The giant Corellian Imperial Star Destroyers. The dinosaur sized AT-AT. The super-fast Pod Racers. The iconic Millennium Falcon. The vehicles of the Star Wars movies have been ingrained in American pop culture for decades. The imagination of George Lucas has shaped how all movies are made and seen, not only science fiction. He has created a world where anything is possible and the laws of physics seem to be bent at every turn.
The hundreds of star ships, speeders, and walkers of the Star Wars Universe have held places in cinema that few movie props have been able to achieve. If we were to walk up to anyone on the street and ask them who was the pilot of the Millennium Falcon, odds are that most, if not all, of them would answer: Han Solo. They may not be able to tell you on which planet he was born, or who he won the Millennium Falcon from, or how fast the Falcon ran the Kessel Run, but everyone knows of the ship that changed movie history forever.
With the popularity of the technology in the Star Wars movies, one would think that these amazing vehicles would have made their way into the dreams and onto the designs of inventors and scientists today. Not to say that there hasn't been technology created by NASA that was not at least inspired by Star Wars, but you think that we would have more Star Wars-like cars driving around. The mere convenience of being able to float your car out of the driveway in the morning on your way to work is more than enough to encourage some smart brainiac to invent a speeder like the one Luke Skywalker drove across the Tatooine desert. It was even 100% electric. With all of the "Green" thinking of science and industry these days, a vehicle operated by electricity collected by wind or solar power would be right up the ally for companies trying to lose the internal combustion engine and willing to risk finding a progressive niche in the market.
There are a few promising companies out there willing to try it. But with problems like a poor economy and the unsure future of a clean renewable source of energy, these companies have many hurdles to cross. Let us all look into the future just as George Lucas did in the 1970's. One can only dream of flying like they do in the movies.
