I’m enjoying these types of videos, starting with a Star Wars concept but then using real life examples and how we could eventually develop in that direction.
Imperiaal star destroyers can: Transport troops, dropships and heavy ground vehicles. Do planetairy bombardments. Carry fighters and bombers. Can service smaller ships like frigates and corvettes. Can combat other capitol ships. These huge 10 mile ships all have "thermal exhaust ports" that make it possible that one fighter can knock them out. While imperial star destroyers can do everything the empire needs. These uber huge ships is like putting all your eggs in one basket. These are just put in the film to make Poe look heroic. Morronic ship design.
@@thijsjongthe exhaust port was the Death Star, no? I thought rebel tactics were to hit the shields generators and hangers with bombers and then just thrash the thing
Kuat-KDY is the answer. The Ring was able to service thousands of ISD-2 sized ships, while at the same time manufacture thousands of ISD-2 and a few dreadnaughts all at the same time. The vertical integration of supply and logistics is a great point.. Also the cost to produce technology in the starwars galaxy has been revolutionized with AI controlled nano assembly
The method your talking about is called "superblocks" its how they built the USS Ford.. enabled with the use of 3d virtual design software to keep the wiring and piping running correctly.
If there is a company that holds a virtual monopoly on a strategic asset, it has no incentive to SELL it´s products at a bargain price, even if it can make them very efficiently. They would take the highest price they could extract from the state without endangering the orders. The price given for an ISD compared to other goods appears completely unrealistic, considering the raw amount of ressources that would be necessary to make such huge object.
What is interesting is that I have found we could make a seed station based on a similar concept with nuclear fusion, magnetic harvester beams, and plasma printing instead of the force and we could do something similar eventually. The subsequent question becomes: what do we with all that power?
8:41 in real life, a lot of auto shops will fix uni-body vehicles by cutting out the bad section, and replacing it with a good section from a junked car. The process is relatively simple for an experienced autobody tech - just takes a lot of time to do properly.
They do it with ships too. In 1956 the USS Wisconsin collided with another ship and the bow was severely damaged. The Navy took the hull of her sister ship Kentucky, which was never completed, and cut off her bow to weld onto the Wisconsin. To this day, the Wisconsin with the bow of Kentucky grafted on is affectionately nicknamed the WisKy.
@@anthonymonge7815 A few years ago, a shipyard in the UK managed to weld a section of a submarine hull on upside-down. They had to cut it off and re-weld it rightside-up.
It's no wonder that there are multiple planets in the Star Wars Universe who's industry is starship salvage. There must be hundreds of thousands of pkanets that were just stripped to the core for resources like Illum. It could actually explain some of the inhabited desert worlds that are in universe.
I think asteroid fields would be a better source of resources, I would imagine a fleet of drones feeding thousands of drones, some collecting resources, others refining those materials and some actually building the ship,
Stripping metal and volitiles from asteroids and comets would be more energy efficient. There’s quite a bit of junk floating in our own system, to the point we could build hundreds of super star destroyers.
@@Minotaur-ey2lg I was actually thinking more long term. At the rate the resources will be taken from the asteroids, the gravity and interaction of the asteroids would be changing regularly and be depleted within months. The planets gravity would change at a hugely slower rate and the resources would last for decades. This would allow one to build a base, which they did.
To add to Alan's comment @ 14:00 - The same technology we need to alleviate poverty here on Earth is the same technology we'll need for space colonization. Picture this - 3D Printed Homes revolutionize shelter, driving down costs and labor, not just for those on other planets, but for those here on earth. Water reclamation systems designed for distant planets find purpose in alleviating water scarcity here on Earth. Virtual Education, a necessity in the cosmos, becomes a powerful equalizer, providing learning opportunities across our own globe. From 3D printed tools to the very essence of our self-sufficiency, the same technology propelling us to new frontiers also doubles as the key to a brighter, more sustainable future for all here on Earth.
And driving down the cost of energy, by using nuclear instead of expensive renewables.. We got thorium enough for a thousand years for everyone on the world living like an upper middle class US citizen. It is actually better mathematically to use nuclear to produce synthetic fuel for cars from atmospheric CO2 and water, than use the same electrical energy in Li-Ion batteries in those same cars... And the benefits of LFTRs is, they can use current nuclear waste for fuel, and only produce shortlived waste. With low energy cost, it becomes cheaper to handle waste, and to eliminate powerty. Poverty is tightly linked to low EROEI, which comes with renewables. And while I don't believe in 3D printed homes, I believe in robots replacing humans working.. driving down costs....
@@MrZnarffy Exactly. If both sides were smart they would be pushing for more research money into advance nuclear systems (like fusion and LFTR. AOC really should have made proposing both a key part of the Green New Deal, along with a more robust, intelligent, energy distribution grid).
An in-depth analysis of star ship manufacturing, followed by a thoughtful introspect into how that applies to the real world. Truly, the greatest channel the galaxy has ever seen.
This is video was amazing. I did not expect a levelheaded viewpoint on modern technology when the topic was Galactic Empire shipbuilding. This channel is one of the best Star Wars centric channels out there in the youtube universe.
Regarding your point on Modularity: In WWII the US made hundreds of transports called Victory Ships. The fastest build time on record was five days from laying the keel to launching. Five days to build a ship in the 1940s. They were using gas welders and rivet guns back then. The secret was modularity. They built the ship in sections in different parts of the port and then staged them near the drydock. Imagine doing this for a whole planet-wide shipyard.
@@davidcolmer5448that's just being pedantic. Yes, final assembly in drydock is what they're referring to, using far more completed components than a typical build. It's still building a ship from start to finish using the provided components in 5 days.
