Here on Earth, we have catalogued and identified millions of galaxies. We even recently confirmed the presence of exoplanets in other galaxies and we track radiation and radio pulses from them. Since Star Wars is 1000x more advanced than us, do you think they have mapped out a lot of galaxies and have used advanced telescopes to see whether any of the planets in other galaxies have planets that support life. We estimate that their are 2 trillion galaxies in the universe but we can only photograph 100 billion. Do you think the astronomers of Star Wars can photograph galaxies at the edge of the universe (if the universe of course has an edge).

Most likely, but as hyperspace travel is more or less limited to the galaxy and the nearest few satellite galaxies, it's probably just scientific curiosity and work for bored academics instead of what we are doing (looking for alien life, etc).

As far as I can tell, only the seven dwarf orbiting galaxies and Vong galaxy are ever mentioned to exist. Of the orbiting galaxies, the Rishi Maze has at least some settlements, with one mining operation known (I'd treat it like Jupiter in early Universal Century) and Firefist has known natives who traveled to it and has been reached by probes from the main galaxy. I'd assume it's also a purely academic subject as well.

On 7/31/2019 at 3:14 PM, Leia Hourglass said:

Here on Earth, we have catalogued and identified millions of galaxies. We even recently confirmed the presence of exoplanets in other galaxies and we track radiation and radio pulses from them. Since Star Wars is 1000x more advanced than us, do you think they have mapped out a lot of galaxies and have used advanced telescopes to see whether any of the planets in other galaxies have planets that support life. We estimate that their are 2 trillion galaxies in the universe but we can only photograph 100 billion. Do you think the astronomers of Star Wars can photograph galaxies at the edge of the universe (if the universe of course has an edge).

I don't see why not. One interesting thing they can likely do, since they have FTL tech, is to study images from one side of their galaxy, take a trip closer to the target, and then observe again. Because the other galaxies, should look significantly different, from one end of the galaxy to the other, given how long it takes light to travel. So that could make for some interesting observations for study, and for background design for a scene. One location you see a big cloud from a nova, fly closer, and it's now just a big glowing ball, instead of a massive cloud, because the massive burst light hasn't reached that point yet.

On 7/31/2019 at 2:14 PM, Leia Hourglass said:

Since  Star Wars is 1000x more advanced than us,

Are they though?

For all the hyperdrives, flying cars, space stations, and AI robots, sending a missile through a 6 foot wide hole is still "impossible, even for a computer."

One of the funny things about Star Wars is it's less a vision of the future, and more a reflection of the present. It fantastic, but relatable. No more or less accurate than D&D is to the real dark ages.

So.... Do you need it to? Will Star Wars work better for you if they can view to the edge of the observable universe?

Just like George, it's probably less important you worry about the technical bits any more than required for the story.

Star Wars is set in the past and was futuristic by the standards of the late 70s/early 80s .

Cell Phones don't exist, but handheld super radios are universal. Note how in Vision of the Future a guy gives his com frequency to be altered when something is ready. Within the same book it shows that com frequencies are not at all private or peer to peer, anyone can listen into or send on any frequency (though it may be encrypted). Video games are simulators or very primitive. Instead of online shopping, there's catalogs you send orders to via FTL post (Galladinium's). One of the WEG books portrays a literal holographic site as a flawed design since it emits light visible to anyone but doesn't do anything a real red dot with one glass won't. The most blatant thing, of course, being that the Death Star plans are stored on tape .

12 hours ago, NanashiAnon said:

Star Wars is set in the past and was futuristic by the standards of the late 70s/early 80s .

Cell Phones don't exist, but handheld super radios are universal. Note how in Vision of the Future a guy gives his com frequency to be altered when something is ready. Within the same book it shows that com frequencies are not at all private or peer to peer, anyone can listen into or send on any frequency (though it may be encrypted). Video games are simulators or very primitive. Instead of online shopping, there's catalogs you send orders to via FTL post (Galladinium's). One of the WEG books portrays a literal holographic site as a flawed design since it emits light visible to anyone but doesn't do anything a real red dot with one glass won't. The most blatant thing, of course, being that the Death Star plans are stored on tape .

The computers are analog. Not digital. And advanced analog computers can do interesting things i think.

14 hours ago, NanashiAnon said:

Star Wars is set in the past and was futuristic by the standards of the late 70s/early 80s .

Cell Phones don't exist, but handheld super radios are universal. Note how in Vision of the Future a guy gives his com frequency to be altered when something is ready. Within the same book it shows that com frequencies are not at all private or peer to peer, anyone can listen into or send on any frequency (though it may be encrypted). Video games are simulators or very primitive. Instead of online shopping, there's catalogs you send orders to via FTL post (Galladinium's). One of the WEG books portrays a literal holographic site as a flawed design since it emits light visible to anyone but doesn't do anything a real red dot with one glass won't. The most blatant thing, of course, being that the Death Star plans are stored on tape .

