ST Admiral Holdo's Hyperjump in Episode VIII

The board's big, don't know if this has been covered before, just my 2 cents worth. I also happen to be very scientifically inclined, even when it comes to fictional science and technology.

After reading the reviews for Episode VII a while back, I noticed someone raising ten shades of hell over something Holdo did in the movie. It was when she used a hyperspace jump to shred the first order's flagship, effectively committing suicide in the process. They were going postal. "You can't do that, hyperspace is another dimension, they've ruined Starwars! It'll never be the same because this can't be reconciled with canon!" So on and so forth. I'm wondering if they've actually invested much time in the SW universe, which a lot of reviews don't seem to.

Here's my take on how this hyperjump doesn't defy canon at all. Is hyperspace another dimension? As per Starwars canon, yes it is. So then how did Holdo do this 'in canon'? The way I look at it is like this. Hyperspace and normal space are separate dimensions, but at they same time, there is a level of connectivity between them, otherwise they couldn't be traveled through interchangeably. Could it not be reasonably argued that there's a point during the transition between the two dimensions that, for a very brief time, the ship exists in both simultaneously?

In essence, when Holdo's ship shredded the FO's flagship, it was in the process of transitioning to hyperspace, but had yet to completely reach it, therefore allowing this ramming action to happen? There's also further evidence that it's possible for the two dimensions to affect one another. Look to the Gravity Well Projector that the Interdictor class vessel used to pull ships out of hyperspace. This is listed as canon material, not legends.

 

I agree with this. But it should probably go in the Sequel Trilogy forum, since TLJ doesn’t fall under this forum’s area.

 

This. I've moved it to the proper forum.

 

This topic is discussed in several other threads. Anyway, I have a similar take. Before moving in the other dimension the ship accelerates. The Raddus was close enough to the target that it could hit it before actually going in hs.
You might find interesting all the discussion following this post:

 

Right, sorry about posting that in the wrong forum.

 

There was no Holdo in VII.

 

I don't think it needs such an explanation. There are shadows of realspace matter in hyperspace and vis versa. So an object in hyperspace can collide with an object in realspace due to the shadows they cast. This is why they need to chart hyperspace routes and they can't just travel in straight lines.

 

This is my take on this as well and how I hope they ultimately address it within the EU. It works enough with what they’ve told or shown us of it before. It makes the damage caused slightly harder to replicate consistently and if it’s sub-hyperspace portal phase then that’s just another way of saying that one giant ship collided into another at a very high speed.

There are multiple phases to hyperspace. Initial acceleration into the jump (Star blur), the jump into almost a portal-like state that seems to transecend time/space (the blue phase) and then exiting that portal-like state (reverse star blur).





In Rogue One we see ships jumping away and a Destroyer jumping toward them. They presumably don’t hit each other while in their respective portal-like states despite being on opposing trajectories. Meanwhile, those who haven’t yet reached hyperspace obviously do make contact.




If the two opposing sides had not been in their respective “portals” they would have collided into each other since they were on opposing trajectories. Making it into the portal phase trascends matter into some kind of different dimension or energy state briefly. Which could also explain why Han was concerned about going through a Star or bouncing out near a supernova.

 

The issue with the Hyperspace jump is a simple one. If the attack can be that damaging why not strap hyperspace engines on Asteroids or other celestial bodies with large masses and just shoot them at the enemy technically would have been much easier to just do that then fly into the Death Star to Destroy it just pepper it with thousands of small hyperspace missiles and boom it's done. You want to destroy massive amounts of a planet shoot things through it in Hyperspace...

While the scene is visually stunning it having that ram be a possibility means that all other tactics are meaningless. For example, the entire attack on SKB was pointless once Han got past the shield could have just dropped a rock from the Falcon had it jump to lightspeed and boom destroy the converter and SKB is gone. Now the ST and expanded canon may explain this better later on as why it was a one-time thing the fact that the movie fails to do that is an egregious error and makes every battle in Star Wars pretty much pointless.... Should have just shot an asteroid at Lightspeed through the Scarif shield generator or an unmanned fighter....

