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How fast are SW fighters in the atmosphere? I'm wondering since Peregrine and I have been talking about our stories' fighters and he talked about his ships going Mach 9. So I wondered about SW ships and so I'm posting it here so you wise great wise people can enlighten me.

More than 10,000 kph. The Delta-7's max airspeed was 12000 kpm.

Uhh...how many times faster than the speed of sound is that?

Shroom Man 777 wrote:Uhh...how many times faster than the speed of sound is that?

ten times the speed of sound... well past hypersonic speed (5x the speed of sound or greater.) Or nearly Mach-10.

The GEonosian starfighter could achieve 20,000 kph.

Wouldn't it be incredibly dangerous to travel at that speed through the atmosphere of the planet? What with friction with the air and the inevitable shockwaves that it would cause.

I was under the impression that TIE's couldn't fly in an atmosphere (re: Hoth) and if Vader's TIE or any other with deflector shields could, wouldn't they protect it? Is that the reason why TIE's can't fly in atmospheres?

They can. See Bespin and the EU.

SW spacecraft rely on repulsorlfts and thrust more than aerodynamics to fly in atmosphere.

Grand Admiral Mango wrote:I was under the impression that TIE's couldn't fly in an atmosphere (re: Hoth) and if Vader's TIE or any other with deflector shields could, wouldn't they protect it? Is that the reason why TIE's can't fly in atmospheres?

Did you forget about the TIE Fighters chasing the Falcon through atmosphere as it was escaping Cloud City?

Are the shields a factor of the ship's not being burned up by atmosphering friction?

I don't personally know if that's really much of an issue, considering you're talking about craft that can take about a couple kilotons of damage during combat.

Ah, okay then. So if their top speeds are like 20 times the speed of sound, then how do they escape the gravity of Earth-like planets? Necrondude said that escape velocity was Mach 40.

I would assume that the repulsorlift would assist the craft's thrust in pushing it away from the planet surface.

Are the shields a factor of the ship's not being burned up by atmosphering friction?

More of an armor situation as shields can be knocked out or in some cases to use the Han Solo books from way back(So far back I can't even remeber if their canon somone I hope does) that in some atmopsheres you don't want your shields switched on as they can act as a big ol' lightning rod, which would be bad

Which is not to say shields don't up survivability raiting on ships in atomspheres

The old Han Solo Trilogy is indeed Official.

There are probably preaty clear aerodynamic limits to flying through an atmosphere at speed. In a vacume a TIE might be able to rapidly accelerate to non insignificant fractions of C. Trying to push through an atmosphere though is going to probably snap off a TIE's wings if you get even slightly turned off a straight line.

Hell I think several times in novels TIE's which have in pure reflex tried to make sharp turns at speed in an atmosphere have either been blown into a tumble or had their struts ripped appart.

So, do you think we can assume that even for the sleeker fighters those speeds represent straight-line speeds, and not real combat speeds? Perhaps we can use the old official numbers (generally around 1000 kph, IIRC) as representative of max safe combat speeds.

Chris OFarrell wrote: Hell I think several times in novels TIE's which have in pure reflex tried to make sharp turns at speed in an atmosphere have either been blown into a tumble or had their struts ripped appart.

And I also argued before that if a TIE could withstand the stress of re-entry as well as do the maneveurs they do in space at such speeds, then the incidents involved do not represent a upper limit.

The 2 TIE incidents I'm aware of, from the X-wing series, most probably represented old, not well maintained TIE frames which had already past their service life.

Shroom Man 777 wrote:Ah, okay then. So if their top speeds are like 20 times the speed of sound, then how do they escape the gravity of Earth-like planets? Necrondude said that escape velocity was Mach 40.

It does not matter .
Escape velocity is the theoretical velocity a body must have at the surface of Earth in order to... well, escape gravity forever .
Do you really think space rockets accelerate at Mach 40 when taking off, on the surface of Earth ?
As long as they can maintain sufficient thrust to counteract and overcome gravity, there should be no problem.

It depends. Remember, some of the old stuff has WW2 fighter planes being faster then X-wings. So the old values shouldn't necessarily be taken as accurate. Plus remember that shields can be reconfigured for better aerodynamics as per AOTCICS. Even if you want to argue about wheter all TIEs have shields or just those 4 in ANH, there is still possibly the presence of some kind of navigational deflector screen (which would explain all instances we see, though I still think shields are there so nyah) whish is quite sensible when you consider the impact of a relativistic micrometeroite. They could be used to form a more aerodynaic shape in the atmosphere for the fighters.

I have no idea how to do the calcs for this kind of thing, but Jacknife over at B5 tech's forums does, and he did it for a Thunderbolt. Someone could E-mail him at his site if they wanted to do the math.

TIE Fighters don't have navigational deflectors. The ICS makes it quite clear that TIEs are shieldless.

Gil Hamilton wrote:TIE Fighters don't have navigational deflectors. The ICS makes it quite clear that TIEs are shieldless.

Not all ties, since we see shield effects on TIEs in the movies.

Connor MacLeod wrote:Not all ties, since we see shield effects on TIEs in the movies.

When exactly? I don't recall shields flaring up when they get hit by things.

Primarily, there are shield flashes seen on TIEs (particularly occuring in the space between the wings and away from the cockpit) during the Falcon's escape from the Death Star.

Neat.