Star Wars is More Scientific than You Realize
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- čas přidán 31. 05. 2024
- We like to think of Star Wars as "science fantasy," but in reality... it's much more hard sci-fi than you think. Let's explore!
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/ echenry - Zábava
Mass Effect: Am I a joke to you?
Oops yeah, I legit forgot about Mass Effect!
@@ECHenry oof xD
@@ECHenry I have a feeling they're all gonna want you to make a video about now. Don't think you actually do, but I'd prepare yourself for the rush of comments.
@@ECHenry If Avatar counts as a franchise, then that's another example of caring about heat management on a spacecraft (the ISV Venture Star).
@@ECHenry Halo too.
I think originally, the TIE Fighter "solar panels" were actually radiator panels, which makes more sense. But it could easily be explained as a dual purpose radiator/solar panel, made cheap by mass production.
I can see how both works at the same time.
If I recall they in house they were designed form the get go to be radiators but some secondary source material called them solar panels since solar energy started to become a commonly known thing at the time and that idea kinda stuck.
I mean the radiator idea makes a lot of sense given how high performance TIE's are supposed to be, slap on those giant radiators so they can run the twin ion engines at near red line while staying relatively cool.
yeah considering solar would barely power the cockpit lights lol radiators make more sense. Solar is a drop in the ocean when it comes to the TIE's lasers and propulsion
@@lukasperuzovic1429 I really would like that someone explained to me how a solar panel (or a radiator, for that matter) is supposed to work both as heat managment and as power source.
This "hybrid" thing that I keep reading of dosen't make a ton of sense, in a realistic scenario
I believe it's supposed to be radiators, which frankly make much more sense than solar panels as we know of. Unless of course, in the star wars galaxy solar panels are what they call one type of radiator panels....I mean, in the world where fusion is everywhere, the idea of using panels to absorb energy from steller radiation as if you're trying to emulate a plant might be considered primitive. Far more efficient to get that fusion unit and stick a radiator to ven excess.
I really like the idea that Star Wars technology is stuck with magnetic tapes and that sort of era of computers. Nothing digital.
A fever dream from 1975
Too bad George dumped the early 20th century aesthetic to rip off soft sci-fi in the prequels
@@electricvancompany3847 well the prequels were set in a era of wealth and prosperity
Magnetic tape would still be digital. Though think I agree with what you're trying to say. At the very least they don't seem to have moved past hard disks for most applications.
@@Bruh-hq1hx because as soon as 2008 happened we all magically lost the ability to communicate on a wireless telephone
I think part of the ships realism was the fact that SW was designed to be that dirty "used-universe." Every greeblie on a ship was supposed to tell a story or a function. There are plenty of sci-fis that overuse greeblies on ships or that make no sense and they look awful lol. Also, the fact that these ships were built with model kit parts themselves adds that layer. They seem functional in a way we know because those kit parts served functions on things we have already seen (cars, rockets, tanks, etc etc) all that really contributes that feel that these could exist and seem realistic even if, as you said, they don't behave like they would in reality.
Awesome vid - really loved this topic!
To add on, I understand that many of the background ships were build from kit bashing real world model kits.
@@JonBerry555 A lot of the props are as well. All the blasters are built on real weapons. IG-88’s Head is a part from an old jet engine. The Rebel Fleet Trooper Helmet is built around a WW2 US Talker Helmet. I think the use of so many real world elements is a hundred percent what makes the world of Star Wars seem so believable. Alien and a few other 70’s sci fi films are the same way.
@@forrestpenrod2294 plus the Rebel endor helmet might have inspired the Indian Army Patka helmet.
I think this is hitting it right on the head. Star Wars is not so much a film series about theme as it is about aesthetic and feel. Star Wars is gritty and lived in, functional and down to earth. And the way that it uses science elements, and western elements, and samurai elements and everything else is in service to that core sense of aesthetic.
I wouldn't be surprised if a number of those greeblees were meant to be reaction-control thrusters.
Star Trek fan here....that Death Star orbiting Yavin shot, is one of the greatest tension builders in all Sci Fi. It's just a magnificent sequence and a beautiful bit of science. Perfect way to create a countdown as well.
But did you know that entire scene was created in the editing room by Lucas's wife? czcams.com/video/GFMyMxMYDNk/video.html
@@4saken404 No I did *not.*
@@4saken404 Further proof that Lucas is best in a collaborative setting.
@@4saken404 If it wasn't for Marcia Lucas we wouldn't be having this conversation today, yep, she was that critical to the movie because George did see the big picture. Just imagine how much better the prequels would've been had they still been married and she working at Lucasfilm.
I legit miss your almost weekly videos. Hope you're doing well brother
When I first saw Star Wars the attack on the Death Star what seemed realistic to me was the communications between the X-Wings and their base because my Dad & Grandpa were big into CB radios, and radio calls sounded EXACTLY like their CBs did.
Also, I think that part of the "grounded" look of the original movie ships is because they were kitbashed together from parts of model kits of real vehicles.
Don't forget when Dooku deleted all mention of Kamino from the Jedi archives, but overlooked that the Kamino system's star would exert gravitational influence on nearby stars, perturbing their motions, and that this data in astro-cartographical databases would point to the location of Kamino. And Obi-Wan subsequently used this to zero its location.
He didn't overlook that, he just needed to buy enough time to get the job done.
"Retconned superhero Jedi" as if that's not exactly what George Lucas imagined the Jedi being like in the 70s
Even the Force itself may, of-course, be science-fiction, as is everything in the world of Star Wars. However, the Fantasy elements that George added came from the mythic tone, character archetypes and storytelling. A New Hope is a perfect example: Old Wizard who teaches magic, Farm-boy wanting to be a knight, a rogue pirate in a Wild West town, Princess locked away and a dark sorcerer in the evil fortress.
