Star Destroyers' Garbage

[cmdrjones]

Just a thought.... When Stardestroyers go to lightspeed, they dump thier garbage as per standard imperial procedure correct?

Now in ESB they dumped some HUGE chunks of garbage, big enough for SLAVE 1 and the Millenium Falcon to hide in...

A couple questions: I am making a big assumption that such large hunks or garbage were probably the sliced up remains of the rebel ships at Hoth that DIDN'T make it through the Imperial blockade and/or the post salvage remains of other imperial vessels that were disabled or destroyed in the fighting.

So, #1 what ELSE would be in that pile of junk that could be so large? What other kinds of things would the imperials dump at that time?

#2 Would any of those thing be valuable to scavengers?

#3 Would the Imperials be likely to change this SOP if their ships were Isolated? and if so under what circumstances?

(PS yes, you may have guessed this is a little research for the B5 vs SW crossover I've been working on.... and So...)

#4 What kind of technologies could the B5 Young Races gain in the Short, Middle and Long term time frames by giong through the Imperials trash?

[Elheru Aran]

Interesting thought.

Much of this garbage would be industrial wastes, possibly toxic.

The garbage slot didn't look *that* big... but it could've been, I suppose.

For something to be of value it has to be appreciable. If it's something technological and it doesn't work, you have to be able to make it work again. There are alternatives-- one can imagine taking armour plates off starship debris and bolting it onto your ships if your armour is lacking, for example. But one presumes that the Imperials would probably either strip useful technology or render it useless before they dumped it, unless it's so common-grade (to them) that they ignore it. For example, nowadays we have people who will go through houses before they demolish them to strip out the useful stuff like copper wire, nice floorboards, vintage mouldings, things like that. But nobody really cares about, say, the bricks or the two-by-fours... unless you can think of another use for them.

As for #3... Dunno. Maybe. Depends on how isolated they are. It's really up to you. You can have the by-the-book-prig captain who refuses to deviate from SOP and dump it, or a more practical strategist who decides to hold on to his junk in order to scavenge it for useful supplies himself.

#4-- Anything's possible. Depends on how thorough you want to be. Again, it's up to the author. I'm pretty certain nobody's examined this particular bit in detail before, so you're covering new territory.

[cmdrjones]

Interesting thought.

Much of this garbage would be industrial wastes, possibly toxic.

The garbage slot didn't look *that* big... but it could've been, I suppose.

For something to be of value it has to be appreciable. If it's something technological and it doesn't work, you have to be able to make it work again. There are alternatives-- one can imagine taking armour plates off starship debris and bolting it onto your ships if your armour is lacking, for example. But one presumes that the Imperials would probably either strip useful technology or render it useless before they dumped it, unless it's so common-grade (to them) that they ignore it. For example, nowadays we have people who will go through houses before they demolish them to strip out the useful stuff like copper wire, nice floorboards, vintage mouldings, things like that. But nobody really cares about, say, the bricks or the two-by-fours... unless you can think of another use for them.

As for #3... Dunno. Maybe. Depends on how isolated they are. It's really up to you. You can have the by-the-book-prig captain who refuses to deviate from SOP and dump it, or a more practical strategist who decides to hold on to his junk in order to scavenge it for useful supplies himself.

#4-- Anything's possible. Depends on how thorough you want to be. Again, it's up to the author. I'm pretty certain nobody's examined this particular bit in detail before, so you're covering new territory.

I'll take that as a compliment! Thanks.
The way i see this unfolding is that the first (couple?) time(s?) they dump their garbage they simply jettison it like in ESB and only after they realize how primitive the YRs are, THEN they get a big "uh-oh" look on their an SD or two to run around and try to pick up all their old trash... of course by then it will probably be too late...

In any case, I enjoy finding little details like this... what caught my eye in ESB when re watching the relevant scenes was how MASSIVE some of the pieces were. I thought 'what the hell could they be tossing out from on board an ISA that is THAT frigging big? Are they remodeling the whole interior while on patrol? Then it hit me that they might have been, as you said, stripping the useful components from the damaged ISDs or captured freighters a la "Commander, tear this ship apart until you find those plans!"


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3iFJpGJiug
I guess the Imps real WERE being that literal... which could also explain THIS:

[cmdrjones]

This is a fan edit, but you can get a good look at a lot of the pieces of garbage, on in the center of the screen sort of twirling while staying mostly vertical looks a LOT like an engine... possibly from an ISD?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4_tZ6Yd9fs

[Eleas]

If I were the author I would definitely use this. Solo expected that their garbage would be large enough to hide in, but I don't doubt most Imperial captains who've fought and clawed their way to a bridge position on the Death Squadron would have a keen appreciation for the value of maximizing the odds, whether by scavenging or not.

