ST Admiral Holdo's Hyperjump in Episode VIII

PS @A Chorus of Disapproval I don't think it's pedantry if I disagree with your explanation of the Holdo hyperspace ramming being because no one had thought of it before (I'm arguing that in the previous battles we've seen if it wasn't used - like in ROTJ against Death Star shield - it may be because the tactic actually wouldn't have worked). It's also not pedantry to argue some of your examples to prove your point. Kamikazes actually takes down your crashing planes into buildings example as well, in a way. Isn't it pedantry to call pedantry when clearly the basis of argument is disagreeing on the main point?

 

At the time, I thought it was one of the best visuals of the ST and arguably the Saga...

...then I actually thought about the in-universe ramifications (no pun intended), and of course the follow up from it (Crait), where whoops! Didn't hurt the FO at all in terms of material.

 

@Ender_and_Bean - they could make some case later for the rarity of it in other canon but it would have helped had TLJ presented Holdo differently if only she could um come up with the um complicated calculations to do this... and still it seems like point and shoot shouldn't be that complicated.

Right, and I forgot about Han's magic maneuver to break past SKB's shields. People were not complaining about that so much. I remember I found that really unbelievable. It reminded me of Star Trek IV when they need to go back in time - and well, it's easy! You just slingshot around the sun! (this did probably reference an original series episode that was equally, if not more, ridiculous)

But this is why really who needs an explanation for any of this stuff in Star Wars. Whatever serves the plot will be what it is.

My headcanon likes the idea that FO shields particularly suck. But obviously what Han did was more a principle. It would work against any shields, and in this case there was just enough distance for the MF to slow down enough not to explode.

 

New canon also borrows from old canon when it likes its explanations and old canon heavily played up a ton of the alternate dimension qualities of the blue state that will help make the Holdo maneuver seem more rare and not quite hyperspace ramming.

Hyperspace (called darkspace by the Yuuzhan Vong) was the alternate state of existence used by starships to achieve faster-than-light travel. An alternate dimension of space-time that could only be entered at faster-than-light speeds using a hyperdrive, hyperspace was coterminous with realspace, with a unique point in realspace being associated with a unique point in hyperspace.[1] While a number of aspects of hyperspace remained mysterious to astrophysicistsand astrogation experts, it was clear that hyperspace shortened travel times, allowing starships equipped with hyperdrives to cross light-years in a matter of minutes.[2] Consequently, hyperspace travel was the backbone of the galactic community, commerce and trade, politics and warfare.[2]

One of the more famous hyperspace accidents occurred during the Clone Wars, when the battlecruiser Quaestor collided with the Separatist planet Pammant, fracturing it to its core.[5]

Gravity generators could be used to create an artificial interdiction fieldwhich stopped hyperspace travel in a particular area by mimicking the outer fringes of a celestial body's gravity, useful for both pulling ships out of hyperspace en route and preventing enemies from escaping to lightspeedduring engagement. Less affluent groups, such as pirates, dragged large asteroids (or planetoids) into trade routes in lieu of the generator or starship method, providing them with both a means to stop shipping and a temporary base or shield against hostile fire.

Black holes were a constant menace. At least a few vessels each year were destroyed by the several "wandering" black holes in real space. Their near infinite gravity wells could be catastrophic to craft that passed too close.

Outside the bounds of a vessel's shielding, hyperspace itself was a lethal environment to any realspace species. Being blown out of the airlock of a vessel while in hyperspace was a more effective way to kill an individual than exposing that individual to the vacuum of realspace. An individual could survive in an escape pod ejected in hyperspace, but if the pod lacked a hyperdrive of its own, reversion to realspace would be impossible.[6]

 

I feel like you're missing my point. People apply tactics when the conditions they are in are ones the tactic is useful for. It's not simply that if people haven't apparently done something before that no one has ever thought of it before. It may be that the conditions in which those in the position to use the tactic are in are not conditions conducive to coming up with/using that tactic. Yes sometimes, it's that people have been doing something the same way for a long time and no innovation has occurred even when there is something obvious. Though sometimes innovation is blocked by social norms. But it's not always the case.

This whole thing about sucking at ideas or whatever is something you're injecting in. I wasn't talking about that in response to you. I think the FO probably sucks at ideas though.