As several people have already mentioned, the Mass Effect games (if you pay attention) deal a fair bit with heat management. 2 quick examples - the SR1 and SR2 Normandy both have very expensive, uncommon stealth systems. The main constraints of their stealth modes are use of the main drive, which is basically impossible to miss and instantly makes the ship break stealth, but the other limitation is the ship's ability to internally sink the heat required to operate while it's in "silent running." In Mass Effect 1, the interior of the Normandy isn't very well lit, and everyone looks sweaty all the time. I think that's intended to help convey that the ship is constantly acting as it's own heat sink, and that they frequently have to accept things like darker interiors to use less energy and generate less heat. The other example is that the ability of capital ships to vent the heat from firing their main battery weapons is one of the primary constraints on how fast they can fire their main weapons, which is a huge part of how powerful a capital ship is. Ships which can heat sink or vent heat better can fire their main battery more rapidly, and then the limiting factor becomes power generation.
Also, F**KING ORBITS.
The ingame codex really extensively dives into heat management of both civilian (radiators) and millitary (charges coolant mist that gets ejected at the bow and collected aft) vessels and how space battles usually end due to overheating vessels having to retreat.
An important thing to remember about Star Wars is that the galaxy is incredibly old, like hundreds of thousands of years. The celestials developed Center Point Station in 100,000 BBY. Comparatively, the earliest structures in our world were believed to have been built 100,000 years ago. Whenever someone says something like hyperdrive is "science fantasy", I like to think it's sort of like those prehistoric people saying a magical glass slab that could show you moving paintings so life-life you could swear they were real is just a fantasy.
I think it's mainly that space travel is something so normal in SW that nobody bothers to comment on it. Things rarely break down, and when they do you can find spare parts almost anywhere, no need to jury-rig stuff or technobabble an explanation.
I like this aesthetic of Star Wars best. That’s why I love all the old West End Games source books that feed on what is presented in the original trilogy.
Heat management has at least been mentioned as part of more than just Star Wars. Even then, almost every single one of them are more of lips service than actually care to illustrate it properly.
Most of the more accurate mention of heat management in spacecraft tend to be found in novel than in TV show or movies, since heat radiators are horribly visually unappealing. No one want to see a spacecraft where 70% of its surface area look like ancient sailing ship. Even A.C. Clarke got overruled on this one, and not a single ship in 2001: A Space Odyssey has any heat radiator (He made it clear that they existed in the novel, though). Literally the only example I could think of in TV shows and movies that got the whole thing correct is the ISV Venture Star in Avatar, probably the only good bit in that movie.
Which is kinda sad really, the game Elite:Dangerous has proven that one can illustrate heat radiators without diminishing a spaceships visual design.
Still is the same case as S-foil, though. The surface area is nowhere near even close to remotely enough.
@@PaiSAMSEN Kinda true...
The Babylon 5 Stations have those, and it looks pretty, although, in real life it probably needs more than those.
I have to disagree in the last statement. The organism in Avatar are all very well though and everything is extremely realistic with the only thing that kinda break the mold being the Na'vi themselves. But I think the weird monkey with fused limbs is there to help with that.
"Star Wars is the only SciFi franchise that cares about heat management."
Battletech/Mechwarrior: Am I a joke to you?
@@DanielDracohun So was I. Heatsinks feature in Battletech's spaceships.
@@DanielDracohun Elite:Dangerous: Let me play you the sound of my people
*plays heat aleart because the commander flew too close to a star for fuel scooping and got dropped out of super cruise....
@@DanielDracohun As a Clan Ghost Bear warrior scientist I take great offence on people ignoring our wastly superior navy...
I suggest execution with naval gauss gun of The Rashalhague would be a fitting punishment!
Halo would like a word, that franchise goes weirdly in depth for being primarily an FPS series.
@@DanielDracohun Soaceships in Battletech alos have the Heat part.
Arguing about Star Wars being softer sci-fi than Star Trek is like arguing whether this cushion is softer than that pillow.
Yep. They are both Sci-Fi but different...
Star Trek from TNG on had definitely leaned into soft sci-fi
@@SudrianTales Also the original. Apollo.
@@hughmiller7127 fair enough
and Trelane and Charlie and Gary Mitchell and the Talosians and the Organians and…
Babylon 5: Ehhh Bro, the BABYLON 5 STATION literally has heat radiators
Babylon 5 is really cool cause it has a lot of hard sci fi stuff mainly in the form of Earth Force ships, but when you look at each other race as they get more advanced they start being able to gradually ignore those necessary bits like the rotating habs on Omegas all the way up to the elder races like the Minbari and Vorlons who are so advanced their stuff looks like magic. Meanwhile the Centauris and the narn especially have ships that still require giant plasma engines and reaction thrusters, but seem to have anti grav inside and such other things, making them much closer to Earth's level.
@@battleoid2411 That's one of the things that I loved about that show. Not everyone was on the same tech level and it was more then a binary you're either super advanced or a scrub like some other sci-fi settings handle it.
Re: The Force, one thing that people often forget about old-timey SF is that people legitimately did think that ESP, psychic powers, and the like would turn out to have real-world scientific explanations. Arthur C. Clarke was really enthusiastic about it in his day, and Trek had a lot of psychic plots in its first series for the same reason. The Golden Age of pulp SF teems with "psionics."
This is to say, "The Force" wasn't actually outside the realm of even hard-ish SF in the 1970s.
With that said, the line between SF and fantasy is often blurry. As Niven said, "any sufficiently well-defined magic is indistinguishable from technology."
Which is one of the things that bothers me a bit about the direction Disney Canon's gone--it's emphasized the mystical/fantasy elements often at the expense of the old EU's tendency toward more grounded, almost military-SF genre norms.
Can't say Disney is the blame.The old canon had crazier stories than new canon.
I would argue that Lucas went there first with the Prequels. He turned the Jedi into superheroes, making them extremely different to the depiction in the OT.
I appreciate the take you make in this video, but I think that a science-fiction franchise doesn't necessarily need to be considered "hard" science fiction, just because it hasn't dropped the science part yet. Otherwise, it wouldn't be Sci-Fi or Sci-Fantasy, but just Fiction or just Fantasy.
Not trying to be negative, I just think that there is a bit of a step between "inspired by science" and "taking the time to science the shit out of a story" that is usually the main divide between soft sci-fi and hard sci-fi.
