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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

Lit Fleet Junkie Flagship- The technical discussions of the GFFA (Capital Ships thread Mk. II)

Discussion in 'Literature' started by AdmiralWesJanson, Sep 12, 2005.

  1. Jedimarine

    Jedimarine Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Feb 13, 2001
    There is a slight theoretical addendum there.

    Ships in hyperspace cannot collide with objects in realspace, unless via the mass shadows those objects cast.

    As hyperspace and realspace do not interact physically, only through forces (magnetic, electric, gravitational) , it is only by manipulating these forces, most specifically in this case gravity, that an object in one dimension effects another.

    For a "collision" to occur requires adequate gravity, either artificially or naturally created, to disturb and draw the object in hyperspace back into realspace...at which time the result of the two objects in immediate proximity to each other would lead to a nearly inescapable collision. This can perhaps be avoided in artificial constructs via "gravity projection" which mimics the gravity of larger objects to extend the force to greater distances to not only extend the reach of that kind of stopping power, but to protect the emitter (example: an Interdictor) from a collision with whatever it pulls from hyperspace.

    Now this level of gravity is always significant. Planets, Stars, Nebula, Blackhole, etc. But we have seen instances of hyperspace flight through asteroid fields, through atmosphere, etc. There is a certain delta of gravity that leads to the issue, but before that, the object in hyperspace is not only unaffected by the realspace it travels through, but unaware of it.

    In reality, the definition of just how much mass/gravity is required to draw a vessel back into realspace has fluctuated with the plots throughout the saga.

    As a physics teacher once told me...from our perspective, space is a vast emptiness...but in fact, it is FULL of matter...just scattered and negligible in force.

    Therefore, objects in hyperspace pass through matter in realspace all the time...it is just a question of whether the matter in real space is massive enough to pull the hyperspace traveler back to realspace, which will likely result in the collision.
     
    Last edited: Oct 5, 2021
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  2. ColeFardreamer

    ColeFardreamer Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Nov 24, 2013
    Regarding Hyperspace collisions, I think what is often forgotten is that it needs larger objects to affect ships via mass shadow in hyperspace. A ship in the lane is not enough, small ships especially would merely give it a nudge or bump along the course and not affect the journey at all given relativistic shielding and the like ships got. So yeah larger mass shadows like space stations or large cruisers are an issue in the lane, not so much most common smaller ship sizes exiting and entering along the lane.

    The High Republic disaster was collision with a large ship! And the collission took place in hyperspace by where each ships hyperspace bubble crashed into each other and had both ships spread all across the galaxy hence. Something that would NOT be possible with two normal ships and hyperdrives as these hyperspace bubbles are quite secure and their own pockets of dimension so to speak. The Nihil Path Engine though alters the normal hyperdrive concept and bubble as the High Republic noted often enough, so that it invalidated safeties in favor of being able to appear inside atmospheres and closer to mass shadows and planets, which basically is hyperdrive without safety protocols, hence the collission and unprecedented crash across the galaxy.

    Even Han in TFA can deactivate safeties to jump through a shield straight into an atmosphere! And that is just deactivating normal hyperdrives safety protocols. A Path Engine goes even beyond that, allowing more precise jumps, entering and existing less through accelleration and more through blipping in and out of hyperspace as the Nihil ships did repeatedly even in the big battle against the Jedi. Seeming more like teleporting instead of hyperdriving.

    In that regard I consider the Path Engine an attempt to marry Aing Ti blip teleportation drives to classic hyperdrives that went homicidically wrong.


    @Jedimarine well said, you kinda beat me to it but I added some of my thoughts to the concept!
     
    Last edited: Oct 6, 2021
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  3. Alpha-Red

    Alpha-Red Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Apr 25, 2004
    Yeah. but if you're really, really, really unlucky, couldn't two small ships still collide?
     
  4. ColeFardreamer

    ColeFardreamer Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Nov 24, 2013
    Depends if enough force of speed is able to break both bubbles into each other despite minimal or ignoreable near nonexistant mass shadows of them. Then both need to overcome the repelling nature of the bubbles to force them to merge. And all that while both travel at an angle, most time no headon collision is likely. Angles tend to deflect rather than keep pressing both into each other.

    It is more likely a teleporting ship hits a flying one than two flying hitting each other.

    I consider hyperdrive bubbles like magnetfields kinda but not exactly and forcing two to not repell each other needs more force than speeding them could give them. Like you can press them together by force slowly but not throw them at each other hoping they touch.

