Star Wars' completely nonsense technology (which I love)

[@AkronBaja]

Repulsorlifts wouldn't make rockets obsolete, but they could be hugely beneficial to space programs. Repulsorlift assisted launches could mean getting much much larger payloads into space, and would be greatly beneficial to reusable rockets. It could open up the possibility for other propulsion like Ion thrusters to be used much more reasonably.

[@sumukhvmrsat6347]

Repulsor lift rocket launch platform station in sky would be wonderful

[@MrMonkeybat]

If the repulsor lifts can make a force field affecting an area of air about a hundred meters or more around the ship then they could efficiently fly in the upper stratosphere. In such a low friction environment do the kinetic energy equations and a hover car with a present day EV's battery pack, could fly at supersonic speeds to any destination in the world. Add a solar panel array or a nuclear generator and it can slowly accelerate to orbit. Space is not entirely empty there are enough stray atoms and ions that a repulsor field several hundred meters across would have enough reaction mass to navigate the solar system better than any current day rocket. Look up Zubrin's Dipole Drive" for a more grounded idea on how to use space ions like that. So a big enough repulsor field DOES make all rockets obsolete. My head cannon is all the glowy rocket engines on the back of SW craft are providing little thrust they are just turbine or fusion generators powering the repulsor motors. Most of the time they are not actually in orbit just hovering on their repulsor lifts and by pushing off the planet and space particles they preserve angular momentum when they turn. These forcefields also transmit sound so I can explain all the "scientific inaccuracies'" with this technobabble in my head cannon.

[@pobvic]

It's not that difficult to actually get out of the atmosphere. Staying in orbit requires going sideways, really, really fast and that's what orbital rockets spend most of their fuel on. The closest we have to repulsor lifts is something like stratolaunch or Virgin Galactic with their carrier aircraft, still not orbital in Virgins case.

[@MrMonkeybat]

@@pobvic If these "repulsor fields" allow you to repulse the earth and hover above the atmosphere with little energy still makes getting into space a lot easier. If you can hover above the atmosphere in the frictionless environment you can get to orbit slowly with a more efficient low thrust engine like an ion drive or use these "repulsor fields" to push away from the planet sideways using the entire planet as reaction mass that would be much more efficient than any rocket.

[@Dice_0ne]

@elon_musk Pls do your thing

[@hmyang4308]

It’d be pretty crazy if like you had repulsorlifts in real life. Imagine repulsorlift shoes tho that would be cool

[@nickmalachai2227]

Heelys 2: A Heel Beyond

[@patsey3199]

Shadow the Hedgehog style

[@dustybunny6716]

It would the next police chase I see more interesting. Could you imagine a Florida man using one of these things? Its safer to let an Ewok steal a speeder bike.

[@mattstorm360]

@@dustybunny6716 I'm reminded of the story of 'aliens' flying over a forests. Turned out to be illegal miners flying over with an omni hoverboard.

[@jejeakle]

We have something similar. We have hovercraft which are used for amphibious operations

[@OptimisticSturmmann142]

Why do Star Wars vehicles have six pedals if there are only four directions?

[@AdmiralBlackstar]

I get that reference 😂

[@OptimisticSturmmann142]

@@AdmiralBlackstar I knew someone will get it. Good job.

[@jfox8006]

Based RvB reference

[@Stop_Gooning]

There are six directions...

[@STRAKAZulu]

Eight

[@drizzmatec]

My friends and I were theory crafting about how the buildings on Courscant stay up and we came to the conclusion that they would have to be achored directly to the planets core, and repulsorlifts would help them from collapsing under their own weight.

[@stuartl7761]

Oh yeah, you're probs right on that. There's probably repulsorlifts and gravity tech dotted throughout most cityscapes. Perhaps a form of shield projector tech could help with the really big structures. And maybe a tractor beam for when the architects really let loose.

[@sheilaolfieway1885]

there's also tensor fields which hold together objects.

[@AberrantChibi]

After recently watching a lore vid on Coruscant's various levels, I did wonder on how the architecture was supposed to bear such loading. I hadn't even considered repulsorlifts or tensor fields. It's a good theory.

[@JediSentinal]

There are also things like tensor fields (used in the c9979 landing craft) that exist to help large objects stay together in scenarios like that, wouldn't be surprised if something like that helped. However the lower levels must be supported by some sort of super material because the weight above them... Holy shit 😂

[@Ranstone]

Fun fact: Real skyscrapers have electronic rust inversion currents in the metal frame. The frame doesn't rust, and will even un-rust as long as power is applied to the building. Also, some buildings have The moment power cuts, the building loses power, it will begin to rust like any normal building. Also, while nothing more than a complex pendulum, skyscrapers have somthing called "Tuned mass dampeners" which allow them to better survive high winds while remaining stable. Real life is crazier than you think, man!

[@---jx3ql]

Repulsor tech and no cloud city mention ,i am disapointed

[@russellharrell2747]

Cloud city isn’t floating, it’s chilling.

