• Gladaed@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    “Science Ship” sure buddy, operating independently in remote locations with light to medium intensity combat situations is a mere science ship.

    • Kahlenar@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Picard: Starfleet is not a military organization

      Dominion: Bonjour

      Sisko: jk the Klingons are our besties

    • Speiser0@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      light to medium intensity combat situations

      Are you kidding me? The Enterprise encounters god-like beings on a regular basis, and still manages to subsist after all those episodes, only having lost a very large bunch of its low-ranked crew members. The death star would easily be dealt with in a single episode (but if possible without killing all the people living on the death star, as that would be super cruel).

    • mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Larry Niven subtweeted this in some Known Space books. The protagonists’ ship in Ringworld has a wide variety of tools and equipment that are not technically weapons. Including a mining laser that once punched a hole so deep into a moon that it developed a stable atmosphere. Accordingly, the main character christens it the Lying Bastard.

      It spends the whole first novel upside-down in a ditch.

  • DudePluto@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Who would win, a B-17 Flying Fortress with no bombs, or the USS Missouri?

    Edit: Also the Missouri can fly too, but it’s a little less maneuverable, usually

    • ShimmeringKoi [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      Which, why doesnt it have bombs? I know the Falcon isn’t a warship, but I like to think that if I were in Han Solo’s position, I would keep at least one bomb around just for leverage.

      • Sai Somsphet@lemmy.zip
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        1 year ago

        He dumped those for smuggling room.

        Lando had missiles loaded on his version of the falcon, and missiles were used in combat in the older books. But I believe it was referenced at some point that Han dumped the missiles for more room.

        The empire also specifically outlawed certain weapons on ships to make civilians more reliant on the imperial navy, mearning heavier lasers and the more capable missles were never legally a viable option. Normally not an issue to a smuggler, but as Han stated, even he gets boarded sometimes.

        But yes, the Falcon has missile hard points and can function as a light blockade runner for military purposes.

  • merc@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Two things: crew size and phasers.

    The Aluminum Falcon can be operated by a crew of 2. If you want both turrets being operated, it’s 4. The enterprise has a crew of hundreds. That gives an idea of the size difference between the two, and the difference in capabilities. If the Falcon takes damage, one of the crew has to go and do repairs, reducing the effective crew to 1 or 3. If someone is injured (say by an exploding panel) it’s 1 person down, and another to provide first aid, so either autopilot (crew of 2) or one of the turrets is no longer manned (crew of 4). Meanwhile, on the Enterprise, all that happens is that the junior X steps up while the senior X is taken to sick bay and treated by the dedicated medical crew.

    Then there are phasers. In Star Wars, the main ship-to-ship weaponry seems to be “laser” cannons, that shoot significantly slower than light-speed projectiles. The things are even slow compared to 2020s bullets, as you can actually follow their path through space. In addition, the weapons are either aimed with manned turrets or are boresight weapons, firing directly forwards (X-Wings, TIE fighters, etc.) Meanwhile, the Enterprise uses phasers, which seem to be close to light speed, and more importantly seem to be something you can aim using a computer and just come out of the front of the ship in whatever direction they’re aimed. They very rarely seem to miss. It’s just a question of whether or not the target’s shields hold. In this case, they’re aiming at a small smuggler’s ship. They might miss, but if they hit it’s unlikely the shields would hold out for very long against weapons that were designed to take on other 100-crew starships.

    Star Destroyer vs. Enterprise might be interesting. Or, Delta Flyer vs. Falcon. Or a DS9 “Runabout” vs. the Falcon. But, Falcon vs. Enterprise is not a fair fight. No question the Enterprise would crush it.

    • AEsheron@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Size comparisons aren’t particularly useful when the tech gap is so large. A single relatively small Culture ship would annihilate the Empire and have a grand old time doing it. Going by supplemental technical books from both franchises, Star Wars is insanely, hilariously, beyond the Federation in the ability to project energy. The printed values for Star Wars are frankly absurd and make very little sense, but if we took them at face value the Falcon would be a nigh unstoppable menace. Like throwing some AA guns on a tugboat and harassing some previously uncontacted tribes in the Pacific.

