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The presence of Luminiferous Aether would explain how the Force is able to spread out across the universe between planets rather than just being grounded to locations where life exists.
No offense but considering they sound the same in person, in gravity, that's easy to see isn't the case even without the knowledge that ships somehow replicate the sounds outside in the cockpit
Because physics, or rather lack there of. George didn’t write a a sci-fi story, he wrote a space opera. So magical/fantastical ideas over realistic one. But its fine hah. Its star wars
This isn't really correct though? George Lucas didn't write a sci fi but he was just as thorough in explaining how things operated in his fantasy space opera as is done in sci fi of the time like Foundations and Dune.
I don't get the adversity to the science/sci-fi part of star wars. With all the tech and rules, Star Wars is more science fiction than fantasy, though fiction and fantasy are synonymous, so whatever. Without science, fantasy has no rules. In fact, though the Force is a "magic" system, it's not magic and therefore not fiction, but not fantasy.
Jacen Solo You have a fair point. But in relation to both those series, they were written as books with detailed explanations of their society/technological workings. While yes still space opera like star wars, if you take the detail and world building created by the authors vs what George released in the original trilogy, you can see where he leans on hard sci-fi vs space opera. All I remember (correct me if im wrong) was one line from han about why you gotta plan a hyperspace jump so you dont crash. The rest of the films in the original and prequel say nothing about space and its workings. Meanwhile dune dedicates an entire species and technology to moving through space and its relation and connection to the spice and the main conflict. While certainly dune is a space opera, its explanations and details lean it far more on the sci-fi than the opera in terms of space and flying tech, which is the focus of this video. Now the comparison of a movie to a book is vastly unfair and i get my argument is rather invalid. And if you take comics and books from SW (legends or canon) obviously you can find detailed answers. But my reasoning to my original post is only to say what did the respective authors/creators choose to explain and invest time into. And since space travel/combat wasnt something george cared to expand on, finding a more scientific answer is rather moot since george didn’t establish rules for it.
Helps explain Dooku's "solar sail" as well. It always made more sense that the tie fighters wings are radiators not solar panels. Powerful engines with tiny outputs are going to need to radiate a lot heat. Good place to put the aetheric rudders too, would go a long way to explaining their maneuverability.
If I had to put in lore for the lack of Rail Guns, you could easily make it something banned by a "Geneva Convention" of sorts. Lasers fizzle out after a certain range. Missiles can explode into mostly harmless bits. A hyper-sonic physical projectile will just soar across space forever until it hits *something*. Perhaps in the long history of the Republic, one or multiple devastating rail gun accidents happened (perhaps even hundreds of years after the shots was fired), and rules of engagement were set to prevent it from happening again. Some will ask, why would an evil faction like the Empire care about such rules, seeing as they are already willing to pop planets? Well the argument for the Death Star was always deterrence, and propaganda will tell you, it was supposed to end the war before it escalated. Rail guns wouldn't carry that "deterrence" threat, so general use of them would still be considered a political faux pas.
Actually in the old canon railguns and mass drivers used to be pretty common between around 15000-8000 BBY. The invention of particle shields (especially planetary shields) largely rendered them obsolete (as their ammo is relatively heavy and expensive, unlike a laser which can just brute force its way through a ray shield while still having power to spare most of the time), but prior to then, space warfare basically amounted to pummeling each other's planets into rubble with asteroids fired from giant mass drivers. They still show up as niche weapons by the time of the Clone Wars and beyond, but they aren't the primary weapon of space warfare anymore.
the thing about railguns hitting planets across the intergalactic void is just... so improbable. Even if it was being fired at lightspeed, it would take countless millenia, and the chances of hitting a planet in the same galaxy would be so small as to be negligible. Planets are absolutely miniscule compared to space. and even if it did hit a planet in the same galaxy the chance of hitting a developed one, and the chance of hitting one in a developed location ON the planet, is so incredibly small that even over hundreds of thousands of years of warfare I highly doubt it would ever happen even one time.
@@z3r0_35 to add onto this, its also much more efficient to have the same plasma running your ship's reactor and engines also charging your turbolasers and weapon systems.
@@lenkagamine4145 I have to quote Mass Effect here. "Once you fire this hunk of metal, it keeps going 'til it hits something. That can be a ship, or the planet behind that ship. It might go off into deep space and hit somebody else in 10,000 years! If you pull the trigger on this, you are ruining someones day! Somewhere and sometime! That is why you check your damn targets! That is why you wait 'til the computer gives you a damn firing solution. That is why, Serviceman Chung, we do not 'eyeball it'. This is a weapon of Mass Destruction! You are NOT a cowboy, shooting from the hip!" Yes the odds of any one projectile hitting something are minuscule, but as a dominant weapon on the battlefield, there will be tens of thousands fired in all directions.
I've always taken the Aetheric Rudder concept as being a form of inertia control. They've already established artificial gravity and inertial compensators, so the technology exists in their civilization to manipulate momentum and inertia. So I figure that starships use and extension of this technology, allowing them to redirect momentum as if the ships are flying through the atmosphere. This doesn't require any special properties in the fabric of space itself.
If you want to stop you could divide your momentum in two (foward and backward) and basically an algorithm could help you to steer and keep you from making an orbit like movement, that way allowing you to be in a fixed point in space, thats why if you stop your engines you would start getting pulled by a nearby gravity (star,planet,moon etc)
It’s all advanced alien technology far beyond our current primitive understanding. It’s like showing a caveman a twentieth century automobile, how would the caveman explain how it works?
Yep, reverse (and other directional) thrust would provide fighters the ability to turn the way they do. Essentially a technological improvement on existing engine and thrust vectoring technology we already have would work for all intents and purposes.
I would combine this with the following theory, which I will call "Etheric Controls." I think it would make sense if Star Wars ships had Etheric Controls that made the ships act like they are in an atmosphere whether there is one or not. It makes things easier on pilots in multiple ways, one of which is that they no longer have to learn two different styles of piloting for in atmosphere and out. Another is to keep speed within the pilot's reaction timing. If they always had to worry about turning thrusters on and off and counteracting vacuum momentum, things would be complicated. Consider if with the Battle of Scarif, for example, since it did take place both in and out of atmosphere of the planet, the pilots needed to mentally transition between atmospheric and vacuum piloting. Dangerous, and you need different maneuvers for each. This also implies that these controls could be disabled to perform skidding maneuvers or other space-enabled stuff.
I would also like to add on, in the Rogue Squadron books they make reference to the fact that the ships have gravity inside them, so the pilot still feels like they're flying in atmo. I believe they said it's so pilots don't get disoriented, but you can turn it off...soooo maybe it's the same thing?
You only need then a shit that does NOT conform to this nonsensical rule to zip past them at 40 thousand km/h , shoot lasers from 200 thousand km distance and also to turn around and shoot back even if going "forward"... You win the battle with Newtonian Physics better than Etheric Controls.
Yes, YES! This is it! This is the best explanation ever, which is also suitable for the vast majority of Sci-Fi universes! It is pretty logical and understandable, it does not violate the Laws of Physics much, it is perfect! I most certainly will use such idea in my world. If I don't forget it, that is...
@@outcast4087 "also suitable for the vast majority of Sci-Fi universes" Like what Sci-Fi universes??? I see a MINORITY of sci-fi books where such Hollywood nonsense is used. Commonwealth Saga, Expanse, Hyperion Cantos, Mote In God's Eye, Ringworld Series, The Forever War... etc, etc, etc... whenever there are SPACE BATTLES, they are fought in VACUUM over LONG DISTANCES, with Newtonian Physics and even Relativity Theory thrown in.
How is Chief wearing a totally different set of armor when he's been in cryo, adrift and MIA for years? Nanomachines. And how did the _Forward Unto Dawn_ triple in size and metamorphose into a completely different ship class? Nanomachi- _LIAR!_
@stockart whiteman the vast majority of games below 60 dollars are very bad indie games. If EA is even offering this at 40 and not 60. It is gonna be trash. Just like the majority of EA games.
Perhaps its more logical to assume that star fighters in Star Wars are designed with technology that allows them to mimic the feel of "in atmospheric" flight. The Aeartheric Rudder is most likely a component of said system, and is utilized when needed based on a giving situation. Far easier explanation than a Star Wars version of "Dark Matter" to explain similarities in flight profile.
Alternatively, an aetheric rudder could be acting on energies produced by quantum fluctuations in the fabric of space-time in order to steer itself through space.
I like how people say that The Expanse is realistic despite the fact that it gets biology very wrong and thinks spinning an asteroid is a plausible way of creating artificial gravity when in reality, it would blow itself apart. Also, the only way for a war between Earth and Mars fought with giant spaceships can plausibly happen is if both planets were fledgling Kardashev 2 civilizations, with millions of artificial habitats around the orbits of both planets, which they most certainly aren't. Until then, they should be launching missiles at each other using satellites. Other than that, it's a good show.
there is a real-world reason to bank, even in realistic space flight: dealing with g-forces. Aircraft since WWI have preferred to roll and then pitch up as the human body deals better with the positive g-forces imparted by such a maneuver than just pitching down. Pitching down induced negative g's, which both lift the pilot out of the seat making controlling the aircraft harder but also rush blood to the brain to a dangerous level. Positive g's cause by pitching up push the pilot into the seat and cause blood to pool into the legs, not great but breathing and clenching techniques taught to pilots as well as g-suits designed to counter this make it far preferable to negative g's. Lateral g's by just yawing left or right don't really happen in aircraft because of the aerodynamics involved, but in a spacecraft they'd throw you side-to-side like a rollercoaster, not the best situation for control either. So that preference to roll and then pitch up in Star Wars is at least realistic, but in reality they'd be more of a pivot on the axis and then a hard burn in direction they're pointed rather than the graceful arc we're shown.
Every fighter (at least the ones used by sensible pilots) have inertial compensators. Basically, the ship has sensors of movement of the fighter and compensates for it, so that a pilot does not suffer exactly those problems. You can either keep in complete 0 or you can reduce the effectivity a little so that you can keep ,,in touch´´ with your fighter. This of course isnt perfect, and if you make a very sharp turn or break, you will feel the effects of inertia, but it protects your body from the exact problem. That is EU, so IDK how much of that is kept in canon. But I think it makes sense, since at the speeds in which pilots do fly, it would take some very delicate handling to stay conscious.
thats only partial reason for it: the spitfire and hurricane, for excample, were simply unable to pitch down without stalling the engine since they did not account for the g-forces that act on the fuel when pitching straight down. english pilots learned first thing to never simply pitch down, but to roll over and "pitch up". the german planes did not have this problem, which they used to their advantage. latter fighter planes did not have this HUGE deficit, but if you flew for some time its hard to loose that instinct of rolling and then pitching, which is a real detriment in dogfighting.
@@larrytinsley4247 G's are just a measure of acceleration, with 1g being 9.8 m/s^2. 2g is double that, 3g is triple, etc. Standing at Earth sealevel you experience about 1g (it's complicated) and every move you make involves some acceleration your body has to deal with.
I think shows like the Expanse and Battlestar sow that xero G combat in space can be really cool to. But Starwars is Space Fantasy so do we really care that much?
@@PepRock01 yep. I would love to see Babylon 5 get the hd touch like og star trek and next Gen too. My brothers and I love Babylon 5 but the cg has not aged well but I would just settle for a blueray remaster of the show.
BSG is a lot like Star Wars as far as physics goes. It's a tad more realistic (when it suits the plot) , but other than that, the Colonial Vipers fly much the same as the X-Wings do. The Expanse is the best so far, as far as realism goes, but at the end of the day, none of these shows/movies are that realistic, which is fine since it's more about the story than the physics involved.
@@PepRock01 The Last Starfighter... realistic physics... What? I love that movie but realistic it was certainly not! The Gunstar was basically a space superiority gunship, which was pretty unique too.
Etheric rudder: I always assumed this was essentially a type of repulsor drive, tuned to "push" off of the frame of space itself, or the ether if you want. A repulsor drive tuned like this would be at it's most effective if the drives are placed far from center of mass, like reaction control thrusters on real spaceships. Conversely, these repulsors are less powerful for "lifting" than those that can push off of masses around them, as a typical repulsor would when generating lift, so a spacecraft would generally have both as separate systems. That's my take on it, anyway. As for the constant thrust thing: If a ship is operating it's etheric rudder systems, the general effect of the etheric rudder in idle, is to generate a drag-like effect, slowing a ship and loose debris around it to a relative standstill. As such, ships need to apply at least a small amount of thrust to overcome this drag force. This ultimately works out more fuel efficient than having to use large engines on all axes to generate large changes in velocity. Larger vessels with longer flight times might coast when very far from worlds, disabling the etheric rudder, and shutting down the engines, but this would be during relatively boring spans of time, during which little plot development is happening, so it is never seen on film.
From what I've seen in other games such as elite dangerous some ships bank in space is because their thruster setup (more pointing up or down than left or right) makes it easier for them to tilt and roll instead of yaw.
You can design ships to perform that way in Kerbal Space Program It's not desirable from an engineering perspective, but there's reasons why you'd do it, too As an example from the Elite verse, the flattish wedge shape of the Cobra Mk III could be to maximize cargo bay access, if it's long and flat in the rear half of the ship it'll allow for more surface area for hatches, faster load in/out The Anaconda has a much more balanced shape for yaw vs pitch, but the larger and presumably more spherical cargo space would be terrible for access by comparison
I'd like to further this discussion. The ships in the elite universe intentionally fire more thrusters than needed to simply turn the ship, in order to simulate atmospheric flight. As im sure you know, you can disable that effect and experience flight without that added stability. So, in addition to the shape of the ship and the location/amount of thrusters, the ship does as i mentioned above. All of which combined makes for flight that resembles that of a jet in atmosphere.
@@zacharym7000 I had always wondered why the Cobra was better at rolling than yawing in spite of its shape I like the explanation It's pretty much the headcanon I had for why SW fighter act like planes
@@zacharym7000 this exactly! and if star wars ships would show some visible retro thrusters on their ships there wouldnt be any problem... sadly they seem to not have (visible) retros but here is the funny thing- if they get hit they spin like they would in a vacuum so there has to be stabilzers/assists like in elite and that in return makes the ether theory bullshit anyway... the reason why stupid theories like that ether nonsense exist is that you never see any retros...
The presence of Luminiferous Aether would explain how the Force is able to spread out across the universe between planets rather than just being grounded to locations where life exists.
