Talk:TIE Fighter/@comment-26987658-20150915005723

I know I'm being somewhat pedantic, and geeking out to the Nth degree - but now that Disney is rewriting parts of the SW Lore, can we PLEASE drop the TIE fighers "Solar Array" silliness! It's makes WAY more sense that the "Solar Array" are actually large raditator panels, as part of a heat-management system for the massively over-worked engines...

"Solar Arrays" are silly because:

(A) There's absolutley NO way they could collect sufficient energy to power those engines from the light of distant stars.

(B) Radiators make much more sense, because those engines are TINY!! Even with the fantastical technology of the SW universe, to push a TIE fighter around at such a speedy pace, those engines would have to be under a MASSIVE amount of strain!! This is probably part of the reasoning behind the decision to not give TIEs shields - in order to have more power available to the engine systems... It would also lend itself to the distinctive sound of the TIE fighters - those engines are literally SCREAMING!!

NOTE: The  The Eta-2 Actis-class interceptor - Better known as the "Jedi Starfighter" also has a pair of folding "TIE Fighter Wings", which makes sense - when in "Attack mode" the extra energy/thrust output of the engines would require additional heat-management. (ie: Radiator panels)