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The Feasibility of Star Wars Tech
pwnage writes "Forbes Magazine, not usually the the web's premiere source of all things geekish, has posted an interesting summary of Star Wars technology and its scientific feasibility. As a bonus, they also include a great set of Star Flops, including the infamous Jedi Arena Atari 2600 video 'game.'"
...and not Star Trek, but in this vein, The Physics of Star Trek is one of my favorites. It's written by Lawrence Krauss, a theoretical physicist from Case Western Reserve University. Beyond Star Trek was another good one from him.
He dissects, from a scientific standpoint, some of the common plot elements and familiar staples (such as warp travel, transporters, phasers, etc.) to determine whether they'd be physically possible. An example of some interesting diversions along the way are demonstrating exactly how much data is contained in a human body, and how much bandwidth would be required for a "transporter" to work. It's a fun and interesting read, and includes content that would satisfy anyone from laymen to scientists. Being a fan of Star Trek is a prerequisite, though...
The website is navagating automatically for me? What the hell?
It's not.
BUT THE JEDI RELIGION IS A HOAX! Read The Force Skeptics Page! :)
Man, I love the way that guy writes, so seriously
"The combination of medieval chivalry and modern lethal technology is pretty ridiculous," says Wilczek. "In real history, gunpowder--or even good crossbows--pretty much put knights out of business."
And therein lies one of the problems I've always had with Star Wars and Star Trek. Are you telling me that in a world with hand-held weapons that can supposedly level/vaporize small mountains you are going to pull out your bat'leth or lightsaber and duke it out hand to hand? Heck -- forget the hand phasers/blasters -- you could kill them from orbit fairly easily with either SW or ST level technology.
Yeah, yeah, I know, dramatic license and effect. I miss Babylon 5. Wait -- they had the Minbari using melee weapons too. *Sigh*
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
The Starwars Holiday Special!! featuring the happy family reunion of Chewbacca, wife Malla and son Lumpy(!!!!)
The Jedi Arena!! Two rectangles swinging sprites at an orange glob!!!
Christmas in the Stars!! featuring "What Can You Get a Wookiee for Christmas (When He Already Owns a Comb?)" and R2-D2 dishing out "We wish you a Merry Xmas"!!!
It all makes sense now!!!
But LUMPY!!! If I ever came up with a character name as "Lumpy", I would wilfully get eaten by a Dianoga!!
Rapid Nirvana
None of the tech in Star Wars is feasible. It violates the laws of physics and is for entertainment value only. Also, Star Wars is not science fiction, it is actually fantasy.
You've gotta be a speed reader to read each mini-article at the slideshow's default speed. What dope at Forbes decided how fast his readers should read?
That slideshow could make the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs.
3D Printing Tips and Tricks at Zheng3.com
We're talking about Star Wars -- not Star Trek.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
"The combination of medieval chivalry and modern lethal technology is pretty ridiculous," in regards to lighsabers....umm it's call the force you geek poser! Now excuse me, mother has just yelled down here into the basement that the brownies are done.
Hello?? McFly?? Did you miss the first line of every single movie??
A LONG TIME AGO IN A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWAY...
It's already happened, thus it's feasability is already established.
Actually, I enjoyed Jedi Arena
"In real history, gunpowder--or even good crossbows--pretty much put knights out of business."
And Ben Kenobi referred to laser beam swords weapons of a more civilized age.
I dunno, if blasters are supposed to be "more random", how come Jedis are still able to block their shots?
This makes as much sense as Chewbacca, a wookie, living with Ewoks on Endor.
.. and pigs will never fly
$ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
Someone will come up with a non-slashdottable web server.
"Twenty miles . . . twenty miles . . . twenty miles. Eight thousand cube miles of rackspace, powered by fifty sub-atomic reactors, all designed to respond to the subconcious urges of the ancient Krell web-surfers."
Stefan
Man, Forbes must be desperate for readers to jump on the Star Wars bandwagon now.
Lightsabers are not lasers or simply light, they are directed concentrated energy fields that can cut better than a Ginsu knife.
A better reason for saying lightsabers are not feasible is due to the problems encountered when accidentally firing up one. Many Jedi and Sith limbs have been lost due to carelessness and showing off. Lightsaber safety is a serious issue, and people should not dismiss their potential dangers!
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
http://www.theforce.net/swtc/
"Holographic Messages: Improbable"
/. I believe...
c hnology/images
Hmm....
As reported on
http://www.io2technology.com/dojo/196/v.jsp?p=/te
Where's Trip Master Monkey to be appalled by such things as this?
Is one of the worst things I've ever seen on the web. And they've been doing it for fucking *years*.
Have they ever actually done any usability studies on it?
ObTopic: I always assumed a "real" lightsabre would be something closer to magnetically-bottled plasma, which would explain its ability to deflect other lightsabres.
I can't believe I went down to "Starship Troopers" to try and argue the point for hand held weapons. I'm sorry.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
killing people from orbit with our technology probably implies nukes
How did you come to that conclusion?
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
I liked the first three movies, tolerated the latest three movies, and was annoyed from day one on the hype surrounding the entire Star Wars phenomenon.
It would have been nice to have lived through only one Star Wars flood of commercial crap, but instead we have had to live through decades of Star Wars toys, drink cups, board games, etc.
I'm glad it is nearly over. Now I only have to tolerate the nostalgia periods that will pop up every decade or so.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Ships and weapons make sound in a vacuum in the Star Wars/Star Trek universes. Defying the physical laws of this universe.
Never quite go over this. However, the 1968 movie 2001 space odyssey, got it right!
Are you telling me that in a world with fuel-air bombs that can blow up small cities, you still need infantry?
In situations where control, rather than annihilation, of something is required, sheer brute force is inadequate. You need more precise application of power to capture than destroy-- and capture and control are often far preferable.
It's also probably relevant that you might not want to casually use armor penetrating projectile or high-energy weapons in a thin-hulled space station, for risk of ricochets or misses. Energy weapons are also undesirable in overly oxygenated atmospheres. Things like Dorothy Wire, Variable Swords, or even a good old fashioned Bowie Knife will be useful as secondary weapon choices, for when you want to take life, without taking out life support.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
You're assuming they want you to read the article. They could care less. They care about ad impressions, and flipping from one page to the next automatically cranks them out faster.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
light sabers.
he doesn't get it, they aren't "made of light", they just look like they are. take a 1mK ion source, have it output out of the long end, give the blade a very strong magnetic field that bends that ion stream along the blade but does not touch it. place a weak magnet on the hilt to reabsorb the ions to be charged again.
a. this thing would probably about as hot as the sun, so touching would be double-plus ungood, even on the hilt. the charged ions would repel each other like in the movies, as long as the charge density was high enough.
b. omfg the power needed would be huge to create a blade of any intensity, ion plasma streams have been created in a tokamak, but not for any length of time or intensity, so youd need a serious cryonic ion storage tech, and that would be used up fast, and youd still get an arc-ing effect if it came near anything. think ball-lighting on crack.
c. i doubt you could move it easily, and if it touched a solid object the charge would be dissipated and the blade and other object would explode... a lot.
so the photon blade idea, no, and the gluon idea was pure 100% columbian grade crack from someone who never finished reading that neat book about physics, cause gluons don't really work that way. i'm sure someone could fix the engineering problems i have so far with a little effort.
