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Old 10-03-2019, 07:31 PM   #1
Maximum7
 
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Default Why can’t these things be done in Star Wars?

1.) Why don’t they “terraform” desert planets like Tatooine and give it some water?

They don’t have to do a lot of work, they could just make a giant ocean in the center at least and have irrigation tributaries to distribute it to all the settlements. It seems silly that moisture farmers have to kill themselves to suck water out of the sky. Plus the Tuskens and Jawas would be happy. Creating water from scratch is possible. You just need a massive amount of energy to fuse hydrogen and oxygen. It’s currently not feasible here on Earth; but they can certainly do it in Star Wars?

2.) Why don’t they try and synthesize coaxium (hyperfuel)?

Coaxium fuel is very rare but it’s essential in order to make hyperspace jumps. Hyperspace travel is basically how the civilization thrives and you can’t always rely that planets will be like Kessel and have coaxium you can mine. It would be much easier to try and synthesize it. Have scientists tried? It shouldn’t be too hard. Their chemistry is pretty advanced.


3.) Why can’t ships just “stay still” in hyperspace?

I’m not sure about the rules of hyperspace- perhaps an object traveling in it must always be in motion or something, but it would make a lot more sense to hide a fleet in hyperspace until your coaxium fuel runs out.


4.) Why don’t we see more gene splicing?

I loved Batman Beyonds gene splicing animal DNA traits into humans. The Genetic engineering tech is very mature in Star Wars and I can see humans and many other beings wanting to augment their bodies with different genetic traits and abilities. Why is this not widespread? I can see it being looked down upon as “unnatural” and would produce “freaks” but I can’t believe that hasn’t happened.



Obviously this is a fictional universe and doesn’t have logic or rules, but approaching it from an in-universe point of view; what is the explanation?
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Old 10-03-2019, 10:11 PM   #2
David Johnston2
 
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Default Re: Why can’t these things be done in Star Wars?

1. Tatooine is a devastated backwater so far away from the developed core of Republic space that they didn't even accept the Republic currency. They probably could terraform it, but why would they? It would be a major project with no profit in it.

2. What gives you the idea that it would be easier to synthesize it than to mine it? That isn't the case with any high energy substance. By their nature, they're going to a big investment.

3. It's not possible to stay still in real space either. And gravity extends into hyperspace.

4. No. Genetic engineering tech is not advanced in Star Wars. Not at all. There's was a single world that was good at it out in the back of beyond, but it was destroyed in the Clone Wars.
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Old 10-03-2019, 11:49 PM   #3
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Default Re: Why can’t these things be done in Star Wars?

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Originally Posted by Maximum7 View Post
1.) Creating water from scratch is possible. You just need a massive amount of energy to fuse hydrogen and oxygen.
Couple of nitpicks. First, when hydrogen reacts with oxygen to form water that's a chemical reaction, not fusion. Second, it produces energy — a problematic excess of it on that scale — you don't need energy to do it. Third, it doesn't make water from scratch, it makes it from oxygen and hydrogen.

Tatooine has oxygen (which is a problem with the science), but probably not enough to make oceans (Earth's oceans contain a thousand times as much oxygen as its atmosphere does). Tatooine does not have much hydrogen — it would need something like one hundred quadrillion tonnes of hydrogen.


But quibbles aside, Tatooine does not have large oceans and plenty of water because if it did the writers wouldn't be able to use it as a setting for stories about people on or from a desert planet.
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Old 10-04-2019, 08:43 AM   #4
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Default Re: Why can’t these things be done in Star Wars?

In short, because Star Wars is a cinematic universe, where things like real-world science, logic and common sense always will play the second fiddle to the rule of cool.

And it good this way.

Because when people went to the cinema, they want to see Death Stars, space battles with noises, lightsaber fights etc. Not boring realism.

If you want to introduce staff like this in your campaign, feel free to do it. Nobody will try to stop you, but the end result will look very different from the "real" Star Wars.
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Old 10-05-2019, 03:08 PM   #5
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Default Re: Why can’t these things be done in Star Wars?

Answering #3:

Hyperspace is traversed via wormholes. This has been inherent in Star Wars since the original movie came out in 1977, not something that was added later! Each ship plots its own hyperspace course. More than that, by Einsteinian physics you have a ship traversing a collapsing wormhole. It's impossible to stay still if you're being pushed by the collapse of the wormhole. Remember how it works: You calculate the trip on the navicomputer, engage the hyperdrive, then sit back and relax for some character interaction until the Speed of Plot says it's time to come out and kick the sublight drives back on. Some routes take dropping out and recalculating the next step, particularly if you're trying to evade pursuit. And if there's something that wasn't on the charts creating a mass shadow intersecting the wormhole, like a previously undetected brown dwarf or rogue planet, there's safeties in the hyperdrive to drop you out of the wormhole and into real space ahead of time.

It's not like Star Trek's subspace drive where you can wrap the ship in a bubble of subspace and move the bubble through realspace, which can sit still, relatively speaking, because it's not collapsing behind you.

