1189 replies to this topic

[Zakatak]

Zakatak, on 23 February 2012 - 07:54 PM, said:

*snip post about Halo tech*

Now that I made a big post, I think I want to throw the Pillar of Autumn on the table using my PERFECT remodelling on those clunky Halo yields. So here is my best estimation on what it has.

Pillar of Autumn
- Single highly-uprated MAC Cannon, ~12 Megatons, 30 second reload, 300km/s
- 7800 Archer missiles, 50-100 Kilotons each (390-780 Megatons total), 300'000km range
- Trio of Shiva-class nukes, 30 Megatons each, 100'000km range
- 40 point-defense guns, 50mm slugs, AI controlled (flawless accuracy), high-megawatt output
- 9000c FTL-speed, accurate to 15 light-seconds (preferably outside gravity wells)
- 16 Longsword-class fighters (4 Archers, 110mm gatling guns)
- 200g acceleration (absolutely nothing to go off of, I don't give a Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo either)
- 200cm Titanium-A battleplate (molecular structure modified, assume trinium strength)
- 1170m x 352m x 414m in size, mass approximately "super frakking heavy"
- 45 degrees per second (course-changing speed)
- Cortana, completely sentient AI, 128'000 bit encryptions solved in nanoseconds speak for themselves
- Can have 90% of compartments venting atmosphere and still be 100% operation
- Mastur Cheef

Enjoy comparing to various franchises. Its kind of in the middle of Star Trek and Mass Effect (an astronomical leap in energy outputs) which puts it in an awkward spot.

Edited by Zakatak, 24 February 2012 - 01:41 AM.

[ExAstris]

Zakatak, on 24 February 2012 - 12:57 AM, said:

Physics question, as we seem to have alot of physics majors in the house (warning, science content)...

Could muons (wiki it, super electrons) theoretically be used in aneutronic fusion (such a He3 + He3) to produce more energetic reactions? According to wikipedia, muon-catalyzed fusion allows particles to combine at room temperature, but would it necessarily be more energetic? If I had a MTF fusion plant, similar to the General Fusion Canada design, and heated it to 1.5 million degrees and threw in some X-reactant + Y-reactant; would replacing electrons with muons inside the chamber yield better results? Basically I am looking for a way to explain how to put a 40GW reactor in a 300 ton corvette that seems plausible by 2200, and combing He3 with itself seems impossible by that timeframe without the use of magiscience.

Not really. Being able to initiate fusion at room temperatures in a way convenient for a reactor would be great because it lowers the activation energy required to get the process going, basically meaning that you can put less energy in to get it started. However, the fusion reaction itself will still only yield the same energy release as the fusion reaction in question would otherwise (which depends on which particles you're fusing, but they're all around the same order of magnitude).

Think of it like a candle. A candle has so much potential chemical energy stored in it that can be used to generate heat and light. If you work really hard to rub sticks together you might get one to get hot enough to light some dry hair or leaves on fire, which you could then use to light the candle to reap the rewards of its conveniently stored energy. The room temperature initiation of a fusion reaction would be analogous to just using a match. It gets the thing burning with less effort (input energy), but doesn't make the candle burn longer or brighter.

[Polymorphyne]

Quote

So let's assume 200MJ. Now, that lascannon isn't the primary armament, but it's at least as big, relative to the tank (and probably a good deal bigger, if you consider internals) than the reall big externally mounted guns on the Retribution Class Battleship are relative to that whole vessel.

You need to remember that the rear two thirds of any imperial starship is primarily taken up by engine.

[Zakatak]

ExAstris, on 24 February 2012 - 02:12 AM, said:

Not really. Being able to initiate fusion at room temperatures in a way convenient for a reactor would be great because it lowers the activation energy required to get the process going, basically meaning that you can put less energy in to get it started. However, the fusion reaction itself will still only yield the same energy release as the fusion reaction in question would otherwise (which depends on which particles you're fusing, but they're all around the same order of magnitude).

Think of it like a candle. A candle has so much potential chemical energy stored in it that can be used to generate heat and light. If you work really hard to rub sticks together you might get one to get hot enough to light some dry hair or leaves on fire, which you could then use to light the candle to reap the rewards of its conveniently stored energy. The room temperature initiation of a fusion reaction would be analogous to just using a match. It gets the thing burning with less effort (input energy), but doesn't make the candle burn longer or brighter.

So adding muons to a Helium-3 + Helium-3 reaction would be no means make it more energetic, but would allow the particles to combine together much easier, and thus have practical purpose? I'm not sure if increasing the half-life of a subatomic particle is possible, or if breeding them with a input energy lower then they help output defies thermodynamics. If so, then I guess that should work. Thanks.

[Jack Gammel]

GDL Rahsan, on 23 February 2012 - 11:02 PM, said:

((HOW CAN THE IMPERIUM MAINTAIN SUCH SHIPS?!))

That one is actually pretty simple. The majority of Imperial voidships (ships capable of FTL flight) are incredibly big. This size is necessary due to the space requirements of the plasma engines and warp drive. It also means that even the smallest escort ships (destroyers, etc.) are big enough to contain entirely seperate communities of crew members onboard in what are essentially "villages." There are entire generations of crew who will live and die onboard these ships, and in the cases of the larger vessels, these crew members might not even be aware of an outside world (they're not being bred to be smart...just perform repetetive maintanence tasks over and over every day until the day they die). These crews are controlled by naval officers whose job it is to keep the ship running (if only because being a naval officer is one of the sweeter gigs in the IoM...much less chance of being murdered or eaten) and by Mechanicum adepts who literally see their work as a religious vocation. The adepts also maintain groups of servitors to help onboard, servitors being humans who have had extreme nuerological surgery performed on them to remove most of their decision making and thinking capacity while keeping the basic motor-functions and then slaving the brain to a Mechanicum controlled remote. They are then usually "upgraded" with cybernetic implants allowing them to perform more serious repair work. This horrific fate is generally reserved for criminals, malcontents, and the like, but they are capable of working almost nonstop with very little rest (although they must occasionally stop to allow their organic tissue to reguvinate).

What do the crews eat? Of course there are ship stores which are regularly resupplied, but a lot of low level crew members get by on reconstituted corpses. The grey stuff has all the vitamins and proteins you'll ever need...

Welcome to the IoM.

Edited by Jack Gammel, 24 February 2012 - 07:08 AM.

[Kartr]

GDL Rahsan, on 23 February 2012 - 11:02 PM, said:

Actually if what Catamount said about the Author of that book being a fan of VS threads and wanted to see SW always on top then it is fair to say he just made up big numbers and related them to ships etc. But then again this is science FICTION which always means the writers come up with big numbers and pretty scientific words and create a universe and technology that is about it that's why we love those silly universes.

