The Tractor Beam

How did Ben know how to turn off the tractor beam on the Death Star? He seemed to know exactly what to do. Did The Force guide him?

 

The Jedi seem to have a lot of technical training. Heck, they have to build their own lightsabers; surely they know how to turn off a tractor beam! Once he knew where it was, it was just a matter of getting there.

 

Brings up a different question though...why would you put the controls to the tractor beam for that hangar way in the middle of the Death Star, rather than in the control room for the hangar? Wouldn't that have been a much more logical place for it?

 

The controls are probably there, but its power source needed to be turned off.

 

Exactly. Why storm a heavily guarded hangar bay when you can simply render the beam inoperative by cutting its power?

The thing I've never understood about tractor beams is why pilots caught in them don't simply try to shoot them out. Point the ship right at the beam and fire off a few rounds; they'll go right to the source of the beam, most likely...

 

Take this as you will (there are degrees of canon, after all), but the STAR WARS Technical Manual by Shane Johnson features blueprints of the DS, which show that the power generator is a huge reactor core at the center of the space station, and connected by channels called "power distribution shafts" (possibly the chasm over which L & L swung was one of these four intersecting shafts) to the rest of the station. 3PO tells us that "the tractor beam is coupled to the main reactor in 7 locations" or "terminals", meaning that the power generator/reactor core supplied power directly to the tractor beam. Since the reactor core by necessity had to be at the center of the DS (owing esp. to superlaser power amplification specs), the tractor beam terminals also had to be at the center.

This also answers RocketGir's question, since in addition to the shields we must assume are protecting the beam's point of emission from the station's surface, the beam itself derives from what appear to be hundreds if not thousands of miles into the channeled interior of the DS.

 

I wasn't just referring to the DS, tho. In ESB they say that a Star Destroyer has tractor beams, and there's other sci-fi with ship-mounted tractor beams... It was more of a general question, really.

 

Pilots do sometimes attack the source of the tractor beam. In "Heir to the Empire" by Timothy Zahn, Luke launches a pair of torpedoes, which the tractor beam suck away, which in turn blows up the tractor beam and Luke escapes. I do not know how much manouverability the ships have whilst being caught in a tractor beam, so I do not know if they can manouvre their ships in a position to fire at the tractor beam projector.

 

Good point, __Vader__. Also, as we see in ANH, the Tantive IV has already been knocked out of commission by the time the SD tractors it into its hull. Are there other examples of tractoring, besides this and the DS, that I'm missing?

 

It's very unlike me to bring up EU suggestions, but this one is pretty logical even if you don't consider the Clone Wars EU.

Obi-Wan had prior experience with disabling tractor beams. On the Death Star, all he had to do was find the location of the tractor beam controls.

 

Ben had earlier been shown the tractor beam blueprints/map by 3-PO in the control room. He read the map and got his bearings straight away. The tractor beam could be activated/de-activated from seven different locations. So he had a few choices. He probably chose the location where he was most likely to run into Vader, and become one with the force. 'Escape is not his plan.'

Death Star personnel often have little warning when activating the Tractor Beam, therefore quick access is very important. Besides the Death Star is such an impenetrable fort (or so they think) that having it de-activated by an outside party is inconceivable.

You could also say that the living force was guiding Ben. At this stage of his life he was heavily in tune with its ways.

He also was a pretty handy mechanic. He knew that if someone turned it on it could be just as easily turned off.

Finally, the empire wanted one of the stowaways to find it and turn it off. (So the they could trace the ship to the rebel base and blow it up.)

Ben got wind of the Empire's crafty plan and realised they wanted someone to find it. And find it he did

 

None that I can think of in Star Wars. But I've still wondered the same thing in movies like StarChaser: The Legend of Orin, for example. Not so much in Babylon 5 during the Battle of the Line, because Minbari tractor beams are three intersecting beams that focus from different points on the ship; much harder to shoot out.

Not to drag a Star Wars discussion into other sci-fi...I'm just sayin' that I've often wondered if shooting out a tractor beam would work and why nobody in sci-fi ever seems to try it.

 

well, i know its been done in the EU and even in a fan film. But one would think that the tractor beam dish or whatever it is is shielded to protect itself against such a manuever.

 

Well, then you get into issues about whether shields are one-way or have to drop themselves for a milisecond to allow fire to get out of the shields, and if they do then wouldn't the shields have to drop completely for a tractor beam to function, and blah-blah-blah...

Suddenly it's not Star Wars anymore...it's Star Trek. Bleh.

 

I'd say that Ben, though old, was still tech savvy and coupled with the force on his side...easily disabled the tractor beam. Qui-Gon actually directed where that Gungan submarine should navigate based entirely on force intuition.

 

When he was captured on Genosis Poggle the Lesser came in with the holo-thingy saying "Guess what were building?" in a Bondian villan-tells-hero-all-before-killing-him type of moment.

 

And THAT would be a sin. We agree there RocketGirl

 

Dude, high-five!

 

How did Luke know how to fly Speederbikes, or X-Wings or Snowspeeders?
How did Chewie know how to steer an AT-ST?
How did R2 know how to operate a death star trash compactor?
If I think about it, Ben actually still got the easiest job.
All these things are advanced military technologie and would usually need years of training. Uhm, I guess that's the reason, why Star Wars is called an SciFi-Saga and not a documentary. That's the Reason why these guys have been admired heros and idols for the last thirty years...

 

It's most likely that there was a big ON and OFF switch there. I mean if the stormtroopers had to shut it down in a emergncy they'd have to be able to see the switch...




reason: the stormtrooper smacking his head on the door awnsers it

 

Luke's been a pilot all his life. (Biggs: "Sir, Luke is the best bush-pilot this side of the outer rim territories!") And he's got a T-16 Skyhopper; we can see it parked in the Lars family garage.
You know, I've never driven a motorcycle beyond that one time a friend tried to teach me and we discovered her bike had a bad carburator and we had to stop...but from what little I did pick up, I could probably have grokked the basics pretty quickly just from having driven cars since high school. And Luke is certainly much better at these things than I am.

Chewie fought in the Clone Wars and can fly the Falcon; I'm sure he can figure out an AT-ST. And he's been with the Rebels for several years at that point; if the Alliance doesn't hold seminars on how to use Imperial technology against the Empire if you can capture some, I'm disappointed in them.

Artoo's been an astromech for nigh on fifty years now at least. And it appears (though is by no means certain) that he hasn't had a memory wiped in all that time. I'm sure he can figure out a trash compactor computer.

 

Guy-From-Tatooine posted:
How did Chewie know how to steer an AT-ST?




Also, if you remember Chewbacca was just piloting an imperial shuttle, the other day.

 

Dude, I like your style!

 

That particular instance is in Labyrinth of Evil, set prior to RotS. Obi-Wan is shown how to disable a tractor beam on an asteroid base, and remarks that it's unlikely he'll need such a skill again.

 

I can't believe no one found what I said about Obi & Poggle funny.