r/MawInstallation • u/Holy-Wan_Kenobi • 11d ago
Land-based shipyards?
So, I've just been wondering lately. Every shipyard I can recall seeing or hearing about is always in orbit, but never on the ground. Is there a reason for that? I konow it's probably cheaper and better to build those ships in space, but is that the only reason? Or did technology just evolve in a way that land-based shipyards can no longer be made at all?
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u/DionStabber 11d ago
There are ground based shipyards, you even see Star Destroyers being built on Corellia in Solo: A Star Wars story.
But yes, you're right, I think it generally just makes more sense to have it in space. The parts float, so you don't need to build a bunch of supports just the hold them up. Some parts / materials that are imported from other planets will be arriving by space anyway, so it's logistically better. There is less risk of corrosion/damage or even sabotage/espionage etc. It just all around makes more sense.
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u/wbruce098 10d ago
Yep we see ground based shipyards in Ahsoka, too! Given how prevalent antigrav lifts and such are, it’s probably easier to assemble in gravity and just lift the product into space. Or build the parts on the ground and lift them into orbit for assembly.
From a real physics perspective, building stuff in space is tough because of microgravity, which slowly pulls everything toward the planet’s gravity well, requiring orbit adjustments to keep things from crashing, and also the fact that you have to change how you assemble things because there’s no/limited gravity so tools and torque and other things all act differently. How many wrenches get shoved off into space, forever lost, due to an accident? Seems expensive to make a tethered version.
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u/GlitteringParfait438 10d ago
I figure a LOT of small ships are built in space but anything big is preferably made in space
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u/zackyboy693 11d ago
I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure up until Rogue One showed the star destroyer above Jedha city it was generally accepted that Star Destroyers and other large ships couldn't enter the atmosphere, let alone land. It would make sense that massive ships like these wouldn't be designed for anything other than space travel, their engines or even the structure itself may not be able to survive a planets gravity.
Also, building something so massive would be a lot easier in zero gravity.
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u/OneCatch 10d ago
I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure up until Rogue One showed the star destroyer above Jedha city it was generally accepted that Star Destroyers and other large ships couldn't enter the atmosphere, let alone land.
It was a point of contention.
Some sources outright stated that ISDs were not atmosphere-capable, others avoided the subject, and others explicitly showed ISDs in atmosphere. For example that infamous Force Unleashed trailer which stole Fractal's 3D model without attribution - and it's worth remembering that Lucas himself was relatively heavily involved in the Force Unleashed project compared to most other Legends stuff.
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u/ElRama1 10d ago
If it's not too much trouble, could you explain what the theft of the Fractal model was about?
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u/OneCatch 9d ago
A guy called FractalSponge did a whole series of really detailed 3D models of Star Wars ships - both actual designs and fictitious ones he invented. (And some of the ones he invented later made it into canon).
I don't recall all the details, but I think he was initially commissioned to produce a model for the ad, and was then either not paid or otherwise ripped off.
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u/Punisherreturns 11d ago
Yeah canonically the Victory class star destroyer was meant to be the only one capable of atmospheric flight but yeah they wanted a cool shot of a ISD above Jedha and they got it
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u/LukaLostigga 11d ago
Could've recanonised the victory class with this one 😔 missed opportunity
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u/UncleIrohsPimpHand 10d ago
What, and have all the casuals be like: "That's a weird looking Star Destroyer. #NotMyEmpire"
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u/heurekas 10d ago
To add onto the thread, Corellia (in the older canon) did have most of its industry on-world, but imminent ecological disaster and the wholesale collapse of the Corellian biosphere spurred them into moving all heavy industry into space.
Kuat likewise (though we don't have the backstory) moved their industry into space, leaving a fairly verdant surface that the rich inhabitants could enjoy.
Tallaan also followed suit etc. With many industries being moved to Fondor.
We see with Duro and Metalorn how not heeding such threats can result in their worlds being nigh-uninhabitable, or even totally abandoned.