    Gesendet von meinem FP3 mit Tapatalk
     
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  5. JABoomer

    JABoomer Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Oct 23, 2009
    So this is a really good explanation. I wonder if there's a known mass/distance relationship at which point a ship will be yanked out of hyperspace? Does the ship's velocity and mass play a part in the math? And is it a binary calculation (yes or no to reversion) or can a ship experience "turbulence" in hyperspace?
     
  6. MercenaryAce

    MercenaryAce Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Aug 10, 2005
    Mel's miniatures has the elder Sith's ship from Visions, and includes some interesting concept art of it I didn't see elsewhere, presumably from the behind the scenes bits:

     
  7. ColeFardreamer

    ColeFardreamer Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Nov 24, 2013

    Rebels showed a ship falling/failing out of hyperspace in one episode and it was turbulent before it exited thx to Interdictor cruiser indeed. So I guess turbulence and the ship wobbling around before breaking out of hyperspace is a possibility.

    I would say it is not binary as a small bumb may not throw you out. If insanely high speeds are necessary for an accellerating ship to breach from real space into hyperspace then it is likely that slowing down while in hyperspace, either by mass shadow or drive failure or deliberate deceleration at destination can yank a ship out of hyperspace more or less smooth.

    So hyperspace while a separate dimension, is very tied to real space through laws of physics. It seems to be a speed dimension where only things can exist that have a certain speed or higher, like above lightspeed. hence the accelleration required and maintained during flight. Mass shadows though do not have have any speed for large enough objects gravity alone is enough to affect any speeding object in its gravitational field around it.
     
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  8. Jedimarine

    Jedimarine Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Feb 13, 2001
    There is also the question of "is all hyperspace just "hyperspace"...or is there a randomness to just how "deep" into hyperspace a ship is launched.

    Think of Babylon 5 for a second: How hyperspace is essentially just another "space" with different physical rules. But in that universe, ships can travel together, interact, even have battles, all in that dimension.

    Hyperspace in Star Wars has always been portrayed as less stable, and far less friendly. The fact that something from realspace can even reach hyperspace is by sheer force, and only remain by "racing" through it. To me, Hyperspace is always trying to reject the traveler. So the ship has to focus itself almost exclusively to maintaining the fragile balance to keep it in hyperspace.

    Jumping to hyperspace is actually kind of violent...it is using energy and speed to break a barrier of physical reality. If something is broken, the results of such a breakage may be somewhat unpredictable. So each time a vessel "jumps" into hyperspace, it may actually be jumping into a different hyperspace dimension.

    I was about to say "have we ever seen ships in hyperspace together". And apparently we have:

    [​IMG]

    This is news to me.

    But in most iterations of jumps, even fleets of ships, the ships are isolated while traveling, unable to see or speak to each other.
    It may well be that they are not only separated by hyperspace, but by hyperspaces.

    And if ships are each within their own hyperspace reality, then it would be similar in behavior to hyperspace v realspace in terms of physical interaction (ie, only by "forces").
     
  9. JABoomer

    JABoomer Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Oct 23, 2009
    Getting back to the "major hyperspace routes" .. these aren't just totally safe passages through hyperspace that don't even require a navicomputer, but more like the most commonly used routes? They're the busier routes because they are easy to navigate due to either natural phenomenon, corporate/government decisions to make the navi-data widely available, or more likely, just lots of people use them, so current data is always available? I guess what I'm asking is, there's nothing actually special about the routes other than they're far more popular than any other random hyperspace jump, right?
     
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  10. Iron_lord

    Iron_lord Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Sep 2, 2012
    In the Lando Calrissian trilogy, a point is made of how the density of dust in realspace limits a ship's speed in hyperspace - when the Falcon hits a realspace area with an extremely low dust density - the "desert" from the point of view of the Oswaft - it starts to move much faster.

    Perhaps hyperlanes are like that too - because they're so "swept" they are much faster than regular hyperspace travel is?

    This might explain why ships in the movies travel so fast, yet the books frequently have it taking much longer to travel shorter distances - because those trips are not using major hyperlanes, the ships are passing through much more dust, slowing them down.
     
    Last edited: Oct 8, 2021
  11. ColeFardreamer

    ColeFardreamer Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Nov 24, 2013
    Maybe if they can see each other and interact depends on shared navcomp data and them jumping slaved together Katana Fleet style? If the fleet shares same navdata they travel in the same bubble simultaneously, but if they each calculate the same jump individually it is smaller bubbles for each ship, if that does make sense.




