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CT how did Vader escape?

Discussion in 'Classic Trilogy' started by texjrwillerjr, Jan 11, 2017.

  1. Lt. Hija

    Lt. Hija Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Dec 8, 2015
    Sarge wrote

    In my headcanon, the pilots at the medal ceremony were barely trained volunteers who were willing to fly fighters even if they weren't all that qualified. The rebels assigned their most experienced pilots to the 30 or so ships that they had, and the rest had to sit out the mission. None of them had much fighter pilot training, and they all had fewer hours of flight time than Luke, so he got one of the fighters.

    An alternative explanation which IMHO is less headcanon but rather a viable rationalization based on George Lucas Canon, i.e. in the radio drama Luke was sent straight to the flight simulator and immediately scored much better than an average pilot, so there was a good reason to send him into the battle, given his skills.

    Snafu55 wrote

    In my personal head canon as well, pilots with just blue rebel starbirds on their helmets and nothing else (no personalized color scheme) are either really new or inexperienced. I see it as a right of passage sorta for a rebel pilot or personalize his helmet's color scheme to his own personality and tallied kills.

    I concur wholeheartedly, can't we make it official? As a matter of fact I go one step further:

    [​IMG]

    I.e. the crest of Alderaan was added by many pilots on their otherwise blank helmets to express morning and awareness of the crime the Empire had committed against the population of Alderaan (of course there were veteran helmets already displaying the Alderaan crest, possibly suggesting pilots of Alderaanian origin).

    Of course this breaks the rule with Luke and there were a ton of blue starbird colored rebel pilots we saw in X-wings and Y-wings during the scene with General Dodonna and then in the shot of them taking their ships that we never see in the battle.

    Not necessarily. Of course, his helmet is quite in contrast to the other "nuggets" we see, but prominently features the royal crest of Alderaan (i.e. in its "aggressive" posture, i.e. the head of the dove has turned back and overlaps with the left wing of the bird symbol).

    We do know (at least) from ROJ that Leia is an able pilot (she took that Y-Wing - built for and seen in the deleted sandstorm scene - to come to Tatooine with Threepio), so I'm confident / certain that the helmet Luke was wearing in ANH was actually a gift from Princess Leia.

    Assuming that the "V" marks on the helmet are Imperial 'kills' it would seem that not only the TIE fighters he shot down during their escape were considered but also the Imperial personnel he 'encountered' on the Death Star. ;)
     
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  2. MeBeJedi

    MeBeJedi Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    May 30, 2002

    True, but it was knocked away from the DS.
     
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  3. Martoto77

    Martoto77 Jedi Master star 5

    Registered:
    Aug 6, 2016

    And didn't come under control until well after the explosion. If you were being pernickety, it's rather far fetched for a spinning fighter to have achieved the minimum safe distance from such an explosion.
     
  4. Django Fett

    Django Fett Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Nov 7, 2012


    Vader had regained control of his TIE, the reason how Luke, Han, Wedge and co escaped was there wasn't any one to stop them after Luke blew the DS. They'd all left the vicinity of the DS and with their shields they were protected from the blast and any debris.
     
  5. Martoto77

    Martoto77 Jedi Master star 5

    Registered:
    Aug 6, 2016
    The rebels were in powered, controlled flight Vader was helpless.
     
  6. Strongbow

    Strongbow Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Nov 6, 2014

    How would you explain it's very weathered condition? Even the insignia is very worn/dirty. I definitely agree with the concept that the "generic" blue bird helmets were nuggets. But Luke's helmet clearly belonged to a veteran, perhaps one who had been wounded and was unable to fly, or deceased. After he wore is Yavin, it would, of course, become associated with him.

    One thing that bugs me about the idea of the "V's" as victories markings is that no one seems to have accumulated more by ESB, which is, what, like 4 years later? Surely Luke shot down a TIE or 100 in the intervening 4 years. :)

    BTYW, this is a subject I love. One thing I do quite a lot of is paint X-Wing helmets for my fellow RL members. We try to pick unique designs based on the film designs, so we try to unofficially assign meaning to the different symbols. For example, we now largely assume the "Sliced onion" symbol (as seen on the helmet above) is a Starfighter Command emblem. it is interesting to me that almost all the X-Wing pilots in TFA have that symbol in the same place on their helmets, as if that is an actual regulation.
     