 

Aircraft didn’t fly into towers & large trucks didn’t start smashing into crowds for 50-120 years past their invent.

Star Wars takes concepts we are familiar with and exaggerates them.

The reasons why others aren’t doing things that seem like they should be doing aren’t always clear either in this saga with space magic wizards.

If you can build Droideka’s with personal forcefields 50 years ago then you can build ones the size of walkers later for ground combat.

If there is a genius who worked for a corporation who mass produced advanced weapons like that in the prequel era then that person or their employees would be hired by every terror group or gang to build other weapons elsewhere.

There’s not much reason for human involvement in the ship combat that takes place at all given the technology we have seen from droids in the Prequel era at all.

Death Star tech destroyed planets so smaller versions of that on ships should be prevelant.

Consider force fields. These are energy fields that are nearly impervious to matter. Why not weaponization of that tech? Perimeter rings that then activate a Force field that shreds through matter? Or even an assortment of projectiles that launch and then combine to build a sizable Force field that continues toward an object with immense size?

Even if high speed ramming wasn’t shown there wasn’t much reason for why a ship couldn’t be loaded up with bombs and hyperspace near a target and immediately explode with a droid on board before.

Star Wars has always been spectacle first and then work it out in the EU later to build some semblance of plausibility for why or how.

 

Hitting a target with a projectile traveling at high speed is easier, not harder. Lightspeed would be the equivalent of a video game hitscan, it would be easier to hit your target at lightspeed, not harder. The faster your projectile travels, the less you have to account for your target's trajectory.

Lightspeed ramming is just the next step for a very old concept; missiles. Lightspeed ramming is just an extension of the bow and arrow, it doesn't take any genius at all to think of it, which is why this idea has come up over and over and over in science fiction and the Jedi Council Forums, long before TLJ came around. As soon as lightspeed was invented, someone would start thinking of ways to weaponize it. It's exactly what happened in science fiction, and its pretty much the first thing science fiction fans think of when they encounter a work of fiction that has lightspeed. It's just very obvious why it would make such a devastating weapon; even the slightest mass propelled at lightspeed would gain tremendous momentum. (literally infinite momentum due to having infinite mass)

Because it was not done, the logical conclusion was that it could not be done. There had to be something holding it back, making it an obvious idea but an unachievable reality. If it were to be achieved, it would be an achievement on the level of the atom bomb. The atom bomb was the result of the Manhattan Project, developed by the brightest minds that could be gathered. If lightspeed ramming were possible, it would be a project on the level of the Death Star, not something pulled off on the fly by freaking Holdo.

 

This is something I don't buy. If it is powerful and effective, using it that way sounds like the first thing that would come to mind. Unless it's a super risky maneuver with high probability of failure.

 

I agree with the concept of this however we know that the Death Star and other projects were developed by the empire and i can’t believe that a light speed ram wouldn’t be on the list also the Hux’s reaction is like he knows exactly what she is trying to do which makes it seem like Holdo was not the first. She may be in the GFFA then that’s just bad and lazy writing. Would have much rather had her be force sensitive like Chirrut and explain it that way and shown on film not fleshed our after the fact in the new canon.

 

I don't blame TLJ for hyperspace ramming. I mean it's conceivable well before TLJ. I probably just look at it in terms of shields. In ROTJ, hyperspace ramming wouldn't break the shield protecting the unfinished Death Star. In ANH small fighters can penetrate the shield of the completed Death Star. Star Destroyers are often sent colliding into and through each other (so I guess the shields aren't up at that time). For whatever reason the FO ship shields were vulnerable to hyperspace ramming - probably because the FO are the most incompetent villains yet in the saga. They probably have wanna-be engineers whose parents were engineers in the Empire and who are trying to prove themselves as engineers and graduated the learn-by-rote FO engineering school in which people are even less creative than they were in the Empire, and marvel at all the technology at their disposal and can only make use of about 10% of it due to lack of creativity and resourcefulness. Hopefully the FO will fix their shield problem for IX.

