| Subject: Re: New poll (Nebula v Nebulon) |
Author:
Warspite
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Date Posted: 08:34:30 10/25/02 Fri
Author Host/IP: ipd54b1985.free.wxs.nl/213.75.25.133
In reply to:
The Divine Shadow
's message, "Re: New poll (Nebula v Nebulon)" on 23:22:02 10/24/02 Thu
>>Actually, its an interesting fact that warhead yields
>>have generally gone down since missiles became more
>>accurate, and MIRV warheads were introduced. In
>>simulations, it has proven a lot more effective to
>>dump a few KT level warheads around a target, than to
>>dump one big one on the center. The combined
>>destruction power of multiple kt-range weapons is
>>actually much greater than a single large MT weapon.
>>The largest nuclear bomb ever built was the 'Tsar
>>Bomba', which was around 50MT (it was actually
>>designed to be 100MT, but was scaled down). However,
>>if you look at most missiles today, few have warheads
>>above the KT range. It doesn't sound a lot, when we
>>spend our time talking about MT and GT yields, but
>>don't forget that the original Hiroshima bomb was only
>>15-16kt, and it destroyed most of that city. The
>>modern Trident II missiles on Britains SSBNs for
>>example have warheads with a maximum yield of around
>>100kt. The entire British nuclear arsenal is now
>>probably less than 20-30MT! So I don't think your ISD
>>has to worry too much about Britain. :)
>
>ya, I know, quality (accuracy) over quantity
>(tons-o-TNT)
>Against the Empire this is not the best policy, as the
>Imp's tech and equipment is extremely survivable.
>
In fact, if the torpedo yield is 'just' 1.5MT, a squadron of X-Wings, each armed with six proton torpedoes (total 72 torps) would have firepower in the range of 108MT, which is something like five times the entire nuclear inventory of Britain! In fact, they would probably carry a similar yield to the combined missile inventories of Britain, France and China! It's easy to forget just how powerful these weapons really are. We throw around terms like KT, MT and GT, with little real undertstanding as to what they mean. As I said before, a 15-16kt bomb destroyed Hiroshima, 50MT was the largest nuke ever deployed. 200GT is 200,000MT, or 200,000,000kt. That is the equivelent of 4,000 of the largest nuclear bombs ever, or 12,500,000 Hiroshima sized explosions. The effects of a single 200GT explosion against a planetary target can barely be imagined. A single shot of that power would likely cause global effects and probably a global nuclear winter which would kill the majority of life on a planet. We have never seen any effects even remotely approaching this from a single shot (superweapons aside) in SW. It seems clear (to me at least) that ICS:AOTC must be wrong on this point.
>>>In another book (one of the Lando Calrissian trilogy)
>>>we have a promitive race firing hundreds of thousands
>>>of chemical missiles with H-bomb warheads at a
>fleet.
>>>The fleet survives, no loss of power to the shields.
>>>This proves that the low end 55-125 MT is too low.
>If
>>>a 200 year old Dreadnought could take all of those
>>>missiles so can a much newer ISD with much stronger
>>>shields.
>>
>>As I showed above, most modern missiles have yields in
>>the KT range. Very few reach MT levels. Therefore, the
>>example you showed could well be correct, but still
>>allow protons to have just 1.5MT. I haven't read the
>>book, so I cannot comment definitively. Could you give
>>me a clearer idea (perhaps a quote with numbers) of
>>what happened exactly?
>
>In one of the NJO books (I think "Star by Star") we
>see a special variation on the proto-torp in orbital
>mine form. A heavily modified smuggler freigter (so
>we know it has good armor and survivability as it is
>owned by a long time smuggler, one in the business
>long enough to know that the more durable the ship the
>better) he drifts into the minefield, 3 mines overload
>the shields (he would probly have military grade
>shields like most smugglers [Han Solo, Talon Karrde])
>the next mine plows through the bridge window and
>takes out much of that deck, the next mine plows into
>one of the engines and the explosion destroys them
>all. The other two blow open the cargo holds, this is
>a very large freigter at least 900 meters long, the
>explosions were seen over much of the surface of the
>ship, so these mines and the torpedoes they are based
>off of are atleast 20 MT.
That would not seem unreasonable to me. If the torpedo was modified, and the engines and other un-needed features were removed, there is no reason why the yield of a 1.5MT torpedo could not be increased to make a 20MT mine. How big is a proton torpedo?
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