X-Wing Ejection: It all makes sense now 

I was thinking the same thing.

Ooof, I came here to say the same thing before I saw your comment. But yeah I agree.

This makes a tremendous amount of sense. Even on long flights the pilot can dip into rations below their seat by opening a panel and pulling out the ration box.

Thought of this also, but if I remember right, the cargo bay is below the astromech, not the cockpit, between the lower engine intakes. It could be connected, but I think it would over-complicate the ejection process.

@@Treveli45 Remember though, all that stuff that Luke has on land was brought out of the X-Wing while it was still half-submerged, meaning there had to be some access either on the top of this ship or, as would make sense, through the cockpit.

I'm pretty sure in Heir to the Empire it describes the cargo compartment similarly.

I think that some real canon also explained that if you can get in their and move the wiring around, you can have more storage space too. Which makes sense given how it was a mutki roll fighter designed to fight in pretty much any atmosphere, gravity well, space, and deep space, while also having the capacity for long term solo travel

To be fair, MOST droids are even less well-thought of than the dog. Unlike R2 and 3PO, MOST droids are constantly memory-wiped and don't actually develop personalities.

I couldn't agree more with this comment! If my Astrobuddy is going down, we're going down together! I like the idea that THE DROID has the ability to eject the pilot. Maybe a pilot is incapacitated but not dead and the ship is going to explode.

Reminds me very much of what Luke describes Obi-Wan's last lesson in Heir to the Empire...

@@Feroce Then I'm Nobody, because i do.

@@Feroce That's 'cause droids don't pull people's arms out of their sockets when they lose....

oh yeah, the one clone that jumped and got fucking smacked lmao

Yeah, I think Plo Koon was among those that survived in something like that?

The Lambda shuttle similarly can eject the cockpit, according to the Cross Sections books.

@@KaiserMattTygore927 You are probably thinking of the test reel for Order 66, where Plo Koon managed to eject but was still shot down. In the movie he just blows up with the ship. In that reel he was also flying the Eta-2 instead of the Delta-7, and it only ejected his seat.

During the invasion of mandolare in season 7 on of the LAAT pilots was able to eject after Ahsoka unsealed the canopy.

I always wanted to somehow rescue them with my ship, and thought the implication of there being no rescue mechanic meant they were implied to be corpses

Best game series ever!!!

@@slothfulcobra if you were in "rebel space" you ended up floating in a bacta tank, if the opposite occurred, you got a cut scene of Vader entering a cell with an interrogation Droid and you were then considered KIA!!

The game has the only publicly known ejection to rescue process in Star Wars. Since we can see the floating pilot without any visible rescue gear, I immediately assumed they were covered in a force field. Was the game licensed by LucasArts? Then this is the only official method.

@@andrew12bravo21 You were considered captured actually. You got KIA if you failed to eject or crashed into something, then you got a cutscene of the Alliance dumping your coffin into space. Either way, it was as simple as clicking on "revive" to reactivate that pilot's playthrough.

Goddarn Chigs!

Holy crap someone else bringing up Space Above and Beyond. The show had problems ay but at the same time I loved the system they had in place for fighters. Fighters being infinitely more replaceable than trained pilots.

Yep, the entire cockpit of the ol’ SA-43 Hammerhead fighter ejected. Of course that didn’t help Lt. Winslow much as that rat bastard Chiggie Von Richthofen proceeded to put a couple into her ejection pod after she ejected. Lt. Colonel McQueen sure showed him afterwards with some payback deluxe.

Also it made a lot of sense for deploying, smaller airlocks and all.

Yep, really loved that show despite its later problems. And the pod to ship launch design was very cool, if a bit overcomplicated. (Seriously, leave the pod in there full time, and either keep the bay pressurized til launch, or do a vac walk. All that plugging and unplugging can't be good.

I figure it would work like how tandem seat ejections work on say the F-14 for example. The order (RIO then pilot) and time delay help to ensure that neither crew member is burned by the rocket motor in the seat, and that their seats do not collide. Except in this case given the danger of the pod colliding with the droid, and losing both pilot and droid, the sequence is reversed. Pod ejects, then the droid if possible.