@@Youcancallmeishmaell No, the Force is an energy field produced by all living things. There is a Cosmic Force that has a measure of self awareness that emerged out of this combined energy, but it's not some transcendent existence.
@@TechnoMinarchist That is a transcendent spiritual power! You have look at it from the point of view of the myths and stories that inspired it the concept of the Force.
@@TechnoMinarchist I once read a fanfiction where a man from earth is randomly transported to the Star Wars universe and essentially becomes another personality of the Living Force. He's more mischievous while she is passive and doesn't like to meddle with living beings. That's right, that writer made the Living Force a waifu. 👌
I've been think about this and I don't like the idea of eatheric rudder my theory has something to do with how all ships have a delay on the artificial gravity which causes this drag
@Jotaro Kujo But why would they ever do that if space in the Star Wars galaxy behaved as it does in ours? That seems like going through alot of trouble for something very unnecessary when pilots could take advantage of the properties of real space i.e. lack of drag forces such as atmosphere and gravity wells. Not to mention that such a technology would generate massive amounts of waste heat that's like painting a giant target on your ship saying "here shoot me I'm a very visible target!".
But why would they use a technology that's objectively worse than simply using much more practical ship designs for actual space travel if space really did behave like it does in our galaxy? Why use something that makes you slow relative to what near unlimited speeds you could achieve with no drag forces such as atmosphere and gravity wells? Why use a technology that's overly complicated for no real gain when building a ship that took advantage of the near friction free vacuum of space would be much cheaper, practical and would utterly dominate the slower craft that laboriously try to fly in space as if the were shakey aircraft of yore with unnecessary technology? Honestly the eathric explanation makes so much sense that it explains alot of the wierd and seemingly nonsensical things about space in the SW galaxy compared to our own.
What would have happened if UNSC had defeated he covenant forces and captured the forerunner fleet in Halo Wars instead of destroying the ships?. #askeck
The covvies would get clapped I'd say. Forerunner ships are probably exponentially more advanced compared to anything else in halo. Given how the covenant basically fell apart from the inside, it'll prolly happen like that again. If thats not the case immediately, then the unsc could continue with operation Red Flag, deploying spartans from the forerunner ships behind enemy lines to kill the prophets and destabilize the covenant.
“The Covvies think the Halos will help them meet their gods. The way I see it, if they want to meet God, then it is our duty to help them along!” -A Spartan-II, right before a not-Infinity takes out a CCS-cruiser trying to orbit Earth/Reach.
Considering humans would have access to the Forerunner technology because they are the inheritors of the Mantle I think it would end the war pretty quick. We saw how a single key ship, which isn't even a warship but a life seeding vessel, was able to tank the entirety of the fleet on earth when they were able to dig up the ark
@@droneant7602 The story would be less interesting because humans could have the war done and dusted with the year, complete with subjugating, annihilating, or securing the surrender of the various remaining factions of the Covenant. There would be much less subject matter to make a story with. Sort of how almost every spy story set after the Cold War is about a rogue element of the US's security apparatus causing a problem that has to be addressed.
Another possible explanation for the handling (though I myself have always gone with the explanation that space in star wars is just different) is that the artificial gravity generated in pretty much every ship somehow effects piloting - even moreso in large space battles where there are dozens to hundreds of individual small fighters and capital ships all generating their own gravitational field. Mind you, I know barely anything about science so I have no idea *what* effect that would have but it could definitely be cause for things to act a little off from how we know them.
There is a way to sort-of tie this luminiferous aether into known physics, if one assumes that this aether is the same substance known to us as "dark matter", an undetectable source of mass that might in fact account for most of the mass in our universe, but can only be detected because of its effects on its surroundings. Perhaps in the Star Wars galaxy the dark matter present is dense enough to function like a proper medium, exerting drag on objects passing through it and dispersing energy, explaining the short range of directed energy weapons; of course the REAL reasons that energy weapons are the main weapons on spacecraft in-universe is that their "ammo" is dirt cheap and extremely light (and the weapons themselves have few, if any, moving parts, making maintenance a cinch), allowing for a theoretically greater efficiency except against hardened, ray shielded, or fast-moving targets, against which projectiles, especially guided ones, might be more effective. Now that begs the question of why it doesn't affect the movement of massive celestial bodies...well...maybe the gravity wells of the objects themselves play a part in that; I'd also say it'd explain why ships couldn't enter hyperspace too close to a large mass, but then Rogue One and The Rise of Skywalker happened and threw one of the oldest in-universe restrictions on FTL travel (from all the way back in A New Hope) out the window because...Disney doesn't give a fuck I guess?
With Rogue one I kinda justify that as with the very mass of the planet was shifting due to the death star’s blast there was a brief hole in the planet’s grav well that they were able to jump through. The whole hyperspace skipping in TROS was silly but that could be explained (if it ever gets any) by saying that the firing of starkiller base, which I believe was seen across the galaxy due to it tearing a hole in hyperspace if I recall right, damaged the barrier between realspace and hyperspace making such a manoeuvre possible but near suicidally dangerous and can only be done by small ships and cannot be plotted making each jump an insane risk.
darman12able ...Or it could just be that Disney doesn’t give a fuck. Granted, it was never stated in the MOVIES exactly why that was other than implying it was just really unsafe, but subsequent supplementary material went on to say it was impossible due to how the setting’s physics work (iirc it was whoever came up with Interdictor cruisers that thought it up, probably Timothy Zahn)...which got scrapped when Disney hit their reset button on everything.
It kinda makes no sense tbh, if dark matter density were to be more dense, space would immediately collapse into a black holes “gravitational”. Dark matter doesn’t create friction no matter how dense it will be, even if you were to say gravity would drag them slower, however the attraction is equal all around. It’s better to leave Star Wars as it is, it breaks the laws of physics therefore it’s meaningless to impose any real physical law in their universe. I mean, have fun with Star Wars it’s a fictional world meant to be enjoyed 😆
I always went with the notion that the sensors picking up nearby ships, explosions, weapons fire and so on would pass that information to an audio system to play the appropriate sound in the cockpit to enhance situational awareness for the pilot. We are used to using audio cues to tell us what is going on around us. It makes sense to make use of that here.
Sound in space: Movies are an audiovisual experience and Star Wars is SPECTACLE! If you cut one element out, you hobble the spectacle. IOW There is sound in space, cause it sounds cool. Why do they fly around like cool WW2 film dogfights?: That question answers itself.
I once had a space combat game that used inertia. Ring Runner. Though, it had some limitations for balance reasons, you actually stayed moving. Also, you needed to compensate for sharp turns, and could fly backward, and shoot.
Theory: the luminiferous Aether causes friction to any object moving above a crawl but moving slower than Lightspeed, so if they made their shields out of this material it would allow objects moving slowly enough to pass through it but in large enough quantities (say, enough to make a slightly blueish hue?) it would form a near physical barrier against objects moving at high to sublight speed, but would also allow objects to drift slightly at relatively low speeds enabling planetary orbits and asteroid belts to still exist Edit: essentially, the Star Wars galaxy is filled with a very very small amount of near invisible liquid or gas that only affects objects moving at high speeds, thus allowing both attributes of a vacuum such as weightlessness while also allowing aerobatic piloting. This would make kinetic projectiles nearly useless as it would be like firing bullets underwater, while plasma (an energized gas) and torpedoes (slow moving but with constant thrust) would be virtually unaffected. Also if they hyper condensed this material it would create a physical barrier against objects moving at high enough speeds.
The problem with this is that an Aether is a field that only massless objects propagate into. Things like space stations, starships, planets, stars don’t react with it, it is inert. It wouldn’t cause friction with any object
Listening to your Ask Eck answer makes me realize how much I want to see a story following a diehard imperial who grew up seeing his homeworld Coruscant getting trashed by stray turbolaser fire & falling ship debris, and using that as justification for why he believes in a highly militarized society (similar to how Mandalorian’s flashback scenes revealed both the protagonist’s distrust of droids, while giving us some live-action battledroid action at the same time). It'd be a great way to 1) revisit an iconic star wars scene, 2) show that scene from a civilian’s perspective, 3) give us a compelling backstory for an imperial character, and 4) give us some more clone wars action.
This is actually a very satisfying awnser, many serious scientists used to believe in a medium which light travels through. Even though it is disproven for us it could exist in another universe so its pretty cool to use it to explain how star wars works
First I really like this theory. And I want to add, that the Force is a galaxy wide energy field, so maybe is the force the aether? But I remember a scene from the canon book lord of the sith, that actually describes Newtonish Physics. In the beginning Dart Vader enter a ship, by approaching it in free fall. So real world physics is part of the canon.
This is actually a really good find that will help explain a lot of things going on in the Star Wars universe that does not make sense from a normal world perspective. Johan.
I guess this "aether" would explain The Last Jedi's apparently bad physics then. Those Resistance ships that lose velocity when they ran out of fuel bugged the crap out of me when I saw it.
But what about the way the turbo laser barrage arced through space to "land" on the Resistance's bubble shields...which would have been *WHOLLY* ineffective that far out from the ship? That entire film was utter nonsense!
@@iratepirate648 It really was. But I can't tell if Rian's stupid is worse than JJ's stupid in Ep.9.... almost as if they were competing for who could out-stupid the other
Okay, here's an explanation for why it's not bad physics even if space in Star Wars were a vacuum and why you shouldn't be bugged about it. Assuming (incorrectly) that Star Wars space is the same as our space. This would mean there isn't any friction acting on any ship meaning that a ship firing its engines will not be slowed down by a medium. This means that every ship we see in TLJ's chase is constantly accelerating because they are constantly firing their engines. However, when a ship runs out of fuel, it will stop accelerating and continue to move with a constant velocity. All the other ships continue to accelerate however, meaning that the ship that just lost its engined will APPEAR to lose velocity. They continue moving at the same speed while all the other ships accelerate away from it, giving the illusion of a halted movement.
Exhonor what you said is true, except in TLJ they showed the ships tilting and drifting relatively backward when they ran out of fuel, almost as if they were falling out of the sky. They should have just continued in a straight line.
@@giglefreakz - Unfortunately, you've fallen into the theoretical vs real world trap because, no matter how long ships fire their engines for, eventually they will reach a terminal velocity (still well below the speed of light) and it will require that continuous input from the engines just to maintain that velocity. Secondly, *IF* a group of ships are all travelling at the same velocity and 1 runs out of fuel, it WILL slow down (slightly) eventually, but it *won't* suddenly start tumbling in space and "fall" away. It'll just keep drifting in its current direction. Where the hell is it even falling too? They're in frickin *SPACE...*there is no down!!! Do yourself a favour. Have a little self respect and *DON'T* make excuses for a talentless hack who doesn't deserve your loyalty because you mean less than nothing to him. He proved that with his "fanboy tears" and "manbaby" shit. If he got joy from trolling the fans and sticking it to us, imagine how much funnier he finds it, that someone like you is actually defending him and the movie in a franchise that he actually admitted he cares nothing about.
One theory I always enjoyed falling back on for any media using 'plane' physics in space is the existence of inertial dampeners which allow pilots and personnel to survive acceleration to and from light speed as well as other combat maneuvers - those same dampeners could affect the physics of the spacecraft such that it behaved more like an atmospheric aircraft - further it explains why droid ships were capable of more severe maneuvers in dogfights as inertial dampers could've been weaker (or wholly unnecessary save for the minimum it took to keep the ship from flying apart) as there was no fragile/squishy pilot inside
Considering the term is inertial _dampener,_ not inertial canceller, I'd imagine that's probably it: You can only do so much to counter the inertia caused by such extreme speeds, meaning you have to maneuver with what you've got. Luckily (though likely intentionally) what pilots typically get is just about the upper limit of acceleration beings can usually withstand without blacking out.
The idea of a Universe that follows the rules of classical physic is so cool, and also it gives the possibility to create and original universe without the nowadays overused relativistic/quantum fantasy crap of most contemporary sci-fi films.
Easily the best explanation for Star Wars space battle shenanigans I've ever heard. Obviously the real world reason is that it "looks cool" (as you said). The trick to enjoying it is to turn off your brain and not think about it. For me, the newer movies just made it so hard to do that with blatant inconsistencies or idiotic tactics that no serious commander would use.
See I don't think you always have to turn off your brain to enjoy a space battle in the Star Wars films, plus you said it yourself the recent movie trilogy's idiotic and inconsistent ideas about space travel and combat kinda shows you can't just turn off your brain, not to the inconsistencies nor to the ignoring of established norms of space in the Star Wars galaxy. I like the eatheric idea because it explains nearly everything about how Star Wars physics works the way it does in space and in no way in my opinion takes away from the setting. Infact it honestly adds to the coolness factor that I'm viewing a universe that's not just different from my own in terms of cultures and species and politics while still being comprehensible and relatable at times but also has its own unique metaphysics and properties that underpin its reality.
No, they wouldn't. Aircraft bank because they have to maintain fluid flow over their lifting surfaces. In space, there's no fluid and no lift. Cut main thrusters, reorient to new vector using whatever attitude control system the craft has, reignite thrusters.
The turning of the ship would cause centripetal forces forces to be applied to the body, and as it is acceleration, it is measured in Gs. (1G = 9.8m/s squared) If you turn to the left without banking beforehand, you experience lateral forces. 4Gs worth of lateral forces is painful and disorienting to the point that it would hinder your flying ability. If you bank beforehand and then pull up, you are experiencing vertical forces, and the body can easily handle a sustained 5Gs of force before it becomes an issue. TL;DR: Lateral forces are more dangerous to the pilot than vertical forces are, which is why fighters (even in space) should bank.
@@jsn1252 Cutting thrusters to then change vector would still have major g-force impacts on the body. In order to change vector of the ship you'd need to use other thrusters located on different parts of the ship, and if all you did was cut the rear thrusters and then engaged your vector thrusters, not only are you now exerting g-forces via changing vector, you're also exerting additional g-forces by doing so whilst the ship is still going in its original direction, and then you'd be adding even more g-forces by engaging thrusters again to move along the new vector, first in deceleration and then in acceleration. You'd literally be tearing your body in multiple directions at once with huge amounts of g-forces going in different directions. All of this would likely kill anyone onboard unless it was done very slowly over several miniutes to hours (depending on how fast you're already going) and even then you'd first have to deccelerate first before engaging vector thrusters to rotate the ship, which might take hours unless you want to kill everyone.