[@---jx3ql]

@@russellharrell2747 🤨

[@Daniel-Strain]

We don't technically know if cloud city used repulsors. Believe it or not, around 1960 Buckminster Fuller showed that a city that entrapped atmosphere within it could float, simply because the heat from the city would make the air warmer than the surrounding atmosphere, and the mass of that compared to the mass of the structure would be sufficient for it to float. If not that explanation, then also consider that through the middle of cloud city was a vast open vertical tunnel, which could have acted like a giant jet engine. But yeah, my guess is that repulsors are involved :)

[@---jx3ql]

@@Daniel-Strain wookiepedie says 36k repulsors and a unknown number of tractorbeam Made it float

[@Normandy1412]

​@@---jx3qllegends or "canon"?

[@stuartl7761]

Repulsorlifts are maybe my favourite piece of tech in Star Wars cause of how its always there in the background. Great piece of world building. Seeing how it's integrated across all areas of society really makes the world feel real, lived in, cohesive, and it's just really cool aesthetic that anything can just float. I also have to think there's probably some connection to the gravity bending tech that keeps everyone on the floor in even the most bare bones starships, which is just as ubiquitous in it's own right. And given that launching things from further in a gravity well exponentially increases fuel and cost of rockets, any antigravity bump would be really benefitable for rockets, even if they don't get it to space.

[@calvinnickel9995]

Repulsorlifts are also required for the grand “orbital” battles you see in SW. For the Battle of Endor it wouldn’t matter so much.. since the Death Star II was likely in orbit and the battle took place relative to it. Repulsorlifts would simply account for the small differences in speeds so the craft wouldn’t climb or descent to different orbits. But on the Battle of Coruscant.. where you’ve got two opposing fleets fighting a pitched battle.. if you ever played Kerbal Space Program or some other space simulator you’d know that the number of maneuvers and time to coordinate orbits would be insane.. and if they were different orbits they would be passing by each other at huge speeds unable to have sustained action.

[@pobvic]

Even over Hoth, to get multiple ships in position over the rebel base, they would be using similar tech. The only alternative would have to be in Geostationary orbit, 10's of times further away than needed to blockade the planet.

[@TheRamblingShepherd]

I think it's in Rogue One that a disabled Star Destroyer simply falls back toward the planet; that's not how an orbiting object behaves, so clearly much of what is in space is not orbiting.

[@MrMonkeybat]

At the battle of Endor Death Star 2 is way to close to the planet to be in a geostationary orbit. So my head canon is the hardly anything is in orbit they are mostly hovering above the planets with repulsor tech, makes much more sense of how the ships and fleets maneuverer, if they are pushing of the planet or the big ships with these repulsor fields they can even conserve angular momentum..

[@oneMeVz]

I'm surprised you didn't touch on repulsor lift jamming...

[@Xazamas]

Haven't heard of active counter-measures for repulsorlifts, but realistically, that would be a thing if at all possible. Somewhat related, Empire at War has few planets where you can't deploy repulsorlift vehicles, because "environmental conditions interfere with them" or something like that.

[@littlekong7685]

@@Xazamas The big one is shield bubbles. They basically ground out repulsors on contact. i could see police style flat shield barricades to essentially jam out repuslor craft, then tractor them to the ground for arrest.

[@MrMonkeybat]

That would help explain the walkers.

[@brianjl7477]

It is mentioned in Ep. IX that they couldn't use the repulsor craft on the surface of the star destroyers due to some kind of anti-repulsor tech. It may have been shields. Regardless, it was really just an excuse to ride horses across the surface of a star destroyer, which I approve of.

[@brianmurphy250]

I found it weird that while sometimes they have repulsor lift vehicles…we get jaws sandcrawlers…those giant imperial monster trucks and AT ATs with legs.

[@MGone3]

Some planets have certain conditions that make it difficult or impossible for repulsors to work. I know the reason is weird but it is an in-universe reason. Another reason could be ease of repair. A lower tech world could replace drive trains but may have difficulty replacing components for repulsors. Military vehicles have a lot of armor and weapons so you need bigger repulsors and a bigger power plant. Or you could keep the bigger power plant with more weapons and armor if you cut out the repulsors. There is another reason. The walkers and trucks are intimidating.

[@brianmurphy250]

@@MGone3 thanks for the thoughtful reply/analysis. Makes perfect sense.

[@leonrussell9607]

​@@MGone3there are also shields that can disable repulserlifts so legs are sometimes preferable

[@olafgurke4699]

@@MGone3 Considering we see repulsor lifts commonly used on the poorest, most backwater planets there are (Tatooine, Hoth, etc), I would argue they are common enough to be reliable and or easy enough to repair. That said, the first reason is the most plausible one to me as well.

[@Kissfan96dr]

It's a big galaxy. Room for all that stuff.

[@nerdynautilus5373]

My head cannon is that repulsors work by repelling matter via some sort of force field that doesn’t use much if any energy much like a chair doesn’t use energy to stand upright. The closer a craft is to matter (such as the ground) the stronger the repulsion and the greater the density of that matter, the greater the effect. That’s why slow vehicles can hover near the ground indefinitely but in order to fly, vehicles need to compress large amounts of air to repel at high velocities to offset their mass

[@mrscary3105]

Do you think vacuum is not the state of the Star Wars universe outer space? Is this why space ships fly like airplanes? (It's my SWRPG logic)

[@Chrisspru]

starwars has "ether" and "ethereal rudders"

[@Voltaic_Fire]

You mean like a Treasure Planet kind of deal? It would explain a lot.

[@BierBart12]

I remember seeing someone go in-depth about this, comparing it to the luminiferous aether Might also explain why blaster bolts lose energy so quickly and battles have to be fought at close range

[@mrscary3105]

@@Chrisspru I had to figure on that so I can have a base for the physics of the game.