Those ships were pretty low tech compared to ships of the line, most of those victory ships were used for escort services and were considered expendable
@@davidcolmer5448 Non-sequitur, every ship being build in a drydock is "just" assembling prebuilt pieces. You think they have a ship piece factory in the slip? If you only understood how empty headed your comment was, I am sure you would be mortified. When you hang a shelf in your living room you don't count the time it took to manufacture the screwdriver or the screws or the shelf, or at least I've never heard or seen anyone do it that way, you just source the parts and bid the time you think it will take to assemble them. Maybe you come from Mars or something.
@@mrsweetpotato4354 True, but there are dozens of easily sourced examples of modern countries not being able to rally their population or flex their industrial might effectively. There is a competence gap that is growing worldwide, I hope you liked the movie Idiocracy, because your in it. Right now Russia is fighting a war with tanks form the 1990s and has absolutely no chance of pumping them out of factories at the rate they did then, and they are mostly supplementing by remanufacture and cannibalization (for one example).
The last half of this video turned into a TED Talk that everyone needs to listen to. I went into this video wanting to know more about The Empire's economics of ship building and it turned into a damn good analysis of our current time.
What about the enconomics INSIDE one of these city sized ships there has to be some kind of lore on what the troops did inside these ships over long periods of time
I was thinking the same thing. You see the economies in B5 and DS9, which are static; but you never see the economies on mobile, city-sized ships like dreadnaughts.
It's so fun seeing Generation Tech go into such a deep exegesis of Star Wars lore and then make parallels to our world, even with something as obscure as how star destroyers get built.
I thought I was a fan of Star Wars till I watched this and read the comments. Talk about getting your geek ON! Maybe one of these days I’ll go down the rabbit hole fully and watch this full video all the way to the end…
I'm sitting here stunned. Alan, you're AWESOME! You took my little old question and made a video I'm going to watch again and again. I want to catch every nuance I missed...
Here are some anecdotes about scale: Everybody by now is familliar with the notion that the Executor class could park on top of Manhattan Island, And you would still have to walk a few blocks in any direction to get to a waterfront.... But that also means it could land completely within the perimeter fence of O'Hare airport in Chicago. The death star could sit on top of Long Island and there would be land sticking out on both sides. The DS2 could sit In the waters of the lower end of Lake Michigan like a testicle in a scrotum, if the water was deep enough (it is not) Without touching either shore.
I really appreciated your speech at the end of the video, regarding how we should embrace look for ways to use technology rather than fear and try to avoid it. That attitude really reminds me of when I was preparing to become a music teacher, one of my professors spoke to my class about how how we should go about maintaining our online and social media presences, in regards to how our future students and employers will see them. He said: “You can either try to hide yourselves and your online activity, using aliases or just staying away from social media, or you can make it something you want others to see. Post videos of your performances, tweet about upcoming gigs you’re playing, create your own branding that connects your musicianship to your name so that that’s the first thing that comes up when they Google you. Show them that you’re a real musician, and they’ll want to hire you even more.” It really is better to run towards the things you’ll have to face anyway, and meet them on your own terms, than to hide and avoid them for as long as you can.
All this makes sense for the Empire, but it doesn't make sense at all for the sequel trilogy. The First Order, despite lacking the Empire's population and industrial base, makes the bizarre decision to build even larger capital ships. And then the Sith build an entire fleet of scaled-up Star Destroyers on a planetary surface rather than in orbit. Of course, nothing else about the First Order makes sense either, so...
Palpatine not the first order made the decision to build all those star destroyers and store them underwater. And i case you didn't notice the man was completely crazy and let the rating and ravings of mad men from 1000+ years ago direct his current actions.
@@SpottedHares in my head canon this justifies the bad stuff we see in the sequel trilogy. Palpatine being crazy and snorting lines of coke when deciding to build that many ships make sense.
Nuclear propulsion becomes very efficient and cost effective if we can build ships in space. Chemical rockets would only be for the taxi that gets you to the shipyard / spacedock in orbit.
There are currently no nuclear reactors that would work on a space ship and that would supply significant amounts of thrust. First you still need a huge mass as shielding against the radiation from the reactor. Secound it is difficult to get rid of the waste heat of a nucklear reactor in the vacuum of space. Third you still need some kind of reacation mass to get ship in space moving.
I love how your Chanel isn’t just about Star Wars but you also bring real world things into it. I also love how technical you get about Star Wars ships. I almost guarantee you play space engineers as in depth you get about Star Wars ships. You’re awesome man
star wars economies are crazy large. ssd's i buy, same for death stars. what i don't buy is the remnant making them, or some cultists making super ultra fleets in secret. that's crazy talk.
@@bennettbush3906 it would've made some sense if they had been actual imperial 1 class SD's. But they specifically said no, those are actually new ships that looks like ISD1's but are way bigger AND built on site at exogul. made no sense.
Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.
"Once we start the first orbital shipyard..." The ISS was originally the Freedom Station, the design was twice as big, and its primarily goal was to build interplanetary craft. The inclined orbit to include the Russians neutered the whole project.
I’ve been thinking, what would happen to everything involving space if JFK didn’t get assassinated? I would like to think there would be an alliance between the US and Russia and both countries would’ve started building a big station much earlier, which might mean tech would be more advanced and things like a space elevator would be possible as early as the 2030’s. Just speculation
@@matthewgibbs6886 Even slave labour isn´t "free" - slaves still need food, housing, equipment and health care. And the problem is that you don´t want critical components made by people who hate you...
@@matthewgibbs6886in the example clip where he said slaves, pretty sure those were prisoners. While the distinction there may be a matter of justification, using prisoners for free labor has long been a normal activity, one not considered to be slavery in our modern world, unless the imprisonment is for the purpose of creating prisoner laborers, something certain nations are known for even today. Good times.
