Do the laws of motion and inertia not function in this galaxy?

 

Every body continues in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a straight line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it.

- Newton's First Law of Motion, translated from the "Principia"

 

The only time a space ship would really need a lot of fuel is at launch when it has to escape the gravitational effect of the planet its on. Then it would need to burn fuel to stop when it arrives at its destination. So why does the Imperial fleet need tankers? Why doe the Republic need to stop to refuel (which would burn fuel) twice?

 

The only reason I can think of that they need so much fuel is they are making a lot of course corrections. And the only reason to do that a lot is if they are trying to shake off pursing enemy ships. But in both cases the bulk of the ships are in the fleets. The Empire has more ships apparently than the Republic but they don't have the ships to spare to attack the Republic fleet in deep space or they wouldn't need the Alliance Commander to attack them at fuel depots. And the Republic has less ships than the Empire which is why they need that new and improved ship yard in the first place, they don't have the spare ships to attack the Empire ships while they are enroute to their ship yard.

 

I've been on two ocean cruises, you can feel the ship's engines kick in, when the ship is leaving the port and heads to open ocean and needs to get up to speed and when it make course changes to head to a port. Most of a cruise they don't need to run the ship's engines at full blast because unless there are ocean currents or really heavy winds pushing on it to change its course it will just keep going in a straight line. In deep space there would be nothing to change a star ships course. Unless they have to avoid a lot of black holes they shouldn't need a lot of fuel.

Real physics don't apply in Star Wars: News at 11.

It's just a thing in Star Wars that ships need fuel, just like it's a thing that starfighters make noises and suffer fiery explosions in the vacuum of space.

 

It's not a particularly new or novel idea, either:

 

TCW treats fuel like fuel in the real world.

 

In two episodes of Rebels, fuel is an issue.

 

First, the Ghost is low on fuel, and can barely run its weapons, maintain heating, and can't afford to take off or land.

 

In another instance later in the season, Rebel capital ships are unable to jump to hyperspace because of a lack of fuel.

 

The whole reason that Obi-Wan, Padme, et al., go to Tatooine is because her personal starship was leaking fuel, and they had to stop to refuel/repair the hyperdrive.

 

RIC OLIE : There's not enough power to get us to Coruscant...the hyperdrive is leaking.

 

QUI-GON : We'll have to land somewhere to refuel and repair the ship.

 

In the X-Wing series, there are two instances where crews nearly run out of fuel.

 

Fuel is rarely an issue because there are many refueling stations and many fleet have refueling ships. When supply lines get stressed, however, as we see in Onslaught after a decade of war against the Empire and the Eternal Throne (or when the resistance fleet is fleeing a hostile empire in the sequels, with no refueling stations nearby (well, except one, sort of, in Resistance season 2)) the easy availability of fuel is in question.

 

Fuel was also an issue in KotOR 2. The primary concern of losing Peragus, yes, was because Telos' Citadel Station could not remain floating, but it was a primarily a source of engine fuel for the already-strained Republic Fleet, and it's also a refueling station itself, since we see the Harbinger use its fuel lines.

 

And if you want to go for some... "non-diagetic" explanations, it's pretty simple:

 

Starfighters and cruisers and capital ships aren't modeled after any sort of space-faring craft; they're based on the ships and planes of (primarily) the Second World War, and so are largely bound by their logic and behavior, sans the ability to jump into hyperspace.

 

Also, it's just an easy way of introducing logistical problems, and thus some tension, into a plot.

Edited November 29, 2020 by jedimasterjac

Besides the concept that 'hyperdrive burns fuel' and the stated-in-game lack of resources after the Galactic War pre-game, the war seen in game, the Zakuulan occupation (where it's said that tribute was demanded in the form of resources), there's another factor - combat manuvering. Both sides are coming from operations throughout the galaxy (Ossus, for example) where they've been engaged in combat and are anticipating another major action upon arrival at Corellia. Even considering the fact that most ships in the SW universe are carrier-hybrids, they still tend towards ship-to-ship combat and broadsides to a certain degree, which means besides the fighters burning fuel in bombing runs and dogfights, the ships themselves are manuvering into firing positions, manuvering out of enemy lines of fire, etc. and all of those little course changes are going to burn fuel as well.

