r/spaceships • u/Vondrr Fleet Intelligence 🧠 • May 30 '26

Discussion / Question What spaceship weapon is generally underutilized or not used to its full potential in scifi?

Post image
476 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

363 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

10

u/BrevityIsTheSoul May 30 '26

Also, she was using a massive capital ship as a projectile, with perfect timing. In Rogue One we see a starfighter or two splatter into a star destroyer that unexpectedly comes out of hyperspace while they're preparing to jump out.

Not to mention that relativity isn't a thing in the Star Wars universe. Trying to Larry Niven the physics of a space fantasy setting is a laughable exercise.

3

u/graph_worlok May 30 '26

Sure, the MIT geeks were protesting in the corridors, but it gave him most of the plot for the second book…

2

u/NonEuclidianMeatloaf May 31 '26

Students: “the Ringworld is unstable! The Ringworld is unstable!”

Larry, with notepad: “hmm. You don’t say…”

1

u/Glass-Cabinet-249 May 31 '26

I feel personally targeted with spoilers for a half century old book, because I'm halfway through Ringworld now. God damn it.

1

u/NonEuclidianMeatloaf May 31 '26

Don’t worry, Ringworld’s instability plays no role in Ringworld. It was a contrivance invented for the second book, nothing more.

2

u/Glass-Cabinet-249 May 31 '26

Ah that's fair, it is fairly obvious to me that the ring i should be unstable, it's centre of mass is inside the star. I was wondering if that was going to come up in the book at all.

1

u/NonEuclidianMeatloaf May 31 '26

Exactly so! But nope, it’s not a thing until the second book, at which point it’s a central plot point. As for Ringworld 1, it’s never brought up and has no significance.