Uploaded March 2014 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
The surfaces & trenches of an Imperial Star Destroyer is pockmarked by scores of turrets & bunkers to house all of the ships variable light turbolaser cannons. These turbolaser stations represent the least powerful weapon-systems on the Star Destroyer, and yet a single blast could still vapourize a multi-thousand-tonne asteroid. The purpose of these weapons is to provide point-defence by generating a lattice of laser & ion fire capable of intercepting starfighters, gunships & corvettes. The heaviest turbolasers on the ship are literally orders of magnitude larger & more powerful than these, comparatively, diminutive guns, because they need to be effective against much larger, more heavily shielded & armoured warships.
Estimates (including those by experts) for the energy required to heat these asteroids to vaporization vary, but generally exceed several terajoules (more than 1 kiloton TNT). Scaling up,. the heaviest guns on the ship might be thousands of times more powerful.
Considerations of scale
1.) the length of turbolaser bolts in relation to the Falcon
2.) the size of the asteroids in relation to the turbolaser bolts
3.) the size of the asteroids compared to the Falcon
4.) the solidity of asteroids demonstrated in the collisions with TIE fighters
5.) the existence of craters on some of the asteroids vaporized by turbolasers and many of the asteroids passed by the Falcon shows that these asteroids survived passed impacts intact (collisions of sufficient energy to produce the craters)
6.) the turbolaser bolts were discharged from guns in the star destroyers lateral trench, from weapons to small to be seen. These are anti-starfighter weapons - not anti-capital ship.
Star Wars asteroid field scenes from Empire Strikes Back
Fair Use for technical (lore) review
The surfaces & trenches of an Imperial Star Destroyer is pockmarked by scores of turrets & bunkers to house all of the ships variable light turbolaser cannons. These turbolaser stations represent the least powerful weapon-systems on the Star Destroyer, and yet a single blast could still vapourize a multi-thousand-tonne asteroid. The purpose of these weapons is to provide point-defence by generating a lattice of laser & ion fire capable of intercepting starfighters, gunships & corvettes. The heaviest turbolasers on the ship are literally orders of magnitude larger & more powerful than these, comparatively, diminutive guns, because they need to be effective against much larger, more heavily shielded & armoured warships.
Estimates (including those by experts) for the energy required to heat these asteroids to vaporization vary, but generally exceed several terajoules (more than 1 kiloton TNT). Scaling up,. the heaviest guns on the ship might be thousands of times more powerful.
Considerations of scale
1.) the length of turbolaser bolts in relation to the Falcon
2.) the size of the asteroids in relation to the turbolaser bolts
3.) the size of the asteroids compared to the Falcon
4.) the solidity of asteroids demonstrated in the collisions with TIE fighters
5.) the existence of craters on some of the asteroids vaporized by turbolasers and many of the asteroids passed by the Falcon shows that these asteroids survived passed impacts intact (collisions of sufficient energy to produce the craters)
6.) the turbolaser bolts were discharged from guns in the star destroyers lateral trench, from weapons to small to be seen. These are anti-starfighter weapons - not anti-capital ship.
Star Wars asteroid field scenes from Empire Strikes Back
Fair Use for technical (lore) review
![[Image] Victory star destroyer | planetary bombardment](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/fAK5NofUnKA/mqdefault.jpg "[Image] Victory star destroyer | planetary bombardment
Planetary bombardment from Star Wars Armada (2015, official art) conducted by Victory class star destroyers.
This short video reveals the approximate scale of bombardment by superimposing the blasts onto the Earth (a few pixels out on the right, apologies). The superhot fireball at the epicentre of each blast was many miles wide with estimated radii of ~20km, which is broadly consistent with weapons discharges in the multi gigaton range. These fireballs apparently persist for some time after turbolaser impact, or detonation of ordnance.
Have a go at scaling these explosions yourself using NukeMap :)
http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/classic/
The real life Tsar Bomba was the most powerful man made nuclear weapon of all time; it produced a fireball 8 km (5 mi) wide and a yield equivalent to ~57 megatons of TNT.")