[biostem]

They had those big trash compactors on the Death Star - perhaps they similarly compact garbage on the Star Destroyers, then eject those. Though, if they produce that amount of waste just between periods of station-keeping, then it seems rather wasteful.

[SCRawl]

The Avenger in ESB had been in a reasonably serious fire fight not so long before that jump to hyperspace. Perhaps there was a large amount of damaged equipment that needed to be jettisoned.

[cmdrjones]

They had those big trash compactors on the Death Star - perhaps they similarly compact garbage on the Star Destroyers, then eject those. Though, if they produce that amount of waste just between periods of station-keeping, then it seems rather wasteful.

most of the junk looks like spaceship parts, big ones, nothing really compacted or too.... moist.

[Eleas]

Well, I recall a sidebar in an old WEG supplement called Imperial Sourcebook. And through the magic of Google...

Kanda Farral watched through the viewscreen as the last of the Imperial warships made the jump to lightspeed. Captain Sreethyn had The Lucky Find's engines at full as the ship pulled away from Jerijador.

Kanda absent-mindedly checked a few of the sensor banks. She glanced again when she saw indicator pulsons approximating the locations of better than a dozen ships, all on roughly the same vector as The Lucky Find. All were making like the last bolt from a busted blaster toward the Imperial jump point.

"Suit up woman! I didn't hire you to look at colored lights all day," growled Sreethyn, "and it looks like some of the left-goods are larger than usual. Adjust the programming on the retrieval droids."
Kanda deftly reprogrammed each of the four droids, but had more difficulty than she would have liked getting into her suit. She checked to see if Sreethyn had noticed. His forced grin and slightly shaking head said he had. Okay, now he knew for certain that she had lied about her zero-G experience.

The droids were going to do most of the work, so taking care of them was more important.

"Remember to lock in before you lock out." Kanda found herself nodding, a clumsy motion inside of a work suit, in response to the thin-sounding voice over her comlink. She stepped into the airlock, making sure the frequency of the T-beam actuator and her tractor beacons were the same. She then by-the-booked the depressurization sequence, and vacced with the droids. Kanda was pleased to see the droids scan and maneuver immediately in an optimum search pattern. She began inspecting the refuse from the Imperial fleet.

"There is a Treson cluster, a third full, of KDY Servo Circuit surfaces, OP configuration ... they just jettisoned them!"

"That's the kind of stuff we're after Farral."

Sreethyn's voice carried excitement over her comlink. Kanda began to tag containers and activate the beacons. Immediately the containers lurched toward the hull of The Lucky Find.

"Why would they just throw the good out with the bad?" Kanda asked as she slowburst to avoid a compacted piece of trash.

"Because they're the Empire. They got more money than ships, see? So when it comes to allocating cargo space before a jump, they fill themselves to the gunnels. If they rush they just replace half-empty
containers with full ones."

"But you can't sell a lot of this stuff on the market, Sreethyn. It's illegal tech ..." Kanda stopped herself, realizing that Sreethyn could very well sell that sort of hardware as long as no one knew about it. And Sreethyn was inside the ship, Kanda outside.

Sreethyn's laugh was unreadable through the comlink.

"I'm no smuggler, Farral. I'm a licensed salvager. I pick the stuff up, sell what's legal on the open market, and sell the rest back to the Navy."

"The Navy buys back its garbage?"

"If I package all the partials into standard units they do. They pay full price. I like to think of it as getting some of my taxes back."

Kanda tagged another container. She laughed as she watched two of the droids struggle with a WD condenser pod, as the entire unit and the droids slowly tumbled toward The Lucky Find. This was absurd, but it paid well. She could come to like this.

So yeah. For their big ships, the Empire treats the hyperspace jump as a time top up all the tanks and get back to specs. Even if it means lots and lots of waste.

[cmdrjones]

Well, I recall a sidebar in an old WEG supplement called Imperial Sourcebook. And through the magic of Google...

Kanda Farral watched through the viewscreen as the last of the Imperial warships made the jump to lightspeed. Captain Sreethyn had The Lucky Find's engines at full as the ship pulled away from Jerijador.

