Death Star Architect speaks out

[Adam Reynolds]

In fairness, it was never said (IIRC) that the torpedoes would fly down the shaft and hit the reactor. It was that getting the torpedoes into the exhaust port would start a chain reaction that destroyed the station.

I always thought it was simply a question of plugging the reactor. Thus it makes sense that the Empire would consider it protected when it was ray shielded. In the Clone Wars, blasters were the precision weapon of choice, hence why Jedi fighters didn't even have missiles.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Having just re-watched the scene, Dodonna says "the shaft leads directly to the reactor system. A precise hit will start a chain reaction that should destroy the station. Only a precise hit will set up a chain reaction."

Incidentally, I hadn't realise just how close the Rebels were cutting it. The Death Star had arrived at Yavin and was entering orbit before the Rebels began their briefing.

[Adam Reynolds]

Having just re-watched the scene, Dodonna says "the shaft leads directly to the reactor system. A precise hit will start a chain reaction that should destroy the station. Only a precise hit will set up a chain reaction."

Incidentally, I hadn't realise just how close the Rebels were cutting it. The Death Star had arrived at Yavin and was entering orbit before the Rebels began their briefing.

It probably took them that long analyze the Death Star plans.

[Batman]

If it's just a question of plugging the reactor why was getting the torpedoes into the shaft that flipping important? Them going off inside the shaft is no more or less likely to block the shaft than simply messing up the opening. Besides, the animation Dodonna showed the pilots clearly had the torpedo going all the way to the reactor.

[Lord Revan]

If it's just a question of plugging the reactor why was getting the torpedoes into the shaft that flipping important? Them going off inside the shaft is no more or less likely to block the shaft than simply messing up the opening. Besides, the animation Dodonna showed the pilots clearly had the torpedo going all the way to the reactor.

yeah to me it seemed like the protontorp would react badly with the reactor itself causing the chain reaction, oh and another thing that was not the main exhaust port but rather an emergency back-up one

[Patroklos]

All the death star had to do was accelerate and or rotate along a different axis for two seconds while the fighters were in the trench and they would have been splattered on the side walls. This goes for the torpedo as well, it being barely able to fit into the shaft and having many miles of travel any unpredictable deviation from the axis of movement of the DS from when it entered should have caused it to hit the shaft wall. Again, a purposeful rotation of the DS in any direction would have effectively countered that as well.

Actually that should have been the only weapon the DS needed, if its own shields are at least as powerful as a planetary shield its MO should just be to ram anything within turbolaser range unless the sub light combat speeds of rebel ships allows it to travel the diameter of a Death Star in as many minutes. We see the DS sublight speeds when it moves around Yavin far faster than we observe any X-wing or capital ship maneuvering at combat speeds (as measured against known objects in RotJ. Sure you can say the X-wings show similar speeds by closing with the DS in ANH but they benefited from the relative closing speed by being between the DS and Yavin 4), there really shouldn't be any way for them to escape the DS running them over short of hyperspace or entering a nearby atmosphere once they are near to it.

Has anyone ever explained why the shaft was still intact after the first salvo missed and blew up right on top of the shaft entrance?

[Zixinus]

It should emit particles of some kind, given Dodonna's specific comment that it was ray shielded.

That would be hot gas or something similar, that's what "exhaust port" conventionally means as a means of cooling. Which raises question of why are you venting hot gas when you can radiate it away? You can put the radiators on the top of armor so they wouldn't be an easy target. If you put radiators scattered across say 1/10th of the surface of the Death Star, they would not be militarily easy to destroy.

All the death star had to do was accelerate and or rotate along a different axis for two seconds while the fighters were in the trench and they would have been splattered on the side walls. This goes for the torpedo as well, it being barely able to fit into the shaft and having many miles of travel any unpredictable deviation from the axis of movement of the DS from when it entered should have caused it to hit the shaft wall. Again, a purposeful rotation of the DS in any direction would have effectively countered that as well.

It might not be able to do that suddenly, it is a moon-sized thing after all. Even if its hollow that's a lot of mass to move.

The torpedoes were guided and they might be programmed to respond to such a maneuver.

[Simon_Jester]

While its certainly believable given the station's size, there's no way of knowing that the Death Star had that many fighters in the new canon if its based on old EU information.

There is evidence that the Death Star had many fighters, far more than were actually scrambled to deal with the threat. Exactly how many we don't know, but it was a lot.

The number of fighters wasn't really an issue. For how 'cannon fodder' TIE Fighters seem to get talked up as, 8 TIE fighters sure did a great job wrecking some 30-odd Rebels.

Though to be fair, one of the eight TIE pilots was Vader, I suspect several Rebel fighters were destroyed by surface fire, and many of the Rebel fighters were forced by circumstance to fly straight, low, and level while boxed in in preparation for their attack runs and were easy prey for a fighter that was free to maneuver in and above the trench thanks to having Imperial IFF and not having to worry about getting shot at.