The constant need to run engines on starships highlights that there is some kind of resistance within that galaxy. What people need to realise is how variable the ambient composition can be even within a galaxy let alone from one galaxy to the next. For example, at the edge of our system is the Kuiper Belt. A region which scientists describe as "thick" with ambient gases, pebbles, ice and other materials which are drawn by the gravity well of our system but move very slowly due to their low mass. Anything travelling through the belt wouldn't be able to just rely on momentum from an in-system burn. As for starfighters banking, this can easily be explained by G-forces. Ships in Star Wars are equipped with artificial gravity so pilots will experience the twists and turns as if in atmosphere. Turning left or right without banking is possible in space but would cause dizziness, this is mitigated by banking so that the g-forces change from horizontal to vertical. However, too much vertical force will cause someone to black out. So there is a happy medium to reach.
"Thick", within the solar system, is relative. There's more free material out in the Kuiper Belt (primarily because most of the mass within the planetary zone that isn't in the Sun is in the planets themselves and their moons), but there's still not enough out there to provide any significant drag. Hitting the boundary of the heliosphere has a much more significant effect (the density of the interstellar medium is thicker) but it's still pretty thin. "Interstellar medium resistance" isn't really something that people see as a complication to interstellar flight. Getting a high enough density of gas within a system to represent significant drag to ships would probably require densities compared to what you'd find in a protoplanetary disc, and that's not a stable situation (that sort of drag tends to also cause planets to migrate inwards, while the gas tends to be either hoovered up by the planets or pushed out by the stellar wind). Star Wars having different physics is, honestly, a more plausible explanation. Something like the luminous aether could provide a universal (or at least semi-universal) resting frame, and from there one could imagine physics where objects need a constant force to keep them moving relative to the luminous aether where they are. There's still need to be some explanation as to how planetary orbits can remain stable under these physics, though. Maybe the aether is itself influenced by gravity and tends to swirl around gravitational bodies, so that objects in stable orbits ARE stationary with respect to the aether around them (a concept which has been used to try to maintain luminous aether theory despite the Michelson-Morley null result). This would probably have consequences for orbital dynamics, however - some orbits that would be reasonably stable in our universe might not be in this hypothetical universe.
@@Draxynnic I wasn't trying to suggest that the reason for these wonky physics was something like the belt, I just used it as an illustration that the contents of space is highly variable even in the local region so another galaxy entirely can be vastly different. Aether is one possibility but there can be any number of known and unknown substances which can cause drag in space. I don't know if aether explains away why you can hear noises in Star Wars space but if there were gases in that "vacuum" then it would solve that problem. Further to that, Star Wars has elements that simply don't exist in our galaxy so we can't even use known gases or chemistry to guesstimate how the hull of a ship would react in an environment filled with exotic gases.
Why would they do that though? Why does a pilot on a freakin spacecraft need to feel like they're in an atmosphere when that's just silly and unnecessary? Why not use that technology that can manipulate freakin gravity or dampening inertia forces to make any G-force problems none issues which would allow pilots to pull of some thruster cutting, near omni-directional craft manoeuvring that could dominate the ships that try to move like some antiquated aircraft from WW2 for some odd, nonsensical reason?
@@navilluscire2567 Because there's plenty of times when a dogfight transitions from space to atmosphere and vice versa. You can't DO all those weird and janky stops and redirects in atmosphere, air resistance won't let you. That means you either a) learn to fly two different ways (which is annoying and also leads to issues like "what if you forget to switch flight styles") or b) learn one method that's consistent for both (if sub-optimal for one) The Star Wars universe decided to go with the latter, likely because a LOT of trips through space in the Star Wars universe start and end in ground-based spaceports, with very little time in the vacuum of space. This means the atmosphere-to-vacuum ratio of mediums traveled is HEAVILY skewed towards atmosphere, making atmospheric flight techniques more essential. Such techniques would also be helpful when traveling across a planet, since then you can apply your knowledge of piloting spacecraft to aircraft, and vice versa. Luke being able to fly X-Wings as well as he does could EASILY be at least partially explained by this; similar control schemes and parental talent make up the rest.
@@red5t653 From what I've seen the vast majority of starfighter battles happen in SPACE, so I don't see how flying in atmosphere like an antiquated WW2 aircraft is all that 'essential'. Even if they'd have to learn how to pilot such craft of theirs in two completely different ways from banking in atmosphere to near omni-directional maneuvering then I say tough beans. These are trained pilots many of whom are sopposed to be highly disciplined military personnel it's either suck it up and learn to pilot two different ways, die or don't even bother becoming a combat pilot in the Star Wars universe. If space in the Star Wars universe really does behave like it does in our universe/galaxy then for civilizations in the SW galaxy it's not like they can't manipulate gravity itself anyway and have inertia dampening technology that's practically magic with technobable so if that's the case I see no reason why you'd want pilots to maneuver as if they were piloting earthlike atmospheric craft. Its immensely important of having vehicles in the vaccum space that can move in an almost omni-directional manner via thrusters cutting off and igniting in ways of halting their craft and redirecting them at practically never ending/continuous velocity in the near friction free medium of SPACE. Such realistic spaceships would dominate any "star vessel" that was trying to maneuver like an airplane in space, something that's completely unnecessary when again you have inertia dampening technology that makes G-forces irrelevant.
It is possible that ships (especially small fighters like X-wings) are using a form of thrust vectoring. Thrust vectoring is when you point the engine nozzle in a direction to angle the thrust to turn more efficiently. We actually already have this in our universe on the F-22 Raptor fighter jets. F-22s can actually use thrust vectoring to turn without using traditional flaps and rudders. They cant turn very sharply using thrust vectoring only, but in space with no aerodynamic drag, they could theoretically turn much easier. So thrust vectoring on an X-wing, for example, would make sense as it wouldn't require any sort of medium to push against like a rudder would, it would also allow for the banking and turning we see in the films. I think this makes much more sense than some mythical substance that still allows for space to be a vacuum.
The Star Wars Opening Crawl isn't addressing the audience, it's addressing the reader of the Journal of the Whills. This was explained by Lucas long long ago.
Great video and I'm glad you didn't show that clip of Leia "floating" back into the ship. That scene was so bonkers. Tommy Lee Jones from *The Fugitive* would have had the best response. "She just did a Peter Pan right back into the ship!"
"once you are moving in a vacuum there is nothing that will slow you down" This needs clarification. The vacuum of space and the presence of gravity are different things. We can build vacuum chambers on earth and objects inside are still influenced by gravity. Same applies to objects thrown on the moon, which has effectively no atmosphere. So the statement about not needing to maintain a thrust, to maintain certain motion paths, only applies when outside of the gravity well of local body.
I believe he's referencing drag here, not gravity. If you cut your engines in an airplane, gravity doesn't slow you down - the drag of your plane against the air does.
You don’t understand physics here, gravity affects you yes. But at certain speeds your centrifugal force will complete balanced with gravitational attractions. With high enough velocities, the balance is broken, therefore your orbit will not exist and fly off into infinity
@@gordonchiew7341 Meh, most of the other readers understood I was referring to needing thrust to attain "certain" non-orbital motion paths. You are correct however that there are many bounded orbit paths subject only to matching the centrifugal force. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand%27s_theorem ). However, since in your other post you wanted to be sassy about physics here you should read up on Orbital Decay Mechanisms: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_decay Orbital mechanics is more complex than your "centrifugal force will complete balanced with gravitational attractions" description. Sincerely, a professor of physics.
I remember that in some Clone Wars episode, Plo Koon was able to brwath in space because he is able to breath CO2 or something like this. Even thou that wouldnt make any sense given that space should be a vacuum, meaning there would be no CO2 for him to breath.
It's truly amazing. According to the Empire of dreams DVD that came out about the making of Star Wars, the people at industrial light & magic used actual footage from world war 2 dogfights to frame the dogfights scene in Star Wars. They had no consideration for Newtonian physics but it was our imaginations that made it feel real. What was space combat?, how do you space combat?, when New Hope came out no one knew how to answer these questions. I don't think outside of a select group of people no one understood how real world physics applied in a zero-g 'atmosphere'. As we (still) don't have any really world examples. It's been more than 40 years since a New Hope was released in theaters. Things changed and society as a whole understands physics better. So we must bridge the gap between what we know now and what we see on the TV computer or film. The dreamers, the people who created the ideas and backgrounds based in the lore of Star Wars, broke ground on the idea of new physics based on New technologies and elements that don't or can't exist under our correct level of understanding. Who knows we could find an unknown or brand new element not found on the periodic table of elements that could vault us into something new... Either way the twelve-year-old at first saw a new hope and the 40 year old adult that I am now both agree maybe it's possible one day, And it's still cool.
Having read Bob Lazar’s explanation of flying saucer 🛸 technology he has allegedly examined, repulsorlifts do exactly the same thing, by creating their own gravitic field, cancelling out gravity in an atmosphere. Now, because Star Wars vehicles do not encapsulate their occupants inside a gravitic field, but instead have arrays of them built into the ship’s hull, the occupants are exposed to G forces in an atmosphere, although inertial dampeners are used to some degree, for hyperspace jumps and similar jolts and fluctuations. So, it is possible the role repulsorlifts play in manoeuvering a vessel in atmosphere, is essentially the same in a vacuum, because gravitational and atmospheric forces are mostly irrelevant to repulsorlift coils that gain their anti-gravitic properties from harvested and processed dark matter. Apart from turbulence, wind and drag experienced in an atmosphere, the vehicle behaves the same way in either medium, because it’s movements are not relative to it’s environment. All of it’s thrust is projected from the rear, vectored or otherwise, the repulsors must also play a large part in steering a ship and finding it’s trajectory, because only rudimentary craft like escape pods have steering pulse thrusters .
Theory: Star Wars Galaxy is actually part of the Fluidic Space. Theory: Species 8472 may thus be part of that galaxy. Theory: Species 8472 may be related to the Yuuzhan Vong.
Presumably the SW galaxy just has more orbital decay as a result. But thats such a slow process that the timescale just drops from trillions of years to billions of years
Well, isn't our planet losing its momentum like every other planet there is on the universe. Anyway, this theory doesn't hold water as only weightless stuff like light would be able to interact with aether.
The aether might also explain why you can't (or rather have so much trouble) escaping the Star Wars Galaxy. There's a bunch of actual stuff blocking most parts of the Unknown Regions such as Black Holes and strange planets with gravity anomalies and things to do with the Force and what not keeping stuff out. But if the aether has something to do with how Hyperspace works it may be something only in and around that galaxy and thus why they can't leave it. The ships built there are designed with the aether in mind, so the just instantly break down outside of an aether field. This could also mean a long time ago in a galaxy far far away Star Wars really DID take place in "our" universe. Though honestly, with micro engines on other parts of the ship and thrust vectoring, real life space ships could easily preform everything you see in Star Wars. I say "micro" engines because for things like stopping when you cut engines, you should really see reverse thruster exhaust, but that's noticeably lacking. Still, thrust vectoring pretty much solves all but a few of the "but spaceships can't do that" problems, so I never really questioned it. Since it doesn't really matter, it's sort of a take it or leave it bit of lore either way.
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I like this idea. It can also help explain why something like the Force exists in Star Wars, and can even make light sabers make sense if you assume Ether even exists on planets. Perhaps the entire galaxy is effectively fluidic space (which theoretically exists) and that fluid is this ether. However; I have my own science based explanation for a lot of what we see in Star Wars space battles. Gravity Plating. All ships larger than a fighter would have gravity plating so people can stand on the floor. This would make all ships effectively gravity wells (on a smaller scale than an interdictor.) The more and more bigger ships you get together, the more gravitational eddies that would be created as each ship pulls at each other. A space battle effectively being like trying to fly between really close small moons. It also explains why fighters are used in the first place, as larger ships would have so much more trouble maneuvering with their gravitic plating pulling or pushing at those of other nearby ships. It also explains the bomber scene in Last Jedi. And why living pilots are preferred over mechanoids; they can be more skilled at feeling and maneuvering through gravitic distortion. A ship would need to produce one gee of force for people to stand and walk on its floors. That field literally just extends into space and is the same force the Earth gives off. It makes sense that if we ever develop artificial gravity, that it would radiate outwards from the ship and affect everything outside within a certain radius. Even the Millennium Falcon would produce such a field. Fighters do not need their own gravity. Anything that small does not need to account for its own gravity when maneuvering around other ships, just that of the ship's it is flying between. Tension pilots could feel, as if you were falling in multiple directions at once. You would have to fly in curved arcs because you are fighting the gravity of the capital ships.
It’s actually not the same universe, Lucas confirmed this. The language they speak, “Basic”, literally sounds like English. Also, the opening sentence is coming from the perspective of the Whills. They found R2D2 200 years after ROTJ and wrote the skywalker story in their journals aka the OT
The stop-rudder-drift thing is called a hammerhead and is used a lot in WWII, it's a very dangerous maneuver starting with a verticle climb to stall out the plane, drop the flaps and apply full rudder to swing the nose abruptly to the ground. Used to turn the tables in a pursuit.
About banking.. I always figured it was for visibility and muscle memory. Learning to fly is hard enough, but trying to learn two vastly different styles would be too difficult. Learn techniques that work in both space and an atmosphere. If you forgot to bank in atmosphere you get shot down or slam into a mountain. It's just muscle memory, good trigger control.. that kinda thing. Always treat a gun like it's loaded, always fly like you're in atmosphere. Because the one time you make a mistake, someone dies. That's just how I see it.
another way that the xwing could turn the way it does would be if the engines were thrust vectoring engines. but as for the reason they would have the banking it could be for training and consistancy reasons it would probobly be difficult to get used to awkward sharp movements so if your space fighter flys like an in atmosphere fighter you would only have to train your pilot for one type of flight
What I consider far more important to consider in Star Wars, something that if acknowledged changes one's approach to dogfighting slightly, is acceleration and mechanical stress. We have stuff like basic orbital maneuvers at Yavin being at least 1% light speed even before accelerating to attack speed (the radius of Yavin and the stated units of time in ANH demand this), Luke's proton torpedo pulling 16,000 Gs to go into the thermal exhaust port, and Han's reflexes in his hyperjump to Starkiller Base. People just walking around should be exceeding escape velocity on a regular basis. The Incredible Cross-sections books imply a Utapaun P-38 annihilates kilograms of antimatter every second, and in Rebels we see unshielded shuttle armour take nuclear weapon level impacts with minimal damage. We see an AT-ST vaporizing the cabin of another in ROTJ, yet in the same film see those same blaster bolts barely scorching Endorian vegetation. In Legends we know that repulsorlifts use mini black holes to manipulate gravity, and we know pilots can easily turn their inerttial compensators down to 95% without injury in a dogfight. Sure, luminiferous aether, that explains a few things... but very little all considered.