The difference between hard sci fi & science fantasy is that in hard science stories the authors try to guess how advanced science might affect human civilization. In science fantasy a science fiction backdrop is used to tell more or less conventional stories. Star Wars, for example, was used as a critique of the Vietnam War. Guess who the Galactic Empire is supposed to represent.
There's actually a Mohs scale of Scifi Hardness on TVTropes. I think given the state of scifi media as it is Star Wars probably rates about low to average
@@AlonzoCRichardson No you just describe two science fiction. So Alien and Aliens is science fantasy because it tell a conventional monster movie like Jaws. Science Fantasy is a world where science and magic are in the same setting. Star Jammer is Science Fantasy, Marvel and DC Comic are science fantasy.
@@hughmiller7127 no, I didn't compare sci-fi to sci-fi. Star Wars is not science fiction. It's not telling a story about how our current civilization or people might change with different technology. The tech in Star Wars is not only irrelevant, but can be easily interchanged in a different setting.
Jaws isn't science fiction it's just fiction (could a great white grow to monstrous size? Sure. Might it kill people? Sure. It's not far fetched). Aliens is sci-fi. How might a crew react if they where trapped in a vessel with a dangerous alien? That's a classic science fiction question.
Foundation is classic SF. How might we get along if we could use mathematics to predict the future in broad strokes?
@@AlonzoCRichardson First, Star Wars does deal in science, Droids, clone armies, Death Stars destroying planets. I think these are a set of story dealing with the effect of technology. Second, Science fiction does not need to deal with the effect of technology. Science Fiction is a story where the setting or other things are using science or technology that is not known or not in the use as shown. Three, the point of science fiction at times is to talk about things placing it in a time or place not present and use allegory. E.T. can be replaced with an alien from Mexico or Europe. Alien and Aliens can be set on some base or a sub and have to deal with a murder or a fantasy monster like a dragon or a ghost. So by your argument since Alien does not deal with technology, and the alien can be replace it's not science fiction. That is your argument. And my point of Jaws, is that it's not science fiction, but it is similar to Alien in that a monster is killing the characters.
Classic Science Fiction is a story set in the future dealing with modern day issue in a way that the reader could detach. How do you make a reader care about Native American, make human as a whole the equivalent black and aliens as the United State government.
Star Wars is science fiction, as much as Star Trek and Babylon Five. Is it hard science fiction, No. But neither are they. Star Trek just try and pretend, while Babylon Five and Star Wars just don't care. How does hyperdrive or worm hole work, they just do. How you have gravity in a ship, they just have it. Just like in a police procedural they don't talk about how the car they driving or radio they using work.
funny i just saw a video the other day saying Stark Trek wasn't Hard Sci-fi and closer to Science Fantasy in some way.s
Star Trek isn‘t Hard Sci-fi but it is definetly much harder than Star Wars
I think because star trek was overralance in explaining through techno babbling.
Do you still have a link to that video?
Honestly, at this point I consider all Sci Fi just on a sliding scale. Warhammer is here, Mass Effect is there, Star Wars there, etc.
@@johnj.spurgin7037 Sliding scale? You consider al scifi on a taxing fee?
The 40th Anniversary anthology book "From A Certain Point Of View" actually showed the perspective of the stormtrooper who was mind-tricked, and that the reason the mind trick was effective wasn't a matter of will, it was a matter of personal investment. The trooper didn't really care about the droid hunt in the first place, being more concerned with how stressful his job was and getting a drink. (He's also the same trooper who hit his head on the bottom of the door in the Death Star.
"Star Wars is the only SciFi franchise that cares about heat management."
Elite: 'Am I a joke to you?'
Star Trek : "Am i a joke to you?"
@@abizair1832 TOS didn’t care about heat management. It wasn’t until later series that started to even care about it
Yes
Elite still is wide as an ocean, and deep like a puddle. While other universes were busy building depth...
Such a waste, really, cause it did have a potential, judging from the initial announcements of the Elite: Dangerous...
@@SkywalkerWroc man i hate that i agree. I want to love elite, but at the end of the day, even it's "deepest" power management and module control is so lackluster. I find myself purposely building shitty non meta ships with no flight assist just cause they are more interactive to fly. Made worse by the fact we STILL CANT WALK AROUND OUR SHIPS
3:42 Mass Effect does, too. They make a very specific reference to it with the Normandy's stealth drive.
Two other examples of the very hard sci fi in star wars: The Ravager take off (anti gravity generators) in star wars battlefront (either 1 or 2) and lastly the Lusankya take off with rocket engines the size of Saturn V rockets or larger when it took off of Coruscant in legends.
Lusankya used both. It was carried off the surface on large repulsor lift cradles. And then ignited its sublight drives that are much, much larger than Saturn V, which vaporized several city blocks.
@@martinjrgensen8234 the Lusankya also had more than just the sunlight engines as it also had rocket boosters (bigger than the Burj Khalifa) as well during it's takeoff on Coruscant. It's also seen with them in some books and comics as well.
I'm a simple man. I see EC Henry, I click.
You're young and wise, and i'm very proud of you.
@@lucasoreidopunho3556 You're very powerful and wise, and I'm very proud of you both too.
I do like how New Hope and Empire treat the technology. We get to see more of the finicky and technical side of ship mechanics that gets glossed over in more recent star wars. Even in the Mandalorian, where the Razor Crest is always in need of repairs, the hyperdrive never seems to go down. Han and Chewy could never seem to keep that thing working.
Well, considering all the “upgrades” Han thought he made to it and all the patching Chewie did behind the scenes to cave his feelings, it’s a surprise the Falcon wasn’t as hopeless as the Jupiter 2.
Heat thing from TNG:
TASHA: "Deflector shield technology has advanced considerably during the war. Our heat dissipation rates are probably double those of the Enterprise-C, which means we can hang in a firefight a lot longer."
No, not really.
@@DrewLSsix Hmmm :D
Star Trek is kinda hard sci-fi, in the sense the writers simply invent enough new science that they don't need to worry real-world science anymore.
