MacroFab Engineering Podcast #98
MacroFab Engineering Podcast #98
Will the Rebel Codebreakers be able to emerge victorious against the Empire, or will they succumb to the overwhelming power of the Empire? Tune in!
Topics include StarWars, NASA, Magnets, Perpetual Energy, and Virtual Grounding.
Six times! Y'all let us talk about Star Wars 6 years in a row! Roz, Hyr0n, Stephen, Chris, and Parker discuss the latest in Star Wars media and tech.
What are looking forward to in The Last Jedi (new movie) and predictions
Visit our Slack Channel and join the conversation in between episodes!
We are hiring an Electronics Manufacturing Engineer in Houston! Among other positions. Apply online!
MacroFam and Star Wars fanatic – Taylor Smith
Figure 1: Tarkins height to figure out the distance the Death Star is from Scarif
Figure 2: Death Star firing its main super laser
Figure 3: Scarif’s citadel tower getting a bit of a trim off the top
Figure 4: Parker’s notes for calculating the orbit of the Death Star
Figure 5: Calculations for how many degrees of accuracy the Death Star needs to hit a target
Parker is an Electrical Engineer with backgrounds in Embedded System Design and Digital Signal Processing. He got his start in 2005 by hacking Nintendo consoles into portable gaming units. The following year he designed and produced an Atari 2600 video mod to allow the Atari to display a crisp, RF fuzz free picture on newer TVs. Over a thousand Atari video mods where produced by Parker from 2006 to 2011 and the mod is still made by other enthusiasts in the Atari community.
In 2006, Parker enrolled at The University of Texas at Austin as a Petroleum Engineer. After realizing electronics was his passion he switched majors in 2007 to Electrical and Computer Engineering. Following his previous background in making the Atari 2600 video mod, Parker decided to take more board layout classes and circuit design classes. Other areas of study include robotics, microcontroller theory and design, FPGA development with VHDL and Verilog, and image and signal processing with DSPs. In 2010, Parker won a Ti sponsored Launchpad programming and design contest that was held by the IEEE CS chapter at the University. Parker graduated with a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering in the Spring of 2012.
In the Summer of 2012, Parker was hired on as an Electrical Engineer at Dynamic Perception to design and prototype new electronic products. Here, Parker learned about full product development cycles and honed his board layout skills. Seeing the difficulties in managing operations and FCC/CE compliance testing, Parker thought there had to be a better way for small electronic companies to get their product out in customer's hands.
Parker also runs the blog, longhornengineer.com, where he posts his personal projects, technical guides, and appnotes about board layout design and components.
Stephen Kraig began his electronics career by building musical oriented circuits in 2003. Stephen is an avid guitar player and, in his down time, manufactures audio electronics including guitar amplifiers, pedals, and pro audio gear. Stephen graduated with a BS in Electrical Engineering from Texas A&M University.
Special thanks to whixr over at Tymkrs for the intro and outro!
Welcome to the second annual macro fab Star Wars Christmas special podcast and I'm your guest, Taylor Smith.
And we are your hosts, Stephen Craig and Parker Dohmen. This is episode 98. So Taylor, who
are you?
Hello. So my name is Taylor and I also work at macro fab as their production Account Manager, which means I manage all of our large customers as they go through prototyping to full production. I graduated from Texas a&m last fall and joined the macro fam earlier this year
that we're calling now the macro fam. So yeah, so this is the second annual podcast for Star Wars Christmas Special, etc, etc. Right before the next movie comes out. Yes, it comes out this Friday.
I got my tickets already.
I have not got my I
got my tickets. Steven, you're supposed to buy my tickets was I Yeah. Oh,
I think we were kind of drunk when we said we were gonna do Yeah, when I said
probably. Oh, well, we'll get tickets. Yeah, it'll happen. So Taylor, so this is a question we asked last year to everyone that was on the podcast for this which was us and Josh Josh. So one other person this is off to a great start. Gotta love friends. Barger Yeah. So Taylor, what is your favorite Star Wars character? Organic and robotic? Alright, so
organic was super easy for me to pick. It's quite gone gin. I mean, those locks like had me. So and then. Yeah, it's great. I mean, I love the episode. It's episode one. him fighting Darth Maul. It just was incredible. First time I cried during a major feature film. So it was hard heartbreak.
But when when Quagga dies and dies,
sorry, spoilers.
See, I think the was the is like a limit statute of limitations on spoilers. And successes. We're gonna be talking about the last movie, which was episode. No, it's Rogue One. So it's having an episode. It's about a year now. So set your limitations is whatever it is now. Great.
So I have to I have to admit, so I kind of overheard this did not know it. But right before we were recording, Taylor said that her birthday or her birth date was in 1994. And I didn't know that. And I was like, wow, okay, well, so mine was in 1987, which for probably some of our listeners, they're gonna say the exact same thing like well, wow. But in terms of in terms of like Wigan Jin being your your favorite there, I guess it makes a little bit more sense with with the the 1994.
Oh, yeah. I mean, I joined like the Star Wars fandom. So I grew up in a like addicted Star Wars household. And like, my dad forced me to binge watch episodes four through six. No choice when I was like, seven. You like 10? Eyeballs? Yeah, no, it was quite literally like safety pins. Like just holding my eyeballs. That's
Clockwork Orange. Yeah.
I was like, What is this super old movie, you're showing me with a green puppet. I'm not interested. But then Phantom Menace came out when I was closer to nine. And that was like, I was so into it. I dressed up in my Laya bonds. Like my mom made me a whole costume. I was like, you know, thought the CGI was amazing. Amazing. I thought George are beings was like, great comedic stick and really got me to stick around the Star Wars fandom for a while. But I've grown out of that pad one stage since then. And kind of a bit more mature in my knowledge.
So what do you still think of Georgia then?
You know, honestly, I still like Jar Jar. And my brother gives me so much help for it.
I mean, Georgia is the least of the prequels problems. Yeah. I'm like, don't worry about he's just a scapegoat of like, people just say, Oh, the prequels are bad because they had this silly character in it. Yeah. But he,
I mean, the bad for so many reasons.
But we just this last weekend, Parker, you were at my apartment. And what did you say Star Wars was? I'll bring it up for you. I don't remember what you said. Well, yeah, that's when we were drunk. I remember this because it's true. Star Wars is just a bunch of weird zany characters in a bar on some desert planet. Yeah. All Star Wars. And Joker's kind of like that. Yeah,
he is. Yeah. I mean, he never got drunk, but he acted drunk the entire time. Yeah, I
think he's perpetual. Yeah.
Drunk the friend with no filter. Like you just get a little bit of booze and um, and you just won't shut up about it. Oh, yeah.
So like mean, the lack of like acting direction is probably the worst thing about the prequels. Very, very true. Awesome, so robotic. Oh, actually, we can go for our favorite organics again, nice.
Ah, that was a year ago.
Where's our favorite?
My favorite organic was free range
banana.
Actually, if I remember right, I could be wrong here. I'm one of our listeners is probably gonna remember, this was not your favorite but Okay, so in episode five it was it's kind of after I believe the the hawth section they Vader is talking to a line of bounty hunters in in in there's a bunch of bounty hunters up on the on the railing inside of one of the star destroyers. And there is a lizard guy in there. I can't remember his name. Right? It's like grok or something like that. It's his name and all he does is growl wants In all Star Wars and that guy is awesome.
So you know in like the the scene in episode six with all the stormtroopers Stormtrooper number 38. Pretty awesome. Yeah, that guy. Actually, last year, this year, Stormtrooper number 38. Wow, you
guys have great organic pigs. Yeah. Well, I would like to take some real value in the character storyline.
The best thing about Stevens is the only name that's probably from the retcon. EU.
You know, I think in fact, I shared this with you the other day, Parker. I have the Star Wars Roleplaying Game handbook. Oh, yeah. From 2002. Yeah. And I have a picture of that guy in the caption. Oh, yeah. His name. That's so that's how I know. It's like when I was back in Boy Scouts in high school. Like, we were the nerds that played Star Wars role playing games.
Star Wars. How do you guys forescout Is that?
It's d&d and Star Wars. Yeah. So yeah, instead of swords. It's laser guns.
Yep. Instead of magic. Its force. Yep.
It lends itself very nicely. That's fantastic. Yes, we are nerds. Robot.