I think we did get some relativity in the Solo books when he made his signature 12 parsec Kessel Run; he deviated from the normal "safe" route and flew closer to the black holes to cut the distance and thus time off the route. IIRC (I read it a decade ago) there was description of some of the weird stuff with time and light that we would expect happen close to a black hole.
I honestly like this idea, it gives us a glimpse into what a universe would look like with a luminous aether. Plus it would show that light itself is different than our universe, thus making lightsabers potentially a thing if they weren't already explained as suspended plasma if I recall.
Short answer: Rule of Cool Long Answer (or at least come up with your own theory - here's one I wrote many years ago) Under Newtonian physical modelling, a starfighter faces no opposition to its thrust. Broadly speaking, the more thrust applied to the craft, the fast it goes and as there is no air resistance-caused maximum speed, the maximum speed is effectively limitless. However the methods of manoeuvring under Newtonian physics are not favourable to the defender, as in the time required to change direction whilst under attack, the craft is horribly vulnerable, manoeuvring in a near straight-line, while changing facing and applying thrust to counteract the kinetic energy built-up in the craft. This is where “etheric rudders” can change the nature of combat and restore the balance between attacker and defender. The principles appear to be that the ER creates negative velocity in the direction into which movement is desired, probably through the simulation of “mass”. A craft flying at 100 units per second will fly in a straight line as the velocity is equally applied; if 20 units of movement are deducted from the port side of the craft (assuming that there are two ER units either side of the craft), then with one fifth of the thrust removed, the craft will tip in the direction of the lower velocity at a rate of turn, proportionate to the difference in velocity. It is obvious that bi-directional rudders will only produce lateral turns, so we must have two or more pairs or a single unit capable of compensating for velocity in any direction. This is not going to produce motion similar to that of aerodynamic craft, where the effect of “lift” is being used, and slight changes in direction merely redirecting the flow of air over the body of the craft. Instead, movement is going to be freer than aerodynamic craft but with the downside that there is no “free” energy as from diving. All movement off “0” is going to cost energy, not just to recover speed level but to actually effect the turn. Consequently energy, or rather energy generation is going to be the key factor here. A craft will find a turn harder to achieve the higher the speed and weight of the craft. Engines need only be used to create additional thrust, so the energy generated on board the craft will be divided between the following system areas: 1. Engines. 2. Etheric Rudders (including the “braking” principle). 3. Weapons. 4. Sensors. 5. Life support (includes G-compensation).
It's not really consistent but the part of the ending episode of the Clone Wars where the Venator was crashing, and all the dust and debris was moving relative to the Venator rather than trailing off into space... perfection.
I think it'd be easier to explain the "ether" as the exotic method through which their engines work. Not just as simple fusion rockets, but as an engine that pushes on space. When the engine stops your traversal stops. Kind of like how hyperdrives are also a from of exotic propulsion.
This is true, but do we know that these engines operate purely by electrically accelerating charged ions in order to generate mechanical linear thrust? I merely propose that instead of space being fundamentally different, that the engines achieve motion primarily through a means beyond our ‘real science’ understanding. A similar example is Impulse Engines in Star Trek. In real life an ‘impulse engine’, or Lorentz Force Accelerator, is a form of ion engine which generates thrust by accelerating a charged plasma. But in Star Trek the impulse drive maintains a ‘sub space’ component. Maybe they have the same base principle, but the sci-fi engine extends beyond that basic category.
These are indeed great explanations. Personally I have always thought that the reason why star fighters display motion similar to fixed wing aircraft is because of perhaps creating an artificial gravity well both in and around the ship, thus allowing it to experiance a retarding force. What do you guy's think of this explanation.
I always read the explanation in the X-wing novels as ships needing continued thrust to compensate for the inertial-nullifying effect of the inertial compensators. You could turn the compensator off to accelerate faster, but then the ship and it's occupants would be subject to the "normal" rules of space travel (like in The Expanse). Adding some mysterious "Aether" is superfluous when you have a more simple explanation. The "Etheric Rudder" was merely a device to redirect momentum to provide yaw for starships.
All I would say is that humans (and perhaps humanoids) can handle much more G's directly downward whereas lateral G's are much harder for our bodies to handle. This is why F1 driver's necks are thick as tree trunks, they train their muscles in this area extensively. So, banking could sort of make sense even in space. That said, we rarely and inconsistently see G's represented by the pilot in the cockpit. The idea is that the pilots are protected versus G's with Star Wars technology. Still, when pilots have a "boost" function, (in Star Wars and other Sci-fi movies) they are sometimes shown pushed back into their seats. Its highly inconsistent not only in Star Wars but across Sci-fi. It can be interesting to keep G's in mind when watching the first Star Wars movie (and other Sci-fi movies) where Luke and Han are in the "gunner" seats. I remember this being super cool when I first watched the original movie at age.....9?. Jumping to hyperspace was also cool because while the stars stretched out, there wasn't a G-force inside the Falcon. I can't remember if the jump to hyperspace was consistent over all the movies.....I seem to recall it may not have been in the case of fighters, including Luke's X-Wing....not sure.... .
I love real world space exploration and I am relatively knowledgeable in the area, that being said I’m also a huge Star Wars fan, the lack of real physics has actually never really bothered me because Star Wars is so developed that I feel he can make up his own rules and as long as it sticks to those rules it’s sort of its own universe. Kind of fits into the multi-verse theory actually.
The etheric rudder works more like our real world thrust vectoring on the F-22's and SU-37 Terminators. At least, that's how I interpreted it and implemented into my fan-fiction.
I had a few ideas 1: Ships that keep their engines on are, in fact, accelerating When you see ships with their engines on even while moving, they could simply be moving forwards. however, because the engine is at low power, the camera is following the ship, or that the engines were just slow, it can sometimes be hard to see. 2: ships use thrusters to mimic atmospheric combat This idea suggests that ships behave like aircraft because they use thrusters to give it airplane-like controls. perhaps it's easier on the human mind to comprehend a space battle when ships fly about like this, or perhaps the first starfighter pilots to ever exist were trained with airplanes and nobody ever thought to change the controls, even when airplanes were no longer used in training. these controls worked for those first pilots, so why won't it work for the newer ones? alternatively, perhaps the force somehow... changed space? perhaps, without the presence of an atmosphere the force behaves like some sort of sky instead, causing resistance on ships and causing sound to travel around. this is basically a star-wars version of the lumo-whatever-ether covered in the video.
Mean, as I think was pointed out, it does not necessarily have to be the luminiferous either. Whatever it is, it just must have the following properties: 1) low density. Ships in star wars seem pretty fuel efficient, so it can't be providing much more resistance than air. Assuming it works on planets, it must be providing much less 2) rarely(or never) interacts with normal matter. If it did, you wouldn't need special tech to deal with it. Also, it would either stick to planets or avoid them, but it seems to be present everywhere(at least in the starwars galaxy) At this point I realized, their ships are probably pushing off dark matter aren't they. while "dark matter" is not a very satisfying answer, it does make some of the weird problems that the either would cause from a scientific perspective disappear(like can a blackhole exist if special relativity is not really a thing? Note that special relativity is quite important for general relativity, and GR is the reason black holes exist)
The observed behaviour can also be explained as having differing strengths of repulsion thrusters fitted around the craft, if you have stronger dorsal and ventral repulsors (necessary for the low speed taxiing and manoeuvring seen in the films/shows) they would enable faster manoeuvres by banking and using those rather that yawing with weaker lateral repulsors, second, while the drives are always lit up, this could also indicate that these serve a dual role of also being the power plant for the other systems in the ship. Also pilots may be trained to perform similar manoeuvres as atmospheric flight due to having to operate in both arenas, so rather than learning two differing flight styles, the ships are designed in such a way to replicate atmospheric handling while in space, so the same skill sets are used with little transition as they leave a planet's influence.
The explanation for the Constant Thrust = Constant Speed problem in most sci-fi franchises than makes the most sense to me has always been the fact that most space craft are equipped with inertial dampeners. While these are important for keeping the occupants from being slammed through the nearest bulkhead every time a ship changes direction, it's not out of the question that this technology affects the entire vessels, effectively killing the ship's inertia and requiring thrust to maintain speed.
i sort of rationalized the banking as being a side effect of not having attitude change forces built into the ships uniformly..that there would be a strongest direction a ship is capable of turning and normally that would be from "bottom" upward. so if you wanted to turn to the side as quickly as possible, you'd rotate your ship so your bottom was facing away from the direction you wanted to turn away from. though i guess if that were true then after the turn there would be no reason to re-orient yourself to the original top/bottom direction..you'd probably just want to stay that way unless you had an idea what direction you'd want to hard turn again. but in our regular constant gravity/air environment, we always want to restore our orientation so our forces can continue to resist gravity (and probably so the occupants don't feel strange flying on their side for the rest of the trip :-)
I know I'm 2 years late to comment, but setting aside physics entirely there is one aspect of why starfighters roll then pitch up to turn (whether to turn, dive, etc) and it comes down to design. Like fighters on Earth, many starfighters are designed with a cockpit on top and a clear canopy. Yes I know there are exceptions to this and that is where sensors like what the F35 uses come in..... But from a logical standpoint it makes more sense to track enemies by visibly following them which is hard to do when pitching down since you'd be looking at your own lap and relying on sensors. It is much simpler to quick roll left and right as needed and pitch up to keep the target in line of sight in addition to using sensors rather than rely on sensors alone. If you do throw in artificial gravity even in snub fighters then of course you always pick positive Gs over negative Gs.
I know you normally do Star Wars, but in terms of Space Combat, I wanna say Elite Dangerous handles the Vacuum bit pretty nicely. That said, I enjoyed the explanation as to why we see WW2 style dog fights and lack of projectiles in the SW Universe.
Love your channel so I don't wanna hate but I'm a physics nerd so I'm passionate about this lol. Here's my "buut acktuallly" contribution. The aether solution is a good workaround, but it would have to be in a separate universe as the aether was disproved by Einstein with his theory of special relativity. If aether was real and space/time were separate, it's likely the universe would not develop like it did. I could go on about shields, orbital dynamics, space warfare, drag at the speed of light... etc for hours. I think the best workaround is just to accept it doesn't make sense, and enjoy the stories. Again, love your channel, keep doing you:)
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It will be done my lord.
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The presence of Luminiferous Aether would explain how the Force is able to spread out across the universe between planets rather than just being grounded to locations where life exists.
What game are you playing on n this vid?
Honestly, it's never bothered me that they don't follow real physics personally. What *DOES* bother me is when it's not CONSISTENT
Plot demands.
Cough cough the last Jedi cough cough their ships are smaller and lighter
Yeah the force awakens did that very badly
When is it not?
@Mauricio Diaz A space wizard did it.
I always imagined that TIEs actually had silent engines, but the ions emitted interfere with the radiowaves from comms to produce the shriek
Interesting
I like it
No offense but considering they sound the same in person, in gravity, that's easy to see isn't the case even without the knowledge that ships somehow replicate the sounds outside in the cockpit
I like that idea! Like a comms version of the Jericho-siren dive bomber!
I like that
“We were experiencing some drag, but the sensors are stabilized now.”
“You were experiencing drag in the vacuum of space?”
Well it was a sensor error, you see.
Now we're experiencing turbulence
What’s this from?
@@astra8308 Season 6 Clone Wars. One of the droids said this to the tactical droid. idk the episode tho
Space isn't entirely empty you know, even a tiny chip of paint can't damage the ISS
Because physics, or rather lack there of. George didn’t write a a sci-fi story, he wrote a space opera. So magical/fantastical ideas over realistic one. But its fine hah. Its star wars
indeed
This isn't really correct though?
George Lucas didn't write a sci fi but he was just as thorough in explaining how things operated in his fantasy space opera as is done in sci fi of the time like Foundations and Dune.
I don't get the adversity to the science/sci-fi part of star wars. With all the tech and rules, Star Wars is more science fiction than fantasy, though fiction and fantasy are synonymous, so whatever. Without science, fantasy has no rules. In fact, though the Force is a "magic" system, it's not magic and therefore not fiction, but not fantasy.
Jacen Solo
You have a fair point. But in relation to both those series, they were written as books with detailed explanations of their society/technological workings. While yes still space opera like star wars, if you take the detail and world building created by the authors vs what George released in the original trilogy, you can see where he leans on hard sci-fi vs space opera.
All I remember (correct me if im wrong) was one line from han about why you gotta plan a hyperspace jump so you dont crash. The rest of the films in the original and prequel say nothing about space and its workings. Meanwhile dune dedicates an entire species and technology to moving through space and its relation and connection to the spice and the main conflict. While certainly dune is a space opera, its explanations and details lean it far more on the sci-fi than the opera in terms of space and flying tech, which is the focus of this video.
Now the comparison of a movie to a book is vastly unfair and i get my argument is rather invalid. And if you take comics and books from SW (legends or canon) obviously you can find detailed answers. But my reasoning to my original post is only to say what did the respective authors/creators choose to explain and invest time into. And since space travel/combat wasnt something george cared to expand on, finding a more scientific answer is rather moot since george didn’t establish rules for it.
@@bluehero-96 Most people think on a one-track mind... they think something has to be one or the other. Genres are observations, not hardline rules.
I do like the maritime sound to etheric rudder. Space is just another ocean to sail through, an ocean of stars.
Quite poetic
Helps explain Dooku's "solar sail" as well.
It always made more sense that the tie fighters wings are radiators not solar panels. Powerful engines with tiny outputs are going to need to radiate a lot heat. Good place to put the aetheric rudders too, would go a long way to explaining their maneuverability.
Hello Mr. Philosopher
That's also how the Mon Calamari got into shipbuilding last I recall.
What a wonderful way to put it!
If I had to put in lore for the lack of Rail Guns, you could easily make it something banned by a "Geneva Convention" of sorts.
Lasers fizzle out after a certain range. Missiles can explode into mostly harmless bits.
A hyper-sonic physical projectile will just soar across space forever until it hits *something*. Perhaps in the long history of the Republic, one or multiple devastating rail gun accidents happened (perhaps even hundreds of years after the shots was fired), and rules of engagement were set to prevent it from happening again.