[@caliperstorm8343]

The Thrawn Trilogy and X-Wing series mentions “etheric rudders”, which are used the bank the ships like airplanes. I don’t think there’s ever been elaboration on the specifics, though

[@scottthewaterwarrior]

I would really love to see a Star Wars ship sim that actually included repulserlifts, like actually required you to devert engine power to them when landing/taking off.

[@eds1942]

When I saw the thumbnail, I thought the video was going to be on the T-47 “Snowspeeder’s” freezing problem.

[@Stop_Gooning]

I mean, how exactly do they stay at a fixed distance above the ground? If they make things weightless, then couldn't you just toss a speeder bike or whatever into the stratosphere?

[@thedatatreader]

Based on the size of the powerplant, I'd assume there's a correlation between the amount of power required and the resulting lift. To control the height, you simply lower the power output which makes the field weaker. Additionally you could concievably say speeder bikes may be capable of flight, but they are designed to propel themselves only forward and backward rather than up.

[@commandoepsilon4664]

I can't say by what mechanism that they maintain altitude, weather there is a ground tracking sensor or the default operation of the device requires more power to achieve a higher altitude (thus a set power level would naturally maintain a specific height) or something else entirely. What I can say is: even if they completely canceled out the weight of the object you still couldn't easily throw them around as their mass is unchanged, so even if you shoved a speeder with a lot of force it still wouldn't move very fast (assuming it has about as much mass as you do). Also to my knowledge repulsor lifts don't make things weightless, they just provide counter force the same way a helicopter's rotor does, but without all the noise and rotor wash.

[@Scudboy17]

Repulsar lifts require gravity to work. The farther you travel from a large body, like a planet, the less gravity there is to react with. More powerful repulsar lifts can react with lower gravity and reach higher altitudes. Smaller lifts do not have the power to do little more than get the vehicle a few meters above the ground.

[@Stop_Gooning]

@@thedatatreader height relative to what; the planet's center of gravity, or the height of the ground? The machine isn't generating lift (high air pressure below an object and low pressure above it) it's using antigravity to cancel out an object's gravitational mass, making it effectively weightless. It ought to need some secondary propulsion mechanism to maintain its relative position.

[@Stop_Gooning]

@@commandoepsilon4664 if its gravitational mass has been cancelled out by antigravity, then even a gentle push should be enough to make it float away into space. I am generously ignoring the fact that it shouldn't maintain ANY relative position to the planet's surface.

[@Arashmickey]

I'd get a repulsorlift Spishak Mach 20 Razor. It would just hover above the bowl and brush when I'm not shaving.

[@ParkerAndres-tm8bo]

#askeck say I was a person trying to overthrow a government in Star Wars. What planet should I go to to start and I am not some with or Jedi and I don’t know where any super weapons are or force gods I missed a guy with the dream. Are there any people willing to support my movement or any governments? Legends preferably

[@ParkerAndres-tm8bo]

I’m am not taking over the whole galaxy just enough for a little area of territory, I do not care how the galaxy plays out after that whether it splits up or stays similar to the Republic or empire

[@Number1Irishlad]

Id think Onderron or Ryloth. No good reason, just have a feeling

[@TribbleArtCreations]

​@@Number1Irishlad, both of those places seem to be, in-universe, pretty susceptible to easy take overs and probably good choices. I would throw Dantoonie in there as well because it's mostly farming, you probably wouldn't get a lot of pushback and no one really backs/protects them. A lot of planets have stronger or more resilient governments or backing from larger forces, or have no established government at all.....either tribalism, mostly unsettles and just outposts for criminal activity or no inhabitants at all from extinction or never being in existence (Hoth, Endor, most lava planets like Aeteen 3, most moons of Yavin, etc). Most everything else is claimed by whatever Galactic government, major crime syndicates like the Hutt Cartel, Black Sun or Pikes, or well managed localized governments that would put up a lot of resistance. Post Jabba's death, Tatooine might be on the table. Recently reading Heir to the Empire, those people seem easy to take over as well, but during the Empire, that would probably not work out well since that was a major asset for Palpatine.

[@AManNamedHawk]

Become Mandalore. There’s a reason the Republic and later on the Empire always shut them the fuck down.

[@TribbleArtCreations]

@@AManNamedHawk , I was thinking about that too. It would be relatively easy to essentially take charge. Tho that would depend on if the original person asking was willing to fight and possibly die for it and be capable of taking on their best leader/fighter. As is the way of the Mandalore. If one survives or wins the fight, definitely the fastest way to change or overthrow a government in Star Wars.

[@verbaldysjunction5587]

Glad to see you doing more lore videos again, i don't mind the reactions and reviews, but this is the content i love most

[@thesumofmyfear]

One thing I never got about Mon Cal ships is that whenever you see them as an underwater building, they're vertical. But the corridor and room layout has them laid over like traditional ships. Just seems like the artists made them vertical to appear more like a traditional skyscraper than a ship underwater without thinking about the internals.

[@wrorchestra1]

I always liked the description of the Yavethan Thrustships as they descend into Coruscant. As they don't use repulsor lifts, the sound as they come through the atmosphere is quite memorably written.

