappears into the morning cloud
cover.

INT. MASSASSI OUTPOST - WAR ROOM

The princess, Threepio, and a field commander sit quietly
before the giant display showing the planet Yavin and its
four moons. The red dot that represents the Death Star moves
ever closer to the system. A series of green dots appear
around the fourth moon. A din of indistinct chatter fills
the war room.

MASSASSI INTERCOM VOICE
Stand-by alert. Death Star
approaching. Estimated time to firing
range, fifteen minutes.

So, when they leave the planet, the Death Star will be in firing range in 15 minutes.

They then arrive at the Death Star. There is lots of fighting. The first torpedo run is started. Then we get the following:

INT. MASSASSI OUTPOST - WAR ROOM

GOLD FIVE
(over speaker)
I'd say about twenty guns. Some on
the surface, some on the towers.

Leia, Threepio, and the technicians view the projected target
screen, as red and blue target lights glow. The red target
near the center blinks on and off.

MASSASSI INTERCOM VOICE
(over speaker)
Death Star will be in range in five
minutes.

EXT. SURFACE OF THE DEATH STAR

The three Y-wing fighters race toward camera and zoom overhead
through a hail of laserfire.

INT. GOLD LEADER'S Y-WING - COCKPIT

Gold Leader pulls his computer targeting device down in front
of his eye. Laserbolts continue to batter the Rebel craft.

GOLD LEADER
Switching to targeting computer.

So, the time that the Y-wings start the first run, the Death Star is 5 minutes from firing range.

This means, it took a lot less than 10 minutes for the fighters to move from their base to the Death Star.

Now, to make an extremely, extremely conservative estimate of the acceleration. We will take the 10 minutes as the total time for traveling the distance,ignoring that they fought for some time before this happened, ignoring that Darth Vader had time to go to his fighter and launch between the time the rebel fighters arrived at the Death Star, etc. We'll assume that the Death Star is not moving towards Yavin at all. So, the fighters accelerate for 5 minutes with a constant acceleration, then decelerate with a constant acceleration. We'll take the 120.000 kilometers you claimed on the last page. This means, that they have to cover 60.000 kilometers during the acceleration phase (they'll cover the other 60.000 kilometers during the deceleration phase).

Taking all that (assuming starting and stopping speed of 0, constant acceleration and deceleration, total distance covered of 120.000km, total flight time 10 minutes), what do we get?

An acceleration of about 1300 m/s², or about 130g. (Please calculate it yourself to be sure, my head ist still smoking from an exam today).

Again, this is assuming the Death Star is not moving towards Yavin at all, taking an obviously too long flight time of 10 minutes, etc.

[D.Turtle]

Looking back, where you calculated the distance between the fighters and the Death Star during the scene where they approached the Death Star (I think its the same scene where you measured the distance between the fighters and Yavin 4), you claimed a distance of 24 km. Just the field of view covered by the death star at that distance (2/arctan(80/24) ), I get a result of about 145° of the field of view covered by the Death Star. I think your distance is off.

Given that you used the same method to calculate the distance between the fighters and Yavin 4, that figure is probably suspect too.

[Darth Hoth]

Maybe I fail to see something that others do (it would certainly not be the first time), but what is the point of all this quibbling? I would think it has been sufficiently demonstrated that the films themselves do not, independently, provide such data that one can derive from them certain numbers in the range provided by the EU. But the detractors have also failed to show sufficient evidence to disallow these numbers. Therefore, in the absence of such evidence, they would still stand.

So, from what I see, people are arguing about a non-issue.

[Darth Hoth]

Luke said "full throttle", yet was still in that trench for a couple minutes. (At 3000g, he would have blown through it in under ten seconds - assuming it runs all the way around the Death Star). Does full throttle mean something different in Star Wars? Was he lying? Why would he do that? If Biggs and Wedge misunderstood his lie and actually punched it, he would have been left alone.

I would have to rewatch the scene. But I am sure that one could concoct an argument to explain it away; perhaps it referred to full speed on repulsorlift, rather than thrusters. Full acceleration in the trench does not make sense in any case, due to the human pilots, even if it is only in the tens or hundreds of gees, as has been suggested in this thread.

So, what test could we perform that would disprove this? Is it character dialog? Got that. Is it failing to use it where it would save their lives? Got that too.

If there is no test, just say your Faith shall remain Unshaken and leave it at that.

I cannot speak for others. For me, as a preliminary suggestion, it would have to require an explicit and unambiguous statement that a given low performance is a maximum, and preferably several to reinforce the point. Illogical use of the technology's stated capabilities is not necessarily a contradiction, in and of itself.

[D.Turtle]

If you can redo it correctly, that'd be fantastic. I'd love an accurate measurement for both of them.