You had a favorite robots a robot? Yeah. I think I said last year was the is the trashcan robot. That's basically trash can with two corrugated legs. And on the scope bop, bop. Yeah. I just blocked this kind of wobbles around. Yeah.
I think actually, I think those are actually called Gonk droids.
Gank doors. But with Rogue One coming out that the the new guy, it's not bb hcma.
It has a 12 or something like that. Yeah. And he's like eight feet tall. Yeah, he's real lanky arms. Yeah,
not that guy though. Not him, not him. Um, actually, I can't think of any other robotics that are in Rogue One. Yeah. Robots.
Okay. I remember this because it's fan service. There is. Okay, so back again on half. The the the probe that lands down looks like a meteor right? And okay, Han and Chewie blowed up. There's one of those in Rogue One. And it's fan service. Oh, yeah. Just so people can be like, I
remember that. Oh, yeah. I remember one of those. Things are cool. Yeah, I thought you're gonna see some other kind of fan service. I'm like, I don't remember anything like this.
There's a lot of fanservice in Rogue One. A lot of it. Yeah. And it's all good.
So yalls
nice. I'm going to say our two d two he's just literally been through everything they can then all of Star Wars slept through
row one though. Yeah, slacker.
Dare. You are too. I know. What a crap out.
Oh, my favorite robot. The robotic bounty hunter. IG 8898 It is pretty cool.
He is awesome. And we talked about him last year about how he was ridiculously difficult on what is it the Nintendo 64 It's a shadows of the chairs and the fire Yeah, yeah, he was he was ridiculous on that. I'll go with him. That's easy. That's a good one.
Okay, cool episode was IGA
Episode Five. Okay, and he was in the bounty hunter lineup. Nice. And he has like a What's the guy's name and shadows and power source the Decker
dash render? I don't know. That is a rising force. I don't remember that.
Yeah. He though the shadows Empire guy but he like in the EU. He like fights. IGDA
Nice. Nice. You guys really took to this like bounty hunter lineup. Lots of folks from there.
There's a lot of really good, like meaty stuff that's like way behind the scenes. And it's one scene in one of the movie. Yeah. And a bunch of bots. Well,
the thing is the older you like, like they basically were trying to figure out what to write about and like, oh, we have like eight bounty hunters here. So let's like do here. backstories for each or make like eight novels for each of them.
So, and that's how Disney got 27 more movies. Yeah, yeah.
IGDA movie,
maybe? Ooh, what would it be?
So it starts out slaughtering so it starts out with a planet, right? Yeah, a desert planet does. There's a planet that's getting mined with the materials to build IgD. It's like his entire lifecycle as it goes up. So like, like him being built in a robot factory and then I don't know,
into the world of bounty and because they don't have a tragedy as a robot.
Yeah, cuz they don't have like, they don't have like, they have the the what's the thing on the robots that prevents them from like becoming sentience? And Star Wars?
Oh, the that little thing that they they weld the C three POS chest? Yeah. A, an inhibitor. So remember what is Yeah.
So you it's like, how did that fail? And how do you turn to the bounty hunter because he's pretty much of a he's an asshole and shadows in the empire. So yeah, who knows? I think the EU knows, but it's all retcon. Now so yeah, they got rid of the app, restart, restart. Well, that's just a caching so they just rewrite everything. The new throne books came out like earlier this year, so Oh, really? Wow. So that was like, I'm talking. There's two throne books now. I think there was like, three or four in the old EU? Um, yeah, something like that. I
actually, if it's the old EU, there's probably like, 80. Yep. Yeah. Probably Probably like two or three that somebody who's a little bit beyond the movies would know about
Yeah. And they basically took out like all the stuff Disney didn't want and add a new stuff in and
it's pretty good. Nice. Well, the EU started to get really weird.
And dumb. Read everything.
No, not. I'll put it this way. As for every, every good book in the EU of the older you there was like 10 horrendous things that always they always conflict. Because basically, the thing was, is like the Lucasfilm or LucasArts would like, give the writers almost free will to write whatever they wanted a lot of times,
and so and they would step on each other's feet. And the stories never lined up. So it's not just even one writer. Oh, no, it was a lot of writers. And you could write about the main characters. Yeah, so there's a lot of like, weird Luke and Leia stuff. Really weird. Yeah. Goes to the dark side in one book, but it's in a cave somewhere. And he'd like kind of like, wrestles with the dark side. And then like, leave the cave. And he's like, I'm not dark side. Like that's all about that. And it's it was it's really weird.
The new comics that are coming out are pretty sweet. Yeah. So new Disney comics four star
that actually even owns like comic rights and
everything. Yeah, that's why they had to pay all but billions of dollars. Yeah, well worth it. I'd say,
Oh, they're gonna get their money. Oh, yeah.
I mean, you see, like three year olds nowadays who are obsessed with Star Wars. And it's gonna be like this for the next like, 20 years easily.
Cool. So we got through the introduction, part of everyone here, only took I can't read that number on the screen. A long time. Anyway, so we're, so last time we talked about a lot of the tech and story and things in Episode 123456 and seven, seven. And so this year, we're going to talk about Rogue One. Since it's new, at least in terms of the podcast.
It was almost new
last almost. Yes. Wasn't it coming out the same time? This it was like the day after? Yeah, good timing. Y'all. Got lucky.
We talked about a lot of anticipations. You know, I didn't go back and listen to the episode. I totally should have to see if any of our anticipations were actually
I should have done that. Yeah, it's add a section for like, Was any
of our well enough 365 days, we could probably do it. Again, round two.
So we're gonna talk about tech that was in Rogue One or showcasing Rogue One there's a lot that that's like the same like anti gravity and like, moisture farming, moisture, farming and ships flying. And so that's, we've already talked about and kind of boring now. So we're gonna talk about data storage,
which is this is the fringe right here.
So this is interesting, because well, row one is all about data. It's about the Death Star plans and getting it sorry spoiler warnings for those that are still living under a rock you've had a year
into the Star Wars podcast, you might want to get your stuff in gear.
Yep. So in Rogue One, there's three different storage devices that we see, okay, we see the normal like thumb drive kind of thing where they like pass off to, you know, officers and stuff. And, and it actually has like, circuit board traces on on it. Yeah. And usually these devices, they plug it into machine and it does something like a hologram or message or something. So that it's kind of an interesting format. We will talk about more in a little bit. Then there's the data tape, which is the what the Empire uses to store stuff. And it's what the Deathstar plans are on when they get it out of the server and Scariff fans how you pronounce that. And then the other one is the format that the the rebels use on the ship to transfer the files onto so they can get it away from Darth Vader.
Oh, the big like, ZIP disk or what?
Yeah, it's like a flat clear gold disc. Yeah, yeah. So we'll talk about all those so the flash drive. So this is something that we've seen in like all the movies. Yeah, like see three POS got one that he carries around sometimes. I actually, I think it also doubles as a communicator, too. We like talks into it, which is a little microphone, which is really weird, because like he's a robot and he shouldn't have a transmitter
yet be able to transmit a kid didn't think about that. Well, it wouldn't make sense for him to build an entire robot but forgot the wireless transmitter.
It's probably for the effect of the movie because it would be kind of weird if CP three bro just stopped moving and just like transmitted his thoughts out. And then someone just responded like
no real. No real stop for a moment.
So it's got some. It's it's probably more theatricals of why see Threepio has
a microphone. That's XR communicator. That's also why why he shakes his head so vigorously when he talks because he doesn't actually have lips. So Oh, yeah. Yeah, it shows that he is well, yeah.
Because his mouth whites up, doesn't it? No, no, you're right. He
doesn't know. He just jiggles when he just goes. And that's purely just to know that he's talking. Yeah. Yeah.
Cool. I didn't know that. I actually thought his his like, mouth lit up or something. No, he's not that eccentric.
That's the movie side of
basic acknowledgement of communication.
Yeah. Like, our 2d to who lights up like a Christmas tree and Wiggles. Yeah, I guess that's why actually jittered RttT would jiggle. That's actually
why most of the robots jiggle. Yeah. So and actually so in in Phantom Menace, when you see see Threepio without all of his gold armor or whatever that is.
me naked
he's got something in his head that actually spins around. Yeah, can usually spinning around like a gyroscope to help them keep us balanced. I don't know. Like, it's
just it's just kind of goofy gets where his brain should be. It just spins, huh? Yeah,
maybe maybe it's like some kind of like, maybe that's his wireless transmitter. And it just has to, like, spin around and transmit in all directions.