[@tonymastro42]

Repulsorlifts show that the Star Wars galaxy solved the gravity equation a long time ago. By doing so they were able to create machinery to easily counter the effect of gravity on a ship, platform, droid, etc and it became so widespread and perfected that the tech is probably really really small now and easily added to whatever is needed.

[@RoboticPope]

3:20 If replusor lift engines create an antigravity field as mentioned at 1:26, then they don't require a surface to "push" against. Also ships above a planet's atmosphere would still need to have repulsorlift engines to remain stationary above one area of the planet like we usually see in star wars. The battle Luke saw in the cut tatooine scene in ANH was stationary (not orbiting the planet) so both ships would have to be using repulsor lift engines to stay up there. Gravity doesn't stop when you leave the atmosphere, it gradually weakens as the distance from the massive object increases. A craft like the. Snowspeeder would have to have a limiter of some kind to stop it being able to get too high for the other flight controls (that require air movement to work ).

[@jeffreycarman2185]

7:43 imagine the added mass of a Mon Calamari cruiser if the interior were even 1/4 full of water. More mass means more energy needed to gain speed and slower maneuvers.

[@bitharne]

One of my favorite 4x games: sword of the stars, has a race of sentient dolphins. Since every race in game has a unique FTL mechanic, this race, being in ships requiring fully filled with water, was a “stutter drive”. It was both their sublight propulsion and FTL system and worked by, literally, teleporting the craft incrementally…and the less gravity affecting the ship the farther each hop could go. Thus in deep space each hop was dozens or more AU: viola…FTL. Also, the game modeled mass of ships and projectiles so if you had a massive mass driver (my favorite weapon line) you could knock around smaller ships with the impact…guess how the water ships help up to these? Exactly as you’d expect 🫡

[@DannyHeywood]

If the Mon Cala Cruisers were FULL of water, you would never get them off the planet at 1 Tonne per Square-Meter of water. .....I guess you could get it into space empty, and then fill it with Comet Ice and turn the heating on? Sounds like effort.

[@tbotalpha8133]

Mon Cala Cruisers are already staggeringly huge compared to any spacecraft that exists IRL, and would almost certainly weigh orders of magnitude more. And they can already enter and leave a planet's gravity well with trivial ease. I don't see how them being full of water would make that any harder. Star Wars tech is already clearly capable of lifting phenomenal loads against the pull of gravity. EDIT: Also, this is a civilization with faster-than-light travel. Even if they did use melted comet ice to fill their ships with water, that seems like a relatively trivial energy cost compared to... literally everything else they do.

[@MarvelX42]

Also filling a ship that big with water would add soooooo much more mass that would have to be pushed around.

[@spartan_octo]

6:50 i believe the raddus actually has water tunnels for the fishier crew to move around

[@ZGryphon]

Historical note: In the 1950s and '60s, Grosset & Dunlap's _Tom Swift Jr._ novels featured a number of signature fictional technologies, prominent among them the _force-ray repelatron._ This technology was nearly identical to the _Star Wars_ repulsorlift, differing mainly in that repelatrons were not yet ubiquitous in the fictional setting of the books, since the inventor still had a monopoly on their construction.

[@Voltaic_Fire]

Imagine how amazing it would be to live in a city or town constantly lifted by repulsorlifts, you'd get immunity to natural disasters and you could move the place around so it was always in the season most desired by the residents or the season needed for best crop production, you could also have it revolving slowly like one of those gimmicky restaurants.

[@BartJBols]

Repulsor lift and plutonium rods, shooting them at such speeds into space ships that they not just bust through armour as an armor piercing rod, but when they squish and compress they become critical and explode in a nuclear bomb.

[@FattyMcFox]

I think in some Legends Tabletop games there was a repulsor/tractor beam weapon called a "Tensor Rifle" that could push people around. Always wanted to see one in a game.

[@adamk4242]

One crazy thing about repuslorlifts is they seem to have made the wing an unnecessary feature of atmospheric craft. Even in the X-Wing, the wings don't appear to have an airfoil shape. In order to eschew wings, I imagine repulsorlifts must be very effective and efficient. But this is one of the things I love about Star Wars. Vehicles and devices that upend what we expect technology "needs" in order to function.

[@drtaverner]

Honestly, I think that when we properly figure out Gravity, we'll develop repulsors. Once we really understood the Electromagnetic Force it was less than a hundred years before we had computers in our homes. Once we properly understand the Gravitic Force, we'll have repulsors within, say 50 years.

[@RunToEternity]

Repulsorlift tech combined with a space elevator would be very efficient in getting materials to orbit.

[@bearnaff9387]

Looking at repulsor and repulsorlift technologies _as_ technologies, I could see someone using a repulsor-based mass launcher on a primitive microgravity/spacecraft. Realistically, the simplest newtonian space craft basically just has a a gimballed gyroscope to control orientation and some poor sod throwing things off the back as hard as they can. Anything that allows that guy to impart more energy to the mass being ejected will increase the efficiency of the "engine". Since repulsor-tech can work on objects smaller than planet-sized, there are a lot of ways that a smart monkey could exploit mass magnets and anti-magnets. As far as launching gravity-insensitive cargo into space, a combination of repulsor and maglev technologies can be used take a slightly inclined tunnel and use it to launch objects directly into orbit. Repulsors could evacuate the tube as well as starting the launch process, and maglev could be used to impart enough speed into a craft that acquiring a stable orbit would require very little further acceleration. Actually, putting a static repulsor system into the launch vehicle would be useful, as you could use it to create a massless aerodynamic shell (i.e. a cone) around the craft by repelling the air the craft pushes its way through on the way to space. Does anyone know how repulsorlifts impart traction to the vehicles they let hover? A repulsorlift craft mostly behaves like a wheeled craft with perfect suspension. If you've _seen_ a novice trying to pilot a hovercraft, you know how a floating vehicle _should_ behave. But, the land speeder and the pilot transport at the Yavin base both have adhesion to the surface that transfers up into the craft. You can even see everyone tilt a little bit towards the front of the craft in the Yavin scene because the driver brakes a little too hard for them to stay still.