I can very easily see parts of these ships being, effectively... 3d printed. you could easily lay down a keel or spine of a ship in space just by "extruding it" on the spot. and this would allow you to go anywhere from 100m to 50,000m just by alterting the thickness of the extruder and push/pulling out any length you want. cutting it off at the end, cooling it, then 3d printing the base skeliton of the ship.
A ring around a roughly Earth-sized planet that looked as big as the images in this video would have to be, like, _billions_ of times more massive than the Death Star! Millions of times at the very least! (Somebody do the math, please!)
@@BugRib An orbital ring isn't really that terribly impressive, tbh. The raw material requirements are the main hurdle, of course, but we know that's basically irrelevant as a concern for SW; in terms of actual engineering, a Death Star is laughably more impressive simply by virtue of being mobile, with all the hurdles and challenges that entails.
Thanks for another FANTASTIC video. Well thought out, and like all the channel's others, a VERY different approach to what other SW channels are talking about. Been a fan for years, Sir. These are the videos that made me a fan, and keep me coming back. Again, thanks for the always great content!
Oil tankers have held the top ten spots for largest ships ever made for 40 years now. In fact, they probably hold the top 100 spots for the largest ships ever made at this point.
One should not cling onto what's old, but do not blindly accept the new either. We are nostalgic for old things but old things are not automatically better. But on the other hand, not every new idea is a good one.
The challenge to embracing new technology is knowing which new technology to embrace. Those who bet on HD Laser disks, lost to those who bet on Blue Ray. Those who bet on 8-track, lost to those who bet on cassettes. In both cases, the technology of the loser was actually better than that of the winner. Embracing technology means doing the socio-economic research as well as the technological research.
I just want to be able to enjoy what we have for a while/max it out before it gets replaced but then again, he who stands still in an ever-changing world will soon be overtaken by it
Im waiting for you to mention "Cold Welding" the real reason manufacuring in space will be so easy. you are so right that they would be modular, and essentially squeezed together
I appreciate your optimistic outlook. Human nature is very messy, but people often get hyperfocused on the hear and now, rather than looking forward to the future.
All infrastructure of any kind is a big investment and takes a long time to build. Like the rail road. Lots of labor, time, and money. Felt like crawling on the land. But once that rail was finished. BOOM! We flying across the land so fast and getting product left and right. Huge profits!
Thanks for the breakdown of how the building works. I enjoy your videos. I play star wars rpgs and the bits of info you provide adds to my knowledge of the universe.
Makes sense. KDY is like a Pan Galatic Toyota pumping out Imperial Class Star Corollas by the thousand, whereas Newport News is making one off bespoke ships.
Man I truly hope to see in the upcoming shows/movies the planet Kuat and it’s amazing shipyards. Maybe we can get a New Republic/Mandalorians vs Thrawns empire in the Thrawn movie
About twenty years I've been seeing we need an orbital manufacturing presence, because of all the benefits you mentioned. You have a bigger platform. :-D Shout it from the rooftops.
What a brilliant presentation! I never realized that Star Wars had so many ships and places that made them. I do question the concept of bigger is better. These part being assembled in space will have tremendous mass. Meanwhile, back in the real world there are Navy stories of men building submarine type vessels in Utah for space travel. Even the Tall White aliens of Indian Springs seem to be quite capable of space travel without such gigantic vehicles. Blessings
Very well done, I'm not a big Star Wars fan but that company that builds the ships sounds fascinating. Your attitude about technological change is spot on. As to Tesla backing off from Gigacasting, I think it has more to do with that what they really wanted to do was to make the whole platform one piece, but found out it's a lot more difficult than it seemed at first, so they have backed off from it for now. But again, great job, and you have a new subscriber.
A great vid by a great channel that goes way off topic into something much more interesting. It's worth noting to anyone else feeling like their line of work is gonna be replaced by better tech and think content creation might be better, but just too much effort or too hard - this video is just someone talking about a topic they're interested in (that's key), with a music track (a good one, but presumably royalty free as is usually the case), and stock footage likely obtained off storybooks or some other aggregate service. Not to be reductive, as the combination came out great, but it goes to show how you can make something comparable.
This video put into perspective the mindboggling size of a modern aircraft carrier. Those are small floating cities. Seeing one in real life is kind of a humbling experience knowing humanity can build a machine of wa r that massive.
The thing about AI and art is more down to the fact of redefining what art's purpose even is. To say AI will replace art is to reduce art to little more than a utility or service, as opposed to a very uniquely human means of expression of ideas, emotions, beliefs, etc... In visual art, there's a lot subjective and unique-to-the-individual experience that goes behind every stroke of the brush and 'why' they chose to make something the way they did. Machines are completely devoid of this as they do not 'experience.' I do think it's kind of a good thing as it serves to set art back on its course as a uniquely human form of creative labors of love, as opposed to the direction it's taken over the past 30 years as just churning out concepts and commissions someone pays you to as opposed to something you actually want to make. The problem is that it will make art itself no longer dependable for income, meaning artists will have less time to dedicate to the craft as they're forced to work somewhere else: just one more step in dehumanizing the world into slave/consumer cattle. I think the AI thing is just poorly timed economically, and probably would've been more graciously welcomed in a world where the common person does not have to worry about financial needs: that way people like artists would still create out of love, rather being worried about not being able to do art at all since their new job takes time away from it. In today's economic state, something that threatens to push more people away from being able to do what they love as a career, when it's so difficult to land such a career in the first place, is not going to be well received no matter what it promises; it's putting the cart before the horse, giving a right answer, but asking the wrong question. That's why people get so fervently upset over it.