And while I'm at it: I kinda agree that the magic is more subtle in the original movie compared to prequels/sequels and even Empire/Return, but come on ... the plot of the first act is basically a youthful hero being on a heroic quest to save a literal frickin' princess from a literal frickin' dark lord's evil fortress. How much more fantasy does it get?
That's not the plot though. A major part of the plot is the hunt for the Death Star plans and the search of a militaristic regime for the secret rebel base. The princess is literally saved by accident, because her home planet was blown up. Let me count the classic fantasy stories that feature a super weapon blowing up the princess' kingdom: 0? And the "heroic quest" was actually just travelling to this kingdom with the "old wizard", not saving the princess. Not to mention that all of them saved the princess - including the princess herself, because her rescuers were clueless the moment they went out of the cell. Oh and let's not forget the little known fact that they let them escape in the end because of *drum roll* the plot point that the evil regime wanted to know the coordinates of the secret rebel base. Yeah sounds soooo fantasy...
The Expanse looks down at all these "hard sci-fi" series' and laughs
The Expanse is just as fantasy as Star Wars or Star Trek.
Atomic Rockets (aka ProjectRHO) looks at the expanse and laughs as well haha
You know the ships can pull 20Gs+ aka people go slat from the G force of a full burn and yet no one turns that speed into armor.
Cough cough the Martian flag had none why and how?... Or uses it to cross the solar system in a few days which you can get to Mars from Earth in a day pulling a constant 20Gs by the way. Also, the proto molecule that's a thing too.
But yeah... Expanse did an amazing work trying to integrate hard science fiction into a popular show
@@jeffmorris5802 yeah, nah
Thinking about A New Hope/Star Wars 1977 separately from the other movies is interesting. The Toche Station deleted scenes with Biggs and Camie definitely have a different feel than the Tatooine you see in Phantom Menace. More like Kansas in the desert than a planet of exotic bazaars and trading ports.
Eh. Its kinda both. Even New Hope establishes this. Its a rural planet with some scattered hubs for criminal elements that wanna conglomerate in the last place the authorities would look.
4:12 I like to think that this is why star wars is such a universally loved franchise: because it ties in a bunch of different genre’s while being unique. You said Western, Samurai, WWII, and Sci Fi so we get Cowboys, Samurais, Soldiers and Scientists
This attention to detail and tonal consistency is something that got increasingly ignored as more movies came out.
Thanks for sharing this, it was really awesome to see!
Let us not forget how the Force is described in "A New Hope", either. It is an energy field generated by living things, and fields in real-world physics are properties of the fabric of space-time, and the properties of physical objects can generate specific fields.
And some organisms are more sensitive to thes fields like midichlorians...
I don't think that quite works. Yes there are some fields, but none I've heard of that connect living things and allow esp. Just because there's a magnetic field doesn't mean it has a cousin that gives you magic powers.
People have long theorized that part of the "magic" of science fiction would be through telepathy and telekinesis. If you look at most of the Force powers out there, that is what they are. This concept would be taken up by Games Workshop's Warhammer 40K universe (which is admittedly quite Space Opera, and intended to be).
@pyropulse So telekinesis could exist scientifically, and the dead could talk to the living with the right field? Where are you getting that these sorts of things are scientifically accurate, cause it sounds to me like you're taking the category of field and saying it can do anything. Esp, telekinesis and freaking necromancy aren't scientific just because you put sciency sounding words in front of them. Moreover, the point of Star Wars isn't to be scientific: it's meant to be a fun space adventure.
EC Henry is the only channel that I, literally, drop everything to watch a new video.
What about R2D2 using his "Scomp Link", which was basically the equivalent of an RJ45 plug and cable on an arm he could extend. It plugs into a code cylinder port which is a sort of mechanical lock that can be reprogramed. The idea is someone wanting to interface with an area to get information or change physical security would insert a cylinder into the port and read and upload data or even change the lock. But R2D2 was HACKING the ships computer! Pretty sweet for 1977...
The Expanse is pretty hard sci-fi too. And it deals with heat dissipation. And don't forget about Dennis Taylors Bobiverse. That's REAL hard scifi!
Thanks for this video! I never understood this fixation on the mythological aspects of Star Wars and how most people flat out ignore anything not pertaining to the Jedi Sith conflict. As a child more interesting than anything else were the battles and war, the world War style setting in space and how people live in this galaxy rather than the fairy tale religious angle. I pulled more joy from the Republic and Empire comics and playing Battlefront than the movies themselves because those concentrated on a tiny group of individuals to which the war is merely background flavor. Basically the only movie that took the setting serious were ROTS and ANH. The focus on the force and spirituality overtook the story established in ANH. Only with the sequel trilogy I really understood the merits of the spiritual angle in the franchise when those movies turned all the established values on its head through Reys actions.
The writing of the original trilogy especially is what I love. It blends the reality of a galactic war with the emotional story core of the Skywalkers. The prequels are kind of missing the adventure of a war or switched it for the more boring to most politics which is where TCW set things right by giving us OT type stories in the PT setting. I think most people are too fixated on the jedi and sith, especially Luke and Vader, to the point that they blend out the rest the universe has to offer them. And that it is exactly that type of person that can't stop proclaiming that star wars is ruined and those aware of more of the universes facets can just accept some things like that the sidestories will never be able to really mesh well with each other in a cohesive Canon or that the empire will never be allowed to be portrayed in a positive light because they will always have to fight for Sith values and be opposed to jedi values out of thematic necessity. The Mandalorian appears to finally change this view the masses have towards Star Wars though I wish Rogue One could have managed to do it earlier. As a teen I imagined a line of Star Wars movies exactly like the Dark Horse comics, anthological, as little focus as possible on the force, more dirty and realistic rather than a fairy tale. Sadly the comics and novels are not at all like this anymore but at least I got some of that in rogue one, Mando, hopefully some of the new shows and games and funnily enough also in battlefront 2 to an extent. I still can't forgive the false marketing because of the turncoat story but at least it was able to inject the values of the franchise into the world without force users high jacking the story for their own.
Star Wars (Excluding certain films....) is very dedicated to its own set of in-universe rules. This gives it that grounded, dirty, lived-in feel. Its not hard sci-fi, but it still has this dedication that grounds it to make the tech believable and explainable.