[@DuffTerrall]

The point about repulsorlift tech being reliable is a worldbuilding element that I hadn't really considered. Definitely makes sense, as it's like they aren't even thought of as worth considering.

[@Tarkburz]

In new Battlefront 2 on Raddus map there are tubes filled with water and sometimes Moncalamari are swimming in there. So at least Mc-85s have water filled transportation

[@camrsr5463]

I just can't ride till my leg heals. Its gone my guy! lol

[@raylast3873]

Where I draw the line of usefulness is floating tanks and, to a large degree, also floating trains. Even if the energy to do hold up these extremely massive vehicles is more or less freely available, it‘s not really worth using for this purpose if you can do something else with it, like say, shield the actual tank. There‘s relatively little that a hovering tank can do that a tank on treats could not, and it won‘t need to spend energy keeping itself afloat. You can save energy, or get extra shielding, or add more stuff because weight is less of an issue. For lighter vehicles, sure, floating makes sense, but there‘s basically no scenario in which a floating main battle tank would be a good idea.

[@EvelynNdenial]

tractor beams are supposed to be a different application of repulsors right? so you could totally get to orbit purely with repulsor tech. get high and fast pushing off the air and then use long range enough tractor beams to push/pull on the surface and atmosphere to get to orbital speed and altitude. maybe have a station in orbit with the big tractor beams to reduce the size and weight of the ship, the ship flies into the upper atmosphere and the station pulls it the rest of the way up and flings it out to its destination. then the station recovers the lost momentum by push/pulling off the planet.

[@baronjutter]

Repulsorlifts would certainly make getting into space easier. 90% of the effort of a rocket is just getting into orbit, if a solid-state lift technology of some sort could get you 90% into space, the liquid fuel rocket portion could be drastically cut down and only used for proper in-space travel.

[@Maegnas99]

Yep. Any kind of anti gravity we develop as humans would overnight boost our technology levels to obscene heights. You could put satellites into orbit practically free, so that means unlimited internet and communication. You could have orbital solar panels thousands of kilometers wide and just beam power down to relays. Instantly remove the need for fossil fuels. You could put up modular orbital habitats that you build on land, so there's housing and overpopulation solved.

[@olafgurke4699]

@@Maegnas99 It wouldn't remove the need for fossil fuels entirely, I think. For stationaries, yes. Cities and such would no longer need coal and oil power plants. But cars, planes and ships would still require their fossil fuels, I'd think. Also, I would argue that overpopulation is not so much a problem of housing, and more of a distribution of people (and food). In most places, living room only becomes a problem in the already densely packed cities, to which more and more people want to go to for some reason. Meanwhile, I believe my country is not the only one which experiences massive swatches of rural housing to remain empty, never mind even more land simply being not developed for buildings. That said, orbital habitats would be rad as hell and definitely help with city housing prices as well. Imagine modular skyscrapers, lol.

[@zam023]

That is why material scientist are trying to discover room temperature super conductors. Super conductors have the property of repulsing gravity.

[@tylercross8877]

I love this channel. I've been watching since very early on. I don't comment much and life make it's hard to get to the livestreams but I still love the channel

[@captain4ssassin490]

Aren't there also cross-sections revealing watertunnels in the MC ships allowing aquatic species to travel across them?

[@FalconX_Productions]

I never really thought about how compact you could make repulsorlifts

[@NomicFin]

Repulsorlifts seem, especially if the stuff about the cross-section book where they make use of exotic matter harvested from around black holes is true, like one of those technologies that requires a lot of investment and advanced tech base the get going, but once you've past that initial hurdle they're cheap and easy to make. In this case, you'd need to build massive refinery-stations in orbit of black holes, which would be very difficult and expensive, but once you've got the supply chain up and running the process of actually making repulsorlifts is simple and only limited by the amount of exotic matter you can harvest (which would have made the first repulsorlifts very rare and expensive, but as more refineries get built the cost rapidly goes down). As for the Mon Cala ships, water is really freaking heavy, so you probably want to avoid filling your ships with and massively increasing their mass. Makes more sense to just have some compartments with pools or bathtubs for the fish-people to be able to occasionally submerge themselves.