I know it happen in every science fiction series.. They run low on crystals in Star Trek they act like the Enterprise will stop dead in space. Once in Star Trek: Enterprise they actually had the ship keep moving at its current speed and trajectory, until an outside force slowed it down. I was stunned to see that.

Even in Si-Fy the creation of Energy requires Fuel to be converted into Energy.

 

The First Law of Thermodynamics (Conservation) states that energy is always conserved, it cannot be created or destroyed. In essence, energy can be converted from one form into another.

 

Thus Fuel is required regardless of momentum. Fuel is required to be converted to energy for Life Support, Dive Engines, HyperSpace Drives, Electric for Lights, Computers, Controls ect.

 

Though the fuel in Star Wars is much more compact and potent that real world fuels currently are. So they do not have the weight problem or the need to carry 99% more fuel than payload.

Because we're stuck with the idea that you have to burn stuff to make stuff go. Even in Star Wars and Star Trek, both of which hearken back to the 1960s ideas that space travel involved rockets. So...in SW, you gotta burn "something" to move.

 

We also know (or theorize, depending on whom you believe) that there's more efficient and abundant forms of energy generation and propulsion technologies than we currently have. The use of Zero Point Energy , for example. And the application of anti-gravity (or contra-gravity).

 

However, after a certain point (technologically speaking), resource scarcity becomes artificial in nature. A transporter is, in effect, a matter to energy (and energy to matter) convertor. As long as the system functions normally, and you have sufficient energy, you can create ANYTHING. Food replicators are the most obvious use.

 

One of my big beefs (maybe the biggest) with how Onslaught was done, is the resource scarcity. It's probably the most ham handed way that I could think of to push the intended story line upon the player base.

Honestly, Star Trek had a kind of fuel too, or at least a resource needed to keep the ships running ( dilithium ). I figure SW is similar. Without power things don't work, whatever it is that they use and call fuel it doesn't matter, without it everything shuts down, life supoort fails and the ship drifts.

 

In Star Wars it takes weeks to travel from one planet to another, its not this instant thing that we see in the games or even the shows. The books cover travel time better. The ship might make it but its pretty useless if the crews dead because theres no power to run gravity, lifesupport and what not.

Edited November 30, 2020 by Suzsi

Though the fuel in Star Wars is much more compact and potent that real world fuels currently are. So they do not have the weight problem or the need to carry 99% more fuel than payload.

TLDR(0): no, Star Wars sublight engines are clearly not any kind of rocket, but rather some sort of reactionless thruster.

 

Long version:

Tsk. The problem of having to have so much "fuel" (I'll come back to why it's not really fuel in a moment) is a consequence *solely* of the point that we here with Earthly technology have to rely on reaction drives.

 

No, "reaction drives" isn't the usual term, but all Earthly-tech vehicles rely on some sort of reaction mass. For a wheel-driven car, or a horse and cart, the reaction mass is the Earth itself. For a propellor-driven boat or ship, the reaction mass is the water pushed by the propellor, and the same applies to propellor aircraft.

 

Jet engines of various sorts, whether they are pump-jets for water-based vehicles (jet-skis, high-performance torpedos, etc.), turbojets or turbofans for aircraft or land-speed-record cars, use breathed-in air as the primary reaction mass. An air-breathing nuclear-thermal rocket (ref: Project Pluto(1) uses breathed-in air as the *sole* reaction mass.

 

Rocket engines are an exception to the above, in that *all* the reaction mass is stored inside the vehicle, and they are therefore subject to a nasty thing called the Tsiolkovsky Rocket Equation.

 

So, anyway, why isn't the "fuel" in a rocket really *fuel*? Well, because generating energy is *almost* neither here nor there. Rockets, like anything else that can influence its own movement, do so by pushing away some sort of "reaction mass", so-called because pushing the reaction mass away causes (by Newton's laws of motion) a *reaction* in the vehicle.

* A wheel-driven car burns fuel or expends electrical energy to turn the wheels so they push the Earth backwards, which pushes the car forward (so the Earth is the reaction mass).

* A propellor-driven vehicle (air, land or water) uses the propellor to push air backwards - the air is the reaction mass.

* A turbojet aircraft burns fuel to heat the air that is the primary reaction mass, to release energy into that air and make it push itself away.

* A chemical rocket uses the energy from some sort of chemical reaction to heat the reaction byproducts, whereby they push themselves away (those byproducts are the reaction mass). It's possible to create a "monopropellant" rocket that uses exothermic decomposition of some material, frequently hydrogen peroxide (products: steam, oxygen and lots of heat), and the concept of *fuel* isn't really clear in such a case.