So, sit here start discussing made up numbers and useless info and enjoy after all a universe winning on the other doesn't mean it is bad or anything

The numbers Curtis Saxton placed in the Incredible Cross Sections for Attack of the Clones (only place the official numbers exist), conform to the values calculated using the asteroid chase scene in Empire Strikes Back. The numbers aren't made up in the sense that they were calculated based on observable events. The energy necessary to sublimate an asteroid is something we can calculate based on real world values, just like the potential energy of a photon torpedo can be calculated using our knowledge of M/AM reactions. Its the same principle worked in the from the opposite direction. One takes the yield destroying something we know and uses that to calculate the value of the yield while the other takes the value of the payload and uses it to calculate the yield.

So no the values weren't assigned to ensure that SW's always wins in VS threads, the numbers already existed and proved that SW's had gigaton level weaponry. The books just made the calculations official.

[GDL Rahsan]

Kartr, on 24 February 2012 - 08:41 AM, said:

The numbers Curtis Saxton placed in the Incredible Cross Sections for Attack of the Clones (only place the official numbers exist), conform to the values calculated using the asteroid chase scene in Empire Strikes Back. The numbers aren't made up in the sense that they were calculated based on observable events. The energy necessary to sublimate an asteroid is something we can calculate based on real world values, just like the potential energy of a photon torpedo can be calculated using our knowledge of M/AM reactions. Its the same principle worked in the from the opposite direction. One takes the yield destroying something we know and uses that to calculate the value of the yield while the other takes the value of the payload and uses it to calculate the yield. So no the values weren't assigned to ensure that SW's always wins in VS threads, the numbers already existed and proved that SW's had gigaton level weaponry. The books just made the calculations official.

I didn't know about that I just said what I read from the first pages of this thread, so thank you for the information.

[Kartr]

GDL Rahsan, on 24 February 2012 - 09:44 AM, said:

I didn't know about that I just said what I read from the first pages of this thread, so thank you for the information.

Yeah I read Catamounts post on the first page and had a little laugh at it. There's maybe one source book that refers to them as fusion reactors, most of the early ones refer to them as "solar ionization reactors" and describe it as a miniature sun (fusion yes I know). However the idea that Star Wars ships are powered by fusion reactors is laughable when you compare the capabilities of Star Wars ships to the power generation of real fusion power. Fusion plants wouldn't provide enough power to sublimate (solid to vapor without moving through the liquid phase) asteroids with a single shot. Nor would fusion plants be able to provide shielding from such energetic weapons. As for the Hypermatter reactors Catamount decries, they've been part of the lore since the original ICS, as the power plant for the Death Star.

If you're interested in how turbolaser firepower was calculated here's a site that breaks it down nicely: http://www.stardestroyer.net/tlc/

[Ilithi Dragon]

Jack Gammel, on 24 February 2012 - 07:06 AM, said:

What do the crews eat? Of course there are ship stores which are regularly resupplied, but a lot of low level crew members get by on reconstituted corpses. The grey stuff has all the vitamins and proteins you'll ever need...

Welcome to the IoM.

And remember, Tuesday is Soylent Green Day. } ; = 8 )

Kartr, on 24 February 2012 - 08:41 AM, said:

The numbers Curtis Saxton placed in the Incredible Cross Sections for Attack of the Clones (only place the official numbers exist), conform to the values calculated using the asteroid chase scene in Empire Strikes Back. The numbers aren't made up in the sense that they were calculated based on observable events. The energy necessary to sublimate an asteroid is something we can calculate based on real world values, just like the potential energy of a photon torpedo can be calculated using our knowledge of M/AM reactions. Its the same principle worked in the from the opposite direction. One takes the yield destroying something we know and uses that to calculate the value of the yield while the other takes the value of the payload and uses it to calculate the yield.

So no the values weren't assigned to ensure that SW's always wins in VS threads, the numbers already existed and proved that SW's had gigaton level weaponry. The books just made the calculations official.

Actually... This is not correct. The values the ICS lists for the turbolasers on the Acclamator class Star Destroyer/"Troop Transport" are 200 gigatons per shot. That is 836,800 PetaJoules. Per shot. The absolute highest yield estimate I have seen for the TESB asteroid-popping scene is 2.86 PetaJoules, and even StarDestroyer.Net estimates the yield as 0.25 - 1.5 PetaJoules, and Wong makes his calculations assuming the total vaporization of a solid-iron asteroid, when primarily silicate asteroids tend to be the most common, and the laws of physics require the asteroid to explode apart before it is vaporized in its entirety, because the rate at which the energy would be conducted through even iron would be greatly exceeded by the rate of expansion by the initial bits that were vaporized, blowing the thing apart. Wong makes a number of process errors in his analysis, assuming an iron asteroid because 90% of asteroids found on Earth tend to be primarily composed of metal, even after specifically noting why silicate asteroids are less commonly found on Earth, and because he claims the gray/tan-colored asteroids have a rusty red color... Even though they are clearly Hollywood's Standard Space Rock Gray, and even though iron only turns rusty red when it oxidizes, usually in AIR or WATER, which are decidedly lacking in the vacuum of space. Wong further notes that SW website describes the asteroid field seen in TESB as being the result of a collision between two planets, which would make the majority of the material silicate rock, not iron. Wong does correctly note that it would actually take more energy to completely vaporize a silicate asteroid instead of a solid iron asteroid of equal volume, even though the silicate asteroid has less mass and materials with a lower vaporization point, but his explanation for why is bogus. A silicate asteroid would take more energy to completely vaporize because silicates are much poorer conductors of heat than iron, and because they are very brittle. The total vaporization energy of a silicate asteroid, assuming you could apply the energy to the entire asteroid at once, would be much less, but to actually achieve total vaporization before the asteroid blows itself apart you need to impart more energy with silicates than with metallic asteroids. It's much more likely that the asteroid was simply blown apart by a small part of it vaporizing (and thus expanding violently, with much energy), with most of the asteroid not even getting hot enough to glow, than the entire thing being vaporized, so even Wong's 0.25 - 1.5 PetaJoule estimate for an ISD turbolaser is extremely high.

How does that square against the ICS's 200 gigaton-per-shot for a standard turbolaser cannon on an early Clone War cruiser/"troop transport"? Even if we use the high-end figure from SDN, the ICS figures are 557,867 times more energetic, per shot. That is NOT consistent, in ANY WAY, with the asteroid chase seen in TESB. It is absurdly higher than a gross over-estimate of the energy yields demonstrated in TESB.

Kartr, on 23 February 2012 - 03:39 PM, said:

The thing is I actually know how fusion, fission and M/AM reactions work and I have looked it up. Here's the rub, the way it works in real life only applies if it's backed up by what's seen on screen. The capabilities described and shown in any universe being discussed trumps what it "should" do. For example Turbolasers are not lasers because they do not behave like lasers. So its not as simple as saying "100 times more energy than a fusion powered ship" if the fusion powered ship is described or seen doing things that couldn't be done on fusion power, and/or are more powerful than M/AM powered ships, then the "fusion" powered vessels are more powerful regardless of what our knowledge of fusion and antimatter would predict.

