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So why is a moisture vaporator needed when you're right next to the ocean?

Solid Snack

Lieutenant Commander
Red Shirt
It's seen in the latest Rogue One trailer when Le Chiffre is recruited by Dark Knight Rises lisp guy-seriously, do we really need this slipshod dis-attention to detail with the Disney machine?
 
Maybe it's a cheap easy way to get drinking water as opposed to desalinization required to turn ocean water into drinking water.
 
It's seen in the latest Rogue One trailer when Le Chiffre is recruited by Dark Knight Rises lisp guy-seriously, do we really need this slipshod dis-attention to detail with the Disney machine?

Well, whenever you notice something like that, a wizard did it.
 
Disney don't need to know what those things are.

It's just "here's something that should remind you of the OT, because that's all we do now".

Except they were in TPM too, suckers!!!
 
I just assumed that moisture vaporators are a very old and standard sort of technology for isolated settlements that don't have access to the infrastructure of a town or city. I mean why dig a well or lay pipe out to a water source, install a pump, desaliniser and purification gear when you can just plop down a few condensers that take the water right out of the atmosphere?
If these things are efficient enough that a handful can supply a homestead of three people on as arid a planet as Tatooine, they must be practically overflowing on a water rich world.
 
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Wasn't that the Lars family business? Moisture farming? I always presumed they had hundreds or thousands of them spread out over many acres we never saw.
 
Wasn't that the Lars family business? Moisture farming? I always presumed they had hundreds or thousands of them spread out over many acres we never saw.
Presumably. Owen certainly mentioned units in the south range that needed repairing and that the harvest (presumably when they empty all the tanks?) was in one more season...whatever a season is on Tatooine.

What I was referring to was the handful we see in the immediate vicinity of the homestead, which one assumes is how they got water for themselves to live on. The one in the courtyard is most likely mostly there mostly to recapture any stray moisture they exhale and perspire.
For anyone that's read Dune, it's easy to see how important this kind of water efficiency is.
 
Clean water but also water to use for underground farming. Moisture farming can be either just collecting water effectively for sale or using said water to make produce for said on a large enough scale to net an income.
 
Maybe those aren't moisture vaporizers. They could be similar-looking atmospheric dehumidifiers. Lord knows we need something like those anywhere south of the Mason-Dixon line during summertime...
 
On Tatooine (not exactly the most humid of climates) the devices are said to be able to condense about a liter or two of water a day from what I recall. You could probably get more from a wetter planet.
 
Clean water but also water to use for underground farming. Moisture farming can be either just collecting water effectively for sale or using said water to make produce for said on a large enough scale to net an income.

I suspect most moisture farms have a subsurface hydroponics garden, though probably only to grow their own food. The main produce on a desert planet will always be water. Food is secondary and probably not worth the cost of transporting across the planet. Likely the only real trade in food is in off-world goods, seed stock and things that you simply can't grow on a desert world.
I doubt many such farmers make very much of a profit. Tatooine is still a Hutt controlled planet and Jabba likely taxed all water production to the point of *just barely* being viable. Enough to keep the farms running, but

On Tatooine (not exactly the most humid of climates) the devices are said to be able to condense about a liter or two of water a day from what I recall. You could probably get more from a wetter planet.

Probably? Tatooine is basically like death valley for the most part. Very little moisture at all and virtually no precipitation. That planet seen in the Rogue One trailer looks decidedly soggy. Like Scotland in mid-October. There's probably as much moisture on young Jyn's face in that scene that the Lars homestead sees on an average day. So yeah, there's orders of magnitude difference which means in that environment, one condenser would provide all water needs for a family of three with little trouble. ;)
 
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I think by the time of Luke Skywalker leaving the farm, the worry was more for the Empire nationalizing the farms more than the Hutts controlling the planet.
 
I think by the time of Luke Skywalker leaving the farm, the worry was more for the Empire nationalizing the farms more than the Hutts controlling the planet.
I doubt it honestly. Tatooine was a true backwater (no aquatic pun intended) and I can't imagine it had anything the Empire wanted. I mean why bother with moisture farmers on a desert planet? That's about as lucrative and productive as a solar power plant on the night side of a tidally locked planet.

To be clear: I seriously doubt Tatooine exported water. Indeed, probably quite the opposite. Most likely the homesteaders sold their water exclusively to locals. Mostly those in the towns and spaceports. Depending on how deep into Tatooine the Hutts were, it's possible they controlled the water sellers or some other middlemen who'd be the only people they could sell to. Needless to say, any farmer caught selling direct to customers would be made an example of.

The only profit here for the Empire is in recruits for the academies and the flow of information from the underworld. There are whole water worlds and ice moons out there for the Empire to drain and mine for their water needs.
 
Not sure what the Empire would have to gain, just repeating more or less what Biggs was telling Luke before he left to join the Rebellion (deleted scene).
 
Not sure what the Empire would have to gain, just repeating more or less what Biggs was telling Luke before he left to join the Rebellion (deleted scene).

IIRC he said something about the Empire nationalising commerce in the core worlds and that it'd only be a matter of time before Owen in just a tenant on his own land, working for the "greater glory of the Empire".
For one, that's mostly Biggs being hyperbolic. Sure, in the long run the Empire intends to rule and control *everything*, but realistically speaking, it'd be a while before they'd need to exert that level of control on such a nothing world as Tatooine.
If they did, it would have to be a small part of a larger campaign to dismantle the Hutt families' dominions. Before that can happen, they would first need the core and mid-rim worlds locked up tight (which is where the Death Star would come in.)

So while I agree it's a logical long term goal, I'd argue that the point of that scene with Biggs wasn't that the Empire taking control was a real concern. Quite the opposite since his point was that he can see it coming because of his new, wider perspective but people like Luke were mostly oblivious and apathetic bordering on indolence.
 
Space is weird in Star Wars thanks to the hyperdrive. "Its such a long way from here" was Luke's lament about the Empire, Alderaan and such. While in actual light years, yes Tatooine a long ways from Alderaan or Imperial Center, but via hyperspace, its like taking a day drive to another state or from San Francisco to Los Angeles, and its even easier because the time in hyperspace is mostly autopilot is seems anyway.
 
Space is weird in Star Wars thanks to the hyperdrive. "Its such a long way from here" was Luke's lament about the Empire, Alderaan and such. While in actual light years, yes Tatooine a long ways from Alderaan or Imperial Center, but via hyperspace, its like taking a day drive to another state or from San Francisco to Los Angeles, and its even easier because the time in hyperspace is mostly autopilot is seems anyway.
The trick is actually getting off planet.
 
You could take a plane to New York or DC in the 60s but I'm sure they felt just as out of reach for a kid growing up in a California cow town.

Hell, I know adults today who have never left their home state or gotten on a plane.
 
Maybe those aren't moisture vaporizers. They could be similar-looking atmospheric dehumidifiers. Lord knows we need something like those anywhere south of the Mason-Dixon line during summertime...

This. Unless it's stated that it's a moisture vaporator, then we don't know what it is. Maybe it is. Maybe it just looks similar as CE Evans said. A wash machine and a dryer look the same from a distance, especially in this century when they both have front loading doors.
 
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