A question of StarWars Tech

[Crossroads Inc.]

I have spent more then enough time reading though many threads, arguments and debates to notice something. It is widely regarded that StarWars Tech, despite it’s apparent ‘lowtech’ appearance, is perhaps thousands, maybe TENS of thousands of years beyond StarTrek. The insane speeds of HyperSpace travel, the equally insane powerlevels of the Über Mega ton yields of Turbo Lasers. The mystical nature of ‘HyperMater’ and it’s power yields…

All of this is deep evidance to show StarWars is indeed far beyond StarTrek… Now then, because of this, something I have heared time and gain in SWvsST threads is the following:

Even if the Federation ever DID get their hands on SW Tech, they could never hope to reverse-Engineer it because it’s so far beyond them! Ha ha ha! And so on…

Now, on the face of it this seems a valid point… But I wonder, it is also wildly regarded that StarWars is in a state of Static Technology. IE that the current tech has remind virtually unchanged for thousands of years…

If this is the case, that perhaps the original tech, over the ages, has been ‘dumbed down’ or another way, the longer the tech goes without re-invention, the more its is copied, instead of newly built. For all we know, the Tech in SW could be copies of copies of copies. Who knows if anyone truly understands the tech anymore?

If a Hypedrive melts or something, does anyone know how to build a new one? Or do they just go out and get a replacement?

The long and short of all of this is that it could be far easier for StarTrek to reverse engineer SW tech the many have assumed. Now then in defence I should say I’m not a Trekkie, nor am I pushing any agenda or something, I am merely making a series of observations and seeing what others think.

[The Spartan]

No, they do in fact understand the technology. In fact they are active in building new ships, with new hyperdrives, etc. on a regular basis.

Even if your point was vaild, ST would still be unlikely to recreate Star Wars tech because it is still 25000 years beyond them.

[Gunhead]

Well if feddies are given enough SW tech to take apart and study they could understand some of it at least, in relatively short time. SW weapons do for instance have this cool feature of actually looking like guns. Even the dumbest dodo who picks up a blaster would go "Yup, it's a gun of sorts".

Real problems start when they would have to figure out the theories in work specially when it comes to power generation.
I'd say if they are given SW tech they can comprehend and they'd work their way up from that, they could be able to grasp what makes SW tech tick. At least eventually. How long it would take? Well maybe less than it took the people who invented the hypermatter reactor and stuff to make it work.
Maybe.

-Gunhead

[Nick Lancaster]

Nope.

1. We see Han and Chewie working on the Falcon in TESB; there is no indication they are doing 'replace-to-repair' operations - in fact, when the hyperdrive first malfunctions during their escape from Hoth, Chewie and Han engage in some on-the-fly troubleshooting.

1A. Because Han is a smuggler (i.e. criminal), he *must* be able to repair the Falcon on his own, or rely on a black market economy, rather than pulling into the Imperial Jiffy Lube, where they record your home address, identity, get a good look at you, plant bugs and transponders you won't find in a month of Sundays ...

2. While Anakin builds his racing pod out of spare parts, he is portrayed to have an understanding of technical principles, doing the repair work for Watto. If technology is 'dumbed-down' to a replace-to-repair basis, Watto could easily do his own work.

3. Luke, in the original draft that has him hanging out with Deak and Windy in the shop, is one of several young men who work on their cars. This is a homage to George Lucas' own youth, the hot rod/cruisin' on the strip days he grew up in.

4. Luke creates his lightsaber from parts obtained at Ben Kenobi's hut. If it were simply a matter of slap-the-parts-together, the construction of a lightsaber would not be the challenge it is for a Jedi.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Ok, points well taken, It does seem that the people of StarWars do understand their Tech. Still it is curious what effects the ‘Static Tech’ has on things. When was the last big Tech advancement? What areas ARE still changing? Sicne it seems silly that there’s No tech advancement in SW.

[SirNitram]

Ok, points well taken, It does seem that the people of StarWars do understand their Tech. Still it is curious what effects the ‘Static Tech’ has on things. When was the last big Tech advancement? What areas ARE still changing? Sicne it seems silly that there’s No tech advancement in SW.

