Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2005 01:38:34 -0400 To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org> From: "Mike B." <omni at omniphile.com> Subject: [WSFA] Re: Take that Darth Vader, thwack! , was Sith and before At 10:25 PM 6/15/05 -0400, Ted White wrote: > >It's a Proud And Lonely Thing to have been right about STAR WARS. You were? Hmmm... >It's as stupid today as it was then, full of misused words (like "parsec") and plot frauds. When did they misuse "parsec"? Are you talking about the "Kessel run" thing in the first movie (#4)? If so, that's easily explained...the FTL drive they use just warps space you see, so "Making the Kessel run in under xxx parsecs" is just a way of bragging about how *much* it could warp space, and thus shorten/speed the trip. Since we are making up the entire universe along with the drive, we might as well make up a bit more so it all fits together well, right? >People say to me, "But it was great to see all those neat space >fights onscreen!" And I agree with them, humoring them the way I will any >deranged person whom I don't wish to excite, saying, "Yes, and what a >relief to discover that sound really *does* travel through the vacuum of >space." Who said it did that?!? I've seen all but the latest movie, and the only one who's ever been out in the vacuum of space during a fight was R2D2, and I don't think he's ever given any indication that he was hearing anything while out there. All the sounds of space battles were inside air-filled ships as far as I remember. The sounds made by passing Tie Fighters are easily explained a couple of different ways. One is that the sound was generated by the ships systems, based on sensor data, and intended to clue the crew in on the location of nearby ships without their having to look at a screen. When you are in a turret, shooting at the one in front of you, you don't really have much ability to keep track of the location of the one about to appear from the side using your eyes...but your ears are available as inputs for that data, so why not use them? We do that today with video games, so why couldn't folks who can build space warping ships use the same technology for a more serious purpose? Another possible explanation is that the ships are really damn fast...given how quickly they could cross a solar system even sublight that seems reasonable. The speeds shown on the screen were just "artistic license", as showing them at actual speed would have been boring to the audience...a 2 millisecond strafing run is much quicker than an eye blink. At those speeds it wouldn't take much interplanetary gas density to actually build up a bit of a shock wave ahead of the ship, and when that ship passes another the shock wave would impact the hull and cause sound inside the ship. Anyone want to calculate how fast and how dense we are talking to be able to ring the chimes of another hull like this? The denser the slower, but I'm not sure what the actual figures might be in a galaxy far, far away. The shock wave theory might also explain why they acted like airplanes, and couldn't just spin around and shoot the guy coming up from behind, like on Babylon 5. At their speed, even a near vacuum had aerodynamic effects and the ships might not be stressed for that sort of thing. A little imagination and I bet we could come up with more explanations for the things you are objecting to than just these. I'll always remember Kelly Freas talking about how much John Campbell complained about the way he did the space suits in one of his paintings. There were folds and wrinkles in the outer covering. Kelly's report of the response was, "Wrinkles??? On a BULGER?!??" But he stuck with it, and years later, when astronauts walked in space and on the moon, there were the space suits with folds and wrinkles on the outer covering.... -- Mike B. -- If the world were a logical place, men would ride side-saddle.