BC-304 vs. Imperial Star Destroyer

[darth_timon]

No it's not. Anything not written by Lucas himself is not canon.

go to www.supershadow.com read through that

Supershadow has been served cease and desist orders in the past for blatant lies about episodes 7-9. He is an imposter.

Here's an interview with Lucas himself on the matter: http://www.killermovies.com/s/starwa...cles/4415.html

[Mister Oragahn]

Before claiming that my post is drippling with irony, you may be avised to actually look around on internet to see if such arguments were already abundantly adressed.
I'm informing you that I'm not going to use posh pinchers. You openly jump into this discussion as someone who looks aware of what a versus debate is, so I'll go straight into the core of the matter.

There's also a good page about debunking the uber BDZ myth.

First up, you claim that there is no support for a BDZ being completed in one hour by a single Star Destroyer- whilst it is true that there is no direct evidence, one only has to use a little logic and common sense to figure it out.

I quote from Mike's Base Delta Zero page, a line from one of the novels he referenced:

'to rendezvous at Dankayo and reduce the tiny base to molten slag. Even before the last of its atmosphere drifted away, before the dense clouds of atomized topsoil could begin to settle, Imperial transports Elusive and Timely, as well as a complement of TIE fighters, moved in to perform "mop-up" operations and a through search of Dankayo's now evenly-cratered surface" (Scavenger Hunt, p.3)'

I know what you are going to argue. Why send in transports and TIEs to mop up after anything if the damage is so destructive? Well, it is never, as far as I am aware, clearly defined what constitutes a deep shelter base. It might be metres underground, it might be a few hundred metres underground. I don't believe it was ever quantified. However, one can infer that the Empire didn't want the Rebels to have the chance to escape so the three Star Destroyers that carried out the attack would have to quickly pound that world. Molten slag is a pretty clear term, as is 'dense clouds of atomised top soil'. So is 'Evenly cratered'. A 100 metre rocky asteroid unleashes 772MT when it creates a 3km crater. Add to that the effects of slagging the surface if you will, plus creating a dense cloud of atomised top soil and the blasting away of the planet's atmosphere. Then you have multi-gigaton weaponry. Especially when you consider they had to carry out this attack quickly.

Dankayo: a BDZ order?

Let me start first by talking about Dankayo. It's been literally incredible how many references of Dankayo can be found associated to the Base Delta Zero order. Nevermind if actually, labelling this act as the application of a BDZ order is nothing more than fanon, because never in the source (Scavenger Hunt, by WEG), was this event ever described as a BDZ.
We can already see how far the flawed associations and blown-out-of-proportion interpretation can creep.

But it's still worth the analysis, considering that the interpretation provided by Mike Wong is actually used by several people to support the inflated and erroneous version of a BDZ.



Definition of the term slag

We'll need to look at what "slag" means as well:

From the Merriam-Webster online dictionary:

Main Entry: slag
Pronunciation: 'slag
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle Low German slagge
: the dross or scoria of a metal

As for dross and scoria:

Main Entry: dross
Pronunciation: 'dräs, 'dros
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English dros, from Old English drOs dregs
1 : the scum that forms on the surface of molten metal
2 : waste or foreign matter : IMPURITY
3 : something that is base, trivial, or inferior

Main Entry: sco·ria
Pronunciation: 'skor-E-&
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural sco·ri·ae /-E-"E, -E-"I/
Etymology: Middle English, from Latin, from Greek skOria, from skOr excrement -- more at SCATOLOGY
1 : the refuse from melting of metals or reduction of ores : SLAG
2 : rough vesicular cindery lava

Survivors and pointless mop-ups

Now, on the crux of the matter. I've been reading your comments, and all I can say is that: so much for the use of "little logic and common sense".
What we have here is a clear demonstration of cherry picking, be it done on purpose or not, or the act of ignorance.

So we'll assume that for a moment, this completely absurd interpretation actually supports the equally distorded interpration of what a BDZ order is supposed to be.

You ask: Why send in transports and TIEs to mop up after anything if the damage is so destructive?

I thought the conclusion would be particularily obvious: because there's something to look for that is actually worth the effort, and because it has to be done since there are risks.
What are the risks? Obviously, the occurance of survivors and the possible presence of intel, ressources or technology which have to be destroyed.
How could there be survivors in such conditions, especially on the medium to long term? Even more, why bother? Because there may be people stuck inside bunkers, meters below the now liquified surface of the world.

The next question would logically be, why send the ships down on the surface, when this same surface is supposed to be admirably turned into molten rock?
The idea being, in the minds of certain warsies, that the surface should look like a mix of a lake of lava and raging flows of more or less redish molten rock.
It's most surprising that this point is even argued. Simply put, no matter the depth at which that bunker was, survivors would be stuck alive for the remainder of their lives, inside likely damaged structures toppled by lava, which would harden over the weeks and months to come.
They'll die on their own. Food supplies and medical assistance being cut, they won't survive that long. In the worst case, keep pounding the surface two or three more times, and triple the thickness of the lava flow.
Just make the atmosphere even more poisonous, thicker, and this world is dead, just as much as the "survivors" stuck meters below this hell.

Simply put, contrary to certain claims, there is absolutely no reason at all to send TIE fighters and troop transports after such a level of destruction.

Even more, where will those ships even land? Again, what's the point? Especially for the troops? What are they supposed to do? Lava races with armoured boats??

And how are the survivors supposed to escape from what is nothing more than a tomb? How are they supposed find a way out of the isolated structures of a base, and escape? How will they move through the completely crushed, slagged and lava filled parts of the base that lead to the surface? How will they even find a ship to help them?

Which brings us to the former question: Why send in transports and TIEs to mop up after anything if the damage is so destructive?

The solution is rather simple: because the damage is not so destructive.

Needless to say that sending TIE fighters, which could only do surface surveyance at this point, would be totally pointless if that world had seen its surface turned liquid red. There would be nothing left to blast, nothing left to report anymore, besides slagged rock.
TIE fighters will only be useful if there's something still worth the survey on the surface. That can only be possible when the surface is still much solid, possibly burnt or with several structures leveled and turned into ruins, but nothing more.

But this is not the end. Among other points, we'll see that "the atmosphere" can mean anything, and clearly does not have to be the total atmosphere of the planet. It can simply refer to the atmosphere over the base, in general. Same for the dense clouds of atomized topsoil.

Oh, yes, please notice the presence of atomized topsoil. Another element that will make any balad on the surface, within a certain radius from the base, possibly lethal without a proper suit.
This is also extremely interesting to note when we're facing people, like Saxton, using the destruction of Caamas as another so called element of evidence.

Now, what about slag?
As earlier on, we can see that the definition is rather clear, and refers to the waste of molten material. That is, matter brought to fusion due to tremendeous levels of heat.

Now, what does it mean in this case?

Simple kiloton nuke can create fireballs which will actually do even more than melt materials. Inside the fireballs, even the toughest materials can be vaporized, in the literral way.

All military tactics, in the case of a large scale nuclear assault, agree that a severe pounding by multiple kiloton level blasts will do more damage, than a bombardment of an equivalent total yield, but reached within only one or a few warheads.
This is especially due to the rapid reduction of intensity over distances, and how a more condensed carpet bombing of lower yields is strategically more efficient.
A concentrated bombardment of shots in the kiloton or megaton range would actually leave the surface of a region, nation, continent or entire planet "evenly cratered".

There's no need to resort to high megaton or even gigaton level attacks to do so.



Area of destruction

Another question: what really got slagged?

What's most surprising is just how people read what they want to read.

Does the extract say that the entire surface is turned to molten slag?
Let's read it again, please:

... to rendezvous at Dankayo and reduce the tiny base to molten slag.

Now you can understand how in fact the most enormous lies are the ones which work the best.

The only target to be officially "slagged" is the tiny base and nothin else!

