Jedi Council Forums - Luke Skywalker: Ace pilot or helped by the Force?

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Author	Topic: Luke Skywalker: Ace pilot or helped by the Force?
Lt.Cmdr.Thrawn Registered: Sep '99	Date Posted: 7/10 3:38am Subject: Luke Skywalker: Ace pilot or helped by the Force? - Date Edited: 7/10 3:45am (2 edits total) Edited By: Lt.Cmdr.Thrawn
	I'm sure you realize that the asteroid field is, in real world terms, highly unrealistic. It looks great on film and is an excellent sequence but it's not how real asteroid fields work. The asteroid belt in our solar system is orders of magnitude less dense than the one depicted in ESB. Hernalt posted: Luke negotiates a straight trench under fire in a snubfighter. Lando negotiates a static tunnel under fire in a freighter. Han negotiates a dynamic asteroid field under fire in a freighter. Han buzzes an ISD and disappears. Submitted evidence indicates Han > Lando > Luke. I agree with your conclusion but we have to admit the possibility that these aren't the highest difficulty situations any of those pilot characters have ever faced (though I'm not aware of any others that might compare). Plenty of race car drivers have driven to the store too (not an exact correlation there but you get the point). -----signature----- "We cannot afford to take mythology at face value." -Indiana Jones
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Hernalt Registered: Jun '00	Date Posted: 7/10 12:20pm Subject: Luke Skywalker: Ace pilot or helped by the Force?
	Are you a defense attorney? I'll refer the question back to DRush76: in what context do you ask the rank and/or what data is permissible for analysis?
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Darth_Davi Registered: Jul '05	Date Posted: 7/12 8:46am Subject: Luke Skywalker: Ace pilot or helped by the Force? - Date Edited: 7/12 8:49am (1 edits total) Edited By: Darth_Davi
	Han and Lando were professional pilots, used to flying in space. Luke was just a farmboy who had never had a chance to fly in space, let alone in a top of the line Incom X-Wing fighter. Sorry. There is no way that when it comes to raw piloting skills, Han or Lando, who have had far more experience, are better than Luke Skywalker. If their skills could translate to race car driving, Han and Lando would be like Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart, professionals, been at it a long time, know what they are doing, and Luke is just a teen who got his license a few years ago, gets into a stock car for the first time ever, and wins the Daytona 500. Basically, there is no way Han Solo or Lando Calrissian could have ever come close to doing what Luke did their first time ever piloting a star fighter instead of a T-16 Skyhopper 100% atmospheric craft. Luke not only completely changed venues, going from only knowing how to pilot in an atmosphere to piloting in space, and then switches from what is essentially the equivalent of a Sandpiper or something to a modern jet fighter, while at the same time making a virtually impossible shot while somehow avoiding being shot by the acknowledged deadliest fighter pilot in the galaxy, his father Darth Vader. All during his first ever flight as a fighter pilot. Hernalt, you completely understated what Luke accomplished in order to form your Han > Lando > Luke argument, which completely invalidates it. To believe that it was piloting skill alone, and had nothing to do with the Force (completely ignoring Vader's "the Force is strong with this one" line) baffles the imagination. -----signature----- What the hell is an Aluminium Falcon? Oh, I'm sorry, I thought my Dark Lord of the Sith could protect a thermal exhaust port thats only two meters wide! It wasn't even fully paid off yet!
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Hernalt Registered: Jun '00	Date Posted: 7/12 3:00pm Subject: Luke Skywalker: Ace pilot or helped by the Force?
	Nice to meet you. Good to see someone else interested in this. Your observation about Luke's first ever performance under fire in low gravity with tight maneuvering is correct: he shows exceeding promise as a beginning star pilot. He executes a high-G climb in his learning curve. I trust it is obvious that neither Han or Lando would have been capable during their first flight in space of such a performance as in the Battle of Yavin. They are old enough that a learning curve with high G is not necessary: They may have learned only very gradually. DRush76's question is in present tense. I synthesized available evidence of piloting skill from which movie it was last best displayed. So I took "Is" as "where the skill set was last demonstrated". I did not run projections of what an initial potential piloting skill might amount to in maturity. You seem to calculate piloting skill based solely on acceleration in the learning curve, whereas I calculate it from elevation achieved during demonstration of skills. I don't believe you can honestly say that you _know_ that Luke of ANH, right out of gravity-bound flight and very capable performing an analogue of targeting womp-rats in a small gravitational field, would be able to perform the weightless high-acceleration rolls of the Millenium Falcon in ESB. And if you did assert that Luke could do in ANH what Han did in the ESB asteroid field, I believe you'd be stretching the evidence. That is how my analysis is 'timed'. If I were to take Luke's last known elevation on the learning curve, last known acceleration on the learning curve, and project what elevation such an escape velocity would achieve as of ROTJ, I'd have to apply his other demonstrated skill sets to flying. Three executions leap to mind from ESB and ROTJ: He leaps out of the freeze chamber at superhuman acceleration, performs an extreme strength and extreme acceleration maneuver on the desert skiff, and does a superhuman flip in the throne room. If Luke's mind-body configuration was mapped to a pilot-ship configuration, such that he could run his ship through the same executions, then I think he would top Lando hands-down and would be in the same class of pilot as ESB Han. I might be persuaded to ranking Luke over ESB Han if I knew more about the inertial damping that is clear inside the MF cockpit. In your last sentence I believe you argue with an abridgment of what I said here, unabridged: "Had Luke still had his targeting computer on and Han had taken out the TIEs, Luke's skills as a pilot would have sufficiently precluded any need for the Force". Rephrase: If Luke had been placed in the requirement to maneuver down a long straight trench, while _NOT_ under fire, and to hit a two-meter target while _HAVING_ the targeting computer on, and accomplish this in limited time frame requiring _FULL THROTTLE_, then I am not personally so overwhelmed by the difficulty level of this that I assume he could not have done it without the Force. I think he could have from his hardened skill sets, alone. Getting from the moon to the Death Star in a new fighter - that requires skill. Surviving Vader long enough for Han to get there - that requires the Force. Hitting the target without the targeting computer - that requires the Force. My own personal, un-documentable take on whether or not the Force influences Luke's piloting performance is that the Force is an 'additive' that exists beneath awareness. If it is used with awareness its effect is strong improvement. If it is not used with awareness, its effect is marginal improvement. I don't believe Luke has the option of not being under its influence, as it is genetic, and Vader picks it up in waves. But for the specific set of conditions I delineated, I do not personally think that Luke required the marginal improvement imparted by the Force to successfully execute the task.
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