No, it was just time taken to take out each target on the trench run. The only completely 'WTF' bit is how the Milennium Falcon got even remotely close enough to take a shot on Vader, when the Death Star's cannons had better well be able to shoot THAT down. It is substantially larger and less agile than an X-Wing after all.

I know, right!?

Then again, the Falcon is clearly one of the most souped-up light freighters in the civilized galaxy. She was quite capable of maneuvering along with the X-Wings and other Rebel fighters in the attack on the second Death Star, to the point of making an ideal forward mobile command post for the Rebel fighter wing. And she's still too small to carry anything other than fighterweight weapons. So it might well be that even the Falcon is "too small" for the Empire to take seriously as a threat to the Death Star, and that the largest ships they pay any attention to are, oh, the size of a Corellian corvette or some such.

I'll note I did make at least one error here, so I'll correct it. The Falcon escaped the Death Star the first time because the Empire let it. However, I should note that Han, at least, seemed to believe that they got away on their own, so unless he's an imbecile, it must be at least within plausibility for the Falcon to be able to avoid being targeted by the gun turrets.

I think the question is more about how the Falcon got close to the Death Star during the battle of Yavin...

What does the Death Star ventilate to? Cold vacuum. So the Death Star is continuously venting atmosphere from whatever power core it has, erm why and how? Couldn't the heat be transferred more efficiently away with radiators? You have a planet-sized surface to work on that after all.

My working theory is that it's more like a shaft for ejecting reactor contents (i.e. plasma) in the event of a serious emergency. Thus, it's heavily shielded (to stop the plasma from hurting anything on its way out). But it would be unsafe to have there be a lot of bends or kinks in the shaft (because the plasma would hit them and blow them apart like bombs). And it would also be unsafe to have any mechanical blockage of the shaft that might jam, kink, or stick in place, even when the Death Star is under fire, because if you need the emergency release valve, you really really need it.

In fairness, it was never said (IIRC) that the torpedoes would fly down the shaft and hit the reactor. It was that getting the torpedoes into the exhaust port would start a chain reaction that destroyed the station.

This... is true.

Having just re-watched the scene, Dodonna says "the shaft leads directly to the reactor system. A precise hit will start a chain reaction that should destroy the station. Only a precise hit will set up a chain reaction."

The "reactor system" does not necessarily consist solely of the reactor. It could also consist of control rooms, auxiliary reactors, and other systems that are part of the overall reactor 'infrastructure.'

[Lord Revan]

Considering Star Wars ships can hyper-in practially on top of each other even when the ships are of opposing factions (and thus don't cordinate the jump-in), how the Falcon got so close doesn't bother me as much.

[Batman]

I'm highly dubious about a hit to a control room reliably setting up a chain reaction fit to destroy the station.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Maybe it was a cooling system, or a containment system, or something similar. Proton torpedoes are supposed to be nuclear shaped charges IIRC the ICS properly. It hits a cooling mechanism at the bottom of the shaft. The cone of death takes out that mechanism, the control rooms behind it, some of the containment gear behind that and so on. Then again, Dodonna did only say that the chain reaction should destroy the station, not will. This really was the Rebel's Hail Mary pass, they weren't certain it would work.

[Patroklos]

They should have just had the station go dark and then get pulled into Yavin. A much more plausible death. It could actually be done far more dramatically but not as cheaply or with the air of cliche triumph from the real movie.

[Elheru Aran]

They should have just had the station go dark and then get pulled into Yavin. A much more plausible death. It could actually be done far more dramatically but not as cheaply or with the air of cliche triumph from the real movie.

While more... realistic, as far as that term can be attached to Star Wars, it simply wouldn't have made cinematic sense.

Never mind that with a station that big, even if all the air recyclers got turned off, it'd hold sufficient air for hours-- long enough for them to summon the closest fleet to smash the Rebels-- unless you're going to propose that somehow the reactor exploded but the exterior shell was strong enough to contain the explosion... If the crew was left alive, that means they have the capability to board a small fleet of fighters and shuttles and engage Yavin in a ground attack. Zerg-rushing the Rebels wouldn't have had the same effect, but it would've worked. Hell, there might be sufficient backup reactors-- they have the space for them-- to power the turbolasers; they could have simply BDZ'ed Yavin all on their own.

No. From a storytelling point-- remember, Star Wars was never meant to be high art-- 'shoot the hole, if you miss we're screwed, if you hit it the bad guys go boom' works perfectly fine. It's better to have the station blow up (no matter how contrived the blow-up is) than it is to have it literally hanging over the Rebels' heads.

[Patroklos]

They should have just had the station go dark and then get pulled into Yavin. A much more plausible death. It could actually be done far more dramatically but not as cheaply or with the air of cliche triumph from the real movie.

While more... realistic, as far as that term can be attached to Star Wars, it simply wouldn't have made cinematic sense.