The first rule of USENET is you do not talk about USENET.
No Star Wars spaceship can achieve Ludicrous Speed, let alone go Plaid.
Its a common misconception that lightsabers are made of light... they are merely telescopic rods that glow brightly because of a quantom effect. Don't get your science from Forbes.
rusty quote...
It kills the enemy. All of the enemy. And allof his family, and all of his oxen, and all of his cattle, and all of his manservents, and all of his maidservents...
The point of WMDs, be they yielded by nations or terrorists, (distinction left to the reader) is that they conquer nothing, because they leave nothing. If there's a good purpose, they demoralize the enemy into surrendering, and prevent further bloodshed. The fearsome thing about the neutron bomb was that it would make nuclear war practical again, which was why Jimmy Carter cancelled it.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
A sword/lightsabre offers the user more options too.
You can choose to just defend with it - protect yourself without threatening your opponent.
You can also selectively wound with it as well, giving you the ability to disarm (heh, literally) your opponent without killing him. As a lightsabre cauterizes as it cuts, the opponent won't bleed to death (although I bet he goes into shock pretty hard...)
It can also be used as a general purpose cutting tool - good for cutting through doors, cables, or whatnot.
By comparison, a gun (or blaster) is an all-or-nothing deal. You can kill with it by blowing a hole in someone... and that's about it. You cannot parry with a gun. It's nearly impossible to selectively wound with a gun. And aside from its intended purpose, a gun can't do anything else.
The gun's big advantages are ease of use (a gun does not rely on the strength or size of its wielder, at least not for reasonable calibres), its ability to kill at an extended range, and its near-unblockability. But given that Jedi can parry gunfire with their lightsabres (neat trick, that - how do you practice?) and are trained enough that "ease of use" isn't a factor... the lightsabre starts to look pretty good.
In real life, sword loses to gun at all except close quarters - especially if the gun wielder doesn't know the sword is there. But against all other weapons, the sword's ability to parry and defend without necessarily inflicting lethal damage make it pretty attractive.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
A trained Jedi with a lightsaber has the best of both worlds: a lethal hand-to-hand weapon and a blaster (i.e. deflected shots). Not only that, they can cut thru blast doors, chop down trees, etc.
Not only can it cauterize flesh as it cuts it, but it can also toast bread as you slice it.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
The article claims this is said everywhere.
Who the fuck wrote this? I love pop culture fluff pieces that pretend to be "in the know" from the straights. Of course - why this shit is in FORBES I have no idea. Perhaps the Wall Street Journal will have an insert on ultimate fighting next week.
A lightsabre is a light sabre. Sabre meaning blade. I would assume that the best answer, which has been given before, is that one could create a working light sabre with a telescopic glowing blade or sharpened antenna. a fixed-length laser of that strength isn't feasible without having it go farther than 3 feet, but if one day that ever happened, sign me up, i want one.
stuff |
The only reason the Jedi were effective with the light saber, was because the damn Storm Troopers couldn't hit the side of a barn with their blasters. Seriously, there's only so many blaster shots a Jedi can deflect at one time. Maybe if he's real good, he can block two shots at once. But if you had three troopers fire at the same time... ON TARGET... then there'd have been many less Jedi around.
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
That's the first I've heard of it. That Alec Guiness bailed right the fuck out of it says a whole lot.
What was that one shit, with the kids and the Ewoks? Ewok Christmas or something? With the caves, and the kid was shooting a blaster at some point?
Thank Yaweh for Steven Speilburg. That's all I have to say...
The Star Wars program really is now needed for threats like N. Korea, rogue terrorists states, and the like. Under Reagan the SW program was deemed feasible, but was very expensive IIRC. Clearly advances over the past 15-20 years should allow for cheaper SW technology and maybe even the Dubba Death Star.
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
Of all things, the klingons made the most sense in Star Trek, including the bat'leths. Klingons are highly ceremonial, huge on dogma, tradition, and what they deem is "honorable behavior," whether or not it makes logical sense or not. If you don't think that's possible, please consult your local american news channel and look for any news story with the word "Republican" in it.
A race like the zindi will come up with a huge mega weapon to destroy your planet so that you wouldn't see it coming. However, to the Klingons it was important to their society that they be able to beam down to the surface, whip out their hand to hand weapons, and disembowel you personally. It's the honorable way to kill an enemy!
I can understand your confusion about the jedi, but Klingons are easy. The explanation of "It's just their way" works very well here, and provided entertainment value.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
I read the first slide about these, and I loved the comment about how it isn't possible to make light do things without a large gravity source or some thing to redirect it through.
That being the case then... Why does the road or a desert horizon shimmer on a hot day? Heat from the road or the sand is causing the light to shift.
And the whole faster than light travel thing.... Didn't some french researchers prove that warp drive (ala Star Trek style) was possible just a couple years back? Haven't scientists just lately made light travel at speeds faster than light in a lab (in the USA I believe)? If it's impossible, then did all these researchers lie?
I'm thinking that maybe Forbes should get a real science writer that will actually do a bit of research into things before he/she/they start putting things to print.
Further... They said that teleportation (ala Star Trek transporters) were impossible just 10 years ago. Just last year, researchers teleported light particles across a laboratory on multiple occasions. As I recall reading, there were going to start working with more massive particles on larger scales this year.
All I'm saying is that people should really stop and think before they say something is impossible. Flying was supposed to be impossible. Landing on the moon (or even people in space) was supposed to be impossible. Lasers were impossible. Your everyday microwave oven was born from science fiction and most people that work in an office setting have printers, copiers, scanners or even fax machines that all use lasers to do what they do. That bar code scanner at the grocery store uses a laser, so does the one at the fuel station and the scanner that the freindly UPS and FedEx people use.
People keep saying things are impossible, and then 5 or 50 years later someone makes it reality. Writers should think before they start labeling things like that, or they should really be prepared to get laughed right out of town when they are suddenly shown to be quite wrong. I'm not saying that any Star Wars technology is possible today, or even 50 years from today, but someone will make it or something very much like it work one day. I'd rather not be the guy that said (very publicly) that it was impossible.
Things you can say to your dog that you can't say to a girl: "How about a nice bone?"
In the Star Flops article, they mention the Star Wars Christmas album.
The song "R2-D2 We Wish You a Merry Christmas" features a young Jon Bon Jovi, a few years before he would go on to form the multi-platinum band Bon Jovi, which has now sold 100,000,000 albums.
How's that for a crappy debut?
I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
That '...made the kessel run in under 12 parsecs...' line always bothered me. Did Georgie just hear 'parsec' one day in the context of astronomy and just ASSUME it was a unit of time or what?
George fucked up, no question about it.
However, if you set the speed of light constant to 1, and define all of your other units from there, you get e=mc^2 -> e=m. Some other interesting relationships emerge as well.
One is that distance and time become the same. We have an inkling of that in our current units, such as "light-years," the distance light travels in a year. Saying something is three seconds away, with units defined such that one is always referencing lightspeed (defined as "1", remember?), is the same as saying it is three light-seconds away. Any distance could be stated as a unit of time.