........ Kartr, a few posts ago you were railing against our claims of phaser performance and operation being invalid because they were impossible according to science. Now you're stating that it doesn't matter what science says how things should work, how they appear to or are claimed to work in the lore take precedence because the lore trumps science.. This is a blatant double-standard. Either science trumps lore, or lore trumps science. You can't insist on one standard on one point when it favors your argument and then switch to the other standard on another point when the other standard favors your argument better. That is bad science, that is bad debating practices, it is bad logic. You'll have to pick one standard and stick with it.

And the only way these sorts of debates can work is if we establish that science is the general rule and that everything involved follows all known scientific laws and theories, except where they expressly differ in the official lore (such as the explanations for FTL travel and the like). Everything else should be assumed to follow the laws of physics, and even the exotic stuff should be assumed to coincide with the laws of physics except where they are expressly noted to differ. Otherwise it becomes impossible to establish any kind of comparison. We are dealing with science fiction, so some allowances have to be made for the exotic bits that establish some of the special technologies, but only when absolutely necessary.



Now, I think we've been going about a lot of this wrong the last few pages. I like Strum Wealh's approach. Instead of getting dragged into an "I'm right, you're wrong!" argument, he's pulling up verifiable facts and figures and presenting them for comparison. That is what I really love about these sorts of discussions - getting into the nitty-gritty of the technical comparisons, and I think that's what we should take a step back and shift back into. I've got some notes that I've been jotting down for such a post on Trek tech in my spare time at work (I'm a telemarketer, so there's time between calls and such), and I'll be getting it up sometime between now and 3 in the morning, probably.

[Kartr]

ilithi dragon, on 24 February 2012 - 03:26 PM, said:

Actually... This is not correct. The values the ICS lists for the turbolasers on the Acclamator class Star Destroyer/"Troop Transport" are 200 gigatons per shot. That is 836,800 PetaJoules. Per shot. The absolute highest yield estimate I have seen for the TESB asteroid-popping scene is 2.86 PetaJoules, and even StarDestroyer.Net estimates the yield as 0.25 - 1.5 PetaJoules, and Wong makes his calculations assuming the total vaporization of a solid-iron asteroid, when primarily silicate asteroids tend to be the most common, and the laws of physics require the asteroid to explode apart before it is vaporized in its entirety, because the rate at which the energy would be conducted through even iron would be greatly exceeded by the rate of expansion by the initial bits that were vaporized, blowing the thing apart. Wong makes a number of process errors in his analysis, assuming an iron asteroid because 90% of asteroids found on Earth tend to be primarily composed of metal, even after specifically noting why silicate asteroids are less commonly found on Earth, and because he claims the gray/tan-colored asteroids have a rusty red color... Even though they are clearly Hollywood's Standard Space Rock Gray, and even though iron only turns rusty red when it oxidizes, usually in AIR or WATER, which are decidedly lacking in the vacuum of space. Wong further notes that SW website describes the asteroid field seen in TESB as being the result of a collision between two planets, which would make the majority of the material silicate rock, not iron. Wong does correctly note that it would actually take more energy to completely vaporize a silicate asteroid instead of a solid iron asteroid of equal volume, even though the silicate asteroid has less mass and materials with a lower vaporization point, but his explanation for why is bogus. A silicate asteroid would take more energy to completely vaporize because silicates are much poorer conductors of heat than iron, and because they are very brittle. The total vaporization energy of a silicate asteroid, assuming you could apply the energy to the entire asteroid at once, would be much less, but to actually achieve total vaporization before the asteroid blows itself apart you need to impart more energy with silicates than with metallic asteroids. It's much more likely that the asteroid was simply blown apart by a small part of it vaporizing (and thus expanding violently, with much energy), with most of the asteroid not even getting hot enough to glow, than the entire thing being vaporized, so even Wong's 0.25 - 1.5 PetaJoule estimate for an ISD turbolaser is extremely high.

Most of your objections are actually mentioned in that article. The fact that the rock vaporized before it could've conducted enough heat to vaporize is covered, including your point that most of the asteroid would likely have been blown apart by a small portion vaporizing with enough force to cause the rest of the asteroid to vaporize.

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but if only a portion of the asteroid is vaporized with enough energy imparted to cause the kinetic force of the vaporized portion to vaporize the rest of the asteroid doesn't the original energy imparted have to be close to that required to directly vaporize the entire asteroid?

Also Iron has a lower vaporization heat than silicon (347kJ/mol vs 359kJ/mol respectively), couldn't find the vaporization heat for any silicates. However since silicon's is higher than iron and silicon is a primary part of silicates shouldn't have higher vaporization points?

The iron asteroid assumption bugs me as well, but I always figured it was used because iron is easier to vaporize and silicates cover such a wide variety of compounds, all of which would be more difficult to calculate, that iron was used to establish a realistic lower point.

ilithi dragon, on 24 February 2012 - 03:26 PM, said:

How does that square against the ICS's 200 gigaton-per-shot for a standard turbolaser cannon on an early Clone War cruiser/"troop transport"? Even if we use the high-end figure from SDN, the ICS figures are 557,867 times more energetic, per shot. That is NOT consistent, in ANY WAY, with the asteroid chase seen in TESB. It is absurdly higher than a gross over-estimate of the energy yields demonstrated in TESB.

That's because the TESB shots are assumed to be medium to light turbolasers and not the heavy turrets since none of the shots come from the heavy turrets. While the 200 GT cannons on the Acclamator are the heavy heavy guns not the medium - light cannons.

ilithi dragon, on 24 February 2012 - 03:26 PM, said:

........ Kartr, a few posts ago you were railing against our claims of phaser performance and operation being invalid because they were impossible according to science. Now you're stating that it doesn't matter what science says how things should work, how they appear to or are claimed to work in the lore take precedence because the lore trumps science.. This is a blatant double-standard. Either science trumps lore, or lore trumps science. You can't insist on one standard on one point when it favors your argument and then switch to the other standard on another point when the other standard favors your argument better. That is bad science, that is bad debating practices, it is bad logic. You'll have to pick one standard and stick with it.

If you're referring to my comments about NDF I was saying we don't see nuclear explosions when phasers strike their targets. My comments as far as I remember were all focused on what we see. Having looked back through my posts I cannot find one where I placed extrapolation of real world abilities over what we see on screen. Perhaps I'm just not seeing it because I didn't mean to place extrapolation above what's seen on screen. What happens on screen is always the highest cannon, if I strayed from that please show me where and I'll re-examine my argument in that post.

ilithi dragon, on 24 February 2012 - 03:26 PM, said:

And the only way these sorts of debates can work is if we establish that science is the general rule and that everything involved follows all known scientific laws and theories, except where they expressly differ in the official lore (such as the explanations for FTL travel and the like). Everything else should be assumed to follow the laws of physics, and even the exotic stuff should be assumed to coincide with the laws of physics except where they are expressly noted to differ. Otherwise it becomes impossible to establish any kind of comparison. We are dealing with science fiction, so some allowances have to be made for the exotic bits that establish some of the special technologies, but only when absolutely necessary.

I agree with this, the only exception is when we see something that cannot be explained by our knowledge, but does happen, then there must be some sort of in universe explanation. For example the Death Star cannot be powered by fusion or anti-matter because neither of those generate enough power. What we see trumps real world knowledge/abilities.

ilithi dragon, on 24 February 2012 - 03:26 PM, said:

Now, I think we've been going about a lot of this wrong the last few pages. I like Strum Wealh's approach. Instead of getting dragged into an "I'm right, you're wrong!" argument, he's pulling up verifiable facts and figures and presenting them for comparison. That is what I really love about these sorts of discussions - getting into the nitty-gritty of the technical comparisons, and I think that's what we should take a step back and shift back into. I've got some notes that I've been jotting down for such a post on Trek tech in my spare time at work (I'm a telemarketer, so there's time between calls and such), and I'll be getting it up sometime between now and 3 in the morning, probably.

I'm actually going to step away from debating vs until I finish physics and materials in my engineering course. Personally don't have enough knowledge to verify things like the turbolaser calculations based on asteroid vaporization.

I would be interested in your process for determining the power of phasers since that thread you linked didn't have it that I saw. Just a line about a process that a bunch of people had decided was "logical" which isn't good enough for me. I want to know what the process was.

Anyway it's been interesting and I'd like to point out one last time that replicators cannot transmute atoms based on the DS9 tech manual. Also, except for on some rare occasions, transporters have always dismantled someone and then rebuilt them, a simple 1 in 1 out ratio without transmuting anything. However I do believe transports can transmute atoms since they're said to work on sub-atomic scale and there's been some wonky transporter accidents in the past. However that being said I don't think they can simply create matter with enough energy being pumped in, because as far as I know there's always been an input of matter when transporters are used.

[guardiandashi]

Kartr, on 24 February 2012 - 05:50 PM, said:

Anyway it's been interesting and I'd like to point out one last time that replicators cannot transmute atoms based on the DS9 tech manual. Also, except for on some rare occasions, transporters have always dismantled someone and then rebuilt them, a simple 1 in 1 out ratio without transmuting anything. However I do believe transports can transmute atoms since they're said to work on sub-atomic scale and there's been some wonky transporter accidents in the past. However that being said I don't think they can simply create matter with enough energy being pumped in, because as far as I know there's always been an input of matter when transporters are used.

ok since you have been argueing with me about the transmute capability of replicators (citing the ds9 tech manual I am going to quote the relevent section (Star trek DS9 tech manual pg 74)

the bajorans were given 2 industrial replicators
each unit measures 2.3 by 4.7 by 6.1 meters and masses 12.4 metric tonnes. The complete assembly includes 2 matter-input conditioners, a molecular-matrix algorithm processor, matter-assembly field manipulator, matrix-beam emitter, centera memory-storage bank, and power supply. The matter conditioners accept material in all states, and sensors within these sections detect and analyze the elements and compounds being recieved. A comparison between the input and output matter as to atomic weights and numbers will determine the power required for the particular transformations requested. Substances closely related on the periodic scale (standard, Extended 1, and Extended 2) will require less raw power than those shich are not. Some materials included in Extended 3, and 4 scales, including latinum ditensenide, will not replicate due to their high false-vacuum energy potentual. No replication technology either existing or predicted is able to detect the exact proportion of matter in latnum existing in present four-space.

The matrix algorithm processor prepares the mathematical template of quantum states of the atoms in the item to be replicated and reads this template off in real-time to the matter assembly field manipulator. If the template exists in the database, it is read from isolinear storage. The field manipulator uses the allocated power determined by the processor to alternately break and recombine the molecular and atomic bonds of the input matter into the final replicated forms. ~snip~
The field manipulator works in concert with the beam emitter to perform the final molecular assembly on the delivery pad. Once the basic form of the object is locked, the transformed elements and compounds are added until the correct density is reached. The early stages of the assembly are conducted in a localized subspace domain, which is ramped down to a final emergence into normal 4 space.

The units supplied to the bjorans consume an average of 3.41 kilograms of duterium per minute of operating time.

it then proceeds to comment about the energy budget being high enough that for the bjorans that conventional fabrication is preferred as it is more economic

[Zakatak]

Here is why I don't like those "200 gigaton yields" and much prefer the ~1 petajoule estimate instead (for turbolasers).

If I had 60 turrets that could output 200 gigatons, I could output 12 Teratons per second. That is more then the Horizon MIRV from Stargate Atlantis, which is pretty much a 6-pack Naquadriah-enhanced nukes each between 500GT and 1TT, which turned a continent into superheated plasma. Slagging a planet until all life is wiped out would take, what, a 5 minutes? Who would waste time building a freaking metal moon that sublimates planets? I say the Deathstar is entirely a special case.

[Ilithi Dragon]

Kartr, on 24 February 2012 - 05:50 PM, said:

Most of your objections are actually mentioned in that article. The fact that the rock vaporized before it could've conducted enough heat to vaporize is covered, including your point that most of the asteroid would likely have been blown apart by a small portion vaporizing with enough force to cause the rest of the asteroid to vaporize.

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but if only a portion of the asteroid is vaporized with enough energy imparted to cause the kinetic force of the vaporized portion to vaporize the rest of the asteroid doesn't the original energy imparted have to be close to that required to directly vaporize the entire asteroid?

Also Iron has a lower vaporization heat than silicon (347kJ/mol vs 359kJ/mol respectively), couldn't find the vaporization heat for any silicates. However since silicon's is higher than iron and silicon is a primary part of silicates shouldn't have higher vaporization points?

The iron asteroid assumption bugs me as well, but I always figured it was used because iron is easier to vaporize and silicates cover such a wide variety of compounds, all of which would be more difficult to calculate, that iron was used to establish a realistic lower point.