Then no, but with today's CGI having a moon sized space station torn apart while burning up in the atmosphere, cuts to desperate Imperials clawing at hatches to escape pods and all the craft in the landing bays floating out of there berths and braking up on the walls as the DS accelerates into the gravity well, as the victorious rebels look on from their cockpits? Titanic in space.

Never mind that with a station that big, even if all the air recyclers got turned off, it'd hold sufficient air for hours--

So what? Do you think it would take hours for the DS to fall into the atmosphere? Maybe it could depending on the orbit it took and whether it was only relying on orbital mechanics to round Yavin instead of a mix of that and its own engines, but then just make the sequence happen faster director!

long enough for them to summon the closest fleet to smash the Rebels--

Do you think the DS was in radio silence or something during the actual depicted events? The Emperor himself was probably watching the triumph of one of his most important (and threatening) underlings from holovid a la Obama and the Bin Ladin raid. In any case the Imperial military most certainly knew what was up mere moments after the DS exploded. Hell, Tarkin ran Oversector Outer, all else being ignored like the largest military investment ever conceived vanishing Tarkin himself would be missed immediately. Of course the Emperor would instantly know exactly what transpired via magic as well.

In fact, though now non canon, the Empire did immediately blockade the planet so fast and effectively they trapped most of the Rebels there (including Dodanna) and took over Yavin 4 outright just six months later.

unless you're going to propose that somehow the reactor exploded but the exterior shell was strong enough to contain the explosion... If the crew was left alive, that means they have the capability to board a small fleet of fighters and shuttles and engage Yavin in a ground attack.

I was thinking more like the explosion wherever it takes place takes out critical equipment and fail safes kick it to shutdown the reactor before any major station threatening explosion. You know, how pretty much every reactor outside Star Trek actual works and even those that failed to shut down in the past was supposed to work.

And yeah, I am sure the reeling Imperials that just barely escaped with their lives into any craft that was sort of air tight would be fit as fiddles to conquer a planet that hosts the HQ and primary fighting force of their opponent and is alerted and indeed prepared to resist a dedicated invasion (they again resist an Imperial blockade for six months after the battle). Sort of like how USS Lexington after being torpedoed got all its planes off the deck in fighting order who then flew on to to smash the Japanese fleet, her crew then rowing their lifeboats to and conquering the Solomon Islands. Wait, none of that happened because people unexpectedly and desperately barely escaping foundering vessels don't conquer anything. They are the ones at the mercy of the enemy and elements, the vacuum of space being a bit less hospitable than the South Pacific.

Zerg-rushing the Rebels wouldn't have had the same effect, but it would've worked. Hell, there might be sufficient backup reactors-- they have the space for them-- to power the turbolasers; they could have simply BDZ'ed Yavin all on their own.

Please show proof there were sufficient backup power reactors. Why are the turbo lasers not drawing power from the main reactor? It makes sense to have some backup power I grant you, but I doubt backups would be sufficient to say keep a moon sized station in an non-stable orbit from falling into a planet or say generating gravity for a moon. Backup generators do thinks like keep the emergency exit lights on. Powering things like prime movers are sort of what main reactors are for.

And again, since a dedicated and assumed not recently evicted and homeless Imperial force failed to subdue Yavin 4 for six more months post battle, the idea that random castaways would do so is far fetched.

No. From a storytelling point-- remember, Star Wars was never meant to be high art-- 'shoot the hole, if you miss we're screwed, if you hit it the bad guys go boom' works perfectly fine. It's better to have the station blow up (no matter how contrived the blow-up is) than it is to have it literally hanging over the Rebels' heads.

As I said, they went for a particular style. That doesn't mean it was the best style to go with or the only way to do it within that style for that matter. This is a thread where people are bitching, and rightly so from a certain perspective, about a munition self guiding itself down dozens of miles of close quarters piping. Suggesting a more realistic DS death sequence seems appropriate.

However, for those saying a proton torpedo has the maneuverability and guidance to perform the herculean bit of gymnastics required to pull that off, why the hell did they have such a hard time getting into the tube in the first place? If that is all apparently self contained in the torpedo, why did they have to enter the trench at all? Guiding itself into that port is child's play compared to successfully navigating that exhaust vent that we don't actually know was straight btw. The fact that it took the Force to get the torpedo into the pipe suggests to me it does not possess the follow on capability of reaching the reactor. Or at least shouldn't, it obviously did.

[Adam Reynolds]

Star Wars reactors in general seem to almost always explode when damaged. This occurs with both Death Stars and with the Droid Control Ship as well as implicitly with several capital ships over Endor. The reality is with the sort of energy that gets thrown around in SW it is almost inevitable that once they lose power due to damage they have no way to contain that level of energy. This is somewhat lessened by the fact that their shields are often extremely powerful to go with that massive reactor output, and that the armor around it is also extremely effective in general.