Maybe? Well, that's how he keeps balance. So he's so wiggly. Yeah. turns off once in a while so you can talk. And that's it.
Yeah, maybe that's just spins when he talks and that's why he's on jittery
maybe. So back to flash drives slash stress. Yeah, so but usually we see the because we don't see a lot of like Star Wars every day. There's not like slice of life Star Wars.
Except for Excuse me. Oh, except for the Christmas special. Very much just like it's like oh, please go watch it. It is.
Wait, is it y'all is Christmas star? The star
wars which came out in 78. Yeah, I was right after the first one. George Lucas has said that he if he could get every copy in the world that exists of that which there was never actually a copy so it's all just like home recorded tapes. Yeah, he would burn all of them. And and because it is it is is horrendous absolutely horrible, but it's just like it just shows to bekas like home life. Yeah. Just a bunch of work. He's like yelling at each other. In it's
it's like close caps no
minutes it's just true. It's just Wookies talking with no subtitles and nothing will and it shows it shows two buckets either it says nephew or his son I don't I can't remember a little a little wiki and he puts together an electron project sorry you walk
that's a that's a joke.
Oh yeah. But no it shows this little Wilkie doing an electronic project like connecting wires to things and it shows for like minutes on end like him just doing this like really bad electronics project. Yeah. And then his grandfather or whatnot. The old Wookie watches like cyber porn. Like oh my god. Yeah, like he like logs into like VR porn. Oh, It's so weird to go watch it. It's It's very weird. It's
like 30 minutes. Yeah, definitely.
Okay. Yeah, that's the home life of Star Wars.
Yeah. So that's the only so we don't see. I don't think we see flash drives in that we see VR porn.
That's the tech we should focus on.
Oh, so next year we'll do the Tech of the actual Christmas special on the backpack Christmas
special. And we'll have five minutes of us building some really bad electronics. Yeah, that's like every podcast. Yeah.
So yeah, you in the movies, though, when they when they use the flash drive. I mean, it's like any prop. It's like, they want to use it. And so they basically plug it into a machine and like a hologram pops up. So it's like, it seems like it's very single use. I don't know, you
could probably record over it. I assume like code with a normal VHS tape. But you see Laya transmitted on for the first time in episode four. Right?
Yeah, yeah, that's right. When when they go to old Ben's little his name actually is Old Ben his his Sandy
Sandy, but I imagine there's got to be a way for you to record over it otherwise, like, what's the point of sending a super urgent message like please, we need your help, buddy. You know, it's gonna take some time you gotta get this other USB get back to me and then like, maybe
we can figure things out? Well, I think Josh mentioned this last year, and I think it's, it's totally true. Everything in Star Wars would be solved if email existed to get to that. Okay.
later down the line. Yeah, um, so yeah, flash flash drives, and they seem to work kind of like flash drives do in our world. Maybe we don't see too much of them. So the data tapes are they look it looks like a hard drive or like a magnetic tape kind of setup cuz it's got like two reels on it. They just brought back eight track tapes. And yeah, it looks like it's about the same size as of Ben Betamax tape to Yes, like chunky and it's, you know, a lot of
you have to like hold it in a casing. And yeah,
it's got a handle on it apparently holds like the entire desktop plans. So it's gotta be
it'd be so great if there was like a, like a JPEG image that like Vader Drew was like a napkin drawing. It's like, I want it to be like this. Like a, like a circle. Yeah, like an arrow pointing like big laser. No weaknesses.
Like asterisk, no weaknesses. No exhaust ports. So the the thing about it is like, apparently, like, I did some more reading on these data tapes. Yeah. And like what's like in the EU, the new EU now apparently, like anything that went on with the Deathstar, like holograms, recordings, like meeting minutes, all that stuff is actually stored on that tape, too. So it's like, the entirety of the project is on that disk, or tape? So yeah, so it's kind of
a lot about the size and the fact that they have to go to another planet just to transmit it.
Yes. But it also sounds like eggs in one basket. Yeah,
yeah. Well, it's scary for us, I think set up as a it was set up as like a backup site. So it's like, it's like GitHub, you know? Oh, that's
the repo. Yeah, it's
a repo. It's your repo for everything in there. So if they get if we got news, like it did, at the end of our one spoilers, you still have all the local copies and probably another backup site. And
so the rebels just did a pull request. Yeah, pull requests, basically. But like a very manual pull request.
Well, a hostile pull
request. I love it.
So those data types, um, the interesting thing about it is what comes after that is when after they beam it up into the ship, and the ship captures and they put it on a different format, which is like, it looks like as Steven said earlier, it looks like a ZIP disk. What's clear in the disk is gold. And it's a lot smaller and compact. Yeah. And so it looks like it's probably a newer format, because tech gets smaller. So I'm going to bet since the Empire is basically the remnants of the, you know, the Galactic Republic, which was this huge old government entity, so they probably just carried over all at Tech. They probably wouldn't wipe everything, right. Yeah. And start over it would cost too much, you know, and so it's like NASA like still uses magnetic tape for their long term storage. They will store everything eventually on magnetic tape and store it in a you know, refrigerated room to keep it preserved. And so they probably do. That's probably the similar thing here is they're using this format. It's been around for a long time and when keep using it because it's inexpensive.
They got lucky though because it was formatted correctly. Yeah, format correctly. Yeah, it's like oh shoot, they use Macintosh. Yeah, or it's not, it's not fat 32 It's like fat 32,000 or something.
So it's an interesting point that you bring up too with that they transmit it and goes to a new type of like, desk. Yeah. And that means that they probably just extracted the Deathstar plans and left out all those meeting notes. Like, who knows all of these other things that could have been really important for the client? Well, it's also
like boring stuff. Well, it's like, well, it's also like, I don't remember from that movie, if, how do they? Because when she sees the hologram of her father, and her father says, there's a, I built a vulnerability in into the plans. But he doesn't say what it is. And so when they get the plans, is there anything to say what the vulnerability was? How they could have found it? Yeah. Because you got this ginormous set of plans. And you got to find the one weakness it has. Hmm,
I wonder, I think, I think they did give her I think they didn't. Yeah, I
think she, I think he did. I
mean, you have armies of people just sifting through that data. Yeah. To find and
they had what, like three people and a blind guy. So.
That's fantastic.
So the newer format that they that alliance, us, or Alliance, rebels, whatever you want to call them. They probably just use whatever they get their hands on, which is probably newer stuff. Yeah. You know, it's, it's probably really hard to go to your local Walmart and buy a Betamax tape. But you can get a flash drive. Yeah. Oh, good point. So all right. Yeah. So that's, that's data storage. And at least what we know of it in Star Wars, it seems to be a very manual process. Yeah. Cuz like when they extract that data tape from the, from the server, I guess, a haul of hard drives? Yeah, the hard drive. So call them a hard drives. Yeah. It's not like, I want this and they type it in, right. First, they have to find the word what tape it's on. So they had like, go through and like sift through all the like in that, basically, it's like a library index.
They have. So like in episodes one through three, it might be wrong, but I thought I read that they have like a trans intergalactic data storage system. Yeah, yeah. And so. And what I read was that that was more similar to what they were transmitting all that data to, rather than the actual magnetic data tapes. So I mean, maybe we're seeing those data tapes is like, the new and improved virgin version version, because it has like more security, it lasts longer. And what the Rebel Alliance is using is actually kind of an outdated system from the Old Republic. Hmm, possibly, possibly.
They went backwards from wireless transmission back to Yeah, physical stores. Oh, yeah. But yeah,
the but like, like the index, and find out oh, it's on blah, blah, blah. And when they punch it in, like a light turns on, on where the hard drive is at. And then they had to manually drive the robotic arm over to pluck it out. It's Dennett course, in the course, that breaks in they have the climate and makes all dramatic and stuff. But it's like, why would you build something like you have robots?
But you realize what you're describing right there? Is you literally describing the intent of the entire movie. Like how do you make going and finding a flash drive? Interesting. That's true. Like that is the entirety of, like, find the hard drive? Yeah.