Interesting. Speaking of modular ship building, I watched a documentary in the early 2,000's that explained how modular ship building was being used to save time and money for the US Navy, showed segments arriving on semi-flatbeds and being set into place in the dry dock like Legos.
New port news constructs 600 ton super blocks which are added to the ship the South Koreans put those 600 ton super blocks into 3k ton mega blocks which are then added to the ship, they can have 6 plus mega blocks in production at the same time basically whole semi finished chunks of ship to be welded into a complete ship! Star ships assuredly would be constructed in similar fashion bur even more so with such build qualities a section of the yard probably builds nothing but destroy drive sections or standard shuttle bays of size 3 and so forth
Regarding 15:55, as a 37 year old engineer for some years now I worry for the future. Technology on it's own is not good or evil - in the end people decide how they will use it. Technology really increases our power, both on an individual and societal levels. Now what worries me is that development of technology speeds up in a rapid pace, while our cultural, moral and political development lags behind (and this difference in all likelihood will continue to grow). Because of that we will likely see more abuses of more powerful technologies in the future. We are still largely controlled by the same basic impulses as our hunter gatherer homo sapiens ancestors from thousands of years ago, but instead of sticks and stones we have nuclear weapons. And soon we may have nanomachines and AGI.
Yes exactly. Not to mention that most authoritarian or otherwise non-market states tend to think long-term (usually 4 or 5 years) which enables them to build large ships in such a period. Basically they conduct a broad estimation of technological capabilities of an adversary and their own nation as a whole (The question "CAN we build it" and "SHOULD we build it") and later, when the new naval estimates are drafted, they simply amend them on the go as the basic structure of the ships are already laid out (The question "HOW we build it"). In this period, entire regions would be dedicated to providing steel, titanium and other important resources for construction. The trickiest part is to not outgun yourself, because the enemy can disrupt such a state simply by overstating their own investments or capabilities, essentially, scaring the non-market state into locking into a long-term contract for an unsustainable navy. That's what the US did to USSR during Reagan, for example, with the whole SDI project which basically was inflatable ships and rockets to scare USSR into outproducing them at the expense of civilian economy.
Never been here. Was gonna close the video after I heard Star Wars; I grew up on the other 3 "Star" ones. :D. Then I heard the parallels of IRL and future fiction, then a few quips of humor. Kept me listening.
I was curious more about the internal economics of such a vessel than its construction; ie, the operational economics -- what it would "cost" to support and sustain the enormous population, even assuming there would be highly advanced technologies which would make the processes involved much more efficient than our current techs could. It is as you say the size of a city, and the underlying logistics would be staggering. Still, great video.
There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things, and people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less crowded.
Toward the end, I forgot I was watching a Star Wars video. This is really why I like Generation Tech.
Dead ass I almost forgot to
😎👍
He's surprisingly insightful, isn't he?
He’s able to bring life lessons up in a way that really hits home with me. I’m not sure why.
I’m enjoying these types of videos, starting with a Star Wars concept but then using real life examples and how we could eventually develop in that direction.
"The ship is too big. If I walk, the movie will be over."
“Prepare ship, for ludicrous speed!”
Imperiaal star destroyers can:
Transport troops, dropships and heavy ground vehicles.
Do planetairy bombardments.
Carry fighters and bombers.
Can service smaller ships like frigates and corvettes.
Can combat other capitol ships.
These huge 10 mile ships all have "thermal exhaust ports" that make it possible that one fighter can knock them out.
While imperial star destroyers can do everything the empire needs.
These uber huge ships is like putting all your eggs in one basket.
These are just put in the film to make Poe look heroic.
Morronic ship design.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5? That's the combination I have on my luggage!
@@thijsjongthe exhaust port was the Death Star, no? I thought rebel tactics were to hit the shields generators and hangers with bombers and then just thrash the thing
Is that "Space Balls?"
Kuat-KDY is the answer. The Ring was able to service thousands of ISD-2 sized ships, while at the same time manufacture thousands of ISD-2 and a few dreadnaughts all at the same time. The vertical integration of supply and logistics is a great point.. Also the cost to produce technology in the starwars galaxy has been revolutionized with AI controlled nano assembly
The method your talking about is called "superblocks" its how they built the USS Ford.. enabled with the use of 3d virtual design software to keep the wiring and piping running correctly.
If there is a company that holds a virtual monopoly on a strategic asset, it has no incentive to SELL it´s products at a bargain price, even if it can make them very efficiently.
They would take the highest price they could extract from the state without endangering the orders.
The price given for an ISD compared to other goods appears completely unrealistic, considering the raw amount of ressources that would be necessary to make such huge object.
So AI is allowed for construction, just not for warfare?
KDY is the Lockheed Martin of Star Wars
I'm seeing "rings" and "able to service" and I'm trying really hard not to be immature here 😂😂 great comment though I'm just a 30 year old child
Revan and Malak didn't need to conquer the Galaxy. With the Star Forge, they could have conquered the Galaxy economically.
True
What is interesting is that I have found we could make a seed station based on a similar concept with nuclear fusion, magnetic harvester beams, and plasma printing instead of the force and we could do something similar eventually.
The subsequent question becomes: what do we with all that power?
@@ADHSV113 Mass produce everything from canned food to 5 km space warships
@@ADHSV113 obviously, we conquer the galaxy
Palpatine had a Star Forge at Exagol along with a cloning facility.
8:41 in real life, a lot of auto shops will fix uni-body vehicles by cutting out the bad section, and replacing it with a good section from a junked car.
The process is relatively simple for an experienced autobody tech - just takes a lot of time to do properly.
They do it with ships too. In 1956 the USS Wisconsin collided with another ship and the bow was severely damaged. The Navy took the hull of her sister ship Kentucky, which was never completed, and cut off her bow to weld onto the Wisconsin. To this day, the Wisconsin with the bow of Kentucky grafted on is affectionately nicknamed the WisKy.
