They totally make sense as science fiction. Science fiction doesn’t make any sense as reality.
Although, I did like the concept that went “If you were about to be dropped off on a planet, knowing you may not see a re-supply ship for decades, which would you rather have: Fancy machinery which might break down and need replacement parts you can’t get for repairs, or livestock and beasts of burden that can eat the grass and make more livestock and beasts of burden?”
The weaponry on the Millennium Falcon never bothered me, but the apparent lack of any significant cargo space on a ship that’s purportedly a freighter always struck me as odd. The Serenity at least did appear to have a large central cargo area with a convenient large loading ramp and door.
My head canon is that the Falcon is basically a big rig. The pointy parts at the front (cargo mandibles) link up to shipping containers. As seen here:
The African Queen looked pretty small to me-- and that was an actual tramp freighter before it was used for the movie/
We live iin a society where it is uneconomical to build anything but the largest container ships and man them with tiny crews. SF authors and movie makers are thinking of a world before containerized freight.
Shades of Fauchon-Villeplee’s railgun project from a century ago, but at least that version was successfully converted into a Monument for the Unknown Stratocaster.
That’s one helluva visual blind spot on the port side.
If you’re traveling that fast, knowing where you’re going and what’s in the way would be a prerequisite if you want to survive. (And asteroids are extremely avoidable. Moving the ship would be much easier than completely removing the asteroid from your path - after all, hitting even any remaining grains at a sizable fraction of lightspeed would be like getting nuked multiple times.)
I mean, it should, if it’s “science fiction” and not “fantasy.” (Of course, Star Wars and many other supposed “sci-fi” properties are fantasy. High fantasy, in fact.) And either should at least be internally consistent.
And here’s where the 19th century-derived weird ideas come in, e.g. that there’s grass on the planet. Which presumes it was heavily terraformed until it had an Earth-replicating biosphere but somehow, after this process that involved untold numbers of people and enormous resources was finished, it left a planet with no people or supply chains or any other resources. (Because in the absence of terraforming, you either have a planet without even a breathable atmosphere, or an alien biosphere that won’t be too compatible with either you or your cows…)
It’s all part of the “space = Europeans colonizing North American frontier minus the natives.” A problem with that is, minus the natives, those Europeans would have been dead. Even though they had breathable air, drinkable water, edible plants and animals, materials at hand to make tools and clothing and shelter… all the things completely lacking in space.
Of course it wasn’t designed as a freighter, but as a military assault transport. Kind of an LSM (Landing Ship Medium) in space.
You need weapons to blast any asteroids in your way because it’s too much of a hassle to go around them.
That certainly would be logical, although as far as I know they never really referenced that usage in any of the 7 movies that the Falcon was featured in. I know that they mentioned it in one of those Star Wars illustrated technical manuals they published, but there are different versions of the manuals that have contradicted each other over the years, so I personally don’t consider anything to be canon if it hasn’t been shown on film.
Which is a little silly, unless Firefly bullets some how work differently than real earth bullets, they have their own oxidizers and will work in space, underwater, etc.
As for weapons in sci-fi - depends on the sci-fi and location in that universe.
In the vastness of space, if there are a group of people who want to be pirates, then there will be ships that need to be outfitted to ward them off. Or if there are active conflicts going on, you might get caught in the middle As was done during the days of pirates and various wars on earth.
The alternative to that is to have governments patrol waters/space to prevent pirate attacks, which is largely what is happening on earth right now. So if you have a “central” sector like that where pirates are not a problem, and there are no wars, they probably do have more tightly regulated laws. But backwater planets with out a lot of centralized government, you could run around with what ever you could find. Just like now!
America likes to think it’s #1 Most Free™, but you can buy real AKs and RPGs for not a lot of money in the Kyber Pass in Pakistan. Just saying.
Space libertarians.
My favorite space westerns.