[Patroklos]

The only example you just mentioned that is valid is the DSs. The capital sips we see at Endor blow up either from being hit by a DS laser blast, ramming into the DS, and we see exactly one ISD blow up but have no idea why. You can speculate it was a reactor explosion but it could just as easily be a magazine going up or any other reason under the sun. The Droid control ship very obviously goes down due to secondary explosions sourced in the hanger bay, the reactor might have eventually been included in that mayhem but we don't really know.

I agree with your point regarding power though. In both DS cases the stations were using their super lasers. The first for full planet destruction. I am not sure if it was ever established if the shots tap directly off the reactor but given the long pauses between shots it leads me to believe there is lots of energy storage going on. It may not really be the reactor that ultimately causes the spectacular explosions but rather the release of stored energy. If you had done the same attack when the super lasers aren;t active would you get the same results?

[Adam Reynolds]

It is possible that the Death Stars were overpowered relative to standard vessels in SW. Not just because of their size, but that they were also proportionally more powerful. It would explain why standard capital ships don't appear quite as powerful as they should be proportionally.

[biostem]

Star Wars reactors in general seem to almost always explode when damaged. This occurs with both Death Stars and with the Droid Control Ship as well as implicitly with several capital ships over Endor. The reality is with the sort of energy that gets thrown around in SW it is almost inevitable that once they lose power due to damage they have no way to contain that level of energy. This is somewhat lessened by the fact that their shields are often extremely powerful to go with that massive reactor output, and that the armor around it is also extremely effective in general.

Hang on a sec - in all those cases, an explosive weapon was detonated inside of the main power source, which presumably, also contains or has direct access to all the fuel. It'd be like arguing that cars seem prone to suddenly exploding because everytime we've seen a bomb go off in proximity to the fuel tank, there was a big explosion.

The only case where this can't be said for certain is with the Super Star Destroyer crashing into the 2nd Death Star, and even then, it listed vary hard, accelerating all the while, then didn't erupt until a good potion had crashed into the DS's surface. Even then, the scene cuts before the fireball dissipates, so we don't know if it was a total explosion that consumed the ship, or was just an outward blast and some of the ship was still left.

[Lord Revan]

Also we see wrecks of star destroyers in Force Awakens if SW reactors blew up everytime they were damaged the wouldn't be any recognizeble wrecks left.

[Elheru Aran]

So what? Do you think it would take hours for the DS to fall into the atmosphere? Maybe it could depending on the orbit it took and whether it was only relying on orbital mechanics to round Yavin instead of a mix of that and its own engines, but then just make the sequence happen faster director!

Yeah, actually, it could take hours to enter the atmosphere, if not days. Gas giants are *big* planets, and unless the DS orbit around the planet was wildly erratic or dangerously close, it'd take a while for the orbit to degenerate. People have already sat in the theater for a hour and change by this point, they don't want to sit there and watch a Death Star slowly go dark while the Rebels go home and celebrate. They want to see it go poof, Imperials all wrapped up nice and clean in a bow, a smooth victory. A slow descent into the gas giant, while dramatic and good film from a certain approach, would have been anti-climatic and not what Lucas was shooting for. If you have a problem with that... watch Titanic. At least that's got tits in.

Do you think the DS was in radio silence or something during the actual depicted events? The Emperor himself was probably watching the triumph of one of his most important (and threatening) underlings from holovid a la Obama and the Bin Ladin raid. In any case the Imperial military most certainly knew what was up mere moments after the DS exploded. Hell, Tarkin ran Oversector Outer, all else being ignored like the largest military investment ever conceived vanishing Tarkin himself would be missed immediately. Of course the Emperor would instantly know exactly what transpired via magic as well.

While that'd be nice, the EU doesn't particularly support the notion. Apparently he was signing paperwork related to the Sanctuary hyperspace route to Endor at the time. Instant video from the site of an assault is a modern notion, not something you'll see in a 1970s era film. Even in Revenge of the Sith (the prequels have some embarrassing anachronisms) the Jedi and clones don't use any such; the closest we get are the clones' hologram walkie-talkies.

Also, if you wanna accept stuff like the X-wing games and the Farlander Papers, apparently the DS did deploy a communications satellite on the far side of Yavin to relay comms to the Emperor; the Rebels shot it down before the battle started. Doesn't really line up with what we know of Star Wars comms from the prequels, but again, there we go with the anachronisms.

I was thinking more like the explosion wherever it takes place takes out critical equipment and fail safes kick it to shutdown the reactor before any major station threatening explosion. You know, how pretty much every reactor outside Star Trek actual works and even those that failed to shut down in the past was supposed to work.

Star Wars reactors are not real-world reactors. You shoot them, they tend to go bang. Stupid? Sure. But as noted in this thread, they tend to be in the middle of ships, protected by armour plating and shields. If you get to where you can shoot them (Death Star aside) the people around that reactor are probably screwed anyway.