    Well yes and no.

    The major routes are:

    -most travelled and thus have most up to date data by lots of ships. Every port stop or downloads ships sensor nav data and uploads latest sets of charts and nav data.

    -the BoSS (buro of ships and services) ensures these major hyperlanes are free of any debris, asteroids, etc. artificially by keeping them clean via technology (S-thread boosters or other options) placed along their path that repels them in some way.
    https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/S-thread_booster
    That way they eve could build hyperlanes where none exist previously. Also interesting, the S-thread booster has to be placed in hyperspace stationary!!! I guess it is still moving, but maybe in circles or vibrating at a fast speed/frequency to not fall out of hyperspace.

    -natural routes would shift over time with galactic drifts and all that or distort and get unuseable, so major hyperlanes are special in that they are kept open artificially, in part even forged where none existed before to bridge many lesser natural hyperlanes into one larger major route via shortcuts connecting them thx to technological wonders mentioned above

    -lesser routes still are heavily travelled but a) not as much as major ones, b) Rim and criminal ports may not work with BoSS or the data exchange for navcomputers or even ships travelling may not want to share their data and whereabouts, all this leading to less up to date data and more risk

    -a lot of trust is needed in data and the company providing it or else you end up jumping into a star. one could manipulate data and at the cost of a couple million civilians send ones enemies straight into the next sun. So I figure independent hyperlane keepers like BoSS are as protective and guarded with their systems and codes like real world essential weak spots of the Internet are, like the DNS and IP providing/translating company situated in California that singlehandedly could turn off the entire internet basically.
     
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  12. Jedimarine

    Jedimarine Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Feb 13, 2001
    I always saw the "major" lanes as being corridors through the star clusters. In some of the earliest drawings of the galaxy, the lanes seemed to take complementary curves in line with the major arms of the galaxy. So to me, while I certainly can see some artificial maintenance being used now and then...we aren't talking about "Hitchhiker's Guide" style planet demolishing to make way for a star lane.

    Another thing to consider is that while stellar drift is indeed a hazard...when you are talking about galactic scale rotations and orbits...the need to make major adjustments to the space lanes would be once a millennia or 2, tops. Whole civilizations could rise and fall before the drift caused things to be too far out of whack.

    Then there is the question of how large these "lanes" are. I've seen some interpretations of the lane being only a couple ships across and if you drift, you could get knocked off course...very "DOOM" menacing akin to Han's commentary to Luke on plotting a jump in ANH.

    Personally, I see the lanes as parsecs wide, and the chances of any one ship ever flying the same course through the lane the exact same way are statistically improbable to the highest degree. Such a "lane" would allow for a great deal of forgiveness in obstacles along or even through it's course. And as was said, just because you use a lane, doesn't mean you don't nav a course before jumping.

    And then there is always the debate about traveling above or below the galactic disk, and the subsequent plot armors against that.
     
    Last edited: Oct 8, 2021
  13. JABoomer

    JABoomer Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Oct 23, 2009
    What are you thinking by build? Like when the BoSS sees a particular transit becoming very popular, it starts clearing the lane of asteroids and debris? Like a highway maintenance crew? Are we talking planetoid size debris only? Because we've kind of seen something as large as an Executor-class dreadnought doesn't really hamper lightspeed travel.

    More hyperspace thoughts:

    Do you think a navicomputer can calculate a safe jump between any two galactic points with sufficient navi-data?

    It seems the major routes are kind of self propagating, they become popular for some reason, which increases the navi-data available for the jump, which increases the ease of calculating the jump, and the safety of the jump, and therefore the jump becomes even more popular .. and repeat.

    Did either Death Star has sufficient mass to create a mass shadow that would effect ships travelling in hyperspace?

    If a ship travelling in hyperspace encounters a mass shadow and it is brought back into realspace, are applied forces (high speed atmospheric entry) or a collision really the only ways for that ship be be destroyed? Otherwise you just drop out of hyperspace near the mass shadow object that you encountered with maybe some turbulence?

    If you flew through the DS2's mass shadow in hyperspace, and reverted INSIDE the DS2 .. would there be an explosion?
     
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  14. Jedimarine

    Jedimarine Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Feb 13, 2001
    A navicomputer will calculate the best possible course to the criteria is has been programmed to obey.