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  7. MeBeJedi

    MeBeJedi Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    May 30, 2002
    The spinning wouldn't affect his overall inertia in space.

    An object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by an outside force. Vader was thrown out of the trench and away from the DS. He would continue moving in a straight line away from the DS regardless.
     
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  8. Martoto77

    Martoto77 Jedi Master star 5

    Registered:
    Aug 6, 2016
    All we saw was a spinning Tie. We don't know if it was travelling in a straight line away from the death star or at what relative speed. You have to consider the death star's gravitational pull on the ship.
     
  9. Lt. Hija

    Lt. Hija Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Dec 8, 2015
    Strongbow wrote

    How would you explain it's very weathered condition? Even the insignia is very worn/dirty. I definitely agree with the concept that the "generic" blue bird helmets were nuggets. But Luke's helmet clearly belonged to a veteran, perhaps one who had been wounded and was unable to fly, or deceased. After he wore is Yavin, it would, of course, become associated with him.

    As I suggested, it was probably a gift from Princess Leia, i.e. either a helmet she had worn herself or a relative of hers. Otherwise I would think it to be somewhat inappropriate to let him use the helmet of an unknown veteran.

    One thing that bugs me about the idea of the "V's" as victories markings is that no one seems to have accumulated more by ESB, which is, what, like 4 years later? Surely Luke shot down a TIE or 100 in the intervening 4 years. :)

    [​IMG]

    Apparently the "V" stood for the symbol of an Imperial object, as illustrated by the Yavin IV tactical display of the Death Star. I wouldn't exclude the possibility that prior to ANH the members of the different Alliance cells had some sort of "pxxxxxx contest" who had scored the most Imperial kills. After ANH that changed for reasons not known. ;)

    And here is a cool image of an obvious Alliance pilot helmet collector featuring all the variations (which IMHO makes it abundantly clear that the original Alliance symbol was the circle with the seven lines, as that's the only element you'll find on every helmet - with the exception of Dorovio Bold as her helmet was a reuse of Solo's from ANH): https://www.pinterest.de/pin/559994534888827389/
     
  10. SateleNovelist11

    SateleNovelist11 Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Jan 10, 2015
    In the old EU, Vader's escape was partially due to luck. The crash and so on. Then he landed on that planet and ruthlessly survived his way to an Imperial outpost. He feared reprisals from his master.

    In the film, I think it's fair to say that Vader may have wished he did not survive, given how Sidious Palpatine would punish him. Of course, we're not talking about the original intent (the Emperor being a weakling controlled by a bureaucracy). We're talking about the saga as it stands. I think it was an accident that he survived, partially spurned by Han's intervention. Vader may have killed many Jedi in his day, but some of it was due to dumb luck, his cybernetics, and his knowledge in the Force. In this case, you could chalk it up to the will of the Force. I attribute it to dumb luck in this instance. I can see Vader hating himself. He would be like, "Why did I not foresee this? I could have destroyed this [rogue] pilot before the Falcon arrived." Or something to that effect.
     
  11. MeBeJedi

    MeBeJedi Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    May 30, 2002

    No, I don't.....especially since he did survive. Not only that, but the DS is 1) immensely smaller than even a small moon, and 2) full of hollow spaces, and therefore doesn't have anywhere near the same amount of mass as a moon of similar size. As such, it would have nowhere near the gravitational field your scenario supposes.
     
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  12. Martoto77

    Martoto77 Jedi Master star 5

    Registered:
    Aug 6, 2016
    I am aware of that. [face_waiting] I did say a few posts back that it is pernickety. But it is far fetched. You have to suspend this type of scrutiny for it to hold up.

    The movie shows the fighters flying at full throttle during the trench run, for minutes on end. Far far more than the amount of time after Luke's bullseye and the station destructing. If the escaping fighters reached just enough of a safe distance in that time then they would have circumnavigated the entire station two or three times flying at the same speed during the trench run. And we know that didn't happen.