@@LiveFreeOrDieDH Scary! A 887 feet long cut-and-shut! 😱
@@LiveFreeOrDieDHthey just did that with a submarine years ago. Also they do it with cruisers.
@@anthonymonge7815 A few years ago, a shipyard in the UK managed to weld a section of a submarine hull on upside-down. They had to cut it off and re-weld it rightside-up.
It's no wonder that there are multiple planets in the Star Wars Universe who's industry is starship salvage. There must be hundreds of thousands of pkanets that were just stripped to the core for resources like Illum. It could actually explain some of the inhabited desert worlds that are in universe.
I think asteroid fields would be a better source of resources, I would imagine a fleet of drones feeding thousands of drones, some collecting resources, others refining those materials and some actually building the ship,
Stripping metal and volitiles from asteroids and comets would be more energy efficient. There’s quite a bit of junk floating in our own system, to the point we could build hundreds of super star destroyers.
@@Minotaur-ey2lg Planets are easier, since the source doesn't move as much.
@@theodorefreeman You really think exiting that gravity well is more efficient than ripping apart a chunk of rock that barely registers? Okay.
@@Minotaur-ey2lg I was actually thinking more long term. At the rate the resources will be taken from the asteroids, the gravity and interaction of the asteroids would be changing regularly and be depleted within months. The planets gravity would change at a hugely slower rate and the resources would last for decades. This would allow one to build a base, which they did.
To add to Alan's comment @ 14:00 - The same technology we need to alleviate poverty here on Earth is the same technology we'll need for space colonization. Picture this - 3D Printed Homes revolutionize shelter, driving down costs and labor, not just for those on other planets, but for those here on earth. Water reclamation systems designed for distant planets find purpose in alleviating water scarcity here on Earth. Virtual Education, a necessity in the cosmos, becomes a powerful equalizer, providing learning opportunities across our own globe. From 3D printed tools to the very essence of our self-sufficiency, the same technology propelling us to new frontiers also doubles as the key to a brighter, more sustainable future for all here on Earth.
And a lot of unemployment. Check out The Expanse’s version of Earth.
And driving down the cost of energy, by using nuclear instead of expensive renewables.. We got thorium enough for a thousand years for everyone on the world living like an upper middle class US citizen. It is actually better mathematically to use nuclear to produce synthetic fuel for cars from atmospheric CO2 and water, than use the same electrical energy in Li-Ion batteries in those same cars... And the benefits of LFTRs is, they can use current nuclear waste for fuel, and only produce shortlived waste.
With low energy cost, it becomes cheaper to handle waste, and to eliminate powerty. Poverty is tightly linked to low EROEI, which comes with renewables. And while I don't believe in 3D printed homes, I believe in robots replacing humans working.. driving down costs....
@@MrZnarffy Exactly. If both sides were smart they would be pushing for more research money into advance nuclear systems (like fusion and LFTR. AOC really should have made proposing both a key part of the Green New Deal, along with a more robust, intelligent, energy distribution grid).
An in-depth analysis of star ship manufacturing, followed by a thoughtful introspect into how that applies to the real world. Truly, the greatest channel the galaxy has ever seen.
This is video was amazing. I did not expect a levelheaded viewpoint on modern technology when the topic was Galactic Empire shipbuilding. This channel is one of the best Star Wars centric channels out there in the youtube universe.
Regarding your point on Modularity: In WWII the US made hundreds of transports called Victory Ships. The fastest build time on record was five days from laying the keel to launching. Five days to build a ship in the 1940s. They were using gas welders and rivet guns back then. The secret was modularity. They built the ship in sections in different parts of the port and then staged them near the drydock. Imagine doing this for a whole planet-wide shipyard.
that's obviously not 5 days to build the ship... just to assemble all the pieces that have already been prebuilt.
@@davidcolmer5448that's just being pedantic. Yes, final assembly in drydock is what they're referring to, using far more completed components than a typical build. It's still building a ship from start to finish using the provided components in 5 days.
Those ships were pretty low tech compared to ships of the line, most of those victory ships were used for escort services and were considered expendable
@@davidcolmer5448 Non-sequitur, every ship being build in a drydock is "just" assembling prebuilt pieces. You think they have a ship piece factory in the slip? If you only understood how empty headed your comment was, I am sure you would be mortified. When you hang a shelf in your living room you don't count the time it took to manufacture the screwdriver or the screws or the shelf, or at least I've never heard or seen anyone do it that way, you just source the parts and bid the time you think it will take to assemble them. Maybe you come from Mars or something.
@@mrsweetpotato4354 True, but there are dozens of easily sourced examples of modern countries not being able to rally their population or flex their industrial might effectively. There is a competence gap that is growing worldwide, I hope you liked the movie Idiocracy, because your in it. Right now Russia is fighting a war with tanks form the 1990s and has absolutely no chance of pumping them out of factories at the rate they did then, and they are mostly supplementing by remanufacture and cannibalization (for one example).
The last half of this video turned into a TED Talk that everyone needs to listen to. I went into this video wanting to know more about The Empire's economics of ship building and it turned into a damn good analysis of our current time.
What about the enconomics INSIDE one of these city sized ships there has to be some kind of lore on what the troops did inside these ships over long periods of time
Just eat, train, sleep, train, and train, like all militaries do.
What a great question. Hope Allan sees this, and does a dive on it!
I was thinking the same thing. You see the economies in B5 and DS9, which are static; but you never see the economies on mobile, city-sized ships like dreadnaughts.
Some guy with a food cart in a main corridor selling hotdogs to Stormtroopers putting his kids through college
That hot tub in the Death Star wasn't free. Troopers paid admission fees.