My point is that I don't think the lack of hyperspace ramming is because no one innovated it yet. I think it's more about when that tactic is applicable to sets of conditions. The same tactic is brilliant and effective in some circumstances and not-so-useful in other circumstances; possible given some conditions and impossible given others.

 

Right. And I'm saying that I don't think it's that. I think it's more likely it just wasn't a tactic that would work in the other examples (which comprise the body of "what we've seen before").

But if you were just saying it could have been the invention of the tactic, then my arguing it makes less sense as lots of things could be the case, including that. I just don't think it's really the case. Unless it is the first time in all of time it's ever been done, in which case I suppose one could call it an "innovation" even if in previous battles it wasn't one of the possible tactics that would work. If it is so difficult indeed to calculate and make it work as @Ender_and_Bean is saying, then that gives it more weight to me as an "innovation" as well.

I'd be surprised though if in all the history of GFFA it's never been used before, especially as a way to destroy a planet (perhaps leading to the ways that planets are now defended). If it was used long enough ago, I suppose it could be "forgotten" and then "re-innovated" as memory in GFFA seems particularly short at times.

 

Well, I mean, my guess is that when hyperspeed was first invented all sorts of accidents occurred which involved the ships flying into other objects when they went in or out of hyperspace, which would destroy the ship and possibly the object. I think at that time it would make sense that the tactic of using it to destroy planets would be quite obvious to anyone evil around at the time (since it would be happening by accident), such as the Sith. But then all these defenses were developed to protect planets from accidental or intentional "hyperspace ramming" (suggesting a reason was needed for them in the first place). So in the time of the OT the Empire isn't considering hyperspace ramming to threaten worlds in the galaxy. They need a superweapon that can't be stopped by planetary defenses. I mean, I don't know, I wouldn't be surprised if Sith long ago, were using hyperspeed as a weapon. These would be the wild west days of hyperspace travel. And yes, I mean, I know I'm making it all up. But it just makes more sense to me this way, than that it's never been used before in a deliberately destructive manner. Especially if, as in @Ender_and_Bean 's post, there was even an incident in TCW of a planet being destroyed due to a hyperspeed accident.

 

I think the answer to the question of why no one really used such a tactic before (apart from the obvious possibility of simply no one really thinking about it before) is that it simply is not a suitable approach in most situations. Some people seem to act as if this was some sort of incredible wonder-weapon that leads to huge success, it isn't.

Simply put, there isn't really a normal situation where such an approach is of any benefit at all. If you have a vast and powerful army, you have zero need to kill your own ships in such a way. Not to mention that you might as well build something that has the same effect without dying in the process (e.g. something like a Death Star). If you are nothing but a tiny opposition that is engaged with a much more powerful enemy, you can't afford to suicide your big ships like that, because your resources are finite, while the enemy can easily afford to take huge losses. To give a historical example - though it didn't involve suiciding - the German fleet won a tactical victory over the larger British fleet in the biggest naval engagement of WW1, it sunk more ships and killed more men. But in the end, it wasn't a victory in the strategic sense, because the general situation didn't change much at all, and the British fleet was much more capable of dealing with the losses than Germany was with its own. There just aren't all that many situations where such a tactic is useful.

The only reason it worked here, was because it was about saving a bunch of people that would otherwise have been doomed. With the Raddus being a decoy to be killed anyway. In the process, the resistence lost its only capital ship left, and would have been wiped out entirely if it hadn't been for Luke coming in to stall the First Order and Rey and Chewie coming in to big up the remaining people.

There isn't really anything that suggests that small ships would be capable of the same feat. It worked this one time because it was a big cruiser that was at least on a somewhat similar scale to the ships that got destroyed. Snoke's ship may have been vastly bigger, but the impact of a cruiser should still be quite harmful to such a ship when compared to sending small ships against cruiser or star destroyers. It's also not quite clear what the fate of Snoke's ship actually was. After all, Hux was casually standing around in Snoke's throne room after the damage had been done, there were people fighting on board the ship, and enough troops and combat vehicles were left to make a landing on the planet. The latter could have come from ships that didn't get caught, but somehow I doubt that they had this big gun on anything but the big ship. Which isn't to say that they may only have taken what was left and let the ship burn out.