    Vader's spinning Tie Fighter would not have reached half the distance that the rebels did in the same amount of time. Ok, so, the rebels got far enough away for their shields to protect them. In which case Vader had very very good shields or was just extremely lucky. Fine with me, I suppose.


    The difference in scale shown between the fighters and the death star (and assuming the humanoids in GFFA are the same size as us) would actually make the death star about twice the size as our own moon. It;s constructed from dense metals and uses a lot of energy. There's no way you can dismiss the gravity of the station.


    It would have a gravitation force on an unpowered object drifting near to to that would have to be taken into consideration.
     
  13. Iron_lord

    Iron_lord Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Sep 2, 2012
    It's hard to tell scale when they're having to cut back and forth between "flat landscape" up close, and "curved horizon" from a distance.

    160km diameter is the figure it's usually given as - which matches up fairly well with the depth of the main equatorial trench, and the size of the hangar bay within that trench, that the Falcon lands in.

    Our moon is just over 3470 km in diameter. More than 21 times as wide.
     
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  14. MeBeJedi

    MeBeJedi Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    May 30, 2002
    So is an aircraft carrier.....and yet 90,000 tons of steel, fuel, nuclear reactor, aircraft, weapons, water, food, and people can float.

    Why? Because of it's low overall density......it has huge open spaces thoughout, much like the DS.


    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    What does that have to do with gravity?

    And you have no idea at what speed Vader's ship was thrown out....a speed that, once reached, would not be affected by any spin that was imparted, because there's no air resistance. And the farther Vader's ship travels, the less effect any gravitational field the DS may have would have.

    There's also this:

    The golf ball traveled 12 times farther on the moon than on Earth as a result of its lower gravity. That's quite a longer trajectory.

    The Moon has 1/6, or 16% of Earth's gravity, whereas the DS, by some calculations, has 4% of Earth's gravity. Now, if you look at the 3-minute mark of this video of Apollo 17 taking off from the Moon, you will notice how little energy is expended to achieve sufficient velocity to get the module off the ground. If the DS's gravity was 1/4 of the Moon's gravity, well......


     
  15. Iron_lord

    Iron_lord Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Sep 2, 2012
    If the Death Star was exactly as dense as the Moon, it would have just under 1/20 the gravity of the moon, at its surface (which is to say. slightly less than 5%). It would have vastly less than 4% of the Earth's gravity.

    Even if it was exactly as dense as the Earth, being only 1/80 as wide, it would have only 1/80 of the Earth's surface gravity - little more than 1%.

    Surface gravity is proportional to mass, and inversely proportional to radius squared.
    Mass is proportional to radius cubed.
    Therefore, (density being unchanged) surface gravity is proportional to radius.

    In order to have 4% of the Earth's surface gravity - it would need to be exceedingly dense - close to the density of gold, and denser than lead.

    If it has 4% of Earth's gravity, then that would probably be artificial gravity.
     
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  16. MeBeJedi

    MeBeJedi Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    May 30, 2002
    Well, the 4% wasn't my calculation, but yes.... The DS has very little surface gravity. Gravity is a terribly weak force.
     
  17. Iron_lord

    Iron_lord Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Sep 2, 2012
    That said, even weak gravity may make enough of a difference that flyers have to work to compensate for it.
     
  18. Binary_Sunset

    Binary_Sunset Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Oct 28, 2000

    That's very interesting about the shot being flipped/reversed. I never knew that, but it makes sense. Where did you learn about this?
     
  19. Martoto77

    Martoto77 Jedi Master star 5

    Registered:
    Aug 6, 2016
    There's a bit of a difference between buoyancy and gravity.

    And MeBeJedi is correct we have no idea how fast Vader is spinning. We just know it cannot be as fast as the escaping rebels how are accelerating away in controlled, powered flight.

    Red Leader loses power and immediately struggles to maintain altitude and helplessly dives into the surface of the death star. If there was no gravity in play then he should have just floated away in the direction he was heading when he lost power. And it was not head first at the surface of the death star IIRC.