    And if it cannot determine a path, it will let you know it. But this is rare. This would be like the Legends Kessel Run...the Nav will tell you to take the long arc around the Maw...is that the only way?

    Think of google maps...if you tell it to avoid toll roads, it will recompute.

    So a navicomputer may "cheat" on a course from Coruscant to Tatooine by using available hyperlanes to reduce computation time. We also see that if a course requires an actual "stop" or reversion to realspace to make a course correction, that usually means the nav needs more data at a certain "Turn" which may be as simple as a realspace monitoring scan of what lies ahead.

    But this is why once you get off the lanes, the rate of speed at which one can "jump" to a destination slows dramatically. This is why some of the most remote places in the galaxy are not on the rim, but deep in the core or far off the major lanes. This is why it always made perfect sense to me how the galaxy was explored from the "outside-in". The Core Worlds blazed these lanes right out to the edges of the galaxy. They found Xim or Sith or who knows what else, and after that, they started looking at all the stuff they missed along the way because it took more calculations to get there.
     
    Last edited: Oct 8, 2021
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  15. JABoomer

    JABoomer Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Oct 23, 2009
    Do you think a ship can adjust course in hyperspace, or is it a point to point jump? What programming tolerances could you put into the navicomputer? Fastest route vs least reversions/course changes?

    Does the navicomputer always assume your current position is the starting position (constantly correcting for current velocity/acceleration/course change)?

    What makes a "hyperlane" a hyperlane, why does it provide faster speeds?
     
  16. Alpha-Red

    Alpha-Red Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Apr 25, 2004
    Hmm, well I guess the Death Stars are still very small compared to planets and moons. And they're also mostly hollow inside, so that's less mass...

    I think it should be a point-to-point jump. If you want to change course, then you'd have to exit hyperspace, then plot a new jump. I don't know if there's anything out there in Legends or canon that contradicts me on this, but if there is...eh.

    Just any path that's been discovered that's free of obstacles.
     
    Last edited: Oct 8, 2021
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  17. Jedimarine

    Jedimarine Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Feb 13, 2001
    The sources have been all over the place on this for decades. We have gotten straight line course and we have gotten curving projection courses. I think the answer is "it depends on your navicomputer". Perhaps what makes the Falcon so fast is not sheer speed, but her "L3" nav making better choices?

    I don't think the nav makes too many midflight adjustments...this is one of the key points of difference in Star Wars vs. other shows like Star Trek. Once you are "in" hyperspace, it really is flying blind. While you are in, the ship is just trying to balance speed, shields, and whatever makes a hyperdrive motivator "motivate"...just to keep you from falling out before the nav computer tells you it is time to fall out.

    The lanes means nothing is in your way...it is that simple. If you had to fly around a nebula or a blackhole to reach a destination, that might require a stop or 2 so the ship can recompute the legs of the journey and reach the destination. the lanes are clear paths, along which stopping to recompute is not required.

    Gonna use some specific examples here, so if you want a visual, check out the map.

    Let's say you are on Corellia and want to get to Tatooine.

    You punch in your destination, and the nav may come up with 2 or 5 or 25 or 25000 possible plots to take before you hit the go button.

    You might just try to flight arrow straight there...but the chances are there might be several objects of mass along the way. Nebula, solar systems, dark matter, who knows...and while some may be anticipated and compensated for in the jump calculations, there may still be discrepancies or items that don't appear on record. This could force a reversion to realspace, a course correction, and another jump.

    The real trick becomes just how fast, how far, and how long you can jump safely while flying this way. This is where those pesky "collisions" could pop up. So your ship may fly slower, or make reversions back to normal space to take scans more frequently in the effort to safely move along that "straight line" you wanted to start with.

    Now...if you listen to the nav and take a detour along the Corellian Run (hyperlane)...the bulk of those worries are remedied. Millions of ships take that course every day. Many are adding their flight data to repositories that can update your hyperdrive to make sure you don't run into the perils that other space may hold.

    So you hop the Corellian Run, take a left at Arkanis, and you reach Tatooine faster then you would going in a straight line.

    The catch to the galaxy is when you look at that map and see how many worlds are no where near one of the major lanes. And those smaller "lanes" are barely lanes...some long haul spacer thinking he can become famous by saying he's blazing a hyperlane to some backwater, until a nova ruins his get rich scheme.

