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atgxtg
Rear Admiral
Joined: 22 Mar 2009
Posts: 2460
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 Posted: Sat Jul 23, 2011 2:30 pm Post subject: |
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| Grimace wrote: |
What?! You don't think Star Wars ships should be much faster than modern spacecraft? |
I forone do. I think the faster speeds fits what we see in the films, what data that exists, and makes sense.
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Are you talking about our shuttle during powered flight into orbit, where it attains speeds of up to 28,000 kilometers per hour. Considering it's 384,403 kilometers to the moon, it would take the shuttle, under POWERED flight, almost 14 hours to reach the moon. |
I'd like to back you u here, but the slower travel time actually has little to do with the shuttle's speed. It has to do with it's fuel.
The shuttle (and other real spacecraft), gets into orbit using lots and lots of fuel. So much so that it needs booster rockets and an external fuel tank to do the job. Because of this, the shuttle doesn't have much fuel left over for maneuvering when in orbit. And it's 28,000 kph speed is UNPOWERED. That speed isn't an indication how fast or powerful the suttle is, it is simply the speed required to maintain orbit. Everything else at that altitude is moving at the same speed.
But, if the shuttle didn't have to worry about fuel, it could maintain a constant acceleration and it could reach the moon in about two and a half hours, and that is if it is starting from a dead stop. it would take about an 3 and a half hours if the shuttle actually wanted to stop at the moon. But that is at a relatively low acceleration of 1G, about the best the orbiter can do. If the shuttle could keep it's 3G acceleration that it has with boosters and external tank, it could get to the moon in a hour and a half, or in two if it wanted to stop.
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That's quite a lengthy amount of time. Unless time is very different in Star Wars, its safe to say that Star Wars fighters went MUCH faster to move from the moon of Yavin to the Death Star that was orbiting Yavin at maximum velocity. |
Yup. In fact, assuming that the Earth's moon is a "standard" distance away, and that the 15 minute travel time i he RPG holds up, That works out to an acceleration of over 47Gs. And that is probably for a relatively slow freighter at "cruising" speed. I have no doubt a starfighter at full thrust could do it faster.
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Even the fastest we've propelled something towards the moon, the New Horizons mission to Pluto (which only passed by the moon, didn't enter it's orbit) was done 8 hours and 35 minutes and travelled at 58,000 kilometers an hour. |
Again, it isn't that we can't get things to go fast. It's the fuel and acceleration limits. "Top speed" doesn't really apply in space. As long as you got fuel to burn, you can just keep accelerating. Not that Star Wars tech can't do a lot better.
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So if you're going to be somewhere on par with what Star Wars seems to demonstrate, you're going to have to have speeds a whole lot more than current modern spacecraft. |
At least ACC ratings. We can, and have spacecraft going a very high speeds, like the Voyager probes, but it usually takes us a lot longer to reach those speeds, and requires some fancy use of other planet's gravity wells. And even at those speeds, our craft have no maneuverability.
BTW, Using that G to MGLT/SPACE Speed conversion I came Up with, a Space Shuttle Orbiter has an RPG SPACE speed of about 0.016,or about 1 unit of movement every 62 game turns. Going all out, that is about 1 unit every 16 turns.
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Also, I'll point out that Star Wars ships seem to be able to accomplish faster than light speed without hyperdrive usage. What was Han Solo's line in Star Wars? "She'll make .5 past light speed." Somehow I don't think he was bragging that it had a hyperdrive. Lots of ships had hyperdrives. I think he was indicating that the Falcon could actually attain light speed and beyond with just its regular engines.[/quote
That's just speculation. Sure, all freighters would have a hyperdrive, but not all hyperdrives are he same. The "point five past lightspeed" comment seems to have been a reference to the 1/2 hyoerdrive.
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In the Return of the Jedi novelization, it mentions that Wedge's X-wing came out of the Death Star at "barely sublight speed" and arced around the forest moon. I take that to mean he was nearly at light speed with just his engines, while coming out of the inner workings of the Death Star. I don't assume that meant he was using his hyperdrive, just that he was pushing his regular engines as much as he could to get out of there as fast as he could. |
You have to take something like that with a grain of salt. If the ship could travel at just under lightspeed, then relativisitic effects would mean that Wedge practically forever to get to the moon, due to time dilation. And if it were going that fast, Wedge would have problems reacting in time to avoid hitting the moon, etc, etc.
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So I've always kind of assumed that Star Wars ships could go up to and beyond light speed using their regular engines. If they wanted to many multiples of the speed of light and not use as much fuel doing it, they used hyperdrives.[/quote]
You can assume that, but that hasn't been proven yet. There is some data that supports that idea, but most of it doesn't hold up under scrutiny. Frankly most of Star Wars tech doesn't hold up. But then, it's a series of movies.
I agree with you basic assumption that Star Wars ships are A LOT faster, or at least that they have a much higher acceleration. |
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Fallon Kell
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Joined: 07 Mar 2011
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Location: Tacoma, WA
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| Posted: Sat Jul 23, 2011 5:25 pm Post subject: |
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| Grimace wrote: |
What?! You don't think Star Wars ships should be much faster than modern spacecraft?
