ST 'Weaponizing' lightspeed

Just because something has never been done, doesn't mean it should be done.

while a beautiful scene, that will impact Star Wars moving forward forever.

I think after watching it again, this one move was Rian's biggest and most impactful blunder.

Rebels and most importantly Rogue One show us that simply shouldn't work, the ships going into light speed should 'bounce' off of larger massed objects. The End of RO had rebel ships bouncing off of larger Star Destroyers as in Rebels many times.

Think about it, why hasn't anyone in the history of Star Wars? Not even the cringe-worthy 1990's marvel comics did this crap...why didn't the Rebels simply fly a bunch of empty ships into the Death Star? The Rebels were desperate.. this is something Saw Guerra would have definitely been on board with.

While I understand this is fiction, and lots of the 'science' is completely wrong -sound in space, being able to 'see' lasers in vacuum etc. There has to be some sort of baseline, otherwise writers moving forward can simply make new **** up as they go... thoughts?

 

Rebels actually showed a "weaponised hyperspace jump" (early Season 4) before TLJ did.

And Rogue One, as far as I can tell, showed a collision with the Devastator - but it wasn't a hyperspace collision- a ship escaped to hyperspace, the Devastator jumped in - another ship collided with it before it had the chance to start jumping.

 

I agree..this opens up the possibility to just dropping a hyper-drive on something and shooting it off like a missile...a rail gun of sorts. Star wars drones. No more need for space fighter jockies. Just send a horde of hyper-drive enabled bombs at whatever you want to destroy

 

Well, considering that we still have an Episode 9 to go, this could actually be a good thing if it winds up leading to escalation from the First Order.

Everybody keeps fearing that JJ will introduce another "Death Star" in Episode 9, but what if the First Order weaponized Admiral Holdo's sacrifice and this became their new superweapon? They could have a legion of gigantic craft that could be sent to destroy any planet with Rebellion influence at any moment they wanted (like a nuclear Drone strike).

 

Yawn.

 

"While I understand this is fiction, and lots of the 'science' is completely wrong -sound in space, being able to 'see' lasers in vacuum etc. There has to be some sort of baseline, otherwise writers moving forward can simply make new **** up as they go... thoughts?"
Actually, as a physics student, I can tell you lightspeed would cause catastrophic damage. Kinetic energy is 1/2mv^2, or half the mass time velocity squared. The speed of light is the tiniest bit under 3 X 10^8 meters per second. Square that, and you've got 9 X 10^16...times the mass of whatever ship is used, in Joules. That's an insane amount of energy. For reference, a 1 megaton bomb (waaaaay stronger than Hiroshima or Nagasaki) would translate to 4.18 x 10^15 Joules. Even if the ship were 1 kilogram of mass (a really small ship, like a big bag of potato chips...), it would still be a whole order of magnitude larger. And this would be just the speed of light. It's well established that Star Wars hyperspace vehicles travel considerably faster than the speed of light.

 

Relativity has objects increase in mass the closer they get to light speed (and it becomes harder and harder to keep accelerating). A solid object a minuscule fraction below light speed has almost infinite energy.

Relativistic rules may not, however, apply here.

 

think about it, RO needed the shields to be down, why not simply drive a ship into the shield control? Movie over in 1 hour
this changes everything. If this was 'a thing' it would have been done before..

this is what I was afraid of, why even have space battles anymore? Why even waste the men/women if you can simply FTL objets at the enemy? The Empire wouldn't have needed to build the Death Star in the first place.

 

Well, yes they could use ships moving at hyperdrive as, basically, kamikaze missions. Problem is, you lose a ship and a hyperdrive. The Imperials and, presumably, the FO had enough ships to make such a sacrifice viable. The Alliance and the Resistence clearly do not. It wouldn't make sense to waste valuable ships and materials just to take down one other ship, especially when you have a limited supply.

 

It's no different than what Han said. If you jump out of hyperspace in the wrong point it's disastrous. "Hyperspace ain't like dusting crops, boy. Without precise calculations we could fly too close to a sun or bounce through a supernova, and that'd end your trip real quick, wouldn't it?"

Actually, if you have precise calculations for a star base or giant ship, dropping a bomb out of hyperspace and colliding would be exactly what Han was describing in ANH.