Since time=space (along a 4th dimensional curve), you only need one set of units. With c=1, that unit could as well be what we have traditionally used as distance rather than time. I.e. I'll do it in two hundred billion miles would translate roughly to "I'll do it in 12.4 days".
Personally, I prefer measuring distance in units of time, but either works. Of course, George Lucas had no clue about this stuff when he picked his units, so none of this changes the fact that he didn't know what he was doing and screwed up.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Clearly they've not seen this article: http://www.howstuffworks.com/lightsaber.htm/
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
Try this. That should effectively stop the slide show.
Iesus Christus magnus est.
The german Nazis had flying saucer technology before the US. After the war the US took over the projects.
/. about several european companies that had developed working prototypes of the 3d floating tv/image holo display type technology.
http://www.vho.org/D/Geheim1/29g.htm
There were previous stories on
And of course we already have lasers and tons of other technology. But dont forget the US military has technology that most of us will never see.
Why can't (in theory, the engineering behind it is another matter) we keep a stationary wave of light with poles coincident with the ends of the blade and thus create a lightsaber? I know it would not *look* like a lightsaber (you wouldn't see the light coming through) but I'm pretty sure that if you could make such a wave, out of ,say, CO2 very powerful laser.... anything that goes in the middle would be badly burned.
thoughts?
Wouldn't it be neat if there was a book about this? It could have stuff about planets, species and races, droids, even the Force! And it could be published in 1999!
The article explains how most of the things are not possible with todays technology, well duh, of course most are not possible, but with future technology who knows. For example the light saber, whats to say we don't invent some way of controlling light particles to stop or change direction in the future? As time goes to infinity everything is possible :)
In the early 20th century samaurai with spears and swords fought off colonists with firearms. That makes lightsabers seems a bit more realistic.
I am trolling
[no comment]
*sigh* You just don't get it...
The Jedi always use their MIND CONTROL abilities to MAKE the Storm Troopers miss (except when they WANT them to fire an accurate blast so it can be deflected back). Remember, Obi-Wan said in Episode IV that all Storm Troopers have weak minds and are easily controlled. BTW, this is one of the first abilities Jedi learn, so it's done automatically at a subconscious level whenever they sense a Storm Trooper reaching for his blaster.
See, anything can be explained with enough BS.
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
Stationary waves don't work the same (and generally not at all) with energy waves.
Tesla spent his entire fortune, and the latter years of his life, proving this (though he never believed it himself) quite conclusively.
Just doesn't work.
I don't know about you but I find his lack of faith . . .
disturbing.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Really. A slideshow. How nice.
[Fade into dream sequence]
"You are part of the Frontpage Alliance and a hack! *cough* *choke* *gasp* [web designer's corpse thrown to the floor] "Take him away!"
[Fade out of dream sequence]
*sigh* Back to work I guess.
premier: First in status or importance;
If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is around to hear it, does a nerd still bitch about it?
Help me take back Slashdot. When did 'News for Nerds' become 'FUD and Conspiracy Theories for Extremist Nutjobs'?
You can actually carve a flying pig into sizzling sausage patties as it zooms by, just by using a light sabre and the Force. Mighty fine eatin'! Yum!
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
Either everybody's got a babelfish stuck in their ear, or the folks in that galaxy have the inborn ability to understand a seemingly million different sounding languages (though yes, sometimes requiring an interpreter), a totally different alphabet (see the control panels of the shuttle at the beginning of Episode 6), but yet use Arabic numbers for describing distances.
Luke was a total noob and now he is a JEDI. This just proves that anyone can become a Jedi.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
If the goal is to make something that behaves like a light sabre, it is probably possible. I think you could probably whip up a plasma jet that was contained in a magnetic field that would behave roughly like the sabres in the movies. Micronizing the power supply would be a challenge, and a plasma jet would be rather hot, so I doubt you would want to do a flip where your sabre passed under yourself.
I wrote up a little article several years back about how a pod racer is actually possible. If you get a pair of jet turbines with vectored thrust, and chained them to some sort of goofy chariot you could fly like in episode one. The catch is, you need to hook it up to a computer that can do real time physics calculations, since with no lift surface and non-fixed engine mountings, you need to make very fine adjustments to the thrust vectoring VERY quickly. That being said, I wouldn't be the first person to test dive it. Perhaps the ten thousandth person to drive it...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Those phasers/blasters/guns only work if your opponent doesnt' have the right king of shielding technology.
Jar jar or the damn ewoks?
If Star Wars was based on possible technology it wouldnt be called Sci-FI and it would probably be the most boring space battle movie of the century! Light Saber are unrealistic but it's OK! spaceship making noises in space, IMPOSSSIBLE, but would you want a battle with no sound except the breathing of the spectators in the theather.Explosion with no oxygen , still impossible, who cares.The only thing i dont want them to put in a sci-fi movie IS a totally improbable thing like breathing in space with no helmet on or spacesuit! If you want reality, rent appollo or space odyssey 2001!
Goo...goo...gaa...gaa!
If you click the stop icon, then "next" it doesn't hold the "stop" from the previous screen. Which is incredibly annoying. You need to click "slow" several times to make it useable.
Or, better yet, I need a firefox extension that disables meta-refresh but lets you activate it manually for certain pages. Webshots is terrible about this.
The previous cousin post had it right - a terrible interface designed to force unclickable ad impressions.
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
From the article:
Since Star Wars characters don't seem to have a problem standing, walking around or running on those ships, it stands to reason that their civilization, as Lucas wrote it, is familiar with how to manipulate gravity without the bother of needings any large gravitational masses. If so, space warping might be accomplished by the same means by just increasing the power of the force created.
For us poor little earthlings, however, manipulating gravity is still something that seems more in the arena of science-fiction rather than science-fact. But if all those Grant Unification Theory yuppies ever manage to get it figured out, then we might well discover that artificial gravity is not much different than artificial magnetism. If so, a space warp or "hyperdrive" technology might well be possible.
I would just like to thank the idiot that coded this as a slide show, instead of a rgular web page. Yes, it is much better for you to decide when the page should change, instead of letting me click when I am done reading. And going to the next page every five flaming seconds was obviously the correct interval.
I hate people.
Thomas Galvin
Not the 1968 movie, but the KUBRICK movie
Firefly the series got it right too.
Won't know about the movie until I see it though.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
Jesus, who in the hell designed this "slide-show" crap! They should immediately append a link to their own freaking site!
The real silver bullet to good programs is caffeine; lots and lots of caffeine! *twitch, twitch*
They mention this in the article:
Here's where you can find the paper mentioned above, in various formats:
The Warp Drive: Hyper-Fast Travel Within General Relativity
I was fighting Anakin with a light saber, and I know it worked very well, which slicing and dicing. I can't understand why it wouldn't work in real life.
WTF with saying holograms are impossible because they have to be on a flat surface? We already have displays that rotate, where you don't really see the rotating mirror but you see the 3d image. Also, it should be easy to make a system that uses a matrix of 'holographic dust motes' to reflect parts of the image in 3-space; it's not like the holographs in Star Wars are life-like anyway.
...you must be the 1 guy who bought it. =]
-Valiss
Mod me down if you must, but I am on a grammatical warpath that cannot be stopped.