And yeah, I am sure the reeling Imperials that just barely escaped with their lives into any craft that was sort of air tight would be fit as fiddles to conquer a planet that hosts the HQ and primary fighting force of their opponent and is alerted and indeed prepared to resist a dedicated invasion (they again resist an Imperial blockade for six months after the battle). Sort of like how USS Lexington after being torpedoed got all its planes off the deck in fighting order who then flew on to to smash the Japanese fleet, her crew then rowing their lifeboats to and conquering the Solomon Islands. Wait, none of that happened because people unexpectedly and desperately barely escaping foundering vessels don't conquer anything. They are the ones at the mercy of the enemy and elements, the vacuum of space being a bit less hospitable than the South Pacific.

Actually. There *were* a number of escapees. A TIE fighter pilot even holed up on Yavin for years (Qorl), for example. If the station just suddenly went dark, sure, there would be some panic, but that's what stormtroopers are for-- club blasters and restore the peace. This is a military station, a bit bigger than a ship. They may not have expected to use them but they probably wrote up plans and drills for evacuation in the case of, say, a reactor breach (the likely story they might use to justify the evacuation to the crew).

We are talking about a station that's literally the size of a small moon. It's got something like 1 million complement. And every military loves contingency planning and drills. With the amount of time they would have had if the DS reactor just dies and the orbit starts decaying, they would have had time to evacuate at least some of the crew and military complement.

Please show proof there were sufficient backup power reactors. Why are the turbo lasers not drawing power from the main reactor? It makes sense to have some backup power I grant you, but I doubt backups would be sufficient to say keep a moon sized station in an non-stable orbit from falling into a planet or say generating gravity for a moon. Backup generators do thinks like keep the emergency exit lights on. Powering things like prime movers are sort of what main reactors are for.

I said 'might', not 'are'. But since you asked so nicely.

Death Star blueprints, not going to inline the image as it's pretty big

Note in particular: 'ion drive reactor', 'power cell', 'stellar fuel bottles'. Unless you want to suggest that there's a feedback mechanism or some such that might burn out the entirety of their power generation, they have power available besides just the primary reactor. Also, I didn't say it would keep the station running entirely, just powering the guns, which is quite possible-- they don't want a main reactor shut-down to affect the station's defensive capabilities in case, for example, sabotage shuts it down in open space with a Rebel fleet nearby.

And again, since a dedicated and assumed not recently evicted and homeless Imperial force failed to subdue Yavin 4 for six more months post battle, the idea that random castaways would do so is far fetched.

Except that if the station only loses power and is hanging in a (slowly) decaying orbit above the gas giant of Yavin, there will be a lot more than 'random' castaways. 607 thousand troops. 25K stormtroopers. What was the Rebel complement on Yavin? Can't have been THAT big.

[Patroklos]

Yeah, actually, it could take hours to enter the atmosphere, if not days. Gas giants are *big* planets, and unless the DS orbit around the planet was wildly erratic or dangerously close, it'd take a while for the orbit to degenerate.

Could it take a long time? Sure. Does it have to? No. It could take mere minutes if the orbit was close enough. Its pretty clear they want to get around the planet as fast as possible, which means a lower orbit. Of course there is zero reason to assume they were relying on orbital mechanics to round Yavin when the station is perfectly capable of moving at sub-light speeds. Its smart to use the assist if its there (and they stated they entered an orbit of some kind, but not what kind), but do you honestly think the station went engines cold in a combat setting and just lackadaisically drifted to its target?

I don't know, maybe they depowered their engines to charge the super laser faster. Possible.

It doesn't really matter, if you want the station to fall into Yavin at any rate for any cinematic reason there is plenty of excuses for a director to use. Would you care to see an example of one making that happen? I give you the Executor, which should never have been able to do what we see on screen assuming real time progression based on where we last see the ship relative to the DS. Didn't stop the director from making it happen. According to you though that's undramatic and the audience hated it, the Executor should have just popped into sparks. How long did it take the Executor to fall into the DS? Days? Hours? Dare I say single digit minutes? Maybe even less than a single minute?

People have already sat in the theater for a hour and change by this point, they don't want to sit there and watch a Death Star slowly go dark while the Rebels go home and celebrate. They want to see it go poof, Imperials all wrapped up nice and clean in a bow, a smooth victory. A slow descent into the gas giant, while dramatic and good film from a certain approach, would have been anti-climatic and not what Lucas was shooting for. If you have a problem with that... watch Titanic. At least that's got tits in.

Man, I wish you would have told James Cameron that, he could have just skipped the last third of the movie and saved a ton of money and me hours of my life when repeatedly being forced to watch it with my wife. "WE'VE ALREADY BEEN IN THE THEATER FOR TWO HOURS DOUCHEBAG, skip the grand disaster porn finale already!" And yeah I bet audiences would hate watching space Nazis who have been gallivanting around the galaxy arrogantly committing evils like blowing up planets of full of billions of pacifists with the main characters taking every opportunity to tell us just how evil they are getting theirs in a graphically grandiose and detailed fashion. That is of course why Inglorious Bastards was such a box office failure.