    But the point is the lanes are paths of least resistance...they are arteries just like our freeways, which allow for speedy transit to far flung destinations...and while it might not be precisely where you want to go...taking it MOST of the way and then backtracking a bit is way easier then trudging off into the wild in the fastest vehicle you can afford.
     
    Last edited: Oct 8, 2021
  18. JABoomer

    JABoomer Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Oct 23, 2009
    The Imperial BoSS was dying to get their hands on a Death Star, the ultimate hyperlane debris cleaning machine! :D
     
  19. Jedimarine

    Jedimarine Force Ghost star 5

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    Feb 13, 2001
    They weren't around long enough for us to find out!
     
  20. JABoomer

    JABoomer Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Oct 23, 2009
    Sorry I meant your subspace velocity etc., ie: the navicomp doesn't direct you to a desired entry point, it works with the ship's current location.

    We on the same page mostly. The navicomp computes straight line jumps through the galaxy, there's kind of two options: fewest reversions/course changes or fastest time. A direct line between any two points in the galaxy is unlikely given the disk plane and the amount of large objects (with mass shadows) floating around. A robust and up to date navi-database will get you there faster, because it can carve out the shortest paths. If you're relying on the standard lanes (on which the navi-data is far more readily available because the lanes are so busy - again, self propagating) then slower, but you probably didn't have the navi-data to get there faster, safely.
     
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  21. Jedimarine

    Jedimarine Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Feb 13, 2001
    Ah, gotcha.

    No, you can enter hyperspace from pretty much anywhere that isn't inhibited by gravity (or more ominously sounding "Mass Shadow"!)

    Now whether that start point forces another reversion to make a correction to a more "normal" course, depends on the starting point.

    If your destination is straight through a planet you are orbiting...does it make sense to travel around it at sublight and then jump straight into hyperspace...or do you jump "away" from the planet, and either have a "curve" in your hyperspace course or drop out, correct course, and jump again?

    I suspect this is left to the plot to determine. In a real-world application, I would surmise the fewest jumps the better, so a sublight orbit to the proper entry point would be most practical. But in star wars, you reach space, and you jump...it is just what they do.
     
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  22. Tuskin38

    Tuskin38 Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jul 15, 2010
    If Star Wars was realistic, the chances of you hitting something large enough to knock tou out when traveling in hyperspace would be very very very slim. Stars and other objects are very far apart. Even the galactic centre, where objects are more densely packed together, they're still pretty damn far apart. Unless you purposely aimed at an object, you could easily go from one side of the galaxy to the other in a straight line without hitting anything.

    But Star Wars is Fantasy, so these kinds of limits are fine. I mean look at the asteroid belt in ESB. Way too dense (based on our current knowledge of asteroid belts). The rocks would be so far apart the Falcon wouldn't have any cover at all. But a dense belt where they need to zig and zag to avoid pursuit looks a lot cooler. What looks good on film is what matters.
     
    Last edited: Oct 10, 2021
  23. JABoomer

    JABoomer Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Oct 23, 2009
    I don't agree with you. There's over 400 billion stars (many of which have associated planets and moons) in the Galactic disk (disk meaning the vertical plane of the galaxy is greatly compressed compared with the other axis), plus everything is in motion. That's a great deal of mass shadow material packed into the galactic plane that ships must traverse to get to one place to another. I would suggest the opposite, there's almost no chance a navicomputer (even with all required data current and uploaded) could plot a straight line course through hyperspace from one end of the galaxy to the other.
     
  24. Alpha-Red

    Alpha-Red Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Apr 25, 2004
    EC Henry defends the asteroid field scene:


    tl;dr version: not all collections of asteroids are like the asteroid belt in our solar system, we don't know the circumstances under which the Hoth asteroid field formed, so it's maybe plausible that what we see in ESB could actually exist.

    Hrm, I was thinking about how galaxies can collide, and all the orbits of the stars get completely messed up, but actual physical collisions between them would be rare. On the other hand...it could be that the mass shadow of a star is much bigger than the star itself, in which case perhaps it could be enough to affect hyperspace travel?
     
    Last edited: Oct 10, 2021
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  25. JABoomer

    JABoomer Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Oct 23, 2009
    To me it's all about the galactic disk. With the galaxy compressed into a plane, there's far less volume for those 400 billion stars (plus planets and moons) to occupy (simplistically going to 3D to 2D), making it much more likely for a mass shadow to be in your way.