Aside from TROS, I really enjoy how the sequels expand upon the lore of Star Wars, especially the technology side. TFA set up this idea of the First Order being this small, but extremely high-tech faction because Palpatine had cherry-picked all the best people to carry his legacy forward. The Resurgent is probably my favourite Star Destroyer because of how plausible it is. The Resurgent is like the Legends Nebula Class SD done correctly.
Star wars was pretty consistent with how tech works. Unlike star trek which constantly introduced stuff that messes with tech to produce drama. Or phasers can vaporize people and rocks but hiding behind a cargo crate is always a legit strategy and nobody vaporizes cover.
Is one reason i like star wars. Tech is peaked but continues to be tweaked and improved.
On the orbital mechanics topic, this is something sorta inconsistent even in the OT, though in this case doesn't necessarily mean conflicting. Many Star Wars ships act under the influence of gravity where people assume they aren't, and I have to imagine that they use repulsorlifts to counteract this. You see both in Rogue One and the escape from Hoth that when a Star Destroyer gets disabled, it starts to fall. The same is true of the bombers in whichever sequel movie. People complained that "there's no gravity in space" and "that has to be magnetically propelled", but if everything is using repulsorlifts much of the time, real gravity does all the work. This was even simulated in the old Battlefront 2, the Y-wings' bombs didn't always drop vertical relative to the ship, but instead the planet.
Well to be fair to those surface bombers that were being used in a horrifically wrong manner, those rails were described as accelerating the bombs which then used magnetic guidance. Also the star destroyer we see disabled from the ion cannon in ESB was less of a "falling" and more of drifting without any guidance from engines.
A few people are bringing up sci-fi franchises that deal with heat management, so I feel like I should mention Alien, as well as potentially Eclipse Phase, though that does use a lot more of that exotic technology thing.
Always cool to recontextualize older star wars for those of us who always knew it through the lens of later material/adaptation
Some great observations there.
Also, when comparing the United Federation of Planets to the Rebel Alliance, I notice that Star Wars is in some ways better than Star Trek at conveying intended core messages of Star Trek.
There is a lot of bilingual dialogue. It seems that most characters in Star Wars understand at least two languages. Star Trek's universal translator supports the attitude that you don't need to learn other people's languages. What we most often hear in Star Trek is Starfleet officers who can speak Klingon -- they learned the language of their enemy, presumably to understand their enemy so they can combat them more effectively -- okay, I guess that helped in the peace talks too.
We see people of various species in various roles in the Rebel Alliance and not much is made of that. Star Trek's extraterrestrials can be read as supportive of racial stereotyping with how main recurring species like Vulcans, Klingons, Ferengi are driven each by one core value.
With Luke, Han and Lando we see characters of various walks of life joining the cause. Due to the shows' Starfleet-based setting, Star Trek focuses mainly on characters who are already part of a militaristic command structure that they've joined before we met them; and diplomatic missions are most often about talking to representatives.
For each of these points there are examples in which Star Trek is much better than that, but you're not likely to see such an example when you tune in to any randomly selected episode.
Good point about Star Wars aliens being more detached from a single monolithic culture.
I'm not sure when you added this. But I really dig the narration animation. It's really cool to see your channel's craft grow and change!
yeah but they still moved stuff with their minds, and also shot lightning. all they did later was ramp it up logically. and in terms of technology, the shields that let in ships but not air out just make more sense to have and yes they are more coinvent for the movie. in general i think the move into a more fantasy and more speculative future was a good one, even if the movies overall didnt take full advantage of that.
It's probably been said before but I'll say it again; this is the greatest and most underrated channel on Star Wars lore and design around. The way EC Henry articulates what is important to the design language of Star Wars is just immaculate.
Christopher Paolini's new book "To Sleep in a Sea of Stars" is really interesting in how spacecraft deal with heat!
“As far as i know, Star Wars is really the only sci-fi franchise that actually cares about heat management.”
Georgie LaForge: Coolant leak!!!!! Coolant leak!!!
I’ve always wanted to apply hard newtonian physics to star wars to see what that looks like, but keep the more fantastical force elements of later films
This video has pointed out something brilliant about a series I already love and provided a new way for me to look at star wars.
Star Trek has used terms like "residual bio-energetic signatures" which, to me, sounds like an extreme techno-babble version of "spirit."
Beat me to it :D
Star Trek is often just fantasy but with the fantastic concepts explained through a paper thin scientific lens.
and don't forget, that they had ESPer as a Plot point in the "very first" (secound pilot) Episode of TOS
@@enisra_bowman By the time of the movies, Vulcans had gone from "purely logical" beings to a sort of spirituality, what with Spock's "katra" and all that.
Really awesome perspective - great video!
I think in continuity one could say that even after the veritable super powers the Jedi and Sith demonstrated in the old Republic and the Clone War, even aside from the fact that the Empire actively censored all knowledge of the Jedi and made them a taboo subject, a hokey religion, you also hear about it from Obi Wan and Yoda later on, who have had decades to learn more of the Force since then. Obi Wan has started to lean on the Force for defense, knowledge, and stealth. Yoda has focused on the connections in the Force between all things in the galaxy, where it comes from, why it does what it does.. Yoda explained Midi-Chlorians to me before I ever saw Episode 1.
The Force is a believable element to the fiction, I would say. Not because it's subtle, but because it works.
One of the things I love about Rogue One is how it builds on these ideas of the Force, not by introducing amazing, spectacular new powers, but by talking about how it works. Perhaps my favorite line in the movie is when Chirrut says that "The Force moves darkly around a creature who's about to kill." That one line tells so much about the nature of the Force. For example, it says that there are movements in the Force. Currents, like an ocean. It doesn't control the universe so much as it is a part of it. It says that "learning the ways of the Force" is not like learning the way of the Samurai. The Samurai have their way of doing things. The Jedi have a way of doing things. The Force is moving, and learning the ways it moves is what allows you to tap into it. That's the will of the Force. The line also tells me that even a non-Jedi can tune himself to the Force, can see it as clearly as one sees with eyes. Chirrut demonstrates that by following the Force, he can perform better while blind than most could with sight and extreme training.
