Skywalker worked on a moisture farm
By Diego Flammini
Assistant Editor, North American Content
Farms.com
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, Luke Skywalker was a farmer.
May 4 is commonly known as Star Wars Day, and social media is flooded with photos and videos celebrating the iconic movie franchise.
As it turns out, there’s a connection between Star Wars and agriculture – or in this case, moisture-culture.
Before venturing off to battle Darth Vader, Skywalker worked on his uncle Owen Lars’s moisture farm.
A moisture farm is an area of land used to produce water by drawing moisture from the dry air, according to Star Wars fan sites.
Lars moisture farm
Photo: StarWars.com
The farm used 63 devices called vaporators to harvest excess humidity from the atmosphere. Moisture farms were vital on dry worlds like Tatooine, where Skywalker lived.
His duties mainly consisted of equipment maintenance, which included two droids – CP30 and R2D2.
“Harvest is when I need you the most,” Lars said to Skywalker in A New Hope, after Luke expressed his interest to leave the farm to join the Imperial Academy, a military school. “Only one more season. This year we’ll make enough on the harvest so I’ll be able to hire some more hands.”
Not just for space anymore
Researchers on Earth appear to be working on similar technology used on the Star Wars moisture farms.
Scientists from MIT (the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and the University of California developed a solar-powered harvester that can produce 2.8 litres of water in about 12 hours, according to an April 13 article by The Telegraph.
The device can harvest water in areas like the Mojave Desert, where average humidity is around 20 percent, The Telegraph reports.