Star Wars technology and it's scientific feasibility.
ITS scientific feasibility, not IT'S scientific feasibility. The former is possessive, and the latter means "it is scientific feasibility," or even "it has scientific feasibility," neither of which makes sense in the sentence.
STOP THIS, people! I am tired of net.illiteracy! I'm sick of:
It's for its
definately
for all intensive purposes
"dribble" when the author means "drivel"
"penultimate," used to mean "ultimate" by someone who thinks "penultimate" is longer and therefore more ultimate than ultimate
"myself" when the author means "me" or "I"
Comma splices
Run-on sentences
refusal to make the extraordinarily difficult trip to the shift key
DAMN, this crap PISSES ME OFF! We all make mistakes, but there are TOO MANY, and we need editors to EDIT and CORRECT! AAAH!
Lightsaber
This would be a rod-shaped energy field that is emitted by the lightsaber base. To use my own current physics knowledge, I would fill it with a plasma.
This doesn't solve the aspect of lightsaber blades repelling each other, but it's close.
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
The power to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the force.
but would you want to.
/. has a pointer to form, procedure, process for NIH OR DOD proposals for way out there stuff like this, please 'share'. Yes, I want to do it with a dog or capucian monkey first.
i have figured out a scheme that looks good for loading your mind/soul into hardware. If any
immortality and timeless exploration of space, here we come
I wrote a paper on the same subject when I was in 8th grade for Science Class - in 1978.
Just make a laser gun that shoots perfectly unless you actually aim it "at" somebody.
Turk: Let's play Steak. J.D.: What? Turk: Steak. The 1st person to finish their steak is the winner of Steak. -Scrubs
MOD UP - HILARIOUS
Or you could just shoot people with the very powerful laser..
I wonder. If we posted this discussion thread on Craigslist and indicated that it is permissable to beam it to outer space, what would Luke think when he read that it's impossible for light sabres to exist.
Darth: I have you now, young Skywalker.
Luke: It is time for me to finish this once and for all.
[Pulls out light sabre handle and pushes the button]
Pppppppphhhhhhhhhhhhhhhllllllllllllbt
Luke: Oh no! I knew I shouldn't have used those cheaper AA batteries!
Darth: [Maniacal laughter] I have you now! I will put you in eternal torment by inflicting the worst punishment known to pre-Jedi man: Barry Manilow on perpetual shuffle on my i-Pod. Bwahahahahaha...
Luke: NOOOooo...
I believe that "IT'S" is a contraction for "IT IS", not "IS IT".
Silly AC.
Why exactly does the site give you only about four seconds before moving on?
I've hit the 'back' button about five times, and still haven't managed to read page one.
Get a decent web designer guys...
I remember reading in one of the Star Wars novels or such that the blade is not a single beam of light, but an energy arc that swoops out and returns back to the handle. It's so tight that it looks like a single beam.
You know one of those Frankstein's lab devices where the electricity bolt flows up two metal spikes? Imagine that to some kind of extreme.
You never expect irony, do you?
Want to be a professional wrestler? Visit www.iyfwrestling.com
@iyfwrestling
I love how the "experts" chime in with today's knowledge and say that something is "Impossible." Did they forget that a little more than 500 years ago the world was flat, and that was a scientific FACT at the time! The sound barrier could never be broken said scientists prior to 1947 when Chuck Yeager did it in the Bell X-1.
I love the imagination and innovative thought coming out of our leading scientific minds. Encumbered by igits, we pressed on.
"He pulls a knife you pull a gun, he sends one of yours to the hospital you send one of his to the morgue! That's the Chicago way."
His midichloridians are off the scale...the LOW end of the scale. I sense much fear, and fear leads to anger, and anger leads to suffering, and suffering leads to martyrdom, and martyrdom leads to apotheosis, and apotheosis leads to deification, and deification leads to Mormonism, and Mormonism leads to apostasy, and apostasy leads to uncertainty, and uncertainty leads to fear. Perhaps he can bring balance to the Skeptical Side of the Force.
To avoid having the pages advance, turn off JavaScript, and try these links individually:
r warscienceslide.html r warscienceslide_2.html r warscienceslide_3.html r warscienceslide_4.html r warscienceslide_5.html
http://forbes.com/technology/2005/05/10/cx_mh_sta
http://forbes.com/technology/2005/05/10/cx_mh_sta
http://forbes.com/technology/2005/05/10/cx_mh_sta
http://forbes.com/technology/2005/05/10/cx_mh_sta
http://forbes.com/technology/2005/05/10/cx_mh_sta
There is a slide 6 but it's devoid of useful content, and broken to boot.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I remember a cool science teacher in High School getting people to write papers on the science of Star Wars. Rather than do anything particularly scientific, I gathered all the fictional information I could find on the ion engines in TIE fighters. I did not do well.
Of course, ion engines do exist now. I want some marks back.
Also: Bob's Quick Guide to Its and It's.
Karma: Chameleon (Mostly affected by the 1980s)
"...light sabers, like the famous laser sword Skywalker wielded, would never work.
Laser beams are made of light, and they continue until they hit something. They cannot be fashioned into sword blades a mere 2 feet long. A bigger problem: Swords made of light would pass right through one another. Instead of having a swordfight, they would slice each other immediately in half."
Fact: Lightsabers extend for a few feet and then terminate.
Fact: Lasers do not.
Conclusion A: Lightsabers could never work.
Conclusion B: Lightsabers are not laser swords! Duh!
Geesh! They make it sound like Luke and Vader are dueling with flashlights!
Y'know, it's articles like these that the Wright Brothers went up against. The authors should not say something "can't be done" based on a technology that clearly isn't right for it.
I have no idea what fictional energy lightsabers are supposed to use. Saying they're impossible because lasers don't work that way, though, is downright stupid.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized!
The simplest truth is that every year we disprove a limitation that stood in the past. Next year I suspect the same.
All our science is realtive to our observations up to this point. I would assume that until we find the grand unifcation equation, or the Hitchihikers Guide to the Galaxy, that it's more likely that the fact that we can imagine it, implies (or is it infers in this context)that there is some possibility of it just based on the fact that we can conceptualize it.
Remeber that within some of the readers lifetimes space travel was sciene fiction and impossible. There was such impossibilities as Nukes came to be. Who would, 80 years ago fathomed that 2 softball sized chunks of material could in fact blow a city away? And long before those, the world was flat, the sky a dome, and the stars in the sky jewels set in the dome of heaven by Gods who had nothing better to do then turn into swans and have sex with hotties.
"With one language (math) that which man could imagine was..."
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
The Storm Troopers couldn't hit the side of a barn from inside the barn with the doors closed.
When Leia was shot in Return of the Jedi, it was because "Hands" Solo had given a rebel in disguise a wad of the folding stuff to help him out. You watch that bit carefully (try slo-mo), you'll see what I mean.
For example if Annakin and Padme had had access to contraceptive technology Annakin might never have turned to the dark side and billions of lives would have been saved.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
I have the manual and you are WRONG!!!!!! Special Effect? What? are you living in the real world?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Did you ever notice the ground transportation they use?
Levitating carts pulled by animals.
