Jump To Lightspeed Archive

basicly what i mean is that in theory if you cut off your engines and then fired thrusters in oposing directions on the nose and tail you could basicly flip your starfighter around 180deg while still holding the same heading you were going. think of it this way, the space shuttle can fly backwards by using its engines to get up to speed, cut the engines and then use thrusters and flip the shuttle around. it is then orbiting in "reverse". such an ability would make dogfights extremely cool for those who could get good at such a manuver, imagine getting in behind someone only to see them flip around and start shooting. heh maybe a dream for another space game though, would be fun to have space physics and not aircraft though.

me and my friend were having a similar discussion last night about how in SPACE, the size of the ship shouldnt matter when it came to maneuvering. there is no drag or gravity in space and unless youre goin through the astroid field. So i wanna know, would the Nova courier, in SPACE, really be the same as an A wing when it came to maneuvering.

this is in space guys, not in the atmosphere

No the size would not matter, only the engines would, but its still about mass. If something ways a lot more then you also need more trust to get it moving.

The only thing which is a good point of discussion in science-fiction and fantasy movies in space, is sound. An explosion, laser blast, engine of a ship etc just can not be heard, because there is only vacuum in space, and sounds needs air to carry on.
But I agree that it is much more fun to hear TIE's just screaming on by in space

mass would still effect you, however ships would not be limited to Aircraft style handling as they seem to be in all scifi if you wanted to flip end over end you could without much work but you would still be on the same heading until you used your main engine again.


im guessing scifi ships flying like airplanes is partly a limitation of what the audience would accept and what the SFX budget can handle. i doubt the audience could accept a star destroyer flipping itself end over end to shoot a cruiser coming up behind it even though in truth it would be possible.

mass still applies to thrust in outerspace.

If you strap a saturn 5 rocket to a walrus.. and then you strap one to a blue whale... the walrus will accelerate much faster.

They can attain the same speeds, which is not true in atmospheric flight, but the lighter objects will accelerate to maximum more quickly.

---

CantinaOwner wrote:
No the size would not matter, only the engines would, but its still about mass. If something ways a lot more then you also need more trust to get it moving.

The only thing which is a good point of discussion in science-fiction and fantasy movies in space, is sound. An explosion, laser blast, engine of a ship etc just can not be heard, because there is only vacuum in space, and sounds needs air to carry on.
But I agree that it is much more fun to hear TIE's just screaming on by in space

---

Ive sat for hours pondering this too...ive come to the conclusion that explosions maybe possible as the ship that was blown up was full of oxygen and fueled the explosion...now it may look a tad bit different in space, but still possible.

No, newtonian physics wouldn't work in space.

Why? Because it isn't Star Wars-y. People thinking of Star Wars as some sort of science fiction epic are nuts. Unless all space in the galaxy far far away is filled with some sort of gas, every movie took liberties with the physics of space flight. Remember the opening starfighter scene in the most recent film? There's someatmospheric-ish drag onthe wings carrying those buzz droids off.

Star Wars is a fantasy with science fiction window dressings. The laws of physics as we know them do not apply in George Lucas's world.

---

jtc632 wrote:

If you want a demo of how the newtonian physics would work then watch Battlestar Galatica. the new ones give an interesting view of how the future of dogfights may be pulled of. The problem is that if you compare it to the Star Wars movies they seem completely different in comparison in terms of the laws of physics. The reason for this is that the orginial dogfights are based on WW2 footage of dogfights (a lot of stuff from star wars is based on WW2, nazi war helmets/Vader's helmet, branding of nongermans to be infirior/ branding of nonhumans to be infirior). Although adding Newtonian physics would be interesting to the game it is not in classic star wars physics. And personaly im not sure what Lucas had in mind in the way of physics for the movies.

---

lol ya, i tried the BS:G thingy in my vaksai soo many times../cry that it didnt work, almost tho hehe

The one I remember the most for being pretty accurate, before the BS:G (cause that is pretty close), is Space: Above and Beyond. That one was a little truer to what real space flight would be like.

The size doesn't matter. It's all about inertia when it comes to space. An object of a higher mass density will take more energy (thrust/power) to accelerate at the same speed.

So you could, theoretically, have a ship the size of an ISD but has less mass density then an A-wing, and it will definately outmaneuver the A. As long as it can compensate for the inertia.

And to expand on what started this, yes, in space it is 100% possible to do, and would be sweet if they did, but the controls for something like that would be interesting to say the least. You'd have to manage at least 16 different thrusters in order to attain a true space maneuverability, 8 up front and 8 in the back.

The one that has really gotten me when it comes to JTL is how, even though you only have an engine, if you turn it off (speed to zero), you stop. We don't have a slot to put reverse thrusters, nor do they show on our ships, but they act as though they have them builtin.

id imagine the controls could be made simple in the game, we allready have roll left/right. to make you flip over like the space shuttle can, you would have a flip back and flip forward. course certain ships would by default do this faster, im sure a YT-1300 would take more time to flip around then a A-Wing. to view how this would effect combat, picture some of the twisted metal games where one could pull a handbrake turn and blast the person coming behind them, a "flip" would be the space version of a handbrake turn, hit your booster and your now going back the way you came. to say the least it would make deep space rather colorfull, just think of being in your oppressor coming up on an Xwing only to have it flip around and bore into you with all three guns.

---

Cyph3rX wrote:

---

CantinaOwner wrote:
No the size would not matter, only the engines would, but its still about mass. If something ways a lot more then you also need more trust to get it moving.

The only thing which is a good point of discussion in science-fiction and fantasy movies in space, is sound. An explosion, laser blast, engine of a ship etc just can not be heard, because there is only vacuum in space, and sounds needs air to carry on.
But I agree that it is much more fun to hear TIE's just screaming on by in space

---

Ive sat for hours pondering this too...ive come to the conclusion that explosions maybe possible as the ship that was blown up was full of oxygen and fueled the explosion...now it may look a tad bit different in space, but still possible.

---

OK FINAL DISCUSION, ive thought alot about this and some people say, wiat aminute! we cant hear in space why do we hear the blasters? simple, as the blasters hit the shields or hull on your ship it sends vibrations through the hull, the hull touches the air in the ship and thus is vibrate to your ears. so you might here the blasters after they already hit but they are heard. as for the scream on the tie fighter, it has solar pannels as you all have seen as its wings, this suggests it using an ion drive, which shoots ions backwards providing thrust (every aciton =and opisite etc). so the scream you hear would be the ions smashing on your hull. pretty deep concept but its the one loophole no one ever expects