Again, I am not saying they way they did it didn't work and have its own style. It obviously did. What I am saying is that it was sort of unrealistic, and you can have both (style and realism) if you want it.

While that'd be nice, the EU doesn't particularly support the notion. Apparently he was signing paperwork related to the Sanctuary hyperspace route to Endor at the time. Instant video from the site of an assault is a modern notion, not something you'll see in a 1970s era film. Even in Revenge of the Sith (the prequels have some embarrassing anachronisms) the Jedi and clones don't use any such; the closest we get are the clones' hologram walkie-talkies.

He can't have the holovid on it the background? And no its not a modern notion, movies since the concept of video existed have loved to insert people watching footage of events as they happen, generally from vantage points that it would be impossible to observe but that's another movieism. See ST2, when the Reliant blows up and that is in 82. Hell ST TMP does it repeatedly and gratuitously and was released in 79, just two years after ANH. Come to think of it every time you see the damn view-screen in a ST episode of any series including TOS which predates SWs. And are you seriously telling us that a civilization that can trivially transmit real time holographic video chats across galactic distances somehow lacks the capability of do the same for a 2D video feed or hell a 3D real-time tactical display? Are you really claiming that as the most important military vessel in the Empire was about to take out a significant military threat nobody off the station was interested in monitoring that?

The point is they can do that, should have been doing that, and would have been doing that. You can claim they didn't, but without proof they didn't the default should be they were. Especially since the Emperor should have discerned what happened via the force instantly if not from the destruction of the DS itself then from the defeat of Vader.

Also, if you wanna accept stuff like the X-wing games and the Farlander Papers, apparently the DS did deploy a communications satellite on the far side of Yavin to relay comms to the Emperor; the Rebels shot it down before the battle started. Doesn't really line up with what we know of Star Wars comms from the prequels, but again, there we go with the anachronisms.

Whether you want to hold that particular mechanism as accurate is up to you, what it does illustrate is being in contact with the rest of the Empire was a thing the DS crew cared about and as you said the capabilities we see the Imperial military use elsewhere should have been available to the DS in spades.

Star Wars reactors are not real-world reactors. You shoot them, they tend to go bang. Stupid? Sure. But as noted in this thread, they tend to be in the middle of ships, protected by armour plating and shields. If you get to where you can shoot them (Death Star aside) the people around that reactor are probably screwed anyway.

Do you have any examples of this outside the Death Stars themselves? Reactors are shielded and protected because you need them to make the ship work, not necessarily because they explode on contact. If they don't explode when shot and are just inactivated the ship is just as useless as if it had exploded. For instance WWII battleship engines didn't explode when hit and they occupied the most protected space on the ship along with the magazines that did.

Actually. There *were* a number of escapees. A TIE fighter pilot even holed up on Yavin for years (Qorl), for example. If the station just suddenly went dark, sure, there would be some panic, but that's what stormtroopers are for-- club blasters and restore the peace. This is a military station, a bit bigger than a ship. They may not have expected to use them but they probably wrote up plans and drills for evacuation in the case of, say, a reactor breach (the likely story they might use to justify the evacuation to the crew).

We are talking about a station that's literally the size of a small moon. It's got something like 1 million complement. And every military loves contingency planning and drills. With the amount of time they would have had if the DS reactor just dies and the orbit starts decaying, they would have had time to evacuate at least some of the crew and military complement.

Of course there were escapees, did anyone claim there weren't? Most sinking ships have survivors (though they may not get rescued). So I take you back to the military ship I mentioned earlier, USS Lexington, who was a military ship with plans, drills for evacuation, a love for contingencies, etc and like I said they did not react by launching a fully combat capable airwing nor were any of their crew concerned with accomplishing anything other than saving the ship and then surviving upon abandoning ship hours after the hit (their ship slowly sank, it was not burned up instantly).

Also Hunt for Red October isn't real and even there the only reason they bothered to lie about the reactor was specific to treasonous motives. Why would they (DS commanders) lie about a reactor breach? Is "the reactor shut down and can't be restarted in time, we are falling into Yavin's atmosphere, you have thirty minutes (15, 10, 2!, whatever) to get to the escape pods or you die" not motivating enough?