[@AdamTehranchiYT]

One thing I liked about the yuuzhan vong was the dovin basal (organic) technology. Repulsolifts stopped working the farther away from a gravity well they were. Which doesn't really make sense because everything with mass interacts with everything else with mass. So the DBs could fly in space. Granted, they could do some other gravity manipulating stuff that should be impossible, but I digress. Hopefully, someone in SW figures out how they do that. Great video 👍🏻👍🏻

[@benderbendingrodriguez420]

This is why Eck is the best for this stuff cause i never wouldve noticed/thought the absolute monopoly repulsorlift have on the SW universe without this. Granted from what were shown its prob like electricity today.. just considered apart of life and not a new fancy invention

[@DanielLCarrier]

In Legends, repulsorlifts worked from around six planetary diameters away. Canon doesn't say, but they're supposed to work based on antigravity and there's no clear reason they'd need an atmosphere. Actually getting something moving using repulsorlifts alone would be pretty difficult, but you could at least use it to lift it well above the atmosphere and use a less powerful and more efficient engine. Also, they seem to sometimes be able to use it to push stuff away instead of always up. If they can control the direction like that, I see no reason you couldn't use it to achieve orbit. Just push away from the part of the planet behind you instead of directly under you, so you'll end up going forward.

[@pacman3556]

I like how their ships have back end reverberators designed to propel the craft through "dense" atmospheres on planets but have no purpose when flying in zero atmosphere outer space environments.

[@kellingc]

Think of the logistics where any repulsornlift is used on multiple planets, they have to compensate for the different gravity es. The more mass, the more gravitational attraction. Even shops in orbit would need to use repulsors even when not in the atmosphere. This is similar to the Heizenberg Compensators in Star Trek's transporters.

[@Nebulorum]

In Asimov’s foundation novels the gravity manipulation allows space travel. You decrease the pull of where you are and increase the pull of a far away star or planet. This would work fine.

[@corrinestenman5683]

You forgot to mention the repulsorlift furniture that Bakura had; it was a blink-and-you-miss-it detail early in Truce at Bakura that I always thought was neat.

[@PiippoErareika]

4:42 Karelian system???

[@eds1942]

Then you get to the Clone Wars where people regularly carry big cargo boxes, and putting their back into it. Meanwhile, in the original movie (ep4 ANH) used a what looked like a good sized scanner into the Falcon, while used repulser lift technology. And in ep5, Empire Strikes Back, the carbonate slab that carried Han Solo was also transported by repulser lift tech. Failing that, they had loader droids and something that looked like a forklifts and utility carts. I mean, Filoni impressed me with some of the details he saw in the movies, yet he was one of the showrunners for the Clone Wars CGI show?

[@johnnyringo5777]

Bro uploaded at 11:00pm. Bro is a real one

[@jessespitler3457]

I'm glad that you bothered to make a video about something as 'mundane' as repulsorlift tech. I've actually spent a considerable amount of time thininking about specifically how spacecraft 'turn' and manuver around in space, which is kind of related to this, or at least I think it definitely could be. It's been described a little bit here and there, but not as much as I'd like I guess. In my own head canon, I just like to think that the 'wings' and various other surfaces on spacecraft push the craft around and enable it to turn and such similar to how repulsors push airspeeders off of the ground. This all still follows simple ol' Newtonian physics (I think everything in Star Wars actually does, cept for hyperspace of course) and to me could explain why many Star Wars spaceships have 'wings' and such that don't seem very aerodynamic. On a side note, I hate the idea that TIE fighters have giant ass hexagonal 'radiators'; I think they seem a bit cooler if those things are instead kind of repulsor panels as described above that allow the TIE to turn and roll. If none of this makes any sense to anyone reading this, google 'torque' - it's how you turn things.

[@stainlesssteelfox1]

I always thought repulsorlifts operated not by generating anti-gravity, but by altering the existing vector of local gravity. 'Fixed' repulsorlift - Balances gravity vector into an upwards and downwards component so they cancel out. Minus enough from the upward vector to compensate for centrifugal 'force' from planetary rotation, otherside it would drift upwards. Object hovers at fixed height above centre of mass. Some sort of feedback from the mass underneath, similar to capacitance adjusts the overall vector just enough to keep the fixed height relative to the ground. As such can only operate relatively close to the local ground. Hover vehicles frequently use this in combination with conventional engines for horizontal movement. Variable replusorlift - Gravity vector can be adjusted between normal and inverted. Object can move up and down, relative to the local centre of mass. The body's own gravity is being used to repel the repulsorlift vehicle, like Cavorite. Most space vehicles use this, along with conventional engines for forward and in-space movement. Vectored repulsorlift - Vector can be pointed sideways as well as up and down. Used for surface vehicles and aircraft, including speederbikes. The advantage is the vehicle doesn't need any other engines. The downside is it is more complex, and can only accelerate at the acceleration the planet's gravity would normally give, around 1G for most habitable worlds. But fine if you don't need high acceleratuion, like an Imperial Probe Droid.

[@alexanderhikel2350]

Putting one of my favorite ships on the cover of this thumbnail is just dirty ecks

[@seanohalloran384]

Surprisingly no repulsor lift Nike’s. Lol. Great video!

[@tallielintrasimpaccount]

Eck now is the time to make the "How Tallie could and definitely did survive" video

[@noalowenstein6741]

I imagine in addition to being cheaper, repulsorlifts were also simpler to manufacture, maintain, and operate. So repulsor-only vehicles were more easily accessible to everyday civilians, while anything with actual thrusters required a higher level of certification.

[@dafoex]

In theory you could use repulsorlift in space. Everything has some gravity, and that effect can reach parsecs (gravitational waves, anyone?) but that would probably very weak when you're very far away. More useful may be defencive use, either as a shield against projectiles with mass, or to bounce off of other craft in a dogfight.