I've always thought the Siege Dreadnought looked like a slice of pizza, please tell me I'm not the only one
Every single star destroyer variant that’s ever been built looks like a piece of pizza if we are being honest😂
It's supposed to be a Mandator-class SSD, but when you compare it to the rest of the line it looks really weird.
You are not alone. It's bridge makes it look like a stuffed crust slice of pizza.
All star destroyers look like pizza slices.
Same...
It's so fun seeing Generation Tech go into such a deep exegesis of Star Wars lore and then make parallels to our world, even with something as obscure as how star destroyers get built.
I thought I was a fan of Star Wars till I watched this and read the comments. Talk about getting your geek ON! Maybe one of these days I’ll go down the rabbit hole fully and watch this full video all the way to the end…
I'm sitting here stunned. Alan, you're AWESOME! You took my little old question and made a video I'm going to watch again and again. I want to catch every nuance I missed...
Here are some anecdotes about scale:
Everybody by now is familliar with the notion that the Executor class could park on top of Manhattan Island, And you would still have to walk a few blocks in any direction to get to a waterfront....
But that also means it could land completely within the perimeter fence of O'Hare airport in Chicago.
The death star could sit on top of Long Island and there would be land sticking out on both sides.
The DS2 could sit In the waters of the lower end of Lake Michigan like a testicle in a scrotum, if the water was deep enough (it is not) Without touching either shore.
but....... where else would my testicles be
I really appreciated your speech at the end of the video, regarding how we should embrace look for ways to use technology rather than fear and try to avoid it. That attitude really reminds me of when I was preparing to become a music teacher, one of my professors spoke to my class about how how we should go about maintaining our online and social media presences, in regards to how our future students and employers will see them.
He said: “You can either try to hide yourselves and your online activity, using aliases or just staying away from social media, or you can make it something you want others to see. Post videos of your performances, tweet about upcoming gigs you’re playing, create your own branding that connects your musicianship to your name so that that’s the first thing that comes up when they Google you. Show them that you’re a real musician, and they’ll want to hire you even more.”
It really is better to run towards the things you’ll have to face anyway, and meet them on your own terms, than to hide and avoid them for as long as you can.
All this makes sense for the Empire, but it doesn't make sense at all for the sequel trilogy. The First Order, despite lacking the Empire's population and industrial base, makes the bizarre decision to build even larger capital ships. And then the Sith build an entire fleet of scaled-up Star Destroyers on a planetary surface rather than in orbit.
Of course, nothing else about the First Order makes sense either, so...
Palpatine not the first order made the decision to build all those star destroyers and store them underwater. And i case you didn't notice the man was completely crazy and let the rating and ravings of mad men from 1000+ years ago direct his current actions.
@@SpottedHares in my head canon this justifies the bad stuff we see in the sequel trilogy. Palpatine being crazy and snorting lines of coke when deciding to build that many ships make sense.
Even if it would be possible to build that many ships and hide them on a planet - where do you "store" the necessary crews to operate these ships?
Because awful writing is why.
@@hermes7587carbonite :p
Nuclear propulsion becomes very efficient and cost effective if we can build ships in space.
Chemical rockets would only be for the taxi that gets you to the shipyard / spacedock in orbit.
Average KSP player
@@GoatGuitars6 wtf is ksp?
Perhaps Kerbal Space Program? Idk. (It’s a video game about building spaceships. I think.)
It is Kerbal Space program@@anonymousanonymous2649
There are currently no nuclear reactors that would work on a space ship and that would supply significant amounts of thrust.
First you still need a huge mass as shielding against the radiation from the reactor.
Secound it is difficult to get rid of the waste heat of a nucklear reactor in the vacuum of space.
Third you still need some kind of reacation mass to get ship in space moving.
I love how your Chanel isn’t just about Star Wars but you also bring real world things into it. I also love how technical you get about Star Wars ships. I almost guarantee you play space engineers as in depth you get about Star Wars ships. You’re awesome man
Also, I work in manufacturing, loved the video. Even saw a FARO laser tracker towards the begining of the video. Good job
I learn more about life than Star Wars from this channel and I have no complaints :)
star wars economies are crazy large.
ssd's i buy, same for death stars.
what i don't buy is the remnant making them, or some cultists making super ultra fleets in secret. that's crazy talk.
You underestimate the power of the dark side of the force.
But yea it is pretty wild.
I think those star destroyers were from imperial remnants or something, still way too many.
@@bennettbush3906 it would've made some sense if they had been actual imperial 1 class SD's.
But they specifically said no, those are actually new ships that looks like ISD1's but are way bigger AND built on site at exogul.
made no sense.
3:28 KDY is kind of like Samsung in South Korea
Duuude so true
Facts
Exactly what I thought of and searched the comments to find 😁
7:31 in the background: secret cat attack.
Holy shit you have good eyes
It caught the corner of my eye, and I had to rewatch that part three times to know what the hell was going on.
Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.
This video earned a subscriber. Entertaining, logical and introspective. Excellent content!
"Once we start the first orbital shipyard..."
The ISS was originally the Freedom Station, the design was twice as big, and its primarily goal was to build interplanetary craft.
The inclined orbit to include the Russians neutered the whole project.
I’ve been thinking, what would happen to everything involving space if JFK didn’t get assassinated? I would like to think there would be an alliance between the US and Russia and both countries would’ve started building a big station much earlier, which might mean tech would be more advanced and things like a space elevator would be possible as early as the 2030’s. Just speculation
They knew what they were doing
Building with a combination of robots and slaves.
_"Write that down!"_ - various CEOs that are household names.
you dont need slaves if you have robots
@@matthewgibbs6886 Even slave labour isn´t "free" - slaves still need food, housing, equipment and health care. And the problem is that you don´t want critical components made by people who hate you...