Yes, it was common knowledge that b-wings ejected like this. Also, the system showed in this video was described in the old D6 role playing books published by West End Games.

This. I remember it basically created a force field but after thirty minutes it was either death by suffocation or exposure or both. Nawara Ven started sticking his lekku into what were basically giant socks after his first extravehicular experience 🤣

Agreed. I always interpreted the chairs as a technically-there-but-not-very-good option. Given that rebel strike ops meant ejection = capture at best, it makes sense they didn't place a high priority on that feature when selecting their preferred snub fighter.

ImGine actually ejecting over the deathstar, surviving just long enough for the thing to blow up under you a few minutes later....

Don't forget how Luke met his wife in the Thrawn Trilogy. Luke only survives an extended period in a damaged X-Wing in deep space due to Jedi hibernation letting him optimize his oxygen and hunger beyond what any mortal could do.

I remember in one of the first X-Wing novels Corran Horn’s wing mate Ooryl Qrygg losing part of their arm due to debris following an ejection. Corran even states that “10 is extra-vehicular” (Rogue 10 being Ooryl’s call sign). Clearly Ooryl’s X-Wing didn’t come with a fully enclosed ejectable cockpit. Edit: I just looked up Ooryl’s bio on Wookieepedia, and learned that Ooryl is a subspecies of Gand that are ‘lungless’, meaning they don’t breath like we would. So, if not for that debris, Ooryl could have survived in the vacuum of space with no issues. Still, no enclosed ejection cockpit is still a dumb design, as Ooryl learned.

I was looking for this comment.

Concept? Did you assume that the X-wing just ejected a human into the vacuum of space? Did you give it any thought

​@@appleseedgames6934 No, cause I don't really pay attention to star wars. I'm not hardcore into it.

@@appleseedgames6934 You should probably go outside. Have a wash too.

@@unvaxxeddoomerlife6788 No, I wanna be a musky husky 😠

The A-Wing IS the escape pod lmao.

@@boundlessaether392 A-Wing "Go Fast". Oh, and a lil 'shooty shooty' on the side. The most combat effective we've seen an A-Wing (on-screen) was an impromptu kamikaze run into Darth Vader's flagship SSD. TBF, It's the only thing that can meet-beat a Tie Interceptor (and, probably 'keep up with' heavily-modified blockade-runners). IIRC, it's well-established that A-Wing pilots are a 'special kind of crazy'; lacking an ejection system, just adds to the lore of the snubfighter and its pilots, IMHO.

It was not a module. You saw figures in suits floating and picked up by a transport. Or maybe that was tie fighter.

@@gregorymuir1985 I could have been mistaken in which one it was. But I think one of them had what appeared to be an escape pod in it.

@@kennethkates3140 there will undoubtedly be a recording of it somewhere on RU-vid.

@@kennethkates3140 the 3D Wing Commander games made-clear, there's a 'pod' involved. WC III and IV were 'contemporaries' to X-Wing/Tie Fighter. So, (at least) the 'false memory' is easily-explained.

The Space Combat Simulation games have that.

Addition to the lore? He has no authority to make additions to anything Star Wars. If you want to pretend his garbage is official, go ahead while we all laugh, but know that none of it is canon. None.

@@JackRipper8881 why are you even here? I never said it was canon and neither did EC or anyone else. Get outta here.

@@JackRipper8881 given that fuel was never even mentioned in Star Wars until Episode 9, I'll take Eric's thought processes over anything approved by Kathleen Kennedy, because E.C. is more about love for Star Wars than most of the top level folks at Lucasfilm (people like Dave Meloni being the exception).

Great to know that instead of mindlessly consuming anything Disney puts out, you just mindlessly consume anything EC Henry puts out. And not only that, 42 people are in agreement at the time of me writing this comment. Have you considered, perhaps, thinking about the content you're watching so you can meaningfully contribute?

@@terribleauthority I like the some of the EU, some of Disney, and some of what fan creators like EC put out. Have I violated some sort of code of conduct here? I can like what I like. Why don't you do the same and stop raining on people's parades? This video was interesting and we'll put together. It isn't canon, but I like it. The end.

