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heat

Posted: 2005-01-22 09:40am
by dragon
I have a question what does SW ships do with all the heat they generate and how do they keep it from frying planets when they enter the atmosphere.

Re: heat

Posted: 2005-01-22 09:57am
by Lord Revan
dragon wrote:I have a question what does SW ships do with all the heat they generate
they dump the heat to space in some form or another.
and how do they keep it from frying planets when they enter the atmosphere.
It's probable that SW(or ST) ships don't heat up on re-entry (heat is caused by friction with athmossphere of the planet (you need at least mach 3 speeds for that). SW use repulsors to land slower(modern spaceship don't use engines during re-entry(apart from breaking orbit)).

Posted: 2005-01-22 11:22am
by Howedar
I believe he's asking what is done with the waste heat and such.

Last I heard, SW ships were hypothesized to dump their heat as neutrinos, and generally used only repulsors within a planet's atmosphere. The former shouldn't have any real effect on an atmosphere, while the latter should tremendously reduce the amount of heat being dumped.

As for the rest (when assholes like Solo do run their primary engines in an atmosphere), I don't think it's at all unreasonable to assume that planets have the same heat-dumping technology as large starships, particularly in light of the fact that an ISD can dump as much heat as a planet would have to get rid of.

Posted: 2005-01-22 12:17pm
by dragon
Howedar wrote:I believe he's asking what is done with the waste heat and such.

Last I heard, SW ships were hypothesized to dump their heat as neutrinos, and generally used only repulsors within a planet's atmosphere. The former shouldn't have any real effect on an atmosphere, while the latter should tremendously reduce the amount of heat being dumped.

As for the rest (when assholes like Solo do run their primary engines in an atmosphere), I don't think it's at all unreasonable to assume that planets have the same heat-dumping technology as large starships, particularly in light of the fact that an ISD can dump as much heat as a planet would have to get rid of.
Yup thats what I was asking on the waste heat but what about when certain people use their main engines in an atmosphere on a non tech world. Say when Solo was having a dog fight in the atmosphere of a undeveloped world with the coralskippers in the last of the NJO books. I mean they were going full bore and fireing MT range weapon left and right.

Posted: 2005-01-23 05:38am
by Connor MacLeod
You probabvly could use your ion engines (The Falcon did it in the movies, after all) you just can't run them at all that high an output while doing so. Its likely that atmospheric combat is probably limited to single or double-digit gees under most circumstnaces for starfighters and such (maybe a couple hundred gees if neccessity demands it - like in an emegency) but its unlikely you'd see thousand+gee accelerations in an atmosphere (unless the person in question cared not a w hit for who he hurt.)

Its also worth noting that most large/huge ships (ISDs, Executors, ,and the like) generally don't enter atmospheres - just smaller vessels.

Posted: 2005-01-23 06:57am
by Vympel
It should be remembered that in the TESB novelization, Han fired his engines while escaping out of the Hoth hangar and melted a few Snowtroopers. Presumably, Vader walked in from a corridor out of the way.

Posted: 2005-01-23 07:15am
by Dead_Ghost
Vympel wrote:It should be remembered that in the TESB novelization, Han fired his engines while escaping out of the Hoth hangar and melted a few Snowtroopers. Presumably, Vader walked in from a corridor out of the way.
Donald F. Glut wrote:Han just smiled then turned to his copilot. 'Punch it!' he shouted.
The huge freighter's engines roared. And everything behind the craft instantly melted in the fiery exhaust billowing from its tailpiece. Chewbacca furiously worked the controls, watching out of the corner of his eyes the ice walls rushing past as the freighter blasted away.
At the last moment, just before takeoff, Han caught a glimpse of additional stormtroopers running into the hangar. In their wake strode a foreboding giant clad entirely in black. Then there was only the blue and the beckoning of billions of stars. from pag. 246 in The Star Wars Trilogy - The Empire Strikes Back
There was indeed several stormtroopers in the hangar, and only a small group got nailed by the Falcon's defensive laser weapon in the hull.

Posted: 2005-01-23 01:17pm
by The Silence and I
That would have been cool to see on film, but for whatever reason the ice didn't melt when the Falcon took off, perhaps ion engines don't blast plasma out the back end?