Sound In Space

We have all watched and loved the Star Wars movies for years now. But for those of us who play the role playing game, we seek a certain sense of reality to put into our game. We can suspend our disbelief, but some things are just plain against everything in physics. Other thinks we can leave up to the fact we don't know, whether or not something's may be possible, after all most of our technology today was science fiction yesterday, who knows what our future holds. Well enough ramble, one of the things that strikes be as wrong was, Why could we hear the Tie fighters, laser cannons and other sounds in space, on the movie? Even when the scene is inside a cockpit we here the sound. This led me to the following conclusions:

1) The people in SW space ships can hear the sound of weapons firing, and Ships approaching, ect.

2) In space the sound is not heard, except by us watching the movie, lets face it it would be pretty boring with out sound.

3) People have and depend on 5 senses. If you take 1 away then they are less effective. I.E.: Try playing Quake without sound, against some one of the same skill level but with sound, he'll kick your but because he is receiving more information.

My explanation is simple, almost too simple and does not require any suspension of disbelief.

All star ships have sensors, some better than others, but they all have them. Passive, active, scan ect. Most ships also have intercom systems. Now with our current technology in speaker and sound deployment we can create 'surround sound'. So it's safe to say the Star Wars universe has as well. Our speaker technology is very small, just look at the sound quality from a set of speakers on a laptop computer, better than the boom box I had in `82.

Any way the ships in Star Wars, all have sound producing membranes in the interior of the ship. These do not have to be powerful. They are hooked up to the onboard computer and the sensors. When activity occurs out side the ship, the sensors convert some of the data into an audio format, that most species can detect. A tie fighter for instance flying by an observer would be heard. This has been done for countless millennia, and is standard equipment on all ships. This allows a pilot to accept more information at 1 time, because lets face it you can only see so much at one time. And in combat situations this is immensely helpful, as the pilot can hear, when a ship is behind or coming up on them, and identify the basic type of ship. The sound generated is identical to what the sound would be in an atmosphere.

Game notes:
If a ships sensor are disabled the occupants of said ship will not be able to 'hear' anything out side the ship, except for impacts.

The sound system utilizes the Passive mode of the sensors, but can be changed to one of the other modes, and is limited to the range of the given sensor.

The sound is generated by a computer which could become unstable, maybe it makes everything sound like a tie fighter, or a slicer could load a virus making certain ships sound like friendlies, or blasting the volume, to confuse the pilot, or rigged to transmit what ever the pilot say's. Lot of possibilities with this one.