Good Point. To be fair: 'forcefield' tech is not something new or considered unreliable in Star Wars. Especially, with the canon-adoption of The Old Republic; we can see technology like (electro)magnetic atmospheric containment, has been around for eons. Also, in EU, Legends, and D-Canon "Personal Deflector Shields" are not improbably-uncommon; implying 'form-fitting forcefields' are 'a thing'.

I fuckin love that show.

And, less prominently, the Starfuries from Babylon 5

@@thatstarwarsnerd6641 Pretty sure the Star Fury is more prominent. Space Above and Beyond was awesome, but it has nowhere near the reach of B5

@@pdxmarine1430 I meant how prominently they were presented in each show, the B5 escape pod only comes up rarely (maybe once or twice a season at most), but the S:AAB ones are shown every time the fighters are launched

@@thatstarwarsnerd6641 OK, that's fair

It was a very good aircraft. One version was meant as a deep penetration bomber under Strategic Air Command (SAC) back in the day.

That is how an aeronautical engineer would design an escape pod, you have to remember that the the ship is flying in space so of course the pod would blast up and away from the rest of your exploding ship. Just like fighters do

@@nicholasklangos9704 I get that, but the position of the thrusters would mean that it *looks* like it would fly using all four thrusters (so thrusting "upward") because just using the ones at the back (relative to the pilot) would be misaligned to the center of mass and cause it to tumble. The image of it flying upwards (relative to the pilot's head) just gave the image of a floating coffin, that's all.

In many cases, the open helmet was there for one main reason...seeing the actor's face. In TV/film, it's all about seeing the actors face. I figure one could assume the lighting on the viper helmets is an imaginary shield (which the real purpose was to light the actor's face). If you've ever seen a real military pilot's helmet and mask setup, the visor comes down and lines up with the edge of their air mask.

You noticed that too!

Like many things in Star Wars it varies depending on whos depicting it. Same issue with 40k stuff, honestly.

Everyone thinks of the cockpit idea! It's the most generic idea to space ejection ever! It's like duh, use your last braincell to think mate

The other Starfighters like the Y-Wing and A-Wing probably have the same ejection as well.

Mr Lucas was big into aircraft I bet he knew.

The Truce at Bakura book (iirc) has someone eject into atmosphere and they have a repulsor-chute which helps them descend safely to the ground. Thinking about it now, it's probably overkill, but you never know how much atmosphere a planet might have -- the Mars rovers couldn't safely descend fully via parachute due to thin atmosphere so that's why the final stage had to be retrorockets.

Those 'meme' images of Star Wars' Canon and Lore being built-atop the prop/costume department's choices... really are true.

Wow. That actually does make sense, having redundancies.

The problem is, wouldn't it be better to spend that mass on better shields? Remember an escape system is a last resort. Until you use it, it is dead weight. In space above and beyond it existed as a means of quickly getting into the plane to fight, escape pod as a secondary function and minimal capability.

@@justindurante2554 Realistically it's always a balancing act when designing anything, but an ejection system is centralized i na single part of the ship typically surrounding the cockpit. A shielding system would have to be distributed even if it's one large generator with supporting systems spread through the craft. Plus theres only so far you can go wit ha shielding system i na craft of that size and maybe incom already had what they felt was the best the ycould safely install without either damage or mantinance issues.

The noise in deep space shows that the SW galaxy has some sort of ubiquitous atmosphere with limited pressure. Pilots might not need much more than a larger rebreather to wait for rescue.

​@@davidtauriainen9116 I remember EckhartsLadder did a video talking about luminiferous ether once. That might correlate with your theory.

@@davidtauriainen9116 FWIW, TESB shows that in the belly of a space worm, humans can survive with a simple rebreather and no eye or ear protection, and some of the comics (TFU 2's comic comes to mind when Juno is kidnapped by Boba Fett) depict human characters surviving in space without eye or ear protection either. This seems to support your idea.

Originally, the X-wing pilots were to wear oxygen masks with their helmets, but the masks were dropped to allow more of the actors' faces to be visible. You can see a picture of a prototype helmet with mask in Star Wars Helmets' article for the Rebel pilot helmets.