What the rest of the extract reveals is that the rest of the surface has been evenly covered by craters, which can mean anything in terms of how craters are spread.
Above all, nowhere does it even imply, nor support, the idea that the entire surface was turned into molten lava.

Besides, does the extract actually says that the entire world's surface was cratered?
Absolutely not! It just talks about "the surface". It's just as vague as it gets, and can mean anything.

When as asteroid hits the surface of a planet, does it mean the asteroid hit the entire surface of a planet? No. So why assume it's the case for Dankayo, when the target was clearly identified as a tiny base?
What about parsimony?



The "atmosphere" bit

Nothing else is said about Dankayo, so we don't even know if the planet had some sort of significant atmosphere. Please read the book's extract, agian, with the idea in mind that the atmosphere that's mentionned could actually be the atmosphere of the base!



Bombardment duration & number of ships

The most important aspect of this, in fact, is that no matter the total amount of energy delivered by the guns, nothing, and I stress on that, absolutely nothing is said about the amount of time necessary to accomplish this mission, and nothing implies or suggests that this should have happened anywhere around one hour!

Thus far, it's just a claim coming out of the blue.
But the same bunch of guys I have a gripe against will dismiss that part. They'll literally ignore the fact that it required three star destroyers to do so, and claim that this happened within one hour, or actually less, since according to them, a single Star Destroyer can do that in one hour.




You have the perfect receipe for the most absurd and blatant alteration of facts to suit a belief, a pathetic nerdy agenda of some sort.

Let's continue in another post.

[Mister Oragahn]

Another example from another novel:

Sunlight rippled across a sea of shimmering glass. Glass that had once been part of iridescent domes, towering minarets, soaring archways, vertical towers, and all the other structures that constitute a city. A city reduced to a sea of manmade lava, as Imperial laser cannon carved swathes of destruction through the once-beautiful metropolis." (Jedi Knight, p.47)

Do you know sort of firepower it would take to destroy a city the size of New York, which has a square radius of 830KM? (and I'm referring only to the thermal blast radius, not pure destructive power of buildings)? 33 gigatons, that's what. Assuming that a metropolis in Star Wars is on a par with New York (and lets face it, the Star Wars civilisation typically builds bigger), to destroy such a city completely (as in flatten all buildings) would take 1600000 megatons- or 1,600 gigatons if you prefer. That's not taking into account that the city was reduced to LAVA, something requiring even more firepower.

I'll continue later with more examples.

Destroying New York

I see you used Wong's calculator:
http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Science/Nuke.html

First error: misleading use of terms. You assume that you need to engulf the whole city within the fireball to destroy it. This is false. Levelling large areas of advanced structures won't require that much energy.
You don't even need to completely crush buildings to actually destroy a city. The harder structures can actually remain up, remaining after the most brittle elements have been blown away and burnt.
You'll see the damaged "skeletons" of the skycrappers.

You can check the Nuclear Weapon Effects Calculator from the Federation of American Scientists to see how grossly and absurdingly overexagerated your estimation is:
http://www.fas.org/main/content.jsp?...&contentId=367
You can already witness the estimated level of destruction of very low yield megaton warheads, even when exploding at the surface.

But that error only exists because of that vocabulary shortcut you've made, so it's not a real error per se. You are correct on the fact that the only way to melt a city is to engulf it within a amount of energy which can melt most elements. Inside the fireball radius. Which leads me to your second and most important mistake...

Second error: you use a calculator for a single blast. Again, unnecessarily inflating a situation, you assume that a city will be destroyed with one blast.
Once again, due to the loss of intensity over the distance, you won't even need that much of a total yield when firing several salvos at your target, over a broader surface, to melt most of its materials.
Working from a single blast, which is completely wrong in this case, will lead to inflated numbers.

Plus this assuming that the description describes the whole city as being mainly liquified, which is not a necessity. As far as we can tell, there could be many structures still standing up, and there could be only a 2mm thick residual molten layer.

So we can see that from the get go, you're already "working" from a flawed premise. Which was my point over, oh, just so many posts. Always flawed premises.



Extent of destruction

Again, let's remember that this extract describes the destruction of a city. Only that.
It would be preposterous to even dare to think this would support, in any way, Saxton's version of a BDZ.



Bombardment duration & number of ships

Again, the same problem, which makes this extract totally pointless as far as Saxton followers are concerned (but doesn't stop them from thinking it's legit).
This is the most recurring mistake Saxton's devout followers make: always brush aside those pesky considerations about the forces actually involved in the execution of these feats.

As you can see, nothing is said about the number of ships used, just as nothing is said about the time it took. So even if the total yields did range in the several gigatons, it could be divided over many ships, and over many hours. You just don't know.

But I suppose that's just enough to keep claiming that a single Star Destroyer can slag the whole surface of a planet within one hour.



And then, I have a question for you: why don't you quote the original and complete definitions which actually perfectly outlined the nature of a true BDZ?

I'll just quote the analysis from the same site mentionned earlier on:

B. Imperial Sourcebook

Then, in 1994 and 1995, a mass of new books started to come out, and three of these had planetary attack references. The slagging of a Rebel base in "Scavenger Hunt" suddenly became:

"The Imperial Star Destroyer has enough firepower to reduce a civilized world to slag."
-- Imperial Sourcebook

Well, now, that's quite a change! Now we've gone from three Star Destroyers against a tiny base on a small moon to one Star Destroyer against an entire civilized world! Not much need for mop-up then.

Of course, if you can reduce an uncivilized world to slag, there would seem to be little point in mentioning the presence or absence of civilization. This would seem to argue that instead of melting the surface of a planet, the ISD is instead claimed to have enough firepower to melt the traces of civilization. Also intriguing is the following from the same source:

"System bombards are used when the Empire would rather completely destroy a world rather than see it fall into Rebel hands."
"System bombard contains an average of 100 ships divided between three bombard squadrons and a light squadron. If an admiral feels that force superiority has done less than a thorough job of removing hostile craft from the system, a system bombard squadron will be augmented with ships from the light squadron."

As per the Sourcebook, the 100 ship fleet may include a few ISDs. Thus, it seems clear that a lone ISD isn't going to be slagging the entire surface, when three out of four of the squadrons are required to "completely destroy a world". How could a single vessel achieve the same goal against an uncivilized world?

The answer, of course, is that it can't. A Star Destroyer can wipe out a planetary civilization per what we've been given, but it takes a number of ships to support the maneuver. By analogy, a modern warship might be able to sit off the coast and destroy a city, but it takes a fleet and other assets to do it safely.

C. The Star Wars Adventure Journal


Indeed, what it might be expected to do may not be too different from what we're told in The Star Wars Adventure Journal. The SWAJ was a little more modest in its approach, but it has given us the name of the order for a total planetary attack:

"Sir, what about bombardment? Is there a stage for that?"
"Blasting a planet from orbit is easy -- you don't need me to tell you how to do that. Limited orbital strikes would occur during the invasion stage. Just hope you are never given a Base Delta Zero order, lieutenant. Ah, yes, another question?"
"Sir, what's the Base Delta Zero order?"
"Base Delta Zero is the Imperial code order to destroy all population centres and resources, including industry, natural resources and cities. All other Imperial codes are subject to change, as you well know, but this code is always the same to prevent any confusion when the order is given. Base Delta Zero is rarely issued. ...."
-- "A World to Conquer"

This makes a little more sense. Three Star Destroyers can fire on and eventually slag a Rebel base facility of unspecified size, so simply destroying the population centers, resources (presumably major ones, unless we wish to consider every speck of dirt strategically valuable) and industry (perhaps melting some buildings and such) shouldn't be too much worse, given a sufficient number of Star Destroyers.

This view is supported by the Star Wars Technical Journal of 1995, which makes reference to turning a planet's surface into "smoking debris". The problem comes with what is said after that . . . "a matter of hours".

You can respectively find direct links here and here.

You may also want to check out this: http://boards1.wizards.com/showpost....7&postcount=39

Sufficiently and properly commented here.

[Mister Oragahn]

Besides, let's leave that supershadow crap out of the debate. It's just pure made up nonsense and is totally irrelevant.

Even if he was right, until the scripts turned into films or books, there's nothing to talk about here.

[Mister Oragahn]

To Darth Timon:

Do you have a copy of your last posts?
If yes, I won't repost my reply until you repost yours, to keep the chronology in place.

[Mister Oragahn]

Since the WE is about to end, I'll post my reply.

A small note I forgot. Dankayo apparently was a small moon. So even if the surface of the moon, and not the region around the tiny rebel base, had been cratered, the total energy would be less than if Dankayo had been of the size of Earth.
The other point which is interesting is that if Dankayo is a small moon, then how is there supposed to be an atmosphere of any kind?
This would led even more credence to the diea that the atmosphere mentionned in Scavenger Hunt was the base's one.

Wow, Oraghn, your posts are simply huge. I'll see if I can't strip things down a bit...

They're huge because they need to be so. It would be simpler if the posts your writing aren't filled with the same old flawed arguments we've seen for ages.

I wished we could avoid this, and basically, the only thing you're doing is pointing to other people's websites without even formulating one single decent argument.
It's particularily easy, and hypocrit from you to complain that my posts are huge and dripping with irony when there's actually so much correction to make.

First up, Darkstar's BDZ site has already been addressed- http://stardestroyer.net/Empire/Hate...A/MoO/BDZ.html

This so called debunked is as lousy as it's grossly superficial. Even reading the first lines typed by Wong's minion (Master of Ossus) are enough to see the typical sign of twisted argumentation he's fond of.

Actually, RSA replied to this page here: http://www.st-v-sw.net/BB/BBbd0.html

An example: the torpedoes spheres. Ossus goes on to claim that all those 100 ships are only necessary when an imperial fleet is attacking a world of importance, protected by a planetary shield.

Ossus takes the first line of the Imperial SB as literally as possible, while it could precisely be a hyperbole.
How couldn't it be? If a single SD can actually melt the surface of a world with so much ease, why need 100 ships?

The line is just self explaining:

"System bombards are used when the Empire would rather completely destroy a world rather than see it fall into Rebel hands."

There's, of course, no mention of the presence of particular defenses, even less a shield or large importance, like a planetary one - which for instance have never been precisely mentionned in the higher canon, nor in the films, nor in the books, especially those where such references would be expected, as in the novelisations of A New Hope and Revenge of the Sith.
We see that the shield factor is completely made up, like many other things. And this is only the beginning. It's like that all the way down.

Ossus establishes a false dilemna where if there are two torpedoe spheres among those 100 ships, then it's because those 100 ships are only necessary when there's a shield to destroy.
Which is stupid, because the torpedoe spheres can knock shields out on their own. 100 ships wouldn't be necessary in such cases. Maybe two spheres, and a few ISDs then. Even more, once the shields are down, if the ISDs were as powerful as Wong claims, there'd be no point, again, to have a total of 100 ships when, again, destroying a shieldless planet would only require, in fact, one single SD besides the spheres used to destroy the shield generators.

Ossus can't even weasel his way out of this simple fact. He can't claim that the large fleet is there to principally deploy a blockade around the planet, though that would help, because the book clearly says that those ships are used to destroy the planet.

So Saxton, in his ICS, and according to his own view of the BDZ, as he put it on his site, decided that only one single ship was necessary to destroy a planet, instead of 100.

Besides, it's funny to see how they easily dismiss the fact that those ships are said to be able to "destroy the planet". Their traditional exploitation of lousy contortions would have them claim then that 100 ships = Death Star superlaser, because the opening scroll of ANH clearly says that the space station has enough power to destroy a planet.
Do they do this? No. Yet, it's teh exact same leap of logic they use to downscale the superlaser, and make absurd claims about the caliber, and thus power of heavy turbolasers.

I don't put much stock in Darkstar's arguments. He argued passionately that his Superlaser Effect Theory was of equal or greater merit than the theory that the Superlaser is a big powerful blast of energy, but his theory can no more explain the unexplained phenomena than direct transfer of energy can, and he has admitted as much. So I take what he says with a large pinch of salt.

That is literally apples and oranges, and if he actually not been there, Wong's bull**** about the destruction of Alderaan being the pure result of DET would have never found competition.
People would have had never the chance to actually see all the weird phenomenoms associated to the destruction of the planet, because in people's minds, it stop to big laser = boom, and Wong plays on that.
However, the hypocrisy in his arguments flies high, as we see that a simple analysis of the video reveals elements which don't fit at all with a purely DET mechanism.

Simply put, planets do not explode on their own after all traced of energy have already stopepd being pumped into this same planet. A planet's not a bomb, and among other elements, this is precisely what Wongies don't get.

By the way, as far as it goes, I've never seen RSA admitting Wong's DET theory being as valid or invalid as his own theory.

I have my own take on what happened, because I think there's room for another theory, again, but at least, contrary to Wong, RSA and we try to take most of the evidence into consideration.
Wng bases in his theory on lazyness and the audience's ignorance and what's commonly accepted without a second thought.

[TKG]

I think it's due to be said that EU as a whole is more about the sales then the story. Inevitably stock writers sensationalize things to make them more beleivable and dramatic so that the franchise can grab more consumers.

[darth_timon]

Right, am back home now, could arguably do with a beer but just had a cup of tea, and tea and beer don't settle in the stomach all too happily together, so on with the debate instead.

Bombardment duration & number of ships

The most important aspect of this, in fact, is that no matter the total amount of energy delivered by the guns, nothing, and I stress on that, absolutely nothing is said about the amount of time necessary to accomplish this mission, and nothing implies or suggests that this should have happened anywhere around one hour!

Thus far, it's just a claim coming out of the blue.
But the same bunch of guys I have a gripe against will dismiss that part. They'll literally ignore the fact that it required three star destroyers to do so, and claim that this happened within one hour, or actually less, since according to them, a single Star Destroyer can do that in one hour.

Dankayo had to be quick in order to prevent the possible escape of Rebels from their base. The quote is not ambiguous- it clearly states that 'Dankayo's surface was evenly cratered'.

To evenly crater the surface of an entire planet, even as small as Pluto (3,000 to 3,500KM in diametre), you require the application of hundreds of gigatons, be that in the form of a few large blasts, or many many smaller blasts. Given the need for speed with this operation (one of the requirements of a BDZ is to leave no survivors, which means attack quickly to ensure no one can escape), this means that those three Star Destroyers, either in the form of a few powerful strikes or lots of smaller ones, had to deliver multi-gigaton firepower to Dankayo and do so quickly.

Destroying New York

I see you used Wong's calculator:
http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Science/Nuke.html

First error: misleading use of terms. You assume that you need to engulf the whole city within the fireball to destroy it. This is false. Levelling large areas of advanced structures won't require that much energy.
You don't even need to completely crush buildings to actually destroy a city. The harder structures can actually remain up, remaining after the most brittle elements have been blown away and burnt.
You'll see the damaged "skeletons" of the skycrappers.

You can check the Nuclear Weapon Effects Calculator from the Federation of American Scientists to see how grossly and absurdingly overexagerated your estimation is:
http://www.fas.org/main/content.jsp?...&contentId=367
You can already witness the estimated level of destruction of very low yield megaton warheads, even when exploding at the surface.

But that error only exists because of that vocabulary shortcut you've made, so it's not a real error per se. You are correct on the fact that the only way to melt a city is to engulf it within a amount of energy which can melt most elements. Inside the fireball radius. Which leads me to your second and most important mistake...

Second error: you use a calculator for a single blast. Again, unnecessarily inflating a situation, you assume that a city will be destroyed with one blast.
Once again, due to the loss of intensity over the distance, you won't even need that much of a total yield when firing several salvos at your target, over a broader surface, to melt most of its materials.
Working from a single blast, which is completely wrong in this case, will lead to inflated numbers.

I really don't see where the error lies. I pointed out, correctly, that just to cause a fireball big enough to engulf New York, you need 33GT. To actually cause widespread destruction to nearly every building in New York City, you need a blast weighing in at 1.6TT. Even then, such a blast would still not kill everyone in New York.

Yet the destruction referenced in the quote suggests an event of even greater magnitude:

Sunlight rippled across a sea of shimmering glass. Glass that had once been part of iridescent domes, towering minarets, soaring archways, vertical towers, and all the other structures that constitute a city. A city reduced to a sea of manmade lava, as Imperial laser cannon carved swathes of destruction through the once-beautiful metropolis." (Jedi Knight, p.47)

I have placed emphasis on some key points of the quote- to reduce a metropolis (and this is assuming that this city is no bigger than New York, and we know how big cities in Star Wars can be) to a sea of lava would take tremendous firepower.

We can define sea as being more than a trivial term here. Seas are not generally small and are not a few MM deep. We are talking about reducing an area that could be even greater than the square radius of New City to lava. The quote is very explicit as to what happens to that city.

Again, whether this is delivered in large bursts of a series of small ones, to leave the city as lava (IE, that the surface is so hot and destroyed that the first shots do not solidify) means that the attack would have to be swift.

Extent of destruction

Again, let's remember that this extract describes the destruction of a city. Only that.
It would be preposterous to even dare to think this would support, in any way, Saxton's version of a BDZ.

It describes destruction of a city that is truly incredible. We are not talking about merely destroying buildings here, but about reducing said city to molten material. If it requires 33GT to produce a thermal blast the size of New York City, how much more firepower is going to be required to turn a city into lava?

Bombardment duration & number of ships

Again, the same problem, which makes this extract totally pointless as far as Saxton followers are concerned (but doesn't stop them from thinking it's legit).
This is the most recurring mistake Saxton's devout followers make: always brush aside those pesky considerations about the forces actually involved in the execution of these feats.

As you can see, nothing is said about the number of ships used, just as nothing is said about the time it took. So even if the total yields did range in the several gigatons, it could be divided over many ships, and over many hours. You just don't know.

But I suppose that's just enough to keep claiming that a single Star Destroyer can slag the whole surface of a planet within one hour.

To prevent escape, the attack would have to be quick. This is simply elementary and I don't see why this is still an issue.

Fleet strength is unknown but this doesn't mean we should swing to the opposite end of the spectrum and assume many ships. Coupled with the Dankayo reference, there is, between the two quotes, tangible evidence to support gigaton-level firepower for Star Destroyers.

To try and get more precise information on exactly what it takes to reduce an 800KM radius to lava, and to see what it takes to evenly crater even a world as small as Pluto, I have put a couple of questions on Yahoo Answers. Hopefully, within the inevitable sea of silly responses, some people might actually offer answers.

I will deal with the Imperial Sourcebook stuff and your latest post separately.

[Mister Oragahn]

Dankayo had to be quick in order to prevent the possible escape of Rebels from their base.

No. No for the simple reason that if the plan was to stop ship from taking off, the imperial would have sent their TIE fighters and bombers before, to intercept enemy crafts.

The quote is not ambiguous- it clearly states that 'Dankayo's surface was evenly cratered'.

I largely adressed why this interpretation is not the only correct one, by far.

To evenly crater the surface of an entire planet, even as small as Pluto (3,000 to 3,500KM in diametre), you require the application of hundreds of gigatons, be that in the form of a few large blasts, or many many smaller blasts. Given the need for speed with this operation (one of the requirements of a BDZ is to leave no survivors, which means attack quickly to ensure no one can escape), this means that those three Star Destroyers, either in the form of a few powerful strikes or lots of smaller ones, had to deliver multi-gigaton firepower to Dankayo and do so quickly.

Evenly could mean anything. You don't know how close to each other the craters are. You don't know how big they are. Again, fire 1000 MT in one single bolt, and then fire 1000 MT through a thousand 1 MT bolt, and you'll end, with the first case, of a large crater, but unavoidably limited in its radius due to the reduction of energy of the distance. The crater will be deep, but that's all. Depth doesn't matter at all when adressing area. Now, in the second case, the area that will be damaged will actually be larger.

I really don't see where the error lies. I pointed out, correctly, that just to cause a fireball big enough to engulf New York, you need 33GT. To actually cause widespread destruction to nearly every building in New York City, you need a blast weighing in at 1.6TT. Even then, such a blast would still not kill everyone in New York.

Your error is that you assumed a single blast for your calcs. You'll obtain the same results with a constant rain of kiloton or megaton bolts you know, and you'll actually need much less total energy.

Yet the destruction referenced in the quote suggests an event of even greater magnitude:

I'm not disputing the effects.
However...

We can define sea as being more than a trivial term here. Seas are not generally small and are not a few MM deep. We are talking about reducing an area that could be even greater than the square radius of New City to lava. The quote is very explicit as to what happens to that city.

The word sea is lousily used to describe a large zone of molten liquid. It's a metaphor. It's not to be taken literally, especially not to start planting numbers about how deep this needs to be then.

Again, whether this is delivered in large bursts of a series of small ones, to leave the city as lava (IE, that the surface is so hot and destroyed that the first shots do not solidify) means that the attack would have to be swift.

Again, we don't know how long it took, nor how many ships were involved in this assault.
I'm not going to repeat this again. Even if the total energy may be impressive, diluted over several ships and over a distinctive amount of time, the ratio of joules per bolt won't be as high as claimed by Saxtonians.
And, again, it's only about one single city. No more, no less.

To prevent escape, the attack would have to be quick. This is simply elementary and I don't see why this is still an issue.

It's made out of the blue. The point is not to prevent escape. It's not even mentionned. You enjoy shoving this claim as many times as possible, but the problem here, is that it's absolutely irrelevant.
Even if some ships escaped, the novel doesn't mention them. It doesn't care. It just describes the effect on the city, because obviously the mission was to slag the city, and the city alone, since the novel clearly makes it clear that only the city is turned to a sea of manmade lava.

Above all, and please notice how important this is, Star Wars cities have astroports. They're clearly identified (choke)points where the vast bulk of ships are parked. Simply put, they're easy targets, easy to destroy in a few shots. Once you've destroyed astroports, and thus the ships located inside them, you've immobilized most of the civilians on the ground, if not all of them.
A spaceship sitting in orbit and knowing what to shoot at shouldn't have issues to take them down, even with low firepower.
It's not like everybody's always about to take off at any occasion.

Besides, if there are ships to intercept - which again, wasn't a factor in the extract you gave - TIE fighters and bombers are there for a reason, and an ISD may also carry about a few of other ships, like shuttle boats armed with missiles and skiprays.

Basically, stopping ships from escaping should be nothing particularily hard for a spaceship firing at a defenseless and sitting duck, and the energy to do so would be minimal, especially when using several ships, armed with many cannons.

So this argument about forbidding escapes has no value. Not only it happens to be used in places where it's irrelevant, but it also completely fails at supporting tight assault timeframes and phalic firepower.

Fleet strength is unknown but this doesn't mean we should swing to the opposite end of the spectrum and assume many ships.

For a true BDZ, claiming several ships, between half a dozen to 100, is not the other side of the spectrum. It's conservative and reasonnable, especially the more you actually get close to 100 ships.
However, constantly assuming one ship, or maybe two or three, at best, is just right for sensationalism and inflationism.

Actually, you should try to match the 100 ships armada figure. The ISB described a fleet of 100 ships to destroy a planet. To destroy a planet. I don't know how many times this has to be said. And this didn't include the smaller crafts.

Coupled with the Dankayo reference, there is, between the two quotes, tangible evidence to support gigaton-level firepower for Star Destroyers.

No. Maybe gigaton level at total, but not as joules per bolt, or salvo.
You remind me of those who think they've debunked Sagan's work and the 100 MT estimated final yield to damage the surface of planet for enough time that it actually results in a nuclear winter, saying that a blast of 100 MT would never reach the level of final destruction claimed by Sagan. Those poor souls completely forget that Sagan talked about that total firepower being dropped through the launch of a hundred, at least, 1 MT warheads. All of them on critical points, notably near forested zones, power plants, economical districts, industrial zones and administrative sectors.

To try and get more precise information on exactly what it takes to reduce an 800KM radius to lava, and to see what it takes to evenly crater even a world as small as Pluto, I have put a couple of questions on Yahoo Answers. Hopefully, within the inevitable sea of silly responses, some people might actually offer answers.

Those numbers will be fine to know, but will hardly weight anything tangible in this discussion, for the reasons I mentionned several times. They're the fruit of irrational inflated premises, just to make things much bigger than what they actually need to be.

I will deal with the Imperial Sourcebook stuff and your latest post separately.

Ok.

[darth_timon]

B. Imperial Sourcebook

Then, in 1994 and 1995, a mass of new books started to come out, and three of these had planetary attack references. The slagging of a Rebel base in "Scavenger Hunt" suddenly became:

"The Imperial Star Destroyer has enough firepower to reduce a civilized world to slag."
-- Imperial Sourcebook

Well, now, that's quite a change! Now we've gone from three Star Destroyers against a tiny base on a small moon to one Star Destroyer against an entire civilized world! Not much need for mop-up then.

Of course, if you can reduce an uncivilized world to slag, there would seem to be little point in mentioning the presence or absence of civilization. This would seem to argue that instead of melting the surface of a planet, the ISD is instead claimed to have enough firepower to melt the traces of civilization. Also intriguing is the following from the same source:

It should be noted that to simply cause a thermal radiation radius the radius of New York City, you need to supply 33GT. This much, we both agree on. To cause widespread destruction to a city the size of New York, you need to supply 1.6TT.

The Imperial Sourcebook reference is referring to the reduction of an entire world’s civilisation to slag- and as we know from your earlier definitions, slag is the residue that forms on molten material when said material is formed under intense heat.

If we assumed that that a civilised world in Star Wars was no bigger than the total scope of civilisation here on present-day earth, to simply cause widespread destruction to every major city on earth (lets call the major cities New York, Washington, London, Paris, Tokyo, Beijing, Moscow, Sydney, Madrid, Rome, rather than actually listing every city, as that would take too long) you would have to supply a staggering 1.6TT to New York, a small 5GT to DC, to destroy Greater London (which as a radius of 1,577KM) you need in excess of 8TT (again, just to cause widespread damage to the buildings here), Paris is comparatively small (89KM), thus only requiring 2GT to cause widespread damage, and as you can see, before we are even halfway through the list of cities, to cause damage to them all (and not even kill everyone in them) you need almost 10TT. Even if you use many kiloton-level bombs to perform the feat of destroying those cities, you still need to supply hundreds of gigatons at the very least, using thousands of bombs. We know that civilisations in Star Wars can be much bigger, and the aim of a BDZ is to destroy that civilisation, killing everyone and ensuring there are no survivors. References from previous sources already detail just how violent BDZs can be (cities reduced to molten seas, planets that are left cratered across their entire surface), so the energy requirements of doing that to every major pocket of civilisation on a world are incredible.

So no matter what spin you place on things, you need to supply many gigatons to destroy a civilisation, especially if you are seeking to kill that civilisation’s inhabitants. In Star Wars, where hyperspace capable ships can be found in the hands of civilians, if you wish to destroy a civilisation, you must do so quickly to prevent anyone escaping.

"System bombards are used when the Empire would rather completely destroy a world rather than see it fall into Rebel hands."
"System bombard contains an average of 100 ships divided between three bombard squadrons and a light squadron. If an admiral feels that force superiority has done less than a thorough job of removing hostile craft from the system, a system bombard squadron will be augmented with ships from the light squadron."

As per the Sourcebook, the 100 ship fleet may include a few ISDs. Thus, it seems clear that a lone ISD isn't going to be slagging the entire surface, when three out of four of the squadrons are required to "completely destroy a world". How could a single vessel achieve the same goal against an uncivilized world?

Two considerations here. After your comments about how Dankayo and the events in Jedi Knight were not referred to as BDZ operations, you now assume that an operation referred to specifically as a system bombard means BDZ, even though system bombard and BDZ could be two different things. The very Sourcebook quote you mention refers to the possibility that this light squadron is around to defend against possible attackers (why else would it be mentioned in the context of removing hostile craft from the system?) and you yourself mention that the 100 ship fleet ‘may’ include ISDs, but apparently not even you consider this to be a given. Does the quote say specifically that ISDs are present as part of this bombardment order?

The way the quote is worded, it suggests that 100 ships of unknown size and power can perform an operation that is specifically referred to in terms other than a BDZ, but if we assume for the moment that the two terms are interchangeable, then this does not rule out the idea that a lone ISD can perform such an operation by itself, it merely suggests that other ships may be involved to supply support and to deal with any hostile craft that happen to be in the area.

[darth_timon]

Since the WE is about to end, I'll post my reply.

A small note I forgot. Dankayo apparently was a small moon. So even if the surface of the moon, and not the region around the tiny rebel base, had been cratered, the total energy would be less than if Dankayo had been of the size of Earth.
The other point which is interesting is that if Dankayo is a small moon, then how is there supposed to be an atmosphere of any kind?
This would led even more credence to the diea that the atmosphere mentionned in Scavenger Hunt was the base's one.

Your source for Dankayo being a small moon? Titan is a moon, that is smaller than the earth, but has a thick atmosphere.

They're huge because they need to be so. It would be simpler if the posts your writing aren't filled with the same old flawed arguments we've seen for ages.

I wished we could avoid this, and basically, the only thing you're doing is pointing to other people's websites without even formulating one single decent argument.
It's particularily easy, and hypocrit from you to complain that my posts are huge and dripping with irony when there's actually so much correction to make.

Matter of interpretation. I'm sure that you consider me to be full of mistakes, and perhaps in some areas I am, but then, I don't consider your arguments to be the pinnacle of perfection by any means, especially seeing as you feel the need to punctuate them with anti-Wong messages here and there. Not to mention that you yourself have pointed to Darkstar's site to form some of your arguments, so don't start finger pointing over the formation of arguments now. That's not necessary.

[quoteThis so called debunked is as lousy as it's grossly superficial. Even reading the first lines typed by Wong's minion (Master of Ossus) are enough to see the typical sign of twisted argumentation he's fond of.[/quote]

This is what I mean. You don't see me referring to people as being Darkstar's minions or as being twisted.

Actually, RSA replied to this page here: http://www.st-v-sw.net/BB/BBbd0.html

An example: the torpedoes spheres. Ossus goes on to claim that all those 100 ships are only necessary when an imperial fleet is attacking a world of importance, protected by a planetary shield.

Ossus takes the first line of the Imperial SB as literally as possible, while it could precisely be a hyperbole.
How couldn't it be? If a single SD can actually melt the surface of a world with so much ease, why need 100 ships?

The line is just self explaining:

"System bombards are used when the Empire would rather completely destroy a world rather than see it fall into Rebel hands."

There's, of course, no mention of the presence of particular defenses, even less a shield or large importance, like a planetary one - which for instance have never been precisely mentionned in the higher canon, nor in the films, nor in the books, especially those where such references would be expected, as in the novelisations of A New Hope and Revenge of the Sith.
We see that the shield factor is completely made up, like many other things. And this is only the beginning. It's like that all the way down.

I'm aware of Darkstar's reply, including the considerable number of subjective comments about Ossus himself, which does not, to be honest, lend great credence to what Darkstar has to say. I am not going to go over and over what Ossus and Darkstar have to say in their debate over this matter, because quite simply, I am not about to be swayed by Darkstar's arguments and you are not about to be swayed by what Ossus has to say on the matter, so delving deeper into that will simply lead us in circles.

That is literally apples and oranges, and if he actually not been there, Wong's bull**** about the destruction of Alderaan being the pure result of DET would have never found competition.
People would have had never the chance to actually see all the weird phenomenoms associated to the destruction of the planet, because in people's minds, it stop to big laser = boom, and Wong plays on that.
However, the hypocrisy in his arguments flies high, as we see that a simple analysis of the video reveals elements which don't fit at all with a purely DET mechanism.

Mike's theory is at least grounded in reality- you pump something with too much energy and bad things happen to that object. There is no basis for the chain reaction theory that somehow causes an enormous explosion out of a comparatively minuscule starting point. When there is nothing left for the reaction to react with, it stops. It doesn't go boom at a magnitude thousands of times greater than what it started with.

Simply put, planets do not explode on their own after all traced of energy have already stopepd being pumped into this same planet. A planet's not a bomb, and among other elements, this is precisely what Wongies don't get.

Wongies? What kind of a term is that? Do you have some kind of issue with him and SD.net?

Anyway, we SEE on screen that the planet starts to explode even before the entirety of the beam has penetrated it. The Death Star's beam was in fact overkill, even factoring in the effects of a shield. Take a look at the pictures from Mike's debate with Darkstar on the subject: http://stardestroyer.net/Empire/Hate...A/Round1a.html

To summarise, even if DET cannot explain the unusual phenomena that took place at the destruction of Alderaan, DET remains a better theory than the Superlaser Effect because the SE also cannot explain said phenomena and SE contradicts how a chain reaction functions, whilst DET has grounding in real science.

By the way, as far as it goes, I've never seen RSA admitting Wong's DET theory being as valid or invalid as his own theory.

Part of the reason that Darkstar had his debate with Mike on the subject is because Darkstar was pushing his theory hard. Darkstar has devoted a significant portion of his site to validating his own theory and debunking DET.

I have my own take on what happened, because I think there's room for another theory, again, but at least, contrary to Wong, RSA and we try to take most of the evidence into consideration.
Wng bases in his theory on lazyness and the audience's ignorance and what's commonly accepted without a second thought.

Perhaps YOUR theory will explain the unusual phenomena about Alderaan's destruction. Darkstar's theory does not attempt to. Why therefore should I favour his view over Mike's? Especially when Mike has a degree in science and Darkstar does not?

To summarise:

We can go round in circles about who presents the more valid points on BDZ- Ossus or Darkstar. We are unlikely to find common ground.

As far as DET V SE is concerned, DET is at least grounded in real science and is no worse at explaining the fire rings et all than SE is.

[Mister Oragahn]

It should be noted that to simply cause a thermal radiation radius the radius of New York City, you need to supply 33GT. This much, we both agree on. To cause widespread destruction to a city the size of New York, you need to supply 1.6TT.

If you plan to glass it in just one shot. As I said numerous times, a single blast will require to be much more powerful than a rain of much weaker yields used to obtain the same end results. Even total energies will be different.
You keep, conveniently or obtusely, basing all your estimations on Wong's calculator by using a single blast.

We know that civilisations in Star Wars can be much bigger, and the aim of a BDZ is to destroy that civilisation, killing everyone and ensuring there are no survivors.

Not exactly. There can be survivors. Even captures are planned. It's in the BDZ definition.

As for the IBS slag claim, you can't take it literally, otherwise it would mean that in one salvo, a SD can slag the surface of a civilized world. That's absurd.

References from previous sources already detail just how violent BDZs can be (cities reduced to molten seas, planets that are left cratered across their entire surface), so the energy requirements of doing that to every major pocket of civilisation on a world are incredible.

Besides the gross overestimations you keep repeating like a broken record, and the way you dismiss ship numbers and timelines, you keep missing the difference between being able to generate 1 GT in one single blast, and being able to generate the same amount of total energy after a long period of time, because the power core can only deliver a fraction of that total energy per second.

So no matter what spin you place on things, you need to supply many gigatons to destroy a civilisation, especially if you are seeking to kill that civilisation’s inhabitants.

I don't put a spin on this. You believe that these amounts of energy can be delivered within seconds. It's wrong.

In Star Wars, where hyperspace capable ships can be found in the hands of civilians, if you wish to destroy a civilisation, you must do so quickly to prevent anyone escaping.

Star Wars is not Stargate. In Star Wars, ships have to clear the gravity well of a planet, or a moon, to be able to go into hyperspace. That's why it leaves plenty of time for frigates, destroyers, patrol ships, fighters and bombers to blockade a world or a small rebel base (like Dankayo) before poor civilians or rebels can realize they must flee!

Two considerations here. After your comments about how Dankayo and the events in Jedi Knight were not referred to as BDZ operations, you now assume that an operation referred to specifically as a system bombard means BDZ, even though system bombard and BDZ could be two different things. The very Sourcebook quote you mention refers to the possibility that this light squadron is around to defend against possible attackers (why else would it be mentioned in the context of removing hostile craft from the system?) and you yourself mention that the 100 ship fleet ‘may’ include ISDs, but apparently not even you consider this to be a given. Does the quote say specifically that ISDs are present as part of this bombardment order?

Simply put, if the ISDs are not at the party, destroying the planet will take even more time for the 100 ships orbiting around.

The way the quote is worded, it suggests that 100 ships of unknown size and power can perform an operation that is specifically referred to in terms other than a BDZ, but if we assume for the moment that the two terms are interchangeable, then this does not rule out the idea that a lone ISD can perform such an operation by itself, it merely suggests that other ships may be involved to supply support and to deal with any hostile craft that happen to be in the area.

You don't get it. A BDZ was never identified and defined as an operation to destroy a planet. This is the fan retconning that Saxton, Wong and co managed to enforce after enough bashing, after enough violence and bile, which finally managed to sneak under the radar straight into an ICS.
This is overkill. The true and typical BDZ stopped much before that.

Plus you reroute the debate on the generous interpretations of exploitable extracts for your side, while you brush aside all the quotes which simply put a strigent limit on how powerful Star Destroyers can be.

The quote from the ROTS novelisation which mentions that a Venator Star Destroyer weapons can vapourize small cities - which is not such a formidable feat in the end!

For example, and that's just another example among those I cited, check out this thread: http://www.starfleetjedi.net/forum/v...er=asc&start=0

From the NJO: It has several notes which clearly tell us how extravagant the claims found in the ICS are. Previously undamaged capital ship hulls which can't withstand the explosion from luggage sized nuclear fission small explosives, Star Destroyers which could do not destroy a 20 km large moon, and even less be able to destroy the remaining fragment - which incidentally would be a piece of cake for guns even starting in the medium gigaton range, especially since they'd have no problem to blast the fragments from that moon, and especially since cratering energies are far less important than those meant to even melt pieces of rock, all of which the book describes as impossible for a Star Destroyer.
Or the fact that a Star Destroyer's cannons wouldn't be powerful enough to penetrate the ice crust of a planet, and that many Star Destroyers would be necessary to start causing damage.
We're a far cry from the absurd claim that the CIS had ships which could vapourize a whole ice moon in one shot (ICS stuff, as you guess)!

Two New Republic Assault Frigates, the Tyrant's Bane and Liberty Star, cruised in toward the Golan station. Though each ship was less than a third as long as the station, they bristled with fifty laser cannons and poured terajoules of coherent light into the Golan.
p 7, X Wing: Isard's Revenge.

Terajoules. Or kiloton level firepower. Remember how a frigate like that was able to take down the shields of the (starboard?) side of Thrawn's Star Destroyer, so much that he had to blast the cannons of that republic ship facing him, and pull this ship close to the Destroyer's hull with the tractor beams to use it as a shield.
Technically, a new republic frigate is an upgraded dreadnought, and packs 60 turbolaser mounts, with 15 turbolaser batteries, compared to those 60 turbolasers claimed by certain EU sources.
ISDs won't be terribly more powerful than a frigate.