Well, there are a number of problems with the SDN analysis. The first is the assumption that the asteroid was completely vaporized. There's no reason to assume that the asteroid was vaporized. The thing explodes, and we see a bunch of glowy bits, but we've no reason to assume that the entire asteroid was vaporized completely and that the glowy bits were all that were left. An alternate possibility is that part of the asteroid was vaporized, and that the rest of the asteroid shattered into little bits too small for us to see from the distance we were at, with the glowy bits we do see being just the small portion of the asteroid that was vaporized or melted. If SDN truly wanted to get an absolutely minimum yield estimate, they would have calculated a bare-minimum yield from the latter possibility, even before you bring into consideration the problems with the laws of physics that the first runs into. That's just good policy when doing a thorough work like that. When the minimum is against your position, you calculate the absolute bare minimum that you can get from the available data, bending over backwards to establish an absolute this-cannot-be-any-lower-than-this-period figure, and then build up from there. It tends to give you a more accurate figure, and shows that you're honestly willing to accept lower figures if the evidence indicates them. It's also a valuable tool for demonstrating that higher figures are more reasonable, because you can demonstrate all the unreasonable assumptions you have to make to get the bare-minimum figure (when the reverse is true and the maximum is against your position, you calculate the highest possible yield for a given data set, for the same reasons).

To jump into a tangent a bit, seeing someone establish bending-over-backwards minimum limits for their position and bending-over-backwards maximums for their opposition is a sign of honesty and integrity on their part (at least in thorough works, quick-and-dirty overviews or calculations don't necessarily apply because they're not meant to be thorough), because it requires that they actually try to work to undermine their own position and work to support their opponents' position. If the position you hold is incorrect or not supported by the data, that will become plain by doing so, forcing people capable of changing their minds based on the available evidence to change their position, and making it very hard for the people who aren't to maintain their self-deceptions. That's actually a key part of how science works, and why it works so well: the best support for a hypothesis is showing a bunch of ways in which you tried and failed to disprove the hypothesis. You will never see SDN establish a bending-over-backwards-and-breaking-my-spine bare minimum limit for SW figures, nor will you see them establish a similar maximum limit for ST figures, and that alone speaks volumes to the reliability of their analysis.

Now, to get back into the asteroid vaporization physics, the SDN page claims that the shockwave required to explode the rock would have to travel through the rock at more than 600 m/s, faster than the speed of sound, and that this super-sonic shockwave would vaporize the rock anyway, so the energy calculation is still valid because the difference between vaporization by instant conduction and vaporization by supersonic shockwave is moot.

The problem with this is that regular sound travels through rock at about 3,000 m/s. Because it's a denser material, vibrations travel through rock much faster than air. The speed of sound in water is over 1,400 m/s, and the speed of sound in iron is over 5,000 m/s. So a shockwave traveling through a rocky asteroid at over 600 m/s is hardly surprising at all. It's also possible for a shockwave to travel through rock at speeds greater than the speed of sound in rock without vaporizing or even melting it. A shockwave actually moves through rock at supersonic speeds with any pressure over about 2 gigapascals, but doesn't start doing the vaporization thing until you get well over 50 gigapascals (fragmenting and metamorphisis of rock type occurs between 5 and 50 Gpa).

So we have no reason to believe that the shockwave pressures were intense enough to vaporize the entire asteroid - there is no requirement for it. It is also physically impossible for the energy to have been instantly conducted throughout the asteroid and vaporized that way - the asteroid would have exploded apart long before the energy could have been conducted far enough to vaporize even most of it.

But lets look at this from the opposite direction. We have no reason to believe that the asteroid was vaporized in its entirety, but do we have any reason to NOT believe this? Well, if the asteroid was vaporized in its entirety, that would require that the energy blast actually be much greater than the total energy required to vaporize the asteroid if evenly distributed across the asteroid all at once, because it would have to impart enough energy to the initial portion vaporized that it carried a shockwave of around 100 Gpa throughout the entire asteroid, and deliver all of that energy before the vaporized bit blew the asteroid apart. This would all happen way faster than the time it takes for the turbolaser bolt to pass completely into the asteroid, so there would have to be way, way more energy in the turbolaser bolt to completely vaporize the asteroid for bolt to have completely vaporized the asteroid, so much that the leading fraction of the bolt carried way more energy than was required to vaporize the asteroid.

If that were the case, then we should see at least some of the bolt continue through the asteroid, having passed through the exploding asteroid without imparting much energy to the expanding plasma cloud it was passing through. What we actually see is the entire bolt being consumed by the asteroid. This makes it very unlikely that the bolt carried sufficient energy to completely vaporize the asteroid before it blew itself apart, so it is very unlikely that the asteroid was vaporized in its entirety before it blew itself apart.

So we have no reason to believe that the asteroid was entirely vaporized, and a number of reasons to believe that it was not entirely vaporized (the unlikely requirements of the laws of physics, and observations that do not meet with what we would expect if the turbolaser was capable of vaporizing the asteroid entirely as described), and we have a perfectly valid explanation within the laws of physics for what occured. Logically, we must conclude that the asteroid was not completely vaporized, but instead was 'merely' hit with a turbolaser bolt that had enough energy to create a crater at least equal to asteroid's radius. The energy required to do THAT is only in the mid-GigaJoule range for the 30-40 meter asteroid SDN estimates.

This is where we run into another problem iwth the SDN page. SDN estimates the size of the asteroid at 35-40 meters. However, in this shot we get a comparison of a turbolaser bolt just before it hits the ~30-meter-wide Millenium Falcon:



And here is the asteroid in question in the process of being popped:


That is very clearly NOT 35-40 meters in diameter.

This even further reduces the energy required to plast the asteroid apart, down to the very low GigaJoules. In fact, if we assume Lunar densities, and especially if we assume average solar system asteroid densities (for the solid rock ones, not the clumps of dirt and ice ones, which are the most common in the small size range), that drops into the high MegaJoule and mid MegaJoule range, respectively. I don't think that would be quite necessary, however, since the background lore has the asteroids coming from the collision of two planets, so they are more likely to be nearer to the average densities of rock on larger planets like Earth or Mars, which would put the energy requirements into the very low-GigaJoule range. It's also quite possible for the turbolaser to have contained a fair bit more energy than was required to crater the asteroid, but only by so much, otherwise we would expect to see some of the turbolaser bolt continuing through the asteroid.

Kartr, on 24 February 2012 - 05:50 PM, said:

That's because the TESB shots are assumed to be medium to light turbolasers and not the heavy turrets since none of the shots come from the heavy turrets. While the 200 GT cannons on the Acclamator are the heavy heavy guns not the medium - light cannons.

The problem with this is that the gap between even SDN's gross over-estimate of the yield requirements to pop that asteroid and the ICS figure is too great to be explained by the difference between a big gun and a light gun. Even SDN's high-end yield is about 558,000 times less energetic than the 'big gun' figures for the Acclamator, which is described as a "troop transport" in the ICS books without any of the really big heavy turbolasers seen on the Venator and Imperator Star Destroyer classes.