Define 'big tech advancement'. They've been using the same tech ideas for a long time, but they've been steadily improving them. Hyperdrives shrink like crazy between the Prequels and the NJO, for example.

[Meest]

There also seems to be big gaps of peace time in Star Wars history that slows most industries (maybe not food production), but during wartime they seem to be able to get new stuff going.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

Even if your point was vaild, ST would still be unlikely to recreate Star Wars tech because it is still 25000 years beyond them.

At the least. I think it's more along the lines of 100,000 years or more.

[Mark S]

Because the tech is so old, none of it would be classified or anything, as we see by an eight-year-old hick building a racer and an AI. If Trek could get a spy into any civilian area of the Empire it would be little effort to get all the design schematics they needed, not even considering reverse engineering.

[Spacebeard]

Because the tech is so old, none of it would be classified or anything, as we see by an eight-year-old hick building a racer and an AI. If Trek could get a spy into any civilian area of the Empire it would be little effort to get all the design schematics they needed, not even considering reverse engineering.

What are they going to do with those design schematics without (a) the scientific knowledge to understand them and (b) the infrastructure to produce all of the components and materials called for by the schematics?

Anakin, if I recall correctly, built his pod racer and protocol droid from parts found in Watto's junkyard. The Federation couldn't learn from a junkyard how to start producing their own parts and materials for Star Wars technology any more than a caveman could learn how to produce his own cars or toasters from a modern day junkyard.

[Lone_Prodigy]

And besides, remember– Anakin is the most powerful force user ever, even though he never learns how to harness it. How many normal eight year olds have superhuman reflexes and can build from scrap parts a racer that can outrun many custom-built ones?

[Mark S]

What are they going to do with those design schematics without (a) the scientific knowledge to understand them and (b) the infrastructure to produce all of the components and materials called for by the schematics?

Typically, the point of a blueprint is to tell you how to build something and what it is supposed to be built with. Along with that comes a specification of how that something is supposed to work and what it is capable of when used properly. Starting from step one, it would be a lot easier to try and gain the scientific knowledge to understand the item and to understand what infrastructure is needed to build it from a schematic than by reverse engineering (the topic of this thread). At least you wouldn't be staring at what would be the equivalent of a black box and scratching your head. Couple that with text books, design guides and manufacturing principles, all of which would also be easy to find, and you are well on your way.

Trek is by no means going to start production the next day or even the next year. Nobody said that. What I said was that any knowledge they would get from reverse engineering is common in the Wars universe and could be taken with a spy that only has to be adept enough to pass as a civilian.

Anakin, if I recall correctly, built his pod racer and protocol droid from parts found in Watto's junkyard. The Federation couldn't learn from a junkyard how to start producing their own parts and materials for Star Wars technology any more than a caveman could learn how to produce his own cars or toasters from a modern day junkyard.

That would be reverse engineering. Given enough time and analysis, they would indeed learn how to start producing some of those things in the junk yard. That, of course, is not the point of my post at all though.

[Jawawithagun]

Send a current-generation laptop back to 1960. How far would they get at reverse-engineering 40 years more advanced tech?

[Star-Blighter]

If anything is a sign that SW denizens understand their tech, then its world devastators. Even after the Empire was defeated by the rebels, they were able to develope automotons capable of consuming resources and building entire fleets, with minimal to no supervision. This tech is rather unprecendented outside of the starforge.

[Crazedwraith]

4. Luke creates his lightsaber from parts obtained at Ben Kenobi's hut. If it were simply a matter of slap-the-parts-together, the construction of a lightsaber would not be the challenge it is for a Jedi.

Actually building lightsabers is quite easily. All the parts are readily avoailbe. The only problem is the crystal finding a good enough one and intergrating it is the challnege for the jedi.

Theres also some crazy force trick used in the creation to make all the bits work together just that much better.

REF: I, Jedi.

