One of the criticisms levelled at The Last Jedi was aimed at its opening salvo, as a First Order dreadnought arrived in orbit over D’Qar. Scrambling to protect the evacuation of the Resistance fleet, a squadron of MG-100 StarFortress SF-17’s cruise slowly over the First Order fleet, dropping bombs that obliterate the enemy. Wired remind us that we’ve seen bombing runs before, in a key scene from The Empire Strikes Back 38 years ago as TIE bombers did strafing runs to spook the Millennium Falcon out of its hiding hole in the Anoat Asteroid belt.
The number of physics problems hidden in Star Wars movies is much greater than you think. Oh, don’t worry. I know it’s just a movie and not one that really focuses on science. That won’t stop me from looking at something from The Empire Strikes Back—the introduction of the TIE bomber.
For a human like me who grew up on Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back was super cool (and also one of the top three Star Wars movies of all time). In the prequel A New Hope, we see only two kinds of TIE fighters—the plain kind and Darth Vader’s special TIE fighter. But then we get to see the TIE bomber.
What the heck is a TIE bomber? It’s a TIE fighter that drops bombs … in space. Yes, right there you might say these things are dumb. Or you could just chill out and realize that this is the equivalent of a WWII bomber. That’s what it’s like.
If you want, you can get together with your friends to debate the merits of a bomber in space. For me, I’m just going to do some physics. This is going to be great.