Star travel and anti-gravity and they need animals for propulsion?!
I -Think- that's the name of it.
Anyway, it's a combat rule that states that if someone with a blade attacks someone with a holstered gun, and is less than 27 feet away, they WILL cut the person with the gun.
Now, this doesn't mean the person with the blade won't keel over from having half a clip in him after cutting the guy with the gun, but unless the guy with the gun eyesockets the blade user or is carrying a VERY high calibur handgun, he IS going to get cut.
Also, unarmed combat is still extremely important in training for the Marines and other fighting units, and it focuses on disarming armed opponents.
You know why bullpup rifles/SMGs (bullpup means that the barrel is mostly inside of the gun instead of sticking out) are popular for room clearing? Ease of movement is one thing, but also because someone would have a hell of a time grabbing the barrel and directing fire away from themselves in close quarters!
If I could have anything out of the Star Wars flics, I would want that holographic chess set from the "new hope".
That's right. We don't need correct punctuation on Slashdot, just consistent!
I like some of the Star Wars references in the article text itself:
"Lightsaber: That's impossible!"
"Lucas was said to be so ashamed of this program that he has systematically hunted down and destroyed every copy he can get his hands on."
Nice to see an immersed writer.
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
[*]To those that know such things...
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
"Your father's Lightsaber. It is the weapon of the Jedi Knight. Not as clumsy or random as a blaster; an elegant weapon, for a more civilzed age."
- Obi-wan Kenobi, Outspoken proponent of the Force
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
People forget the intemidation factor of a lightsaber. A blaster is one thing, but a long arc of energy that slices and dices definitly would cause pause.
In God we trust, all others require data.
Sites like howstuffworks are stooping so low as to produce articles on How Lightsabers Work mingled among what is considered to be more credible material.
The Star Wars Technical Commentaries
This site has been around for a while; written by a PhD student with too much time on his hands, it contains painstakingly detailed scientific analysis of all things Star Wars.
WAnt to know about the Endor Holocaust? Curious about the exact size of the two Death Stars? Or perhaps you'd like to read about hyperspace ("Phenomenological study and physical rationalisation of superluminal travel"), or the injuries of Darth Vader, or (my favorite) military walkers of the Empire.
There's months of engrossing reading there. A fascinating site.
the person who wrote the lightsaber slide never read this.
Okay, let me get this straight. Someone wasted their time trying to investigate the "feasibility" of the technology in Star Wars?
Is this the same fictional universe where sound travels through space, those w/ high levels of "midi-chlorians" (miniature life forms which purportedly inhabit living cells) can control matter and the weak-minded, and girls go around in metal bikinis?
It always amazes me how movies like 2001, which actually attempted to adhere to technology that could really be developed, and Star Wars, which is as much fantasy as science-fiction, are grouped together in the public's mind.
And when is Forbes going to stop focusing on crap like this, and maybe cover why the government can't get 25-year old technology like the Space Shuttle working correctly? Light-sabers? Hyperdrives? Bah, we can't even get people to the Moon anymore!
It's significantly better that to have one and not need it than it is to need it and not have it.
Are possible. Using gases intersperced with light. You'd be able to control the light dimensions ans speed. You can slow light down to the speed of a bicycle. One doesn't have to modify the laws of physics, just bend them a little with additional elements involved. Using light as the only component to each, you'll fail each time, but certain heavy gases give you a semi-solid solution to the light problem.
Google is out of business as soon as PETA finds the location of their pigeon farm and circulates the photographs.
Verbing Nouns.
Primary character, other than Pooh and his friends, is a heffalump named Lumpy. And yes, I've seen it multiple times with my three kids.
Actually, it was a rather enjoyable movie, and when it comes out in DVD in two weeks, I'll purchase it
for my family.
Do not look into lightsabre with remaining eye.
The sword fighter doesn't need to deflect bullets. He just needs to get into sword range before shots are fired. Once he is in sword range it fairly easy to keep the gun pointed away from you. (This of course means you change fighting technique a little) After a couple good hits to the barrel the gun is useless, and will explode if fired. Then the sword fighter has a completely unarmed opponent to finish off at his leasure.
The hard part is getting into sword range. You can run 10 yards in the time it takes to aim the gun, but not much more. If the guy with a gun is 50 yards away you are dead. Nobody with a gun will let a sword get that close to them when expecting trouble.
If 2 jedis can both see into the future and one tried to shoot the other, will the other be able to block it using his light saber?
......
Jedi A seeing that Jedi B will block high would shoot lower. Jedi B sees that A changed his mind and will block lower. Jedi A sees that B sees A
Check out Pickover's book "The Paradox of God and the Science of Omniscience" for similarly intriguing paradoxes.
I know that the majority of scripts from Voyager and Enterprise could be considered deadly weapons of mass dissatisfaction.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Whomever designed that stupid slideshow app that they seem to be in love with should be fired. Whomever commisioned the dev who designed it should be fired too.
What a wonderful user experience... having the page change on it's own while you're in the middle of a sentence. Real slick.
If anyone needed an example of how not to design a UI, this is it.
http://www.screamingpickle.com/members/StarWarsKid /
:)
By the way, if you watch Arrested Development (best show on TV, IMO) but haven't seen the above, it will help explain a few hilarious scenes.
Never held a gun?
Dude, 11 years in the Army. Unit small arms precision shooting team coach, a 2-time member of the Area pistol shooting team.
I've put tens of thousands of rounds downrange and taught hundreds of soldiers how to shoot.
And I'm telling you now that you never shoot to selectively wound. Centre of mass, squeeze the trigger, bad guy fall down.
Oh, while we're at it - college fencing team too. Epee, where the whole baody is a target, and we routinely aimed at wrists, toes, upper arms, etc.
Care to try again?
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
The lightsaber analysis was pretty short sighted. A lightsaber, according to the way stuff works in the movie, would have to work like this:
Take a shield and make it into a cylinder that is closed at one end then shoot a laser beam into it.
In the movies, tangible stuff like flesh can pass through a shield but laser weapons cannot right? So that being the case, someone's arm could pass through the shield that contains the laser only to be ultimately chopped off by the laser itself.
Comments?
These people claiming they can dismiss the feasablity of tech in either the Star Wars or Star Trek universes really have an over-inflated views of their own scientific prowess. As if they could be expected to understand technology that's centuries ahead of ours or that they are completely versed in theoretical physics enough to make these determinations. They should stick to doing what they do best and not pretending to be able to see into the future. We'd do better with a gypsy palm reader making the call.
The Star Flops section got me to wondering about a 33 1/3 record that was released many moons ago called "Encounter on Ord Mandell", that occured between IV and V. Why is it the internet is rife with copies of the Christmas special, but I can't seem to track down audio of this (supposedly good) peice of Star Wars history?
...the tech we see on Slashdot. Fully functioning prosthetic arms, self-rep robots, quantum computers, nanomachines, spintronics. Sometimes the tech on Star Wars seems more plausible than the stuff I read here.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
"In fact, the photon, or light particle, is renowned in quantum physics for its standoffish refusal to interact with anything."
Wrong. The photon is renowned to interact with everything that has charge, that is, pretty every thing.
Better to stick with good science fiction than with bad science.
