Look pal, the only thing that has holes in it is your analysis and Metal Gear Rex’s hull, after being pocketed by plasma fire:

1) Actually, even at the speeds necessary to place an AGM-129 ACM warhead (The W80 is the variant used in Rex’s missile launching capacity) in low orbital reentry, the impact will only generate a KE rating of 3929376 joules (3.929376 megajoules) due to the fact that the ACM warhead is an aluminum encased air burst missile intended for a primary terrestrial targets.

Even if you scale up the imparted energy to compensate for the 200kt yield present in modern W84 warheads and electromagnetic acceleration (For example, let’s say within a vacuum) you only produce a distribution of KE measured at 135 gigajoules, equal to 32 tons of explosives. The Uranium itself does not present a solid core, instead it is a series of plated layers suspended in Polystyrene foam and various other dampener alloys designed to prevent the core from achieving accidental supercriticality; a useful design feature if a high speed delivery system were to impact with the contents of a nuclear warhead. (See Broken Arrow: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_nuclear_incident_terminology#Broken_Arrow) If the mass of fissile material did impact and somehow coalesce at such speeds, it would no doubt cause a “prompt critical” reaction and a burst of hard radiation as a result, the effects of which would most likely become apparent to any Covenant forces stationed outside the hull without sufficient protection; but judging from their personal combat gear, the effects of such an incident would take weeks to become apparent in present organisms.

In the case of the Scarab, her armoured hull has been depicted as to survive several blasts from the mounted MAC cannon of the Spirit of Fire, which fires 600 ton slugs of either ferric Tungsten or depleted uranium at 30,000 m/s, which equals 58 kilotons of explosive power against a stationary target. ultimately it only takes a minimum of two slugs to penetrate and destroy the interior of the hull, but it certainly suggests that an aluminum encased W80 warhead would prove an insufficient penetration device.

It would make more sense to arm the warhead with a proximity fuse, although with a 200 kiloton blast it would make sense to dial it down somewhat as to avoid the repercussions of such a large blast (the one that flattened Hiroshima was only 18 kilotons) at close range. This is a delicate procedure, to which the Rex pilot is limited to only one chance.

2) Whilst the repelling party would no doubt remain vulnerable to weapons fire (The driver and gunnery crews would remain safe), Rex is firing up at a target more than four times its own height, meaning the cockpit section is going to be straining upwards at an almost obscene angle to compensate.

But throughout combat, the head section continuously faces downwards and hunches forwards, in fact whilst ambulatory it is very rarely (If ever) horizontal to the rear pod in which Snake and Liquid fought in hand to hand combat all those years ago. The only time it is ever above an angle parallel to the rear pod is when forcefully mounted by an equal or greater mechanical force. The angle of the neck strut seems to suggest that it is structurally impractical for Rex to look up (I could make a “Dogs can’t look up” joke right now), as throughout the Rex Vs. Ray sequence it continuously hunches forward during full ambulatory and defensive polymerization.

3) Actually, to cause the explosive explosive destruction of limbs and other organic materials requires an inordinate amount of energy displaced into a single area at once. But in the Halo Graphic Novel (Halo is rated 16+, explosive body parts often garner an R18+ stamp on most games) plasma rifle fire is depicted as detonating concrete, spreading molten ejecta at a two meter radius and even penetrating straight through (In and out) the titanium body armour of an ODST Marine.

With an energy distribution of eight megajoules per shot (In small plasma pistol shots), single plasma bolts can generate over 10,000 Kelvins worth of heat (Three times the boiling temperature of titanium) and have been depicted as rapidly evaporating Titanium-A body ceramic armour upon impact, usually killing a human with the rapid expansion of molten metal and various ejecta from the impact before the plasma can even do its job. The beauty of the alloy in question being the fact that it has a high tolerance for heat and can quite easily dissipate it upon impact, in which case a Marine has the opportunity to uncouple and remove his body plating before it continues onwards to his exposed flesh (Which to plasma is nothing).

Steel laminate plating on the other hand has a remarkably lower heat based dissipation rate, and as seen in the Fall of Reach, steel structures provide little to no protection from plasma, with bolts often passing through with limited loss to the structural integrity of the bolt. In the case of Rex, his plating will provide paper thin protection to the slagging abilities of Covenant plasma.

4) Mechanical stress (as opposed to psychological stress) is expressed in units of force divided by area, and it is conceptualized as the load acting normal to a plane surface, divided by the area of that plane surface.

