FTL communications in an asteroid field

[Ace Pace]

This question came up in my head after a recent showing of ESB. What precisely makes FTL communications unwise in an asteroid field?

In ESB when the Emperor wishes Darth Vader to communicate with him, Vader immediately orders the ship to leave the asteroid field in order to communicate.

FTL movement makes sense (during acceleration, you can run into pretty much anything) and yet local comms worked just fine. Also, as far as I can recall, communication technology is never precisely explained in the EU.

[Batman]

At least one Star Destroyer lost local communications due to the stupidly dense asteroid field. How about the antennae used for holographic FTL comms need to be poked outside your shields to function and don't take kindly to having big hunks of rock smashing into them?

[biostem]

I believe Vader ordered they leave the asteroid field in order to get a clear/clean signal - basically, Vader didn't want any static on a call where the other party was someone as important as the Emperor...

They may have also had shields up and been actively using their turbo lasers to shoot down any asteroids that got too close, which may also contribute to the interference.

[Borgholio]

The interference may only apply to holo-communications. They obviously received a non-video transmission demanding that Vader contact the Emperor prior to exiting the asteroid field. I would suspect that just like with modern telecommunications where high-bandwidth transmissions like HD satellite TV would suffer greater interference from physical obstructions (such as heavy rain) compared to low-bandwidth transmissions like FM radio...holo-transmissions are probably more sensitive to interference than text messages.

[Ace Pace]

The interference may only apply to holo-communications. They obviously received a non-video transmission demanding that Vader contact the Emperor prior to exiting the asteroid field. I would suspect that just like with modern telecommunications where high-bandwidth transmissions like HD satellite TV would suffer greater interference from physical obstructions (such as heavy rain) compared to low-bandwidth transmissions like FM radio...holo-transmissions are probably more sensitive to interference than text messages.

This sounds fishy to me. Entire star systems don't get in the way of communications but a puny asteroid?

At least one Star Destroyer lost local communications due to the stupidly dense asteroid field. How about the antennae used for holographic FTL comms need to be poked outside your shields to function and don't take kindly to having big hunks of rock smashing into them?

That Star Destroyer seemed to have been hit with a huge rock. What you say makes sense and yet they managed to receive some sort of transmission. Since FTL comms are so far out of our RL knowledge, we can't start making an accurate guess if you require a larger antenna to transmit/receive more data.

[RogueIce]

It's non-canon Legends now, but The Last Command had as a plot point that planetary shields blocked long-range communications, and IIRC that applied to ships as well. So it could be that having shields up interferes? At least with holo-comms. Though maybe it's more of an issue of sending than receiving. Or maybe they can do one or the other but not both at the same time.

Of course that's all non-canon now, and Borgholio's theory is just as likely at this point. Not sure if any of the new EU books have touched on the subject.

[Simon_Jester]

The interference may only apply to holo-communications. They obviously received a non-video transmission demanding that Vader contact the Emperor prior to exiting the asteroid field. I would suspect that just like with modern telecommunications where high-bandwidth transmissions like HD satellite TV would suffer greater interference from physical obstructions (such as heavy rain) compared to low-bandwidth transmissions like FM radio...holo-transmissions are probably more sensitive to interference than text messages.

This sounds fishy to me. Entire star systems don't get in the way of communications but a puny asteroid?

Star systems are big and sparse, and almost all of their mass is located in a few specific places.

If you're at a random point in interplanetary space, there's a high probability that you have a clear line of sight to a random star of your choosing elsewhere in the galaxy, with nothing bigger than random interstellar dust particles to get in the way, and not even many of those (there's a reason we can image the galactic core clearly using the infrared spectrum). The odds are that all the big rocks are somewhere out of the way. If this weren't true, then the stars in the night sky would be constantly winking in and out of view as random rocks got in the way of our line of sight to them.

And even if, by some strange mischance, you can't get line of sight on the planet you want to send your signal to, the Star Wars galaxy has highly developed infrastructure- you'll be able to route your signal to some base or installation or relay that can then forward the message to its destination.

By contrast, if you're in an absurdly cluttered asteroid field, there's a much higher risk of a half-kilometer boulder randomly drifting into the path of your signal. Moreover, all the asteroids are in your immediate vicinity surrounding you in all directions, so you can't just route your communications around the obstacle while you're standing in the middle of it.

[Anacronian]

I might remember it wrong, but I think I read somewhere that ship shields interfere with FTL communications and I don't think the imperials would want to take the shields down in such a dense asteroid field.

[Lord Pounder]

There is the aforementioned incident in the Thrawn Trilogy about shielding and battle debris effecting long range communication which was why a Dark Jedi with Battle Coordination was so devastating in multiple hit and run attacks.

Another thing to consider is that the asteroids themselves may contain metals which inhibit communications. Again this is now Legends but in Darksaber *shudders* the Hutts were able to mine enough material from the Hoth asteroid field to construct Darksaber.