To put this into perspective, the M242 Bushmaster 25mm chaingun used by the M2/M3 Bradley, firing the M791 AP sabot round, has a kinetic energy of about 121,204 Joules, or about 121.2 KiloJoules. This is close enough to be in the same basic range as the 40mm Bofors AA guns originally mounted on the Iowa class Battleship (which I can't find enough information on to get these sorts of figures). The Iowa's main armament, the 16"/50 caliber Mark 7 Naval Gun, firing the Mark 8 "Super Heavy" Naval Gun Shell, a solid AP round, had a kinetic energy of 355,644,450 Joules, or 355.64 MegaJoules. That's a little over two thousand times more powerful per shot than the M242 (and less when you factor in the Bushmaster's rate of fire). WAY less than nearly 600,000 times more powerful per shot. 864,800 PetaJoules per shot just does not make any sense and does not fit with even grossly-overestimated yields, nor does it fit with any observed yield figures.

Kartr, on 24 February 2012 - 05:50 PM, said:

If you're referring to my comments about NDF I was saying we don't see nuclear explosions when phasers strike their targets. My comments as far as I remember were all focused on what we see. Having looked back through my posts I cannot find one where I placed extrapolation of real world abilities over what we see on screen. Perhaps I'm just not seeing it because I didn't mean to place extrapolation above what's seen on screen. What happens on screen is always the highest cannon, if I strayed from that please show me where and I'll re-examine my argument in that post.

Well, I'm not too worried about it right now - it's late, and nit-picking over wording implying or coming across as a double-standard is precisely the type of argument I want to avoid. If it's not how you intended to come across, then it's probably just a misinterpretation artifiact from our text-only communication. You did come across as pretty damn belligerant and hostile, which contributed greatly to the impression I got, and you'll probably want to check that in the future, but it's not really worth making a big deal out of if we can move past it and avoid the miscommunication in the future.

Kartr, on 24 February 2012 - 05:50 PM, said:

I agree with this, the only exception is when we see something that cannot be explained by our knowledge, but does happen, then there must be some sort of in universe explanation. For example the Death Star cannot be powered by fusion or anti-matter because neither of those generate enough power. What we see trumps real world knowledge/abilities.

It sounds like we're in fairly solid agreement here, then. Science is the dominant force, and it is only ignored when expressly noted by the lore/canon. Everything else should be assumed to fit within the bounds of known physical laws (plus any special modifiers established in the lore/canon).


Also, regarding the Death Star's power generation, one explanation is that it uses some form of power generation that generates WAY more energy than you could ever get from E=mc^2. This contradicts with descriptions of common power generation methods in other parts of the lore (movie scripts and novelizations), though. However, it is not the only possible explanation. An alternate explanation is that the Death Star Superlaser is NOT a Direct Energy Transfer or DET weapon, but rather a weapon similar to phasers and disruptors that induces a chain reaction, and that it is this chain reaction that does most of the 'work' in blowing up the planet, by using the planet itself as the primary fuel source in blowing the planet up. Both would require some exotic process not presently known to science, but the latter doesn't break the laws of thermodynamics.

The superlaser beam inducing a chain reaction would also explain why the very similar but much smaller beam weapons on the Republic gunships (same dish-shaped business end, and they even have the converging beam effect) demonstrate much greater yields than other blaster weapons of comparable size. It would also be consistent with the general energy yields we observe from various other Wars craft (such as the high megajoule/low gigajoule-range turbolaser bolts fired by Slave I in the asteroid scene over Geon

Kartr, on 24 February 2012 - 05:50 PM, said:

I'm actually going to step away from debating vs until I finish physics and materials in my engineering course. Personally don't have enough knowledge to verify things like the turbolaser calculations based on asteroid vaporization.

Understandable. This is one of my major hobbies, so I'll still be around, but I've got work and classes myself, and I'm hoping to be looking at moving back out of my parents' house in the near future (long story short, lost my job in favor of someone with more years seniority than I've been alive last year, then rent went up and the roommate bailed on me -.-; ), so I definitely understand the need to focus on other things.

Kartr, on 24 February 2012 - 05:50 PM, said:

I would be interested in your process for determining the power of phasers since that thread you linked didn't have it that I saw. Just a line about a process that a bunch of people had decided was "logical" which isn't good enough for me. I want to know what the process was.

Oh, definitely. I've still got to get a post up in here on the SDE Theory and everything (I'll probably just dig up the 10,000-word post I made on it a while back on the ST: Excalibur forums and polish that up at some point), and I've got my notes I've been working on for a proper run-down of Federation technological capabilities (was going to make that into a post tonight, but I got pulled into Killing Floor and ME3 demo matches, among other things, so this will have to do for now).

Kartr, on 24 February 2012 - 05:50 PM, said:

Anyway it's been interesting and I'd like to point out one last time that replicators cannot transmute atoms based on the DS9 tech manual. Also, except for on some rare occasions, transporters have always dismantled someone and then rebuilt them, a simple 1 in 1 out ratio without transmuting anything. However I do believe transports can transmute atoms since they're said to work on sub-atomic scale and there's been some wonky transporter accidents in the past. However that being said I don't think they can simply create matter with enough energy being pumped in, because as far as I know there's always been an input of matter when transporters are used.

Well, as guardiandashi noted, the DS9:TM actually does establish that industrial replicators, at least, CAN transmute matter, it just costs more energy to do so, and that the energy requirements can make 'conventional' fabrication more economical. But if the power is available, and the desire for speed high enough to override economic energy concerns, industrial replicators at least can transmute any raw stock of matter into just about any other type of matter desired, barring a few exotic materials.

Edited by ilithi dragon, 25 February 2012 - 12:08 AM.

[Zakatak]

Ilithi Dragon, you being the "weapon yields" guy, do my Halo yields seem accurate to you? Just wondering.

Also, just a thought I had. The UNSC can produce sentient AI that can solve 128000 bit encryptions in seconds (Cortana did so). The amount of permutations for that combination lock would be a number with 128000 zeroes trailing it (your computer screen would need to be the size of an aircraft carrier across to fit that on 1 line). That is like many orders of magnitude more processing power then Data from TNG (who does 1 million calculations per nanosecond). Absolutely absurd numbers, no?

Despite outputting 1/250th the power of the Enterprise-D (by my awesome calculations), could the Pillar of Autumn thereotically squash the Enterprise before the fight has even begun? If the Enterprise opens a single channel, just one signal, one opening for UNSC AI to get through, all the PoA would have to do is tell the Enterprise to have its antimatter containment/warp core to malfunction. Boom, the fight is over in a picosecond.

Edited by Zakatak, 25 February 2012 - 01:02 AM.

