It’s the only way out. Princess grabbed the Imperial blaster from Luke, flipped it to overload maximum, and pulled the trigger.
The energy of the power pack was released in one huge blast. A cloud of vaporized iron and people roared down the cell bay, setting fires throughout the area and killing everyone in its path.
Alarms screamed, blast doors closed to contain the inferno, and damage control reports went up the chain of command to Tarkin himself. He listened, his cold expression unchanged except for a raised eyebrow. Your adventure ends here, princess.
The energy release from a Star Wars blaster is calculated, from the energy release shown in the scene where Leia removes the cover to the garbage chute, to be 342 MJ, or the equivalent of 82 Kg (!) of TNT, as asserted here.
I have several problems with that, as follows:
- The heroes survive, without even having their hair mussed. That energy release would kill them and everyone in a large area from the blast, never mind the 54 kg of vaporized iron.
- It’s too powerful for a personal weapon.
- Massive over-penetration.
- A stray round hitting a blaster power pack will take out everyone in the area, i.e., all your friends.
First, looking at the picture, the assumption that the cover to the garbage chute is a solid plate of metal is just wrong. It’s a grating. The requirement is to cut through a set of steel bars, estimated at 8 cm wide and 2 cm thick. That can be done by melting, not vaporizing, the metal. Changing the assumptions cuts the energy requirement down by a lot. We’ll further assume that the cut will be 1 mm.
- If the blaster had a ring setting, that simply cut a circular hole, that would greatly reduce the power needed. The cut out chunks would simply have fallen down the chute into the garbage compactor.
- This is a plausible setting for a soldier’s weapon. Fighting in confined quarters, you don’t go through the door. You blow through the wall and toss in a grenade (s).
- Cutting doesn’t require vaporizing the material. Melting it will do fine.
That gives us about 28 grams of metal (assume steel), making a generous allowance for Murphy.
Putting the numbers together, we get:
- 28 cc of steel is 221 grams.
- Heating 221 g of iron to melting point requires 153 kJ.
- Melting it requires another 7 joules.
- Total is right around 160 kJ.
- Equivalent to 40 grams of TNT, about a land mine’s worth. Or, 40 grams of thermite (roughly, same energy content).
The Revised Scene
Leia was annoyed. The blaster bolts being traded up and down the cell bay weren’t accomplishing very much, but that wasn’t going to last. “This is some rescue. Didn’t you have a plan for getting out?”
“He’s the brains, sweetheart.” Han Solo’s usual reckless insouciance was sounding a little strained as he squeezed off another shot.
She glanced over at the boyish looking guy who’d showed up in her cell, but there was no help there. Like Han, he was totally focused on the firefight. She was huddled in behind him, but she could read enough of his body language to be sure of it.
Leia looked up and down the cell bay for something, though she wasn’t hopeful. This was a maximum security prison, after all. Her gaze stopped on a metal grating. Why would anyone put a garbage chute in the cell block of a maximum security prison? Of course, it is big enough for a body.
She shook off that very unpleasant thought, and regarded it calculatingly. A grating a bit over a metre wide, about a two centimeters thick, steel most likely. Not much of a security risk, really, under normal circumstances. Bare hands won’t get you anywhere.
Trying to just blast through that grating would take a long time and more energy than was in twenty blaster power packs. Leia blessed every moment of the training she’d badgered the head of her Detail to put her through. The Imperial standard blaster design had a lot of features. Some of them were seldom used, but were useful when you needed them.
The Imperial blaster had a ring setting, designed to cut through a wall or bulkhead rather than go through a door or hatch, which was flat guaranteed to be targeted by the bad guys, booby trapped, or both. She ran through the sequence of actions in her head, then acted.
There was no time to argue the toss, and Solo for sure wasn’t going to be much on listening to a woman. The ego behind the pretty face said he wasn’t going to be much on listening to anyone.
Luke let his gun hand down a little. Leia grabbed it out of his hand, set it for max power, then tapped the selector in the sequence to activate the ring setting at one metre width. She shut her eyes and pulled the trigger.
It took her a couple of seconds to open her eyes again, then her face broke into a wide smile. There was a hole in the middle of the grating, big enough for a human, or even a … eight foot tall furry creature.
“What the …” Solo twisted around to see what was going on.
The smile widened a little as she took in the surprise on his face. I’m not just another pretty face, flyboy.
“Someone has to save our skins. Into the garbage chute, flyboy.” She tossed the blaster back to Luke, making sure to safety it first, and dove right through the centre of the hole, missing the still hot ends with the skill that hours of gymnastics practice had drummed into her.
As she slid down the chute, she heard shouts behind her, then the thumps and bangs of the others following her down the chute. Let’s just hope this doesn’t lead to a crematorium.
The adventure continues, and physics has been respected. The mystery of why the shielding on the garbage masher isn’t used in a high security prison is left open for discussion.
I’ll have more to say about blasters in another post.
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