Reply To: Translation to Portuguese language

[Ivy Matt]

There’s an Enterprise episode and a Voyager novel named “Fusion”, neither of which has anything to do with nuclear fusion as far as I am aware.

A recent visit to a bookstore confirms that hypermatter reactors are standard fare in post-prequel Star Wars lore. So far I have been unable to find evidence of any fusion-assisted hypermatter reactors. However, I did find that Tipoca City, site of the Republic’s secret cloning facility, is powered by a fusion generator. You can get a look at it if you click on the image labeled “Tipoca City cutaway”.

Then I remembered I had a copy of the Star Wars Technical Journal. This reference work was published in 1994, so it predates the era of George Lucas revisionism. Some Star Wars fans may prefer it for that reason alone, but it’s not without its own problems and, for most fans, has been superseded by the newer, more widely available references.

For about half of the vehicles, the technology is described in very general terms. The Millennium Falcon, for instance, contains fuel slug tanks, a hyperdrive motivator, a drive system matrix, and an emergency generator.

The first technology that really caught my eye was the Star Destroyer’s power generator, which is called a “solar ionization reactor”. What do you suppose that means? It’s contained within a large sphere on the ship’s ventral ridge, so it’s not likely to have anything to do with photovoltaics. As a deep-space vessel, you wouldn’t want it to be dependent on nearby stars for its power anyway. So “solar” likely has some meaning other than “coming from the sun”. Perhaps it means something like “resembling the sun”. “Ionization”, well, that’s what happens to a gas when it becomes a plasma, right? Now, here’s the description from the book:

Containing what is in essence a miniature sun, the heavily-shielded, carbonite and durasteel-reinforced heart of the ship’s SFS I-a2b solar ionization reactor was the one element that dictated the enormous size of the Imperial Star Destroyer. It feeds not only the hyperdrive motivation system, but the vessel’s propulsion, powerfeed and weapons networks as well, providing more than enough focused power for any task facing a Star Destroyer.

What, no magnets? And focused power? 😉

The Description of the Death Star is even more explicit. The diagram of the Death Star’s reactor core shows a solar ionization reactor with a power generator just below it. Here’s the description:

At the core of the Death Star was an immense, cavernous housing for the battle station’s power generator matrix. A fusion reactor of incredible proportions, fed by stellar fuel bottles lining its periphery, produced the raw energy demanded by the Death Star‘s superlaser and hyperdrive systems.

Stellar fuel? Is that like hydrogen?

The Correllian Corvette/Blockade Runner’s main reactor is also a solar ionization reactor according to this reference.

Now for the fighters. The TIE fighters are uninteresting, of course, being powered by solar arrays. The X-Wing is powered by “Novaldex 04-Z cryogenic power cells and ionization reactor”. I’m not sure what an “ionization reactor” is, but it sounds less formidable than a “solar ionization reactor”. The X-wing’s propulsion system consists of four “Incom 4j.4 fusial thrust engines (rated at 300KTU)”. “Fusial” is a made-up word, but it could easily mean “having to do with fusion”. (And “KTU” is a made-up acronym. Although unexplained, the “TU” no doubt expands to “thrust units”.)

With the A-wing, things are even more explicit. The A-wing draws its power from an “MPS BPr-99 power converter and fusion reactor”, and is propelled by twin “Novaldex J-77 ‘Event Horizon’ engines (rated at 400 KTU)”. The aft view of the A-Wing shows its fusion reactor exhaust port between the two engines, although this same part of the craft is labeled “thrust vector control” in later literature. Of course, the two functions are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

The B-wing is similar to the X-wing as far as power and propulsion systems are concerned. The Y-wing is powered by “Thiodyne 03-R cryogenic power cells and ionization reactor”. More interesting is the propulsion system, which consists of twin “Koensayr R200 ion fission engines (rated at 250 KTU).”

Ion fission? *shrug* I think the “fission” part is to make it seem like older technology when compared with the newer fighters.

Oh, and the EG-6 Power Droid “is a walking fusion generator that provides operating power for remote equipment on farms and at spaceports”.

After checking Wookieepedia again, I see that most of this information has not been superseded, at least on Wookieepedia. I’d have to check the newer Vehicles & Vessels and Cross-Sections books to see what they say. Wookieepedia has pages on the A-wing’s fusion reactor and the Star Destroyer’s solar ionization reactor. The Death Star, however, has succumbed to revisionism, being powered by a hypermatter reactor now. I guess you just can’t trust something that large to a fusion reaction.

Of course, none of this was mentioned on film, so….