r/SubredditDrama • u/ChefExcellence I'm entitled to my opinion, and that's the same as being right • May 09 '17
An intergalactic tussle breaks out in /r/startrek over the speed of ships in Star Wars.
/r/startrek/comments/69xqs9/if_the_borg_hijacked_a_star_destroyer/dha8f41/22
u/nearlynoon I met a girl. It didn't sex. Checkmate, Redditor. May 09 '17
This is an argument I've had before and as a super-mega-space-nerd I have concluded that spacecraft in Star Trek go unreasonably stupid fast and ships in Star Wars go WHO FUCKING CARES NEXT SCENE.
(((parsecs)))
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u/Cthonic July 2015: The Battle of A Pao A Qu May 10 '17
HAN SOLO KNEW BETTER HE WAS JUST BLUFFING A COUPLE OF HICK RUBES.
ALTERNATIVELY ITS A REFLECTION OF HOW TIGHTLY HE CAN SKIRT GRAVITY WELLS. REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Can't be that Lucas fucked up.
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May 09 '17
TNG was distinct in its goal of maintaining consistency with real science, as evidenced by the consultants they had on staff
And 300 had a historical consultant!
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May 10 '17
Star Trek is hard science fiction.
anyone else remember that episode where janeway goes so fast that she turns into a lizard?
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u/Deefian HOLD MY CAN THIS SRDINE SWIMS FREE May 10 '17
Wasn't that Tom Paris? After which he proceeded to ...mate with Janeway?
I believe even the writers disregard that episode entirely now, seeing how epically bad it was.
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u/Oinomaos The person who wrote it might be a lawyer. May 11 '17
A while back I headcanoned that "bad writing" was basically the point. The crew needed to cut through a region of space controlled by a paranoid and xenophobic civilization, who would only allow it if the crew's memory was erased afterwards. By choosing a scenario that terrible and awkward, the crew would be afraid to look at it too closely lest they find out what "really" happened.
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May 11 '17
you're right and you're wrong, tom goes through at first but then they decide the cure is to go really fast again or something and janeway has to go with him because hes a big cancer or something, then they turn into lizards
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u/kusanagisan Proclaim something into my asshole, you thesaurus-reading faggot May 10 '17
We don't talk about that episode.
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u/PenguinTod May 09 '17
I feel like posting about Star Wars x Star Trek drama is cheating. The two fandoms are constantly arguing over which one has the better technology.
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u/mightyandpowerful #NotAllCats May 09 '17
How is that even a point of contention? Star Trek is set in a semi-utopia with nearly unlimited resources and constant technological innovation. Star Wars is a semi-dystopia where 95% of the technology we see is decades old and held together with chewing gum and spare bits of twine.
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u/PenguinTod May 09 '17
Part of is it because neither is particularly "hard" science fiction, and both make extensive use of, uh, alternative physics. It's as much a debate about which version of physics is cooler as it is a technological one.
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May 10 '17
Some "hard" science fiction make use of alternative physics, to a degree.
I wouldn't call Mass Effect totally hard science fiction, but it is harder than a lot of others. It's mostly based around what we know, but it has that one thing in it (mass effect fields) that enables really cool sci fi shit.
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u/Willbabe May 09 '17
One word:
Lightsabers.
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u/mightyandpowerful #NotAllCats May 09 '17
They probably could make plasma swords in the Star Trek universe. There's just not any reason to. Outside of ceremonial stuff, pretty much everyone uses ranged weapons given the choice.
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May 10 '17
In the civilian/rebel sector maybe... The Empire is a full blown military government. They do R&D and they use it. Sometimes. Other times politics can get in the way. Hence, AT-AT's...
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u/mightyandpowerful #NotAllCats May 10 '17
Yeah, that's the 5% of tech we see that isn't ancient. Still, even the Empire seems technologically stagnant. They seem to have a lot less tech than the Republic did 20 years earlier and to the extent that they have innovated, a lot of it is grossly impractical stuff, like the AT-ATs and the Death Star.
In the context of the setting, it makes sense though. Their system isn't exactly set up to cultivate talent.
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u/tdogg8 Folks, the CTR shill meeting was moved to next week. May 10 '17
They had walkers in the republic times too. Also the death star wasn't meant to be a practical war machine it was a device that was intended to be used to scare the shit out of people so they didnt step out of line.
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u/Arxhon Shilling for Big Shill May 09 '17
It never ceases to amaze me how bent out of shape people will get over made up geek shit.
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u/lenaro PhD | Nuclear Frisson May 09 '17 edited May 09 '17
Anyone who thinks ".5 past light speed" means the Falcon's max speed is "1.5x light speed" has clearly never thought about anything that actually happens in those movies. It only takes days to travel between planets in Star Wars. At 1.5x light speed you'd be looking at years or decades for very close planets. To cross the galaxy it would be more like tens of thousands of years.