Kanda absent-mindedly checked a few of the sensor banks. She glanced again when she saw indicator pulsons approximating the locations of better than a dozen ships, all on roughly the same vector as The Lucky Find. All were making like the last bolt from a busted blaster toward the Imperial jump point.

"Suit up woman! I didn't hire you to look at colored lights all day," growled Sreethyn, "and it looks like some of the left-goods are larger than usual. Adjust the programming on the retrieval droids."
Kanda deftly reprogrammed each of the four droids, but had more difficulty than she would have liked getting into her suit. She checked to see if Sreethyn had noticed. His forced grin and slightly shaking head said he had. Okay, now he knew for certain that she had lied about her zero-G experience.

The droids were going to do most of the work, so taking care of them was more important.

"Remember to lock in before you lock out." Kanda found herself nodding, a clumsy motion inside of a work suit, in response to the thin-sounding voice over her comlink. She stepped into the airlock, making sure the frequency of the T-beam actuator and her tractor beacons were the same. She then by-the-booked the depressurization sequence, and vacced with the droids. Kanda was pleased to see the droids scan and maneuver immediately in an optimum search pattern. She began inspecting the refuse from the Imperial fleet.

"There is a Treson cluster, a third full, of KDY Servo Circuit surfaces, OP configuration ... they just jettisoned them!"

"That's the kind of stuff we're after Farral."

Sreethyn's voice carried excitement over her comlink. Kanda began to tag containers and activate the beacons. Immediately the containers lurched toward the hull of The Lucky Find.

"Why would they just throw the good out with the bad?" Kanda asked as she slowburst to avoid a compacted piece of trash.

"Because they're the Empire. They got more money than ships, see? So when it comes to allocating cargo space before a jump, they fill themselves to the gunnels. If they rush they just replace half-empty
containers with full ones."

"But you can't sell a lot of this stuff on the market, Sreethyn. It's illegal tech ..." Kanda stopped herself, realizing that Sreethyn could very well sell that sort of hardware as long as no one knew about it. And Sreethyn was inside the ship, Kanda outside.

Sreethyn's laugh was unreadable through the comlink.

"I'm no smuggler, Farral. I'm a licensed salvager. I pick the stuff up, sell what's legal on the open market, and sell the rest back to the Navy."

"The Navy buys back its garbage?"

"If I package all the partials into standard units they do. They pay full price. I like to think of it as getting some of my taxes back."

Kanda tagged another container. She laughed as she watched two of the droids struggle with a WD condenser pod, as the entire unit and the droids slowly tumbled toward The Lucky Find. This was absurd, but it paid well. She could come to like this.

So yeah. For their big ships, the Empire treats the hyperspace jump as a time top up all the tanks and get back to specs. Even if it means lots and lots of waste.

NOw I just have to figure out what all that stuff DOES and if the B5 powers can use it for anything....

[Elheru Aran]

Just take a look at a list of equipment aboard a, say, Missouri class BB, and extrapolate upwards tech-wise. Also some of the 'cargo' and 'garbage' that they dump would be stuff like half-used food supplies, stocks of military-grade hardware, and what not. Not necessarily anything useful per se, just... stuff they tossed out.

It's also reasonable to assume that if they're a long way from resupply, they may be a bit more cautious about throwing out supplies in general. Chopped up captured ships and garbage, sure; supplies, perhaps not.

[Eleas]

Those are good points worth considering.

Just bear in mind what this -- irrespective of the amount and quality of usable gear -- would mean to a B5 civilization. If this is their first large find of artifacts, it'd be scientific paydirt, practically a the Holy Grail of finds: a small asteroid field consisting almost entirely of what a galactic-scale tech base's naval forces considered its most useful utilities, consumables and raw materials. Admittedly most of them would be damaged, but even that is far better than nothing.

Also, there's an upper limit to what the scientists of any civilization can readily assimilate. Initially, what they'd need might well be a basic working knowledge, and garbage should be good for that.

[cmdrjones]

Those are good points worth considering.

Just bear in mind what this -- irrespective of the amount and quality of usable gear -- would mean to a B5 civilization. If this is their first large find of artifacts, it'd be scientific paydirt, practically a the Holy Grail of finds: a small asteroid field consisting almost entirely of what a galactic-scale tech base's naval forces considered its most useful utilities, consumables and raw materials. Admittedly most of them would be damaged, but even that is far better than nothing.

Also, there's an upper limit to what the scientists of any civilization can readily assimilate. Initially, what they'd need might well be a basic working knowledge, and garbage should be good for that.