Or the one about wide spread forest fires on the surface of Yavin IV caused by an Executor like Star Destroyer using her heavier turbolasers at max power.

All turbolaser batteries, full strength. Fire at will, targeting any structures in the jungle. p 311, Darksaber.
Callista looked up and saw another blast come down. With a single strike, the Super Star Destroyer obliterated an acre of ages-old growth. One lucky shot could level the Great Temple. p350, Darksaber.

Acre: 160 square rods, 4,840 square yards, or 43,560 square feet.

Coupled to:

"Theoretically, no weapon could penetrate the exceptionally dense stone of the ancient temple, but Luke had seen the shattered remnants of Alderaan and knew that for those in the incredible battle station that the entire moon would present simply another abstract problem in mass-energy conversion."
p178, Authorized Novelization of Star Wars.

And:

Suddenly the Star Cruiser was rocked by thermonuclear fireworks outside the observation window.
p 41, authorized ROTJ novelization.

"I'm still surprised at how small an energy input it's supposed to take,' Luke said. "I thought at first we'd have to bring in half a dozen Star Destroyers and keep them here a month."
p 362, Tyrant's Test.

As someone else said: Smoking debris in hours with a single ISD, and yet Luke expects half a dozen to take a month just to start up the greenhouse effect again.

You can add how a Sith Interdictor produced millenia before the battle of Yavin, with only a very limited number of cannons, which could barely be able to output kilotons of firepower, could actually outgun Interdictor Star Destroyers created during the Empire Era!

Plus those other extracts about how few fighters and bombers are able to pierce Star Destroyer shields with concentrated fire, while their heavier weapons, torpedoes, kiloton to megaton range, at best.
The Technical Journal suggests that proton torpedoes are fusion weapons. There's just a very hard limit on how powerful those can be.

Or, another one which you also completely forgot:

"These colossal, wedge-shaped behemoths, bristling with turboweapons and carrying entire TIE squadrons within them, each possess more firepower than the entire planetary forces of most worlds, and can reduce a planet surface to smoking debris in a matter of hours."
Star Wars Technical Journal, vol.2, p.17

Huh. So a Star Destroyer, which packs a firepower that exceeds that of most worlds in Star Wars, can only reduce the surface of a planet to smoking debris in a matter of hours. Notice the plural form, and notice the fact that all it leaves is smoking debris. We're a far cry from molten rock.

So we, on the contrary, have a fair description of what a Star Destroyer can only do in, at least, several hours of constant bombardment.

And that's not far fetched, because it meshes well with the level of firepower seen in ALL the films.

You got to wonder if Saxton's intimate friends ever watched the films!

Of course, Saxton prefers to use this information:


A Victory-class star destroyer bombarding an unshielded planet's surface to slag in a Base Delta Zero operation. [STAR WARS Vehicles trading cards]

... rather than actually look at the films and what's really shown.
I don't know where to start from as this picture is complete b°ll°cks. If the comment was true, even the ICS would look conservative!

Actually, what Saxton describes as an "unshielded planet" looks nothing more than a rounded asteroid. Notice the complete lack of atmosphere on that rather ambitious piece of art.
Notice, in fact, that this is not a planet at all, and a simple verification shows that it's not even remotely close to a perfect sphere. Not even an elongated sphere. It has such imperfections in its curvature which can only correspond to small stellar bodies.
It's sad how an "author and theoretical astrophysicist" didn't even verify if the object was a planet to boot.

Of course, he believes that this:



... supposedly supports his irrational claim.

Time is not given, and a planet at fired multiple times, by thousands of kiloton or megaton level shots, will be rendered uninhabitable anyway... especially if each bolt raises clouds of atomized topsoil! AKA "see how the Dankayo incident hits him back straight in the face"!
Check out Meridas, which surface was turned radioactive.
It's even more remarkable when you look at Sagan's confirmed work that a total of 100 megatons of nuclear firepower spread over key targets will trigger a nuclear winter. Enough to turn a planet into a perfect Helheim!

[Mister Oragahn]

Your source for Dankayo being a small moon? Titan is a moon, that is smaller than the earth, but has a thick atmosphere.

Let's assume it's a planet.
We still don't know how long it took for the Star Destroyers to bombard the surface.

EDIT: we know they bombarded the whole surface.

Transmitted from Dankayo to Alliance Com Buoy 965C shortly after the Imperial attack
Entry I
As instructed, I have remained behind until the last of our transports departed safely into hyperspace. Imperial Star Destroyers have so thoroughly blasted Dankayo that I fear for my safety, even in this deep-planet survival shelter.

But we also know that all rebel ships have safely escaped into hyperspace. So basically, you can't use the no-escape argument to argue about a tight schedule about Dankayo's event (especially since I pointed out that the other imperial ships were sent after the bombardment, which is proved by the fact that no rebel ship was intercepted), and thus you can't claim that the three Star Destroyers caused the level of damage described in the small book as fast as you would like to.
Actually, there just was no urge at all. And again, the deployment of troops and fighters just proves, again, how limited the level of destruction was. Only the tiny rebel base was slagged.
The rest was just throughly cratered, which requires far less energy.

So just drop Dankayo. It's pointless to insist on what can't be used to support your claims.

Matter of interpretation. I'm sure that you consider me to be full of mistakes, and perhaps in some areas I am, but then, I don't consider your arguments to be the pinnacle of perfection by any means, especially seeing as you feel the need to punctuate them with anti-Wong messages here and there.

So what? The fact that an important amount of flawed ideas, unsurprisingly, either find refuge on Wong's site, or in Saxton's works, should not
You are actually trying to derail the debate in making me look like the one who's adressing the person more than the arguments.

But yes, I do, from time to time, clearly speak my mind, and accuse them and their pals of being dishonest. How can a man with a PhD in astrophysics use the image of a Victory class destroyer firing at what cannot be a planet, still claim that it's a planet?

How can this same person, who I assume is fairly intelligent, maybe too much actually considering how evidence has been twisted, can claim that the DSII is 900 km large, claims largely based on the analysis of holograms, when we know are far from reliable.
Simply put, I made a measurement of the core reactor of the DSII, and then looked at the DSII hologram shown orbiting Endor during the rebel briefing, before the massive hyperspace jump.
Oh surprise! The battle station ends being only 16 km wide. Yeah, funny how it's only ten times smaller than the correct 160 km figure. Just because in that same hologram that Saxton considers to be reliable enough for his murky ramblings, the core is actually around ten times bigger than what it should be!
Yet, due to circumvulated manipulations and babbling bordering on red herring, he manages to transform that into evidence, and ends claiming that because the holo shows the Death Star II to be that large in comparison to the holo-Endor, then the DSII is giganormous and 900 km wide. Plu-eez.

We, again, won't also mention how he makes an incomprehensible mistake regarding the Death Star II hangars, and which ones were used by who.

Not to mention that you yourself have pointed to Darkstar's site to form some of your arguments, so don't start finger pointing over the formation of arguments now. That's not necessary.

Of course, for someone who comes late into a debate, that's particularily appreciable to hear. You unfortunately forget that citing a couple of references hardly represents the bulk of my arguments, contrary to you. You are invited to read the damn thread as a whole.

This is what I mean. You don't see me referring to people as being Darkstar's minions or as being twisted.

The arguments are twisted. The minion label is truth, and actually helps to know where the arguments come from.
Now, if you don't like that, so be it. I don't care. Why should I?

I'm aware of Darkstar's reply, including the considerable number of subjective comments about Ossus himself, which does not, to be honest, lend great credence to what Darkstar has to say.

Obviously, you've not been reading enough of the stuff from the person you cited as references!

I am not going to go over and over what Ossus and Darkstar have to say in their debate over this matter, because quite simply, I am not about to be swayed by Darkstar's arguments and you are not about to be swayed by what Ossus has to say on the matter, so delving deeper into that will simply lead us in circles.