I am a Navy man, I have been a repair locker leader as well as a training team member for damage control on a DDG and in fact been involved in a collision. Star Wars is not exactly analogous but your priority is to save your ship, keep it fighting if you are in combat in the mean time, and saving your people then yourself in that order. The idea that someone abandoning a vessel, whether it be over the course of minutes or hours (depending on director fiat), would be effectively mounting the equivalent of an amphibious invasion from a mortally crippled ship is ridiculous. Think about it for a second, how much of the DS has to work to pull that off under normal circumstances? Ammo elevators, charging stations, TIE rack rotations, fueling pumps, artificial gravity, turbo lifts, traffic control stations, communications, etc. Was the DS just a box providing no services whatsoever to its embarked crew and their equipment? Is everything just sitting on launch pads ready to go? If an ISD is any indication most of its equipment is efficiently stored in racks or deep storage spaces and has to be laboriously moved to precisely timed and operated launch locations not unlike an aircraft carrier and its hanger deck. And they do this even when they know about operations beforehand.

In any case, no, the DS crew would not be mounting organized competent planetary invasions from a crippled and failing DS. Again I take you to the Executor. Did its thousands of troops escape combat ready to the Endor moon to save the day? Hell the actual DSII had a non instantaneous destruction, enough time for Luke to luckily find a shuttle on a launch pad and escape. Did the Imperials he ran across on the way to the hanger seem organized and worried about taking the fight to the rebels? Did the hanger he escaped from look up to hosting a planetary invasion? Did hundreds of thousands of crew escape to Endor in fighting trim to reinforce the Executor's contingent already taking it to the enemy? Nope.

I said 'might', not 'are'. But since you asked so nicely.

Death Star blueprints, not going to inline the image as it's pretty big

Note in particular: 'ion drive reactor', 'power cell', 'stellar fuel bottles'. Unless you want to suggest that there's a feedback mechanism or some such that might burn out the entirety of their power generation, they have power available besides just the primary reactor. Also, I didn't say it would keep the station running entirely, just powering the guns, which is quite possible-- they don't want a main reactor shut-down to affect the station's defensive capabilities in case, for example, sabotage shuts it down in open space with a Rebel fleet nearby.

Power cells and fuel bottles are irrelevant. Can you drive you car with a full gas tank but no engine?

So regarding actual warships this is in fact exactly how they work. On a real ship that is drawing large amounts of power like say AEGIS with SPY active, you have to pump a lot of power constantly. If there is any fluctuation in services or problem with one of multiple generators first the ship will load shed, dropping systems in series (what goes first depends on what you are doing) and if that doesn't work the ship will go dark. It is worth going powerless for a few minutes over letting a power spike short out a billion dollars of sensitive combat systems gear or damaging the generators themselves. Now if you are doing something especially critical like say maneuvering close to shore or shooting down incoming missiles you can activate a maximum reliability doctrine which basically means its worth it to you to suffer damage due to power problems until you can make the situation safe to load shed or go dark. You just accept what damage that causes (and you may go dark anyway).

The point is no warship I know of has 200% capacity to power itself at peak load. In the case of an Arliegh Burke DDG you need all three generators online to use SPY at full power. Anything less and you might have power for lights and computers and to rotate the 5" but the primary weapons suite is down. And while that class doesn't use generator power for propulsion the same is true for its gas turbine engines. All four need to be up at full power, there isn't any spare capacity that can absorb an engine casualty with no effect, and while there are two engines per shaft there is no ability to move power from one shaft to another (unlike say an all electric setup like the Zumwalt and presumably the DS).

Now we don't exactly know how the power systems on the DS works but unless you think the main reactor is there solely to service the super laser it is obviously the main power source for everything. If that's the case its size relative to any identified backup means those backups can only support a small fraction of the DS's normal operating power load. And note that unlike say an Arleigh Burke that has three separate equally sized generators for main power the DS has one reactor. That means that its all or nothing for main power, not just a mission kill for like for said DDG. This is not that uncommon really, a modern US carrier has two reactors for some redundancy but every submarine class has only one reactor. If it goes down its lights out.

Anyway, the point is yes warships go down hard due to losing one reactor, and even get mission killed when losing one of many. The first things to go are not the little things like lights, secondary weapons or communications but the big things like primary sensors (if they are large power draws, they are in the real world), main propulsion, and things I assume take a lot of energy like gravity.

Except that if the station only loses power and is hanging in a (slowly) decaying orbit above the gas giant of Yavin, there will be a lot more than 'random' castaways. 607 thousand troops. 25K stormtroopers. What was the Rebel complement on Yavin? Can't have been THAT big.

So don't make it hang slowly in a barely decaying orbit. And honestly I think the problem of organizing a planetary invasion gets worse the more castaways you have, not better. How do you feed 650K people, many probably injured, on a wilderness planet hosting a well appointed and dug in hostile enemy force ready and waiting?

[Elheru Aran]

Yeah, actually, it could take hours to enter the atmosphere, if not days. Gas giants are *big* planets, and unless the DS orbit around the planet was wildly erratic or dangerously close, it'd take a while for the orbit to degenerate.