Ok, OK, uncle!
I was thinking about parrying real bullets with a real sword, and forgot that scene in the movie with the non-lethal zapper doohicky. It was a long time ago, OK?
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Huh? What's infamous about it? Curious, since I'm pretty much in the loop on infamous VCS games.
At the time, it was well reviewed. Nothing like the real infamous games: E.T. Pac Man, and Custer's Revenge.
So am I the only one that actually *liked* Jedi Arena for the 2600?
Need Geek Rock? Try The Franchise!
While I appreciate the "esc" key - and would mod you up for mentioning it - it doesn't solve the problem. Because if you click "next" it starts all over again. So it's at least an extra keystroke on every single page load.
The problem isn't that you can STOP it from reloading, it's that I want to SUPPRESS it from having automatic reload. I want a setting where it loads a page, and when it finishes it automatically stops the page.
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
This sort of story always remind of the U.S. Patent office announcing that they planned to close down because "everything that can be invented, has been invented." That was ~1896.
I think Forbes was lacking in the Technology Dept.
Lightsabers
Not possible? I think most StarWars geeks, physics buffs, and George Lucas already understood the properties of light. That's why most techie sites refer to it as an "wave arc" weapon. Meaning it's not a "laser sword" more of some kind of energy/matter stream that loops onto it self. More probable, yes? PS, with all the ILM technology, why are not the lightsaber shadows removed, hmm?Do a google search on building a lightsaber, lightsaber physics. You'll find ton's of pages.
Hyperdrives
So so SO many theories on this one. Most won't work. Some are really really probable. Yes, look at the Physics of Star Trek. Read Michio Kaku. Do your homework!
3D Spacial Holograms Not Possible?! WHAT! Like almost here! A guy has already built a floating 2D projection monitor. Read this article
IO2 Techlology
FogScreen Inc.
...I'm crushed to find out that's all a lie...I'm going to go home right now and fall on my light sabre...
I remember this feature from a recent Forbes article on /. (here's the actual link)
At least this time they have some of the text within view (to the right of the image) so that the user knows that there's extra stuff being missed. Check out the slideshow/article from the above linked thread to see what I mean - you could easily miss the entire description for each item.
A potentially nice feature being routinely misapplied. At least we can learn from their mistake.
Note: I'm viewing at 1024x768.
This is not my sig.
As I understand, that's one way of thinking of how the inside of a laser cavity works: set up a confocal (in some cases) gaussian beam. I think it's like a standing wave with nodes at the mirrors--it's been a while, though.
And you're right: the energy density inside of a gain medium is really really high. Problem is that you can't get anything in there because it stops the laser action instantly--and, for some lasers, the gain medium is solid.
It's about accomplishing a geopolitical outcome. Even putting aside the moral considerations for a moment, strategic bombing is a remarkably crude tool for doing that. Sure, America could have turned Iraq into a radioactive wasteland, but it would have cratered its economy as OPEC declared an oil embargo on the West in retaliation...
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
OK, let's make this a little clearer.
:) But all else being equal, *because my weapon has a defence as well as an attack function*, I can elect to attempt to withold lethal force if I choose not to kill you. Plus I have the opportunity to communicate with you while we are sparring, and perhaps you can be dissuaded verbally.
.22 rimfire will kill a person stone dead with one shot, and other times somebody will take a dozen 9mm rounds and still keep coming. So it behooves me, if I want to survive, to get as many bullets into you as I can.
Let's examine the (hypothetical of course) case where you and I come across each other, and we're both armed.
In most non-open-battlefield encounters, the distance between us is going to be somewhere between 10 to 25 metres.
Let's start with swords. Could be epee, could be sabre, could be katana, could be lightsabre - it doesn't really matter.
Barring misfortune, both of us should be able to unsheath our swords and come en garde before the other could close the distance. At 10m maybe if one of us is an iado expert perhaps that's close enough to attack straight out of the draw.... but in any case, odds are that we we be able to come en garde before closing the distance.
And that means that we will have the opportunity to defend against an attack made by the other. And in swordfighting, defense is stronger than attack - more points are made on the riposte than on the initial attack, as you tend to be more open during the attack than while defending.
That means we are going to have the opportunity to size each other up, come up with a plan, perhaps even *talk* to each other before commiting ourselves to a plan of action. A lot depends on relative skill of course; but if we are similarly skilled and I don't plan on making an attack, I can probably hold you off for quite some time if I restrict myself to defence only. Accordingly, if I decide to wound or disable only, I can withold the attack until such time as an opportunity to wound/disarm presents itself.
If your skill level is higher than mine, perhaps that opportunity will never come. Perhaps my clumsy defence will open up an avenue, and I wind up skewered.
Now same scenario, but we have pistols instead of swords.
This is a different story. There is NO way for me to parry a pistol shot. There is NO need to close distance - at 10m, I can fire 5 shots in 3 seconds and keep all 5 rounds in an 1" circle (at least, I could once upon a time...) At 25m, that circle expands to about 3" - which still fits nicely on your chest. Plus the only physical effort you need to plug me is to point the gun at me and sucessfully pull the trigger - unlike the sword, which requires more physical effort and skill to execute a successful attack.
In this scenario, my only hope is to get my gun on line and firing before you can do the same, and do devestating, incapacitating damage that puts you down and keeps you down, without having the ability to get a shot off at me.
In real-world terms, that means shooting you centre of mass as many times as I can as soon as I can. Bullets are funny; sometimes a little
Now I do have a few other shots availible to me other than just centre of mass. I can shoot for kneecap, hip, head, and the old Western standby, gun.
Shooting at the gun is a ridiculously low percentage shot. I might be able to make that shot if you struck a Charlie's Angels pose and held it for a second or two, but there's no way I'm hitting your gun if it is coming out of a holster and being pointed at me. That only happens in the movies.
Hip and kneecap are attactive because a solid hit on either drops you - and you won't be running after me any time soon. But neither option stops you from shooting me once you are on the floor - or even on the way down to the ground.
And head is lethal, and a lower percentage shot than centre of mass.
That (if you'll pardon the pun) is the double-edge of the gun.
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
I imagine if someone did have a grenade then the jedi would simply flick it away with their mind.
"sweet dreams are made of this..."
Don't forget the Lensman series by EE "Doc" Smith. They were also a bit of the inspiration for Star Wars, but on a much larger scale. Star Wars had the Death Stars, but the Lensman had fleets of mobile planets. In another amusing twist, the heavy vaccum armor that every soldier has got powerful enough to delfect any ranged laser/energy blast, leading to the rise of the space axe. This fine weapon served the "slashing things to bits" function of the lightsaber, but anyone capable of lifting one could wield one.
But as soon as Qui-gon gives a name to that link, all the fair-weather-fans start rioting in the streets.
It's not a question of someone being a fair-weather-fan, it's a question of Lucas being a twit with literary devices.
The Force as a metaphor is a powerful idea -- not so much the idea that nature emits a magic, but that there is something to be gained by getting in synch with nature in a world governed by technology. Creating a vague link between life and the force does the trick. By talking about there being some sort of microscopic entity behind the force that can be determined via a blood test, we're being given a literal explanation that serves no real purpose except to dilute the power of the metaphor. The audience was already willing to suspend disbelief on the idea that the force exists. Why toy with that?
