On 21 Apr 2016 at 15:02, Greg Chalik wrote:

> This by the way brings me to a somewhat comical start of the latest
> Star Wars sequel I watched the other day. One of the main characters
> is shown scavanging a part off a crashed Imperial Stardestroyer ship,
> and the question I asked is...how the hell does a woman in early
> teens, with no apparent technical knowledge or supporting schematic
> documentation, locate a fist-size part in the body of a vessel several
> miles long? :-) And, the parts trader then, without so much as
> referencing a screen, tells her it is of minimal value! One assumes
> the trader's extraordinary knowledge of presumably classified Imperial
> Stardestoryer systems and sub-systems down to small components...and
> if he has THIS level of knowledge, why is he just a scavenged parts
> trader on Tatooine and not a senior design engineer with the Evil
> Empire? :-)
>
> It got worse from there :-)
> The film was underwhealming

As has been noted on this list before, in the SW universe starship tech (and blaster
tech) is clearly at the point where it's so well understood that it's like a pre-EFI car -
about anyone with some practice and affinity for tech can do basic repairs, identify
most parts, and bodge something together from junkyard parts. It's also obvious that
most components in a ship are standardised.

WRT to the latest movie, obviously all the really juicy bits have long been recovered
(and it's ~20 year old tech by this point anyway). The scvangers are picking over the
bones for the bits left behind by the previous lot, and are down to the very basic
modules that on a decent world you'd just buy at the local parts outlet.