This cross-sectional area is often referred to as the “load-bearing area”. For example, if the load-bearing area is 5 m squared and the bar is supporting a 100,000 ton mass against the force of gravity, then the stress would be roughly 2E8 N/m squared, or 200 MPa (structural steel yields at ~260 MPa, in case you’re wondering).

The critical factor is the load-bearing area. The length of the bar doesn’t help at all, and you can verify this with an experiment. Get a length of good high-quality rope, tie one end to a solid post, and try to pull on the other end until it breaks. Does it matter how long the rope is? No. You could cut a 100 foot length and it would be no stronger than a 1 foot length. So the moral of this story is that the load-bearing capacity of our bar is affected by changes in width or height, but not by changes in length. If you scale the bar up by a factor of 100, then its volume will increase by a factor of 1 million but its load-bearing area will only increase by a factor of 10,000.

Which suggest that if the surface area of Rex is compromised in the least, structural integrity begins to decline rapidly. Whereas the Scarab already demonstrates the integrity of the available material (Sans absorbing MAC rounds) when it possesses a mass to surface area ratio far greater than that of Rex.

What does that suggest? The Scarab can survive any shock in its structural integrity far more easily than Rex can survive a minor equivalent of. This also alludes to the amount of surface area the Scarab presents to the ground, improving its stability over the bipedal Rex.

5) Actually the Phalanda F(AT-3 “Rain From Heaven”) Rapid guided anti-troop missiles used by Rex were once part of the Chinese AT-3 Anti-Tank missile family, until it became obsolete due to the mass availability of reactive armoured compounds to even relatively “primitive” Tank producing nations. It was then retrofitted with an IR/wireless remote system for Helicopter deployment, so it could utilized as an effective missile platform against stationary infantry positions such as gun nests or occupied garrisons.

Considering Rex is a black ops project, the use of Chinese missiles (At the Fox Archipelago laying south-west of Alaska in the Bering sea) is hardly that much of a surprise.

6) The Main cannon is not the only offensive measure, in fact it utilizes three Type-52 mounted weapons with a rate of fire equal to 300rpm, firing bolts capable of penetrating clean through the titanium hull of a Pelican Dropship.

The rear mounted turret on the other hand is a scaled down Plasma cannon, with a higher rate of fire, a semi-homing projection ability (It has a decent compensation speed of around 60Km/h) and a swivel mounted turret pod, allowing for total coverage of the entire platform. This lone weapon was sufficient as to keep the Forward unto Dawn (A a heavily armed Frigate with a meter thick Titanium-A battle plate) from landing.

7) Size means a lot when the single coup de grace delivering weak point (Hit the red spots for maximum damage!) can remain elevated out of weapons range, or a single Scarab leg is larger than the entirety of the opposition craft, which a single violent brush could quite easily immobilize (As seen in Ray Vs. Rex, Rex doesn’t respond well to being pushed over).

Also:
A) The Bismarck was voluntarily scuttled after several hours of continuous shelling from superior British Destroyers who outnumbered it greatly.
B) Luke had the mobility to reach end of the trench, comparatively Rex is limited by severe height restraints, like a Child reaching up at an opponent of superior height.
C) The circumstances resulting in the 1904 war is an irrelevant comparison when Japan fielded a larger fleet in the region and lost more ships than Russia in suicidal canal dashes.

A likely conjecture is that this version of the Scarab was intended to be a weapon. Its color changed to a shade of purple, like other Covenant war-ready vehicles and it was better-defended, having superior weapons. It has been speculated that Scarabs of Halo 2 were not weapons, but rather mining tools that were deployed as emergency combat relief by Regret upon finding humans on Earth. They could have been the mining Scarabs from Fall Of Reach. This is supported by the fact that Regret was looking for the device that opened the Portal to the Ark, and he needed digging machines to excavate it. Another likely explanation for the different Scarabs encountered throughout Halo is that the Scarabs depicted in Halo 2, the Graphic Novels and Halo wars were older models of Scarab tank, while the one encountered in Halo 3 was a newer model designed to replace the older versions.

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What I dislike most about your analysis is that it seems to work on the basis that the Scarab is completely inert and will not fire back, when we know that the Scarab will turn to face its opponent, will respond and maneuver with equal speed and will return fire with one of the five mounted weapons present on the platform, each one of which is nigh devastating and could be used to either disable the Radome, drown the cockpit in plasma and kill the lone pilot or reduce the entire structure to molten slag in a sustained volley.

