# The new Star Wars films crap on 40 years of Galactic warfare doctrine **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 15, 2018, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-wars-films-crap-on-40-years-of-galactic-warfare-doctrine/808870 "2018-02-15T14:56:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![mlees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@mlees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mlees)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2018, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-wars-films-crap-on-40-years-of-galactic-warfare-doctrine/808870/41 "2018-02-16T15:33:56Z")
> [@Grestarian](#): > > But we don’t sit an analyze the science behind fairy tales. That would be like checking the mathematical accuracy of an Italian Opera – you’re wasting your time and missing the point. Some folks do. (Analyze fairy tales, that is.) I recall many nitpicks that King Arthur’s knights wouldn’t be wearing full plate armor in or around 600 to 800 A.D. Ditto the existence of trebuchet’s, and so on. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2018, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-wars-films-crap-on-40-years-of-galactic-warfare-doctrine/808870/42 "2018-02-16T17:40:36Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > Star Wars isn’t supposed to be “hard science”. They live in a universe where they’ve invented routine FTL travel, force fields, anti-gravity, friendly AI and all sorts of other things we would consider “magic”. And that’s fine. But like Lord of the Rings or any other fantast work, the magic has to be somewhat consistent. Otherwise the audience will ask why the wizard can’t just deus ex machina out of any difficult situation. Like if you can use The Force to pull a Star Destroyer out of orbit, why couldn’t Darth Vader just crush the Tantive IV from the bridge of his destroyer? Sure, but despite the notion that George Lucas constructed the _Star Wars_ mythos of whole cloth, there really isn’t any evidence for this and even within the original trilogy there are inconsistencies in powers and technology. There isn’t even all that much world-building done in the original trilogy; each film has basically four or five locations. (_Empire_ seems to have more because of all the time the _Falcon_ spends dicking around with their hyperdrive, but it really doensn’t go anywhere.) We basically see a couple of backwater worlds, a few Imperial bases and ships, the ‘Forest Moon of Endor’, Cloud City, and the _Millenium Falcon_ which is as much a character as it is a location. The thing that makes the _Star Wars_ universe seem so expansive are the paranthetical references to historical events and a larger world (the ‘Clone Wars’, the Imperial Senate, et cetera), and when the prequels and Extended Universe properties started filling this in, it became convoluted and inconsistent because there was never a really consistent base mythology or technology. Lucas, et al, were basically filling in wherever they needed to in order to make an entertaining story and flashy visuals. > [@Smapti](#): > > The Death Star is significantly larger than the Supremacy, and the second one even bigger so (160 km and 200 km diameter respectively). Even a capital ship may not have been able to destroy it by ramming. But from _Return of the Jedi_ it is apparent that the the Death Star is mostly a hollow shell with a reactor at the center. It would seem possible to punch through the shell and strike the reactor with successive attacks by small fighters or missiles equipped with hyperdrives. For that matter, they could disable the collumator dish that projects the beam and then destory the station at leisure, especially given how incompetent Imperial troops and TIE fighter pilots are. The introduction of an amazingly powerful and essentially unstoppable ship combat tactic is pretty much inconsistent with everything that has previously been presented, but that is hardly something new to this film. There are many inconsistencies in the _Star Wars_ films (why can Vader deflect blaster bolts with ease but he can’t stop a lightsaber blade with the same power? How did he not sense that Leia was is daughter with nascent but powerful Force capabilities? Why does Kenobi not recall owning an R2 droid?) that are never really addressed, notwithstanding edits to the original films and developments in the prequels that are wholly inconsistent with the characters (Han would never pass on an opportunity to shoot first, Mace Windu goes out like a bitch). > [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > There is a Star Wars “what if” comic where the rebellion has been defeated (but the main cast have survived) and Yoda comes out of hiding to take care of everything himself. The Imperial fleet is gathered around Coruscant and Yoda has Solo and friends fly him to the Death Star to be “captured”, where he mind-tricks Tarkin into use the DS to start blowing up Star Destroyers. When the Imperials finally manage to remotely switch off the turbolaser, Yoda causes the DS to be crashed directly into Coruscant. Bam, empire destroyed by one muppet using the force. Which would beg the question of how the Empire could arise at all if a little green muppet could essentially smush their space fleet with his mind. Limitations and flaws are important, not only to give a character challenge but to keep writers from just using ‘magic’ or ‘The Force’ to write their way out of any logical corner. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2018, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-wars-films-crap-on-40-years-of-galactic-warfare-doctrine/808870/43 "2018-02-16T20:22:46Z")