This is pretty much my assessment as well. Even though B5 civilizations are far, far, behind SW, I think they could make some serious leaps just by going through the ISDs trash. Now, they will have to do some serious R&D that will take years, but most of the major powers are set up for that anyway, being that plundering dead civilizations in the B5 galaxy seems to be an Olympic sport.

[cmdrjones]

Just take a look at a list of equipment aboard a, say, Missouri class BB, and extrapolate upwards tech-wise. Also some of the 'cargo' and 'garbage' that they dump would be stuff like half-used food supplies, stocks of military-grade hardware, and what not. Not necessarily anything useful per se, just... stuff they tossed out.

It's also reasonable to assume that if they're a long way from resupply, they may be a bit more cautious about throwing out supplies in general. Chopped up captured ships and garbage, sure; supplies, perhaps not.

you wouldn't happen to have a link to said list would you?

[Elheru Aran]

Just take a look at a list of equipment aboard a, say, Missouri class BB, and extrapolate upwards tech-wise. Also some of the 'cargo' and 'garbage' that they dump would be stuff like half-used food supplies, stocks of military-grade hardware, and what not. Not necessarily anything useful per se, just... stuff they tossed out.

It's also reasonable to assume that if they're a long way from resupply, they may be a bit more cautious about throwing out supplies in general. Chopped up captured ships and garbage, sure; supplies, perhaps not.

you wouldn't happen to have a link to said list would you?

No. But if you're a HAB member you could ask there. Or PM Sea Skimmer. You could also just fool around the links on the Wikipedia page for Missouris.

[Sea Skimmer]

A lot of military equipment doesn't actually last that long, even today, let alone in WW2 when you had for example tank engines only rated for a couple hundred hours of running time. The fuel injectors on some designs only lasted 35 hours! Swapping them was easy, you could do in in an hour, but you still had to do it. Modern jet fighters usually only have about 4000-6000 hours of flying time for the AIRFRAME. Other stuff on the aircraft lasts less time without extensive overhauling. Even the missiles on the wings have limited lives they can be flown. That was a reason why missiles failed so badly in the Vietnam War. They'd actually only been designed to be carried airborne for a single flight.

The LM2500 gas turbines that power most USN and many international ships are highly refined designs, evolved over decades of service experience, it isn't high stress on purpose, but the mean time between failure is about 3000 hours. That's a bit over three months, which isn't bad since a failure could be something fairly simple like a bad oil temperature sensor, but just imagine how major power train components of an ISD could be the SIZE of a modern destroyer. That carries over to the size of broken and replacement parts. A single valve or manifold of many valves could be the size of a house ect....

We don't actually have any reason to assume Imperial warships are highly reliable the way microwave ovens or a new 2015 vintage low milage car is. Indeed the only reliability information we have in Star Wars would suggest the ship have limited reliability, with hyper drives being more sensitive then say, atmospheric systems or sublight engines. They sure fail a lot between the movies and the Clone Wars series. That's for plot sure, but it fits the universe well, the same way plane crashes fit in the 1920s and 30s adventure stuff Lucas loved.

The more power you think Star Wars ship have (which can't be low by any standard, simply to move sublight) , the less likely it is that subcomponets would be to have long lifespans anyway, without putting numbers on it. It may simply be that internal parts of Star Wars ships are constantly failing, or are simply replaced out of hand on a regular schedule to avoid failure. That would kind of make sense in episode V when the Imperial Fleet is supposed to coming to Hoth after having been speeding all over the galaxy constantly trying to find the rebel base and bring rebel raiders to action. Constant service will cause ships to be worn out faster then normal, if the operations tempo is high enough to interfere with scheduled maintenance, or average speeds are higher then intended by the designers ect... this applies to all manner of things. Starting and stopping constantly also tends to cause machinery to get worn out more quickly.

It kinda seems 'right' in universe that the Dark Lord of the Sith, with the money to build a DEATH STAR in secret no less, even if it took 20 years, would not give a damn about scheduled maintenance! All the more so when the Emperor and Vader were both probably more concerned with finding Luke then actually wiping out the rebel scum. That goes back to the image of the dark side Lucas actually wanted, that it makes your irrationally evil, not just a bad person.

The end result would then be vast amounts of trash to dump overboard, since its probable that basic structural materials are simply not valuable enough for a Galactic Empire to bother to recycle. Piping subject to high heat and highly corrosive fluids for example might only last lets say, 1000 hours, and be replaced at that point if it fails or not. The ships might be engineered with large numbers of redundant systems to allow them to undergo constant underway maintenance, making it reasonable to assume they will constantly dump high volume.