Plus, look at the simple explanation that Obi Wan gave Luke, and then look at the impromptu faux-biology explanation that was given to "Ani". It was ludicrous, totally self-conscious, and its poor execution made people question what the heck Lucas was trying to get at by using the Force in the first place.
It's tinkering on par with making Han shoot first -- it insults the intelligence of the audience. We were already willing to accept that it's possible for Han to go from shoot-first-take-names-later to somebody who risked his own neck for a worthy cause. Han knocking out Darth Vader at the end of SW:ANH is one of the more meaningful character developments in the whole series. Making Han reactive rather than proactive in the bar scene, it's as though Lucas was saying, "You're just too stupid to believe such an awesome character development at the end of the movie, so I'll help you out by changing Han's character."
Those things, and others, went a long way to destroying my faith in Lucas's ability as an artist. That's what bothered me. It's like finding out that William Faulkner was contemplating turning Go Down, Moses! into a broadway musical.
You are seeing laser beams in outer fucking space and you can hear things in a vaccume.
Star Wars is many things, scientific is not one of them.
Remember folks, slashdot doesn't have a -1 "disagree" moderation!
OK, if you have a gun, and I have a sword, and we assume the aha! scenario where we bump into each other at 10-25m, then I'm in deep poodoo. My *only* chance is to try and rapidly close the distance and get inside your gun hand before you can get on line and start firing.
:) But at that kind of speed, there's no time for selectively wounding. Gun comes up on the sight line, the sights hit the centre of the target and the weapon fires.
That's low percentage if you have any sort of draw at all. Just for grins, I tried this out - I have an air pistol that can be fired indoors, safely, and that does a pretty good job of simulating a Browning Hi-Power in all but the need to rack the slide. If we assume a round up the spout, the hammer forward, and the safety on, I was able to get a round centre of mass on a man-sized target at 10m from a cold draw in about a second.
Not bad for an old man of 35
There's no time for much more than reflex, because the target is closing quickly, and if he gets withing lunge distance, you're hosed. It's hard to parry well with a pistol.... not more than once, anyway.
Someone less practiced will be slower, but could probably still be counted on to get at least one round off before the distance was closed. And that round is going to be centre of mass, and taking a hit centre of mass is likely to be lethal.
Keep in mind we're talking about fairly low-power handgun rounds here too. Step it up to rifle or assault weapon calibres, and the damage gets MUCH worse. A 5.56 NATO round hits very, very hard out to about 600m. At 25m, its practically a cannon. A shot to a leg is liable to take the leg off. A centre of mass shot will have a little teeny entry hole, and a great big honkin' exit hole. You would be hard pressed to just "wound" even a willing target.
The downside to a rifle is that it takes longer to sweep the same arc as a pisol, and the muzzle is farther away from the body, meaning that the arc a swordsman needs to get inside is longer, meaning he has a bit better chance.
Anyway, try this one on - we both have pistols. You have yours out; mine is holstered. We encounter each other AHA! and you have a second in which to act before I shoot you.
You ain't shooting the gun out of my hand there Tex, so pretty much the only nonlethal shot left open to you is leg or hip. Let's say you get that shot off. If you miss, you die, because I'm shooting centre of mass because I ain't letting you get off a follow-up shot. If you hit, I'm going down, but I have a decent chance of still hitting you as I fall over, and if we assume no freak accidents like me banging my head on the way down, *I can still shoot at you while I'm down*
For that matter, if you manage to hit an arm or a shoulder, I can still shoot at you with the off hand (with reduced accuracy)
Somebody armed with a firearm is still dangerous until the weapon is out of ammunition or they are incapacitated - and an extemity hit probably won't do the job. If you shoot to wound, firstly you stand an excellent chance at missing entirely, and secondly, you stand an excellent chance of being killed by your (wounded) target's follow-on shot.
I am a very good pistol shot, trained specifically to shoot accurately very quickly. If you oblige me by standing still 25m away, I'll hit whatever extemity you like. At 10-15meters, I could probably shoot individual fingers off a stationary target. But moving? No way. Running at me, carrying a weapon? Centre of mass, baby.
As far as longer weapons... you ever have an axe head fly off when you are chopping wood? It doesn't fly at the tree; it takes off at the tangent point to the arc of the swing when the connection is broken. If I parry a swinging halbard or whatever with a lightsabre, taking the head of the weapon off, it will fly outboard of me, not at me.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Now I can see the uses of a bayonet, and we sure trained with them too. But:
1. if you look back at WW2, the way urban combat was fought was not charging with a bayonet in every room. It was by throwing in a grenade before they lobbed one at you. If you were lucky, now you'd have a room full of enemy body parts. If you were unlucky, they had a stairwell full of your (and your squad's) body parts.
2. It's not _that_ hard to shoot someone up close. Anything from SMG to assault rifle means you can basically put enough bullets in the air until someone falls down. Now you might have a problem if you're within 1m of the enemy, but then again, you probably shot each other long before you were anywhere near that distance.
And even if we're talking bolt action rifles, even in WW2 there were ways around their being unwieldy in close combat. E.g., the Germans liberally issued pistols (including any pistols captured from the enemy) to soldiers. Whereas the Soviets produced unholy quantities of SMGs.
3. It's probably just me, but I didn't find the assault rifle with bayonet to be that handy a close combat weapon. To be honest, in really cramped quarters I think I'd be quicker and more accurate just holding the bayonet in my hand. I can slash and jab with it about 3 times in the time it takes it do one of those "and step and *thrust*" maneuvers.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I mean, wasn't it about 40 years ago that it was stated that the smallest computer to effectively do anything useful would have to be the size of a building?...oh wait...that still holds true. I haven't found a useful purpose for this computer yet...
And in 1890's, the quote of "Everything that can be invented, has been invented". Perhaps he was right... Maybe we should have stopped then.
These Experts all need to just STFU in my opinion. That's all it is, my opinion. Don't say something CANNOT be done...someone will do it. Maybe Bill Gates! (hahaha)
Firearms from the 1300, and in fact everything before the minnie ball (i.e., the rifled barrel) were pathetically inaccurate and short range.
There's a reason why in all independence war movies you see them walking up to 100 paces, lining up, firing from there, then charging with the bayonets. Because that was the range of those muskets, and even at that range it was so inaccurate as to make the whole thing mostly for suppression.
It also took a long time for those guns to start to penetrate a knight's armour. You can look at history and see one moment when the full plate was discarded in favour of concentrating all weight all in a super-thick breastplate and helmet. That was the moment when finally they started to penetrate a knight's full plate armour.
So basically knights continued to exist as long as they were still a formidable force on the battlefield. That's all there is to it. They could and did stand a hell of a chance against guns, which is why they continued to be used.
And IMHO you're also mixing up two _very_ different events. The knights as nobility, and the rise and fall of that institution, is _not_ the same thing as the rise and fall of cavalry as a weapon of war.
Cavalry had survived long after the aristocratic institution of knighthood had fallen. Cavalry was used as late as WW2, and sometimes even successfully. Even _Germany_, otherwise remembered by everyone for panzer warfare, still had cavalry units in the 30's.