* A nuclear thermal rocket uses the energy from a nuclear reactor to *directly* heat some material whose job is just to get hot, expand, and fly away, pushing the vehicle the other way. The material might be atmospheric air, as in Project Pluto, or it might be stuff (usually hydrogen) carried in tanks in the vehicle.

 

In all the rocket cases, the stuff we throw away, above noted as "reaction mass", is also known as "propellant". The fuel aspect is just a way of heating the propellant - if you can heat the propellant without burning fuel, go to it (ref: monopropellant chemical rockets, but also nuclear thermal rockets). If you want the rocket engine to produce more velocity change from a given mass of propellant, you have to throw it harder (applying more force to it), which takes more energy, and directly implies significantly higher operating temperatures. The fuel cannisters in Solo show that Star Wars vehicles clearly don't use any kind of conventional chemical rocket, and in fact, they make me think that it's clear that the propulsion is really that Sci-Fi stock-in-trade, the reactionless thruster.

 

If we switch to a reactionless thruster (anti-gravity is a form of reactionless thruster, although it's kinda-sorta implied that it can only oppose gravity), then we escape the tyranny of the Tiolskovsky equation, because we don't have the ever-escalating problem of having to use the first part of the propellant to push the payload *and* all the other propellant.

 

(0) In business communication, the equivalent of a TLDR is called an "Executive Summary", and serves to allow a busy executive to see if it is worth the executive's time to read the rest of the document. To do that, it must be at the *beginning*. Since a TLDR is there for the same reason, it, too, must be at the beginning.

 

(1) Yes, it was a catastrophically bad idea, although it was marginally feasible from a technical point of view.

For a crew of roughly 40K, it could take a lot already just to keep the heating and lights on.

There are dogfights over a planet where tie fighters and x-wings glide through the vacuum of space and appear to maneuver or change direction just like aerodynamic reaction surfaces on an airplane - nothing in the Star Wars universe actually works like in real life. The orbital stations don't even need to "orbit" a planet, they just kinda hover in place.

For a crew of roughly 40K, it could take a lot already just to keep the heating and lights on.

Exactly. Not only do you need fuel to power whatever FTL** drive they use, but you also need power for the artificial gravity, "life support", heat, lights, etc.

 

In the OPs analogy of a Cruise Ship - the cruise ship has fresh air and heat from the surrounding ecosystem (unless it's an arctic cruise), gravity supplied by the earth's mass, and doesn't need some form of 'power' to fuel a FTW*** drive.

 

Of course, that whole 'chase' episode in one of the sequels (they're so bad, I don't remember which one) was so utterly ridiculous, that I thought they couldn't get any stupider until the 'ram the baddies in warp drive' thing.

But SciFi always has such problems. On top of the 'fuel' problems and motion dynamics in space, sci-fi series almost always have every planet with the same breathable atmosphere and the same "earth" gravity.

One must always suspend one's rational faculties for the sake of entertainment. 🤩

 

** Faster Than Light

 

*** Faster Than Water 😅

There's also the important fact that shields require power, and, even if a ship is not maneuvering in a way that would consume a lot of fuel, they absolutely need their shields up in a combat situation.

There's also the important fact that shields require power, and, even if a ship is not maneuvering in a way that would consume a lot of fuel, they absolutely need their shields up in a combat situation.

Another excellent point. 👍

I'm actually reminded of something from an old (and I mean late 90's, early 00's old) issue of White Dwarf where they published something that had been found online;

Someone complained that "The Imperial Navy (Imperium of Man) shouldn't waste ammunition with planetary bombardments. There's plenty of space rocks they could drop on planets and rocks are free."

Someone else laid out the counterargument that "The cost in finding the right rock by geological survey missions, using one of the Navy's ships to move it into position and get it up to speed (almost certainly sustaining damage, if not scraped paint in the process) which would consume fuel, guarding it as it traveled at sub-light speeds for weeks, possibly months or years to ensure that it didn't deviate from its course, all the while food was being consumed by the ship's crew and wear and tear was happening to the ship itself, before said space rock finally hit the planet could run into the multi-billions of money and months or years of time. Meanwhile, one big planet-killing bomb could cost a few hours, only a few hundred million credits, and the ship could be somewhere else bombing an entirely different planet while the 'space rock' would have still been in transit."