See, this is one of those suspension of disbelief things that fans of this franchise are so bad at. The fact that the creators of the fiction (art/theater/media majors, not scientists), could only fantasize so far into speculative technology isn't a flaw in the fictional world, it's just a realistic limitation that all science fiction is subject to. Old Asimov era fiction had artificial intelligence, but it was all based around hardware, not developing software like real world science is going. Johnny Mnemonic the film had a fully immersive 3D VR internet...but they still used faxed machines. The list goes on and on.

The technology of Star Wars is exponentially more advanced than ours, by the functionality of the tech, if not by the description/design of it portrayed to the audience. We don't have the technology to make a planet sized machine that runs relatively smoothly (smooth enough to be the seat of power of an entire empire). We don't have artificial intelligence enough to have a voice reactive interface, complex enough to speculate, theorize, and extrapolate when a random person asks it questions like Star Wars does. We simply don't have the math (if it even exists), nor the technological know how to crack FTL. Just by the fact that these things exist in Star Wars, illustrates they are vastly more advanced than us. The fact that some college film students, working in the desert with a small budget, time constraints, and other real world issues, used materials at hand to show this and move on with the actual story , is just a limitation of the medium of visual storytelling. The creators of these films aren't trying to be "speculative science accurate" when they are doing these stories.

They are setting up scenes to get a shot done before the lighting fades for the day, they're already over budget, past production date, the crew are all suffering from heat exhaustion and diarrhea from eating on location. The last thing they are worried about is "hmm, will this object look outdated to obsessed fanboys 40 years from now, comparing it to technological advances we haven't even considered yet? I should really take the time to consider this when designing my set pieces"

Plus I think that "tape" you are referring to was actually a disc? I seem to recall it looked like a flat CD to me, the thing that Leia put into R2. Could be wrong.

13 minutes ago, KungFuFerret said:

See, this is one of those suspension of disbelief things that fans of this franchise are so bad at. The fact that the creators of the fiction (art/theater/media majors, not scientists), could only fantasize so far into speculative technology isn't a flaw in the fictional world, it's just a realistic limitation that all science fiction is subject to. Old Asimov era fiction had artificial intelligence, but it was all based around hardware, not developing software like real world science is going. Johnny Mnemonic the film had a fully immersive 3D VR internet...but they still used faxed machines. The list goes on and on.

The technology of Star Wars is exponentially more advanced than ours, by the functionality of the tech, if not by the description/design of it portrayed to the audience. We don't have the technology to make a planet sized machine that runs relatively smoothly (smooth enough to be the seat of power of an entire empire). We don't have artificial intelligence enough to have a voice reactive interface, complex enough to speculate, theorize, and extrapolate when a random person asks it questions like Star Wars does. We simply don't have the math (if it even exists), nor the technological know how to crack FTL. Just by the fact that these things exist in Star Wars, illustrates they are vastly more advanced than us. The fact that some college film students, working in the desert with a small budget, time constraints, and other real world issues, used materials at hand to show this and move on with the actual story , is just a limitation of the medium of visual storytelling. The creators of these films aren't trying to be "speculative science accurate" when they are doing these stories.

They are setting up scenes to get a shot done before the lighting fades for the day, they're already over budget, past production date, the crew are all suffering from heat exhaustion and diarrhea from eating on location. The last thing they are worried about is "hmm, will this object look outdated to obsessed fanboys 40 years from now, comparing it to technological advances we haven't even considered yet? I should really take the time to consider this when designing my set pieces"

Plus I think that "tape" you are referring to was actually a disc? I seem to recall it looked like a flat CD to me, the thing that Leia put into R2. Could be wrong.

It was more like a magnetic floppy disk than an optical CD. 😜

1 hour ago, Tramp Graphics said:

It was more like a magnetic floppy disk than an optical CD. 😜

*shrugs* I barely paid it any attention, because I, unlike SOME fans of this franchise, didn't really care about the data storage accuracy of the device used in the film, and just understood "ok, that's the data device with the MacGuffin, got it." and was happy to move on with the film. But you know, some fans want to actually calculate the amount of bits needed to display the plans as presented in the film, and try and declare that there is no way the device could store that much data, etc etc. The same people that bother determining how accurate Titanic is because the wood buoyancy would/wouldn't support 2 people, etc etc. It's pedantic nonsense, but that's Star Wars fans for you. Chasing their own tails of irrelevant data that serve to only show how obsessed they are about ultimately meaningless things and details. Yay fandom! *last bit said very sarcastically*

"Tapes" is actually said on screen

Quote

Don't try to frighten us with your sorcerer's ways, Lord Vader. Your sad devotion to that ancient religion has not helped you conjure up the stolen data tapes

I actually think the fact that Star Wars is old enough to have become a "retro future" naturally and that several EU writers have stuck to it is half the charm of the universe. It's not entirely unfounded either: Lucas was inspired by much older sci-fi and designed the world with a lived in feel.