Some will ask, why would an evil faction like the Empire care about such rules, seeing as they are already willing to pop planets? Well the argument for the Death Star was always deterrence, and propaganda will tell you, it was supposed to end the war before it escalated. Rail guns wouldn't carry that "deterrence" threat, so general use of them would still be considered a political faux pas.
Actually in the old canon railguns and mass drivers used to be pretty common between around 15000-8000 BBY. The invention of particle shields (especially planetary shields) largely rendered them obsolete (as their ammo is relatively heavy and expensive, unlike a laser which can just brute force its way through a ray shield while still having power to spare most of the time), but prior to then, space warfare basically amounted to pummeling each other's planets into rubble with asteroids fired from giant mass drivers. They still show up as niche weapons by the time of the Clone Wars and beyond, but they aren't the primary weapon of space warfare anymore.
you say civilian casualties, i say acceptable losses
the thing about railguns hitting planets across the intergalactic void is just... so improbable. Even if it was being fired at lightspeed, it would take countless millenia, and the chances of hitting a planet in the same galaxy would be so small as to be negligible. Planets are absolutely miniscule compared to space. and even if it did hit a planet in the same galaxy the chance of hitting a developed one, and the chance of hitting one in a developed location ON the planet, is so incredibly small that even over hundreds of thousands of years of warfare I highly doubt it would ever happen even one time.
@@z3r0_35 to add onto this, its also much more efficient to have the same plasma running your ship's reactor and engines also charging your turbolasers and weapon systems.
@@lenkagamine4145 I have to quote Mass Effect here.
"Once you fire this hunk of metal, it keeps going 'til it hits something. That can be a ship, or the planet behind that ship. It might go off into deep space and hit somebody else in 10,000 years! If you pull the trigger on this, you are ruining someones day! Somewhere and sometime! That is why you check your damn targets! That is why you wait 'til the computer gives you a damn firing solution. That is why, Serviceman Chung, we do not 'eyeball it'. This is a weapon of Mass Destruction! You are NOT a cowboy, shooting from the hip!"
Yes the odds of any one projectile hitting something are minuscule, but as a dominant weapon on the battlefield, there will be tens of thousands fired in all directions.
I see Eck posts, I click faster than Han when he killed Greedo. I am but a simple man
Rusher Ranker7 sorry but Han shot first
Is your neck ok? Han's neck did not look ok...
Over 11 hours late…,?
I must be from the remastered edition.
Sky Ram, you are a bird.
Trying to make his way through the universe
I've always taken the Aetheric Rudder concept as being a form of inertia control. They've already established artificial gravity and inertial compensators, so the technology exists in their civilization to manipulate momentum and inertia. So I figure that starships use and extension of this technology, allowing them to redirect momentum as if the ships are flying through the atmosphere. This doesn't require any special properties in the fabric of space itself.
If you want to stop you could divide your momentum in two (foward and backward) and basically an algorithm could help you to steer and keep you from making an orbit like movement, that way allowing you to be in a fixed point in space, thats why if you stop your engines you would start getting pulled by a nearby gravity (star,planet,moon etc)
This was always what I believed.
It’s all advanced alien technology far beyond our current primitive understanding. It’s like showing a caveman a twentieth century automobile, how would the caveman explain how it works?
Exactly, spot on!
Yep, reverse (and other directional) thrust would provide fighters the ability to turn the way they do. Essentially a technological improvement on existing engine and thrust vectoring technology we already have would work for all intents and purposes.
I would combine this with the following theory, which I will call "Etheric Controls."
I think it would make sense if Star Wars ships had Etheric Controls that made the ships act like they are in an atmosphere whether there is one or not. It makes things easier on pilots in multiple ways, one of which is that they no longer have to learn two different styles of piloting for in atmosphere and out. Another is to keep speed within the pilot's reaction timing. If they always had to worry about turning thrusters on and off and counteracting vacuum momentum, things would be complicated.
Consider if with the Battle of Scarif, for example, since it did take place both in and out of atmosphere of the planet, the pilots needed to mentally transition between atmospheric and vacuum piloting. Dangerous, and you need different maneuvers for each.
This also implies that these controls could be disabled to perform skidding maneuvers or other space-enabled stuff.
i love this theory
I would also like to add on, in the Rogue Squadron books they make reference to the fact that the ships have gravity inside them, so the pilot still feels like they're flying in atmo. I believe they said it's so pilots don't get disoriented, but you can turn it off...soooo maybe it's the same thing?
You only need then a shit that does NOT conform to this nonsensical rule to zip past them at 40 thousand km/h , shoot lasers from 200 thousand km distance and also to turn around and shoot back even if going "forward"...
You win the battle with Newtonian Physics better than Etheric Controls.
Yes, YES! This is it! This is the best explanation ever, which is also suitable for the vast majority of Sci-Fi universes! It is pretty logical and understandable, it does not violate the Laws of Physics much, it is perfect!
I most certainly will use such idea in my world. If I don't forget it, that is...
@@outcast4087 "also suitable for the vast majority of Sci-Fi universes"
Like what Sci-Fi universes???
I see a MINORITY of sci-fi books where such Hollywood nonsense is used.
Commonwealth Saga, Expanse, Hyperion Cantos, Mote In God's Eye, Ringworld Series, The Forever War... etc, etc, etc... whenever there are SPACE BATTLES, they are fought in VACUUM over LONG DISTANCES, with Newtonian Physics and even Relativity Theory thrown in.
When things don't match reality:
"NANOMACHINES,SON!"
Thorhighheels, is it you?
Midichlorians
@@twistedyogert Durge didn't have Midichlorians
Nahnomasheenes
How is Chief wearing a totally different set of armor when he's been in cryo, adrift and MIA for years?
Nanomachines.
And how did the _Forward Unto Dawn_ triple in size and metamorphose into a completely different ship class?
Nanomachi-
_LIAR!_
God I love Squadrons' UI. So cleverly designed.
Too bad it is a 40 dollar game which means big trash.
@@FXIIBeaver what
@@jonathanpilcher337 the game costs 40 bucks. Which means it will be trash.
@stockart whiteman the vast majority of games below 60 dollars are very bad indie games. If EA is even offering this at 40 and not 60. It is gonna be trash. Just like the majority of EA games.
@@FXIIBeaver goofy ass fool lmao
Perhaps its more logical to assume that star fighters in Star Wars are designed with technology that allows them to mimic the feel of "in atmospheric" flight.
The Aeartheric Rudder is most likely a component of said system, and is utilized when needed based on a giving situation.
Far easier explanation than a Star Wars version of "Dark Matter" to explain similarities in flight profile.
But it's functionally impossible to do that with conventional physics.
Alternatively, an aetheric rudder could be acting on energies produced by quantum fluctuations in the fabric of space-time in order to steer itself through space.
This is one reason why The Expanse is one of my favorite sci fi universes. I hope someday Eck covers some of it in a video
Check out Gen tech and Gen films. American Ben does a lot of Expanse content
@@bigredwolf6 a man of culture as well.
@@bigredwolf6 Spacedock as well.
I like how people say that The Expanse is realistic despite the fact that it gets biology very wrong and thinks spinning an asteroid is a plausible way of creating artificial gravity when in reality, it would blow itself apart. Also, the only way for a war between Earth and Mars fought with giant spaceships can plausibly happen is if both planets were fledgling Kardashev 2 civilizations, with millions of artificial habitats around the orbits of both planets, which they most certainly aren't. Until then, they should be launching missiles at each other using satellites. Other than that, it's a good show.
@@bigredwolf6 he doesn’t do it justice a lot of times
there is a real-world reason to bank, even in realistic space flight: dealing with g-forces. Aircraft since WWI have preferred to roll and then pitch up as the human body deals better with the positive g-forces imparted by such a maneuver than just pitching down. Pitching down induced negative g's, which both lift the pilot out of the seat making controlling the aircraft harder but also rush blood to the brain to a dangerous level. Positive g's cause by pitching up push the pilot into the seat and cause blood to pool into the legs, not great but breathing and clenching techniques taught to pilots as well as g-suits designed to counter this make it far preferable to negative g's. Lateral g's by just yawing left or right don't really happen in aircraft because of the aerodynamics involved, but in a spacecraft they'd throw you side-to-side like a rollercoaster, not the best situation for control either.
So that preference to roll and then pitch up in Star Wars is at least realistic, but in reality they'd be more of a pivot on the axis and then a hard burn in direction they're pointed rather than the graceful arc we're shown.
Every fighter (at least the ones used by sensible pilots) have inertial compensators. Basically, the ship has sensors of movement of the fighter and compensates for it, so that a pilot does not suffer exactly those problems. You can either keep in complete 0 or you can reduce the effectivity a little so that you can keep ,,in touch´´ with your fighter. This of course isnt perfect, and if you make a very sharp turn or break, you will feel the effects of inertia, but it protects your body from the exact problem. That is EU, so IDK how much of that is kept in canon. But I think it makes sense, since at the speeds in which pilots do fly, it would take some very delicate handling to stay conscious.
thats only partial reason for it: the spitfire and hurricane, for excample, were simply unable to pitch down without stalling the engine since they did not account for the g-forces that act on the fuel when pitching straight down. english pilots learned first thing to never simply pitch down, but to roll over and "pitch up". the german planes did not have this problem, which they used to their advantage.
latter fighter planes did not have this HUGE deficit, but if you flew for some time its hard to loose that instinct of rolling and then pitching, which is a real detriment in dogfighting.
But theres no G's in space
@@larrytinsley4247 G force exists in space, they are caused by change in direction of motion and acceleration. Gravity is not relevant.
@@larrytinsley4247 G's are just a measure of acceleration, with 1g being 9.8 m/s^2. 2g is double that, 3g is triple, etc. Standing at Earth sealevel you experience about 1g (it's complicated) and every move you make involves some acceleration your body has to deal with.
I think shows like the Expanse and Battlestar sow that xero G combat in space can be really cool to. But Starwars is Space Fantasy so do we really care that much?
Let us not forget Babylon 5 and The Last Starfighter as far as some of the realistic physics.
@@PepRock01 yep. I would love to see Babylon 5 get the hd touch like og star trek and next Gen too. My brothers and I love Babylon 5 but the cg has not aged well but I would just settle for a blueray remaster of the show.
BSG is a lot like Star Wars as far as physics goes. It's a tad more realistic (when it suits the plot) , but other than that, the Colonial Vipers fly much the same as the X-Wings do.
The Expanse is the best so far, as far as realism goes, but at the end of the day, none of these shows/movies are that realistic, which is fine since it's more about the story than the physics involved.
@@PepRock01 The Last Starfighter... realistic physics... What? I love that movie but realistic it was certainly not! The Gunstar was basically a space superiority gunship, which was pretty unique too.
Because the hows and whys of a setting are fascinating.
5:14 “You can die if you’re thrown into a vacuum”
*Shows someone living after being thrown into a vacuum*
Mary Poppins
Thirty seconds
Yeah, but you can also survive a minute or so in space without a suit
He said "can".
Etheric rudder: I always assumed this was essentially a type of repulsor drive, tuned to "push" off of the frame of space itself, or the ether if you want. A repulsor drive tuned like this would be at it's most effective if the drives are placed far from center of mass, like reaction control thrusters on real spaceships. Conversely, these repulsors are less powerful for "lifting" than those that can push off of masses around them, as a typical repulsor would when generating lift, so a spacecraft would generally have both as separate systems. That's my take on it, anyway.
As for the constant thrust thing: If a ship is operating it's etheric rudder systems, the general effect of the etheric rudder in idle, is to generate a drag-like effect, slowing a ship and loose debris around it to a relative standstill. As such, ships need to apply at least a small amount of thrust to overcome this drag force. This ultimately works out more fuel efficient than having to use large engines on all axes to generate large changes in velocity.
Larger vessels with longer flight times might coast when very far from worlds, disabling the etheric rudder, and shutting down the engines, but this would be during relatively boring spans of time, during which little plot development is happening, so it is never seen on film.
From what I've seen in other games such as elite dangerous some ships bank in space is because their thruster setup (more pointing up or down than left or right) makes it easier for them to tilt and roll instead of yaw.
You can design ships to perform that way in Kerbal Space Program
It's not desirable from an engineering perspective, but there's reasons why you'd do it, too
As an example from the Elite verse, the flattish wedge shape of the Cobra Mk III could be to maximize cargo bay access, if it's long and flat in the rear half of the ship it'll allow for more surface area for hatches, faster load in/out
The Anaconda has a much more balanced shape for yaw vs pitch, but the larger and presumably more spherical cargo space would be terrible for access by comparison
I'd like to further this discussion. The ships in the elite universe intentionally fire more thrusters than needed to simply turn the ship, in order to simulate atmospheric flight. As im sure you know, you can disable that effect and experience flight without that added stability.
So, in addition to the shape of the ship and the location/amount of thrusters, the ship does as i mentioned above. All of which combined makes for flight that resembles that of a jet in atmosphere.
@@zacharym7000 I had always wondered why the Cobra was better at rolling than yawing in spite of its shape
I like the explanation
It's pretty much the headcanon I had for why SW fighter act like planes
@@zacharym7000 this exactly! and if star wars ships would show some visible retro thrusters on their ships there wouldnt be any problem... sadly they seem to not have (visible) retros but here is the funny thing- if they get hit they spin like they would in a vacuum so there has to be stabilzers/assists like in elite and that in return makes the ether theory bullshit anyway... the reason why stupid theories like that ether nonsense exist is that you never see any retros...
The presence of Luminiferous Aether would explain how the Force is able to spread out across the universe between planets rather than just being grounded to locations where life exists.
The Force is supposed a transcendent spiritual power.
@@Youcancallmeishmaell No, the Force is an energy field produced by all living things. There is a Cosmic Force that has a measure of self awareness that emerged out of this combined energy, but it's not some transcendent existence.
@@TechnoMinarchist That is a transcendent spiritual power!
You have look at it from the point of view of the myths and stories that inspired it the concept of the Force.
@@TechnoMinarchist I once read a fanfiction where a man from earth is randomly transported to the Star Wars universe and essentially becomes another personality of the Living Force. He's more mischievous while she is passive and doesn't like to meddle with living beings.
That's right, that writer made the Living Force a waifu. 👌
@@inktea256link?
I've been think about this and I don't like the idea of eatheric rudder my theory has something to do with how all ships have a delay on the artificial gravity which causes this drag
hmm thats a pretty cool thought too
Yeah, I just figured it was something to do with the repulsor tech and how it worked in a vacuum.