[GDL Rahsan]

Jack Gammel, on 24 February 2012 - 07:06 AM, said:

That one is actually pretty simple. The majority of Imperial voidships (ships capable of FTL flight) are incredibly big. This size is necessary due to the space requirements of the plasma engines and warp drive. It also means that even the smallest escort ships (destroyers, etc.) are big enough to contain entirely seperate communities of crew members onboard in what are essentially "villages." There are entire generations of crew who will live and die onboard these ships, and in the cases of the larger vessels, these crew members might not even be aware of an outside world (they're not being bred to be smart...just perform repetetive maintanence tasks over and over every day until the day they die). These crews are controlled by naval officers whose job it is to keep the ship running (if only because being a naval officer is one of the sweeter gigs in the IoM...much less chance of being murdered or eaten) and by Mechanicum adepts who literally see their work as a religious vocation. The adepts also maintain groups of servitors to help onboard, servitors being humans who have had extreme nuerological surgery performed on them to remove most of their decision making and thinking capacity while keeping the basic motor-functions and then slaving the brain to a Mechanicum controlled remote. They are then usually "upgraded" with cybernetic implants allowing them to perform more serious repair work. This horrific fate is generally reserved for criminals, malcontents, and the like, but they are capable of working almost nonstop with very little rest (although they must occasionally stop to allow their organic tissue to reguvinate).

What do the crews eat? Of course there are ship stores which are regularly resupplied, but a lot of low level crew members get by on reconstituted corpses. The grey stuff has all the vitamins and proteins you'll ever need...

Welcome to the IoM.

I know how do the IoM maintain their ships I was just joking about it.

[Catamount]

Ilithi, you hit nearly every point I was going to cover, I think it's fair to point Kartr out to the full analysis of the TESB asteroids done by Darkstar

http://www.st-v-sw.net/STSWaster.html

There are multiple instances, comparing the relative size of the Millennium Falcon to the lasers being fired at it to the relative size of the asteroids to those same lasers.



And, of course, Darkstar gets gigajoule range outputs, but unlike SDN, is willing to go with all assumptions that could give the absolute highest and lowest figures possible. He gets about two orders of magnitude range there, easily enough constraint for a useful analysis (only in a vs debate is two orders of magnitude considered a useful constraint!).

I see only one obvious objection to that analysis, but the rebuttal that invalidates it is so glaringly obvious, I won't bother getting into it unless it's brought up.


It's also worth pointing out that, as I believe we showed in this very thread, the DS9 The Die is Cast fleet shows considerably better pound-for-pound firepower than even the Death Star.

Zakatak, on 25 February 2012 - 12:56 AM, said:

Ilithi Dragon, you being the "weapon yields" guy, do my Halo yields seem accurate to you? Just wondering.

Also, just a thought I had. The UNSC can produce sentient AI that can solve 128000 bit encryptions in seconds (Cortana did so). The amount of permutations for that combination lock would be a number with 128000 zeroes trailing it (your computer screen would need to be the size of an aircraft carrier across to fit that on 1 line). That is like many orders of magnitude more processing power then Data from TNG (who does 1 million calculations per nanosecond). Absolutely absurd numbers, no?

Despite outputting 1/250th the power of the Enterprise-D (by my awesome calculations), could the Pillar of Autumn thereotically squash the Enterprise before the fight has even begun? If the Enterprise opens a single channel, just one signal, one opening for UNSC AI to get through, all the PoA would have to do is tell the Enterprise to have its antimatter containment/warp core to malfunction. Boom, the fight is over in a picosecond.

I would think we'd be talking more ~1000 times the difference between a GCS and UNSC ship, given that we're basically talking kiloton range weapons vs megaton range weapons, perhaps in the range of dozens for both, but looking past that...

Halo doesn't always have the most thought put into such basic things. Computing has physical limitations like anything else (hence the drive to make computers smaller with quantum computers), and making a key like that in seconds could not be accomplished even with a quantum computer the size of the universe. It's actually 2^128000, not 10^128000, iirc, but that's still probable bigger than any computer the size of the universe could accomplish. Let me put it this way: 2^128000, just as a number, crashes a TI-83 calculator. Even 2^1280 crashes said calculator.


Let me put 2^128000 another way: A Planck length is on the order of 10^-35m (it's actually ~1.6*10^-35, but this is just rough figuring, on a scale of dozens of orders of magnitude, so *shrug*), and the estimated size of the known universe is ~10^27 meters.

So the entire difference between a Planck length and the size of the universe is 62 orders of magnitude, or 10^62, and you're talking about 2^128000. So even if Halo could make an entire computer the size of a Planck length, which is physically impossible according to everything we know (you could only make a single part that small), and that computer could do 128bit encryption, Cortana's calculation would still take a computer so many times larger than the universe, that I doubt we even have a word for that number (and I can't even calculate it, because the best calculator I have on hand CAN'T EVEN WORK WITH VALUES THAT BIG!). Yes, your number, just the number, breaks a $100 calculator.


Technically, no science fiction is realistic, in the sense that it works completely within the framework of known physics, but this just flagrantly directly violates all known physics, so grossly as to violate any plausibility or suspension of disbelief.

Basically, it's tantamount to claiming the Covenant attacked Earth with a ship ten thousand orders of magnitude larger than the universe, in terms of plausibility.



Edit: My astrophysicist friend told me about a site, Wolfram Alpha, that was able to do the calculator.

Assuming our 128bit encryption-capable computer the size of a Planck length, which is already impossible, Cortana's calculation would take a computer (2^128000/2^128)/10^67, or 2.03*10^38426 times the size of the universe. No, we do not have a name for that number.



Also, after all that, I feel obliged to point out that if Cortana was inside the E-D's computer, she'd be limited to the speed of the E-D's computer (or specifically, what resources she could take control of, if any)

Edited by Catamount, 25 February 2012 - 09:36 AM.

[Ilithi Dragon]

Zakatak, on 25 February 2012 - 12:56 AM, said:

Ilithi Dragon, you being the "weapon yields" guy, do my Halo yields seem accurate to you? Just wondering.

Also, just a thought I had. The UNSC can produce sentient AI that can solve 128000 bit encryptions in seconds (Cortana did so). The amount of permutations for that combination lock would be a number with 128000 zeroes trailing it (your computer screen would need to be the size of an aircraft carrier across to fit that on 1 line). That is like many orders of magnitude more processing power then Data from TNG (who does 1 million calculations per nanosecond). Absolutely absurd numbers, no?

Despite outputting 1/250th the power of the Enterprise-D (by my awesome calculations), could the Pillar of Autumn thereotically squash the Enterprise before the fight has even begun? If the Enterprise opens a single channel, just one signal, one opening for UNSC AI to get through, all the PoA would have to do is tell the Enterprise to have its antimatter containment/warp core to malfunction. Boom, the fight is over in a picosecond.