On the side of the hard science of Star Wars, I think it's still present in the other films. The snowspeeders with their heat vents, and the issues adapting tech to Hoth's environment. The tow cables. Planet-based shield generators. Hyperdrive rings on the Jedi starfighters, data transmission with signal degradation, jet-powered racing machines, starfighters that actually overheat and can't keep working, gunships that need a window in the bottom so the pilot can land troops, tensor fields, treaded tanks, energy beam focusing crystals. Those elements are still there. That's what makes it a great universe.
And then there were some other movies that didn't have time for that nonsense because they had to focus on how out of breath the characters always are.
Heat management in scifi, it's not only a Star Wars thing, it's also present in Elite's universe, like lasers generate lot of heat that you have to vent out to avoid overheating and damaging your ship
Hmmm I don't really know if i really agree with your star wars is sci-fi thesis on this one, while, yes, i agree star wars cares more about the science than people give it credit for, that does't make it sci-fi to me.
The way i was taught in school, and yes i might be completely wrong on this so feel free to correct me if needed, is that sci-fi is not as much a genre about technology as a genre about what if's. "What if scientific thing happens" and then tell a story that examines the consequences.
Like, Frankenstein "what if we made a man out of parts and brought him to life with electricity" 20,000 miles "what if we invented a ship with which we can explore the bottom of the ocean, isaac Asimov's foundation "what if we could predict how society would evolve using math, what would be the consequences?" And many pulp sci-fi is simply, what if we "invented a space ship and came across aliens" or "what if we invented this and it went wrong and transformed a dude into a fly or whatnot.
Even Star Trek is basically "what could happen if we created a post scarcity world using technology, and invented space travel and joined the intergalactic community what could happen in a world like that.
And star wars ultimately lacks that 'what if' factor, there is no invention that drives the story forward, if it was set in the early days of the universe and the story took place around or just after the hyperdrive was invented and the galactic community now needs to adapt or something like that, then i would probably call it pure sci-fi. Ultimately star wars takes place in a world where all the technology is a given and not something to think about. Sure you could argue the death star is the catalyst of the story, and yes while it is very much a new technology in the world it isn't something that would be too crazy in universe, like based on what Hans Solo says it isn't unheard of for planets to have been destroyed before, just never this efficiently.
But still this was a really good video talking about the technological 'realism' is (early) star wars, amazing work as always, sorry for the ramble and if it was incoherent. And again this is how i was taught about the genre in Belgian school so my perspective might be wrong, feel free to correct me if anybody things i'm wrong
tl;dr: sci-fi ultimately cares more for about the consequences of invention and technology than about how the technology or invention themself work, thus arguing star wars caring about the physics of the fictional and real world making it more sci-fi is flawed.
^^ This. The OT ends with a statement about love and redemption and not caring at all about the science of the thing.
Couldn't have said it better myself. Exploring the implications and consequences of scientific and technological achievements is a fundamental aspect of science fiction, and something that Star Wars on the whole does not do.
Themes like that are sometimes touched on here and there (e.g. in regard to cloning sentient beings in TCW or the Republic Commando books), but in general, Star Wars does not tell sci-fi stories. It has a setting that would be totally suitable for sci-fi, but uses it as a backdrop to more universal themes.
Just because it "has" technology doesn't mean it's "about the impact" of technology. Most of the points brought up are reasons it's not sci-fi.
No that is not science fiction. Science fiction is exactly what the name describes, fiction loosely based on science. And with Star Trek and later Star Wars the meaning became more oriented towards the celestial element of science, space was quite the fascinating thing for people of that time I mean when Star Trek was made plastic bottles were considered futuristic - the point is meanings change. Was your definition correct when frankenstein was written? Maybe. But now it completely misses the mark as schools and other educators often define things by their older more 'academic' terms when in reality they are completely different. Really what if scenarios are in almost every piece of fiction it is almost impossible to avoid it since fiction is well fiction. By your standards every piece of fiction is science fiction.
@@celestialceilagor3802 no it doesn't?
I love your videos! I know producing them is a lot of work, but they're always great.
This is exactly why I've come to love this channel 👏
Honestly, the Force is the only true "fantasy" element in Star Wars, and even that is pretty consistent with its own rules and how they are applied. Star Trek, on the other hand, is all over the place with technobabbled pseudo-science that is outright magic at worst and is rarely consistent.
Ergo, I'd argue that Star Wars is "harder" Scifi than Star Trek is.
"is rarely consistent."
When a franchise ran for decades with hundreds of hours of screentime that good chunk of those spent close to the core technology that is the center of the franchise, of course you're going to get that much inconsistency, especially as time goes by and more creators tried to adjust it to be inline with real world technological development.
That said, looking at the whole picture, the core "science" of Star Trek verse is still more solid than most scifi franchise, compare to technological aspect of Star Wars, for example.
@@PaiSAMSEN Sorry, but I disagree. Even if you ignore the whole "science marches on" trope, I find it _extremely_ hypocritical that people say SW is Science fantasy because of the Force, while Star Trek *also* has telepathy and telekinesis and such. The difference is that SW at least doesn't try to pretend they're scientific. And I'm not even going into the whole can of worms that is the Q and Prophets and such... Or even the fact that ST simply cannot decide how its own Time Travel mechanics are supposed to work.
@@Timjer92 I agree that people are way too forgiving of things like telepathy in sci-fi. To me, mind powers are just as much fantasy as casting fireballs from your hand.
it's not that there's an egregious amount of fantasy elements, it's that there's a stark lack of realism that makes it fantasy. Lightsabers should boil and melt any organic thing they get near, ships shouldn't fall, the franchise rarely pays any mind to orbital mechanics or gravity (sans the one example from ANH, which Henry seemed to use to dismiss every example of the dead opposite elsewhere in the franchise), alien species should be wildly unique and non-humanoid, planets should have different gravity and various biomes and different atmospheres, etc. No few examples on either side prove it one way or another, it's the totality of the franchise that depicts, to put it bluntly, a scientifically indefensible universe. And that's fine, it really doesn't have to be realistic, but we NEED to stop pretending it is. The harsh truth is that big "sci-fi" franchises like SW are huge sources of scientific illiteracy among kids, who picture space as some fantastical land with humanoid aliens and apparent universal "ups" and "downs," when it's not. We need to firmly establish and explain it as science fantasy, because that's indisputably what it is.
