Why didn’t the British just sink the Bismarck by crashing another battleship into it?
Because they weren’t fast enough to do so. Also, it would be kind of a waste. However, it also isn’t the same thing as what the OP is talking about wrt Star Wars. In the movies, ships in normal space can only go so fast, but a ship making the jump to lightspeed or hyperspace are shifting to another level of speed. There isn’t an analogy between that and a battleship trying to hit another since battleships can’t suddenly go to hypersonic speeds, say…nor could they change vector in a completely opposite direction without making a huge broad turn. If they could do those things then it might be viable (though a huge waste) to suddenly go from 30 knots, say, to 2000 and ram an enemy ship. Though what you’d probably do is get a small patrol boat and ram THAT into your battleship at 2000 knots instead.
Or you’d do it with an airplane, like the Japanese did. We call it a kamikaze attack.
The thing is, the Japanese didn’t do that right away. They didn’t do it at Pearl Harbor. They didn’t do it at the Coral Sea, or Midway, or Guadalcanal. They only started doing it in late 1944, after they had suffered multiple defeats, and they no longer had any realistic chance of winning the war. And there’s a reason for that. It’s a desperation move, something to be used when you have no other options available.
I figure that’s why we’ve never seen a hyperdrive attack done in Star Wars before. Nobody was ever that desperate.
I gotta think there are two levels of shields. After all, fighters penetrated shields of cruisers and even the original Deathstar to get in close. Fighters and shuttles were also able to move out through those shields without them having to be shut down. Just as fighters and escape pods are able to join up with the Ghost without it dropping its shields in the middle of battle.
Then there are the Ubershields, such as used to protect the second Deathstar during construction and the entire planet of Scarif. Those do not allow ships to come in.
Even wheny the entire Rebel Alliance was about to be annihilated by the Death Star?
The reason Rian Johnson put that scene in The Last Jedi was purely The Rule of Cool. Looking for deeper logic or consistency in the Star Wars universe is something of a fool’s errand. The original trilogy was purely space opera that essentially ignores physics and presents technology as essentilly blinky-light magic that allows for laser swords, faster-than-light spacers truckers, and sentient autonomous robots but manual piloting and human (or cloned) ground troops. ‘The Force’ is touted as being a power that could eclipse the destructiveness of the Death Star but the most anyone ever uses it for is to sky crane a crashed X-wing out of a swamp or mind-fuck some stormtroopers.
Stranger
Exactly. In one of the games that is supposedly canon, someone uses the force to pull one of those star destroyers out of orbit. That alone is a level of power so vast that it’s amazing that even a force user that is an order of magnitude less powerful wouldn’t be using to solve most of the issues that seem to crop up in the movies. Personally, I just suspend my disbelief in these movies and much more popcorn…
It’s been said, as far back as 1978, that Star Wars (and it’s sequels) should not be considered science fiction because, quite bluntly, there’s basically no science being demonstrated, discussed, analyzed, or explored. It’s really a Space Fairy-Tale* complete# with heroes, villains, one-on-one combat, rescuing the princess, and a smattering of love thrown in. The mode of transport changes from horse to X-wing, the forboding castle becomes a Death Star, etc.
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.
–G
*A fairy tale is basically just a subgenre of romantic (not Romance) fiction. The protagonist has a special ability or trait (or several) that makes him (her) the best choice for the challenge. The fun, as always, is in the details of the story rather than the overall plot or synopsis.
#There are other elements of myth and fairy tale involved as well – spiritual transformation, rites of passage, etc. – that aren’t typical of science fiction.
Only someone as strong with the force as Han could pull that maneuver, which makes it perfectly constant with everything we know about Star Wars. It’s just like Luke needing to turn off the computer to make his shot at the Death Star.
It could also exp;lain why Han could do the Kessel run in so few parsecs. While everyone else takes the long way around an immense debris field he flies right through the densest part.
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?
Luke also used the Force to…you know…blow up the Death Star.
By “doctrine” that’s kind of what I mean. It may not be “realistic”, but that’s how ships work in that universe.
