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Because there is gravity in space.
“orbit” is just what we call the sweet spot between moving fast enough to not hit the planet or mooon or whatever and not so fast that you escape it’s gravity (even though it still affects you. just not enough to make kissy noises as you fall back to it.)
But the ships would still be continuing on their current trajectory even when destroyed. Gravity doesn’t affect them more just because their reactor blew up…
So SD’s, etc- the big ships- aren’t technically in orbit. they’re using repulsors to stay up and float above a specific point. So when they start falling… yeah. They’re still going the way they were going before.
It always makes me happy to see someone who is head deep into the star wars kool-aid punch bowl. None of your explanations matter because Star Wars is filmed like in-atmosphere dog fights, on purpose. Lucas wanted the esthetics of old aerial battles action flicks. Gravity, orbits, physics matters not at all. It became part of the visual language. None of the space battles in any Star Wars product make any logical sense in a world that has physics even slightly similar to our universe. But you know what? it doesn’t matter, you keep defending it. It is more entertaining that way.
Even just moving in space for the dog fight is going to be putting you in to way under or over a stable orbit around the planet. So the moving ships trivialize gravity but once they’re broke and drifting then gravity does come into play. If they are in very low orbit they’re going to reenter pretty fast, outside of that you’ll just drift in orbit almost all the time.
Yeah, the gravity will affect them, over the next couple hundred of kilometers given their initial speed. Not within a few meters. It’s way over thinking it. The destroyers are battleships and the fighters are planes, that’s how their movement is coded. Real life space physics play no role. That’s OK, is an stylistic choice that works for the franchise. Anything more is head canon from fans that breaks down with even the slightest scrutiny. Like I said, it’s fun to argue about it, but from the very mouth of the cinematographers, it’s not that deep.
Without the acceleration of the engines the gravity well takes over.
Where are the Moon’s engines?
Not many space battles are taking place in stable orbit dude.
So the reason the moon has a curved path is because of the earth’s gravity. Its velocity relative to earth is high enough that as the earth pulls the moon
at 9.8 m/s2, it misses the earth entirely. This pulls the moon into a circular trajectory, and that’s what we call an orbit.Big ships in Star Wars are not “in orbit” in this sense. They’re relying on technobabble and dohickeys to stay up in the sky- above a specific part of the planet.
So when those engines stop providing power, they fa ll to the planet.
The physics you presented is very off.
First, 9.8 m/s/s is the acceleration of things that fall near Earth’s surface, so the Earth is not pulling the moon with that acceleration, it’s far less. A basic model predicts the moons acceleration to be GM/r^2 where G is the universal gravitational constant, M is the Earth’s mass, and r is the distance between the Earth’s and Moon’s centers of mass.
Second, you have presented a misconception that “orbiting” does not include hovering over the same position relative to a point on a planet. The thing is the planet is not still, it is both spinning and translating. This means in order for the big ship to view the planet as not moving, it also needs to be orbiting around the planet at the same speed that the planet is spinning while translating at the same speed as the planet.
Uh, you’re right about the acceleration.
I’m not sure what you’re on about with the second point?
Are you suggesting that because geosynchronous orbits exist they’re always in geosynchronous? We see big ships (imperials 2’s) in all sorts of different elevations. They’re very clearly not orbiting- anything other than geosynchronous for that planet is going to require some kind of lift to keep it at elevation- and probably some amount of lateral/tangential speed to keep above a city.
Their repulsors could do the job (but probably bring in the engines for some reason… but we won’t get into that.)
Or are you suggesting that the orbit around the sun is somehow significant enough to affect the position of a ship able to transit most systems within hours?
It might be in a heliocentric orbit (along with the planet) but it’s still not orbiting the planet unless it’s moving with a tangential velocity roughly equal to the orbital velocity.
My general point is that people’s arguments regarding how star wars simplifies space flight into pseudo-atmospheric flight mechanics is generally correct. It’s not an awful thing though. Space is so foreign to almost everyone on Earth that trying to model realistic outcomes in the movie would probably not make sense to most viewers; so it’s being greatly simplified in order to cause less cognitive dissonance to the viewers.
Also, a lot of battles are taking place as ships come out of hyperspace in relation to the gravity well, so they are accelerating across or into the planet. They aren’t even in “orbit” at all.
Yes they don’t decelerate, but that’s an entire other thing.
I always envision that they’re burning velocity while in hyperspace to come out in a zero-zero rendezvous with whatever they’re meeting so that they come out “just right”
My head cannon is that the hyperdrive is like sliding into a blister on the edge of space and the drive is pushing that blister. Your momentum is preserved, start and stop but you can shift it so you’re always coming out “stopped” or advancing at a useful direction.
(Otherwise we’d see them making long-ass RV burns.)
That’s no moon
(I see what you did there)
And why are they all upside ? Space battle in star wars don’t take full advantage of the verticality
That’s a failure of human psychology. I bet that pilots from species with natural flying ability do better. In fact, I would expect Ackbar to be a real fiend in this regard.
Movies and TV shows starting with “Star…” are not known for their hard-science fiction.
Star Wars is just a western, set in spaaaaace.
That’s why the good guys wore white and the bad guys wore black.
Whenever you notice something like that, a
wizardjedi did it.I feel like Ron Moore’s Battlestar Galactica series had the most realistic ideas about how battles would be fought in space and doesn’t get enough recognition for it.
No. That honor goes to The Expanse. After that, all other space shows are unwatchable from a physics reality POV.
Up until the green space magic, anyway…
green space magic
naw. still just super advanced tech indistinguishable from magic. But I also know that’s a bit of a contentious topic.
+1 for the expanse! the story isn’t extraordinary but their take on space faring was so good. now all sci-fi looks dumb :( i wish there were more series like that
The story isn’t what? Get out! :)
Space is full of gravity. It is literally engulfed in gravity. It’s just differently strong depending on where you are and what’s around you.
Also: cinematic effect. Just like sounds of explosions etc which are usually not really hearable in space.
There is no defined “down” in space
The enemy gate is down.
they don’t
Well you clearly haven’t watched that documentary about the return of the jedi
If there’s no direction in space, then how does he know which way is down?
Uhm, sounds, flames, laser swords, the shape of spaceships
This thread, specifically the physics-knowledgeable people arguing with the Star Wars nerds with enough in-universe knowledge to explain things, is the best thing I’ve read all day.