@@littlechickeyhudak In that case, Star Trek and every other hard sci-fi would also be science fantasy. If you want examples of science fiction breaking the laws of matter, there are many examples out of Star Wars.
Amazing video EC, keeo doing things like this!
The only franchise that cares about heat management?
Ahem: elite dangerous
Ahem: the expanse
Ahem: probably other stuff
Halo comes to mind.
However, from a contemporary list from the 70s and probably 80s, you'd have a harder time finding it. The Expanse uses real world physics and what we think might work with gravity effects as a matter of course and, other than the blue junk, is very hard Sci-Fi. Besides, this is a thought he had when he was looking at the ships. So your point is worth bringing up, but do remember that later works also know they have more educated (or at least nit-picky) fans to appeal to :) Just my .02 credits!
@@RifterBlade yeah, I get the point that was made, I just thought it'd be funny to poke fun at the exact phrasing
@@existentialselkath1264 Fair enough :)
Mass Effect as well, the main ship the Normandy is a stealth ship because it is good at dissipating heat not because it turns invisible.
Great video -- hadn't thought about this before but you're absolutely spot on!
So glad your back buddy keep it going
Great video EC. The whole cooling radiator thing never occurred to me, which is odd considerring I play Elite Dangerous, where such things feature pretty prominently!
Thank you! Details like this are part of the reason why I love the original film so much.
It’s crazy that Star Wars used to care about thermodynamics. Not even The Expanse or B5 has radiators! The only other popular examples of good thermal designs I can think of are the ISV Venture Star from Avatar, the Hermes from The Martian, and the original version of 2001’s Discovery I.
Thankfully, it seems like indie sci-fi is beginning to care more about this. Check out Delta V: Rings of Saturn or Children of a Dead Earth to see what a real spaceship should look like.
Huh, never thought of things like this, excellent video as always.
Nice video EC.👍
I always looked at it as sci-fi over sci-fi fantasy because of all the details like you've exposed. Ty. I'm going to love this vid
@ECHenry Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
A bit of a stretch, but an interesting thought nevertheless.
Great and fun video as always, but I can hear every Mass Effect fan from here to the other end of the galaxy (myself included) start to type angrily at the mention of Star Wars being the only franchise that cares about heat dissipation in space.
In one of the first episodes of Andromeda they use some form of cables to prevent the Andromeda Ascendant from melting. I don´t know what they´re normally using to manage their temperature but they´ve shown at least an emergency solution.
Nice vid, OG Star Wars never got enough respect for its quality scifi in my opinion. I've always thought that it was largely the result of A) Lucas being smart enough to leave technical details vague unless absolutely critical to the plot, supplemented by B) having a lot of genuine, hard core scifi fans working behind the scenes on props and filming, adding that subtle air of plausibility without directly addressing those specifics.
It gradually slipped further into fantasy as the series progressed, until Disney got it and now it's almost to the point of comic book logic.
Small correction (if you can call it that) about sci-fi heat management. Star Wars may be the only space opera to give it due consideration, but heat sinks have cropped up everywhere from BSG to Expanse
These're some really compelling arguments, and I think I'd enjoy a longer video with more examples.
Star Trek is more space opera than a lot of people want to admit, especially considering so much of the "science" is just pure random technobabble.
Not that Star Wars isn't guilty of technobabble... as a kid I wondered why we have never built a real X-Wing when the Incredible Cross-Sections showed so well how it functioned! :P
Star Trek's so called "Technobabble" IS actually "Techno Jargon" of applied science concepts and procedures using in-universe jargon. In the old days, most of its theoretical concepts which many considered "fantasy" at the time are now real world applied science. Most of the bridge functions can be done now that everyone made fun of how the redesign bridge in JJ'S films looks like an apple store.
Those were the best books ever...of all time.
@@IN-tm8mw No its really not... unless we are counting its computing tech especially with cellphone like communication and touch screens. Those were really fantastically accurate predictions. Of course Trek was not the only sci fi piece to accurate peg the advancement of digital tech, 2001 had HAL, and Ender's Game predicted how social media could influence politics; but Trek was indeed very prophetic in its computer tech depictions.
But Trek gets so much wrong about physics and space travel in general and disguises it under a veneer of technobable, its not techno jargon but made up Hollywood nonsense for the sake of plot. It sounds smart, but it well isn't actually anything of sense. From an engineering standpoint already the ships of Trek all are extremely goofy for having their center of thrust not aligning with their center of mass, the Enterprise would be doing somersaults over itself if any real world laws of mechanics were applied to it. You can make an offset thrust rocket work (the Space Shuttle and Buran are both good examples, the SN6 and SN7 flight tests SpaceX did are another) but its a pain to make them fly perfectly straight lines without a lot of gimballing and thruster control which would be a waste of resources on a long distance ship such as the Enterprise. The only way to make Enterprise work as it does is to assume it runs on "unobtainium" (which is basically what dilithium crystals is) and violates all known laws of thermodynamics and energy conservation to do it. Yes its a beautiful ship and I sure love the look of say the NCC-1701 refit or the E (I even like the Kelvin Enterprise style to be honest), but while its got looks it violates tons of design sensibilities that would be needed in a real world design.
The key component of Trek always was its more philosophical debates on morality and humanity combined with an action adventure of the week format, so ultimately it is still excusable that the science is screwed up and make believe because the key plot was always enjoyable not because of its scientific accuracy, but because it managed to be a fun and thoughtful story. But it still bugs me that people don't separate the fantasy part and assume that Trek is the standard bearer for "Hard Sci Fi" when there are really much better examples (The Martian, The Expanse, 2001 Space Odyssey, anything Jules Verne wrote, etc.) that show how to do science fiction rooted in real science, hence why I say Trek cuts closer to Star Wars than people are willing to admit.
