In a far off place, technology was way cooler than it is in our world, with commercial spaceships that can cross the universe in seconds, or even autonomously translated languages, and deadly swords of swords.
These classic Star Wars technologies have captured imaginations for decades, and some of them are finally coming to fruition.
There are seven Star Wars technologies that could become a reality.
Unmanned aerial vehicles have been a staple of warfare for several decades, but you will never hear two of them arguing like an old married couple. Artificial intelligence is still a work in progress, but humanoidrobots have taken leaps in ability and design in recent years. Boston Dynamics shows this with two famous robots: Atlas, a bipedal robot that can sprint, backflip and do parkour, and Spot, a dog that can do the same. We would hate to run into either of them in a dark alley at night.
Light sabers are the most coveted piece of technology for any kid who grew up watching Star Wars, but they are still far away from modern conveniences. Creative inventors like those behind the YouTube channel Hacksmith have come up with some clever and deadly laser swords that are very close to the Jedi's weapon of choice. Hacksmith created the world's first retractable, plasma-based energy sword, with a 4,000-degree Fahrenheit (2,200 degrees Celsius) blade. The blade requires an external fuel pack full of propane gas and oxygen, which is not likely to fit on a Jedi belt. Should you and your father want to relive the climax of The Empire Strikes Back, it could easily burn through a human hand.
Depending on how well your lightsaber works, you may soon need the assistance of a bionic arm, like the oneluke receives at the end of Empire. The company Open Bionics sells a Hero Arm that is inspired by the movie Star Wars. According to BionicsForEveryone.com, these sell for between $10,000 and $20,000 an arm.
C3PO is very good at 6 million forms of communication. On paper, that sounds more impressive than the 100 or so languages that Google Translate knows, but how often do you need to ask for directions in Ewokese? You won't need to visit any shady scrap dealers to take advantage of the service. Simply open up the website on your phone or computer, then type directly into the box, or speak into your microphone, and the app will translate your voice into the language of your choice, in real time. You will never have to conjugate another word again.
The Landspeeder is a kind of car hybrid that can fit a family of four and is the best way to cross the dunes of Tatooine. According to the U.K.'s Hovercraft Museum, the technology has existed since the late 1950s, but only recently have designs deviated closer to the fast paced, stylish fare of Star Wars. These test videos of hoverbikes speeding across the Mojave Desert look promising, even though both projects are still in the prototype phase.
To escape the sandy backwater of Tatooine, Obi-Wan and his friends hire a private spaceship for 17,000 credits. Commercial space travel costs a bit more and you don't get to leave the solar system. An auction winner paid $28 million to join the inaugural flight of Blue Origin, a commercial space travel company founded by Amazon's Jeff Bezos. The son of the lucky winner joined Bezos and his brother on a 10-minute trip to space, reaching a maximum altitude of about 100 kilometers above Earth. The cost of commercial space travel could be as low as $100,000 per person in the next decade, according to some experts. Is that good?
The Millennium Falcon sometimes makes a daring jump to hyperspace, allowing it to travel extraordinary distances in mere moments. According to recently released documents, the U.S. government has been researching the idea of warp drive, which involves changing the shape of space-time. In 1994, physicist Miguel Alcubierre published a paper showing how warp drive could be physically possible, by using equal amounts of positive and negative energy to simultaneously compress the space in front of a spaceship while expanding the space behind it. Negative energy and warp drive technology are speculative. Physicists are still investigating it.
It was originally published on Live Science.
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