How dangerous would it be for a Star Destroyer to crash land on a planet? Wouldn't there be a lot of damage to the planet itself depending on where it crashed and also pollution from reactors that go pop and stuff? Just watching that scene again in The Force Awakens and I wondered what the aftermath of that crash was. The scene where Rey flies the Falcon into the wreck of the ship.
It sure is hella convenient that a ship that dropped down from orbit impacted in a manner that left most of it relatively intact. Really, though the whole thing is just an extension of Abrams's obsession with seeing huge starships on the ground, same reason why the Enterprise was being constructed in a ground facility in Trek XI.
From how we've seen the Battle of Jakku depicted in the Battlefront games, among other sources, it looks like most of the starships descended within the atmosphere to provide ground support, so they didn't fall that far. As for toxic waste and leakage from the crash, that's definitely a concern. Now I'm just thinking of the old woman Rey looks at whose also cleaning her scavenged parts at the beginning of the movie doing the Hans Moleman voice; "Toxic Imperial wreckage has ruined my life. I'm thirty-one years old!"
Well, it's a desert planet so it's not like there's much of a biome to be devastated and it's not like any toxic spill would taint the water table since there probably isn't one; most of the potables seem to come from vaporators. But yes, there would be damage. You even see a massive impact crater from orbit as the Falcon flies off. Thing is, I gather that the implication is that Jakku's population showed up *after* the battle, specifically to profit from the salvage operations. Though in a post war, demilitarised galaxy, it turned out not to be anywhere near as lucrative as most hoped; supply of weaponry and surplus military hardware would be through the roof while demand would have bottomed out. So the people left behind have to eek out a living because they can't afford to buy passage elsewhere. Nobody said that. Entering the atmosphere and hovering isn't landing. Though they might be able to touch down the the Venetors could in specially made drydock platforms.
I know that sorry. I meant that I wondered if an SD could land under ideal conditions, maybe not on the ground but a special dock like the Venators.
Most likely. Repulsor tech doesn't seem to have an significant limitations in Star Wars since they can build entire floating cities, construct destroyers in mid-air, and just park them at VERY low altitude for extended durations.
Star wars tech is almost magic. Don't forget X Wings which fly like regular aircraft and can do sharp on point turns yet there's no other thrusters to change direction?
You know it just occurred to me that all the particulate matter kicked up into the atmosphere by all those high energy impacts may have made the planet slight *more* liveable by reducing the average global temperature a few degrees...kind of a mini-nuclear winter, but without any actual winter. Nuclear autumn!?
We saw a star destroyer hovering quite close to the ground in Rogue One. There's no reason to say the one in TFA didn't crash from a similar height.
Crashing doesn't necessarily mean unpowered either - some lift remaining, shields and structural integrity operational, not totally catastrophic...
I always assumed that the scarring we saw on the surface of Jakku at 4:33 (I think we also saw it earlier in the movie, but I can't find the clip) was the Star Destroyer's point of impact.
Well, I imagine some of them did create a crater, but I'm guessing that alot of them were done in a "Controled Crash" type of way, similar to when Anikin landed that Seperatist ship in Sith.. but yeah, the planet is littered with broken stuff.
Sometimes, just sometimes, threads like these, that discuss the merits of ships and their durability, make me want to discuss Trek vs Wars again... then I remember how aggressive it got...
When it comes to the safety of being around the crashed ships, there is a sequence in the Battle of Jakku level of Battlefront II where you are running around in the wreckage of a crashed Star Destroyer, so I'm thinking there isn't anything to dangerous about them.