The only big difference between Trek and Wars is that Star Wars is more dealing in a conflict of black and white, good vs evil and a heavy dose of mysticism, while Star Trek would sometimes more willingly dive into moral grays as seen from a secularly sceptic point of view. A faith based meditating wizard/priest with a laser sword would be an oddity in Trek, since their universe operates on "facts and logic." Equally a "what does God need with a starship?" moment in Star Wars would not fit in a world where The Force seems to favor blessing starship pilots all the time in using its power to blow up planet killers. Its a tonal difference, not a scientific one.
George: star wars should obey the laws of physics!!
Rian Johnson & JJ Abrams: *No, I don't think I will.*
"New Hope" will always be a gem of human culture.
Why didn’t this end up in my feed? This is the ONLY channel that I have now clicked the bell icon for.
I've always thought that before Empire, the entirety of force powers could be considered ESP powers. Good to know someone else has noticed this.
Very good points, all! Thanks!
Science Fiction is at its best when it follows hard rules, because science is all about figuring out what the rules are and how to exploit them.
I recall watching the 77 SW on Betamax in 82.
One of the first movies I saw.
So it's a bit like the first _Rambo_ and _Fast and the Furious_ films?
Let's go really over the top in the sequels …
My personal headcanon has maintained for years that the entirety of Star Wars is in a stellar nursery,by which I mean that while there isn't enough atmosphere for people to live, there is enough for sound to propagate. 3 primary reasons:
1. Everything is relatively close together (short hyperspace times).
2. Sounds for shots carry a moderate distance. Dogfighting and capital ship broadsides can be heard, while the fleet action in RotJ couldn't be.
3. Fuel usage. The ships slow in space because of the effect of the sound carrying gases in space.
And this is why A New Hope is the best
Excellent arguments and I hadn't thought of it that way. And your conclusion is well balanced. Though nowadays, never mind the Jedi, to be considered hard SF you'd have to ditch the whole idea of hyperspace comms or flight or interstellar civilization.
You nailed what I love about the original Star Wars and what I hate about the prequels.
Actually with things like heat dissipation, Star Trek also tacked this with both on, "The Corbomite Maneuver," as well as, "Catspaw." Corbomite of watching the engines overheat in order to get away from the Fesarius, and Cats talked about heat dissipation units.
Star Trek also talked about limited fuel supply in a real world context with, "The Galileo Seven," "The Menagerie," and, "The Doomsday Machine." And all of this without talking about dilithium crystals.
Star Wars didn't get to that until the animated TV series, Droids, until they talked about a fuel tanker, as well as a plot point on The Phantom Menace and The Last Jedi. We saw one of the ships getting a hose removed, nut that's about all.
And not to offend, but even Star Trek beat Star Wars over a mysterious force that can let people shoot lightning from their hands, like Gary Mitchell and Elizabeth Dehner.
Plus badly needed spare parts like dilithium crystals, that they can't always fix anything on their own like, "The Paradise Syndrome," and so forth.
Look at the warp nacelles closely. They had "heat pipes" - big radiators for heat dissipation. Check the technical specs out... LOL. Roddenberry had actual engineers and physicists help with creating the ship.
Insightful. Kudos.
I’d always heard that Dune was one of George Lucas’s inspiration from Star Wars, but I hadn’t realized how similar the Jedi as presented in A New Hope are to the Bene Gesserit, at least in terms of their “powers.”
Bene Gesserit. Ben Kenobi. LOL.
Fear is the mind-killer vs Fear is the path to the Dark Side
If you have the technology to power a space ship so it can travel all the way across the galaxy at faster than light speeds in a couple of weeks; you also have the technology to power a fighter craft so it can maneuver through space the same way an aircraft flies through an atmosphere.
Great job thank you! 👍🏼👍🏼
It's been proposed in at least one book (one of the DK books IIRC) that TIE fighter panels are also heat radiators rather than solar panels. That always made more sense to me, since they're very poorly positioned for solar panels. And they have powerful engines for their size, so it seems apt that they'd need more heat radiator surface area than Rebel fighter. See also the Raider corvette, with its massive engine.
If you have Disney+, you could watch the Star Wars Tech Extra that's with the rest of Revenge Of The Sith's deleted scene catalog. It actually details how difficult it is for our spacecraft to make the hard turns that Star Wars' spacecraft does along with a focus on the size of their windows.
I see Star Wars purely as a fantasy series. Not so much because of the recent canon, but largely because the story is structured as fantasy moreso than science fiction. You have the traditional battle between good and evil, the old mentor who sacrifices himself and more.
I call it fantasy in a futuristic setting.
I like how the technology of the 70s is represented in Star Wars computers and hasn’t changed since
Hey man, really cool vid. Pretty Epic
I’ve got an idea. How about a model of the successor of the blockade runner? I’d love to see a new republic version or just an update to the classic design
There is a CR-92 Assassins-class corvette, though it was used primarily by the Imperial Navy. A few CR-90s that have been modified into carriers. In Legends, the ships that might have succeeded the CR-90 are the Agave-class Picket Ship and the Warrior-Class gunship. In canon it would be the Free Virgillia-class Bunkerbuster. The former 2 could use a touch up imo.
I'm glad someone pointed this out. Lucas was heavily inspired in ship designs, particularly the Tantive IV, by 2001: A Space Odyssey and the Discovery, which was itself an extremely realistic and grounded spacecraft design (ironically, it didn't have radiators because Kubrick thought the audience would wonder why a spaceship had wings). It's funny, I never heard an actual mention of "orbits" in Star Wars again until one little throwaway line in Rogue One.
In point of fact, the Force and Jedi powers, as presented in the original trilogy, are very similar to 'psionics' - not only a throwback to Lensman and the classic pulpy sci-fi that inspired Lucas, but an actual real-world attempt at grounding so-called 'psychic' phenomena like telepathy, remote viewing and telekinesis in an understanding of electronics, that was at times considered so seriously as to be studied by elements of the intelligence agencies of both the USA & USSR - the Men Who Stare at Goats and such, with the Stargate Project, etc.