This is one great advantage of being in space too. As long as you have air to breath and don't get disabled heading directly into a star at close range, you can have major failures and not DIE. You can't sink or crash the way an aircraft or plane can, and yet with a giant mile long ship you can carry around repair and replacement capability that would simply never fit on anything that can move in real life.

This kind of thing also just fits with the general style of Star Wars, with items being used, junkyards being typical, stock ship designs being improvable by tinkering ect...

[AniThyng]

So basically what it boils down to is that Star Destroyer quartermasters spend their time juggling their inventory and dumping vendor trash to clear space or just make the containers all neat and tidy ("half full container of service parts? Throw it").

[cmdrjones]

A lot of military equipment doesn't actually last that long, even today, let alone in WW2 when you had for example tank engines only rated for a couple hundred hours of running time. The fuel injectors on some designs only lasted 35 hours! Swapping them was easy, you could do in in an hour, but you still had to do it. Modern jet fighters usually only have about 4000-6000 hours of flying time for the AIRFRAME. Other stuff on the aircraft lasts less time without extensive overhauling. Even the missiles on the wings have limited lives they can be flown. That was a reason why missiles failed so badly in the Vietnam War. They'd actually only been designed to be carried airborne for a single flight.

The LM2500 gas turbines that power most USN and many international ships are highly refined designs, evolved over decades of service experience, it isn't high stress on purpose, but the mean time between failure is about 3000 hours. That's a bit over three months, which isn't bad since a failure could be something fairly simple like a bad oil temperature sensor, but just imagine how major power train components of an ISD could be the SIZE of a modern destroyer. That carries over to the size of broken and replacement parts. A single valve or manifold of many valves could be the size of a house ect....

We don't actually have any reason to assume Imperial warships are highly reliable the way microwave ovens or a new 2015 vintage low milage car is. Indeed the only reliability information we have in Star Wars would suggest the ship have limited reliability, with hyper drives being more sensitive then say, atmospheric systems or sublight engines. They sure fail a lot between the movies and the Clone Wars series. That's for plot sure, but it fits the universe well, the same way plane crashes fit in the 1920s and 30s adventure stuff Lucas loved.

The more power you think Star Wars ship have (which can't be low by any standard, simply to move sublight) , the less likely it is that subcomponets would be to have long lifespans anyway, without putting numbers on it. It may simply be that internal parts of Star Wars ships are constantly failing, or are simply replaced out of hand on a regular schedule to avoid failure. That would kind of make sense in episode V when the Imperial Fleet is supposed to coming to Hoth after having been speeding all over the galaxy constantly trying to find the rebel base and bring rebel raiders to action. Constant service will cause ships to be worn out faster then normal, if the operations tempo is high enough to interfere with scheduled maintenance, or average speeds are higher then intended by the designers ect... this applies to all manner of things. Starting and stopping constantly also tends to cause machinery to get worn out more quickly.

It kinda seems 'right' in universe that the Dark Lord of the Sith, with the money to build a DEATH STAR in secret no less, even if it took 20 years, would not give a damn about scheduled maintenance! All the more so when the Emperor and Vader were both probably more concerned with finding Luke then actually wiping out the rebel scum. That goes back to the image of the dark side Lucas actually wanted, that it makes your irrationally evil, not just a bad person.

The end result would then be vast amounts of trash to dump overboard, since its probable that basic structural materials are simply not valuable enough for a Galactic Empire to bother to recycle. Piping subject to high heat and highly corrosive fluids for example might only last lets say, 1000 hours, and be replaced at that point if it fails or not. The ships might be engineered with large numbers of redundant systems to allow them to undergo constant underway maintenance, making it reasonable to assume they will constantly dump high volume.

This is one great advantage of being in space too. As long as you have air to breath and don't get disabled heading directly into a star at close range, you can have major failures and not DIE. You can't sink or crash the way an aircraft or plane can, and yet with a giant mile long ship you can carry around repair and replacement capability that would simply never fit on anything that can move in real life.

This kind of thing also just fits with the general style of Star Wars, with items being used, junkyards being typical, stock ship designs being improvable by tinkering ect...

This tracks with what I was thinking... do you have any thoughts about the B5 powers scavenging those items?

[Lord Revan]

the thing is that those items probably aren't gonna be in pristine condition with manuals on how to use them. What B5 powers could get is weaknesses and strengths in a rather broad sense, but integrating those items into ships would be more or less impossible within any realistic time frame even with pristine items and manuals.