@@matthewgibbs6886in the example clip where he said slaves, pretty sure those were prisoners. While the distinction there may be a matter of justification, using prisoners for free labor has long been a normal activity, one not considered to be slavery in our modern world, unless the imprisonment is for the purpose of creating prisoner laborers, something certain nations are known for even today. Good times.
I can very easily see parts of these ships being, effectively... 3d printed. you could easily lay down a keel or spine of a ship in space just by "extruding it" on the spot. and this would allow you to go anywhere from 100m to 50,000m just by alterting the thickness of the extruder and push/pulling out any length you want. cutting it off at the end, cooling it, then 3d printing the base skeliton of the ship.
A ring around a roughly Earth-sized planet that looked as big as the images in this video would have to be, like, _billions_ of times more massive than the Death Star! Millions of times at the very least! (Somebody do the math, please!)
The planet is exactly 10,000km in diameter, which seems improbable unless it was engineered by Celestials and Rakata
@@Hello-bi1pm Why?
@@BugRib An orbital ring isn't really that terribly impressive, tbh. The raw material requirements are the main hurdle, of course, but we know that's basically irrelevant as a concern for SW; in terms of actual engineering, a Death Star is laughably more impressive simply by virtue of being mobile, with all the hurdles and challenges that entails.
@@papapalps2415 the number is too exact
Rothana Heavy Engineering is basically Kuay Drive Yards' Skunkworks.
Thanks for another FANTASTIC video. Well thought out, and like all the channel's others, a VERY different approach to what other SW channels are talking about.
Been a fan for years, Sir. These are the videos that made me a fan, and keep me coming back.
Again, thanks for the always great content!
Your closing is on point. Enjoy the moment, friends.
Oil tankers have held the top ten spots for largest ships ever made for 40 years now. In fact, they probably hold the top 100 spots for the largest ships ever made at this point.
One should not cling onto what's old, but do not blindly accept the new either. We are nostalgic for old things but old things are not automatically better. But on the other hand, not every new idea is a good one.
The challenge to embracing new technology is knowing which new technology to embrace. Those who bet on HD Laser disks, lost to those who bet on Blue Ray. Those who bet on 8-track, lost to those who bet on cassettes. In both cases, the technology of the loser was actually better than that of the winner. Embracing technology means doing the socio-economic research as well as the technological research.
I just want to be able to enjoy what we have for a while/max it out before it gets replaced but then again, he who stands still in an ever-changing world will soon be overtaken by it
I saved this video on numerous playlists - especially "Watch Again"!
Im waiting for you to mention "Cold Welding" the real reason manufacuring in space will be so easy. you are so right that they would be modular, and essentially squeezed together
I appreciate your optimistic outlook. Human nature is very messy, but people often get hyperfocused on the hear and now, rather than looking forward to the future.
And once again another great video. Well done
The noblest worship is to make yourself as good and as just as you can.
Dude you are killing it with these ship videos!!!
We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.
Great video. Subscribed.
Good one, agreed , economics 2 nd and 3rd year, still works for me 25 years later
Thanks Allen I needed to hear that. Your right thankyou
I like how you landed on a very real point from a fictional topic
All infrastructure of any kind is a big investment and takes a long time to build. Like the rail road. Lots of labor, time, and money. Felt like crawling on the land. But once that rail was finished. BOOM! We flying across the land so fast and getting product left and right. Huge profits!
Man you have no idea how inspiring you are to me ❤
A single conversation across the table with a wise person is worth a months study of books.
Right on Bro! OUTSTANDING JOB!🎉😂❤👍
Finally some practical content!
Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend.
Thanks for the breakdown of how the building works. I enjoy your videos. I play star wars rpgs and the bits of info you provide adds to my knowledge of the universe.
Makes sense. KDY is like a Pan Galatic Toyota pumping out Imperial Class Star Corollas by the thousand, whereas Newport News is making one off bespoke ships.
Man I truly hope to see in the upcoming shows/movies the planet Kuat and it’s amazing shipyards. Maybe we can get a New Republic/Mandalorians vs Thrawns empire in the Thrawn movie
Great video and final thoughts. 💪🙂👍
About twenty years I've been seeing we need an orbital manufacturing presence, because of all the benefits you mentioned.
You have a bigger platform. :-D Shout it from the rooftops.
What a brilliant presentation!
I never realized that Star Wars had so many ships and places that made them.
I do question the concept of bigger is better. These part being assembled in space
will have tremendous mass.
Meanwhile, back in the real world there are Navy stories
of men building submarine type vessels in Utah for space travel.
Even the Tall White aliens of Indian Springs seem to be quite capable of
space travel without such gigantic vehicles.
Blessings
This is the channel I've been looking for
Another similar one is Isaac Arthur
Very well done, I'm not a big Star Wars fan but that company that builds the ships sounds fascinating. Your attitude about technological change is spot on.
As to Tesla backing off from Gigacasting, I think it has more to do with that what they really wanted to do was to make the whole platform one piece, but found out it's a lot more difficult than it seemed at first, so they have backed off from it for now.
But again, great job, and you have a new subscriber.
A great vid by a great channel that goes way off topic into something much more interesting.
It's worth noting to anyone else feeling like their line of work is gonna be replaced by better tech and think content creation might be better, but just too much effort or too hard - this video is just someone talking about a topic they're interested in (that's key), with a music track (a good one, but presumably royalty free as is usually the case), and stock footage likely obtained off storybooks or some other aggregate service. Not to be reductive, as the combination came out great, but it goes to show how you can make something comparable.
This video put into perspective the mindboggling size of a modern aircraft carrier. Those are small floating cities. Seeing one in real life is kind of a humbling experience knowing humanity can build a machine of wa r that massive.