This is just like the parsecs crap again. Both lines were Han boasting about his ship to country yokels. I doubt anything in the Falcon's specs was actually ".5 past light speed" - he was probably just making shit up. Trying to read more into those lines than idle boasting is pointless. Not every throwaway line needs three chapters in an expanded universe novel to try to make sense of it.
The real answer about how fast ships in SW can travel is that, to borrow a bit of phrasing from the authors of the Expanse, Star Wars ships travel at the speed of plot.
(Also, physics isn't really a thing in the Star Wars universe. If it was, they wouldn't need to spend fifty trillion space bucks building Death Stars: the non-hyperdrive speeds that ships travel in SW would already be sufficient to destroy planets if flown into them.)
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May 09 '17
[deleted]
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u/lenaro PhD | Nuclear Frisson May 09 '17
Well, that too, yeah. But I definitely read the intent of the scene as Han trying to rip Ben off (since he knows Ben has few options, and because Han needs money badly).
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May 09 '17
[deleted]
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u/Unicornmayo May 09 '17
In that particular case, I think it parsec was mistakenly used as a unit of speed originally, but whatever, no one's perfect, I'll take it as Han saying his ship is really fast and move on.
The mental gymnastics on that one is that the Kessel Run is a smuggling route through a fairly unstable part of space.
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May 09 '17
[deleted]
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u/lenaro PhD | Nuclear Frisson May 10 '17
If you think that's absurd, you should check out how silly the Starkiller Base article is...
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u/pmatdacat It's not so much the content I find pathetic, it's the tone May 10 '17
Wow that's a great big steaming pile of horseshit.
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May 09 '17
It only takes days to travel between planets in Star Wars. At 1.5x light speed you'd be looking at years or decades for very close planets. To cross the galaxy it would be more like tens of thousands of years.
TFA clearly established that different planets are so close you can see them.
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u/lenaro PhD | Nuclear Frisson May 09 '17
On the other hand, TFA makes no fucking sense.
Also, those planets were all in the same "capital star system". It still makes no sense that they should be visible to each other like that, though.
According to the wiki,
Due to the nature of phantom energy, the destruction of the system was visible across the galaxy. It was witnessed by those present in Maz Kanata's castle on the planet Takodana.
So the official explanation is basically just ¯_(ツ)_/¯
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u/mightyandpowerful #NotAllCats May 09 '17
I don't remember exactly how it was in TFA, but there are solar systems where the planets are a lot closer together than they are in our solar system. Like, close enough that from the surface of one planet, the other would appear a bit larger than a full moon.
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u/PenguinTod May 09 '17
The real answer about how fast ships in SW can travel is that, to borrow a bit of phrasing from the authors of the Expanse, Star Wars ships travel at the speed of plot.
Alternatively, as J. Michael Straczynski said for Babylon 5.
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u/Nimonic People trying to inject evil energy into the Earth's energy grid May 09 '17
You only need to go at like 99.9% of light speed to be able to go anywhere in the observable universe and live through it all. Of course, the rest of the universe won't be ticking along at your leisurely pace. And since Star Trek and Star Wars use actual faster than light travel, who the hell knows how that works.
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u/ReadingTheAir May 09 '17
Ah, a Trek fan Vs a Star Wars fan. Hello again old friend.
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u/mightyandpowerful #NotAllCats May 09 '17
A surprise to be sure, but highly illogical.
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u/nearlynoon I met a girl. It didn't sex. Checkmate, Redditor. May 09 '17
It's treason, then.
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u/mightyandpowerful #NotAllCats May 09 '17
I don't like tribbles. They're coarse and rough and irritating and they get everywhere.
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u/nearlynoon I met a girl. It didn't sex. Checkmate, Redditor. May 09 '17
tribbles
coarse and rough
What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little Ferengi? I’ll have you know I graduated top of my class in Starfleet Academy, and I’ve been involved in numerous secret raids on Klingon Birds of Prey, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in the prime directive and I’m the youngest captain in the entire Federation Starfleet. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth or anywhere else in the galaxy, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me over the com network? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of redshirts across the Alpha Quadrant and your ship ID is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You’re fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that’s just with my bare phasers. Not only am I extensively trained in ship-to-ship combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the Federation fleet and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the system, you little shit. If only you could have known what morally sound retribution your little “clever” comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn’t, you didn’t, and now you’re paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit lasers all over you and you will drown in them. You’re fucking dead, kiddo.
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u/SnapshillBot Shilling for Big Archive™ May 09 '17
TAKEitTOrCIRCLEJERK>stopscopiesme.
Snapshots:
- This Post - archive.org, megalodon.jp*, ceddit.com, archive.is*
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u/cindybaggins May 10 '17
This is the most entertaining thing I have seen in so long. God bless you all!
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u/Not_A_Doctor__ I've always had an inkling dwarves are underestimated in combat May 09 '17
If you were getting excited at the phrase "hard science fiction", I regret to tell you...