[Spacebeard]

What are they going to do with those design schematics without (a) the scientific knowledge to understand them and (b) the infrastructure to produce all of the components and materials called for by the schematics?

Typically, the point of a blueprint is to tell you how to build something and what it is supposed to be built with.

And most devices in Star Wars, be they droids, blasters, speeders, or starships, are made from a myriad of different parts, which the blueprints won't tell you how to build. The parts for Luke's landspeeder from ANH, for example, would include a repulsorlift unit, turbine engines, a control computer, sensors, and so on. They would have to find schematics for those parts, too, and for the parts of which they are made, and so on. They would need to go all the way down to the harvesting and refining process for materials like Tibanna gas and hypermatter, and then try to bootstrap a Star Wars-level industrial base from their current technology.

Starting from step one, it would be a lot easier to try and gain the scientific knowledge to understand the item and to understand what infrastructure is needed to build it from a schematic than by reverse engineering (the topic of this thread). At least you wouldn't be staring at what would be the equivalent of a black box and scratching your head.

Easier, but still not easy. Again, to be able to produce technology equivalent to that of the Empire, they would need to go all the way down to the basic industrial processes of gathering exotic resources they've never used before (such as Tibanna gas or hypermatter) or the metallurgy of forming alloys they've never used before (such as the armor on warships).

I say that even if the Federation were at peace with (or occupied by) the Empire and had free access to all these schematics, it would still take decades at least to revamp their industrial base to produce Star Wars-equivalent technology. In a war, they wouldn't even come close before they were obliterated.

Trek is by no means going to start production the next day or even the next year. Nobody said that. What I said was that any knowledge they would get from reverse engineering is common in the Wars universe and could be taken with a spy that only has to be adept enough to pass as a civilian.

Agreed, but again I believe that to make use of this information they would need to completely transform their economy.

Anakin, if I recall correctly, built his pod racer and protocol droid from parts found in Watto's junkyard. The Federation couldn't learn from a junkyard how to start producing their own parts and materials for Star Wars technology any more than a caveman could learn how to produce his own cars or toasters from a modern day junkyard.

That would be reverse engineering. Given enough time and analysis, they would indeed learn how to start producing some of those things in the junk yard. That, of course, is not the point of my post at all though.

Again, not necessarily. Not if they're composed of material that they have no way of producing. But if your basic point was that Trek could acquire information more easily from publically available documentation than from reverse engineering, then I agree. Finding this stuff wouldn't be hard if they were able to infiltrate the Empire, but acting on it would be tremendously difficult. Much more difficult than it was for, say, Earth to catch up to the rest of the Alpha Quadrant between the time of Zephram Cochrane and the events of Enterprise or TOS.

[Mark S]

snip.

I'm not disputing any of this. Trek would have to get information on every piece of equipment in use in the system or ship or whatever and they would not have the means to produce the materials off the bat, but they wouldn't have those means if they were trying to reverse engineer either. Either way is not going to help them in any usable length of time but buying/downloading information about Wars tech that is thousands of years old, even if it was all the way down to the process of manufacturing durasteel would be a lot easier and safer than trying to steal and reverse engineer a piece of equipment. You get all the same information that isn't going to do you a lick of good in a fraction of the time.

[Darth Wong]

If this is the case, that perhaps the original tech, over the ages, has been ‘dumbed down’ or another way, the longer the tech goes without re-invention, the more its is copied, instead of newly built. For all we know, the Tech in SW could be copies of copies of copies. Who knows if anyone truly understands the tech anymore?

There would be specialists who understand the physics and technology. Something like the Death Star, with various technologies on an unprecedented scale, is not something you can achieve without engineers rather than technicians, and engineers need to understand the underlying principles. You're talking about exclusively assembling ships from pre-manufactured parts made in automated factories which no one understands anymore, and this theory would require that it is impossible to make anything but reconfigured combinations of existing parts. Anything that required a newly designed hyperdrive would be impossible.

If a Hypedrive melts or something, does anyone know how to build a new one? Or do they just go out and get a replacement?