 

All paraphrased, of course.

There have been some great explanations already about why the OP is wrong, so I am not going to rehash any of that. Let us just say that, for sub-light speeds, the OP is correct that the laws of motion apply and, in general, in both Star Wars and Star Trek they are applied correctly for sub-light speeds. Usually, it is science fiction / fantasy, or course, and the writers generally are not physicists so they get some things wrong*.

 

But those are sub-light speeds. The laws of motion do not apply to a fictional setting about faster than light speeds.

 

In Star Trek dilithium crystals are not a fuel source. The fuel source is the interaction of matter and anti-matter. Dilithium crystals are a stabilizing agent that regulates that interaction and without them warp cores can not function properly or safely. The extreme energy output of a matter anti-matter reaction was necessary to create and maintain a warp field bubble, and the dilithium crystals are a necessary component of the warp core for it to function. Dilithium crystals were also a finite resource and there were a few episodes devoted to making renewable dilithium crystals. Why, because without them there is no warp drive and everyone becomes reliant upon sleeper or generational ships again.

 

In Star Wars, there is both fuel for the sub-light engines, often (so called) ion drives (but not really ion drives in any way), and fuel for the hyperdrive (called hypermatter in game, coaxium, from Solo, is a type of hypermatter). Sub-light travel and maneuvers are all done with the sub-light engine (see TESB where the hyperdrive is damaged and they use the sub-lights to get to Bespin). In lore, a vessel must have both hypermatter and a functioning hyperdrive motivator in order to enter and remain in hyperspace. See the following:

The hyperdrive functioned by sending hypermatter particles to hurl a ship into hyperspace while preserving the vessel's mass/energy profile, and required a functional hyperdrive motivator to do so. The vessel then traveled along a programmed course until it dropped back into normal space—realspace—at its destination.

 

A hyperdrive only functioned to keep a vessel in hyperspace, and should a hyperdrive be forcibly deactivated or destroyed during transit, the ship was violently and instantly pulled back into realspace.

So in order to remain in hyperspace a vessel must have hypermatter fuel. With regard to your statement on multiple course corrections, you are not wrong.

Large objects in normal space cast "mass shadows" in hyperspace, thus hyperspace jumps required accurate plotting to avoid collisions, which were often fatal.

Lore wise, when traversing the core shorter trips in hyperspace were necessary, with more frequent course adjustments, due to the higher density of mass shadows present in the galactic core. If you look at a map of hyperspace routes you will see that in the mid- and outer-rim it was common for hyperspace routes to be rather long, but in the core they were shorter due to those mass shadows. This was also the explanation behind Han Solo's line about completing the Kessle Run in less than 12 parsecs prior to the canonical explanation given in Solo. That explanation being that Han had to make fewer course corrections, thus shortening the distance (because a parsec is a measure of distance, not time) to avoid the numerous mass shadows present along the Kessel Run. The other generally accepted explanations being that Lucas did not know what a parsec was and used the wrong term, or that Han was being braggadocios but only proved their lack of knowledge.

 

There is also the fact that hyperdrives needed time to recharge (this is specifically mentioned by Lana during one of the early chapters of Fallen Empire), which was why the Eternal Fleet was so deadly because they could travel greater distances with fewer stops to recharge their hyperdrive. During those recharge stops it is unlikely that the fleet was sitting idle and would likely use that time to make course adjustments, which means burning (so to speak) sub-light engine fuel.

 

 

* I am looking at you Gravity. Seriously, how does a movie called Gravity get gravity so wrong?

Meh, if the Republic and Empire think they've got fuel issues they should try driving my car for a week - pretty sure their starships have got nothing on my expenses

in general, in both Star Wars and Star Trek they are applied correctly for sub-light speeds.

 

Gravity the movie aside, neither Star Wars nor Star Trek have ever implemented realistic sub-light motion. Never does a ship point it's engines to an anti-normal vector to raise its apoapsis nor have they ever burned retrograde to land on a planet's surface.

 

In both universes, the ships generally work as if they are tied to invisible rails that extend forward, in any direction the nose points to. Which is fine, we have space magic called "the force" in swtor and "subspace" in trek that make for easy explanation. But realistic? Not for a moment.

