Do they rescue humans? I’ll work for room and board and promise to make not-too-much of a mess.

It’s not my fault I can’t read!

Those are some happy ducks!

This birb has evolved into a borb.

(Emphasis on the ORB. Also: “I’m in shape. Round is a shape.”)

*Boop!*

calm down. i ordered some pizza.

I bet everyday was exciting around those three!

Keep the skinny blond kid away from that cat!

Do they love tickles the same way mice and rats do? If so… can you do me a favor and give them a few for me?

If not… well. I’m sure you can think of something they’d like?

Purty please? Cuz they deserve it for being adorable.

I’m unconvinced on the ai-free claim. We’re gonna need a toebean shot to verify.

(Everybody loves tiebreaks, right? Should I ask for a loaf?)

Can ya do me a favor and give her some extra scritches for me?

I think you might be confused as to the reference- Fat Man was the nuke dropped on Nagasaki, and was larger than Little Boy, which was dropped on Hiroshima.

which makes these two not-actually-fiction.

They suck.

Either they’re not actually hybrids or they suck tremendously at both.

Too many trade offs to get the other side working.

No.

• energy requirements will always be higher vs surface transit

• mechanical complexity will increase mechanical failures. these mechanical failures are much more likely to lead to death or severe injury or extensive damage.

• you think self driving is bad now? It’s not. Planes can largely fly themselves, but that’s not the hard part. It’s the everything else, including maintaining safe patterns and separation. If everyone jumped to air travel in a city congestion just moves into the air, and you’ll have shit loads of accidents. Throw in improperly maintained air craft because that shit is expensive and you have a recipe for 9/11-level accidents on a daily basis.

Mass transit is the way to go.

So, here’s the thing.

That’s not a great analogy. The MIM-104 Patriot missile system is still providing vital and necessary functionality on a daily basis.

It’s also mobile in the exact same way I’m suggesting the V-150 could (and should,) be.

And finally, the reason they haven’t done that is because there’s plenty of other options like the RIM-174, which we also gave them. (But I’m not so sure it’s as vital. That’s a high bar to cross.)

As for its size, yeah. It’s huge. But you’re comparing that to earth construction. Star Wars always went big. For example the Lucrehulk freighter (which they used for a pilot training academy,)

That thing was large enough that pretty much every they brought to Hoth could fit on it and access with all the same capability as echo base itself. With room to spare. They probably wouldn’t even need to give up the flight academy!

The point being, it’s not unreasonable to suggest they could just literally do that- strap it to an appropriately sized freighter.

Like i mentioned before: they had to get it there somehow, and it’s not the type of thing you’d just build in place. (They stole it and several other cannons, after all.)

so, here’s an incredible cross sections scan of the v-150 cannon on hoth:

The cannons are absolute beasts. Don’t get me wrong.

We don’t actually know how big the thing is, at least not directly. We do have a scene with a golan df.9 turret (the stubby tower ones, not the dish turrets,) is next to it. those are 4 meters in height In the screen grab of the ion cannon. guestimating the height behind the snow drift, I make the ball 6 df.9’s in diameter. 8, if I ignore the base and go with whats seen, and ignoring the actual barrel thingies. (that’s another df.9.)

So for surface installation (Ball turret plus the reactor core that’s under the ball,) I’d make it needing something between 48 to 64 meters in over all length, and 24 to 36 meters in cylindrical space.

this wouldn’t be that hard to bolt on to something like a GR-75, which is 90 meters long, and mostly just cargo racks. Keep in mind they had to get all that equipment there in the first place, and these aren’t the kind of things you’re building in place, it might be broken down into some submodules, but you’re not breaking them down into component parts.

if a GR-75 isn’t large enough, (maybe because the reactor core isn’t… a reactor core? and needs “base” power.) Then the Imperial Container Ship certainly is (and incredibly easy to steal.) You can actually build that thing out to something that resembles a mobile operations base, to be honest. (the internals of the cargo stack are all shirt-sleeve habitation, apparently,)

Both ships have an advantage here in that they would be rather easy to modify into hauling something other than containers, and including possibly something outsized like the ion cannon. basically becoming a system defense monitor (slow, big guns, and mobile only the sense that, sure, it technically can shuffle off.)

You could do a few things with it. use it concert in lightling raids- it doesn’t come deep into the envelope, but it hits the biggies from range. Probably after a recon flight pops in and gives targets, it can jump in and start blasting with lighter things coming in to do whatever. fighters, bombers, etc.

alternatively, drop it in orbit and let it hang out where it can cover an escape and shuffle off on it’s own. (bonus points for everything else being space-based and not planet-side.)

It absolutely is fantasy

But the physics as far as that goes are still on point compared to, idunno, Star Trek.

The sound in space, the swooping, all of that were story telling tools used to convey a sense of what was happening. Realistic space battles aren’t really all that exciting.

Not even the expanse got that right. They just replaced particle beams with Gatling guns and condescending but inaccurate explanations of why things don’t swoop.

Fun fact, the reason planes and stuff seem to swoop is because they’re under constant accelerations and observed from the perspective outside the plane. One source of that constant acceleration is the atmosphere (drag and lift,) but you can just as easily replace that with fusion maneuvering thrusters or something.

aural synthesis of sensrionics to enhance situational awareness.

(For a non bullshit answer it was for creating engagement with the audience. The utter silence of 2001 space odyssey kinda bothered a lot of people.)

(Same with the swooping.)

(Though from a certain point of view, swooping happens.)

I’m really not a fan of super weapons in sci fi. They make little sense, if you ask me.

like. really. the Deathstar didn’t really serve much in the way of a useful purpose.

A carrier for self-mobile carriers? that made planets go poof?

Any reasonable rebel would just not be on a planet, which means you’re making your own resources go poof. and by resources, I mean labor force.

This something I never understood about Hoth. strap that ion gun and it’s genset to a freighter, and you’d have a pretty mean gunship that can disable entire convoys or blockades. equip other freighters for wildcat gas extraction and refinery and solve your fuel problems. same for manufacturing, with the advantage of not losing your shit everytime the Empire shows up.

Bruh.

That’s perfect.