"we're having trouble adapting them to the cold."

Did this really make sense to anyone? I'm thinking that if you can build space ships that deal with the coldness of outer space, why can't you develop a ship that deals with a planet's frigid weather??

Really, this was a hackneyed excuse just to get Han on the back of a taun taun and put him in a more dangerous situation. They might as well have said "no we can't use the ships sir because we haven't installed headlights on them yet."

 

Actually, those craft aren't for space travel (thus why you never see them in space) and are in fact low-altitude speeders. As such, they aren't adapted for the cold of space, and thus it's not logically inconsistent that the crafts are also not.

Why the rebels used them at all if they weren't good in cold weather (it wasn't like they'd just arrived at Hoth the week before, you know), is a different - and harder - question to answer.

 

You have to remember, there is no matter in space, and the best way to lose heat is to absorb it from other matter. Basically, in space the heat radiates from, say, the X-Wing's engines. Radiation is the same way our planet gets its heat from the sun. On Hoth, the heat from the same engine is losing heat by radiation. It also loses heat, at a lot faster rate, through convention. Convention is like cooking food in an oven, the air gets hot, and your food absorbs the heat.

Hoth's icy atmosphere here is to blame. The heat radiators worked, but they word too good, because the heat goes from the engine to the atmosphere (it's similar to how A/C and heat works in your house). So, basically, in order to run the snowspeeders on Hoth, they had to add installation to keep the heat on the engines so they run.

 

^^^^

While a facinating post, it's kind of redundant as the first reply was correct.

Speeders are for atmospheric flight only and not designed with extreme temperatures in mind 'out of the box'. Hence the problems.


It doesn't appear to be even a fully sealed cockpit. Isn't there a big hole for the rear gunner to manuever the tow cable?

 

Not to mention the Rebels are "making do" with a lot of their equipment. Safe bet that the starfighters, speeders, etc, they get aren't in top condition to begain with. More than likely they're using a lot of military surplus and local enforcment surplus. Basically stuff that under any other circumstance might end up in the junkyard and therefore isn't to likely to be missed by the Empire or raise to many eyebrows when it shows up in combat.

 

Along the same lines. I always wondered why Kenner called them Snow Speeders in the first place.

If the Rebels were "having trouble adapting them to the cold," then they were not designed to be Snow Speeders, they were just plain old speeders.

They should have been called Rebel Speeders or something.




Adam Bertocci loves you!

 

You have to remember, there is no matter in space, and the best way to lose heat is to absorb it from other matter.

There IS matter in space...which I think is called Dark Matter. Go to Space.com for details. Don't know what to click on though

EDIT: Click here for an article

 

"Along the same lines. I always wondered why Kenner called them Snow Speeders in the first place.
"

If you look at the SW bumf on vechicles and stuff they are just 'speeders'. They were called snow speeders BECAUSE they were adapted to the conditions.

 

Along the same lines. I always wondered why Kenner called them Snow Speeders in the first place.

The same reason Kenner named action figures Walrus Man, Squid Face, Death Star droid, Hammerhead, and Snagletooth. There were no names from LFL for these characters/vehicles so Kenner named them how they saw best.

 

Why the rebels used them at all if they weren't good in cold weather (it wasn't like they'd just arrived at Hoth the week before, you know), is a different - and harder - question to answer.

Not to mention the Rebels are "making do" with a lot of their equipment. Safe bet that the starfighters, speeders, etc, they get aren't in top condition to begain with. More than likely they're using a lot of military surplus and local enforcment surplus. Basically stuff that under any other circumstance might end up in the junkyard and therefore isn't to likely to be missed by the Empire or raise to many eyebrows when it shows up in combat.

I don't even think it had to do with quality and condition of the speeders. More to the point, the Rebellion is using exactly what it has. It doesn't have the facility or wealth to customize their various equipment to every scenario. I think this was an excellent illustration of just how ragtag the rebellion still was at this stage in the story.

They had to flee and hide on an ice planet with equipment that was not suitable for such an environment. Thus, they had to adapt.

 

There IS matter in space...which I think is called Dark Matter.

Uh, no. Dark Matter is 'in' space in the same way that any other visible matter is 'in' space. As in, not very much.


Think back to high school physics - space is a vacuum, that is, it's not made up of matter, or ether or anything else. Just nothingness (other than the little clumps of matter making up galaxies and dark matter etc). The only qualification to this point is that it is based on the our current conception of the universe to date, which may be inaccurate.