And, and, and you touched on it earlier is not a lot of wireless communications. Like even, like ship the ship. Communication sounds like it's analog. Yeah,
well, they do it. They do it in almost every movie, those little hologram transmissions, those blue light transmissions, even whenever Star Wars is, you know, said I guess a long, long time ago, but it those look like crap. And there's like static and they built in like crappy transmissions.
Yeah. And so I actually was thinking, and especially when, like when they transmit the desktop plans out on that they need that ginormous disk or dish, right? And it's like, no, you can probably just transfer that thing over Wi Fi eventually. So I was actually thinking is maybe in Star Wars. It's all the transmissions are analog, and they don't have digital communication over RF. Mm hmm. It's possible. Well, okay. So
you know, the thing that's kind of interesting about it is, maybe, maybe their world is in a way exactly opposite of ours. We have really, we have lots of space available, but Our data transfer rates are not incredible. Like to transfer all the plans of the Deathstar. If we had to do that over one pipeline, that would take a long time for us. I'm just assuming that they're huge. But for them, it's almost instantaneous. But their storage capability seems to be crap. Yeah. Or it seems to be like, You must do it some really archaic way. So maybe their technology evolved towards fast communication but bad storage. Yeah,
because they can transmit like a hologram signal or radio. Well, have we ever seen radio signals over lightspeed? We've seen holograms. I don't radio travels at lightspeed. No, I'm talking about hyperspeed. Oh, okay. Yeah. So like, because there will be times where like, the Empire or the Emperor, like holograms in and he's like, on the other side of the galaxy, and it's like, you know, it's like a normal conversation. There's no lag.
And he's like, a full body hologram. Yeah, well,
but they will. Okay. So they never show those transmissions happening during a hyperspace travel. Well, yeah,
but that that signal had to travel hyperspeed to get there, they will have to travel instantaneous.
Yeah. And to and to be working like a live chat type of
so it's, it's breaking the speed of sound of speed of light, speed of sound, whatever speed of light. And, yeah, so it's like, so they somehow figured out how to transmit holograms, but not like just voice. Maybe? I don't know. But it still has static in it. Yeah. And they can't transmit data that way, either. It seems like the best way to transmit data is to like, get it on a flash drive, and then hop in your, your Millennium Falcon. And then, you know, I hyperdrive somewhere.
Yeah, it's so funny, because it seems like they have solved all of the things that we can't, but they're bad at all the things we're good at. Yes. Yeah. That's basically the tech of stuff. There's no
Dropbox.
Yeah, nothing. No Google Drive.
Yeah. Alright, so we talked about Star Wars servers, and data, how they don't store data. So we'll get into that transmission of data now. Okay. So I started to look into like, how much data like the Star plans would take. So last year, we did the similar thing of like, how much materials and a Death Star and we compared it to like, a aircraft carrier. And so like, because they probably are the war machines, and they probably the same density and metal and stuff. I could not find the CAD 3d drawings of an aircraft carrier, though.
Well, that's probably a good reason.
So I couldn't use that example. So I just went online and started looking for like, buildings that had industrial stuff built into them, like a machine shop, and basically looked at, like, made sure like the machines had like all the mechanics working and stuff and figured out how big of a file that would be. And so a, it was about 100 300 megabytes, or these 3d files for like a decent sized building. Yeah. And it was like a I can't remember the size, but I wrote down the a of the, the volume 900 meters cubed was what I came up with, before about 300 megabytes. Okay, I was looking at solid work stuff. So that actually has stuff that can you know, if you're designing something like the desktop, you probably have designs for every little thing and how it goes together. And how everything moves. So
well. And if and desktop is really really like very, very planned out. Yeah, there's nothing janky you know, like everything fits together surgically but
not like they have one door that doesn't open.
Or like one of the floor doesn't have like a bunch of trash or like
very regular trash you once in a while the door opens
up and there's no walkway did happen episode for both the laser walkway so
laser laser walkway.
That's actually one thing we know to talk about future laser walk well, yeah, like how much energy would you have to like beam across so you can walk across it? Could it be a solar laser walkway, solid laser walkway, so
it powers itself? Maybe, maybe. Okay, so 100 to 300 megabytes for standard build?
Yeah. And so I took the size that we use last time, which was 160 kilometer diameter, that star and so that is 1.72 times 10 to the 16th meters cubed of volume, just stuff, just stuff. And then so 900 meters cubed goes into that. Oh, what does that um hundreds 1000s Millions, billions, trillions. 19 trillion times? It goes into it. And so that works out to be 5.7 million petabytes.
Yeah. Which is petabytes and perspective for me.
petabyte comes after gigabyte Okay, that comes out to allow no conductor terabyte terabyte? Wow. So I think what is it? The every, every book ever written if you were to convert that to like text files would be a petabyte, I believe, no, it's
way smaller than that. No, I
thought I thought that was. I can't remember what anyway, it's huge.
It this is this is more information than like, is on the planet right now?
Yeah. Oh yeah, for sure. So yeah,
it was then. So if you had to transfer that? Oh, I actually didn't write that down. Oh, well. Well, then that so that was just I think What was that number alone is like if you try to transfer that over 54 megabyte Wi Fi
couldn't even it would take longer than a human life. Yeah, it would
take longer than probably the eternity of the universe. Well, I mean,
let me make a fool of myself right here. What's 515 million? 733 million or 1000? Sorry? 333? On a on a one and eight in one. Transmission. Okay. And you get what did? What is that? At what baud rate? Not 96. Let's say an Arduino was passing this.
So 11 520?
No, no, no, no, no. 9600 Oh, boy. Well, you just you just multiply that out. Right? Yeah. So yeah. 55 billion seconds to pass that many bytes? Or not? Bytes? I apologize. Multiply that by eight. Ah, all right. So what is it? 1000 million 440 billion seconds? or however long? That is? keep dividing by 60? Yes. So that's minutes, that's ours. And then 5 million days to transmit on an Arduino serial terminal.
So as long as I thought, but so a long, long time.
Yeah, it's a very long.
This is partly why you would manually transfer stuff, and why you'd have to have a ginormous dish. To transmit
stuff. all makes sense now. Yeah.
And that's just the 3d plans of the desktop that does include all the meeting minutes and holograms and all this other stuff that's probably included.
The Urata data sheets. Yeah.
How many? How many Urata. Rata data sheets Do you think there are? That's like, how many revisions Do you think they got through,
you know, I downloaded, I don't live there. I downloaded a new driver for my Nvidia graphics card just the other day. And up at the top, it said the revision was 360.58. And to think that they're on a decimal system with the revisions, and they had already reached 360. In this is for a graphics card and a computer. The number of revisions for a Death Star, they you know, if you're doing like a letter revision system, it's probably like 50 characters long, and they're already on like ZZ be five. But you know, like,
so crazy.
So yeah, that's probably why they use giant dishes
kind of puts the whole mission into perspective. Yeah, like, why it had to happen. We couldn't, they couldn't hack into it. Yeah, an interesting thing. You don't see any hacking happen at any point. And so any star had a
theory about that?
Well, I mean, our two goes around, you know, plug in his thing into computers and is hacking, right?
Yeah, that's true. But that's a little bit. It's that's physical
storage, I
feel well, it's physical access. It's like, if you give hacker physical access to a server, there's,
he can do any extra. That's true. So if if if a if a bad guy walks up and actually physically uses your computer, you get stuff off of it. That's not hacking. That's just,
that's just scaling, for security for the building. So I was thinking about that. And there's another Sci Fi series that addresses this concern, and it's Battlestar Galactica. And all their systems are not connected in they use physical data to physical things to transfer data around, because the Cylons would hack them. Right. So maybe early. It was a lot of paper. Yeah, yeah, a lot of paper too. So maybe a long, long, long, long time ago. This was a problem and that's why they're more like, physical transferring of stuff. Yeah,
maybe it's the same universe. Maybe. And it's just fandom long after maybe going after. Yeah, still just
tradition to do things traditions that way. Yeah. Yeah. But that idea about this is different series at the end Battlestar Galactica. They're like the proto humans. Y'all ever watched a new series of you know, I
watched I watched until it got weird. Oh, man, they got to
that point
to the politic stuff
when? Whenever he kind of takes over yeah starts like the politics. Yeah. So
you know, what do you what happened? They ran out of budget. And so they had to save up a couple of seasons a budget. And so they can finish
this doesn't mean we're on like an actual network and then move to sci fi. And that's like I said, definitely always on time.