> [@SykoSkotty](#): > > So are you saying that since the culture has been around for thousands of years, they can’t develop anything new? Is there some limit to developing new technologies based on the age of a culture? To be totally fair, nothing about star wars tech makes any sense. Why doesn’t everyone who might have to deal with enemy force users carry grenade launchers or some other weapon that a lightsaber can’t deflect? (with acceleration sensitive fuses so the grenade blows early if an outside force tries to push it away, with the fuse arming after the grenade has traveled a minimum safe distance) Why didn’t they combine the circuit boards from C3-PO with the ones in R2D2 so that a single robot can speak human intelligible speech while performing repairs? Why haven’t they had an AI singularity, where robots making robots take over the galaxy in a matter of weeks? And so on. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2018, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-wars-films-crap-on-40-years-of-galactic-warfare-doctrine/808870/44 "2018-02-16T22:56:03Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > The Death Star is significantly larger than the Supremacy, and the second one even bigger so (160 km and 200 km diameter respectively). Even a capital ship may not have been able to destroy it by ramming. Just to put this in some kind of perspective, a 1 kg object going near the speed of light will have the kinetic energy of a small nuke. Something that’s larger than a super carrier (no idea how big a rebel cruiser is, but looks pretty big) going at near the speed of light hitting a ‘small moon’ going at orbital velocity is going to be pretty cosmic. I don’t see any way anyone on the death star survives, or even how the structure itself wouldn’t fly apart. Even if it doesn’t hit the magic conduit of death that goes right to the core. ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2018, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-wars-films-crap-on-40-years-of-galactic-warfare-doctrine/808870/45 "2018-02-16T23:09:59Z")
> [@XT](#): > > Just to put this in some kind of perspective, a 1 kg object going near the speed of light will have the kinetic energy of a small nuke. Something that’s larger than a super carrier (no idea how big a rebel cruiser is, but looks pretty big) going at near the speed of light hitting a ‘small moon’ going at orbital velocity is going to be pretty cosmic. I don’t see any way anyone on the death star survives, or even how the structure itself wouldn’t fly apart. Even if it doesn’t hit the magic conduit of death that goes right to the core. To be totally fair, maybe the ‘jump to lightspeed’ isn’t actually technically accurate. Most sci-fi stories that posit FTL travel have some ‘extra dimension’ you can go to, and only within that special dimension are you allowed to go lots faster than light. So it could be that the falcon emerging from hyperspace is only actually traveling at a few kilometers per second - aka just a bit over orbital velocity, as you do see them ascending away from the planet in A New Hope. It would be logical that upon emerging from hyperspace you’d be going around the same speed you entered at. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2018, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-wars-films-crap-on-40-years-of-galactic-warfare-doctrine/808870/46 "2018-02-16T23:35:07Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > To be totally fair, maybe the ‘jump to lightspeed’ isn’t actually technically accurate. Most sci-fi stories that posit FTL travel have some ‘extra dimension’ you can go to, and only within that special dimension are you allowed to go lots faster than light. So it could be that the falcon emerging from hyperspace is only actually traveling at a few kilometers per second - aka just a bit over orbital velocity, as you do see them ascending away from the planet in A New Hope. It would be logical that upon emerging from hyperspace you’d be going around the same speed you entered at. Maybe, though that would make the distended star field effect weird (not that this is what it would actually look like if you were approaching light speed, but it’s what I think some Hollywood special effects person THINKS it would look like). As has been noted, the star wars movies aren’t exactly scientifically rigorous. However, if you really could get such a large ship up to light speed and crash it into even something the size of Cerces (which I think is approximately the same size as the death star) then the KE released (I calculated it out as an inelastic collision and it was startling) would be astronomical (he says, tongue in cheek)… ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2018, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-wars-films-crap-on-40-years-of-galactic-warfare-doctrine/808870/47 "2018-02-17T01:14:43Z")
> [@XT](#): > > Maybe, though that would make the distended star field effect weird (not that this is what it would actually look like if you were approaching light speed, but it’s what I think some Hollywood special effects person THINKS it would look like). Yeah the real effect would look something like blue shifting as the stars you are headed towards get their light shifted blue. And they wouldn’t appear like lines - you still wouldn’t be going anywhere near fast enough for that. This does agree more with a jump to hyperspace, in that entering another dimension all sorts of odd visual oddities might happen. ---
**Author:** ![Capn\_Carl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/838e76/32.png) [@Capn\_Carl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capn_Carl)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2018, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-wars-films-crap-on-40-years-of-galactic-warfare-doctrine/808870/48 "2018-02-17T02:12:41Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > Why didn’t the British just sink the Bismarck by crashing another battleship into it? While the Bismarck was fully functional, they got 2 battleships as close as 7 miles from the Bismarck. One was sunk, the other damaged. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2018, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-wars-films-crap-on-40-years-of-galactic-warfare-doctrine/808870/49 "2018-02-17T02:15:09Z")
Again: You cannot calculate the energy of an object at or beyond light speed. The mathematics do not give an answer. If it is possible to do what Star Wars ships do, we have no information on what their energies would be. ---
**Author:** ![Capn\_Carl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/838e76/32.png) [@Capn\_Carl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capn_Carl)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2018, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-wars-films-crap-on-40-years-of-galactic-warfare-doctrine/808870/50 "2018-02-17T02:18:42Z")
“it’s what I think some Hollywood special effects person THINKS it would look like” I disagree. The special effects are meant to entertain. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-new-star-wars-films-crap-on-40-years-of-galactic-warfare-doctrine/808870.md?page=2)