The point being that space IS cold. While I don't pretend to understand ChiefYoda's application of thermodynamics, I can tell you right now that if the our laws of physics DID apply in the GFFA (and they don't appear to since you can hear the 'sound' of lasers in space) then these craft would get a lot colder a lot more quickly in space than on Hoth given that the temperature on Hoth would at least be a little ways above absolute zero due to its atmosphere, whereas in space it would be negligibly so.

But I agree with the consensus that they were built as atmospheric craft, probably for use on Tatooine, Geonosis, Kashyyk, Endor, Utapau, Mustafar or Naboo (lol) given that they seem to be so badly attuned to the cold.

But perhaps sometimes it's best not to think up complicated explanations as they'll only detract from our enjoyment and probably turn into misconceptions about the real world.

 

I never really cared about them having trouble adapting to the cold, but one thing did bother me. If they have trouble adapting to the cold, why call them snowspeeders???

 

...probably turn into misconceptions about the real world.

You mean snowspeeders aren't real?

 

Think back to high school physics - space is a vacuum, that is, it's not made up of matter, or ether or anything else.

I never took high school physics. But I 'was' into Astronomy since 4th grade.

...

Which, in hindsight, was actually a bad thing.

 

If they have trouble adapting to the cold, why call them snowspeeders???

I don't believe they did in the movie. I think they referred to them as "speeders" only. IIRC the first time I saw it referred to as a "snowspeeder" was the toy and the name just stuck.

Come to think of it, were any of the fighters referred to by their name? The only one I can think of is in ESB when the Imp officer is telling Vader Luke's on the way. Something about picking up a X-Wing on the scanners or something like that,,,

 

I always thought the line was ridiculous, but then so is much of Star Wars. I love Star Wars despite and because of its ridiculousness.

RB

 

I love Star Wars despite and because of its ridiculousness.

Me too Razorback! It's just that I'm running out of topics to post! Argghhh!!!

 

ahhh, maybe the reason they were having problems was that the speeders didn't come with A/C heater as standard equipment and since Princess Leia lost all her money when GMTarkin blew up her planet they didn't want to spend the extra $100 for the A/C option.

Maybe the delivery fee to have the A/C installed was too high...

Just kidding...

 

This is EU stuff, but it may help with what to call the speeders. I think the first guide to vehicles said that different slang terms come up for those ships depending on what terrain they're flying over. They can also be called "swampspeeders" or "sandspeeders" etc.

Just a thought.

 

Rebel Alliance technicians scavenged their own arsenal in adapting the civilian T-47 for combat duty. The venerable Y-wing fighter became a prime donor to the T-47 program, offering refitted cockpit modules, control surfaces and armor plate to the snowspeeder. This cut down on the cross-training time required to turn Alliance starfighter aces into Alliance snowspeeder aces.
To compensate for the added weight of armor and weaponry, the Alliance fitted the T-47 with an advanced powerplant and repulsorlift engines. The extremely maneuverable craft had a flight ceiling of 175 kilometers, a top speed of 1,000 kilometers per hour and a combat speed of 600 kilometers per hour


This is from Starwars.com. The snowspeeder's actual name is T-47.

 

Come to think of it, were any of the fighters referred to by their name? The only one I can think of is in ESB when the Imp officer is telling Vader Luke's on the way. Something about picking up a X-Wing on the scanners or something like that,,,


"Ship approaching. X-Wing class."

 

^^^^

In addition, Star Destroyers are not identified by name until ESB:

"There's a fleet of Star Destroyers coming out of hyperspace in sector four".

And TIE fighters are not identified by name until ROTJ!

"Split up and head back to the surface. And see if you can get a few of those TIE fighters to follow you."

Never identified by name in the movies:

Landspeeder is just called a "speeder".

Speeder bikes
A-Wings
Y-Wings
B-Wings
AT-ATs and AT-STs (Just called "Imperial walkers")

It's amazing the influence the Kenner toys had on Star Wars. I went for years thinking 4-LOM was Zuckuss, and vice versa.

IMO, the names Walrus Man, Hammerhead, Squid Head, Snaggletooth, and Prune Face are the best.

 

Prune Face

Sounds like the name of a character from Dick Tracy or The Untouchables or something