Flight characteristics of the Millennium Falcon
Earlier this week, I was pilot #1 on Disneyland’s Smuggler’s Run—the newish Star Wars attraction in which Earthlings finally get to pilot the Millennium Falcon. As the left-seat pilot, I had the (apparently) simple job of controlling our turns. Pilot #2, my father-in-law, controlled our pitch. My 8-year-old son and wife were our gunners in charge of blasting things, and my brother-in-law was the engineer in charge of … we weren’t quite sure.
We all felt the gravity of our mission. None of us had any idea what to do.
And it showed.
They don’t tell you that turning the Millennium Falcon is a real pain in the ass. There’s a dreadful lag in whatever thruster/control surface combination the craft uses when it’s within an atmosphere. There’s no bite to the controls, and you feel the massive inertia of the ship. Then you feel the massive inertia of the mountains you hit. I had one lever that provided a coordinated roll/yaw response, but I frequently found that decoupling those controls would have been really useful.
There’s no bite to the controls, and you feel the massive inertia of the ship. Then you feel the massive inertia of the mountains you hit.
Oh, how I wished I could flick us vertical to get through those narrow spaces instead of bouncing off them like a bowling ball in a lane with the bumpers extended.
Crash. Shit.
Opposite crash. Shit.
Harrison Ford did this extreme-bank move all the time because it’s needed all the time. Everyone knows it’s like the Millennium Falcon’s main thing.
[Clears throat.]
We made it through the mission by collecting one or two Very Important Thingamajigs using our engineer’s Whatsits (space grappling hooks, as far as I could tell—I was busy trying to turn our crate around). My son destroyed many, many things loudly and spectacularly, with no discernible tactical effect. My wife left a more courteous trail of destruction.
Then, when the thing shut down and we had gotten an earful from our superior about how much damage we’d taken, we marched out the long exit tunnel together in a strange, energized silence. It took a while for the high to wear off.
Turns out blowing shit up with the Millennium Falcon is much easier and more popular than doing anything particularly graceful with it. But who’s surprised by that?