The long and short of all of this is that it could be far easier for StarTrek to reverse engineer SW tech the many have assumed. Now then in defence I should say I’m not a Trekkie, nor am I pushing any agenda or something, I am merely making a series of observations and seeing what others think.

Even if your postulate was correct, why would it lead to the conclusion that it would be easier for someone else to reverse-engineer this technology? Can you explain this leap in logic?

[Crossroads Inc.]

*In Reply to the Hounorable Mr. Wong*

Points long conceded, I originally mad the mistake of thinking that because the Tech was tens of thousands of years old, the understanding of how it works had been lost, when in actuality the exact reverse seems to be true.

As to this applying to reverse Engineer; Again I made an assumption that if the Tech was not fully understand, yet everyone used it, it must be simpler in nature and could be reversed engineered by Federation Tech. Again original thought conceded.

In the long run, while it may be the Fed Engineers could in time understand StarWars Tech and learn of its properties, they simply doi not have the resources or infrastructure to try and reproduce any of it.

[kaikatsu]

All this about infrastructure being said...

Has anyone ever noticed that the moment someone in Star Trek thinks up an idea, they can have it built in rediculously short order?

I would be curious if anyone has specific examples indicating just how deep their infrastructure levels go? Perhaps the most important question would be -- what things can they replicate?

I don't think I've ever seen the characters in Star Wars talk about the bajillion particles, classes of radiation, or other weird materials Trek keeps running into. It would be interesting if the Federation found it easier to manufacture, say, tibanna (sp?) gas and durasteel than it could manufacture it's own deuranium hulls.

Of course, if they could, that would beg the question why they haven't done it yet. I'll hazard a guess and say no layman has given them the inspiration required to get it done in the twenty minutes or so that's usually needed....

[SirNitram]

All this about infrastructure being said...

Has anyone ever noticed that the moment someone in Star Trek thinks up an idea, they can have it built in rediculously short order?

I would be curious if anyone has specific examples indicating just how deep their infrastructure levels go? Perhaps the most important question would be -- what things can they replicate?

I don't think I've ever seen the characters in Star Wars talk about the bajillion particles, classes of radiation, or other weird materials Trek keeps running into. It would be interesting if the Federation found it easier to manufacture, say, tibanna (sp?) gas and durasteel than it could manufacture it's own deuranium hulls.

Of course, if they could, that would beg the question why they haven't done it yet. I'll hazard a guess and say no layman has given them the inspiration required to get it done in the twenty minutes or so that's usually needed....

I'd suggest hopping over to Mike's Star Trek Canon Database for this one. Head to the main site(The Stardestroyer.net banner on top, and I Want You! link) and hit the database button. Click on the Star Trek link, and use the category dropdown to reference 'Replicators'. It'll give a good analysis of all the incidents with it.

[Crossroads Inc.]

*Reads Above*
Heh, now wouldn't that be a killer scene?
StarTrek Engineer: "Well, We have studied this strange alien Device, and we have no way of building one from scratch, BUT! If we put in it's exact properties, we can just Replicate one in a few seconds!"
*chuckles*

[Civil War Man]

*Reads Above*
Heh, now wouldn't that be a killer scene?
StarTrek Engineer: "Well, We have studied this strange alien Device, and we have no way of building one from scratch, BUT! If we put in it's exact properties, we can just Replicate one in a few seconds!"
*chuckles*

As has been gone over before (mostly in the main site IIRC), that usually results in something like this.

Redshirt: Cool, we have now replicated something called a "mortar." Now...um...how do you use it?

[Aaron]

I'm kinda curious as to how the Federation is going to get the Hypermatter to power all this crap.

[kaikatsu]

Do you GET hypermatter? Or is it something manufactured? I don't think we've ever seen wars over the control of hypermatter. You'd figure it would be more important than Tibanna gas, not to mention Bacta -- and there HAVE been major engagements (in the EU Novels) fought over those resources.

Much like how antimatter in Star Trek is apparently manufactured. (Though I have no idea how...)