The length of my post is only relative to the information I’m capable of offering per each post, which is certainly a lot more than the mini-bites of faux science you’ve been offering up.

1) Physics fail.

A) Velocity is of concern ONLY when the weapon system demands that the munitions are capable of striking the target in question. Plasma pistols are naturally used in close range combat, and are thus reserved for targets in the immediate vicinity. Cannons are reserved for long range engagements; their acceleration is dependent on the ability of the target to manoeuvre away during fire fights.

B) Plasma utilizes a reaction in which the energy level is so high that the electrons will not stay confined in their atomic energy shells, so they escape upon impact, with the intention being to release abundant levels of exothermic energy upon contact as the electromagnetic sheath dissipates. It is the internal energy of a hot plasmoid which damages the target, not the forward kinetic energy of any sort of ballistic.

C) Magnetic field lines are known to reorganize themselves in plasmas, converting magnetic to particle energy. Evidence harvested from the solar wind implies that the scale of the effect is larger than was thought, which is a convenient display of velocity since

The reconnection of magnetic fields that occurs in the ionized gases known as plasmas is a fascinating and enigmatic phenomenon. It transforms magnetic field configurations, converting energy stored in those fields into kinetic energy of the electrically charged particles that make up the plasma.

In fact heat is a function of the particles average velocity within their magnetic bonds (Magnitude average); we could move the particles until they get close to the speed of light before the plasma boundaries begin to collapse. At this velocity we begin to witness some interesting physical properties when the quantum states of two particles can be entangled. Until the free particles are observed, they exist in a superposition of two quantum states. If the particles are separated and one of them is observed to determine its quantum state then the quantum state of the second particle is determined automatically through superconductivity. Fortunately, if the plasma bolt reaches these velocities not much would be left in the immediate environment as a result.

A review was presented of the studies in the former Soviet Union and in the USA of the mutual interactions of plasmas at high speeds. There are reports from as early as the 1980s of large changes in the standoff distance ahead of a blunt body in ballistic tunnels, significantly reduced drag and modifications of travelling shocks in bounded weakly ionized gases. Energy addition to the flow results in an increase in the local sound speed that leads to expected modifications of the flow and changes to the pressure distribution around a plasmid due to the decrease in local Mach number. There have been a large number of experimental studies on the influence of a weakly ionized plasma on relatively low Mach number shocks and inherently also on the influence of the shock on the plasma.

D) Plasma (Even when shaped by electromagnetic pulses) reforms into a sphere at relativistic velocities. The issue with projecting plasma is NOT velocity as most mistake, but through maintaining the coherency of the electromagnetic sheath that contains the plasma over a distance. The further away from the source the weaker the bolt becomes not due to resistance, but due to a lack of resistance.

E) The structural stresses imposed upon the Plasma bolt during even 1 m/s acceleration are huge. Let us imagine that the bolt’s interior is 10% gaseous, and composed of hydrogen. This would give it a surface area of 10cm squared (A very conservative figure since it unleashes energy with a mass-reactive equivalent of around 10Mj upon impact). This composite would, of course, also be the bearing stress the bolt as it travels (And it’s more than 300,000 times the yield stress of structural steel). How potent would bolts have to be? Let’s put it this way: if you took a jet engine of such nozzle pressure, and scaled it down to 1cm wide (Like a miniature version of the engine outlets on an F-15 Eagle), it would produce enough thrust to accelerate the 21 ton aircraft at roughly 330 million g’s!
When some simpleton looks at enormous sci-fi structures and concludes that anyone could generate them with enough raw materials, he is only betraying a pitiful lack of scientific knowledge, not to mention common sense. Have you ever seen the Tonka commercial where they shove a Tonka truck and real, full-size dump truck off a cliff? The Tonka truck bounces and clatters all the way down to the bottom, dented but intact. The full-size dump truck, on the other hand, crashes to the bottom as a twisted, barely recognizable pile of wreckage. The humorous subtext to the commercial was that Tonka trucks are tougher than the real thing, but the real story is as an object grows larger, its own mass becomes its worst enemy.

You can’t just “scale up” a design to make a bigger gun or a bigger bolt, even if you have the necessary raw materials. Bigger designs require entirely different engineering and construction methods, not to mention superior materials. Therefore stating the necessitation of an inverse law is fallacious where the scale of an electron soup is concerned.