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Frankly, I don't. (EDIT:I think that Star Wars ships should accelerate faster a little faster, but absolute speed is rather pointless,) especially since if we shot one of our ships into a black hole, it would hit light speed at the event horizon. In a vacuum, speed isn't the issue. Acceleration and the length of time you can accelerate are. I think a Star Wars ships should be able to accelerate roughly 2-5x faster than modern spacecraft, and for much much longer. | Grimace wrote: |
Also, I'll point out that Star Wars ships seem to be able to accomplish faster than light speed without hyperdrive usage. What was Han Solo's line in Star Wars? "She'll make .5 past light speed." Somehow I don't think he was bragging that it had a hyperdrive. Lots of ships had hyperdrives. I think he was indicating that the Falcon could actually attain light speed and beyond with just its regular engines. |
I disagree. I like the System in the RAW where he was bragging that his ship's hyperdrive was twice as powerful as military-only hyperdrives. I haven't seen anything to indicate that star wars ships could break the light barrier with sublight engines. | Grimace wrote: | In the Return of the Jedi novelization, it mentions that Wedge's X-wing came out of the Death Star at "barely sublight speed" and arced around the forest moon. I take that to mean he was nearly at light speed with just his engines, while coming out of the inner workings of the Death Star. I don't assume that meant he was using his hyperdrive, just that he was pushing his regular engines as much as he could to get out of there as fast as he could.
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But in the movie, you can see he clearly wasn't going that fast.
The idea of superphotonic sublight travel clashes with the idea of Star Wars I get from the movies, far more than well, I guess anything discussed on this thread so far. And that's not to discredit you or your idea of SW in any way, but it is certainly contrary to mine.
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Or that excessively long "Noooooooooo" was the Whining Side of the Force leaving him. - Dustflier
Complete Starship Construction System
Last edited by Fallon Kell on Sat Jul 23, 2011 9:44 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Grimace
Captain
Joined: 11 Oct 2004
Posts: 729
Location: Montana; Big Sky Country
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| Posted: Sat Jul 23, 2011 6:37 pm Post subject: |
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Well... I feel you're going to be so convoluted in the information you decide to go with that you're wasting your time making something that will likely never accomplish what you want.
You're attempting to apply current real world physics and theories on Star Wars. It's pretty obvious, even on the farthest extent of disbelief, that Star Wars operates under a completely different set of physics and theories. They have hyperspace. They have the Force. They have lightsabers and blasters. The idea of relativity when nearing the speed of light could simply not apply in Star Wars. The idea of acceleration and deceleration in a vacuum could be entirely different in Star Wars.
I wish you luck, but I'm forced to agree with the idea that it's a nigh impossible task to meld reality and Star Wars together. |
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Fallon Kell
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Joined: 07 Mar 2011
Posts: 1846
Location: Tacoma, WA
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| Posted: Sun Jul 24, 2011 1:25 am Post subject: |
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| Grimace wrote: | Well... I feel you're going to be so convoluted in the information you decide to go with that you're wasting your time making something that will likely never accomplish what you want.
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Well what I'm going with primarily is what we see in the movies, and a pretty solid amature understanding of physics. After that come good ideas from other sources that don't flagrantly conflict with the first two. It keeps convolution to a minimum. | Grimace wrote: |
You're attempting to apply current real world physics and theories on Star Wars. It's pretty obvious, even on the farthest extent of disbelief, that Star Wars operates under a completely different set of physics and theories. They have hyperspace. They have the Force. They have lightsabers and blasters. The idea of relativity when nearing the speed of light could simply not apply in Star Wars. The idea of acceleration and deceleration in a vacuum could be entirely different in Star Wars.
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I don't think that blasters and lightsabers and hyperspace really do conflict with the physics as we know them. It's just that they aren't always as simple as it sounds on the surface. I've already provided a good working example of how blasters could work. My brother and I have talked over lightsabers, too. They could easily be similar to a blaster bolt suspended in place, or even a small quickly oscillating plasma packet, for example. | Grimace wrote: |
I wish you luck, but I'm forced to agree with the idea that it's a nigh impossible task to meld reality and Star Wars together. |
I'm comfortable with monumental challenges. If it is impossible, I'll know soon enough. If not, I hope to be able to show how.
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Or that excessively long "Noooooooooo" was the Whining Side of the Force leaving him. - Dustflier
Complete Starship Construction System |
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atgxtg
Rear Admiral
Joined: 22 Mar 2009
Posts: 2460
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| Posted: Tue Jul 26, 2011 12:16 pm Post subject: |
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Well, the technology we see in Star Wars could conflict with real world physics. It all depends. Much of what we see does conflict with how things work, as least to the best of our knowledge. But there could be things that we don't know about that could make some things possible.
As far as the acceleration for ships in Star Wars, the offical values are much higher than 2-5x, more like 400-1000x. What we see on screen is inconclusive. We can't even lock down hyperspace travel times. |
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