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Message: <blockquote data-quote="s/LaSH" data-source="post: 1274909" data-attributes="member: 6929">True dat.To elaborate, however, there are actually 3 kinds of drive module in Star Wars: repulsorlifts, thrusters, and hyperdrive.Repulsors are antigravity, pure and simple; they require a gravity well to operate, have virtually no thrust, but allow ships to land without standing on their tails and have no ports.Thrusters are what comes out the back of a ship. These are generally highly-sophisticated rockets: TIE stands for Twin Ion Engine. An ion engine is a magnetic accelerator which spits charged particles out at speeds approaching light, so you don't see much flare around the nozzles. NASA testbed vessels currently use ion engines, but they're sooo slow compared to chemical rockets it's not funny. Right now, their only advantage is that they just keep going with minimal fuel loss; you can get a spacecraft going faster in the end with ion engines than with chemical engines. Obviously, the low endurance of TIEs is linked to an incredible increase in engine output. The Death Star moved very slowly compared to anything else, so its sublight engine output can be assumed to be so insignificant that we didn't see any engine flare whatsoever; it was, presumably, still there, in a million tiny holes in the Star's pockmarked surface.Hyperdrive seems to have no dedicated thrusters, being more a field effect. I don't know whether you can maneuver in hyperspace; considering that you need a navicomputer to safely jump, I assume you can maneuver (around planets, black holes, etc. in your path), although it might just be a very sophisticated angle calculator/map service. Or you drop out/turn/reengage like that one episode of Voyager.</blockquote>

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