Yep. They feel huge on the deck, but tiny once you're wandering the passageways 😂
The thing about AI and art is more down to the fact of redefining what art's purpose even is. To say AI will replace art is to reduce art to little more than a utility or service, as opposed to a very uniquely human means of expression of ideas, emotions, beliefs, etc... In visual art, there's a lot subjective and unique-to-the-individual experience that goes behind every stroke of the brush and 'why' they chose to make something the way they did. Machines are completely devoid of this as they do not 'experience.' I do think it's kind of a good thing as it serves to set art back on its course as a uniquely human form of creative labors of love, as opposed to the direction it's taken over the past 30 years as just churning out concepts and commissions someone pays you to as opposed to something you actually want to make. The problem is that it will make art itself no longer dependable for income, meaning artists will have less time to dedicate to the craft as they're forced to work somewhere else: just one more step in dehumanizing the world into slave/consumer cattle. I think the AI thing is just poorly timed economically, and probably would've been more graciously welcomed in a world where the common person does not have to worry about financial needs: that way people like artists would still create out of love, rather being worried about not being able to do art at all since their new job takes time away from it.
In today's economic state, something that threatens to push more people away from being able to do what they love as a career, when it's so difficult to land such a career in the first place, is not going to be well received no matter what it promises; it's putting the cart before the horse, giving a right answer, but asking the wrong question. That's why people get so fervently upset over it.
Agreed
Long live the Republic!!!!!
Thought- provoking! Thanks!
You brought up a great point how big would their cargo ships be in the star wars universe
I love how we have people who wonder about the economics of it all, lol great video man! Appreciate all you do
Interesting. Speaking of modular ship building, I watched a documentary in the early 2,000's that explained how modular ship building was being used to save time and money for the US Navy, showed segments arriving on semi-flatbeds and being set into place in the dry dock like Legos.
New port news constructs 600 ton super blocks which are added to the ship the South Koreans put those 600 ton super blocks into 3k ton mega blocks which are then added to the ship, they can have 6 plus mega blocks in production at the same time basically whole semi finished chunks of ship to be welded into a complete ship! Star ships assuredly would be constructed in similar fashion bur even more so with such build qualities a section of the yard probably builds nothing but destroy drive sections or standard shuttle bays of size 3 and so forth
Great point with the astroid mining!🎉👍😎
An excellent analysis
Neither genius, fame, nor love show the greatness of the soul. Only kindness can do that.
Regarding 15:55, as a 37 year old engineer for some years now I worry for the future. Technology on it's own is not good or evil - in the end people decide how they will use it. Technology really increases our power, both on an individual and societal levels. Now what worries me is that development of technology speeds up in a rapid pace, while our cultural, moral and political development lags behind (and this difference in all likelihood will continue to grow). Because of that we will likely see more abuses of more powerful technologies in the future. We are still largely controlled by the same basic impulses as our hunter gatherer homo sapiens ancestors from thousands of years ago, but instead of sticks and stones we have nuclear weapons. And soon we may have nanomachines and AGI.
“…Dark Side aligned Gungans…”
Well done sir.
ah yes… more epic Doritos lore 🔺
Our daughter calls them pizza.
A truly interesting take
Only you, Alan. Great job!
This was the best Re-Birthday present ever!! Thank you!
Go,Allen,go!!!!📣🍻🥂
This is not a video about the economics of a 10 mile starship, it’s a video about life
I like the overlap of current earth technology 😊
Yes exactly. Not to mention that most authoritarian or otherwise non-market states tend to think long-term (usually 4 or 5 years) which enables them to build large ships in such a period. Basically they conduct a broad estimation of technological capabilities of an adversary and their own nation as a whole (The question "CAN we build it" and "SHOULD we build it") and later, when the new naval estimates are drafted, they simply amend them on the go as the basic structure of the ships are already laid out (The question "HOW we build it"). In this period, entire regions would be dedicated to providing steel, titanium and other important resources for construction. The trickiest part is to not outgun yourself, because the enemy can disrupt such a state simply by overstating their own investments or capabilities, essentially, scaring the non-market state into locking into a long-term contract for an unsustainable navy. That's what the US did to USSR during Reagan, for example, with the whole SDI project which basically was inflatable ships and rockets to scare USSR into outproducing them at the expense of civilian economy.
Careful... Boeing might send dolphins over.
As a Boeing mechanic, I can neither confirm nor deny
They're already there.
Never been here. Was gonna close the video after I heard Star Wars; I grew up on the other 3 "Star" ones. :D.
Then I heard the parallels of IRL and future fiction, then a few quips of humor.
Kept me listening.
What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.
Another great Generation Tech video to give me an existential crisis. Thanks Allen!
excellent choice in music
5:57 The pronunciation for Bombardier is bom-bar-dee-ay and Embraer is em-bre-ehr
Compassion and happiness are not a sign of weakness but a sign of strength.
Fascinating, and thanks
Reminds me of that one matpat video about the death star just done even better. Awesome video.
I was curious more about the internal economics of such a vessel than its construction; ie, the operational economics -- what it would "cost" to support and sustain the enormous population, even assuming there would be highly advanced technologies which would make the processes involved much more efficient than our current techs could. It is as you say the size of a city, and the underlying logistics would be staggering. Still, great video.
Everything you are against weakens you. Everything you are for empowers you.
If you like tuna and tomato sauce- try combining the two. It’s really not as bad as it sounds.
Doing what you love is the cornerstone of having abundance in your life.
See the positive side, the potential, and make an effort.
Woop nice details 🥳
Cool topics relatable to economics.
There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things, and people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less crowded.
I enjoy all of Generation Tech videos 🎉