Ankhanu
Vice Admiral
Joined: 13 Oct 2006
Posts: 3089
Location: Nova Scotia, Canada
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 Posted: Mon May 21, 2007 6:29 pm Post subject: |
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| ifurin wrote: | | i read somewhere (don't remember where) that repulsor lift tech worked by "pushing" against the gravity of a planet. thats why they don't work in space and asteroid belts. if that is so then what reason would they work differently over water? |
| Ankhanu wrote: | | While it makes sense logically, it doesn't really fit with the technology presented in the SW universe. There are floating vehicles for a range of uses, landspeeders, airspeeders, speeder boats, etc that all use the same technology but do not work in the same situations (terrain). Though it would seem logical that a landspeeder might skip over the surface of water or operate against the bottom of the water, it doesn't work flavour-wise. Landspeeder hits water and it sinks... same sort of reason why the repulsors on Luke's X-Wing were useless getting it out of the swamp on Daggobah. Logically they'd still work. |
| Gry Sarth wrote: | It's tricky to discuss repulsorlift technology in real physics terms, cause it really wasn't meant to have much logic. The speeders float, that's it. The explanation of "pushing against gravity" shouldn't be scrutinized too much. If we assume that the ship is pushing the surface in order to float (and thus would sink in water because of surface tension), then it would be possible for a person to be "runned over" by a speeder flying overhead. The logic is that the person on the ground would effectively be part of the surface, and would have to sustain the vehicle's weight when it flew overhead (it's not healthy to stand underneath a Harrier Jet lifting off). This is clearly not the case, so we have to accept that repulsorlift techonolgy doesn't work quite how it should in real-world physics.
I base my opinion on how well a speeder would fare over water by the fact that there are "waterspeeders", such as the TIE Boat or Waveskimmer. If normal speeders could fly over water, then there wouldn't be a need for these specialized speeders. |
Like I said, and essentially what Gry said, it comes down more to thematic elements of the setting than it comes down to how things actually might work.
It makes sense that a landspeeder should work over water, however, in the setting they don't. There is specialized equipment for using speeders over water, on land and generally in the air. Simply, it's an imaginary realm with imaginary technology; the technology of imagination doesn't work like its real-world counterpart might. Run with the flavour rather than the "but it should". |
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Gry Sarth
Jedi
Joined: 25 May 2004
Posts: 5304
Location: Sao Paulo - Brazil
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| Posted: Mon May 21, 2007 8:11 pm Post subject: |
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And I'd just like to add that my "water and speeder" opinions expressed before, concern landspeeders, not airspeeders (meaning speeders with a flight ceiling of about 1 meter). Airspeeders shouldn't be constrained by whatever terrain exists a couple kilometers down, but it just feels wrong to have a landspeeder skimming over water.
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"He's Gry Sarth, of course he has the stats for them." |
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