Also, why would you want to sit still in the middle of a wormhole, assuming you could make the wormhole stable to not collapse in on itself with something inside it? What strategic or tactical sense would it make? You can't go outside the ship to make repairs while in hyperspace; you have to drop into realspace to do that.



I'm going to touch only briefly upon Tatooine. Suffice to say, it's a Hutt Space backwater of composed of moisture farmers, scavengers, nomadic raiders, and crime lords, with a bit of a racing circuit (because what else is there to do besides shoot womp rats?). There has to already be water there somewhere, or else you wouldn't have clouds in the sky; my guess is there's large underground reservoirs and places in the deep crevices where the water hits the surface to get boiled into the atmosphere; also likely a few hot springs in oases. But it's situated in the Outer Rim, whereas Coruscant, Corellia, and Alderaan are Core Worlds. (Naboo is the Inner Rim, situated on the border between the Core (the Deep Core, Core Worlds, and Colonies) and the Rim (Inner, Expansion, Mid, and Outer). Note that the Expansion and Mid Rims vary in width in the "south-eastern" portion of the Galaxy where Naboo and Tatooine reside, being rather slender in that region - as opposed to the wide swath along "the Slice", an older "eastern" region spreading from the Core to the Outer Rim where territory of the Colonies and the Rims are wider), which is why Naboo is closer to Tat than Coruscant.)



Clear as mud?
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Last edited by Phantasm; 03-14-2021 at 10:50 AM.
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Old 10-05-2019, 03:13 PM   #6
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Default Re: Why can’t these things be done in Star Wars?

I have to ask, Maximum7, with these threads, it doesn't sound like you want to play Star Wars. Are you happy in your Star Wars game? Is it what you really want to play, or did you get roped into it and can't back out without hurting someone's feelings, or without ending up gameless? (I get the feeling you'd be happier in a Star Trek game, myself.)
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Old 10-05-2019, 04:03 PM   #7
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Default Re: Why can’t these things be done in Star Wars?

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I have to ask, Maximum7, with these threads, it doesn't sound like you want to play Star Wars. Are you happy in your Star Wars game? Is it what you really want to play, or did you get roped into it and can't back out without hurting someone's feelings, or without ending up gameless? (I get the feeling you'd be happier in a Star Trek game, myself.)
I like both.
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Old 10-05-2019, 05:17 PM   #8
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Default Re: Why can’t these things be done in Star Wars?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Maximum7 View Post
1.) Why don’t they “terraform” desert planets like Tatooine and give it some water?
Because it's easier to move people than an ocean of water. BTW, Tatooine has no oxygen. We have oxygen on Earth because of plants. No plants, no oxygen. Same for Hoth.

Quote:
2.) Why don’t they try and synthesize coaxium (hyperfuel)?
They probably could. But it takes energy to make fuel. Cheaper to mine it.

The question should be why isn't the rebels fighting tooth and nails to control the one source of hyperfuel in the galaxy?

Quote:
3.) Why can’t ships just “stay still” in hyperspace?
Because George didn't want them to. Hyperspace is not real, which means the writers can make it do, or not do, what they want.

Quote:
4.) Why don’t we see more gene splicing?
Because gene slicing wasn't big when Star Wars was written.
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Old 10-05-2019, 05:26 PM   #9
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Default Re: Why can’t these things be done in Star Wars?

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I like both.
That doesn't actually answer the questions, though. I like both, too, but I don't look for ways to make SW more like ST, or vice verse, nor either more like B5. I didn't ask which you liked, but which you'd rather game in?

That said, I personally would much rather game in SW than ST. I've tried gaming in both, and found SW more my gaming speed than ST. I'd much rather be a plucky rebel computer-security systems slicer in a starfighter squadron than an exploration cruiser's science or engineering officer. It may be that ST is more your speed, and that's okay, too.
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Old 10-06-2019, 12:54 AM   #10
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Default Re: Why can’t these things be done in Star Wars?

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Originally Posted by shawnhcorey View Post
Because it's easier to move people than an ocean of water. BTW, Tatooine has no oxygen. We have oxygen on Earth because of plants. No plants, no oxygen. Same for Hoth.
Except that, plainly, both Tatooine and Hoth have free oxygen. Same for Coruscant, which is supposed to be entirely covered by city according to The Lore.

The only reasonable conclusion is that these aren't actually single-biome planets, but rather worlds where the growing bits are smaller than on Earth. Somewhere on Tatooine is open water surrounded by plants, probably with access exclusively controlled by the Hutt and no admittance to the scruffy humans and others in villages dotting the desert. And there must be open water and clear land on Hoth's equator as well, else the local life would not exist.

As for why such worlds aren't terraformed, why should they be? Terraforming is what you do when it's difficult or impossible to find habitable worlds without all that work, and clearly the Star Wars galaxy has a number of worlds that are simple shirtsleeve environments for most sapient life forms. They're not going to go to the trouble and expense of transforming some marginal world, especially some backwater planet out near the Outer Rim territories, when there are perfectly useful worlds already there and closer to the money folks anyway.
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