2) So you’ve gone from saying that titanium is only slightly pitted by plasma (which was wrong) to saying that even as a composite armour, steel laminate is superior in dissipating heat to an alloy that has a higher heat threshold, against an exothermic chemical reaction that exists on a totally separate order of magnitude known to the 21st century (By my calculations the reaction would leak over 41,800,273 kelvins into the immediate environment)? Try and stop yourself from backpedalling so much.

Anyway, whilst conventional logic does state that given a sufficiently resistant material compound it should be possible to dissipate heat, what it fails to take into account is threshold. Every material has a mechanical threshold which has to be considered from an engineering perspective during construction. Armstech never had to take into consideration that their mobile missile platform would engage a target that could expose it to over 10,000 Kelvins of heat energy, thus they used steel laminate; a compound that has the ability to resist close quarters 21st century projectiles with some ease. The UNSC have been engaged in total war with an advanced alien empire for over two decades, the compounds they use are designed to resist the weapons presented by their alien counterparts; however they have yet to develop an armour that is not burnt away or simply evaporated on contact. Which of these two examples is more likely to have an effective counter-measure against Plasma? The 21st century engineer who is literally centuries away from conceiving plasma as a viable battlefield projectile, or the 26th century engineer who has over two decades worth of experience devising a resistive compound against a plasma wielding Empire and has thus far relied upon titanium, a “Space Age” transition metal with a greater threshold for heat resistance? It doesn’t take a genius to recognise that engineers have the capacity to understand the tolerance levels of such materials and when they are applicable.

Titanium-A Battle Plate uses Ceramic ossification to increase its resistance to heat. For example, ceramic titanium entering the atmosphere at 7.8 km/s (One hundred times the re-entry velocity of a Single Occupant Exoatmospheric Insertion Vehicle) would experience a peak shock layer temperature of 7800 K. This is often unexpected, since the kinetic energy increases with the square of the velocity, and can only occur because the specific heat of the gas increases greatly with temperature (Unlike the nearly constant specific heat assumed for solids under ordinary conditions). At typical re-entry temperatures, the air in the shock layer is both ionized and dissociated. This chemical dissociation necessitates various physical models to describe the shock layer’s thermal and chemical properties.

Yet despite its exoatmospheric properties, titanium-A and her known variants are vaporised *on contact* with Covenant plasma, their structures are not only severely warped, they simply cease to exist as their original structural states. Saying that steel laminate compounds are resistant to plasma is like saying that there’s no way the Death Star could blow up a small moon, when we’ve already observed it blowing up an entire planet. There’s a word in the scientific community for someone who refuses to acknowledge both the theory and observed proof, a zealot, to whom science may as well be nothing more than a religion used as a stranglehold on others.

All we’ve gathered thus far from this statement is that your knowledge of engineering and metallurgy has two major holes:

A) Mechanical limit: Iron is strong, why not use Iron for every metallic requirement? Who cares if it has shown a definite threshold to environmental factors that corrode or degrade its tensile strength?

B) Material dependence: The melting point of aluminium is 933K, therefore it can resist any amount of heat. Ever.

3) Good, then we know it’s an W84 warhead; thus the specifications are clearly available.

4) I’ve seen the video (in fact, I own the games), which still doesn’t change previous classifications.

5) That’s nothing, a prototype Super Scarab Assault platform can survive ten consecutive bursts from the Spirit of Fire.

6) Hardly, in fact it does nothing more than reinforce how simplistic your perception of narrative events are when judging the traits, abilities and individual values of a combatant. The fact that the greatest super-soldier of the 26th century needed the assistance of a space-borne military and a separatist alliance of the Covenant to even get as far as he did against the Scarabs does nothing for you, yet validates everything I’ve stated thus far.

Try not to get confused by conversely simplistic semantics.

7) Yes, because Rex has demonstrated itself to be amazingly flexible during combat. A large dish that is easily destroyed by direct energy weapons, no backup sensory systems, an exposed cockpit with no shielding and an armour plating that will last only several seconds against the lightest of Covenant weapons. Whilst the only weakness the Scarab can conveniently present is a shielded core that Rex would have to stand at her tippy-toes on a elevated platform to reach.

Judging from the Slave-I Vs. Enterprise debate it is clear you don’t understand the significance of such an uneven technological disparity.