But usually sci fi like, they only have enough budget to run a couple of seasons. And then they just kill it. Yeah. And they kept it going. And they ran out of budget. And so they just saved up for a while. And then they finished a season series. So yeah, that's where you get like two seasons of like, just skip it
was yeah, it was really weird. Yeah. Couldn't couldn't handle that one bad. The
watch the end. It's pretty good, though. But basically what happens is they are you're gonna watch it. Nope. Nope. So they basically they find Earth, and then they land on Earth. And it's like, you know, all nature and stuff. And so they basically become, they send they send the Battlestar Galactica into the sun, and they become the proto humans. Yeah.
And those are the people who end up becoming Star Wars. Yeah.
They go colonize Mars, which becomes tattoo queen, and blah, blah, blah. Just
goes. It all blends together. Yeah. So it's not trek isn't
there somewhere.
Maybe Star Trek's way after it's like
after humans, right. Star Trek takes place like towards the end of human race when we discover all of these were fully enlightened. Yeah, we can handle you know, equal.
Everything is a liberal utopia.
I still want to I still want a machine that gets like, makes anything.
A 3d printer. Wow.
pieces of plastic right now. Yeah,
well, and occasional organs. Yeah, you know. Okay,
so let's get back on topic.
Star Trek. One thing I love about Star Trek is they talk about the prime directive all the time. And the first thing that goes out the window is the prime directive. I love that. I think that's hilarious.
Okay, back to Star Wars. Star Wars, which don't have prime directives. They do not know. They have executive orders. Like six six. That's when they kill the Jedi in
episode three. Oh, that was a an executive order. Yeah, make sense. Teens like
execute order. 66. Like yes, sir. And they just start shooting all the Jedi.
I was like 11 watching. I love
doing the Emperor's voice. Yes, best. Actually, no, he is the master. So I will name you Darth Vader. He was really worried about it's like that comes completely out of like, if you've never watched four, five and six before you have no way you have no idea why he's called Darth Vader. He just got it's like they had to call Anniken at that point, Darth Vader because of four, five and six.
What? Okay,
have you ever actually watched all the films and like, one through six? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Does it storyline like add up
their works? That's just one of the weird things. It's like, why'd they come Darth Vader. It's like, there's no nothing. No, because if you look at, again, the old EU in the new EU, like all like the darse. Like, there's a reason kind of behind their name. Invaders just kind of like, okay, we're just that that was just why it's got written that way. So they had to use it
because you have names like Palpatine and Snoke. And then you have like Darth Maul. Darth play this is that. Yeah. Yes.
Yep. Who's the? I think Palpatine is Master. Yes. And then Palpatine killed him. Yeah, recall.
Something like
that. He's gonna pop back up. But
we'll see. Oh, yeah. We'll get to that in a little bit.
Yeah, I guess we got to talk about the new one eventually. Yeah.
Okay, so we've talked enough about that. So yeah, I'm thinking they hacking was probably a big thing. And then they stop using wireless transmissions and, yeah, something like that, or something like that. Okay, so next thing we're gonna talk about is about Rogue One is how accurate the Deathstar is because like, the first thing it chooses the Jedi city of Jeddah Zyprexa Yeah, yeah, just the city. Yeah, and they use a one reactor blast is how they said and it just decimates the city doesn't blow up the plant though. And so then they at the end of the movie, they use a one reactor blast to blow up the I think they call it the scarf Citadel is how they call it in the movie, the big radar dish. Yeah, big radar dish, but they shoot it like they shoot the radar. dish.
Oh yeah, yeah. And the explosion goes outwards from there.
No It shoots it goes beyond so if you i figures could be turned to figure threads
can be provided if you want to go down. So figure three website
shows shows the point of where the Deathstar shoots the dish. And so it goes past it into the ocean. So that's how that happened. Right. But
the point was to hit the dish not to hit beyond the dish, correct? Yeah, that's just an artifact. Yeah. But what why didn't they just shoot at the base of the dish? Because I mean,
yeah, we're done. Same thing. Yeah, I think that was because of theatrical effect again, because it was like that. The creator of the Deathstar got destroyed by his creation kind of thing. You know, you know, monster Frankenstein kind of thing. Sure. Yeah. So anyway, so I wanted to figure out is like how accurate that laser would have to be to like, hit if they, if Tompkins was like, hit that dish? And they're like, Yes, sir. And can they actually hit it? Like, how accurate would they have to be? And so the first thing I had to figure out was like, how high was the death star above Scariff. And so there's two points where we see the Death Star and Scariff in like the same plane of view. One is like the stars like on the horizon, and pretty ominous shot. The problem is, there's like no scale to that shot. I didn't, I didn't print it out. I put it on the blog, though. So you just see a horizon and then like the Deathstar, like looks like a half Sun kind of thing. There's not really any scaling, so you can't really figure out how high it is the sky, and the other shot is Tompkins looking down, over Scariff. And the good thing is, people have figured out how tall Harkins is because he was a real actor once. Once died. He's six foot one. And so I've basically figured out, I measured how wide the window was, right? Using his height scale as the scale. So it's like 8.2 meters. I heard the window. Yeah, it's huge when I correct anything in the metric because it made the math easier in the end. Nice. That's usually how these things work. Yeah. Because you just keep meters, I don't have to convert the miles and then like, we don't have anything furlongs and fathoms. So yeah, I went to meters. And so basically, I came up with a ratio of so if you the first diagram I wrote up, is a circle. And that's so that circle is Scariff. And then I drew up at the top of what the window could see, which is, so that that line that says 8x 8x, that would be the width of the window, and an X up is how high Scariff is in it. So I drew a straight line across, you're basically trying to find the radius. Well, the scalenes. Yeah, I'm trying to find the scaling of what Scariff looks like in here, verse, what Scariff actually would be in that slice.
And I like I used x so we could find Yeah.
And so in that it's not a true height. It's it's close, though. And actually, the math when it comes out is like, oh, that's actually reasonable. So I went with it.
And so I just have to mention this, because I think this is I remember, I remember that scene where you see the planet and the Death Star. Yeah. Because at first when I saw this picture, I was like, Oh, well, that's just some zoomed in image of the planet. But no, it's not. Because if you actually see that, that scene where you see both the planet and the dead star, they're close enough that that's just like looking out the window at the desktop. Yeah, so this is Parker's math here is is pretty accurate.
It's gonna be pretty, it's actually pretty interesting. But the numbers work out too. Yeah, so I did all the trig. It's only just trig math. worked it out. And it's about 100 and I converted back into Imperial. So because one it's the Empire. And two, you know, most of our listeners are American, so they know miles better than meet kilometres. That's 170 miles up, is what they are at. So in 170 mile orbit up, which sounds close, but the International Space Station orbits about 200 miles up. Yeah, so it's it's closer, but that means they're hauling ass. Oh, yeah. If you actually, when you see the like it when it's coming up over the horizon. It's like, given how big it is. It's hauling butt up. Yeah, yeah, the come up. So that's what I figured out. It's about 170 miles and I'm like, okay, the internet's reasonable. It's reasonable size, height. And and so even to backtrack even more, I went on to YouTube and I started Googling, like, what would this desktop look like if it was orbiting the Earth? And so I found a video that this guy named Scott Manley did who does like hold on Like Kerbal Space Program and a bunch of space videos, he got a model of the Deathstar real size and then sent it in a 400 mile orbits around the planet and just, I looked at it and I'm like, if it was double that distance, it'd be twice as big. And it would look right about what it looked like in the movie. So I'm like, okay, that's 200 Miles is probably kind of double check. Yeah, double check that using just some, you know, Vision YouTube videos, YouTube. So we have oh, hi, it is okay, which we
need 170 miles. Okay, so
the next set of calculations is figuring out like, that laser now has to shoot an angle out and hit the tower. Right? Okay. So the next thing was like, How wide is the laser? So I figure two shows the deskstar shooting the laser, okay. Now this image is from the episode four, I think saw the same desktop. It's the same Deathstar. But it's firing a full power. But I went with this one because it actually showed the laser better than the one in row one. So in the row one laser actually look bigger in diameter. And like the one frame you get to see it in the movie when fires. And it looks to be about the same width as like the equilateral trench that goes around the Deathstar. And we know how big that is. It's one kilometer wide, roughly, which is a huge laser. And the problem is, if you look at figure three, when it hits the tower, that beam was one kilometer wide. That's a 20 Kilometer tall tower, which is like 12 and a half miles tall. That's enormous. Which is, yeah, it's that's what when you look around, it doesn't look that big. So
either amount of elevator music, you'd have to listen to going to the top, it would be like a whole album.
