So I was busting around The Feed over on G4’s website and someone posted one of the greatest things ever. I’ve always been huge into SciFi, and there has always been these nagging questions concerning the starships in the various series (ie Star Trek, Star Wars, Babylon 5, etc etc). Primary of those for me has always been who could take who out in a battle. Well, this Starship Size Comparison Chart lends some help to answering these burning questions.
Seriously, I knew the Executor Class Star Destroyer was big, but that is seriously just not right. Its seriously three times bigger than the next vessel, Babylon 5. Bonus points to anyone who can actually manage to find the most bad ass starship in the Star Trek universe, the USS Defiant. That goddamn thing rocked, and I’ll challenge anyone who says otherwise to a cage match.
CORRECTION: I actually looked at it again, and Lexx is the next biggest vessel at 10,000 meters I think it was. There are several ships bigger than B5 actually. I ,however, still maintain my assertion on the Defiant. Give me 10 of those bad boys and I’ll take down that Star Destroyer.
The problem for me with the Star Destroyer was always that scale. Made no sense. For one thing, it would probably consume the natural resources of an entire planet just to build one. Secondly, it’s a STAR DESTROYER. It’s entire function was to obliterate planets, ships, Rebel Alliance fleets. All you needed was a Death Star Cannon (don’t even get me started on the impracticality of an immobile doomsday weapon built out in the sticks) and a couple of massive engines.
A ship that big would hold… thousands upon thousands. At approximately 18,000 meters long and (for the sake of argument), a beam of say 5,000 meters at its widest point, with a height that appears to be about 1,000 meters, one can assume that it’s meant to hold a LOT of people.
Why? Decimate from orbit and take what you want. You don’t NEED something that big. Something that big would only be useful as a multi-generational ship designed to move an entire population from one planet to another.
Immobile doomsday weapon? What are you talking about? The Death Star was capable of moving, it did so in Star Wars: A New Hope. The only reason it didn’t go anywhere in Return of the Jedi was because it wasn’t done.
Also, why do you have this insane hard-on for wanting defined, specific measurements for fucking FICTIONAL SPACESHIPS?
Even if the original Death Star was mobile, laws of physics would dictate that it wouldn’t move very fast, or be able to maneuver. I mean, it’s the size of a small MOON. Why? When a few dozen nukes dropped off a small, light, bomber would have done just as good a job of destroying populations without destroying valuable resources?
Again, makes no sense.
And Dave, I need some semblance of… structure to suspend disbelief that far. Want me to believe in zombies? Fine. Write up a few paragraphs about how in your world, a virus/demon/chemical/mcguffin animated corpses. Want me to believe in Star Destroyers? Okay, tell me what conceivable practical purpose they serve and how they were built… I mean, Jesus… the man-hours ALONE!
Give me an anchor to hold to and understand the rules.
Oh jeez… From Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Destroyer
37,085 crewmen, 9,700 troops, etc….
Cargo capacity of 45,000 tons. That doesn’t make any goddam sense. Firstly, they are IN SPACE. it doesn’t matter if they’re carrying a million tons (EDIT: If they turn off whatever generates their gravity, its mass they worry about, of course), since they never land the thing on a planet. Secondly, a cargo ship here on Earth can carry up to 90,000 tons. Also, that must be in addition to the AT-AT walkers, since 20 of those have to weigh in at more than 45,000 tons, not to mention all the other crap on board.
So a Star destroyer carries ~40,000 support personnel for ~10,000 ground troops… Who ever built an ass-backwards army like that?
Oh yeah, and cracking one into Endor like they did in Jedi? Would have washed those shitty little ewoks right out of their trees, and probably vaporized the atmosphere when all the weaponry and engines went BOOM on their asses.
Hey, if you really want to ruin your enjoyment by worrying about administrative minutia like that, by all means, go right ahead. I refer you to tv tropes for an explanation of traveling at the speed of plot, used most notably of late, as they mention, by Messrs. Straczynski and Whedon.
(also, I assume the Affleck hand-waving “FIC-TION-AL CHAR-AC-TERS” effect was implied in my first comments on this article)
According to the geeks on that Wiki entry, the Death Star was capable of light speed. And actually, physics speaking, a sphere is the best configuration for a space vessel.
Imagine for instance a mobile Dyson’s Sphere.
http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/dysonFAQ.html
I had a nice reply written up on why the Death Star never travelled at light speed. It’s gone now… fucking IE. But it had to do with inertia and the size of that Death Star. In a word, impossible. It didn’t ‘move’. maybe it jumped/wormholed/gated… but there were no cool moves like the Falcon.
Of course not, but it was capable of light speed. Just because they use a different physics system other than ours doesn’t mean it is wrong. Unconventional mathematics work different in galaxies far, far away.