To add a useless comparison
Let a fly crash into a deer or a car, it won't have much impact. Let the deer hit the car, and you are likely to see at least significant damage.

Kamikaze wasn't really all that successful either. And it wasn't implemented because it was such a great idea, but because the circumstances made it at times more useful than the alternative. Japan had plenty of planes left, though a ton of them were quite outdated. What they didn't have a lot of were fuel for the planes and experienced pilots. With little fuel, you can't train your pilots, and if you can't train them, and are behind in technology as well, you lose them way too quickly to keep up. This means wasting inexperienced pilots on suicide runs against bigger targets might give you a better chance of causing damage than having them face the enemy's airforce, which not only is better equiped and trained but also having a huge superiority in numbers. If you are bound to lose the pilots and planes anyway if you put them to regular use, you might as well throw them against other targets. It won't work 99% of the time, but the one time it does work it causes quite the damage. Which is more than you could expect from regular attacks by the same pilots.

 

No, she basically did nothing. Phasma and her guards are still there. Kylo and Hux are fine and manage to land a gaggle of walkers on Crait after getting there to finish out the Resistance. She basically did as much as Poe did taking out the Dreadnaught, for which everyone gave him crap for the entire movie. She took out one ship and didn't hurt the First Order in the least.

I'd argue that the physics of it make no sense but Starkiller Base didn't make any sense either and I'm a liberal arts major so...

 

@PendragonM
No. I am not going to defend RJ's script. Neither now nor in the future.

I was just saying that in terms of damage it was arguably the most effective maneuver of the whole saga.
Then yeah, the FO has unlimited resources, so nothing against it has long lasting consequences. I'm not arguing with that.

 

Arguably, Luke did more damage with a smaller ship....and he didn't die either

Someone needs to do a meme of Holdo's "Manuever" with Scotty saying you can't break the laws of physics

 

Alright, but we have to compare carrots with carrots. I'm talking about fleet vs fleet battles. Btw, if we really want to go into this, Holdo could have done something similar against the DS (I guess), whereas Luke could have done nothing with his X-wing against the FO fleet.
Anyway, it's not very important, I think we understood each other.

 

If you want to talk about damage from a small ship may I present...





Now, consider this... This is the vacuum of space. No gravity. No resistance. When one slow moving mass comes into contact with another slow moving object in such an environment what should probably happen is that it simply moves the other object almost like a cue ball hitting another in billiards. Or, two rubber ducks bouncing off each other in a bath tub. Instead... we get fun, explosive destruction as though the one Destroyer is somehow pinned up against a wall and the energy of the one object can't go anywhere except crush the other object because, well, it's Star Wars and Star Wars is primarily made for what we all would have watched as 12 year olds and thought, "Wow, cool!"

 

@Ender_and_Bean
I have two considerations
1) that damage is nothing compared to what Holdo did
2) I think you are wrong about the physics here. Gravity has nothing to do with the phenomenon you are describing. If you hit a massive object you might very well destroy it even in the vacuum of space. In principle there is nothing wrong with that.

 

These are two similar objects moving in slow motion with zero resistance (including gravity) impeding some kind of energy transference. I would think the destroyer that slowly moved toward the other would simply send the one below it in a downward trajectory. There might be some minor wreckage but nothing as extreme as what’s shown because the lower object of similar mass would be propelled downward and might perhaps begin to spin downward.

 

@Ender_and_Bean
It depends on how strong the material of the SD is. And also how fast they are. But it doesn't violate the laws of physics in any obvious way.
This is off topic so I won't reply further.

 

I think I figured it out actually! I had forgotten the other ship is “hovering” above Scarif! Scarif has gravitational pull! Even the space station experiences 90% of Earth’s gravity where it is and only avoids being pulled back down from Earth because of its sideways momentum orbit that is constantly countering for that gravitational pull.

The Star Destroyer is enormous and size impacts gravitional pull. So, sitting there it would be subjected to Scarif’s gravity. It would thus be countering for that with a force meant to push back on that pull. Assuming the lower star destroyer was actively countering for Scariff’s gravity then there truly would be resistance and the ship would be more rigidly in place then I had initially considered.