No, you didn't get to the hyperdrive. The top.
That's true. Yeah. As you carry your data,
actually, would be maybe faster. So I'm like, Okay, so that's either the laser loses strength as it goes through the atmosphere, which makes sense. It focuses focuses, but I couldn't rely on the laser within because there's no way that's towers, trough kilometer or 20 kilometers tall. And so I'm like, it looks this is like, it looks like 250 meters. So we'll go with that. Who does it's like, you know, in a couple scenes, I could see where the 8080 is kind of by it. And you kind of just like, you know, stack stuff up and it looks 50 meters is pretty totally tall. Yeah, it's so pretty tall tower.
Can we have like a comparison to a real life thing that is 250
meters tall? Wow, he looks that up. I'll keep explaining the well. What is what
is the the how do you pronounce the Burj Khalifa or whatever? The tallest building in the world?
I'll look it up. Oh, and Dubai tower? Yeah. Yeah. Well, he's doing that. I'm gonna get another beer.
I'm almost there. I'm almost did
you talk me off too? Thank you, sir. Oh, 801 meters.
You know what's funny, I saw I Google it, and it comes up in feet.
So it's about a third as tall as the world's tallest building. And when you look at that one, though, like everything below, it is absolutely tiny. Whereas this, it's like, oh, you can make out roads and stuff in this picture. So I'm like, Okay, if it's 250 meters tall, that beam is like 10 to 12 and a half meters as a 10. Make math easy. Okay. Okay, so, and that means that the, the dish, you know, it's about 10 ish meters tall, because it actually like completely blasts the laser the dish off, like completely vaporized. And so I'm like, okay, so it has hit a 10 meter target. And it's x distance away, because it's not right above it is actually it's at an angle. And so I actually drew out red lines and then measured the angle in between, which is, it's gonna be parallax error there, but we're gonna roll with it. So it's 52 degrees is the angle shot. Okay. Okay. And so that works out to be 346,286 meters is the shot.
Well, that's the distance from the laser to the Deathstar. Yes. Okay. The hypotenuse of that triangle. Yeah, yeah. So it's, it's
pretty, like pretty big distance. Yeah. Yeah. And so you, you know, use equalled triangles. So you have three 346,286 on one leg. 346,286 on the other leg, 10 meters. So it works out the point 002 degrees. Is your ark that you have to be within to hit that to
hit that target. So you have to turn an entire moon sized ship to within an accuracy of to 100 1000s or 10 1000s 10 degrees that's some control. Yeah, there PID loops are tuned pretty well, very
was actually interesting because in in the sixth movie, return the Jedi, they shoot like this was like just like shooting randomly at ships. And so I think they basically figured out how to like directionally turned the laser now,
they just have a big mirror that they kind of just like wiggles around big prism. Right?
Actually, I think what it is, is it shows like The, the lasers that go around it first, and then the big laser goes through
all the Yeah, they all combine into one master laser.
No, no, they don't combine that they I think what those are doing is controlling the angle of the big laser.
Ah, so they don't have to move the whole desktop.
I think I figured out my desktop too. But the first one it's like, if you look at the picture, it's like
straight. Yeah, cuz I was coping with that thing. Yeah.
MLG does starring
Well, that was a that was impressive. Parker.
Thank you for going exercise sacrifice yourself for this man. You know, so it's
nice to hear you do that like, and that's awesome. That's great. I feel like this is something that one of my professors back in college would have tried to have done but we would have all been like oh my god, just stop
everything though is when I was doing the the trig math for the circle to figure out like how high the star the star was. The answer could be zero or 140,200 Quadratic Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'm like it's probably not zero that's one assumption I'm probably correct on imagine like the Death Star like just skidding on the planet.
It'd be kind of cool actually. Yeah. Hey, maybe that will something like that will happen in a future Star Wars
Yeah, just works like a pinball rather than a laser
the image kind of just given up
yeah, what was like in the in Episode Six would like when that start to blows up, it probably would have taken out everything on that planet when it exploded.
We talked about this last weekend. I think this is one of one of the best scenes in all Star Wars is the park in our we're laughing about this. When they shoot the laser. There's those two like control guys who are inside the laser gun. Oh, yeah, they're standing on this little podium. It's like big enough for two guys. And they're right next to this beam that can destroy planets. And there's no railing. There's no like, any kind of safe. You ever gonna like duck out of the way because it's like oh shit.
The first time it's ever been fired before? Oh, yeah. Yeah, they like turn it on a look and go holy crap.
It'd be great if if all of like the control stuff that they're doing. You know, like all those guys like moving levers and pressing buttons and stuff like that. It'd be great if all of that control stuff didn't actually fire the weapon. It just told those guys to fire the weapon. And they're like the final say and they just press one button and it shoots. Oh, no,
it'd be like a battleship or a big ship where they send the speed down to the engineers actually adjust the speed. Oh, yeah, it's just that's like it's a suggestion. Hey, guys down there. Vader said we need to fire this weapon so probably good idea to fire that weapon.
Right? Those guys are down there looking at your drawings and being like, you're telling us we have to choose.
These guys. It's like bulls. womp rats and mighty whatever it was
16 No, whatever. The life of an engineer. Yeah, a laser firing engineer the
most stressful job on the desk. Besides being the architecture, Apparently so.
Oh, yeah. funny guys. boiler? Well, I guess. I guess the laser engineers died too. Eventually. Yeah,
yeah. Yeah, I would think that if you're next to a beam of energy that much, he would just vaporize. They probably just have to keep sending engineer down. They're just gonna do some repairs on their endless stream of them
and there'll be nothing left. So there's no evidence either. It's not like, it's like going down there and hosing off. Like you don't have to hose the platform off. It's just instant sterilization of
that tube. Oh, yeah. And when the new engineers who go down there they ask Hey, what happened to the last ones? They were transferred They were transferred to secure. Yeah.
The intergalactic safety inspector never catches anybody. You pass this year Good job. Bader
like one of the guys is like drinking coffee down there and he accidentally bumps the fire. Yeah. Oh, you think they're gonna notice
I hope there's nothing in the way of laser.
And that's when the laser goes into like the Star Trek universe. completely destroys the enterprise. Yeah. Oh, good stuff. Yeah.
I had something for that. But oh, well, I ruined it. Sorry. No, your joke was way better. Oh, yeah. So you're talking about no railings, but at least so the fact that they had to manually get onto top of this tower onto a railing to the terminal to just dish it's like, why can't you just do that in like the control center? That's actually really interesting. Where I wonder if it is like Battlestar Galactica, where everything is so not connected to each other. So you can't like control the dish from the main area? Because someone might hack it or something.
Maybe the fire command down to the engineers maybe
Yeah, but yeah, but at least that where that terminal is that the just the dish had railings around it. Did it Yeah, I had I commented on it when we watched it last Oh guy. They have railings, so at least you know. Oh,
on the dish. Okay, but But check this out. I'm, I'm pretty sure that railing on the Deathstar is only there for the executives. No, no, seriously, if you think about it, like when Obi Wan goes to like, deactivate the the tractor beam. Oh, yeah, there's no there is nothing on that. Like there was death everywhere. And like the walkways on like six inches wide. Right. And the bridge that you're talking about? There ain't railings there. But when when Vader has to throw the Empire The Emperor over the railing to kill them. There's there's railing there. Yeah. His little play. Yeah.
Well, he's old. So he needs like grabs.
I just think I think it's railing is only there for the uppers. can afford? They can
it's like when you look at like the bridges on the star destroyers. There's no railings, either. It's like the platform where like the cap captain is on and like a pit where like all the like black keys are working. It's like it's a 12 foot drop if you fall off that. Yeah, and everything's like waxed smooth. So it's like it's probably slippery. And you get hit by a hammerhead vehicle and into another star destroyer. And,
yeah, well even even when the Millennium Falcon is in one of the landing bays in the Deathstar. There's a there's a part where one of the elevators is coming up in full elevator full of Stormtroopers. But when that elevator is down, who knows how far down that is, there ain't no. Like, and that's that's like, you're supposed to walk on that and it just drops out. Yes. So apparently they they have in that data package. There's, there's like the safety guy just took the day off. There's no OSHA, there's no nothing. But it's a bunch of clones, right? So I mean, that's that's all staffs it and nothing. I
wrote 1456 Do not all clones anymore.