Well, to be honest, there is so much wiggle room in how you calculated that, that its possible to reach almost any number you want with the method you used - if it is what I think it is (Wikipedia calls it the intercept theorem).

Just to make sure, heres the picture that describes it:

You tried to calculate C = B*D/A using the following picture:

Looking at the distance between the X-Wing and the Death Star, the numbers you conclude are:

D is obviously correct at 160.000 meters.

You estimated B as the length of the X-Wing at about 13 meters. This is pretty close to other numbers out there.

However, you guesstimated the tip of the nose (which is as wide as the Death Star in the background) as about 2m wide, so A=2. Looking at other picture/schematics, the nose is maybe best 1/10 the width of the X-Wing, which is about 12 meters. This would make A=1.2. If you had taken that value instead, C would have been 40% smaller.

Because A is such a small number, small differences in the estimate can produce huge differences in the end result, as the differences in A are carried over proportionally. And even with the 40% wiggle room, this method still delivers obviously ridiculous numbers.

This is especially relevant with how you calculated the distance between the fighters and Yavin.

You used the following image as the basis for your calculation:

This then gets very confusing. Again, C= B*D/A

You estimate B, the length to the end of the X-Wing in the foreground as about 14 - a tiny bit more than the length of the X-Wing. This is a very, very rough estimate, that could easily be doubled, after all, the camera has a narrow vision. If the camera really was just 2 meters off the front of the X-Wing, it would dominate most of the view. This means there is a huge uncertainty in your figure.

You (bizarrely) decide to use the 25 pixel width between the engines of the X-Wing as the basis for your calculation, estimating that length to be about 2 meters. Since the X-Wing is about as wide as it is long (maybe 10% or so difference), and the X-Wing is about 220 pixel wide, those 25 pixels are more in the range of about 1.3 meters.

You use this to somehow get 92.7 and somehow get a factor of 8.6e6 for D/A. I have no idea where these numbers come from. If I simply use half the X-Wing (which is also about 110 pixels wide) with a width of 6 meters for A, then use 10,200,000 meters for D, I get a value of 23,800 km for C.

All these results seem quite weird, and can easily be manipulated.

Lets try a better method. We know Yavin is a gas giant with a moon that is apparently close to Earth in size (I don't think the size of Yavin is mentioned anywhere directly). Lets be conservative and say that Yavin is about the size of Jupiter, a diameter of about 150,000 km.

Taking a look at Mike's site, we have the following pictures:
15 minutes before being in firing range (the time at which the rebel fighters were launched):

5 minutes before being in firing range (at which point rebel fighters have already been fighting at the Death Star for some time, the Y-Wings have just started their attack run):

Now, I don't think measuring pixels is apt here, since starting with the known size of the Death Star, Yavin would only have a diameter of about 1000km. What we can use these images for is the relative positioning of the Death Star and Yavin 4, as this is updated and fits the situation when the Death Star is in firing range.

Apparently, when the fighters arrived at the Death Star, it was almost completely opposite Yavin 4. Taking simply half a circle with a diameter of 150,000km, we have a distance of about 240,000 km. The actual distance traveled is likely far larger, since they started from a moon orbiting Yavin. Considering the orbit of moons in our solar system, this can easily add 100,000 km or (a lot) more to the total distance traveled.

So, we can very, very conservatively say, that they traveled at least 240,000 km in less than 10 minutes. Using 240.000km and 10 minutes as an extreme low end (again, with starting and ending speed of 0), that is an acceleration of at the very least 2666m/s², or about 270g.

[Stofsk]

Maybe I fail to see something that others do (it would certainly not be the first time), but what is the point of all this quibbling? I would think it has been sufficiently demonstrated that the films themselves do not, independently, provide such data that one can derive from them certain numbers in the range provided by the EU.

That's the point though. The ICS, places like this site and the SWTC, all based their conclusions off of what they saw on screen.

But the detractors have also failed to show sufficient evidence to disallow these numbers. Therefore, in the absence of such evidence, they would still stand.

Like adr, I'm sceptical because in many cases the heroes (or even the villains) could have used these magical numbers at various points throughout the movies. That they didn't means they either don't have these capabilities, or they're massively retarded.

So, from what I see, people are arguing about a non-issue.

I think if anything this argument has been valuable because it's shown that some people have taken the ICS numbers to heart, and that's a problem if you want to closely examine them and understand their implications.

I mean, adr's point about the 'full throttle in the trench thing' occurred to me as well. To his credit, he actually worked out the numbers, but even I 'felt' that huge 1000s+ gees of acceleration does not jive with that scene at all. Luke says 'full throttle' and it's difficult to interpret that to mean anything else. I suppose they could have been repulsorlifts, but if they were using them for that whole battle why couldn't they have done their attack run using their high performance engines and everyone would have dropped their torpedoes at the shaft in under a minute? They either don't have the capability, or they're stupid.

