Blaster/Legends



"Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid."

- Han Solo

Blasters were ranged weapons that fired bolts of deadly energy, known as lasers. Blasters ranged in size from pistols and rifles to starship cannons. They were considerably more potent than primitive projectile weapons such as slugthrowers.

Technical Information
The term "blaster" was often used interchangeably with the term "laser" in everyday conversation, both denoting the same type of particle beam weapon. The designs of the blaster were a fair bit older than that of lasers, which were becoming less common in newer ships. With their design, blasters had high fire cycle rates which enabled them to multifire, a mode of fire in which the rate of discharge increased at the cost of accuracy.

Laser Mechanics
A laser beam was a coherent shaft of light. When referring to light (or any other wave pattern for that matter), coherence was the "sameness" in multiple waves. In other words, each light wave emitted from the laser device had the same wavelength and amplitude as all other waves emitted from the same device.

Lasers were generated by introducing energy to the lasing medium. The lasing medium was the substance used to generate the laser beams. Tibanna gas was a favored medium. When an atom of the medium was excited by energy, one or more of its electrons would "jump" to a higher energy level. When the atom stabilized (e.g., the electron(s) returned to their original energy levels), a photon was released. A photon was a "packet" of energy that traveled in both a wavelike, and a particulate manner.

Blaster Mechanics
Blasters were a considerable improvement on the laser design, however. The bolt fired from a blaster was not just light. Some gas used to generate the beam was energized to a plasma state and fired with the highly energized light at supra-light velocities. This combination of light and plasma formed the deadly bolt fired from a blaster. Because the bolt traveled at faster-than-light speeds, in some cases, targets could show signs of damage before the visible portion of the bolt hit. This was because the visible portion, was a side-effect of the actual, lethal bolt.

Most personal blasters had two kinds of ammunition: a gas cartridge, and a power cell. Very weak weapons, like the Drearian Defense Conglomerate Defender sporting blaster, relied on the power cell and used only a small quantity of gas; immensely powerful weapons, like the illegal Tenloss DX-2 disruptor pistol, used abnormally large amounts of gas.

History and usage
"So uncivilized."

- Obi-Wan Kenobi

Among the oldest and most venerable example of blaster technology was the triple blaster which dated back to the Galactic Republic. It worked by using three separate blasters connected to the same targeting system, often coordinated in sets of two or four, and fired simultaneously on a target. By the Rise of the Empire, triple blasters became exceedingly rare. Before this was invented, blaster tubes were used. They were backpacks with a hose coming out of the side, and a tube sticking out of the hose. All of the equipment that made the blaster bolt was contained in the backpack, and was fired out of the hose. Needless to say, these lost popularity quickly when triple blasters came around.

An updated version of blaster technology was the autoblaster. Designed for the B-wing fighter, it had an even higher rate of fire than other blasters but was not available to other models until after the Battle of Endor.

Blasters were allowed on civilian vessels except for heavy blaster cannons during the Galactic Empire, when they were restricted to corporations through the purchase of Imperial licenses.

The most common manufacturer of blasters during the Galactic Civil War was BlasTech, which had contracts with both the Imperial Military and the Alliance to Restore the Republic. It also manufactured the Protector civilian fighter-grade blaster line.

Blaster variants

 * Sporting blaster
 * Blaster pistol
 * Heavy blaster pistol
 * Blaster rifle
 * Repeating blaster
 * Heavy repeating blaster
 * Autoblaster

Appearances
Most Expanded Universe stories
 * Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
 * Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones
 * Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
 * Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
 * Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
 * Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi