Star Wars without massive power generation. Would that make sense?

[Vince 520]

 For me, the Death Star’s massively overkill destruction of Alderaan as well as the multiple accounts of huge accelerations are more than enough evidence for massive power generation in star wars. And firepower too, because energy weapons are powered by the starships. There has never been a planetary bombardment in star wars outside of the Death Star, so looking at the power ships wield is the next best thing to telling us what they can put to their weapons and shields.   

And just think about the work involved with accelerating a starship to thousands of times the speed of sound and back again within a few minutes. The kinetic energy of a ship impacting at this speed could devastate a country, or even a continent. So the laws of physics dictate that a mile long ship would need power equivalent to many millions of megaton nukes detonating each second to achieve the highest acceleration. Because accelerating mass into motion requires energy.

 

 

So many people argue that there is no connection between the Death Star and a star destroyer, but there’s nothing to suggest the power generating technologies of either, pound for pound, are orders of magnitude superior or inferior. 

 

 

They are just two starships of different scale. One has relatively big engines and numerous weapons. So imagine if you scaled a star destroyer up to the size of a Death Star, do you think that’s its power generation and shields would be orders of magnitude weaker? Or do you think they would be just a little weaker? Perhaps the star destroyer would generate ten times less power, thanks to the DS being more efficient or ‘state of the art and cutting edge’? Remember all sources suggest hours to charge the superlaser, this is a lower limit in the films. 

 

People argue that there are scenes contrary to massive firepower in star wars, bringing forth atmospheric battles as evidence, which gets debated, as well as kinetic impacts. But kinetics is very often the Bane of high sci fi with otherwise comparatively ridiculous levels of power generation and DEW based firepower (star trek, virtually all of them besides 40K). But we have never planetary bombardment besides from the Death Star, which was of planet destroying magnitude. Much less anything that is certainly “maximum firepower” beyond the most intense capital ship combat. 

 

[Tyralak 12,068]

I frankly think this is a good idea. If nothing else, an excellent thought experiment. What ways can we come up with for SW to have more realistic levels of power generation and still perform the same feats?

 

I also came up with an idea a few days ago that I kicked around with a few friends. What if the ships aren't actually generating much at all? What if they're USING all the power the calculations seem to indicate, but they aren't GENERATING it? The example I thought of was two ships. They both cross the ocean. They both are the same size and require the same energy to move. However, one is powered by a diesel engine, and must generate all of the energy required for ocean crossing. The other is a sailing ship, and generates none of it's own power, except for the electrical, communications, navigation, and life support systems. The energy used to move it across the ocean is collected from the surrounding environment. (wind, waves, and currents) In Stargate we see ZPM modules used. They collect vacuum energy instead of generating it. This isn't without precedent in SW either. The Force is EXACTLY that. It's an "energy field that surrounds all living things" which Force sensitive beings draw from. In the (now non-canon) Knights of the Old Republic, the Rakata Infinite Empire used Hyperdrives which were powered by the Force. I'm not saying that SW technology is Force based, but why should we be limited to the idea that 100% of the power needed is generated on-site?

[Vince 520]

I had considered something similar before. since the fuel requirements for these things are so astronomically high, I had pondered some kind of power source that somehow derives the energy from outside the ship. Perhaps another dimension, or another point in the galaxy such as a black hole through like, a wormhole or something. I think the former is much more feasible and likely.

 

I'm not sure a "hyperspace tap" would work because if so much power could be drawn from hyperspace then that would mean that hyperspace is a energy dimension. I don't think you could fly through an energy dimension without getting destroyed utterly instantly. And hyperspace might not even be another dimension, it might just be normal speed perceived at FTL speed. 

 

It's worth considering that such a theory doesn't technically make ships less powerful, though. Their not using fuel to generate all the power they need to move or blow up planets, but would be deriving the needed power from outside the ship, probably outside the universe, somewhere in the multiverse. If a star destroyer didn't have to carry fuel to perform multi-thousand G accelerations and acheive relativistic speeds then it would only need about a tenth of the power to move. You would probably need conventional fusion or annihilation reactors to maintain the interdimensional power source, though. It would also explain why ships are not so nearly as volatile as the ones in Star Trek. 

[DSG2k 4]

Wow.  I don't have time to get involved with a second thread, but I will simply comment.  

 

See, I read that title and I'm the exact opposite in my thinking . . . it makes perfect sense not to have sun-yield reactors, engines, and weapons in Star Wars.  It doesn't even make sense to watch Star Wars and think such things, so near as I can tell.   It's like if the thread title was "Star Wars without beyond-visual-range weapons. Would that make sense?"   Of course it would, because we seldom if ever see BVR in SW.  Imagining the contrary, so many things become questions or just plain nonsensical that it boggles the mind how anyone could claim to like Star Wars while also refusing to acknowledge what it is showing of itself.

 

Star Wars is a universe of fusion and steel.  It was a lived-in universe of banged up objects and realism of a sort uncommon in sci-fi prior to it.   The battles were modeled on WW2, not light-minute ranges and magically-invisible gigatons.

 

The Star Wars inflationism that developed from circa 1995 to the mid-2000s had no precedent before that . . . fans didn't even dream of much more than a kiloton for a proton torpedo or think there were more than a few thousand ships, and with good reason.   Even "Blade Squadron", the latest addition to the new canon, notes that the Imperial fleet at Endor was "the largest flotilla of Star Destroyers ever assembled".   Even restricting that to the Imperial Star Destroyer of the original trilogy, that's notable.

 

Inflationism's genesis was due to a protracted effort to win the Vs. Debates.  But by modifying Star Wars with their own imaginations, the inflationists warped Star Wars to their own ends.  The canon, with its fusion and steel and short-range combat with reasonable and authentic yields, did not change a bit in that time.