Cavalry survived that late because as late as WW1 it had still been a damn useful and powerful weapon of war.
So basically chivalry and medieval honour had _nothing_ to do with it. Knights didn't go obsolete overnight in 1300, simply because guns in 1300 were just not yet enough to stop a cavalry charge, that's all.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
You are still assuming that the fighters are going to have your level of skill. Remember that this discussion was about the novice fighter. For a novice, a gun would be safer to use and be possible to incapacitate. A novice with a sword (especially with a lightsaber) is just asking for trouble. Also, I have never disagreed with your battle simulations, just in your statement that a gun only has one purpose. That said, in your discussion on sword/pistol:
If we assume a round up the spout, the hammer forward, and the safety on, I was able to get a round centre of mass on a man-sized target at 10m from a cold draw in about a second.
There's no time for much more than reflex, because the target is closing quickly, and if he gets withing lunge distance, you're hosed. It's hard to parry well with a pistol.... not more than once, anyway.
No time for more than reflex? Reflex actions occur in less than a second. Assume for an extreme that we (with the gun) are facing a speed runner already running towards us a full clip with sword out. The fastest recorded running speed is ~10 meters/second. If we were to turn around and there is a silent speeding guy ten meters away there would still be time for more than reflex, but barely. And that's an absolute extreme. (Well no, the absolute extreme we don't see the guy because to not hear someone running 10 meters/sec we're having some kind of hearing problem and we're dead.) If we saw him 20 meters away: two seconds. Now there's enough time to hit legs.
Since we're at extremes; think about this with swords, the closing time would be the same and there would still not be enough time for much more than reflex at the max. It gets worse with a sword because we'd have to wait for the attacker to close (and be thus lethal) before responding.
In all but these extremes, there would be plenty of time for the gun wielder to hit the sword wielder. Come across, gun (blaster) in holster, sword in sheath (or turned off as with a lightsaber---which is what we were discussing remember). That blaster can come out as fast as the sword, and closing time is moot.
In all of these cases we are assuming that the attackers are both aware of each other. You have already stated that a gun can incapacitate at range; that's all I was pointing out.
As far as longer weapons... you ever have an axe head fly off when you are chopping wood? It doesn't fly at the tree; it takes off at the tangent point to the arc of the swing when the connection is broken. If I parry a swinging halbard or whatever with a lightsabre, taking the head of the weapon off, it will fly outboard of me, not at me.
Exactly, the axe flies past the tree because I would have essentially missed the tree---the only way for it to hit would be to fly backwards. But think about the trajectory a flail or hauberk if I were swinging at you. Sure if you managed to hit the weapon if it's at or before it was at 135 degrees relative to our sight-line, or were able to close fast enough for the swing to be missing you anyway, then the weapons trajectory would fly right past you. But in that case you wouldn't need to parray because the threat is behind you and my gut is rather exposed. If the swing was past the was past that point (when many parries happen) then the tangent line would be pointing at you.
I suppose that with special training and jedi skill then "safe" parry techniques could be used.
Man, you STILL don't get this.
I'm telling you that *I*, trained in combat pistol shooting, which emphasized speed over almost all else, could not reliably shoot to wound in all but the most artificial of circumstances.
A novice with a pistol is not going to be any better than that. If they *try* to shoot to wound, they will most likely miss - with the end result being either a clean miss if they miss outboard, or a lethal body hit if they miss inboard.
Two novices with pistols who encounter each other will blaze away at each other and have a high miss rate (you see this all the time in security camara videos) It's not uncommon for novices - even trained police officers, for that matter - to empty a pistol without scoring a hit, especially at longer ranges.
If they do hit, they have a good chance of it being lethal, because it is the nature of guns to be lethal. You cannot "pull" a bullet. You cannot shoot someone "softly". You either hit him or you don't, and the amount of lethal area is a good proportion of the total area.
Novice vs expert, the expert will put a couple of rounds centre of mass, and the novice will go down.
Novice pistol vs novice sword, my money is on the pistol. A novice with a sword is more of a danger to himself than anybody else, because it is the nature of swords to require skill to use effectively. The swordman is in great danger though, because the pistol shooter is highly unlikely to have enough control to be able to effectively shoot to wound, given that even experts find that very difficult to pull off.
Novice pistol vs expert sword raises the odds of success for the swordsman, but probably not enough to tip the balance, unless the range is VERY close and the swordsman VERY good. Woe to the mugger who suprises an Iado expert wearing his sword at close range!
Finally, pistol/blaster vs Jedi (and keep in mind please that the Jedi are FICTIONAL) The Jedi is by definition a supreme swordsman, such that he is actually capable of deflecting bullets with his sword, and one assumes undestands the likely result of cutting up the opponant's weapon mid-swing. With that extreme level of skill, the Jedi now has a defense against the gun (where another gunner has no defense save to hit first and hard) and thus has the ability to choose a more nonlethal response if he deems it appropriate.
Get it now?
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Something somebody wrote on a whiteboard at work..
STAR WARS DARK SIDE INITIATION RITES
1. Give a Gungan a wedgie
2. Ewok target practice (Pull!)
3. BBQ a bantha using force lightning
4. Post to the Light Side message board mocking size of Yoda's lightsaber
5. Voiceover work for CNN
6. Write test plan for the Death Star laser cannons
7. Shave the empire logo on the dark side of a Wookiee.
One issue that I rarely hear is the fact that the Star Wars ships fly as though they are airplanes cutting through the atmosphere. From an X-wing up to the Star Destroyers, all of the ships have big engines that would thrust them forward, but would not allow for any turning in space. In other words, airplanes use the air around their wings to lift, dive, turn left and right. In space, of course, there is no air, but the space ships behave just like airplanes would behave in an atmosphere. This is impossible. The Star Wars space ships don¦t seem to have any noticeable thrusters on the front end of the ship that could give them maneuverability in space. Unless there is some magical field surrounding each ship that helps them to maneuver, their current designs are implausible in space. I¦ll give the X-wing some slack because it¦s a ship that can enter the atmosphere as well as space (so it could use its wings in the atmosphere like an airplane). But what about the Millennium Falcon? It only has a big thruster in the back. How does it maneuver in zero gravity and zero air resistance? That being said, I¦m a total Star Wars nerd and I worship the ground George Lucas walks on. I¦m super stoked about Episode III. f
Health Insurance Quotes
If you notice that Luke had his hand cut off by his Fath^H^H^H^HVader, and did not so much as receive a warm kiss from Leia, you'll see that having a limb cut off is not a big deal in that faraway and ancient galaxy. Protetic replacements seem to be cheap and easy to install in SW's universe.WTF, you might just #emerge bionic left-hand there.
Where is that guy who'd die defending what I had to say when I need him?
Personal shield to protect against high speed projectile weapons but vulnerable to slow bladed attacks. Don't hit a sheild with a lazgun or a deadly reaction takes place.
Every weapon has a strength and a vulnerability. Someone skilled with a light saber can deflect a laser attack but must be within striking range to inflict any damage. On the other hand, someone armed with a laser gun is purely offensive and has no defense against a light saber or otherwise.
"Form should follow function...unless it's just plain ugly."