Lit This facility is crude, but it should be adequate- Official Technology Thread

Many users have gotten annoyed with my technology-related inquires on this board, and one suggested to start a big thread for all of it. They started a thread specifically for talking about the Jedi, so now I am starting a thread for the technological side of Star Wars which I love exploring. SW may seem to be technologically backwards, but based on the novels, you need to have suspension of disbelief when dealing with the tech. Ex. The computers at Echo Base may look big and clunky, yet they probably are exascale or higher (exascale is computing power we don't quite have yet). Everything discussed here should be canon.

Anyway, my first topic to tackle is bacta. Its basically a pseudo-panacea in Star Wars, a substance with remarkable healing properties, even so that it can regrow whole organs that couldn't be replaced with cybernetics (Lost Stars; regrew Ciena Ree's liver). Yet, what are its limits?

1.) Could bacta treatment cure cancer? Cancer is non-existent in canon, as of January 2018 Star Wars lit. However, it existed in Legends so I assume it exists in canon. Yet can bacta make it a minor problem that can be taken care of easily? Nanites are only used so far only for weapons in nu-canon. Their is no mention of nanomedicine and Pablo Hidalgo himself mentioned that that is too "sci-fi" for Star Wars, yet you need to take everything with a grain of salt that Pablo says. Perhaps, when bacta was discovered, medical scientists got lazy and didn't bother further researching medicine.

Yet, we know this isn't true, as nu-canon has already introduced us to illnesses that don't seem to be curable. Bloodburn (which is treatable but chronic like kidney failure), Shilmer's Syndrome which is incurable, but the very wealthy (Denetrius Vidian) can beat the virus by replacing their organic parts with cybernetics. That's just a giant Band-Aid, however. Also Iden Versio's mother died of a illness that we are never given exact details on. We also know that bacta CANNOT regenerate lost limbs, as they are replaced with prosthetics. It also doesn't fully work on extreme injuries brought on by 4th degree burns (Darth Vader). Bacta treatment may lessen the pain (as we see Vader meditating in bacta in Rogue One), but it can't fix the whole charred lungs problem.

So it stands to say. Could regular dunks in bacta replace chemotherapy or radiation treatments for a malignant brain tumor? Thane Kyrell jokingly asked if it could cure a hangover by jumping in it (yet we know that by the events of Phasma, their is a pill for hangovers). Better yet, could bacta help cure a poor soul infected with a prion or any other neuro-degenerative disease?

Also in Legends, some beings could be allergic to bacta (basically meaning they are royally screwed), so its safe to assume bacta allergies exist in canon, since its very common to be allergic to medicine (ask my grandma )

 

Interesting thread-however I suggest the EU community might be a better subforum.

 

As a paramedic I also found Bacta interesting and often wished it was a real thing so this has always fascinated me. That being said, I think the oversimplified answer is Bacta could only accelerate healing for those things which have a innate biological ability to heal. Major organ and tissue damage, particularly those that are typically incapable of regeneration naturally seem to not be influenced by the use of Bacta. We got a bit of a glimpse into this from the Medstar books but not much and the lung tissue example is a good point in support of this.

What is more interesting to me though is that with all of the DNA and gene sequencing going about for cloning I would find it hard to believe that they could not isolate cancer issues and treat them through gene therapy. The IRL explanation probably is that LFL/Story group did not want to go down that rabbit hole or could not based on the known knowledge at the time.

As a story device you cannot have a miracle medical solution for every malady or injury. There would never be any source of jeopardy for the character(s).

 

Great thread idea.

Re: Bacta.
IIRC, bacta can reattach a severed limb.

Re: Disease.
I'm sure most diseases were cured in the GFFA. In Dark Force Rising they talk about the old times with the Hive Virus. I imagine the further back you go the more problematic diseases are. There was some kind of plague during the thousand year New Sith Wars. There's surely still diseases that have adapted or haven't been cured yet. I imagine a Coreworlder won't be exposed to anything that could harm him, but would visit a poor planet and the natives would have no cure/immunity to the Core diseases.

 

I'm always distressed how primitive the medicine of SW is. Luke should have had a hand cloned for him, not a robotic one.

I was always wondering if there was a retcon--that Force sensitives can't get body parts cloned (like Vader) because of midi-chlorian compatibility, clone madness, whatever, but non-Force sensitives can have body parts cloned easily.

 

I'm a bit confused about how shields work. There's quite a few different types it seems.
1) Shields that vaporize objects.
2) Shields that stop energy.
3) Shields that stop energy and objects.
4) Shields that stop energy and accelerated objects.
Also some shields go one way and others both ways.
And probably many more. What are these called and where are they found?

 

Shields must also work very differently between canon and Legends. Shields didn't save the Supremacy from Holdo hyperdriving into it in 8, but saves the Executor from 3 star destroyers hyperdriving into it in the EU comic "Escape to Hoth".

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Good point. What’s up with that?

 

Next: The Holonet. Is it like a mixture of the TV, Radio and internet? It’s never really stated. Can you use it like we use google. Can you listen to music from it? That’s what I’d like to know.


Why isn’t Asteroid mining a booming business. It has the potential to produce trillion even quadrillionaires. It’s mentioned in canon, but nobody seems to care about it.

 

maybe Episode IX will center around asteroid mining

 

The holonet seems to very based on the era of EU works-I'd say it's got internet, cable tv, radio, and military/government channel aspects and they seem somewhat fragmented-so no unified galactanet that we can see.