[@AnthonyA0424]

I feel like I’ve been subscribed to this channel forever

[@Codraroll]

Even Futurama took a dig at Star Wars's ubiquitous repulsorlift technology. In that futuristic universe, everything either walks or floats, so the wheel has become lost technology.

[@Daniel-Strain]

Repulsors seem to provide "slow floaty" movement only. For real speed, they still use jets and rockets. Even the V-wings you said were 'entirely repulsors' clearly had glowy rocket-looking exhaust out the back in the very picture you show. That is probably a jet engine.

[@AndrewJ9673]

A little off topic but I always loved Halo rocketry. Its really cool to hear and see the ships and then get to watch the lift-off sequence in Reach where the Autumn just has these giant frickin auxiliary engines that just brute force it to get airborne and then let it take off by firing its main thruster. Feels like a very realistic and human way to launch a big spaceship like that.

[@hisdivineshadow8263]

At 2.01 there's a painting or illustration with some alien in mid background flipping the bird!

[@isaacchillman11]

It’s so confusing but so cool at the same time I love when I get into arguments with the boys on Discord at like 1 in the morning over this stuff lol 🤣🤣

[@h4ogaming492]

#Askeck can you do a video on what type of civilization on the Kardadive scale the Star Wars universe is? I think what would be very interesting.

[@reefreptile]

Love your content! Keep up the great commentary!

[@fuzzybear6191]

Your helping me to come to answer the issue of how the Millennium Falcon took off and landed the way it could. The main engines, of course, could not assist in this. Same issues with X wing,Tie Fighter etc.

[@Themightyhuntsman]

How do you think a at-at would fight against something like a battlemech from MechWarrior

[@deaths_comedians2847]

Please do more like this. Such amazing video!!

[@wyvernbravo]

We have advanced ion engines We have solar panels We even have basic laser weapons (ik theyre not the same as blasters) Alls we need is repulsor lift tech and we can make the TIE line of starships

[@deondewit3175]

Lets not forget Yoda's little floating chair.

[@dr.steelworth5775]

To be fair, the Galactic Republic has been around for over 25,000 years with several regime changes before the Galactic Empire. Honesty, I'm surprised there aren't more structures like the Star Forge without using the dark side of the force

[@sportybrian]

Repulsor Lifts don't really make sense in real life because there is such a tiny difference in gravity between sea level and at a mile of elevation. Not to mention the ground-hugging vehicles that would supposedly float upward in an elevator or continue level across a bridge. If we had them on Earth they would only be suitable for ships that crossed the ocean, because it would be basically level, or in combination with rotors for helicopter-like vehicles. But we still have no more idea how to counteract gravity than control time, even as weak as gravity is.

[@CatRaph]

This is what people misunderstand about repulsorlifts: Factories use black hole to tie spacetime into knots. This is not anti-gravity! It´s more like a levitating hook you can hang stuff on. Repulsorlift technology doesn´t power or generate any gravity, it just tells this "hook" where to move and thus brings the speeder with it. That´s why it´s so ubiquitous even tiny droids can use it without any large machinery. Pre-disney the word anti-gravity was rarely used in the books, but the new disney cross sections say anti-gravity generator which IMO is wrong and not what repulsorlifts are.

[@richardlahan7068]

If you have force field technology, repulsor lift technology should be easy.

[@maximusrex7616]

#AskEck How come the dark empires galaxy gun was so small compared to other planet destroying super weapons or even super star destroyers? The galaxy gun is only said to be around 7km whilst a SSD is said to be 19km

[@asa-punkatsouthvinland7145]

Repulsor tech in a different universe is what the hoverboard in Back to the Future ran on too.

[@MrQuantumInc]

I have a love hate with Rebel One's climatic battle. It is a great battle but it just sort of ignores the concept of orbits. It only makes sense if every ship has repulsor lifts, or if in the Star Wars galaxy gravity just cuts off at a certain altitude.

[@violentneon2999]

6:40 Ion drives are the new tech to use to replace rockets however currently they lack the power for larger ships and are used (more so experimentally) on satellites and space probs.

[@caliperstorm8343]

Ion drives are relatively efficient (specific impulse above 3000 seconds), but they have thrust comparable to the weight of a piece of paper. Crewed mission designs using them have to slowly spiral in and out of gravity wells, which makes it take significantly longer to get anywhere. I don’t think they will ever be practical for anything other than probes or RCS thrusters. For crewed spacecraft, nuclear engines (fission or eventually fusion) are the most practical option. We already developed some in the 70’s, and with the DRACO mission we’re working on them again

[@CathrineMacNiel]

New Tech? The Dawn Probe, which has an Ion-Engine, was launched in 2007. I believe the latest hottest shit is the Daedalus Drive.

[@Daniel-Strain]

Ion drives are rockets in the general sense. They have a propellant that shoots out the back, the reaction to which drives you forward. They just aren't chemical rockets.

[@CathrineMacNiel]

@@Daniel-Strain Not really. Ion drives and rocket Motors have only In common that they are used for propulsion. Also Ion Drives use electricity and Noble Glasses. Rocket Motors use oxidizers and fuel.