Oh, yeah, by that time, they've all it's just a bunch of old clones.
Well, some of them are all clones. And then it's just people who are Stormtroopers. Sure.
So Finn, was he a clone or was he just like a person? He's disbursing by
the time? He probably Yeah,
he's just enrollee, okay. Yeah. So he didn't look like Boba Fett.
Guidance Counselor and in high school was like, Yeah, you seem like Emperor Empire material. Yeah. Have you thought of being a stormtrooper?
Your aptitude test came back and it said, You're the dark side.
I see a white suit in your future.
I'm not gonna make any jokes on that. Oh, man. Um, think that Oh, yeah. So let's go and talk about the new movie.
I guess. I guess that's our RFO right. Yeah, your opinion. Yeah.
So we saw in in Rogue One. We saw some CGI. Not just normal CGI. We saw fake people.
Dead people fake dead people. Yeah. We saw dead people. Yeah,
we saw Doug Tompkins was a CGI. And I'll put this way the first time he was on the screen. I thought he was like, I'm like, wow, they got an actor. It looks just like him. I
was blown away. It looks so real. Yeah, really? I mean, we saw so didn't we see CGI of a young Princess Leia at the end of row variant
one it was the it looked too good to
pristine better known actual Carrie Fisher did
better than she did in Episode Four. It was like to like the makeup was basically to perfect little to porcelain like, yeah, that's a good way to put it. But Tompkins was like they got like all like the wrinkles and like the scars and like bags and liver spots.
But he wasn't a movie a lot more so they probably focused a ton on him. Yeah, probably because she was in there for like, two seconds if that Yeah.
So with Carrie Fisher being you know, dead now. Yeah. Spoiler alert for people and I think she died before the finishing of the last Jedi. So I don't know if she finished older because a lot of times though, like, finish all the scenes and stuff. So I don't know if they did that. So we might see CGI Carrie Fisher. I really hope she doesn't die off screen. Yeah, like that. Her ship explodes. Like, Oh, yeah.
Be very sad. I think I think they'll do like a good parting gift for her in the series in some manner. Yeah. Yeah.
Because of that, I guess more spoiler alerts here because of that. I wonder if they're going to just kill off basically all the old cast, you know, just get rid of them all. Yeah, maybe including potentially Mark Hamill.
Yeah, depends on if he makes it through the next movie or not. Well, I mean, this character would say a great character because well, because Indiana Jones died. Solo died. And then next year is the solo movie. Yeah. So then the cast a someone else? Because you
can't have a CGI solo for that one.
Yeah, cuz you can't cast an 80 year old guy to play like a 20 year old bounty hunter smuggler? I don't remember anymore.
Okay. Would you ask? Who they casted for young solo?
I don't know. I only know who they casted for Lando? It's Donald Glover. You guys know what that is? Yeah. Very excited about that. Actually. Yeah, I heard that they've had to revamp the Han Solo script, because it was little not Disney. So they had to take a lot of the comedy out. I know. Comedy. Oh, yeah. That's good. Yeah, yeah, the storyline still there. But yeah, no, that's good. But yeah, do you really think that they're gonna kill off all the old guys? Well,
so there's only one left now? Because cuz I can't remember the person that plays chewy. is, I think, no offense to the guy. But anyone could probably wear cheese outfit, as long as he's tall.
Yeah, still got that high. You know, he's notorious for having a loud mouth. And they actually stopped telling him his scenes before he was doing them because he would just go and blab about a lot of Star Wars. So he basically had to read a script right before he did it.
Oh, my God sounds like a chewy thing.
You think they would just like, like, put the voice in for like, he just has to open his mouth up.
Yeah, like cast a new person base.
Yeah. So apparently they did that too, when they did it for everyone. When Vader reveals that he's Luke. Wow. Nobody knew about that. That's till like, right when it happened. Wow. That's cool. Yeah, I wonder
if that's like one of the last, like scenes they actually shot too. And Episode Five. That'd be cool.
I actually think it was it was like right before
and then they just went at it. Sorry, editing.
So if I remember correctly, I think there's like a really interesting Mark Hamill, like commentary on that and finding out that that was Luke's father, which we should totally try to post on my blog.
Oh, yeah. So excuse me. So yes, CGI. Parkins. And Leon wrote one, so we'll probably see more of that. Excited. And since that was
heard that Carrie Fisher's dog is making a cameo in this episode, her little French Bulldog, so keep an eye out for that. It's the first time we would see a dog in the Star Wars. Yeah. I wonder it's like part alien or something. Oh, it looks like a little alien. So. Yeah.
That's cool. It's a little homage. Yeah, cuz she used to carry that thing around everywhere. Yeah, he was. I hate to say that was hilarious.
Yeah, she was so great. She was super salty. And I loved I loved it so much.
Which is funny because her character was not really. No,
it's so funny. You hear her talk about playing the character of Princess Leia and she hated Princess Leia. So my oh yeah, but she brought that character. Yep. So great.
She still didn't hug chewy though at the end of that movie.
At the end of six, yeah.
777 Yeah. And didn't give chewy a medal. I think I think les is racist against
against the first half dozen like first
I thought that my favorite thread on Reddit that came out like last week was in in 2016. A lot of your favorite celebrities died in 2017. A lot of your favorite celebrities are now like scumbags and creeps. And so in 2018 What will be the thing for celebrities? And then my favorite was the OB CGI. One got to pay him for the pain for lightness. Yeah, and they look better. And two, you don't have to care if their likes coming or not anymore because digital ties them the future so they'll never die. Yeah, they just get bit rot.
That's great. Eventually, it will eventually Yeah. So I think I think Luke's gonna die in this movie. Okay, yeah.
So that's the prediction part.
RFO? I think so. I mean, I think with the name The Last Jedi, you know, it talks about him, there will be one more and it will be Ray, and he's gonna die.
So I think Ray is not going to be a Jedi
that we haven't we already kind of gotten that confirmation that Ray has the force. Yeah.
She's like, unnaturally proficient in the force, which is weird
that you know, okay, so I'm nerdy here they call those force adepts. Those are basically people who don't know about the force, but can use it. It's sort of like a religion in a way.
Other than people that can that know about it, though, and be trained in it.
I wasn't, I wasn't a huge fan of her character. Because of that, basically, what you're talking about? Yeah, like, she like, we went through six movies of building up how much effort it takes to be a Jedi and putting them on this pedestal and, and even the first three movies are all about, like, how much training it takes and how much effort and then she comes along and just throws all of that out the window, because she can just use a lightsaber cuz she can just x y, which is kind of bullshit we talked about on the last podcast where you're like Force users, or only force users can use a lightsaber. And we talked about that a little bit. But I mean, it's clear that people that don't know anything about force can turn a lightsaber on from episode four.
That's because Luke turns on the lightsaber, he just goes punk and turns on you. I mean, of course, he's fader son, and I am a concern. And he has the foresight, but he doesn't know anything about it. And he just flicks the switch. How
great would it be if it was holding it backwards?
So I mean, but isn't that technically the same thing that happened with Ray, except she just doesn't have that like prior knowledge of the force that he had with OB. She, she like, encompasses it with the theory that like she's potentially Luke's
daughter? Well, Luke hadn't like live months in the swamp with Yoda. Yeah, he may go through some training and even just the move of law rock or something. Even
what Ray did I mean, it doesn't show that she's proficient at the force, just that she has some type of capacity she did,
was able to block the mind read from from Kylo Kylo. And then
she got the lightsaber to write and she like, call it to
Yeah. And then was able to convince the Stormtrooper to let her go. Yeah. Which is like, that's actually, if you look in like the video games and lore, that's like, really high level use of force. So it's like, it's not like, actually like lifting a rock is like, that's easy. Yeah, worse. Whereas, like, mentally manipulating people is actually really hard. So it's, like, kind of just like, I would agree with Steven on that one. It's kind of like it's convenient. Convenient. Yeah,
for sure. I would say a lot of things in The Force Awakens were made very convenient.