@Jotaro Kujo
But why would they ever do that if space in the Star Wars galaxy behaved as it does in ours? That seems like going through alot of trouble for something very unnecessary when pilots could take advantage of the properties of real space i.e. lack of drag forces such as atmosphere and gravity wells. Not to mention that such a technology would generate massive amounts of waste heat that's like painting a giant target on your ship saying "here shoot me I'm a very visible target!".
But why would they use a technology that's objectively worse than simply using much more practical ship designs for actual space travel if space really did behave like it does in our galaxy? Why use something that makes you slow relative to what near unlimited speeds you could achieve with no drag forces such as atmosphere and gravity wells? Why use a technology that's overly complicated for no real gain when building a ship that took advantage of the near friction free vacuum of space would be much cheaper, practical and would utterly dominate the slower craft that laboriously try to fly in space as if the were shakey aircraft of yore with unnecessary technology? Honestly the eathric explanation makes so much sense that it explains alot of the wierd and seemingly nonsensical things about space in the SW galaxy compared to our own.
A possible canon reference to this theory: the Delta-7 Jedi Starfighter is also known as the Aethersprite
Interesting
What would have happened if UNSC had defeated he covenant forces and captured the forerunner fleet in Halo Wars instead of destroying the ships?. #askeck
The covvies would get clapped I'd say. Forerunner ships are probably exponentially more advanced compared to anything else in halo. Given how the covenant basically fell apart from the inside, it'll prolly happen like that again. If thats not the case immediately, then the unsc could continue with operation Red Flag, deploying spartans from the forerunner ships behind enemy lines to kill the prophets and destabilize the covenant.
“The Covvies think the Halos will help them meet their gods. The way I see it, if they want to meet God, then it is our duty to help them along!” -A Spartan-II, right before a not-Infinity takes out a CCS-cruiser trying to orbit Earth/Reach.
Considering humans would have access to the Forerunner technology because they are the inheritors of the Mantle I think it would end the war pretty quick. We saw how a single key ship, which isn't even a warship but a life seeding vessel, was able to tank the entirety of the fleet on earth when they were able to dig up the ark
The series would be way less interesting
@@droneant7602 The story would be less interesting because humans could have the war done and dusted with the year, complete with subjugating, annihilating, or securing the surrender of the various remaining factions of the Covenant. There would be much less subject matter to make a story with. Sort of how almost every spy story set after the Cold War is about a rogue element of the US's security apparatus causing a problem that has to be addressed.
This explains SO much 😮
Huh
Another possible explanation for the handling (though I myself have always gone with the explanation that space in star wars is just different) is that the artificial gravity generated in pretty much every ship somehow effects piloting - even moreso in large space battles where there are dozens to hundreds of individual small fighters and capital ships all generating their own gravitational field.
Mind you, I know barely anything about science so I have no idea *what* effect that would have but it could definitely be cause for things to act a little off from how we know them.
That's my explanation too, the artificial gravity would create some drag on capital ships.
Wow. I actually knew immediately what a "luminiferous aether" was.
There is a way to sort-of tie this luminiferous aether into known physics, if one assumes that this aether is the same substance known to us as "dark matter", an undetectable source of mass that might in fact account for most of the mass in our universe, but can only be detected because of its effects on its surroundings. Perhaps in the Star Wars galaxy the dark matter present is dense enough to function like a proper medium, exerting drag on objects passing through it and dispersing energy, explaining the short range of directed energy weapons; of course the REAL reasons that energy weapons are the main weapons on spacecraft in-universe is that their "ammo" is dirt cheap and extremely light (and the weapons themselves have few, if any, moving parts, making maintenance a cinch), allowing for a theoretically greater efficiency except against hardened, ray shielded, or fast-moving targets, against which projectiles, especially guided ones, might be more effective.
Now that begs the question of why it doesn't affect the movement of massive celestial bodies...well...maybe the gravity wells of the objects themselves play a part in that; I'd also say it'd explain why ships couldn't enter hyperspace too close to a large mass, but then Rogue One and The Rise of Skywalker happened and threw one of the oldest in-universe restrictions on FTL travel (from all the way back in A New Hope) out the window because...Disney doesn't give a fuck I guess?
With Rogue one I kinda justify that as with the very mass of the planet was shifting due to the death star’s blast there was a brief hole in the planet’s grav well that they were able to jump through. The whole hyperspace skipping in TROS was silly but that could be explained (if it ever gets any) by saying that the firing of starkiller base, which I believe was seen across the galaxy due to it tearing a hole in hyperspace if I recall right, damaged the barrier between realspace and hyperspace making such a manoeuvre possible but near suicidally dangerous and can only be done by small ships and cannot be plotted making each jump an insane risk.
darman12able ...Or it could just be that Disney doesn’t give a fuck. Granted, it was never stated in the MOVIES exactly why that was other than implying it was just really unsafe, but subsequent supplementary material went on to say it was impossible due to how the setting’s physics work (iirc it was whoever came up with Interdictor cruisers that thought it up, probably Timothy Zahn)...which got scrapped when Disney hit their reset button on everything.
Z3r0_ that’s reason enough to write off all Disney movies as noncanon.
It kinda makes no sense tbh, if dark matter density were to be more dense, space would immediately collapse into a black holes “gravitational”. Dark matter doesn’t create friction no matter how dense it will be, even if you were to say gravity would drag them slower, however the attraction is equal all around. It’s better to leave Star Wars as it is, it breaks the laws of physics therefore it’s meaningless to impose any real physical law in their universe. I mean, have fun with Star Wars it’s a fictional world meant to be enjoyed 😆
I always went with the notion that the sensors picking up nearby ships, explosions, weapons fire and so on would pass that information to an audio system to play the appropriate sound in the cockpit to enhance situational awareness for the pilot. We are used to using audio cues to tell us what is going on around us. It makes sense to make use of that here.
Sound in space: Movies are an audiovisual experience and Star Wars is SPECTACLE! If you cut one element out, you hobble the spectacle. IOW There is sound in space, cause it sounds cool.
Why do they fly around like cool WW2 film dogfights?: That question answers itself.
I once had a space combat game that used inertia. Ring Runner. Though, it had some limitations for balance reasons, you actually stayed moving. Also, you needed to compensate for sharp turns, and could fly backward, and shoot.
Theory: the luminiferous Aether causes friction to any object moving above a crawl but moving slower than Lightspeed, so if they made their shields out of this material it would allow objects moving slowly enough to pass through it but in large enough quantities (say, enough to make a slightly blueish hue?) it would form a near physical barrier against objects moving at high to sublight speed, but would also allow objects to drift slightly at relatively low speeds enabling planetary orbits and asteroid belts to still exist
Edit: essentially, the Star Wars galaxy is filled with a very very small amount of near invisible liquid or gas that only affects objects moving at high speeds, thus allowing both attributes of a vacuum such as weightlessness while also allowing aerobatic piloting. This would make kinetic projectiles nearly useless as it would be like firing bullets underwater, while plasma (an energized gas) and torpedoes (slow moving but with constant thrust) would be virtually unaffected. Also if they hyper condensed this material it would create a physical barrier against objects moving at high enough speeds.
The problem with this is that an Aether is a field that only massless objects propagate into. Things like space stations, starships, planets, stars don’t react with it, it is inert. It wouldn’t cause friction with any object
But you can make up whatever the hell you want, because cmon it’s star wars guys. It’s not meant to be realistic
Listening to your Ask Eck answer makes me realize how much I want to see a story following a diehard imperial who grew up seeing his homeworld Coruscant getting trashed by stray turbolaser fire & falling ship debris, and using that as justification for why he believes in a highly militarized society (similar to how Mandalorian’s flashback scenes revealed both the protagonist’s distrust of droids, while giving us some live-action battledroid action at the same time). It'd be a great way to 1) revisit an iconic star wars scene, 2) show that scene from a civilian’s perspective, 3) give us a compelling backstory for an imperial character, and 4) give us some more clone wars action.
“Space is not a vacuum*
Air resistance: My time has come
This is actually a very satisfying awnser, many serious scientists used to believe in a medium which light travels through. Even though it is disproven for us it could exist in another universe so its pretty cool to use it to explain how star wars works
First I really like this theory. And I want to add, that the Force is a galaxy wide energy field, so maybe is the force the aether?
But I remember a scene from the canon book lord of the sith, that actually describes Newtonish Physics. In the beginning Dart Vader enter a ship, by approaching it in free fall. So real world physics is part of the canon.
This is actually a really good find that will help explain a lot of things going on in the Star Wars universe that does not make sense from a normal world perspective. Johan.
I guess this "aether" would explain The Last Jedi's apparently bad physics then. Those Resistance ships that lose velocity when they ran out of fuel bugged the crap out of me when I saw it.
But what about the way the turbo laser barrage arced through space to "land" on the Resistance's bubble shields...which would have been *WHOLLY* ineffective that far out from the ship?
That entire film was utter nonsense!
@@iratepirate648 It really was. But I can't tell if Rian's stupid is worse than JJ's stupid in Ep.9.... almost as if they were competing for who could out-stupid the other
Okay, here's an explanation for why it's not bad physics even if space in Star Wars were a vacuum and why you shouldn't be bugged about it.
Assuming (incorrectly) that Star Wars space is the same as our space.
This would mean there isn't any friction acting on any ship meaning that a ship firing its engines will not be slowed down by a medium.
This means that every ship we see in TLJ's chase is constantly accelerating because they are constantly firing their engines.
However, when a ship runs out of fuel, it will stop accelerating and continue to move with a constant velocity.
All the other ships continue to accelerate however, meaning that the ship that just lost its engined will APPEAR to lose velocity. They continue moving at the same speed while all the other ships accelerate away from it, giving the illusion of a halted movement.
Exhonor what you said is true, except in TLJ they showed the ships tilting and drifting relatively backward when they ran out of fuel, almost as if they were falling out of the sky. They should have just continued in a straight line.
@@giglefreakz - Unfortunately, you've fallen into the theoretical vs real world trap because, no matter how long ships fire their engines for, eventually they will reach a terminal velocity (still well below the speed of light) and it will require that continuous input from the engines just to maintain that velocity.
Secondly, *IF* a group of ships are all travelling at the same velocity and 1 runs out of fuel, it WILL slow down (slightly) eventually, but it *won't* suddenly start tumbling in space and "fall" away. It'll just keep drifting in its current direction. Where the hell is it even falling too? They're in frickin *SPACE...*there is no down!!!
Do yourself a favour. Have a little self respect and *DON'T* make excuses for a talentless hack who doesn't deserve your loyalty because you mean less than nothing to him. He proved that with his "fanboy tears" and "manbaby" shit. If he got joy from trolling the fans and sticking it to us, imagine how much funnier he finds it, that someone like you is actually defending him and the movie in a franchise that he actually admitted he cares nothing about.
One theory I always enjoyed falling back on for any media using 'plane' physics in space is the existence of inertial dampeners which allow pilots and personnel to survive acceleration to and from light speed as well as other combat maneuvers - those same dampeners could affect the physics of the spacecraft such that it behaved more like an atmospheric aircraft - further it explains why droid ships were capable of more severe maneuvers in dogfights as inertial dampers could've been weaker (or wholly unnecessary save for the minimum it took to keep the ship from flying apart) as there was no fragile/squishy pilot inside
Considering the term is inertial _dampener,_ not inertial canceller, I'd imagine that's probably it: You can only do so much to counter the inertia caused by such extreme speeds, meaning you have to maneuver with what you've got.
Luckily (though likely intentionally) what pilots typically get is just about the upper limit of acceleration beings can usually withstand without blacking out.
The idea of a Universe that follows the rules of classical physic is so cool, and also it gives the possibility to create and original universe without the nowadays overused relativistic/quantum fantasy crap of most contemporary sci-fi films.
Easily the best explanation for Star Wars space battle shenanigans I've ever heard. Obviously the real world reason is that it "looks cool" (as you said). The trick to enjoying it is to turn off your brain and not think about it. For me, the newer movies just made it so hard to do that with blatant inconsistencies or idiotic tactics that no serious commander would use.
See I don't think you always have to turn off your brain to enjoy a space battle in the Star Wars films, plus you said it yourself the recent movie trilogy's idiotic and inconsistent ideas about space travel and combat kinda shows you can't just turn off your brain, not to the inconsistencies nor to the ignoring of established norms of space in the Star Wars galaxy. I like the eatheric idea because it explains nearly everything about how Star Wars physics works the way it does in space and in no way in my opinion takes away from the setting. Infact it honestly adds to the coolness factor that I'm viewing a universe that's not just different from my own in terms of cultures and species and politics while still being comprehensible and relatable at times but also has its own unique metaphysics and properties that underpin its reality.
Just saying, any ship would need to bank when turning, as the vertical G-force limit in humans is far greater than the lateral G-force limit
But there would be no gravitational force in space.
No, they wouldn't. Aircraft bank because they have to maintain fluid flow over their lifting surfaces. In space, there's no fluid and no lift. Cut main thrusters, reorient to new vector using whatever attitude control system the craft has, reignite thrusters.
The turning of the ship would cause centripetal forces forces to be applied to the body, and as it is acceleration, it is measured in Gs. (1G = 9.8m/s squared)
If you turn to the left without banking beforehand, you experience lateral forces. 4Gs worth of lateral forces is painful and disorienting to the point that it would hinder your flying ability. If you bank beforehand and then pull up, you are experiencing vertical forces, and the body can easily handle a sustained 5Gs of force before it becomes an issue.
TL;DR: Lateral forces are more dangerous to the pilot than vertical forces are, which is why fighters (even in space) should bank.
@@jsn1252 Cutting thrusters to then change vector would still have major g-force impacts on the body.
In order to change vector of the ship you'd need to use other thrusters located on different parts of the ship, and if all you did was cut the rear thrusters and then engaged your vector thrusters, not only are you now exerting g-forces via changing vector, you're also exerting additional g-forces by doing so whilst the ship is still going in its original direction, and then you'd be adding even more g-forces by engaging thrusters again to move along the new vector, first in deceleration and then in acceleration. You'd literally be tearing your body in multiple directions at once with huge amounts of g-forces going in different directions.
All of this would likely kill anyone onboard unless it was done very slowly over several miniutes to hours (depending on how fast you're already going) and even then you'd first have to deccelerate first before engaging vector thrusters to rotate the ship, which might take hours unless you want to kill everyone.
George Lucas: hehe. Starships go vroom.
Good video and good post. Back when I read these books those bits _sailed_ right over my head.
