MEP EP#46

Published: Dec. 16, 2016, 4:42 p.m.

First Annual MacroFab Star Wars Christmas Special

This is a reupload of Episode 46 into one continuous podcast. Originally it  was broken into 4 parts.

  • Vehicles of Star Wars
    • Tie Fighters
    • Hovercraft and levitation
    • Power: Fission batteries? A AA battery weighs around 23g. Convert it all to energy e=mc^2 and you get 2 quintillion Joules of power. 2,067,136,911,094,680,572 Joules to be precise.
    • 16 Teslas to levitate a frog. This consumed 4MW of energy according to the paper. A “common frog” weighs 22.7g. Compact car weighs about 1200kg. So that is 211,453 and some change MW or Joules per second. 8.4million Teslas.
  • Weapons of Star Wars
    • Death Star
      • Cost of Steel alone would be $852 quadrillion which is 13,000 times the worlds GDP.
      • How much steel required to make it? It is 160km in diameter and they modeled the Death Star to have a density similar to a modern warship. Which gives us 1.08×1015 tonnes of steel. World wide production of steel is 1.3 billion tonnes a year which will take over 800K years to make enough steel.
      • Thats no moon. Speaking of the size. Earths moon is 3,474km. Smallest moon in our solar system is Methone which orbits Saturn with a diameter of ~3km.
      • How much energy would be required to blow up a Planet? Earth would require 2.24 × 10^32 Joules to blow apart the gravitational binding energy of the Earth if you consider it a uniform sphere. In 1 second the Sun generates 3.8 x 10^26 Joules. Which means in 589,473 seconds or about 6.8 days worth of energy. Gives a reason behind Star Killer Base.
    • Star Killer Base
      • Its not as silly as people make it out to be in comparison to a Death Star.
      • Energy gathered from a Sun? How would that work?
    • Light Sabers
      • Elegant weapon for a more civilized age. Lots of mystical lore surrounding this weapon.
      • Force aligned crystals are necessary for their construction.
      • How would the blade be created? Plasma?
    • Blasters
      • They are not laser weapons!
      • Gas cartridge and a power cell.
      • Gas can be mostly anything but typically is Tibanna - a naturally gas found on Bespin home of cloud city.
  • Light Speed Travel
    • Faster then light travel in Star Wars is accomplished by transporting the vessel to near light speed and then jumping to a "Hyper Space" dimension where faster then light travel is possible.
    • Possible if this "Hyper Space" is worm hole tunneling.
  •  Prosthetics
    • Mechanics exist to make them work.
    • General Grievous.
  • The "Force"
    • The force is actually the main character of SW. That’s why prequels suck.
    • Fundamental problem with midichlorians.
    • Force as consciousness.
    • Is the "Force" possibility the control over dark matter/energy?
  • R.F.O.
    • What is your favorite Star Wars Character?
      • Organic?
      • Robot?
    • Favorite sound effect?
    • The prequels
    • Why do some Jedi disappear after dying and others don’t?
    • What are we excited or concerned about most in the new Rogue One movie?