​@@EscapeVelocity11186 Several years ago, I had a friend (A middle-aged and life-long Fantasy/SciFi 'enthusiast') that was logical and insistent that 'The Galaxy Far Far Away' was not a 'hard vacuum' but rather an extremely low-density 'fluid'. S-foils, sounds, ejection survivability, etc. All factored into his summation. (I think even the effects of The Force may be inter-related to the 'ethereal composition' of Star Wars' non-(hard)vacuum 'space'.) TBQH, it's part my own head canon now.

yes that is how the novels explained it. Also in the Xwing PC flight games. When "shot down" your character is shown floating in space with a blue force field around the body. If you survived the destruction of your fighter.

@@dirus3142 There was no force field shown in the PC games according to the recordings I've seen here on RU-vid -- I think your memory is playing tricks on you.

why not both, if you can, eject the whole nose, and have a semi decent mid range ship to escape with, or if its bad enough, just the cockpit module, or even if its REALLY bad, just the seat and force field as a last resort

@@TytonidaeIndustries No. Mass penalty. While a quick cutaway section is easy, it can't realistically have thrusters and all. Remember we are talking dead weight until used. That mass is best used for a better craft.

I liked the idea of an ejection seat force field bubble, but I really like this idea when I actually put myself in the boots of an X wing pilot. I think a cockpit with thrusters and more air sounds better than a stupid jetpack force field seat

Maybe its like with Cars... depending on how much you pay the manufacturer you get heated seats and electric windows, parking distance sensors... or just the base model.

@@SP-sy5nq Better shields and combat capabilities sound better than this clunky thing.

@@SP-sy5nq Ejection make sens in the atmosphere. In space it's necessary to have a special suit with life support for some hours, or how you would be evacuated from a bubble? You can't actually surviving in open space, like on the surface of a planet with atmosphere, so you simply don't need supplies and tools there. If nobody came - you dead. On the planet with atmosphere and life, theoretical you could survive for years.

Easy answer to that is the engines aren't that big. TIE Fighter engines are tiny and seem to work well.

Well, you don't need much space for struts if you use the skid as your outside layer of the ship. Look at a 737..those planes have no cover shroud for their landing gear(outside edge of tire is exposed to the elements), and some Airbus wide body planes (Airbus 340 specifically) carry a center fuselage landing gear as well.

@@shraka I guess we're forced to assume that, but when designing something for maximum efficiency you cut out as much empty space and dead-weight as possible. The fact the top turbines look the same but function differently than the bottom turbines would lead someone to assume that there is a power imbalance there, which wouldn't be in the best interest of a ship designed to dogfight. Or do the top turbines on the X-Wing also contain landing gear for those special circumstances you'd want to land upside down? (I'm joking) The engine types of TIEs and X-Wings are also different forms of propulsion, as the TIE's propulsion is conducted purely by a reactor, and the X-Wing and other alliance ships rely on a fuel source, which also requires larger spaces to ignite the fuel and use it for propulsion. When you remove the entire section of the bottom turbines for landing gear, with beefy doors for that matter, it begs the question why the top turbines are just as big and identical to the bottom when they could be smaller.

@@BobDunlock They wouldn't be turbines - there's no atmosphere in space - they're a drive of some sort. The upper drives may well have other items where the space for the landing gear would be. Sensors, countermeasures, shields, some kind of backup system such as a backup / regulator so the upper drives can operate when damaged more easily, or possible a different design to accomodate more armour. Kinda makes sense because you're more likely to get hit from the top - you will pull up more often as a human can tolerate more G forces in that direction, and you want to keep an eye on your opponent so you have to keep them above the canopy.

That's my assumption too; keeping in mind of course that the average astrodroid is supposed to have a lot less personality and initiative than Artoo or Whistler and thus would be more likely to follow the pilot's instructions or the organisation's standard policies.

The encapsulated ejection seat could be useful for Imperial TIE fighters.

@@justindurante2554 yes, and no, the Empire wanted to encourage the TIE Pilots to fight to the end, and to think of themselves as expendable to decrease the likely hood of them defecting, just like why the TIEs lacked shields or Hyperdrives or Life Support, so i just cant see them getting any form of Ejector Seat

I alwasy assumed (until the Force Awakens) that TIE cockpits didn't have life-support and that the TIE pilot flight suit was fully sealled and did the life support. Why provide the entire cockpit with atmosphere when you can just put the pilot in a spacesuit.