I'm no expert on Halo tech, it's been a while since I've really looked into it in any real depth, but your numbers do seem fairly reasonable. I do think they're probably an order of magnitude on the high side for the MAC guns, because fusion would be really hard-pressed to get yields that big without going into the super-sized ship range that 40K has, but that's okay because you'd be able to get away with notably lower MAC gun yields vs nuke yields because the nuke energy is going to be directed in 360x360 degrees, and even at close range detonation you're not going to be hitting the target with the majority of the energy in the nuke, and the energy that does hit the target is going to be spread all over it, where as the MAC gun concentrates all of its kinetic energy into the target, and into a relatively small point. A MAC gun would be able to have a considerably lower absolute yield and still have an equal or even considerably higher effective yield because of the nature of the weapons.



As for the encryption stuff, to add to Catamount's point, my $1100 laptop can calculate out 2^12800, but not 2^128000, I get an overflow error. What I do get from 2^12800 should further prove Catamount's point:

1.5273708540796677855567598230857e+3853

That is 1.5273708540796677855567598230857 Exponent+3853 or 1.5273708540796677855567598230857 x 10^3853.

There is no way that Cortana could have solved a 128,000 bit encryption. Hell... I doubt there's even a computer that could possibly be built to PRODUCE a 128,000 bit encryption.

To put this into perspective, the AES encryption system used by the U.S. Government can range between 128-bit and 256-bit encryption, and the maximum encryption level would take 2^256 (1.1579208923731619542357098500869e+77) attempts to successfully break through in a brute force attack, which would take far, far longer than the current age of the universe to complete with present computing technology.

I think the only way to reconcile this is to assume that 128,000 is a back-stage goof. Cortana breaking a 128-bit encryption in seconds is more believable, but still pretty damned impressive.

[Catamount]

Ilithi noted to me that I didn't account that the universe is three dimensional, not one dimensional, so my math was massively wrong there.


Assuming the universe to be a cube (yes, I know, shut up; I already got an earful from the astrophysicist), it's 10^67*10^67*10^67 times larger than a cubic Planck length (unless I'm even worse at math than I freely admit, which is to say bad), or 10^201. So using (2^128000/2^128)/10^201 as an approximation, a massive change to one of the figures,

changes the number from 2.03*10^38426 to... *drumroll*... 2.03*10^38292. These numbers are so big, the difference between an exponent of 67 and 201 makes no difference

So yeah, it would take a computer filling 2.03*10^38292 universes, assuming they have the technology to build our impossible planck length computer

Edited by Catamount, 25 February 2012 - 10:37 AM.

[ExAstris]

To be fair, Catamount and Ilithi, you can't just dismiss the number because physics says its impossible. Thats inconsistent with the precident of canon trumping physics. However, even if you granted the universe breaking figure to that computer in the name of 'canon trumps physics', it still doesn't provide much help. Computing power is just that, nothing more. Being able to hack something requires having previous knowledge about the thing your hacking. Without that, you're just looking at an apparently random garble of ones and zeroes, and computers are notorious for locking up as soon as they hit ones and zeroes they aren't already properly programmed to handle. Garbage in, garbage out.

So breaking into any computer requires that you already know about that computer's software. You can't just build a virus for Windows 7 and then launch it against my TI-89. And then, even if you did already have the the knowledge to build a virus that could attack a TI-89's software and be launched from a Windows 7 based platform, you have to find a way to physically communicated with that system. If it locks you out before you get control of the lockout mechanism, its over. Then, if you manage to get in before it cuts the comm lines, you are limited by its processing power. For example: if the combination lock on the safe door requires 10 seconds per attempt, and there are a billion different combinations, then you're going to have to make repeated 10s long attempts to crack that combination, despite the fact that your computer could tell you every possible permutation of the combination in a single second, you still need the actual lock your breaking into to do the actual checking of each possible combination.

Now either side can potentially get past the security locks by being good hackers (in the safe analogy, listening for pin clicks). But that requires understanding the other sides systems, and requires actual sentient beings to analyze since raw computing power just can't solve things in that manner.

This doesn't mean that superior computing power is useless, it obviously isn't. It isn't too difficult to imagine a situation in which two ships are performing complicated information warfare against each other, and only the faintest obscure cobbling together of your sensor readings through rigorous mathematical analysis could reveal any information about where your enemy is. Then the vessel equipped with the better computer is going to have a massive advantage because it can run multiple analysis algorithms and run vastly more complicated ones to weed out the interference and find indications of the other ship. It also means that if your information warfare emission gear is manipulatable, your computer can handle more complicated combat analysis on the fly to determine which attack methods to use that will be the most effective.

Of course, the use of this varies. Its most useful on an empire scale. Computer power is awesome for high end research. For ship to ship combat however, you're going to have to be matching up similar systems that rely on computing power in order to see a difference in performance. For example, a hypothetical future super computer hooked up to a WWII radar just won't be able to see a modern stealth fighter. The instrumentation isn't precise enough. But if you hooked up an Actively Electronically Scanned Array to a 286, you're going to have a significant performance loss compared to a modern multicore processor because the array is giving you way more information than a 286 could properly process on the fly.

Hopefully this provides a reasonable framework for understanding the use of infromation computation power in starship combat. Definitely worth considering, but its a second order concern.

[Catamount]

I'm not sure that the "canon trumps physics" argument works in the first place. I mean, people hold different views there, but in my opinion you shouldn't assume that for the purposes of analysis.


To be sure, most science fiction, for the sake of analysis, rides on the cheap copout that "technically physics doesn't preclude the possibility that you can do that" (like FTL travel).


However, when there's a really obvious and direct conflict, if real-world science doesn't take precedent, then suddenly there's no guarantee that any physical law applies if they don't all apply, so then any analysis becomes useless.


Yes, I know, canon purists go ahead and flame, but there it is: Either real-world laws are assumed to be absolute, with the caveat of accepting things in canon that aren't known to be possible, but aren't known to be absolutely impossible (which is 90% of scifi), or all analysis is meaningless.


Take the USS Defiant, for instance. Canonically, she's a magical ship that changes size. David Stypes, in all of his incredible fail had a habit of doing that with ships; he's make it big in one scene, and then small in other, and just change ship sizes on a whim to make scenes seem more exciting in DS9. So as a result the Defiant pretty much rapidly alternates between any values from 100m-200m (usually ~120m-~170m). Canonically that's how it is.

However, since the Defiant magically shifting size over and over and over is simply impossible, it should be assumed to be a goof, a mistake by the VFX team.



I would consider Cortana's comment to be the same, either a writing mistake, or, knowing her, she was just being facetious. Super-Mac round velocities in orbital defense stations are the same thing. Some of the stated velocities and masses just don't work, and we've discussed that here and elsewhere, so basically, they're a mistake (if they were just really powerful, it'd be one thing, but it's inconsistent with normal shipboard MAC rounds). The torpedo tube phaser in TNG Darmok is yet another example.

Besides, Zakatak asked if it was realistic

Edited by Catamount, 25 February 2012 - 02:09 PM.