land speeders underwater.

[garhkal]

Lets say someone is piloting one of those enclosed landspeeders (like the luxury one from galadiniums), but while fleeing over water, gets ionized and goes in the drink. How far down can it go before starting to worry about crushing? Will it leak?

Since it was just ionized, after power comes back on, what roll will be needed to get it out of the water???
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[Gry Sarth]

Standard Landspeeders are not meant to work underwater (and most can't even fly over it). I don't think they would fare any better than our cars if sinking underwater. Speeders are not vacuum sealed and would start filling with water in that nice suspenseful way, so pressure crushing would not be really a problem, as it would probably be filled with water way before sinking to crushing depths. And I don't think you would be able to fly a landspeeder out of the water after it has sunk, that's what submergibles and waterspeeders are for.
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[Ankhanu]

[Phalanks Balas]

Well, a landspeeder is a car without wheels. when a landspeeder run over water, same thing occurs than if you run your car in a lake...
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[Tupteq]

I see a problem here. What if landpeeder has altitude range ~10m (not so rare)? Should it count from lake bottom (then if depth <10m there's no problem)? If so, what will happen with water between landspeeder and bottom? Maybe repulsorlift engines may affect water somehow (for example pushing it and creating Moses-like effect )? If so, then maybe it's possible to slide over the water using surface tension of water (like on surfboard, but with repulsor field used as plane)?

[Ankhanu]

While it makes sense logically, it doesn't really fit with the technology presented in the SW universe. There are floating vehicles for a range of uses, landspeeders, airspeeders, speeder boats, etc that all use the same technology but do not work in the same situations (terrain). Though it would seem logical that a landspeeder might skip over the surface of water or operate against the bottom of the water, it doesn't work flavour-wise. Landspeeder hits water and it sinks... same sort of reason why the repulsors on Luke's X-Wing were useless getting it out of the swamp on Daggobah. Logically they'd still work.

[Ray]

My group has always used that if it has any great amount of altitude (More than 20 metres, say), it could go over anything save an ocean unless things were choppy.

If less, then it could go over shallow, still water, and have a really cool wave effect while doing it.

Needless to say, pedestrians get splashed a lot when it rains in the Star Wars Universe.

IIRC, we've never seen an ocean-going Speeder, as Boats are effective in that manner. We have been underwater a number of times, but in tunnels.

In fact, we've had *NO* luck when it comes to boats. Almost all the ones we've been on have sank.

OK, we did the sinking a few times, but that's a different matter.

[garhkal]

Some of the land speeders i have read, DO list them as being able to go over water, but do add a diff to the repulsor roll if the waves are choppy..
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[Orgaloth]

I'd base it on the scene in back to the future 2 where Marty Mcfly takes the hover board on the lake. Biff says something about needing propulsion to work on water. I know its not SW, but I think it gives an idea on how it works.
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[Hellcat]

[PsiberDragon]

My basic thought on landspeeders is more of a VTOL type vehicle on a small, very controlled scale.

So, while you could go over a shallow creek or stream... a river, pond, lake, ocean, etc that has a deeper bottom wouldn't be able to support the craft as the surface tension of the water is insufficient to provide the proper lift...
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[ifurin]

i read somewhere (don't remember where) that repulsor lift tech worked by "pushing" against the gravity of a planet. thats why they don't work in space and asteroid belts. if that is so then what reason would they work differently over water?

[Endwyn]

Basically, it comes down to surface tension. While repulsor lift tech is based on anti-gravity it exerts a strong gravimetric force that has to push against the planet's gravity to keep it above the ground. (The ground being the solid object that the repulsor is actually pushing against the gravity of.) When it hits water it would attempt to do this same thing, but the water (being a non-solid state) will react to the change in gravity and part; which in turn would cause the vehicle to continuously loose it's already limited altitude (of around 1-2 meters) until it was lower in altitude than the water ahead of it which would cause a wake collision.

This could be avoided for a limited time if the speeder had acquired enough speed to avoid breaking surface tension initially and continued to gain/increase speed faster than the water reacted to the changes in gravity or if the user had made modifications to the repulsor system to extend the gravity field out over more surface area to reduce the effects it has on non-solid surfaces. Both of these modifications are unlikely to resolve all problems you might encounter over water but will reduce your difficulties in trying to cross it.

There are other vehicles in Star Wars that use repulsor technologies that fly at higher altitudes that would experience little to no problem due to the differences in distance and overall power level of the equipment. (This equipment actually pushes against the planet's gravity in general not the gravity of surface objects.)
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[Gry Sarth]

It's tricky to discuss repulsorlift technology in real physics terms, cause it really wasn't meant to have much logic. The speeders float, that's it. The explanation of "pushing against gravity" shouldn't be scrutinized too much. If we assume that the ship is pushing the surface in order to float (and thus would sink in water because of surface tension), then it would be possible for a person to be "runned over" by a speeder flying overhead. The logic is that the person on the ground would effectively be part of the surface, and would have to sustain the vehicle's weight when it flew overhead (it's not healthy to stand underneath a Harrier Jet lifting off). This is clearly not the case, so we have to accept that repulsorlift techonolgy doesn't work quite how it should in real-world physics.

I base my opinion on how well a speeder would fare over water by the fact that there are "waterspeeders", such as the TIE Boat or Waveskimmer. If normal speeders could fly over water, then there wouldn't be a need for these specialized speeders.
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