[@caliperstorm8343]

@@CathrineMacNiel “rocket” just means a reaction thruster that carries all of its own propellant. Everything from an open valve on a pressure tank to an astronaut throwing bricks out a window is technically a rocket engine. An ion drive is a rocket engine, as is a fission drive or fusion engine or whatever else you can think of. The only things that aren’t rockets are engines that push off of some external medium, like a jet engine, magnetic tether, or the Star Wars repulsor engine.

[@sumukhvmrsat6347]

So someone with repulsor lift gloves and shoes can be somewhat Jedi

[@nessy9022]

'somewhat Jedi' would make a great t-shirt.

[@billeickman]

How did land vehicle mounted weapons like on that speeder aim? Droid assisted articulation or just hard mounted?

[@ricks5756]

Greeblies - they don't have to make sense, they just have to add visual noise and look cool on sci-fi models :)

[@Gibson7Clans]

Besides repulser lift tech. There is also tractor beam tech. That can even be weaponized in to a gun that kills like a traditional fire arm. Just ripping a chunk off what you’re pointing at. I think a bug race used this weapon.

[@oldtimefarmboy617]

If you used anti-gravity devices on a rocket, you could use much smaller rockets to get into orbit and use them to move up or down in orbit when you need or want to. You could also simply take off and go straight up and away from the planet in the direction you want to go without getting into orbit first or requiring the use of gravity assist to pick up speed or slow down traveling through a solar system.

[@GuardianSage]

Thank you for the video, though what happened to your classic outro with the cute dog and head pats?

[@sulljoh1]

Fun fact, Rogue One ships are clearly NOT in orbit like the ISS They're hovering at high altitude. That's how they stay fixed over the Imperial base

[@nowthatsjustducky]

The Falcon may have used repulsorlifts to take off, but when it landed at Cloud City, it looked like it was using maneuvering rockets to land.

[@stevenscott2136]

The Falcon had a lot of mechanical issues in that movie -- maybe the repulsors were damaged. Remember that the Falcon is also heavily-modded... no telling what kind of weird jury-rig might be in there that Correllian Engineering Corp. would never have done on purpose.

[@ChrisHall-vh4fx]

Bro the v wing man rouge squadron was so good

[@edmundblackaddercoc8522]

When i try and get amorous with the mrs, she uses repluser lift, never knew it had another use until now.

[@satakrionkryptomortis]

the first thing that would get that tech is most likely tanks. heavy tanks.

[@ChelseaStockford]

how do star ships pull others into their hangers in star wars using the pulling beacon (cant remember what its called)?

[@TribbleArtCreations]

I feel repulsor lift tech would make current rocket tech obsolete, if we could develop repulser lifts with the power for things similar to Acclamators, C9979 transports, etc or even smaller Millenium Falcon or Slave 1 sized ships, we would still require other tech for the actual space aspect of things, but we wouldn't need the massive rockets we need now for leaving atmosphere. I've played around with some ideas in Keebal Space Program (unmodded), and have made spacecraft that don't require the traditional rocket boosters and take off like normal(our normal, although I've craeted a few that do vertical take-off as well) aircraft but have enough power to break through the atmosphere and maneuver in space, again, without massive rockets. Repulsors could definitely take the place of that aspect of rocketry. Although, I do feel, if we develop that tech, initial uses would be more along the lines of tanks and land speeders, and would be a while before we get to air speeders much less Starfighters or large space ships

[@sentrysapper45]

Funnily enough, there are actual cars with wheels in the Star Wars galaxy as well. Some worlds have atmospheric conditions that interfere with repulsors, while others are simply isolated and very low-tech.

[@olafgurke4699]

And besides cars, there are other vehicles with wheels. Chief among them the Clone Turbo Tank or the Hellfire droid. Then there are also tracked vehicles, like the Seperatist snail droid or the Tie Crawler, which I never saw in any star wars media except the Lego catalogue, but damn was the picture shot of it badass.

[@fishman5422]

Question: how do repulorlifts stay at the same height, what if someone hit a speed bump when driving a speeder? And would it be different if it was a something like a snow speeder or if it was a vehicle like Lukes landspeeder?

[@codybergman5991]

A thought on the comment of repulsorlifts not working in space: while I accept this is law in SW, you point out that they produce a gravity field. Gravity is a product of mass/energy that as best as we know warps space/time. If you look at an Alcubierre Warp Drive, it operates on the principle of warping spacetime in a way that drags the ship and it's surrounding space/time along. In principle on the most surface level, a repulsorlift of sufficient power could also probably interact with spacetime itself , allowing a reaction less drive in space. Yes, I know: world of space wizards with laser swords. Still ;)

[@caliperstorm8343]

Alexey Bobrick and Gianni Martire proved that you still need a rocket engine of some kind to accelerate a warp bubble. You can’t just start moving without some kind of momentum exchange with the outside universe, not even with a warp drive. Regardless, Star Wars isn’t really relativity-compliant anyway. Ships literally push off of the luminiferous ether to turn.

[@mrdunk2955]

Repulsorlift tech can be used to send a rocket in orbit which would then switch to the main rocket engine to continue into space.

[@poposterous236]

2:14 we're literally looking at a wheeled vehicle in that shot, its just that the wheels are hidden

[@PEAK_Football]

I mean yes, in the real world it has wheels, but it's supposed to be hovering.

[@williamainsworth2256]

Have you done one on hyperdrive systems and how hyperlanes work in the Star Wars universe? The books I’ve read, aside from legends and beta canon, haven’t really explained much about the technology.