You actively participate in the creation of those circular mechanics. Your intensive focus on (arguably) favourable extracts and singular blast yields is just a good indicator of that.

Mike's theory is at least grounded in reality- you pump something with too much energy and bad things happen to that object.

That's just fantastic! Do you even undestand anything of what he's claiming?
His theory doesn't even explain one of the keys factors of the destruction of Alderaan, yet there's like a galleon worth of peons queueing to embrace this vision as God's words.

It's nothing more than a neanderthalian claim which limits itself, rather remarkably for someone who works in sciences, to "beam hits, ugh! Planet big badaboom!" = Imperial powerful energy beam.

It's like I'd look at Netu's destruction and say "missile hits, ugh! Planet big badaboom!" = Tok'ra powerful meganuke.

Riiiight.

There is no basis for the chain reaction theory that somehow causes an enormous explosion out of a comparatively minuscule starting point. When there is nothing left for the reaction to react with, it stops. It doesn't go boom at a magnitude thousands of times greater than what it started with.

Oh frak. I've just heard that so many times. It's literally insane how it still works, really.
What is this reality you're speaking of? You mean the one where planets explode on their own?
Why insist?

The only systems which have, in Star Wars, shown such an habit to explode long after being hit, are systems which are destroyed from within due to chain reactions, mostly because vital parts are overloading, and exploding left and right.

That's why Darkstar believes in some sort of genesis like chain reaction (the surface of a planet was ravaged, and later on a chain reaction resulted in its ultimate explosion), and why I think there might be room for other explanations, but none which are based on simple DET mechanics, because simple DET mechanics utterly fail in that department.
Arguably, Darkstar's white band of energy has some merit. It's easy to see how he actually thinks it exists, because we can see a whitened band expanding from the point of impact.
However, I believe it's nothing more than superheated material, mostly the atmosphere.

But see: when you fire a beam of energy at an asteroid, it is heated up as long as the beam is being intercepted by the said asteroid. Once the beam stops, there's no addition of energy. There's no direct transfer of energy anymore (DET). The asteroid does not explode even more violently fractions of a second after the beam has finished hitting the asteroid.

Actually, you can watch Stargate Atlantis' First Strike (season 3's finale). Look at what the asuran beam does.
The beam is a weapon already funky on its own, due to the disparity between DET effects on inert objets, and drastically different effects on impressive power sources tied to defensive systems.
The beam heats up the asteroid and drills through it, as long as it is intercepted by the asteroid. But when the beam doesn't touch the asteroid anymore, does the asteroid violently explode into millions of fragments?
No.

Continued...

[Mister Oragahn]

Now, look at how hiveships are destroyed, most of the time. The energy bolts or the nukes do not destroy them in one blow. A close look at screencaps easily show that hiveships are, 99% of the time, destroyed by chain reactions (which actually illustrates their toughness despite internal nuclear explosions).

Compare this to Trek's Species 8472's planet cracker, or the Xindi's similar weapon. In evidence of the contrary, we see the beams actually produce a heck of damage. There's unarguably a lot of destruction going on there, in the initial stage of both bombardments. This is likely the result of DET (though it could already be the effects of the first steps of the chain reactions).
However, when the planets explode, for all evidence concerned, it's long after the beams have stopped hitting the planets. This simply CAN'T be the result of DET, and is solely the result of chain reaction.

If the planet has not exploded when the beam has ended, it won't explode later on... safe if a chain reaction of some sort happened.

And sorry for all those who'd like to think that Star Wars only has weapons which are raw and powerful, and thus universally powerful - because that's the essence of the argument: make sure that Wars weapons bust everything anywhere, and are not limited to special circumstances.

When you look at it, the Death Star fires a beam which does, in fractions of a second, what Trek planet busters take many seconds to do (but still within less than a minute). Which is not a shame actually when you consider the size of the Trek devices, in comparison to the Death Stars.

Wongies? What kind of a term is that? Do you have some kind of issue with him and SD.net?

For those who know what SD.net is about, it's particularily easy to have issues about that community.

Anyway, we SEE on screen that the planet starts to explode even before the entirety of the beam has penetrated it.

Actually, we see that there's a primary explosion, a big fireball that ravages most of the hemisphere facing the Death Star. But we can still see that Alderaan, as a whole, is still there (please notice that I use Darkstar's image independantly of his own theory).

Then you can count several frames where nothing else happens. The beam isn't there anymore.
Frame 1.
Frame 2.
Etc.

Then the secondary and much much more massive explosion happens.

For frakign sake, you can even notice the delay in real time!:

Grab the video.

The Death Star's beam was in fact overkill...

On that, I perfectly agree. The first explosion alone is enough to destroy a planet.

...even factoring in the effects of a shield.

Any idea on how a shield could explain this?
I've provided my take on what would have happened if there had been a shield, a way to explain what could have caused the second explosion. Think about how much saxtonite - sorry - hypermatter would have been necessary to power a shield able to momentarily repel the power of a planet semi-busting beam.

To summarise, even if DET cannot explain the unusual phenomena that took place at the destruction of Alderaan, DET remains a better theory than the Superlaser Effect because the SE also cannot explain said phenomena and SE contradicts how a chain reaction functions, whilst DET has grounding in real science.

You're mixing things horribly.
Wong's superlaser DET has no grounding in real sciences at all. He just claims that what we're looking at is basically the same phenomenom of a beam of powerful EM radiations, or highly energetic particles, hitting a rock.
Those phenomenoms do not create secondary explosions.

Some time ago, I presented the idea that maybe the beam is very focused, and drills through the crust, and then drops some kind of particles, or triggers a phenomenom that literally defies phyics, which builds up, and then ends as a burst of formidable energy.

It's an intermediate solution where the "superlaser" is still largely working on DET principles, still able to destroy a planet through the primary explosion (destruction of a whole hemisphere, which unavoidably will result in the destruction of the whole surface for eons), even if the DET component is largely weaker than what busts the planet apart, but the final overkill event, the secondary explosion, is the fruit of a more complex event which has more to do with a chain reaction, adn is largely more exotic.

Part of the reason that Darkstar had his debate with Mike on the subject is because Darkstar was pushing his theory hard. Darkstar has devoted a significant portion of his site to validating his own theory and debunking DET.

Both sides have been pushing ther ideas hard. However, Wong openly admits, and actually encourages people to fill their rebuttals with torrent of bile, to actually "fight like a man".

Perhaps YOUR theory will explain the unusual phenomena about Alderaan's destruction. Darkstar's theory does not attempt to.

Correction. It attempts to. Even Wong's attempts to.

Why therefore should I favour his view over Mike's? Especially when Mike has a degree in science and Darkstar does not?

The degree in science obviously doesn't preclude Wong from saying stupid things, and hosting pages literally built upon lies.
(You can check my link about the Turbolaser Firepower page and imaginary asteroids, posted earlier on, to see what I mean.)

To summarise:

We can go round in circles about who presents the more valid points on BDZ- Ossus or Darkstar. We are unlikely to find common ground.

We could, if you'd actually recognize the bulk of data which actually severely limits the power of Star Destroyers, and you'd see how it's the majority here. It already was before Saxton wrote his webpages, or penned stuff of the ICS.

As far as DET V SE is concerned, DET is at least grounded in real science and is no worse at explaining the fire rings et all than SE is.

The rings are again, another layer to the problem. They're obviously the result of an even more extraordinary phenomenom, which no theory grounded in hard science can explain.

[darth_timon]

Oraghan, given the yet again huge size of your post and the somewhat haphazard way it is split into chunks (no fault of your own, the quoting system on forums can be a pain in the neck), I am restricting my reply, lest we spiral off into posts that could fill a book by themselves.

Given that it's 11pm, I don't think I will go into much detail now, as I've left it a bit late to suddenly tackle this- and I need to prepare for an interview next week, so I might not be able to reply in depth for a few days. If I do get the chance- well, then you'll see my reply!