The constant need to run engines on starships highlights that there is some kind of resistance within that galaxy. What people need to realise is how variable the ambient composition can be even within a galaxy let alone from one galaxy to the next. For example, at the edge of our system is the Kuiper Belt. A region which scientists describe as "thick" with ambient gases, pebbles, ice and other materials which are drawn by the gravity well of our system but move very slowly due to their low mass. Anything travelling through the belt wouldn't be able to just rely on momentum from an in-system burn.
As for starfighters banking, this can easily be explained by G-forces. Ships in Star Wars are equipped with artificial gravity so pilots will experience the twists and turns as if in atmosphere. Turning left or right without banking is possible in space but would cause dizziness, this is mitigated by banking so that the g-forces change from horizontal to vertical. However, too much vertical force will cause someone to black out. So there is a happy medium to reach.
"Thick", within the solar system, is relative. There's more free material out in the Kuiper Belt (primarily because most of the mass within the planetary zone that isn't in the Sun is in the planets themselves and their moons), but there's still not enough out there to provide any significant drag. Hitting the boundary of the heliosphere has a much more significant effect (the density of the interstellar medium is thicker) but it's still pretty thin. "Interstellar medium resistance" isn't really something that people see as a complication to interstellar flight. Getting a high enough density of gas within a system to represent significant drag to ships would probably require densities compared to what you'd find in a protoplanetary disc, and that's not a stable situation (that sort of drag tends to also cause planets to migrate inwards, while the gas tends to be either hoovered up by the planets or pushed out by the stellar wind).
Star Wars having different physics is, honestly, a more plausible explanation. Something like the luminous aether could provide a universal (or at least semi-universal) resting frame, and from there one could imagine physics where objects need a constant force to keep them moving relative to the luminous aether where they are. There's still need to be some explanation as to how planetary orbits can remain stable under these physics, though. Maybe the aether is itself influenced by gravity and tends to swirl around gravitational bodies, so that objects in stable orbits ARE stationary with respect to the aether around them (a concept which has been used to try to maintain luminous aether theory despite the Michelson-Morley null result). This would probably have consequences for orbital dynamics, however - some orbits that would be reasonably stable in our universe might not be in this hypothetical universe.
@@Draxynnic I wasn't trying to suggest that the reason for these wonky physics was something like the belt, I just used it as an illustration that the contents of space is highly variable even in the local region so another galaxy entirely can be vastly different. Aether is one possibility but there can be any number of known and unknown substances which can cause drag in space. I don't know if aether explains away why you can hear noises in Star Wars space but if there were gases in that "vacuum" then it would solve that problem. Further to that, Star Wars has elements that simply don't exist in our galaxy so we can't even use known gases or chemistry to guesstimate how the hull of a ship would react in an environment filled with exotic gases.
Why would they do that though? Why does a pilot on a freakin spacecraft need to feel like they're in an atmosphere when that's just silly and unnecessary? Why not use that technology that can manipulate freakin gravity or dampening inertia forces to make any G-force problems none issues which would allow pilots to pull of some thruster cutting, near omni-directional craft manoeuvring that could dominate the ships that try to move like some antiquated aircraft from WW2 for some odd, nonsensical reason?
@@navilluscire2567 Because there's plenty of times when a dogfight transitions from space to atmosphere and vice versa.
You can't DO all those weird and janky stops and redirects in atmosphere, air resistance won't let you.
That means you either a) learn to fly two different ways (which is annoying and also leads to issues like "what if you forget to switch flight styles") or b) learn one method that's consistent for both (if sub-optimal for one)
The Star Wars universe decided to go with the latter, likely because a LOT of trips through space in the Star Wars universe start and end in ground-based spaceports, with very little time in the vacuum of space. This means the atmosphere-to-vacuum ratio of mediums traveled is HEAVILY skewed towards atmosphere, making atmospheric flight techniques more essential.
Such techniques would also be helpful when traveling across a planet, since then you can apply your knowledge of piloting spacecraft to aircraft, and vice versa. Luke being able to fly X-Wings as well as he does could EASILY be at least partially explained by this; similar control schemes and parental talent make up the rest.
@@red5t653 From what I've seen the vast majority of starfighter battles happen in SPACE, so I don't see how flying in atmosphere like an antiquated WW2 aircraft is all that 'essential'. Even if they'd have to learn how to pilot such craft of theirs in two completely different ways from banking in atmosphere to near omni-directional maneuvering then I say tough beans. These are trained pilots many of whom are sopposed to be highly disciplined military personnel it's either suck it up and learn to pilot two different ways, die or don't even bother becoming a combat pilot in the Star Wars universe. If space in the Star Wars universe really does behave like it does in our universe/galaxy then for civilizations in the SW galaxy it's not like they can't manipulate gravity itself anyway and have inertia dampening technology that's practically magic with technobable so if that's the case I see no reason why you'd want pilots to maneuver as if they were piloting earthlike atmospheric craft. Its immensely important of having vehicles in the vaccum space that can move in an almost omni-directional manner via thrusters cutting off and igniting in ways of halting their craft and redirecting them at practically never ending/continuous velocity in the near friction free medium of SPACE. Such realistic spaceships would dominate any "star vessel" that was trying to maneuver like an airplane in space, something that's completely unnecessary when again you have inertia dampening technology that makes G-forces irrelevant.
It is possible that ships (especially small fighters like X-wings) are using a form of thrust vectoring. Thrust vectoring is when you point the engine nozzle in a direction to angle the thrust to turn more efficiently. We actually already have this in our universe on the F-22 Raptor fighter jets. F-22s can actually use thrust vectoring to turn without using traditional flaps and rudders. They cant turn very sharply using thrust vectoring only, but in space with no aerodynamic drag, they could theoretically turn much easier. So thrust vectoring on an X-wing, for example, would make sense as it wouldn't require any sort of medium to push against like a rudder would, it would also allow for the banking and turning we see in the films. I think this makes much more sense than some mythical substance that still allows for space to be a vacuum.
The Star Wars Opening Crawl isn't addressing the audience, it's addressing the reader of the Journal of the Whills. This was explained by Lucas long long ago.
Great video and I'm glad you didn't show that clip of Leia "floating" back into the ship. That scene was so bonkers. Tommy Lee Jones from *The Fugitive* would have had the best response. "She just did a Peter Pan right back into the ship!"
"once you are moving in a vacuum there is nothing that will slow you down"
This needs clarification. The vacuum of space and the presence of gravity are different things. We can build vacuum chambers on earth and objects inside are still influenced by gravity. Same applies to objects thrown on the moon, which has effectively no atmosphere.
So the statement about not needing to maintain a thrust, to maintain certain motion paths, only applies when outside of the gravity well of local body.
Gravity is usually a known constant, though, so you can compensate for it, and make a stable orbit.
I believe he's referencing drag here, not gravity. If you cut your engines in an airplane, gravity doesn't slow you down - the drag of your plane against the air does.
You don’t understand physics here, gravity affects you yes. But at certain speeds your centrifugal force will complete balanced with gravitational attractions. With high enough velocities, the balance is broken, therefore your orbit will not exist and fly off into infinity
If you are not sure about something, google it and research. Don’t have to leave statements like these in the comments
@@gordonchiew7341 Meh, most of the other readers understood I was referring to needing thrust to attain "certain" non-orbital motion paths. You are correct however that there are many bounded orbit paths subject only to matching the centrifugal force. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand%27s_theorem ).
However, since in your other post you wanted to be sassy about physics here you should read up on Orbital Decay Mechanisms: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_decay
Orbital mechanics is more complex than your "centrifugal force will complete balanced with gravitational attractions" description.
Sincerely, a professor of physics.
I remember that in some Clone Wars episode, Plo Koon was able to brwath in space because he is able to breath CO2 or something like this. Even thou that wouldnt make any sense given that space should be a vacuum, meaning there would be no CO2 for him to breath.
Plo Koon wears a rebreather though, so maybe the idea was just that they had CO2 on their person that they always had to have.
@@lenkagamine4145 That sounds a lot more logicl than space being filled with CO2.
Me: Star Wars physics are so stupid.
(Watches video)
Me: Star Wars physics are still stupid, but less so.
What's science, we don't do that here
The "aether" element blurs the line between scifi and fantasy even more, and i love it
But Aether only react to weightless stuff
Hey eck could you do a battle breakdown about the battles that will appear in squadrons?
(Sorry for bad english)
It is better than my Hinglish
This is a really cool explanation and now added to my personal headcanon. Thanks!
THE HYPERSPACE BARRIER IS THE END OF THEIR UNIQUE AETHER AND THATS WHY THEY CAN'T USE HYPERDRIVES OUTSIDE OF IT!
It's truly amazing.
According to the Empire of dreams DVD that came out about the making of Star Wars, the people at industrial light & magic used actual footage from world war 2 dogfights to frame the dogfights scene in Star Wars. They had no consideration for Newtonian physics but it was our imaginations that made it feel real.
What was space combat?, how
do you space combat?, when New Hope came out no one knew how to answer these questions. I don't think outside of a select group of people no one understood how real world physics applied in a zero-g 'atmosphere'. As we (still) don't have any really world examples.
It's been more than 40 years since a New Hope was released in theaters. Things changed and society as a whole understands physics better. So we must bridge the gap between what we know now and what we see on the TV computer or film.
The dreamers, the people who created the ideas and backgrounds based in the lore of Star Wars, broke ground on the idea of new physics based on New technologies and elements that don't or can't exist under our correct level of understanding.
Who knows we could find an unknown or brand new element not found on the periodic table of elements that could vault us into something new...
Either way the twelve-year-old at first saw a new hope and the 40 year old adult that I am now both agree maybe it's possible one day, And it's still cool.
honestly who cares about stuff like that as long as it stays somewhat consistent in that universe i'm fine with it
Y_oure f/in/e wiht gya butt(se ecks
Grand ni'giss
@@nuclearjanitors did you have a stroke while writing that xD
@@nuclearjanitors dude you need to lay off the drugs. They're bad m'kay?
@@mikagrof9243 I did reading it
Having read Bob Lazar’s explanation of flying saucer 🛸 technology he has allegedly examined, repulsorlifts do exactly the same thing, by creating their own gravitic field, cancelling out gravity in an atmosphere. Now, because Star Wars vehicles do not encapsulate their occupants inside a gravitic field, but instead have arrays of them built into the ship’s hull, the occupants are exposed to G forces in an atmosphere, although inertial dampeners are used to some degree, for hyperspace jumps and similar jolts and fluctuations.
So, it is possible the role repulsorlifts play in manoeuvering a vessel in atmosphere, is essentially the same in a vacuum, because gravitational and atmospheric forces are mostly irrelevant to repulsorlift coils that gain their anti-gravitic properties from harvested and processed dark matter. Apart from turbulence, wind and drag experienced in an atmosphere, the vehicle behaves the same way in either medium, because it’s movements are not relative to it’s environment. All of it’s thrust is projected from the rear, vectored or otherwise, the repulsors must also play a large part in steering a ship and finding it’s trajectory, because only rudimentary craft like escape pods have steering pulse thrusters .
8 views 42 likes, Eck has broke the force known as RUclips
8 views, 34 likes and 10 comments for me
Yes director
Ecxacly
Yes Director you will be promoted
Awesome video. Sounds like something I can buy into. Totally missed that in the Zahn and xwing books. 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
Theory: Star Wars Galaxy is actually part of the Fluidic Space.
Theory: Species 8472 may thus be part of that galaxy.
Theory: Species 8472 may be related to the Yuuzhan Vong.
😮
Thank you so much for 3 years of quality content, Eck. This vid is no exception!
Last time I was this early Anakin liked sand
Well then you were never this early
@@thomaseasley2938 *It's treason then*
@@thomaseasley2938 You have been arrested by the Imperial Bearue , please do not resist
@@seamus2059 its over Imperial Bearue, i have the high ground
@@thomaseasley2938 You underestimated my forward power
This Tie Fighter guys needs more support and spotlight!
How do planets orbit then? They'd loose their momentum.
Presumably the SW galaxy just has more orbital decay as a result. But thats such a slow process that the timescale just drops from trillions of years to billions of years
Well, isn't our planet losing its momentum like every other planet there is on the universe. Anyway, this theory doesn't hold water as only weightless stuff like light would be able to interact with aether.
I really like the explanation of an aether type of “atmosphere” that engulfs the entire galaxy. It’s a perfect explanation
Eck have u heard of Star Wars armada it’s a great game I recommend for u
have you heard of the tragedy of Star Wars armada?
I herd of armada from the video Eck’s video on the star hawk
@@matthewbrennan3127 It's not a Story EA would tell you
I've been playing X-wing since it's release! Still my favorite miniatures game
O wow thanks for all the likes
The aether might also explain why you can't (or rather have so much trouble) escaping the Star Wars Galaxy. There's a bunch of actual stuff blocking most parts of the Unknown Regions such as Black Holes and strange planets with gravity anomalies and things to do with the Force and what not keeping stuff out. But if the aether has something to do with how Hyperspace works it may be something only in and around that galaxy and thus why they can't leave it. The ships built there are designed with the aether in mind, so the just instantly break down outside of an aether field. This could also mean a long time ago in a galaxy far far away Star Wars really DID take place in "our" universe. Though honestly, with micro engines on other parts of the ship and thrust vectoring, real life space ships could easily preform everything you see in Star Wars. I say "micro" engines because for things like stopping when you cut engines, you should really see reverse thruster exhaust, but that's noticeably lacking. Still, thrust vectoring pretty much solves all but a few of the "but spaceships can't do that" problems, so I never really questioned it. Since it doesn't really matter, it's sort of a take it or leave it bit of lore either way.
That was Pablo's theory, and it's still pretty damn dumb.
A dumb theory for a dumb question if you ask me
And from a dumb person. Pablo, I mean.
I love the Star Fury from Babylon 5. Move forward cut the engines, rotate 180 deg fire weapons, turn and move off in another direction.
#AskEck
*Attempt 817*
Can you do the Forerunners vs the Imperium of Man faction versus video soon please?
Forerunners would be the winner; that much is clear.
It was fun flying with you and Alex in fleet battles tonight!
RUclips: there are no views 17 likes and 5 comments
Me: can I see the comments
RUclips: noooo
Edit: thanks for 20 likes I have never gotten this many likes before
Wheelie-z lol same
RUclips drunk
Corron Pittman Jr agreed
I like this idea. It can also help explain why something like the Force exists in Star Wars, and can even make light sabers make sense if you assume Ether even exists on planets.