Edited November 30, 2020 by StockThorax

So your telling me these ships engines don't charge batteries which is where the power for other things is drawn from they just power everything directly?

 

As for shields even those green ships with the extra special fuel and extra special shields were shieldless after absorbing one barrage from the Republic. The panicking officer didn't say they were out of fuel just that the shields failed.

 

And why does the Empire need a fleet of Silencers when the prototype could wipe out an entire Republic fleet with one blast?

Gravity the movie aside, neither Star Wars nor Star Trek have ever implemented realistic sub-light motion. Never does a ship point it's engines to an anti-normal vector to raise its apoapsis nor have they ever burned retrograde to land on a planet's surface.

 

In both universes, the ships generally work as if they are tied to invisible rails that extend forward, in any direction the nose points to. Which is fine, we have space magic called "the force" in swtor and "subspace" in trek that make for easy explanation. But realistic? Not for a moment.

 

You, like the OP, are erroneously attempting to apply modern Earth technology to a fictional / fantasy setting. Please explain what modern Earth based tech allows a Star Destroyer to hover over a city like this:

http://starwarsplaces.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Jedha-Star-Destroyer.jpg

 

In both Star Wars and Star Trek they have demonstrated a :::hand-waved::: technology that allows for anti-gravity. Such technology would make most, no, all of your points irrelevant.

In both Star Wars and Star Trek they have demonstrated a :::hand-waved::: technology that allows for anti-gravity. Such technology would make most, no, all of your points irrelevant.

 

Your post asserted that sub-light motion was realistically represented while FTL travel wasn't. You can apply that hand waving to both, I was trying to point out how either both are realistic or neither are.

Edited November 30, 2020 by StockThorax

There is a simpler explanation...

 

"Hollywood" !

 

Much of the "futuristic" technology is based on our current "understanding" (**) or desire to apply fiction to a story for a desired affect !

 

(**) Understanding ... based on mathematical probability and science fiction (fictitious) applications of known facts

Your post asserted that sub-light motion was realistically represented while FTL travel wasn't. You can apply that hand waving to both, I was trying to point out how either both are realistic or neither are.

 

Maybe you should not have cut so much from my post because you clearly did not understand what it was that I said.

Do the laws of motion and inertia not function in this galaxy?

 

You must be new to Star Wars

 

This isn't the Expanse... here, space ships fly like old WWII fighter planes and when they run out of gas, they stop moving.

Do the laws of motion and inertia not function in this galaxy?

 

Every body continues in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a straight line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it.

- Newton's First Law of Motion, translated from the "Principia"

 

The only time a space ship would really need a lot of fuel is at launch when it has to escape the gravitational effect of the planet its on. Then it would need to burn fuel to stop when it arrives at its destination. So why does the Imperial fleet need tankers? Why doe the Republic need to stop to refuel (which would burn fuel) twice?

 

The only reason I can think of that they need so much fuel is they are making a lot of course corrections. And the only reason to do that a lot is if they are trying to shake off pursing enemy ships. But in both cases the bulk of the ships are in the fleets. The Empire has more ships apparently than the Republic but they don't have the ships to spare to attack the Republic fleet in deep space or they wouldn't need the Alliance Commander to attack them at fuel depots. And the Republic has less ships than the Empire which is why they need that new and improved ship yard in the first place, they don't have the spare ships to attack the Empire ships while they are enroute to their ship yard.

 

I've been on two ocean cruises, you can feel the ship's engines kick in, when the ship is leaving the port and heads to open ocean and needs to get up to speed and when it make course changes to head to a port. Most of a cruise they don't need to run the ship's engines at full blast because unless there are ocean currents or really heavy winds pushing on it to change its course it will just keep going in a straight line. In deep space there would be nothing to change a star ships course. Unless they have to avoid a lot of black holes they shouldn't need a lot of fuel.

 

well 1 real physics dont appl in star wars

2 think hyperspace travel is a lot different if you look up all teh terrors of hyperspace everycourse has to be precise and a lot of them do a lot of turning in one jump or multiple consecutive jumps (cant reallly tell dif in hyperspace) in ordr to avoid stars planets asteroids so on as well as gravitational pull from planetoids

2.5 hyperspace travel i would also imagine may actualy require lots of constant fuel burning given that youre literally traveling what seems to be 10-100 times the speed of light (could be wrong just my opinon and best attempt at a decent answer with reasons other than... its starwars)