On 8/8/2019 at 2:19 PM, KungFuFerret said:

See, this is one of those suspension of disbelief things that fans of this franchise are so bad at. The fact that the creators of the fiction (art/theater/media majors, not scientists), could only fantasize so far into speculative technology isn't a flaw in the fictional world, it's just a realistic limitation that all science fiction is subject to. Old Asimov era fiction had artificial intelligence, but it was all based around hardware, not developing software like real world science is going. Johnny Mnemonic the film had a fully immersive 3D VR internet...but they still used faxed machines. The list goes on and on.

The technology of Star Wars is exponentially more advanced than ours, by the functionality of the tech, if not by the description/design of it portrayed to the audience. We don't have the technology to make a planet sized machine that runs relatively smoothly (smooth enough to be the seat of power of an entire empire). We don't have artificial intelligence enough to have a voice reactive interface, complex enough to speculate, theorize, and extrapolate when a random person asks it questions like Star Wars does. We simply don't have the math (if it even exists), nor the technological know how to crack FTL. Just by the fact that these things exist in Star Wars, illustrates they are vastly more advanced than us. The fact that some college film students, working in the desert with a small budget, time constraints, and other real world issues, used materials at hand to show this and move on with the actual story , is just a limitation of the medium of visual storytelling. The creators of these films aren't trying to be "speculative science accurate" when they are doing these stories.

They are setting up scenes to get a shot done before the lighting fades for the day, they're already over budget, past production date, the crew are all suffering from heat exhaustion and diarrhea from eating on location. The last thing they are worried about is "hmm, will this object look outdated to obsessed fanboys 40 years from now, comparing it to technological advances we haven't even considered yet? I should really take the time to consider this when designing my set pieces"

Plus I think that "tape" you are referring to was actually a disc? I seem to recall it looked like a flat CD to me, the thing that Leia put into R2. Could be wrong.

to me that was the difference between an archival medium and a dense but not super sturdy storage medium.

On 8/8/2019 at 1:19 PM, KungFuFerret said:

See, this is one of those suspension of disbelief things that fans of this franchise are so bad at. The fact that the creators of the fiction (art/theater/media majors, not scientists), could only fantasize so far into speculative technology isn't a flaw in the fictional world, it's just a realistic limitation that all science fiction is subject to. Old Asimov era fiction had artificial intelligence, but it was all based around hardware, not developing software like real world science is going. Johnny Mnemonic the film had a fully immersive 3D VR internet...but they still used faxed machines. The list goes on and on.

The technology of Star Wars is exponentially more advanced than ours, by the functionality of the tech, if not by the description/design of it portrayed to the audience. We don't have the technology to make a planet sized machine that runs relatively smoothly (smooth enough to be the seat of power of an entire empire). We don't have artificial intelligence enough to have a voice reactive interface, complex enough to speculate, theorize, and extrapolate when a random person asks it questions like Star Wars does. We simply don't have the math (if it even exists), nor the technological know how to crack FTL. Just by the fact that these things exist in Star Wars, illustrates they are vastly more advanced than us. The fact that some college film students, working in the desert with a small budget, time constraints, and other real  world issue  s, used materials at hand to show this and move on with the actual story , is just a limitation of the medium of visual storytelling. The creators of these films aren't trying to be "speculative science accurate" when they are doing these stories.

They are setting up scenes to get a shot done before the lighting fades for the day, they're already over budget, past production date, the crew are all suffering from heat exhaustion and diarrhea from eating on location. The last thing they are worried about is "hmm, will this object look outdated to obsessed fanboys 40 years from now, comparing it to technological advances we haven't even considered yet? I should really take the time to consider this when designing my set pieces"

Plus I think that "tape" you are referring to was actually a disc? I seem to recall it looked like a flat CD to me, the thing that Leia put into R2. Could be wrong.

I think we have the math for "ftl" warp drives (that "fold space" I know it's a lousy description so it's not actually ftl just apparently ftl, of course we don't have the tech to verify that the math is anything more than theoretical conjecture)

11 hours ago, EliasWindrider said:

I think we have the math for "ftl" warp drives (that "fold space" I know it's a lousy description so it's not actually ftl just apparently ftl, of course we don't have the tech to verify that the math is anything more than theoretical conjecture)

We think we have the math, but we don't know, because we also don't have the tech to actually test it. Which just further illustrates that Star Wars is way beyond us. That **** is so commonplace to them, it's basically just "combustion engine" level of normalcy for them