Perhaps the entire galaxy is effectively fluidic space (which theoretically exists) and that fluid is this ether.
However; I have my own science based explanation for a lot of what we see in Star Wars space battles.
Gravity Plating.
All ships larger than a fighter would have gravity plating so people can stand on the floor. This would make all ships effectively gravity wells (on a smaller scale than an interdictor.) The more and more bigger ships you get together, the more gravitational eddies that would be created as each ship pulls at each other. A space battle effectively being like trying to fly between really close small moons. It also explains why fighters are used in the first place, as larger ships would have so much more trouble maneuvering with their gravitic plating pulling or pushing at those of other nearby ships.
It also explains the bomber scene in Last Jedi.
And why living pilots are preferred over mechanoids; they can be more skilled at feeling and maneuvering through gravitic distortion.
A ship would need to produce one gee of force for people to stand and walk on its floors. That field literally just extends into space and is the same force the Earth gives off. It makes sense that if we ever develop artificial gravity, that it would radiate outwards from the ship and affect everything outside within a certain radius. Even the Millennium Falcon would produce such a field.
Fighters do not need their own gravity. Anything that small does not need to account for its own gravity when maneuvering around other ships, just that of the ship's it is flying between. Tension pilots could feel, as if you were falling in multiple directions at once. You would have to fly in curved arcs because you are fighting the gravity of the capital ships.
I mean who cares it’s Star Wars it’s meant to be a magical universe for enjoyment not head aching science
This is why The Expanse is WAY more accurate than other sci-fi series. Great ask eck question and answer.
It’s actually not the same universe, Lucas confirmed this. The language they speak, “Basic”, literally sounds like English. Also, the opening sentence is coming from the perspective of the Whills. They found R2D2 200 years after ROTJ and wrote the skywalker story in their journals aka the OT
The stop-rudder-drift thing is called a hammerhead and is used a lot in WWII, it's a very dangerous maneuver starting with a verticle climb to stall out the plane, drop the flaps and apply full rudder to swing the nose abruptly to the ground. Used to turn the tables in a pursuit.
About banking.. I always figured it was for visibility and muscle memory. Learning to fly is hard enough, but trying to learn two vastly different styles would be too difficult. Learn techniques that work in both space and an atmosphere. If you forgot to bank in atmosphere you get shot down or slam into a mountain.
It's just muscle memory, good trigger control.. that kinda thing. Always treat a gun like it's loaded, always fly like you're in atmosphere. Because the one time you make a mistake, someone dies.
That's just how I see it.
another way that the xwing could turn the way it does would be if the engines were thrust vectoring engines. but as for the reason they would have the banking it could be for training and consistancy reasons it would probobly be difficult to get used to awkward sharp movements so if your space fighter flys like an in atmosphere fighter you would only have to train your pilot for one type of flight
Haha!! YES!! I knew Im not alone in having this idea! I absoltuely love it btw, cements Star Wars even more firmly in to Fantasy grounds!
What I consider far more important to consider in Star Wars, something that if acknowledged changes one's approach to dogfighting slightly, is acceleration and mechanical stress.
We have stuff like basic orbital maneuvers at Yavin being at least 1% light speed even before accelerating to attack speed (the radius of Yavin and the stated units of time in ANH demand this), Luke's proton torpedo pulling 16,000 Gs to go into the thermal exhaust port, and Han's reflexes in his hyperjump to Starkiller Base. People just walking around should be exceeding escape velocity on a regular basis.
The Incredible Cross-sections books imply a Utapaun P-38 annihilates kilograms of antimatter every second, and in Rebels we see unshielded shuttle armour take nuclear weapon level impacts with minimal damage. We see an AT-ST vaporizing the cabin of another in ROTJ, yet in the same film see those same blaster bolts barely scorching Endorian vegetation. In Legends we know that repulsorlifts use mini black holes to manipulate gravity, and we know pilots can easily turn their inerttial compensators down to 95% without injury in a dogfight.
Sure, luminiferous aether, that explains a few things... but very little all considered.
I think we did get some relativity in the Solo books when he made his signature 12 parsec Kessel Run; he deviated from the normal "safe" route and flew closer to the black holes to cut the distance and thus time off the route. IIRC (I read it a decade ago) there was description of some of the weird stuff with time and light that we would expect happen close to a black hole.
I honestly like this idea, it gives us a glimpse into what a universe would look like with a luminous aether. Plus it would show that light itself is different than our universe, thus making lightsabers potentially a thing if they weren't already explained as suspended plasma if I recall.
Short answer: Rule of Cool
Long Answer (or at least come up with your own theory - here's one I wrote many years ago)
Under Newtonian physical modelling, a starfighter faces no opposition to its thrust. Broadly speaking, the more thrust applied to the craft, the fast it goes and as there is no air resistance-caused maximum speed, the maximum speed is effectively limitless.
However the methods of manoeuvring under Newtonian physics are not favourable to the defender, as in the time required to change direction whilst under attack, the craft is horribly vulnerable, manoeuvring in a near straight-line, while changing facing and applying thrust to counteract the kinetic energy built-up in the craft.
This is where “etheric rudders” can change the nature of combat and restore the balance between attacker and defender. The principles appear to be that the ER creates negative velocity in the direction into which movement is desired, probably through the simulation of “mass”. A craft flying at 100 units per second will fly in a straight line as the velocity is equally applied; if 20 units of movement are deducted from the port side of the craft (assuming that there are two ER units either side of the craft), then with one fifth of the thrust removed, the craft will tip in the direction of the lower velocity at a rate of turn, proportionate to the difference in velocity.
It is obvious that bi-directional rudders will only produce lateral turns, so we must have two or more pairs or a single unit capable of compensating for velocity in any direction. This is not going to produce motion similar to that of aerodynamic craft, where the effect of “lift” is being used, and slight changes in direction merely redirecting the flow of air over the body of the craft. Instead, movement is going to be freer than aerodynamic craft but with the downside that there is no “free” energy as from diving. All movement off “0” is going to cost energy, not just to recover speed level but to actually effect the turn.
Consequently energy, or rather energy generation is going to be the key factor here. A craft will find a turn harder to achieve the higher the speed and weight of the craft. Engines need only be used to create additional thrust, so the energy generated on board the craft will be divided between the following system areas:
1. Engines.
2. Etheric Rudders (including the “braking” principle).
3. Weapons.
4. Sensors.
5. Life support (includes G-compensation).
Good Theory I haven't read anything but good
It's not really consistent but the part of the ending episode of the Clone Wars where the Venator was crashing, and all the dust and debris was moving relative to the Venator rather than trailing off into space... perfection.
I think it'd be easier to explain the "ether" as the exotic method through which their engines work. Not just as simple fusion rockets, but as an engine that pushes on space. When the engine stops your traversal stops. Kind of like how hyperdrives are also a from of exotic propulsion.
some of the engines are explicitly called ion engines though. alot of the engines, actually.
This is true, but do we know that these engines operate purely by electrically accelerating charged ions in order to generate mechanical linear thrust?
I merely propose that instead of space being fundamentally different, that the engines achieve motion primarily through a means beyond our ‘real science’ understanding.
A similar example is Impulse Engines in Star Trek. In real life an ‘impulse engine’, or Lorentz Force Accelerator, is a form of ion engine which generates thrust by accelerating a charged plasma. But in Star Trek the impulse drive maintains a ‘sub space’ component. Maybe they have the same base principle, but the sci-fi engine extends beyond that basic category.
These are indeed great explanations. Personally I have always thought that the reason why star fighters display motion similar to fixed wing aircraft is because of perhaps creating an artificial gravity well both in and around the ship, thus allowing it to experiance a retarding force. What do you guy's think of this explanation.
I always read the explanation in the X-wing novels as ships needing continued thrust to compensate for the inertial-nullifying effect of the inertial compensators. You could turn the compensator off to accelerate faster, but then the ship and it's occupants would be subject to the "normal" rules of space travel (like in The Expanse). Adding some mysterious "Aether" is superfluous when you have a more simple explanation. The "Etheric Rudder" was merely a device to redirect momentum to provide yaw for starships.
Honestly I love this explanation, especially after watching the Rebels episode with the Space Whales or whatever they were
All I would say is that humans (and perhaps humanoids) can handle much more G's directly downward whereas lateral G's are much harder for our bodies to handle. This is why F1 driver's necks are thick as tree trunks, they train their muscles in this area extensively. So, banking could sort of make sense even in space.
That said, we rarely and inconsistently see G's represented by the pilot in the cockpit. The idea is that the pilots are protected versus G's with Star Wars technology. Still, when pilots have a "boost" function, (in Star Wars and other Sci-fi movies) they are sometimes shown pushed back into their seats. Its highly inconsistent not only in Star Wars but across Sci-fi.
It can be interesting to keep G's in mind when watching the first Star Wars movie (and other Sci-fi movies) where Luke and Han are in the "gunner" seats. I remember this being super cool when I first watched the original movie at age.....9?. Jumping to hyperspace was also cool because while the stars stretched out, there wasn't a G-force inside the Falcon. I can't remember if the jump to hyperspace was consistent over all the movies.....I seem to recall it may not have been in the case of fighters, including Luke's X-Wing....not sure....
.
I love real world space exploration and I am relatively knowledgeable in the area, that being said I’m also a huge Star Wars fan, the lack of real physics has actually never really bothered me because Star Wars is so developed that I feel he can make up his own rules and as long as it sticks to those rules it’s sort of its own universe. Kind of fits into the multi-verse theory actually.
love this video and you squadrons coverage!!!!
The etheric rudder works more like our real world thrust vectoring on the F-22's and SU-37 Terminators. At least, that's how I interpreted it and implemented into my fan-fiction.
I had a few ideas
1: Ships that keep their engines on are, in fact, accelerating
When you see ships with their engines on even while moving, they could simply be moving forwards. however, because the engine is at low power, the camera is following the ship, or that the engines were just slow, it can sometimes be hard to see.
2: ships use thrusters to mimic atmospheric combat
This idea suggests that ships behave like aircraft because they use thrusters to give it airplane-like controls. perhaps it's easier on the human mind to comprehend a space battle when ships fly about like this, or perhaps the first starfighter pilots to ever exist were trained with airplanes and nobody ever thought to change the controls, even when airplanes were no longer used in training. these controls worked for those first pilots, so why won't it work for the newer ones?
alternatively, perhaps the force somehow... changed space? perhaps, without the presence of an atmosphere the force behaves like some sort of sky instead, causing resistance on ships and causing sound to travel around. this is basically a star-wars version of the lumo-whatever-ether covered in the video.
Mean, as I think was pointed out, it does not necessarily have to be the luminiferous either. Whatever it is, it just must have the following properties:
1) low density. Ships in star wars seem pretty fuel efficient, so it can't be providing much more resistance than air. Assuming it works on planets, it must be providing much less
2) rarely(or never) interacts with normal matter. If it did, you wouldn't need special tech to deal with it. Also, it would either stick to planets or avoid them, but it seems to be present everywhere(at least in the starwars galaxy)
At this point I realized, their ships are probably pushing off dark matter aren't they. while "dark matter" is not a very satisfying answer, it does make some of the weird problems that the either would cause from a scientific perspective disappear(like can a blackhole exist if special relativity is not really a thing? Note that special relativity is quite important for general relativity, and GR is the reason black holes exist)
The observed behaviour can also be explained as having differing strengths of repulsion thrusters fitted around the craft, if you have stronger dorsal and ventral repulsors (necessary for the low speed taxiing and manoeuvring seen in the films/shows) they would enable faster manoeuvres by banking and using those rather that yawing with weaker lateral repulsors, second, while the drives are always lit up, this could also indicate that these serve a dual role of also being the power plant for the other systems in the ship.
Also pilots may be trained to perform similar manoeuvres as atmospheric flight due to having to operate in both arenas, so rather than learning two differing flight styles, the ships are designed in such a way to replicate atmospheric handling while in space, so the same skill sets are used with little transition as they leave a planet's influence.
I'd like to see a fan video where you do a Star Wars battle, but all of the science and physics are accurate.
The explanation for the Constant Thrust = Constant Speed problem in most sci-fi franchises than makes the most sense to me has always been the fact that most space craft are equipped with inertial dampeners. While these are important for keeping the occupants from being slammed through the nearest bulkhead every time a ship changes direction, it's not out of the question that this technology affects the entire vessels, effectively killing the ship's inertia and requiring thrust to maintain speed.
i sort of rationalized the banking as being a side effect of not having attitude change forces built into the ships uniformly..that there would be a strongest direction a ship is capable of turning and normally that would be from "bottom" upward. so if you wanted to turn to the side as quickly as possible, you'd rotate your ship so your bottom was facing away from the direction you wanted to turn away from. though i guess if that were true then after the turn there would be no reason to re-orient yourself to the original top/bottom direction..you'd probably just want to stay that way unless you had an idea what direction you'd want to hard turn again. but in our regular constant gravity/air environment, we always want to restore our orientation so our forces can continue to resist gravity (and probably so the occupants don't feel strange flying on their side for the rest of the trip :-)
I know I'm 2 years late to comment, but setting aside physics entirely there is one aspect of why starfighters roll then pitch up to turn (whether to turn, dive, etc) and it comes down to design.
Like fighters on Earth, many starfighters are designed with a cockpit on top and a clear canopy. Yes I know there are exceptions to this and that is where sensors like what the F35 uses come in..... But from a logical standpoint it makes more sense to track enemies by visibly following them which is hard to do when pitching down since you'd be looking at your own lap and relying on sensors. It is much simpler to quick roll left and right as needed and pitch up to keep the target in line of sight in addition to using sensors rather than rely on sensors alone.
If you do throw in artificial gravity even in snub fighters then of course you always pick positive Gs over negative Gs.
I know you normally do Star Wars, but in terms of Space Combat, I wanna say Elite Dangerous handles the Vacuum bit pretty nicely. That said, I enjoyed the explanation as to why we see WW2 style dog fights and lack of projectiles in the SW Universe.
Love your channel so I don't wanna hate but I'm a physics nerd so I'm passionate about this lol. Here's my "buut acktuallly" contribution. The aether solution is a good workaround, but it would have to be in a separate universe as the aether was disproved by Einstein with his theory of special relativity. If aether was real and space/time were separate, it's likely the universe would not develop like it did. I could go on about shields, orbital dynamics, space warfare, drag at the speed of light... etc for hours. I think the best workaround is just to accept it doesn't make sense, and enjoy the stories. Again, love your channel, keep doing you:)