Of course, yeah. And that's, that's why I'm gonna kind of disagree with what you're saying about her not being a Jedi. Like, they've put so much convenience into it that she has to
no no. So the Jedi are the good side of the Force, the white side, the Sith or the dark side. I think she is because the whole thing about the prophecy about the Jedi was someone to bring balance to the Force. And that was supposed to be Innokin. Well, anagen couldn't handle both sides. Yeah, because he went to he was the good side, light side and then went to the dark side. And then at the very end of six, was able to climb back out to the light side and save his son and kill the Emperor and all that stuff. And so he never was back. And then Luke was supposed to be the balance and we don't know what happened. Because that's kind of what this movie is supposed to cover. Yeah. Which is basically the gap between six and seven. He done screwed up. Yeah, he done screwed up. And so maybe he is the last Jedi cuz he's the last light side force user and then re becomes the actual the actual balance of the force and she's not a Jedi. She's what people term in social media well it's like a Gray Jedi. Well, I've
heard Luke more commonly referred to as the grey Jedi that he has too much of the strengths of the we have the light side without the balance of the dark side. I mean, if you watch like Luke's whole progression he constantly makes like sacrifices for his loves and friends. Yeah. And like, you know,
you're gonna say like, everyone's got to be a little crappy. You could be a nice guy for like, half the day. And then the other half gotta
be a dark guy bad. Yep. But yeah, have you heard that discussion? That one, the gray Jedi? And what are your thoughts on that? I,
I, because what is the people who are writing the story and stuff? They say there's not great doesn't exist? Yeah, well, great. Jedi is a term they use doesn't exist, which is like, okay, then that's just not a Jedi. It's just someone who is in between Sith and Jedi then.
So basically, you're throwing up the semantics of the word Jedi. Correct. And it ends up just being like, the force is one thing. Yeah. As opposed to like, split into Yeah. Okay. I guess that makes sense. Yeah, it's a little matrix II. Oh. So her she just changes her name to Neo.
trench coat? Yeah.
They're the major hair all
the way back in the end of the movie. She just goes, well. She's like, I know kung fu. Yeah, cuz she plugs in one of the USB drives. Learn.
Full circle now. Yeah. Cool. Any other predictions for what do you want to see? So we talked about predictions? What do you want to actually see in episode eight.
I really want to get more insight on Luke's backstory and what's been going on there. And also Kylo his backstory. So like, I know that some of the books probably covered what made Kylo such a screw up. But I mean, Han Solo and Princess Leia were his parents. So what had to happen there to make that go wrong and so severely wrong, too. So I'm really hoping we get some flashbacks there. I've also seen previews for this character rose. No idea who that is. But I'm interested, you have a little bird? Ah, no, I think it's actually a person, this little bird.
That's supposed to be like, the new minion.
So I would like to see that air
quotes there. By the way, guys.
The so in a lot of the books, Luke was supposed to create like a Jedi Academy. Yes, I would love to see the academy and what all that entails.
Because they even talked about it in seven.
Where they do mention that he loves song
talks about it. Yeah. Right. And
he was supposed to, like it wasn't. It wasn't like a super elite private school academy in terms of like, there wasn't like two people there. There was like a lot of people learning at this academy. And so it would be cool to see what that looked like in its heyday if that actually existed and given this lore,
so we have to have a look movie then.
That's, that's what it is. comes in.
Yeah. Yeah. I can't look like grizzled old man. But I gotta admit, Mark Hamill looks awesome. Yeah, he does.
Totally better than the original Luke. Oh, absolutely. Oh, yeah. You know, much more badass, you
know, in Episode Five, where he looks kind of messed up and doing the movie. So what happened? You know what happened now at the end of Episode Four. He actually gotten a really bad car wreck. Oh, that almost killed him. And then so that's why he's got like scars on his face and so the first thing they do is fuck them up in the movie. So monster so now he like he put they put him in that tank and stuff but doesn't fully heal his face. So that kind of explains Oh, it's kind of like when they wrote in Harrison Ford scar in in Indiana Jones where they wrote in that scoring I think the third movie Yeah, third movie.
We're live scene all the way to the third movie.
Any of those three Yeah, that's one of the best movies of all time.
The The Last Crusade Oscars. Oh, The Last Crusade is awesome. It's on par with the first one. Yeah, you know Parker you like Sue like Temple temple Doom, though I have no idea why.
No, no, that's that's
that's not an Indiana Jones movie Okay, that's something that's something else
for us okay, okay. It's crap. shall always writing is like the Jar Jar of there's nothing really wrong with him in the movie. It's just everything else and everyone blames him for it. GEORGE are on a Harley. Yeah. charger on Harley. Yeah. That'd be awesome. Episode name. Cool. So anything else guys? Oh, I guess I can eat see what I'm looking Oh yeah, what do you look for, um, closure on the LWC saga is a big one. I want to see more. All I was really impressed with in seven was when the first order like activated there with Cyprus last year too, but when they activated their star death killer. They just immediately used it. And I'm like, okay, that's actually kind of cool because usually the like, you know, they they got to use like the Deathstar. Top three times, they got these well, that we know of in the movies. They actually use a ton in the EU. But regardless, they only use it three times since like, they destroyed two cities and a planet. But like the star death killer like annihilate eight planets on the first firing. And it's, it's kind of like the anti villain because usually villains are like, they like build this like weapon and stuff and never get to use it. Because the good guy always wins. And here like the bad guys, like, fuck shit up. And I want to see more of that. I like that. Because it actually it actually gives purpose to like, what the good guys need to do. Yeah, and gives, like, they need like, they need to put emphasis on like getting it done quickly. It's like a video game where like, you need to do X really quickly. And then you go off and like, like, farm stuff or do other side grind, grind or, like do side quests. And like ignore the main quest for like, hours. It's like, I guess it's not super important because like, you know,
that's really nerdy. But it makes it makes sense to play video games.
Yeah, that's That's right. Yeah, I want to see the first first order, you know, fuck more shit up and more text and we get stuff to talk about next year.
As well as the Christmas special from? Yeah, so I'm going to go home and watch it tonight.
Oh, yeah. Have fun. Yeah, get some alcohol. It will Yeah.
Oh, yes. I'm going to Karbach after this. Just gonna chug it down and prep. Some get some
eggnog put you in the Christmas spirit. Yeah, that's what I'm looking forward to. Cool. It's, it's Star Wars. I'll, I'm gonna watch. It's gonna be good. It's good. Well, it's gonna be there's an acceptable level of what it's going to be. Yeah.
I think we're at the point where Star Wars is so ingrained in our culture, like, yeah, yeah, it's just going to be what it is. Yeah, it'll either be excellent or just fine. And the
fact that people that are previewed the movie are like, actually saying how good the acting is. And they're like, oh, this can win. The fact that people are saying that a Star Wars movie can win an Oscars for like, Best Supporting Actor. I'm like, Okay, it's what we got. See? Yeah,
you guys need to buy our tickets to go see it this week. Like oh, I'm coming into work Monday jabbing about it. So okay, just be prepared. I'm seeing it Thursday night. Oh, boy. Oh boy.
Can't say anything.
On Friday, I promise I know. I'll get beat up
there's a grace period she's
gonna come in just smiling in like the plot written on her
and he just says Snape kills Dumbledore. Oh, wait, I'm sorry. Spoiler alert.
No joke kills Luke. All right. I hope that doesn't have
shown even Yeah, go ahead and close this out.
All right. That was the second annual macro Five Star Wars Christmas special podcast. I was your guest Taylor Smith.
And we were your hosts Parker Coleman
and Steven Craig. Later guys, take it easy
Bye Thank you, yes, you our listener for downloading our show. If you have a cool idea project or topic or Star Wars topic that you want Steven and I and Taylor to discuss, tweet us at macro fab or email us at podcast at macro fab.com We need to do something about all these acts at the end of the sentence cuz I always get stumbled on and check out our Slack channel. We talk about cool stuff, articles, the map, all that cool stuff. If you're not subscribed to the podcast, yet click that subscribe button. That way you get the latest map episode right when it releases and we get those sweet sweet clicks. And please review us on iTunes. It helps the show save visible and helps new listeners find us. And one more thing guys, we are hiring several positions here at macro fab, including an electronics manufacturing engineer, please apply and share this with everyone that you know there'll be a link in the podcast description
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