      Using estimates from what we see on screen lessens the gap considerably, but still puts Star Wars in general on a higher rung of the Kardeshev scale. I don’t know if it still exists, but stardestroyer.net used to have some great calculations of blaster energy levels based entirely from OT footage, with full breakdowns of their math and estimations. As for the “lasers,” that’s just old nomenclature from long since outdated weapons, blaster tech drives the vast majority of Star Wars weaponry. In new canon, they’re plasma weapons. In old canon, there were several flavors, including plasma, but most were particle weapons that used some very exotic fictional particles that didn’t interact much with normal matter except thermally, like how dark matter doesn’t react much except gravitationally.

      And really. It just makes sense. Star Wars technologically plateaued ages ago. The invention of FTL tech is prehistory. Star Trek is only a couple centuries ahead of us.

      • merc@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        Star Wars technologically plateaued ages ago

        And yet, they don’t have computer-aimed turrets. They still rely on people getting into turrets and aiming at their targets using some kind of low-fi 1970s era CRT to assist them. They may have plateaued ages ago, but it seems like their plateau was pretty low. They never developed transporters, they never developed replicators, AFAIK they don’t have cloaking devices. They have robots, but the robots seem pretty primitive in a number of ways – certainly they don’t have any robots that are advanced enough to be mistaken for humans / humanoids.

        It’s also hard to estimate the power of “laser” cannons based on what you see on screen.

        On one hand, a specialty space station was created that was powerful enough to blow up an entire planet in the matter of seconds. Even if the weapons they use for ship-to-ship fire are 1000x less powerful, 1/1000th of the power needed to destroy a planet is absurdly huge. Maybe the weapons are incredibly powerful, but we don’t know because the shields are also incredibly powerful.

        Meanwhile, the Star Trek world only got warp drive recently, so recently that the individual who created it is still in living memory. But, just because it’s recent doesn’t mean they’re not even more technologically advanced. Everything we see in Star Trek suggests that they blew past the plateau that Star Wars hit, and kept going. Transporter beams, replicators, holodecks, limited time travel, androids with positronic brains that can pass for humans, artificial intelligence both at an individual scale (robots and sentient robotic aliens) but also at larger scales, like the ship’s computers.

        Maybe in Star Wars world, there are no really advanced aliens, so all the alien races got brought into the same empire. Since there’s no outside influence creating pressure to come up with new technologies, there’s technological stagnation. In Star Trek’s universe, they keep finding new aliens, many of whom are so advanced they’re godlike. That has to keep inspiring inventors. In addition, instead of one giant empire, there are multiple empires, many of whom are hostile to one-another. One thing that tends to result in technological development is arms races against aggressive neighbors.

        I tend to ignore what they say at places like stardestroyer.net because the more you look into these Sci Fi universes (and probably the George Lucasverse more than most) the more contradictions and paradoxes you see. I find I can enjoy them more if I just let my imagination fill in the details, based on what I see on-screen.

    • apprehensively_human@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Meanwhile, the Enterprise uses phasers, which seem to be close to light speed

      A phaser beam is made up of nadion particles, which to my eyes seems to move through space at about the same speed as a Star Wars laser bolt.

      I think a more fair fight would be a Danube runabout vs. the Falcon, but my money is still on the Starfleet ship.

      • merc@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        In Star Trek, photon torpedoes seem to go about as fast as “laser” cannons in Star Wars:

        https://youtu.be/j2DEo305CXk?t=35

        Phasers are “nearly instantaneous”, which is slow compared to light speed, but means there’s maybe one video frame where the phaser has been fired and it hasn’t yet hit.

        https://youtu.be/j2DEo305CXk?t=346

        In Star Wars, the “laser” cannons are slow enough that you can see individual bursts flying through the air at once. To me, that suggests it’s even slower than 2020s bullet speeds.

        https://youtu.be/LVHnyqhl3Bk?t=28

        Anyhow, my money is always on the Star Trek ships. The Star Wars universe still seems to use human aiming most of the time, where the Star Trek universe uses computer targeting and target locks. It’s basically 1950s tech but with “lasers” vs 2020s tech but with “phasers”.

        • ThatWeirdGuy1001@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          You forget that bullets aren’t illuminated unless they’re tracer rounds. If you watch an IRL tracer round at night it looks a lot like the lasers from turbo laser cannons.