[Rye]

Isn't there that shuttle scene in B5 that people regard as "stylistic" rather than "documentary", even though it's one continuous shot? Where on Earth is the consistency in analysis?

[Batman]

Isn't there that shuttle scene in B5 that people regard as "stylistic" rather than "documentary", even though it's one continuous shot? Where on Earth is the consistency in analysis?

There is. In all fairness though that scene IS in violent contradiction to the entire REST of B5 as IIRC in that shot the shuttle reaches transorbital distances in under a minute which is a bit hard to accept for a civilization that DOESN'T have artificial gravity/inertial compensators.
For an altitude of 400 km in a minute I get an acceleration in excess of 20 gs which is a BIT much for something actually carrying people.

[Junghalli]

There is. In all fairness though that scene IS in violent contradiction to the entire REST of B5 as IIRC in that shot the shuttle reaches transorbital distances in under a minute which is a bit hard to accept for a civilization that DOESN'T have artificial gravity/inertial compensators.
For an altitude of 400 km in a minute I get an acceleration in excess of 20 gs which is a BIT much for something actually carrying people.

I have heard that a properly positioned human can take up to 17 G for several minutes but it was just a post on a message board so you can take it with a grain of salt (link).

Maybe they were in some sort of breathable oxygenated liquid solution? I've heard of that as a possible way to get people to be able to take more G forces, but I haven't actually looked into it so I don't know what the limits would be.

[D.Turtle]

Don't you mean larger? Being division, as A gets smaller, C would get bigger. So it'd work out to 3g instead of 2g.

Yeah.

As to it being obviously ridiculous, I'll admit the Death Star looks kinda small there too for 24 km. But when my gut and numbers disagree and I can't find an arithmetic error, I go with the numbers (though this is the big reason why I kept saying "right?" after the calcs... I'm not completely sure either.)

Like I said a few posts up (which is the reason I looked at your numbers): Using simply trigonometry, if an object 160kmwide is 24km ahead if you, it will cover about a 140° arc in your field of vision.

Are they weird because they look too small, or weird because they are too small?

Like I said, look at the arc such an object would cover in the sky. The numbers are obviously wrong.

Is there any separate method that could be used to determine the distances in those pictures? Perhaps something from the field of view?

I really don't know. The angle was my first thought, but with so few known values, I hit a wall. Maybe I'm just doing it wrong though.

Well, we know the width of the object in question, so all we need is the arc covered by the object. However, I'm not sure how that could be measured in a camera picture.

Those positions don't seem to agree with the visuals though. The camera swoops around those x-wings, showing the planet behind them, and the death star in front of them. (my two screenshots are with one second of each other in a continuous scene) While some angle could explained by it being a distance shot, it isn't anywhere near to the angle in the diagram.

Looking at a video of the battle at Youtube, I don't see any problems. The sweep the camera makes is clearly not a 180° sweep, so theres enough of an angle to make it work.

One thing Mike missed, is that the plot updates right at the fifteen minute mark, I drew in the rough position of the Death Star at that time in the picture below. In the scene, both the Death Star and Yavin are only a small bit above the horizon of Yavin itself. If you take a straight line from both of these, you get a position that is roughly in the right place, especially as the Death Star would have moved in the intervening 7 or 8 minutes from the time that plot was taken.

Hell, lets do it with the 5 minute update, which is just a bit later than the actual scene:

Especially the position in the second picture seems relatively reasonable. More so, when you remember that the picture isn't to scale - the principal holds true even more if all objects are too big.

Even if that is right, that's still a really, really small fraction of the ICS number. Why wouldn't they burn full speed for the big distance transit? I suppose one possibility is they wanted to conserve fuel for dogfighting and the trip home.

I deliberately chose very, very, very conservative numbers - numbers that are 2 orders of magnitude above your numbers so far.

Lets plug in more reasonable numbers: Yavin diameter: 200.000, Yavin 4 orbital height of 200.000, total travelling distance: 200.000 + 1/2*200.000*pi*2/3 = about 350.000 km. (The 2/3 is because they didn't travel 180° around the planet, and they obviously don't have to travelfirst in a straight line to the gas giant's surface, before orbiting). Take a total flight time of 6 minutes (since there are almost 4 minutes of X-Wing in flight scenes between the 15 and 5 minute marks). I'll still leave the starting and stopping speed at 0 to still be somewhat conservative, and they don't really make much of a difference at the accelerations involved. What do we get as an acceleration figure?

10800 m/s², or about 1100g.

[D.Turtle]

And this disproves the >1000g required by the travel time from Yavin 4 to the Death Star how?