the deal with ISDs dropping their trash before going to lightspeed

ok, this probably should go on an ESB board, but i don't frequent any, and i like the Lit board...

In ESB, Han plans his escape from the Imperial fleet by drifting away when the Avenger drops it garbage before entering hyperspace. Dumping the garbage seems to be Imperial standard procedure, and some of that garbage seemed pretty huge in comparison to the Falcon..

in the EU, is there any explanation of why the Empire has this procedure or why they need to dump so much garbage?

I'd imagine that commonly-used hyperspace vectors for Imperial ships might become hazardous due to large amounts of trash floating around. Populated planets might not appreciate having Imperial Navy ships polluting their systems with navigational hazards.

At any rate, was the Avenger's trash dump larger than normal? perhaps they took damage in the asteroid field, and rather than repair sections that were damaged, they carry spare sections and installed them, throwing away large chunks of damaged section.

I would think recycling or repairing material would be more useful, and proper disposal of hazardous materials, but their wastefulness fits with the Imperial philosophy of "we're so big and powerful and have unlimited resources, that we can throw away tons of trash, wherever we want"

i would just imagine that dumping trash at every hyperspace jump would eventually come back to bite you later on... imagine an ISD jumping back to the hoth asteroid field and getting taken out by something that the Avenger ejected.

any thoughts?

 

Well, to begin with, stellar drift would likely account for the debris NOT causing a navigational hazard even when talking about a couple of days or so later.

As for the dropping of garbage? There's nothing to account for it in any sources, but perhaps it increased the efficiency of the hyperdrive motivator in opening a conduit to hyperspace (e.g. the ship was less mass, and isn't gravity mass-dependent?)

 

no i dont think gravity is mass-dependant. gravity affects all the same. i'm sure there's quite a bit of trash out there in the sw galaxy...especially if Avenger's procedure is normal.

 

Anyone ever read the Mad Magazine ESB adaption? "Chewbacco, putting crazy glue on the underside of the Aluminum Falcon was a stroke of genius! Now we'll just float away in the garbage." "Perfect, this ship looks like garbage, so we'll blend right in!"

 

I checked. Universal constant of gravitation:

6.670 x 10-11 N-m2/kg2

So there's mass involved somewhere.

 

no i dont think gravity is mass-dependant. gravity affects all the same.

gravity is a function of mass. everything that has mass exerts gravity, and the more mass something has, the stronger the gravity it exerts. my stapler doesn't have a lot of mass, and so it doesn't have very strong gravity. the planet Earth has a LOT of mass, and hence it has stronger gravity. the stapler and the Earth both pull on each other, but the Earth's pull is so much stronger it's usually not worth mentioning the stapler's gravity.

however, you are correct in saying that gravity affects things of different mass the same way. the Earth pulls on everything the same. it pulls the stapler just as hard as it pulls on my car and both of them just as hard as it pulls on the moon. if you drop a 10 pound weight and a 5 pound weight and a feather off the top of a tower, they all fall at the same speed once you factor out wind resistance and aerodynamics and such.

 

i guess i stand corrected....i guess. umm...what i meant was that gravity affects everything the same, sure mass has something to do with gravity....just not that it affects something larger more than something smaller.

 

More another element of Imperial philosophy:

Dump it!

Consequences? Who cares? Anyone who objects we'll incarcerate, then kill then kill their planet, maybe all three.

Similarly stormtroopers are cannon fodder, TIEs are flying coffins without shields or hyperdrive, SDs are built to look real scary etc. It's all to make up the picture of Imperial arrogance.