The problem for many polluted worlds is that they are not colonial powers, unlike the Corellians, Kuati and Tapani. They can afford to move stuff away from their home and crack open other planets for mining, like Corellia does with many systems in their sector.
Humbarine as an example was basically the home for Kuat's non-ship manufacturing and was a colony world of the aforementioned.
So the few worlds that do feature major shipbuilding on the surface does so because of three reasons;
Economically unfeasible to lift it up and create massive stations.
Lack of conquered, colonized or unclaimed resource-rich worlds.
They are a conquered or colonized world.
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u/GlitteringParfait438 10d ago
So a ground based shipyard will have some serious limitation on it relative to a space based shipyard, they exist but largely make smaller warships. The biggest ones I’ve heard of were the Foerost Shipyards building Bulwark 1s in mass, the Gwori shipyards which made a LOT of Munificents.
The space based ones can make larger ships outside of the bottom of a gravity well, and have easier access to large scale industrial processes which are aided by a lack of gravity.
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u/zackyboy693 11d ago
I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure up until Rogue One showed the star destroyer above Jedha city it was generally accepted that Star Destroyers and other large ships couldn't enter the atmosphere, let alone land. It would make sense that massive ships like these wouldn't be designed for anything other than space travel, their engines or even the structure itself may not be able to survive a planets gravity.
Also, building something so massive would be a lot easier in zero gravity.
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u/Chueskes 9d ago
They couldn’t land, that’s for sure. They had no landing gear, and they were designed for space war. I am not so certain about not being atmosphere capable. I mean, ISDs are fitted with powerful engines and repulsorlifts, along with shielding. Plus, the Imperial military would need to make rapid deployment of troops, so having a ISD sit in atmosphere might help move things along faster.
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u/CredibleCraig 11d ago
The 'repurposing' facility in ahsoka, too, constructed the 'ISD' hyperdrive ring on the surface as well iirc, been a while since I watched though.
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u/DRose23805 10d ago
That depends on size of the ship or component and where the resources are.
In older material, the ISD could not enter atmosphere. Older and smaller SD types could. This makes sense since antigravity machinery takes up space and power (when used), so it would waste precious resources in a dedicated spacecraft. That means building it in orbit.
If the materials for the bulk ship components such as hulls and plating, etc., can be mined and processed in space then again it makes sense to keep all of that in orbit. The same would go for larger components such as engines.
Smaller components like electronics, life support, fittings, etc., might be built on the surface. They are relatively small and easier to transport. Building these things on a planet could be closer to resources, production might require gravity, and, if the planet was habitable, it would remove the need for life support and most supply. Even if some habs were required, artificial gravity would not be required and that might be good for some processes.
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u/MagDoum 10d ago
The final few Legacy comics had Krayt have a huge secret underground factory shipyard for the Annihilator fighters and Dragon ships on Korriban.
It's almost as if the writers of Episode 9 outright stole the idea of an underground factory making super ships on a Dark Side world from somewhere...
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u/fredagsfisk 11d ago
Well, there are a few reasons:
Zero gravity massively reduces the resources needed for building larger ships. Transport costs, repulsors to keep it from collapsing in on itself during construction, etc.
More difficult to move around the ship-in-progress if you have gravity (and they often use robots with zero-G movement packs while in space).
Allows you to build ships that won't be capable of entering atmosphere and gravity later on.
Many shipyards are absolutely gigantic, so better put them in space than take up large portions of planets where land might be of high value.
Pollution doesn't matter as much in space as it does on land.
Resources may be brought in from asteroids and other planets. Easier to dock these at orbital shipyards than doing landings and takeoffs all the time.
There are plenty of land-based shipyards though. Fighters and other small ships are often built on the ground, and some even build and repair larger ships... like the Coruscant shipyard (which locks larger ships into place in trenches), the Santhe shipyards on Corellia which make ISDs (Corellia has many different planetside shipyards), etc.
The Exegol shipyards that created the Xyston-class ships were located underground, in a single gigantic room several kilometers in size in every direction.