          I’m not arguing against the falcon getting destroyed I’m just saying the turbo lasers on a starship are moving much faster than it seems simply because they’re illuminated.

          Bullets are small and don’t give off any light. Those are pretty much the only reason you can’t see them moving. It’s not instant you just can’t see it.

          • merc@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            I was specifically thinking about tracers when I was saying that turbo lasers seem slower than bullets. Look at this footage and say that it seems slower than turbo lasers:

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LZuNUqZ4TE

            Compare that to the ship-to-ship “turbo lasers” from the clip I shared, it seems very similar. It’s hard to compare because you’d need to look at things of the same scale from the same distance, but it seems comparable to me.

            • AEsheron@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              The thing about blaster bolts in the OT is that they usually are on screen for roughly the same number of frames, no matter the shot. So in close in fights, they can be pretty slow, for long shots, especially the chase of the Tantive IV, they are incredibly fast.

  • Caketaco@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 year ago

    The Enterprise and Millennium Falcon should put aside their differences and sloppy kiss, boobs pressed together, etc.

  • GraniteM@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    From TNG, “Conundrum”:

    PICARD: Tactical analysis, Mister Data.

    DATA: The pods are equipped with fusion-generated pulse lasers and minimal shielding.

    RIKER: Not much power there.

    PICARD: Forward shields to maximum. Lock phasers on the sentry pods. Prepare to return fire.

    WORF: Shields up. Phasers locked on targets.

    PICARD: Full impulse. Take us straight through them.

    DATA: We are through the perimeter, sir.

    RIKER: That was too easy.

    WORF: We have yet to encounter any battleships. They may lie ahead.

    PICARD: Load all torpedo bays. Ready phasers.

    WORF: Aye, sir.

    MACDUFF: Approaching Central Command.

    PICARD: Mister Data, scan for defences.

    DATA: I am picking up no vessels, no additional sentry pods.

    RIKER: Optimal firing range in fifty five seconds.

    MACDUFF: Phaser banks ready. Loading torpedoes.

    PICARD: What are the defensive capabilities of the Central Command?

    DATA: Armaments consist of four laser cannons and thirty nine cobalt fusion warheads with magnetic propulsion. Defensive shield output is four point three kilojoules.

    RIKER: One photon torpedo ought to do it.

    TROI: Data, how many people on that station?

    DATA: Fifteen thousand, three hundred eleven.

    MACDUFF: We’re within range, Captain.

    PICARD: Stand by.

    MACDUFF: Waiting for your order, sir.

    TROI: Captain, this isn’t right.

    MACDUFF: The rest of our forces are depending on us.

    RIKER: How can our mortal enemy be over a hundred years behind us in weapons technology?

    …and in “The Outrageous Okana”:

    WORF: Still no response. Captain, they are now locking lasers on us.

    RIKER: Lasers?

    WORF: Yes, sir.

    PICARD: Lasers can’t even penetrate our navigation shields. Don’t they know that?

    • ramble81@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      RIKER: How can our mortal enemy be over a hundred years behind us in weapons technology?

      I see they have met the Russians too…

  • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    The worst “vs” arguments are the ones that invoke, say, Q, and how he’d instantly kill everyone in the Star Wars universe.

    WHY WOULD HE?

    HE PROBABLY STARTED THE FIGHT SO HE CAN WATCH, YOU NERDS.

    • CarlsIII@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Ok but now I want to see Q and Yoda hanging out to see which one gets sick of the other one first

      • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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        1 year ago

        Oh, most definitely Q.

        They would both do their best, but Yoda has the piece of mind that would endure Q’s antics.

        While Q is a hot head that would get bored fast because none of their usual tricks can get through to Yoda.

        I can see Yoda giggling when Q teleports away.

        • Sai Somsphet@lemmy.zip
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          1 year ago

          Both have lived centuries teaching younger races.

          Only one of them spent time teaching Skywalkers.

          Truly this is a test of patience for Q and a chance to lighten up for Yoda.

  • marcos@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I dunno who would win. Did engineering install the remotely activated self-destruct switch on Enterprise already?

    • Hyperreality@kbin.social
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      The range thing is also a huge factor. Federation photon torpedos have a range of 300,000 kilometers. Star Wars is pretty inconsistent, but depending on the ship range seems to be maxed out at hundreds of kilometers. They also seem to have poor sensors.

