Death Star

[zelda101]

The whole idea of the Death Star seems very unrealistic to me.. What would be involved in actually building something that?

[PTeppic]

Two main features: structural components on a grand scale (you're basically looking at a HUGE ship) and the weapons system. Therefore with the power plant as well, atmospheric support and so on...

[Huttman]

A lot of raw material. I suppose a plentiful resource, besides stripping a habital planet, would be asteroids. Those rocks are full of the needed metals for such a task. If money was not such an issue, I think we have the technology to mine or bring back some asteroids to Earth orbit to strip them of their resources and that, in turn, would stop ruining our home in a big way. Getting rid of fossil burning fuels for our vehicles and such would help considerably too, but I digress.

I read somewhere that most of the interior of the Death Star is the hyperdrive with very little room by comparison for everything else. Even as big as the power core was, it was still a very small chamber inside this huge battle station from the looks of it...

[C Of K]

Well, a Death Star is no less realistic than a Star Destroyer, really, or even a lightsaber. When considering that a Galactic Empire constructed this thing, it's not very far fetched at all. It's mainly just a really big moving space station, with a really big blaster, no less realistic than much of the other stuff that George Lucas made up for Star Wars.

[Majimaune]

Yeah I agree it was just in the same place as say a lightsabre with unrealistic.

[Joel007]

Well, a superlaser shold be possible. The main bits which were unrealistic were the way the planet exploded (exploded? why?), and the lack of debris from the death star (note the big chain reaction and fire following the the ships out of the DSII and then the lack of huge bits of metal destroying endor).

[Majimaune]

Well the massive explosion for one thing wouldn't have happened. It was in hard vacume.

[Harleyquin]

Originally Posted by Majimaune

Well the massive explosion for one thing wouldn't have happened. It was in hard vacume.

Strictly correct however you’re forgetting all the consumable gasses within the station would allow for an explosion - although space is a vacuum the contents within the station itself certainly aren’t, and the explosion would continue until all its consumables had been used.

Some issues with the death star...

Spherical - we'll assume spherical is to aid in the artificial grav generation, we could effectively spin the spear to aid in grav generation. The only consideration here though is that to fire the super laser you would have to stop its rotation meaning more power would have to be shifted to the grav generation systems.

Super laser - we can see the focusing eye on the star acts in the same manner as a satellite dish, it effectively focuses energies to a single point... only issue here is this point is "invisible" so how do the beams join and then subsequently refocus... lets say they have "technology" to do this.

Propulsion - there’s ostensibly no "engines" for propulsion here. Look at all the other vehicles in that universe and the thing they all have in common are the big ion drives which gives the ships the umph to go (yes and lets all ignore the fact that its a hard vacuum again, and lets ignore the other fact that there’s nothing for the rocket drives to push against so how in gods teeth can it move...) The Death star doesn’t have this system of propulsion so you'd need to have a different method for making it go...

Energy - this thing would need VAST amounts of energy - forget the super laser able to blow up a planet - think about heat, light, gravity, water, food, propulsion, etc.. tens of thousands of people will need to live on this thing and technically live on it even when its moving position through the deepest parts of space where solar power couldn’t help in any shape or form - this would therefore mean the power generation centre would have to do everything to keep the little moon going till its next target, monster use of resources, the station would have to be practically self sufficient or otherwise logistics in supplying food and such would be more than the station was worth... so do we assume we now employ storm farmers?? guess their armour would be a little silly

The materials to build the thing - not that bad considering you had a whole galactic empire to call upon for resources - hell it would be a lot easier than keeping Curosant going - this planet is practically a city - so a space station the size of a small moon would be nothing in comparison.

[Majimaune]

Well at the time, the Empire had all resources at hand but I'm with who ever said it, not enough. I think the old Dreadnaughts in the new trilogy and then again in some of the books have to have 8,000 people manning them. I would say thats about the same as a Star Destroyer (a guess). The Death Star is a movable planet basically with great weapon systems. The people on there would have to be about the same as the current population in the world now. Keeping them going with energy and food supplies I would think would take up about half of the Death Star.

If we just ignore all the bad things about it, it really is pretty awesome.

[Fake Vencar]

The Death Star is but one of the unique things that alight Star Wars. Totally unrealistic but awesome all the same. Am i right in saying the first had a diameter of around 200 miles and the second a diameter of 800 miles?

[C Of K]

Some sources (A Guide To The Star Wars Universe) measure the first at 120 kilometers in diameter, and the second at 160 kilometers. (Take into consideration this is an old sourse book. Things may have changed by now.)

Since 1 kilometer = 0.621371192 miles

the first one would be somewhere between 74 an 75 miles in diameter. The second would be between 99 and 100 miles in diameter

These numbers probably haven't changed though. None of the Imperial Star Destroyers were even a mile long, so they would still be small compared to a station of these proportions. Of course, the Super Star Destroyer Executer was just about 5 miles long, and the Eclipse Star Destroyer was 10 miles...
Furthermore, the first Death Star was said to carry 27,048 officers, 774,586 troop, pilots, and crewers, and almost 400,000 support personnel, and over 25,000 storm troopers along with 7,200 TIE fighters.

These are, of course, Extended Universe numbers, but that's probably as official as we're going to get.

[Majimaune]

Yeah I reckon we wont get more official unless Lucas comes on and says well there are *insert number here* people on a Star Destroyer and *insert number here* people on the first Death Star and *insert number here* on the second Death Star.

[Kostmayer]

Been a while since I was on the site, but I remember this article on Howstuffworks

Howstuffworks "How the Death Star Works"

[Majimaune]

I've only read half of the thing so far and very very interesting.

[beware7ninjas]

I was pissed that Episode III didn't involve anything more about the Death Star that a off handed mention and a blip on the panning! There should have been some test explosions or something more evil.