    I'm only going by looking at the movie the scale of the ships to the station and the radius of the "horizon" in some of the shots which seem to make it appear considerably larger than our moon. Also the speeds implied by the effects shots would have the ships going completely around our moon in about one minute.
    It's in the complete saga blu ray special features. The guy at ILM said he told Lucas he was worried it could be seen as a cheesy way of setting up a sequel.
     
  20. ForcePushUp

    ForcePushUp Jedi Padawan star 1

    Registered:
    Oct 19, 2016
    I feel like Robot Chicken covered this with the collect call to the Emperor sketch, lol.

    Seriously though, in my youth, I always assumed he just flew to the nearest civilized location and got in touch with Imperial forces through there and asked to be picked up.
     
  21. MeBeJedi

    MeBeJedi Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    May 30, 2002
    But they are both dependent on the concept of density. The problem is, you are confusing size with density.

    Vader was overtaking Luke at the moment his ship was diverted out of the trench. If Luke was flying as fast as possible, and Vader was flying faster than him, then Vader's ship could have maintained that same speed in a different direction. Ergo, Vader was flying away from the DS faster than Luke's (powered) ship, and despite Vader lacking control of his own ship.

    In fact, there are all manner of flying rocks in space that can travel thousands of miles an hour despite lacking "control" and "power", so your insistence on using those words to impart some special meaning or distinction is kinda funny.

    His ship was already angled downwards towards the DS when he was hit, which meant the direction he would "float away" to would be directly into the DS, which he did.

    That's nice....when I hold my thumb up, it appears considerably larger than our moon, too!
     
  22. MeBeJedi

    MeBeJedi Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    May 30, 2002
    LOL!

    [​IMG]
     
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  23. Binary_Sunset

    Binary_Sunset Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Oct 28, 2000
    Another possibility:

    Darth Vader knew that the rebels would be leaving Yavin-4 pretty soon. He therefore landed his TIE fighter on the moon far away from the rebel base. He then eavesdropped on the rebels' communications. Once the last of them left Yavin-4, Vader walked into the deserted rebel base and used the equipment left behind to contact the Empire: "Hey! Come pick me up!"
     
  24. darthOB1

    darthOB1 Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Mar 22, 2000
    Only us persons with sausage fingers though! ;)
     
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  25. Martoto77

    Martoto77 Jedi Master star 5

    Registered:
    Aug 6, 2016
    Buoyancy is about the interaction between two things of different relative density while both are being influenced by gravity. Gravity is gravity, the attraction of masses.

    Vader was overtaking Luke at the moment his ship was diverted out of the trench. If Luke was flying as fast as possible, and Vader was flying faster than him, then Vader's ship could have maintained that same speed in a different direction. Ergo, Vader was flying away from the DS faster than Luke's (powered) ship, and despite Vader lacking control of his own ship.[/quote]

    The collisions with the tie causes both ships causing them both to deviate at acute angles. Vader's ship would not kept the same momentum it had. The fact that it is spinning shows that energy from its flight pre collision has been scrubbed off.

    I'm aware of what velocities powered objects or particles are capable of. They are not capable of greater speeds than the same particles which have constant forces, acceleration, thrust acting on them. (other than just gravity)

    His ship is shown diving and making the diving sound effect after the final hit. I didn't see him flying downwards at the surface of the death star.

    And if you know that the moon is quarter of a million miles away between you and your thumb and you compare apparent the size of the moon relative to your thumb, you can work out the actual size of the moon.

    But we aren't talking about two things a quarter of a million miles distant from each other. I'm talking about the close shots of the fighters shown flying along the the surface with the death star with the horizon in the background.

    It's like this :

    - A few moments after Luke fires the shot, the station explodes with a fireball and a blast radius many times the size of the station itself. The film has this happening in significantly less time than the rebels did on their final run, at FULL throttle, during which time we can reasonably assume they didn't fly several times round the entire station. So with a combination of luck, shields and speed and "movie time" magic, we accept that they were not caught up by the station's destruction.

    - Vader was out of control and spinning, not escaping. So he was also incredibly lucky and/or had really good shields, and we're into movie time magic area too.

    Far fetched IF you really scrutinise what's shown on screen rather than accept the spirit of it. No big deal.