      In Star Wars the Scimitar is considered a fast ship, it’s top speed is apparently 1200km/h in atmosphere. IRC that’s half as slow as a present day SR71 blackbird. Trek is inconsistent, but the TNG technical manual says that impulse can reach 0.75c but is usually limited to 0.25c to avoid time dilation issues. C being light speed. So that’s roughly 150 million kms an hour except in emergencies when it’s more than that.

      So basically, ships from the star trek universe could simply keep a safe distance, safe in the knowledge the empire’s ships are far too slow to ever catch up conventionally.

      As your video points out, trek ships are also shielded. But so are photon torpedos, which at one point allows a photon torpedo to burrow into the stellar core of a sun. So the Death Star isn’t an issue. Just fire a few photon torpedos at it. Apparently the Death Star only had shields to protect against energy weapons, not kinetic shields because that would block heat escaping the exhaust ports.

      Then there’s the whole teleportation thing.

      And replicators.

      And cloaking.

      And red matter.

      The longer you think about it, the sillier the comparison gets basically.

      • gordon@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        The star wars universe is intentionally “post-apocalyptic” “star-punk”. The star trek universe is post scarcity utopia. Hmmm. I wonder which one has better tech?

        • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          And this is why 40k is a better comparison to Star Wars, both setting are ruled by cool and right fucked. The only thing that could make Star Wars worse is if Chaos somehow infected it, then again Abaloth exists so…

      • qwamqwamqwam@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        I agree that Star Trek is on a completely different power scale than Star Wars, but comparing an in-atmosphere flight speed to interplanetary impulse speed is pretty disingenuous. Obviously there are physical factors that limit one of those but not the other.

        • Hyperreality@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          I know, but it was all I could find on short notice. I did another google and apparently it’s something like x 2 for non-atmospheric flights. Star Destroyers are supposedly fast, and can travel at 1500 km/h in space.

          Hyperspace is another matter, there they clearly outclass anything the star trek universe has to offer.

      • milkisklim@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        I agree with you on almost all points. However, I think Star Wars ships are faster over long distances than any non Borg ship or Discovery. It seems like no time to jump from the Outer Rim to the Core world while Voyager was lucky to cross the galaxy in 7 years.

        • Hyperreality@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Hyperspace in Star Wars is ridiculously fast, true. The empire/republic is also huge because of this. We’re talking millions of worlds. Absurdly large.

          It’s the same thing in Asimov’s Foundation (which everyone should watch, the second season is excellent) where the galactic empire spans the entire milky way. Population is 500 quadrillion apparently.

          • keegomatic@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            Ugh, has the second season gotten better? I watched the first two episodes of the second season and was really disappointed… enough that I stopped watching. I didn’t mind that they veered so far from the book the first season, because it was inevitable and they did a great job capturing the feeling.

            But the second season is just bonkers and lots of sloppy writing so far. Totally unbelievable stunts for no reason other than suspense (that underwater scene and the mouth-to-mouth rebreathing, for example, was so stupid, and then they sit down and they’re like “phew, anyway”) and suddenly Hari is a split-consciousness main character and there’s forward time travel and no second foundation and two different types of non-psychohistory-developed psychic abilities and WE SEE THE IDENTITY OF THE MULE? Like, come on. In just two episodes they trashed some of the most compelling/thematic material and plot points of the original and turned it into a space-magic grab bag of action tropes.

            I’m mostly just salty. Perfectly fine if you enjoy it personally. But maybe some of these points resonate with you and, knowing them, you can convince me to keep watching? Because I did really like the first season.

            • Serinus@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              I also stopped around the same time.

              The Foundation series might be my favorite of all time, but the show is crap. First of all it misses the entire point of the books. Psychohistory is explicitly NOT magic, and not limited to a few special people. And it’s not a drama about the emperor.

              It’s a larger scale that means more than an interpersonal drama. If you can’t do that on the screen (and maybe it can’t be done), then the series shouldn’t have been created.

              Whatever this show is, it’s not Foundation. All it takes from the books is character names and jargon. It has effectively none of the plot or intent or meaning of the books.