JB

 

Well, to begin with, stellar drift would likely account for the debris NOT causing a navigational hazard even when talking about a couple of days or so later.

so instead of being charted garbage, it's trash that is drifting around possibly uncharted...
i would imagine that they might have a "No dumping" rule around coruscant... there's already enough orbital traffic that having more trash dumped around would be a problem... not to mention the occassional piece of wreckage finally succumbing to coruscant's gravity -- but that's the real reason why they have planetary shields.. to defend against their own garbage.

it fits their overall philosophy of being so massive they can afford to be wasteful, but im after a couple ISDs are destroyed by drifting garbage, they might reconsider...
plus rebels and scavengers might be able to use imperial trash for intelligence or profit.

i wonder if they bother to sort out their nasty trash (hazardous materials) before dumping.

remember, Woodsy the Endorian Owl says: Give a hoot! Don't pollute!

 

I would imagine that most of that garbage was abnormal stuff, that was damamged in the assault, and the subsequents flight through the asteroid field.

As for the whole gravity-mass relation thing, the equation is:

((6.67x 10^-11)x (the mass of object a)x(the mass of object b))/ the distance between them squared = the gravitational force exerted on object a by object b.

 

I remember reading in a sidebar in one of the WEG sourcebooks that the Imperials dumped a lot of salvagable & incomplete items that scavengers would collect, repackage, & then resell to the Empire!

Another symptom of the "disposable" Imperial view...

 

The Imperials wouldn't be the ones to be charting new spacelanes to existing planets -- that's what smugglers and scouts do. So they don't CARE who might be affected by their dumping.

Also, the hyperdrive cutouts *should* engage before smashing into debris...

 

I'm assuming that anymore, the Imperial Navy just vaporizes the hazardous detritus when their Imperial-class ships dump their trash.

As a side note, I seem to recall the reason that ISDs didn't have traditional garbage disposal mechanisms was simply because the designer ran out of room inside the spaceframe. With a full fighter wing and Army division and a crew of nearly forty thousand, I can see how such a thing could occur.

 

Universal constant of gravitation: 6.670 x 10-11 N-m2/kg2

Well, that turbolaser gouged my shields. Unable to match such discussion, I'm abandoning ship. Anyone going pass the Hydian . . . anyone?

 

Maybe it was a charitable donation to the local chapter of the Galactic Scavenger's Union?

 

The Technical Journal said something about them not having any trash compactors (contradicted in Dark Force Rising though.) so they just dump them.

 

Is it all ISDs that don't have compactors or just Mark Is?

 

That was a small garbage disposal facility--which does little more than crush unusually large bits and pieces of scrap. Most ships have dedicated disposal facilities that do a good bit more than just smush things and dump them out the stern.

 

I always figured they dumped their garbage simply to make the jump more efficient, if the drive has less to push through hyper-space the more efficient it'll be

 

Yes recycling would be more energy efficent but according to the Imperial sourcebook the reason they did so much wasting was in part to keep contractors happy.

So the Imperial government was alittle like ours

 

Well, think about it. Could you think of a better time to dump the garbage?


no?


Didn't think so. It's simply just a good time to do it. I mean, their going to have to dump it somewhere. So why not dump just before you leave, so you don't have to look at it. Seriously their not going to dump their garbage in the middle of combat.

"Sir, a large, hunk of floating metal from the Avenger has just destroyed the Devastator!"

Warrior_of_Mandalore Strikes Again!

 

Well WoM your scenario would certainly give new meaning to the phrase 'crap happens!'.

JB

 

Where were the Imperials headed? Could it also be a standard procedure over long hauls? I mean, if there is such limited space for waste (especially without a compactor, as I think was interjected earlier), I would think the trash would fill up rather quickly while in hyperspace. So get rid of the waste before it piles up?

It's kind of the "You should go before we leave" philosophy.

 

Heck, they were just in the crappy Anoat System. Thats like the Hoboken NJ of the SW galaxy.

 

In the end of the BFC it is mentioned that the experimental hyperphysics team of the Research Section of the Imperial Navy found out that quote:'Anything that we released in hyperspace just stayed there'.

So I guess they didn't dump it in hyperspace because they didn't know what would happen to the trash there. And you sure wouldn't want to dump it when coming out of hyperspace because that would be like coming home and ****ting on the floor.