@@IceWolfLoki tie fighters don't have any onboard life support, so any air in the cockpit is just what was picked up prior to the hatch being sealed

@@IceWolfLoki There's pros and cons, those suits would need to be hooked up to an air supply either way. There's also the issue that electronics don't always work reliably in a vacuum or with massive swings in temperature. So, you'd have a cockpit that's nearly all the way to being habitable with the only reason for that extra layer is if you're hit, but not so much that it destroys the vehicle.

Ejection capsule + full space suit is definitely the way to go. No reason to not have that extra redundancy.

@@ECHenry you should talk about babylon 5 one day

@@ECHenry have you ever tried to do anything in a space suit? the suckers weigh like 200 pounds and move like the wacky inflatable flying arm man. Plenty of reasons not to have a full suit

Using the whole pod still makes more sense as it simplifies the system. Rather than having two or three ejection systems to make and care for, you only have one. That and there's still the problem of keeping the pilot alive in space even if there are other ships nearby. You don't know how long that fight is going to last, and rescue crews might not get to you in a while. A good example would be pilots shot down during the Yamato's sinking. Three planes were shot down during the attack, with another 7 being downed when Yamato's forward magazine detonated as it was sinking. It would not be until after the rest of the IJN task force was dealt with that rescue planes could start rescuing those in the water. In the case for Star Wars, staying in a pod also protects you from any debris that might be flying around at high speeds.

@@airplanenut89 I'm thinking of it as layers of redundancy, which solves my one issue with EC Henry's concept--what happens if a stray laser bolt gouges a big hole in the canopy window, leading to total loss of pressure? 1. Whole-pod ejection: every pilot's preference, if possible. Atmospheric pressurization, best protection from debris, and controlled atmospheric re-entry. Longest-term survival period (days?) 2. Seat-ejection with magcon bubble: If the pod's pressure was compromised, or if its structural framework or thrusters were damaged, the pilot could still get clear and potentially survive, at least for a short time (30 minutes?). To me, the Rogue Squadron comic panel EC Henry shows in the video suggests this circumstance due to the angle and force of collision impact we're seeing. Ideally, the pod should have ejected prior to the crash, but perhaps the system was damaged or malfunctioning, leaving the seat to eject at the last moment. 3. Failing all else, if the pilot can manually get clear and get hands on an oxygen mask that deploys from the life-support box on their chest within 10 seconds or so, they may be able to survive the vacuum of space for a short period of time as a last-ditch effort (10 minutes? 15?) To me, it doesn't make sense that in a combat situation, a pilot would have no redundancy to deal with the loss of cabin pressure. True, this system would have more moving parts that could fail, but it's better than having just one system that might fail. It also doesn't contradict previous media, and resolves both the issues I noted /and/ the ones EC Henry set out to solve here.

@@davidcanavese6754 The problems with such a layered system are that it adds time, and money to the production costs, as well as in the maintenance of the equipment. All this while they are fighting a civil war against an enemy with more money, and production capability. It also ads more complexity, and room for an accident. The seat could accidentally eject due to malfunction (we've seen this in real life), or the pilot could pull the wrong handle (wants to eject pod, ends up ejecting seat). From what we have seen in SW, if a stray bolt hit's the pod/cockpit area, then the pilot is likely toast anyway since the bolts in SW act like cannon shells when they impact. However, if you ditch the ejection seat, and keep the emergency mask, then you likely have the winning combination. Pod for normal ejection, and the mask in case there is an issue with life support. Even if the pod is damaged, I'd rather have it for some form of shelter, and power. I'd imagine the flight suit plugs into a power source for a heater in the event of life support problems.

In my head airspace craft ejects are where the cockpit ejects with a separate option to eject the seat. The cockpit uses a ribbon instead of a drogue chute for high hypersonic ejection (Mach 10+) also, during ejection the pilot's body is locked to prevent them from snaping their neck and the G-forces can knock out pilots

Pin this man.

huh, now i need to go check my copy, thanks for pointing that out =D

IIRC canonically TIE fighters didn't have pressurized cabins and the pilot suits had full life support, so ejecting from a TIE is not an issue when you're not stealing it in your street clothes.