The momentum difference of the other Destroyer’s energy transference, slow as it seemed, would then have no where to go as it came across a significant opposing force as opposed to what I had initially considered. This helps explain why the lower half remains unmoving while the upper half crumbles. The upper half with the bridge then becomes almost a crumple zone; a structural weak link in density and energy transference exploits those.

I take it all back. The gravity of Scarif and the counters from the Destroyer to offset for that gravity is exactly the counter force I was looking for initially and didn’t see. It makes more sense to me now.

 

My take on this is....whatever. It looked ******* awesome and my jaw dropped when I saw it as well as the rest of the theaters’.

 

No disrespect, but the cue ball analogy just isn’t true. Objects in space hitting each other can destroy each other, even if unmoored by gravity.

 

June 12 1981 ROTJ Revised Rough Draft:

-in defense of TFA.
I automatically cannot conceive that this was the first time in the history of GFFA that someone successfully executed a hyperspace ram. Disney cannot magically tell you that you are not to have conceived of the implications of Han's words in SW77 through all of your young Gen X years, and you are to now obey that what Han said in SW77 nevar evar had malicious fruition in alllllll the years of Rebels versus Empire implicated. No. Disney will attempt to colonize and paternize (exact spelling) the franchise by asserting that, "Yes, Holdo invented and patented the hyperspace ram maneuver", and many will uncritically accept that. A view I find more balanced is that Holdo discovered herself to be in a fairly unique situation and dusted off an old chestnut. There are hardcoded countermeasures among a putative recipient object that stand in the way of this old chestnut being an effective tactic. These hardcoded countermeasures have acted as the physical foundation or deterrent that "guarantees" or supports the soft, wordy, polite conventions that are enacted in equivalents of laws of the sea, rules of war, whatever amounted to the Geneva Convention during the Republic. Holdo had to have circumvented, by cleverness and invention, such hardcoded countermeasures. But it's not a thing she did easily, or lightly, or quickly. It takes more than the ad hoc urgency Han displayed trying to calculate hyperspace coordinates while being fired upon in SW77. Timing a jump to a pin point accuracy sounds like a decent field of 'excuse' for this interruption in known SW lore.
Being an unfan of TFA and TLJ, I can cut this Gordian knot with the more ironic supposition that what Holdo did was not an invention but a war crime. This is a chew toy idea for my own amusement. Of course Disney cannot tolerate that their new heroine did something outside the bounds of the politic. Still - let it be that the First Order is something the likes of which the galaxy has never seen before. Nothing explains their resources or their reach. Prior logistical limitations, as conventionally understood, don't fit them. They have arisen ex nihilo. They are a damage, a cancer, an illness in the body politic that one day make their introductions as fait accompli. Holdo can have been faced with a crisis at an unprecedented, existential, level. And so, in her moral calculus she dusted off an old chestnut, that under all prior conditions, even conditions obtaining during the Empire versus Rebellion civil war, would have been considered a war crime. Under this framework, the spectacle comes with an asterix.

 

Is it necessary to accelerate your vessel in a conventional sense before it transitions to hyperspace? In BSG it didn't seem to be the case, but in SW, there definitely seems to be a small distance a ship covers before it enters hyperspace. It doesn't seem like a far leap for Holdo to adjust the ship's movement to reach the destroyer as it was transitioning, but what is impacting it? How much mass does the Raddus have in normal space at this point? How much is needed to annihilate the destroyer? Like others have said, it's probably possible in universe, but it could open a Pandora's box with respect to future tactics--similar to force ghosts being able to affect the 'real' world (and potentially people) with the force.

Visually, it was stunning--I'm just hoping some of the things RJ implemented in the film, which is now canon, won't lead to the world GL created going in a radical direction. Like astromech-guided hyperdrive ship bombs obliterating planets and vessels.

 

It was a poor analogy, I admit.

I was aiming to better describe the energy transference at the point of collision though between two objects that were nearly identical slowly colliding with each other in what initially appeared to be the vacuum of space.

I've since realized that the second destroyer hovering above Scarif it was likely subjected by significant forces of gravity and using some form of thrust to counter that and "hover" in what appeared to be a fixed position. That helped better explain why the lower part of the ship seemed to be locked in somehow while the top half smashed off, rather than the hit sending the destroyer toppling end over end downward via energy transference of the first ship's momentum.