A valid point. I suppose one could handwave that no one figured out you could do that until sometime after Rogue One and before Force Awakens.
And here’s a problem with Rogue One. Doesn’t seem like a very good shield design if the facility that generates the shield is located outside of the shield where it is vulnerable to being rammed by a star destroyer.
He just kind of did it the hard way. 
And, of course, if you could take a rebel fighter up to something close to the speed of light on the way to getting into hyperspace, that alone would have sufficient kinetic energy to probably at a minimum give the Death Star a really, really bad day. You wouldn’t even have to sacrifice a pilot, just put C3PO in the drivers seat and take the thing plaid (which is right after ludicrous speed, IIRC)…
We can’t assume anything about the energy of a ship in hyperspace. If we try to calculate the energy with physics we know, the answer isn’t “a lot”. It’s “no”. For hyperspace to be possible at all, it must be based on physics we know nothing of. The best assumption for the amount of energy a vessel has at lightspeed is that it has as much energy as was in the fuel that it consumed to go to lightspeed to begin with.
One thing you’re missing is that inept admirals bring the fleet out of hyperspace too close to the planet, it’s totally ept generals that lead planetary landings to take out the shield generators. Just sayin’
I don’t buy this “Star Wars doesn’t have to make sense” tripe.
You know who didn’t agree? George Lucas.
Love him or not, but Lucas spent a lot of time developing a consistent world. He may never had worried about the particulars of the Hyper Drive - but he made very sure that everything in the backstory and world design was there for a reason. There are scenes that could be cut and the story would remain intact, but everything in there was deliberately placed to put the audience in the Star Wars universe.
You know what elevates A New Hope above Michael-Bay-splosion-fests? The fact that everything makes sense in context. That was abandoned with the “sequel trilogy” in favor of the cinematic equivalent of jingling keys.
You know who else doesn’t agree? J. R. R. Tolkein. The Great Man of fantasy was pretty sharp-eyed on the topic of internal consistency, and had an immense amount to say about ensuring that stories made sense from start to finish.
It’s not that people enjoyed the movie which bothers me. It’s that people go to hilarious lengths to defend the worst elements of the movies. These are not even arguable points. There are numerous aspects of The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi. They break basic screenwriting rules for no purpose, riding hard on meaningless nostalgia and expensive special effects.
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.
So just ram the big honking bulls-eye which is conveniently the gun.
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.
The Force is strong in this one.
Let’s compare films. in Empire, Han had to use clever tricks to escape the pursuing star destroyers. Using the Falcon’s greater maneuverability to trick them into a near collision. Escaping into a dense asteroid field where the larger ships couldn’t follow. Landing on a blind spot on the superstructure and then drifting off with the rest of the garbage (not as clever as Boba Fett though).
In the new films, the solution to most tactical problems is “have Poe Dameron blow it up with his magic X-Wing”.
I think it’s reasonable to assume “a lot”. Simply because it involves moving heavy objects from point A to point B. What isn’t as clear to me are “the rules”, since a lot of the old cannon has changed.
Can a ship in hyperspace interact with an object in regular space while it’s in flight? Or does only the start and end point matter? Han seemed to imply that it does. Which would also explain why ships can’t just “jump” ahead of a ship they are chasing at sub-light speed.
I don’t know if the Interdictor cruisers are still canon, but does the existence of any gravity well pull a ship out of hyperspace? If so, Hans maneuver should be impossible.
Adding magic to any story is a bit dangerous because if you don’t have proper rules in place, there’s no limits to what your characters can do. Can Gandalf just vaporize armies? Can Yoda crush the Death Star like a giant orange? Can Poe Dameron single-handedly maneuver his X-wing around, blasting every turbo-laser turret until a star destroyer is completely defenseless?
They are.
One was destroyed by internal sabotage in the Rebels episode Stealth Strike, two were destroyed at the Battle of Attolon in the two part season 3 finale.
BTW, that’s a cool clip of it I linked there.