As for plagues-we know of plagues during the republic dark ages in the height of the new Sith wars the candorian plague devastated the republic. Also speaking of the new Sith wars-the holonet was basically taken or of commission outside the core for centuries.

As for music-we have bands in the OT, operas in the PT, and the EU mentions popular music-when Jacen returns home in Destiny's Way he hears popular music playing.

In terms of cloning-Caedus considers having his arm reattached, and the Jango Fett template is pretty close to Jango I mean in the physical sense of looking identically like him and having his physical attributes.

Asteroid mining does exist-it's mentioned Vectivus was probably in the mining business. Polis Massa probably has mines, Lando IIRC is involved in it somewhat and I imagine a lot goes on that we don't see. It's probably a major part of the galactic economy come to think about it.

As for bacta-It seems to have some sort of regenerative properties or somehow helps the body heal itself or accelerates this process from what I can tell at least-maybe I'm interpreting it wrong.

 

Re: Holonet.
So it's run by the Republic-Empire. I'll say HNN is the official news source of the Net run by the government. There's surely many sides to it, some government, some civilian. They have some form of communication (Video, audio or text?), public forums (Naboo message exchange) and live video channels (HNN). In reality I'm sure the authors would assign any trait of the RL Internet to HoloNet.

 

I imagine there are local planetary holonets-such as the Naboo one, as well as ship based ones.

Though the holonet was a more fragmented entity than the RL internet.

 

It's gotta be different on different planets. Let's say the government of "Planet X" allows certain more official channels like HNN on their planetary network. All other channels would be inaccessible to the Exians. There's probably channels on X that are inaccessible to the Wider Net.

 

Indeed and of course government, military, and intelligence channels are off limits to the civilian population.

I also imagine there is a vast "dark web" or "deep web" used for criminal activities, private intelligence gathering, hiring assassins, clandestine projects, etc...

 

The pair of journalists in Doctor Aphra Annual #1 post to a HoloNet alternative called the Undervine:

 

I wonder how a HoloNet alternative works. Do they use the same servers and transmitters? Do they have their own?

 

Hang on though - let's take a closer look at what actually happened there, and what the dialog says. Here's the comic panel in question:


The ships that impact Executor's shields are dropping out of hyperspace, not jumping into it as the Raddus did. The artwork isn't entirely clear about it but if you really want to reconcile this moment with TLJ, I think there's more than enough wiggle room to say that the Star Destroyers had decanted before impacting Executor's shields.

Another thing to consider - do we know for sure that Supremacy actually had its shields up when Raddus jumped? The Resistance fleet wasn't posing anything that resembled a conventional threat to it at that particular moment. In the spirit of bad-guy overconfidence, they may not have bothered with them.

 

There's a reference to the Supremacy shields with regard to DJ slicing to get through them, but they're described as "security shields," so I suppose it's ambiguous as to whether that's the same given the wide variety of shields, e.g. ray, particle.

The scene in the comic seems more similar to the scene at the end of Rogue One when the Rebel fleet is about to flee Scarif and Vader in the Devastator drops out of hyperspace and collides with a few smaller rebel ships, so I'd say it's likely that the comic depicts the ships exiting hyperspace prior to collision -- otherwise how would they ever know what happened?

Edit:

My take on the whole thing is: a capital ship jumping to lightspeed as a projectile is really effective, but it's difficult to aim at range, is prohibitively expensive, and would be easily defeated with interdictor cruisers. If a navy was to adopt the tactic, the opposing force would just make more extensive use of interdictor cruisers, which would be undesirable.

 

Raddus jumps forward at Supremacy.
The three Imperials seem to exiting hyperspace at the Executor.
Maybe they had time to decelerate. I'm not exactly sure how close to the object the ship is when it hits the mass shadow and exits hyperspace. Enough to decelerate to the point of not pwning Executor, I guess. Raddus was jumping right at Supremacy = no time to decelerate.

For an alternate explanation maybe both forms of hyperspace-ramming were equally powerful. We all know in TLJ the First Order seems to hate shields. If Fulminatrix didn't have them up maybe Supremacy didn't either. I mean after all all the FO really needed at the time was thruster power and "zero-g mortars". They probably left their shields down. Not like the Resistance could hurt them.

And for a technological counter to the tactic (besides shields), passive gravity well generators! Basically our hypothetical modern warship would have miniature gravwells onboard. The projectors would maintain a mass shadow bubble around the ship at all times, and require a quarter of the power. If any craft attempts a ram they'll be yanked out before impact.

 

If those star destroyers didn't exit hyperspace before colliding with the Executor they would never have been visible, since hyperspace is an alternate dimension. Exiting it is coupled with immediate deceleration.

 

Obviously. But how much decel and how close is up to debate. As I said you can find an ad hoc reason for the Imperial trio's lack of penetration. But I think my second theory is more satisfying.

 

Hmm it seems Griff might be decelerating. However, if hyperdrive was an easy weapon, why was it not used against any Imperial superweapon, or Coruscant?

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because its effectiveness is contingent upon relative mass between the projectile and the target

you would need something of comparable size to the death star for it to be effective

I seem to recall Daala had a plan to crash a Star Destroyer into Coruscant in the JAT, but I don't remember if it involved it jumping to hyperspace

 

As well as this.

The entire tactic can be countered with a bit of engineering. The tech is available. In the EU it's thousands of years old.