[cmdrjones]

the thing is that those items probably aren't gonna be in pristine condition with manuals on how to use them. What B5 powers could get is weaknesses and strengths in a rather broad sense, but integrating those items into ships would be more or less impossible within any realistic time frame even with pristine items and manuals.

all true, but the british navy circa 1910 could find out A LOT about modern technology by finding say: a Scrapped F-16 Aiframe and engines, a decommissioned nuclear reactor from a Nimitz class, a broken turret from a missouri class battleship, the guts of an AEGIS targeting system, or even a chopped up modern refueling tanker...
They probably wont make ANY of it work, but it would take them in directions they never thought possible and give them a quantam leap above the Jerrys when WWI breaks out in 4 years.

[Lord Revan]

the thing is that those items probably aren't gonna be in pristine condition with manuals on how to use them. What B5 powers could get is weaknesses and strengths in a rather broad sense, but integrating those items into ships would be more or less impossible within any realistic time frame even with pristine items and manuals.

all true, but the british navy circa 1910 could find out A LOT about modern technology by finding say: a Scrapped F-16 Aiframe and engines, a decommissioned nuclear reactor from a Nimitz class, a broken turret from a missouri class battleship, the guts of an AEGIS targeting system, or even a chopped up modern refueling tanker...
They probably wont make ANY of it work, but it would take them in directions they never thought possible and give them a quantam leap above the Jerrys when WWI breaks out in 4 years.

the thing is alot of those stuff have supporting technology that need to be invented or deveoped to work and the amount of this supporting tech grows rapidly when the gap between technology "level"(a word I don't like using but still) grows. To use your example the RN at 1910 might not even know where to start with a modern motherboard, sure it seems to work with electricity but alot of the components if not all of them are too small to be seen with equipment of the time.

And developing new technology always takes time, and 9 years is that long for that (IIRC basics of jet engines were know at the time they just didn't have the tech to build a working engine).

[Esquire]

all true, but the british navy circa 1910 could find out A LOT about modern technology by finding say: a Scrapped F-16 Aiframe and engines, a decommissioned nuclear reactor from a Nimitz class, a broken turret from a missouri class battleship, the guts of an AEGIS targeting system, or even a chopped up modern refueling tanker...
They probably wont make ANY of it work, but it would take them in directions they never thought possible and give them a quantam leap above the Jerrys when WWI breaks out in 4 years.

At least you picked the right phrase. A quantum leap is exactly what the 1910-era Royal Navy would get from examining a nuclear reactor. XKCD had a comic on this, but I can't find it just now - the gist is that "quantum leap" sounds like it means something vast and paradigm-shifting, but actually means something tiny and almost completely unobservable.

Anyway, not only is nuclear power not a thing in 1910, all the operating principles of the reactor more complicated than "steam drives piston" have not yet been developed. Most of its operations are directed through computers, which the RN can't use, using terminology that (I assume) hasn't been codified yet. You can't skip multiple generations of theory in complicated fields; the intermediate stages would be vastly more usable.

[Elheru Aran]

And, quite probably, half the people who originally found it would die from radiation poisoning or cancer. That's another dimension to consider-- garbage is frequently industrial waste... which is quite often toxic or dangerous. There is nothing particularly healthy about the internal workings of quite a few pieces of technology.

[Lord Revan]

The thing Jones doesn't seem to get is that to start reverse engineering any tech more advanced then your, you'll have to examine the items with the tech and theories you already have avaible. Even in an optimal situation(aka pristine item, full manual and a defector aiding you) that will take time and when we comes to examples like he put you're rarely dealing with an optimal situation. Most likely the items are damaged in some way, manuals are probably incomplete or missing and you won't have access to people who know the tech.

To use a computar motherboard as an example, people from 1910 could probably figure out that worked by using electricy in some way, however the actual function of the board would be beyond their understanding and alot of the important components would be too small to see in any meaningfull detail with the equipment of that era.

And that's ignoring the fact that items might be toxic or otherwise dangerous.

[Batman]

Give people from the 1980s a modern day quadcore CPU (which is hardly cream of the crop these days). Watch them fail miserably trying to figure it out because they simply don't have the information and technology basis. And that's a less than 40 year technological gap giving them advanced technology the receiving society at least understands the basics of pretty fairly. We're talking millennia between B5 and Wars and scientific principles B5 likely never heard of.