The plot always decides what's possible or isn't in these space battles really, and who knows why.

The thing I can't get over is the stupid space chase and how they can't catch the Resistance ships because they are "faster and lighter." It makes my head hurt. It reminds me of how in TFA at first the people making it were thinking you could HEAR the Hosnian destruction all the way from Takodana. It's bad enough you can see it in the sky. So bad! But it is a magical galaxy, so it's less bad than "faster and lighter." Ugh. I get that many film makers come from creative backgrounds and have no science background, but they could use a consultant just to keep the obviously bad stuff out.

 

Crashing planes into buildings is a great tactic for terrorists and not so great for warfare. Dropping bombs from planes and keeping the plane intact, or dropping missiles are better warfare tactics. It doesn't surprise me that the ones who came up with the flying planes into building tactic are the ones who it is actually a good tactic for, and a way to avoid using bombs which I suspect that's actually riskier than the more innocuous approach of sending exchange students to flight school. The tactic is great for staying under the radar, avoiding suspicion from authorities, etc. And terrorist acts are usually not trying to destroy, say, an entire city - which using planes would be pretty useless for.

And also, I thought the two armies facing each other thing was widely a European thing. It kind of makes sense with the structure of European societies with their rigid social norms, designated "civilized spaces" (cities) vs. open fields. Trying to apply these tactics outside of Europe though is an exercise in sticking to one's social norms well past the point of it being practical. It reminds me of that book Pride, Prejudice and Zombies. The parody is about how the British can take care of zombies AND keep adhering to all their social norms which have become utterly impractical in the face of the zombie crisis.

 

I'm not an history expert and I don't want to derail the conversation but I think that the first working aircrafts have been built around the beginning of last century. And in ww2 we already have kamikaze, so we didn't have to wait very long.
The comparison, btw, is not very fair, 'cause in our case, SW, we are really talking about a distructive power that is ridiculously higher than any weapon used so far.
So yeah, in my head canon I'll stick with the idea that it's just very very difficult to do. Sounds easier to accept to me.

 

I forgot about kamikazes.

 

Holdo already had sacrificed herself to stay with the ship, might as well take some of the enemy out on the way. It worked in an emergency context of the situation. If this is anything like Kamikaze in WW2, then as a strategy, it’s effectiveness is questionable.

 

?
She literally got rid of the entire fleet with a ship that proportionally had the dimension of a fly.

 

I’m talking about using that same application as planned strategy (there is difference between winning a battle and winning a war). It is debated today whether kamakaze strategy was effective in WW2. Ultimately, it didn’t win the war (granted there are other factors involved).

ETA: Apparently, the first Kamakaze was like Holdo’s situation. The plane was going to crash anyways.

 

Wookipedia supports what I shared initially. The blue phase is an alternate dimension.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Hyperspace

Thus, she was in the speed phase just prior. Obviously still incredibly fast but perhaps technically “closer” in phase to high speed collisions experienced any number of times in space prior and not technically within the alternate dimension of the blue phase.

I realize this seems like semantics on the surface but even in soft sci-fi, if they end up deciding it’s truly a different phase when they explain this later, it’s then a different phase and a different phase is significant because it changes the narrative to simply being an incredibly fast collision sub-hyperspace phase. If they really want to make it seem rare they could even take it the step further and explain that through sheer luck the damage was caused primarily because she had just entered the hyperspace dimension at the point of impact. Something that would be much harder to time obviously.

And if you can have ships hit each other in space but can’t at very high speeds (that are still technically below the hyperspace phase) “just because” then that’s more asinine plot armor then anything else.

Han’s TFA jump past Star Killer base’s shields seems to also support this. The Falcon entered the alternate dimension/portal prior and exited it at coordinates just past the shields.