How Hot Are Vulcan, Tatooine, and Dune?

[Reverend]

you'd have to wonder what would induce some-one to settle on Tatooine in the first place.

Don't recall any canon mention of anything that really made the place enticing as settelment so maybe it was simply it's location as the arse end of the galaxy out of the eye of the Old Republic and galatic empire.

There was some stuff in Legends about a mineral rush that dried up fast (literally and figuratively) leaving a bunch of abandoned sand crawlers behind for the Jawas to co-opt. No clue if any of that's been reintegrated.
Like I said though, people have been around the galaxy long enough that the place could have been a tropical paradise when the first and second wave settlers showed up. Hell for all we know the Jawas & Tuskens could be their decedents.

Anyway, I don't think anyone *willing* settles on Tatooine anymore unless they're explicitly there to disappear. Most everyone who lives there was either born there, or didn't have a choice in the matter. Getting off planet is likely a non-trivial task for most. Remember that Luke had to sell the most valuable thing he owed just to afford an *advance* on a ticket out of there. If Owen & Beru sold the farm, the homestead and everything they couldn't carry on their backs they might be able to afford a flight off world...but to where, and how are they to live? Make for the midrim and live as refugees? Find some other backwater and start over? How? With what? Even if they found work, a lifetime's experience in moisture farming would mean exactly feck all on anywhere that isn't a desert planet. Even that's assuming the dodgy freighter captain they hired (because that's the only kind that come to Tatooine) doesn't just sell them to the Hutts?

There's a reason why Biggs & Tank left for the Academy and why Luke was so eager to join them. It's literally they only hope for any young person born there to get off that dustball

 

[DEWLine]

I have follow-up questions to @Reverend that are likely better posed on the Star Wars sub-forum.

 

[Timo]

Here on Earth, people generally live on deserts

a) if what they do for a living depends on a spot resource that happens to sit in a desert (minerals, usually),
b) if what they do for a living requires lots of cheap space (cattle, usually - animals have different definitions of "desert") or
c) if the desert is how one gets from A to B and there's a living to be made on that.

Hiding in a desert is a less likely reason, generally because you have to make a living on a, b or c in order to survive. But deserts are a thing you can walk away from, so people generally don't get stuck there: if they're in desperate straits, they go get stuck elsewhere.

Are Vulcans, Tatooineites or Arrakisians natives? With Vulcans, there are "legends" that they are not, and those should be taken seriously, but they're still the best approximation to a species that might think of itself as native, for the Trek value of the concept. With Tatooine dwellers, we see a spectrum of species from across the galaxy, and no hint that the place wouldn't "always" have been connected to said galaxy, but the Tusken raiders are not found on other planets AFAWK; the nativity status of Jawas is less clear. With Arrakis, just the one species (however mutated), plus only slightly nebulous pseudohistory on how they got there. Out of the three, only the Vulcans were really stuck there, due to the Trek galaxy somehow having this odd quarantine thing going even when its most outspoken proponents the Earthlings seldom follow it.

Basically, all three populations could leave. Vulcans won't because they feel like claiming ownership (but a big chunk of them left anyway, presumably for failing to make the claim stick). Fremen won't for reasons of fanaticism. Tatooine farmers won't because they can't afford to. Climate has fairly little to do with all that.

I guess the biggest question is, what do the Hutts get out of Tatooine? It's not as if the Republic or the Empire can't get at them if there's a desire: they're not exactly hiding in anonymity. Is Tatooine worth something to them? Inherently, that is, and not just as the chosen base of operations? Does Mos Espa still produce a precious ore of some sort?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Chaos Descending]

Maybe it started as a penal colony or something and eventually the locals found some kind of exotic local resource that then eventually tapped out, but the locals were stuck?

Lots of ways to imagine it.

 

[JD]

I checked the canon Tatooine page on Wookiepedia, and it says that the Tusken Raiders and Jawa's are natives. It doesn't say anything about what exactly drew non-natives to the planet originally. It says that first people to go there thought it was another sun at first, that there were sporadic and unsuccessful colonization attempts, and an early mining boom, but that's about it.
The Legends page says it was originally colonized by miners.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

It doesn't say anything about what exactly drew non-natives to the planet originally.

Well, we know slavery is legal on Tattooine - maybe the original human inhabitants were all slaves, brought there by their alien masters?

 

[JD]

Could be, the Hutts seem to be more or less the most powerful group there, and they have had a lot of slaves.

 

[DEWLine]

So...a Hutt outpost, to some extent?

 

[Vger23]

Hot. Sometimes even hotter.

 

[JD]

So...a Hutt outpost, to some extent?

Possibly. Thinking about it, I'm kind of surprised a race of slugs from a humid, swampy planet would end up on a dry desert planet.

 

[publiusr]

Always in the shade, Jabba is