StarDestroyer.Net BBS

I was watching Attack of the Clones again and a thought occured to me (shock horror!)

We see quite a few Clonetrooper units assembled with their Acclamators waiting on parade "Triumph of the Will" style at the end of the film. The engines of the Acclamators are either activated, or being activated. It's been said a few times that a Star Destroyers exhaust would likely destroy any ship that got close. Considering that there are Clonetroopers standing amidst all these Acclamators with idling engines or Acclamators that are taking off/ about to take off, should we revise this?

A guess reply, the Acclimators' sub-light engines were being powered up and immediately throttled back to 'idle' power - where they are generating no thrust whatsoever. Basically, the fleet commander wanted them ready to move quickly, so they were activating the interplanetary drives while still on the surface, reducing warm-up time in orbit.

Why didn't it burn the clonetroopers? I came up with three possible reasons:

1. They were all too far away from the engines to be hit by the 'start up' exhaust plume
2. There were hidden ray shields on the parade field (a bit like those blast screens that come up when aircraft are about to be catapulted off a modern USN aircraft carrier
3. The heat wasn't great enough to penetrate the thermal insulation on their armour

Personally, I vote for option 2. I assume that the Republic had put a little thought into designing and constructing their muster field/parade ground, so there would have been facilities to stop troops getting cooked by the exhausts of spacecraft during launch.

It's also possible that the Acclamator's engines incorporated mechanisms to reduce the wash as much as possible. Regarding it's purpose, it would make some sense.

My guess would be that Acclamator's engines were differend to Star Destroyer engines. Acclamators were designed to make planet fall ISD's are not.

The Acclimators were by no means generating much thrust. It seems perfectly reasonable to assume that engine wash is directly proportional to power output.

They'd be using mainly repulsers that close to the ground, chances are the engines are just moving to very very low power in preparation for leaving the atmosphere.