            • Hyperreality@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              It gets much better, IMHO. The first episodes were a bit annoying, agreed.

              Without giving too many spoilers, I suspect some of the dreams are misleading and certain characters are already being manipulated. I also suspect the latest episodes already featured the Mule and he’s not like in the dream, but I’m not sure.

              Also, I think certain characters simply don’t know things. For example, in that vision of the future, the Mule learns the location of the second foundation is Ignis, homeworld of the mentalics. But if you’ve read the books, you know that’s not the location of the second foundation at all. Neither is Helicon for that matter. In the books the true location of the second foundation is hidden from the first foundation.

              Also, the whole Demerzel being Daneel thing, and how she’s been manipulating Empire, is interesting. Increasingly Game of Thrones like.

              TLDR yes, it’s worth watching a few more episodes.

              Caveat: it’s been years since I read the books, so I’m not that bothered about the show being its own thing.

                • Hyperreality@kbin.social
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                  1 year ago

                  Sorry to necro this thread, but I continued watching and although the show was interesting for a while, it then declined sharply and arguably went off the rails again. A lot of drama and stuff like that. Don’t think you’ll enjoy it if you’re a fan of the original books and read them recently.

            • lunarul@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              I couldn’t watch The Expanse after one or two episodes because it strayed from the books, but somehow I stuck with Foundation. I think because it’s so ridiculously far from the books, I have an easier time just watching it as its own thing and have no expectations from it.

        • BlemboTheThird@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          I think star wars just put less thought into what galactic distances look like. Han says the falcon can do “0.5 past light speed” but then they move from tattooine in the outer rim to the core world of alderaan in like a couple of days, max.

          • DudePluto@lemm.ee
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            It’s interesting that people try to explain this away with all kinds of retroactive in-universe technobabble. I mean, I enjoy Star Wars just as much as the next guy but it’s abundantly clear that SW wasn’t meant to be investigated at this level. It’s space mythology, not hard science fiction. And that’s fine! We can have fun asking things like “Why is the Outer Rim considered a backwater if it only takes a few hours to get from galactic center to the rim?” and we don’t really have to stress about answers to those things as fans. Edit: Or we can if that’s what fans enjoy doing, but it just isn’t my thing and I think that’s ok too

          • Remmock@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            The superluminal speed of a hyperdrive was rated on a decreasing scale; the faster the hyperdrive, the lower the rating. These ratings were generally referred to as “Classes” and provided a quick, although often inconsistent or inaccurate, idea of a ship’s hyperdrive speed. It was based on an asymptotic scale with Class 0.0 being infinite speed. In 30 BBY. By the end of the Clone Wars most military starships were using Class 3 or Class 2. During the Galactic Civil War, military capital ships and starfighters were generally equipped with Class 1 or Class 2, industrial freighters and haulers with Class 3 or Class 4, and civilian starships with Class 5 or above. Many vessels mounted backup hyperdrives of much higher—that is, slower—class than their primary hyperdrive.

            Some starships, such as the Millennium Falcon, underwent after-market modifications to achieve ratings of Class 0.5, and Dash Rendar’s Outrider also had a hyperdrive Class 0.75, which was also achieved by modifications, although tampering with the generally stable technology of a hyperdrive was considered a dangerous activity. Boba Fett’s Slave I had a class 0.7 hyperdrive. Hyperdrives built by those outside the sphere of the Galactic Republic, Galactic Empire and New Republic, such as the Hapan Froond-class hyperdrive, were not classed in the standard system, as controlled comparisons were difficult to attain. Some Zonama Sekotan ships were able to achieve a Class 0.4 by combining high class hyperdrives with organic technology,[5] as did the Bes’uliik starfighter via fusion of Verpine and Mandalorian technology.

  • WhoRoger@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I still think the SW universe has some completely different physics than ours. Speed of light, time, stuff like that just don’t work the same way. I think it’s some sort of microscopic fluidic space equivalent to a much younger our universe. After all, it occurs “a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away”.

    Now, Starfleet crews commonly deal with all kinds of alternate universes and they tend to survive (at least if they have a show about them), so I’d still give Starfleet an edge. People im the SW universe get screwed way more often - unknown regions, hyperspace, galactic barrier… Everything we’ve seen Trek crews survive.