Saga Could Tatooine, Hoth, and Jakku have breatheable atmospheres?

Though we haven't seen the entirety of their surfaces, from what we've seen so far, these three planets look pretty barren in their own ways. Oxygen on Earth is only generated through the collective processes of countless plants, plants that seem to be in short supply on these worlds. Unless terraforming in the SW galaxy has become incredibly cheap and simple, or if there are heavily forested areas that we have not seen yet, I don't see how humans, let along dozens of other creatures, could have lived on these planets without some form of artificial oxygen supply. Thoughts?

 

My best guess would be that it doesn't matter what the exact ecology of the planets is, or whether they would have breathable atmospheres. They are simply places for the events of the films to take place; what matters is what happens in the film and how the characters interact and develop. So, the science of the setting does not really matter as that is not the focus of Star Wars (i.e., it is not Science Fiction).
(But yes, lack of plant life would probably result in low levels of oxygen)

 

It is interesting that this and similar question don't often come up more often when the worlds in Star Wars are discussed, with the visual presentation tending to take up most of the discussion. It's very unlikely that a lot of the planets would even be able to support life (sometimes not even at microbial levels) due to the extreme environments on those planets. When you see the full distance shots of these worlds they often show the surface being fairly uniform in environment, unlike earth which has oceans, icecaps, deserts, forests and so on. The planets are also of a very uniform size, completely unlike in the real universe.
I think it shows that Star Wars is not really science fiction, as the science part doesn't matter, and the worlds are only settings for stories. It's not like Star Trek, where episodes are heavily based around things to do with scientific principals.

 

SW planets definitely don't follow irl science

Unless the Falcon had its own atmospheric generator around it, no way could Han and co stand on the asteroid/slug with JUST breath masks on

As for planets themselves, Hoth is the worst offender; one should be able to jump around 9 feet high in one bound, given the planet's details

And yet these things are easily ignored because SW is SW. I'll take it

 

it's another galaxy somewhere so i figure it's different sciences lol. like Tatooine with 2 suns, I doubt anyone would survive that heat

 

Most of our oxygen doesn't come from trees and plants. About 70 to 80% of the oxygen we breathe comes from marine algae. So, it would be easily explainable to say that these planets have a similar (perhaps terrestrial) organism that provide their planet with oxygen.

 

Hoth yes,

Jakku yes

Tatooine...depends on the heat of the suns.

 

Hoth is far from the smallest. Mustafar is a mere 4200 km diameter - would need to be mostly heavy metals like osmium, to have a half-decent gravity.

If you include TCW, Iego, the "Planet of 1000 Moons" is even worse - at 2730 km diameter.

 

Yes, for a planet four-fifths the diameter of the Moon to have enough satellites to earn its name (assuming that that is based on its physical aspect, not having 'seen' it) would be impressive.

Yeah, whatever; chalk it up to my complete lack of interest in anything to do with the oceans. Question is, do these places have hidden oceans or extraordinarily hardy oxygen-producing organisms that withstand the extreme conditions?

Oh, and I forgot my own advice not to take this too seriously .

 

It basically has its own asteroid field - but it does have at least one habitable satellite of its own.:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Millius_Prime/Legends

Early EU gave it 42 moons - TCW upped this number to 1000, but made them look like mostly a debris field.

The planet's moons were first brought up in TPM with Anakin's explanation of what "angels" are.

 

This is actually a great question, hadn't thought of that.

But as others say, SW isn't really sci-fi anyway.

 

No offense but according to some posts in this thread Mars should not have an atmosphere at all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Mars

Just have some kind of exotic algae in the GFFA that people can use deliberately or coincidentally for terraforming and planets like Mars will be able to support human life.

 

Depends on how you define atmosphere, I think



Behold a real photograph of Pluto's atmosphere taken by the New Horizons space probe. At 2372 km in diameter, the idea of such an object having a breathable atmosphere given SW-level technology and terraforming really isn't that farfetched
As for the gravity, that's another story....

 

The fact that every planet only has 1 type of biome and are habitable is odd, but definitely if they were in our universe, they wouldn't have breathable atmospheres.

 

Mars' atmosphere is much thinner than ours though. Even if the pressure of carbon dioxide was high enough to grow plants it doesn't mean that we could breath the atmosphere. The oxygen would escape into space due to the low gravity, or the very least the atmospheric pressure would not be high enough.
Concentration means jack when it comes to a breathable atmosphere. The only thing which matters is the partial pressure of the oxygen, and on a small planet it would be very difficult to raise it high enough due to the low gravity.

Yes, the big confounding factor. I haven't seen any gravity increasing technology in SW, the 'assumed' gravity on the ships notwithstanding.

 

There is a sidebar in The Making of ROTJ where Ralph McQuarrie talks about his personal idea for gravity and repulsors in SW being more related to the old idea of the Luminiferous Ether. Unfortunately I don't have my copy with me at the moment to excerpt from...

 

like the urbanization of Coruscant. Imagine the smog coverage that planet SHOULD have!

 

ObiWanKnowsMe It'd make Beijing or Shanghai look like Cape Grim, Tasmania (look it up).
Also anybody notice how there are lights that seem to mark major thoroughfares? Unless the planet is very small these would be too narrow to pick up from space. The whole planet would just have an amorphous glow.
Also, living on Coruscant looks like hell. Can you image the traffic noise? Apparently goes all night as well. And the bright lights. All the inhabitants must be driven mad from lack of sleep.

I also thought about mentioning that Tatooine wouldn't have a stable enough orbit, but I believe that planets stably orbiting binary systems have recently been discovered. The two stars that Tatooine orbits are so close they should be pulling gas off each other though.

 

Don't forget that all these habitable planets also have the same gravity regardless of size.

 

Funny idea that. I can't understand how that could work, although hopefully you can fill me in more later.
Luminiferous Aether was an idea for how light was propagated when it was believed that light was purely a wave, not the incredibly complex quantum model we have today. Hence 'Luminiferous' - 'light bearing'. I don't see how you could relate it to gravity.

 

ObiWanKnowsMe wrote

it's another galaxy somewhere so i figure it's different sciences lol. like Tatooine with 2 suns, I doubt anyone would survive that heat

Wouldn't that depend where the populated centers are located? IMHO, the major cities on Tatooine are all situated close to the northern pole region (which would also make the most sense for any kind of spaceport, because it'll be easier to find) and we do not know whether Tatooine - like Earth - is distanced one astronimcal unit or further out in the system.

 

Given my preferences, Coruscant looks like it should be the least habitable of any planet inside or outside Star Wars.

 

I suppose the breathable air problem could be sorted...

 

Which means we know what Superweapon will be used in Ep.8