Carl…
What are you going on about here? Of all the things to find impractical, the Imperial Class Star Destroyer should be one of the lowest on the list, but maybe that’s the absurd amount of the expanded universe I’ve read.
To address your point on the troops to support personnel ratio in the ISD;
Who would build a backwards ass army like that? Well, the United States have been doing so for years. The empire built what we would call today an Aircraft Carrier and combined it with a portable army base. The Nimitz class ships in the US Navy according the wikipedia floats 3,200 people in the ships crew, and then a further 2,500 in it’s air wing. It states that it can handle maximum 90 aircraft and usually averages around 64. And the Nimitz doesn’t have to bring air, water, and escape pods with it since no matter where it goes it’s going to be on planet. Our modern day aircraft carriers have a crew of nearly 6,000 over half of which aren’t even involved in launching the planes into the air. And it takes all the rest just to get between 64 and 90 planes into the air. That’s 2,500 people to get less than a hundred aircraft into a fight on dear old planet earth… That’s pretty telling.
Now take all that, and put it on a spaceship. Space itself is a bit more demanding than the Atlantic so that might occupy some thought. What the Carrier has for command and control of it’s area of the globe is turned into needing resources to patrol entire solar systems, and occupy them. I think that might include self contained intelligence departments, on board entertainment and facilities (no holodeck here) and things I probably don’t even know about that are required for military operations. Troops here beam intelligence back to the Pentagon. Out in space they’d have to do such things themselves. A much larger task made more difficult.
Now, the ISD also totes 72 fighters, carries a mobile military base for those ten thousand troops to use, (plus add in all those AT-AT’s and those mechanics must get paid a LOT), and the various shuttles and landing craft to do it’s job. Which was to single handedly if need be take control and maintain control of whatever area of space it’s assigned too. And space is a big place. I think all of that would have to end up quickly in terms of support personnel. I’m going to say that the 45,ooo tons is most likely not including what it’s complement of troops is. If the thing can suck entire starships into its hangar bays then it’s going to have quite a bit of room. Maybe it should be measured in cubic meters instead of metric tons, yes but the having the space isn’t that disconcerting. Yeah cargo ships can carry twice that today, but they’re also not going into combat zones and are designed for that specific a purpose.
Instead the Star Destroyer is a fusion of an aircraft carrier, a portable military base, and a battleship. So I think the size of the thing, coupled with its intended role to be something able to take and control of an area of space including it’s planets to be reflected in the estimated crew needs. And remember the Emperor liked his fear. And the things are scary cause they’re huge. The Executer was supposed to make people too scared to fight it, something that’s actually brought up several times in the IE. It’s said that even though they’re role could be accomplished by vessels a fraction of their sizes, they were instruments of fear as much as they were to display the limitless resources the Empire had. Both Death Stars were the same way. It was the FEAR of the station keeping the rebellious systems in line that Moff Tarkin cites as it’s purpose for its creation. Not it’s ability to destroy planets. And yes. In the books, the Star Destroyers do turn sections of planets into giant fields of glass from orbit. Hence why the Rebels had a shield on Hoth if you’ll recall.
Also, watch the gorram movie again. Looks an aweful lot like what it’s crashing into doesn’t seem to have an atmosphere. You might even say it seems to be large and greyish… almost as if it were crashing into some kind of moon sized sphere shaped man made object. Why else would the station be experiencing all those explosions that Luke barely escaped? You’re right, the thing did go boom! As for the whole lightspeed thing it’s explained somewhere that hyperspace is sort of almost a kind of different dimension of sorts that allows them to ignore a lot physics laws. When ships do go to lightspeed they can’t be near any kind of gravity well like planets or moons as the gravity will just pull them out of hyperspace. That actually allows for gigantic artificial gravity wells to be used to ambush and trap other ships so it’s not just pushing your speed up to pass a threshold as in Star Trek, which is why the hyperdrive and sublight engines are two different things. So the Death Star if far enough away could go to hyperspace, even if it’s slow as hell in normal space. As seen in the movie where it chases Yavin 4 around a planet… Or wizard magic does it.
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I really didn’t mean for that to turn into a rant. Honest. Sorry…
That was tremendous.
The deathstar could move, any ship can reach the same speed of lets say 900000000000000000000000km/s even the deathstar. Mass doesn’t affect speed it affects acceleration, even if the deathstar released a small little tiny bit of oxygen in a burst it would propel the deathstar at about .0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001km/h but it would still move if the oxygen kept releasing for long enough like thousands of years you could reach 900000000000000000000000km/s. The thing is it would take an equal amount of time to slow down to a dead stop, so the engines wouldn’t just be a small continuous stream of oxygen, probley massive enough to get up to speed a little better.