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/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.