Could it take a long time? Sure. Does it have to? No. It could take mere minutes if the orbit was close enough. Its pretty clear they want to get around the planet as fast as possible, which means a lower orbit. Of course there is zero reason to assume they were relying on orbital mechanics to round Yavin when the station is perfectly capable of moving at sub-light speeds. Its smart to use the assist if its there (and they stated they entered an orbit of some kind, but not what kind), but do you honestly think the station went engines cold in a combat setting and just lackadaisically drifted to its target?

Did I say that? No. All I'm pointing to is their apparent altitude and orbital path; I haven't calculated either, just going off a quick glance at the visuals. Orbital mechanics don't require acceleration other than to enter the orbit itself; after that, pure physics comes into play.

I don't know, maybe they depowered their engines to charge the super laser faster.

It doesn't really matter, if you want the station to fall into Yavin at any rate for any cinematic reason there is plenty of excuses for a director to use. Would you care to see an example of one making that happen? I give you the Executor, which should never have been able to do what we see on screen assuming real time progression based on where we last see the ship relative to the DS. Didn't stop the director from making it happen. According to you though that's undramatic and the audience hated it, the Executor should have just popped into sparks. How long did it take the Executor to fall into the DS? Days? Hours? Dare I say single digit minutes? Maybe even less than a single minute?

Actually, the Executor only takes a minute or two after the A-wing hits it to ram the Death Star and then it goes poof. That's perfectly reasonable from a cinematic viewpoint. Realistic? Not terribly--it would have had to turn at a ridiculous rate and be danger-close to the DS to hit that fast. But I can live with that, I'm not there to figure out how far it is from the space station and what's going on with it.

People have already sat in the theater for a hour and change by this point, they don't want to sit there and watch a Death Star slowly go dark while the Rebels go home and celebrate. They want to see it go poof, Imperials all wrapped up nice and clean in a bow, a smooth victory. A slow descent into the gas giant, while dramatic and good film from a certain approach, would have been anti-climatic and not what Lucas was shooting for. If you have a problem with that... watch Titanic. At least that's got tits in.

Man, I wish you would have told James Cameron that, he could have just skipped the last third of the movie and saved a ton of money and me hours of my life when repeatedly being forced to watch it with my wife. "WE'VE ALREADY BEEN IN THE THEATER FOR TWO HOURS DOUCHEBAG, skip the grand disaster porn finale already!" And yeah I bet audiences would hate watching space Nazis who have been gallivanting around the galaxy arrogantly committing evils like blowing up planets of full of billions of pacifists with the main characters taking every opportunity to tell us just how evil they are getting theirs in a graphically grandiose and detailed fashion. That is of course why Inglorious Bastards was such a box office failure.

Again, I am not saying they way they did it didn't work and have its own style. It obviously did. What I am saying is that it was sort of unrealistic, and you can have both (style and realism) if you want it.

Titanic and Inglourious Basterds were also very different films from Star Wars. Star Wars is more of a pure sci-fi action film with dashes of fantasy thrown in. Titanic is a period drama/romance with an element of historic recreation. Inglourious Basterds is Quentin Tarantino being a pretentious asshole making a WWII alt-hist movie full of references to assorted B-movies, music and literature. Frankly, I suspect many men would have preferred a movie that was 30 minutes of Kate Winslet in a minimum of clothes and then 30 minutes of the ship sinking, but a movie that does not make. Having the Death Star slowly sink into Yavin with a maximum of dramatic disaster control, evacuation and assorted madness would have been interesting and perhaps even pretty well done... but it would not have suited the overall flow of the film, and would not have brought the action to a satisfactory climax. Rather, it would have prolonged the film somewhat unnecessarily when it better suits the literary theme of the hero's journey that Luke Skywalker is beginning for him to pull off the last-minute Hail Mary shot by the power of the Force that begins to unlock itself, the Death Star explodes, and everybody (but Chewbacca) gets a medal.

However, that's venturing into the highly subjective territory of film and literary criticism.

While that'd be nice, the EU doesn't particularly support the notion. Apparently he was signing paperwork related to the Sanctuary hyperspace route to Endor at the time. Instant video from the site of an assault is a modern notion, not something you'll see in a 1970s era film. Even in Revenge of the Sith (the prequels have some embarrassing anachronisms) the Jedi and clones don't use any such; the closest we get are the clones' hologram walkie-talkies.

He can't have the holovid on it the background? And no its not a modern notion, movies since the concept of video existed have loved to insert people watching footage of events as they happen, generally from vantage points that it would be impossible to observe but that's another movieism. See ST2, when the Reliant blows up and that is in 82. Hell ST TMP does it repeatedly and gratuitously and was released in 79, just two years after ANH. Come to think of it every time you see the damn view-screen in a ST episode of any series including TOS which predates SWs. And are you seriously telling us that a civilization that can trivially transmit real time holographic video chats across galactic distances somehow lacks the capability of do the same for a 2D video feed or hell a 3D real-time tactical display? Are you really claiming that as the most important military vessel in the Empire was about to take out a significant military threat nobody off the station was interested in monitoring that?

The point is they can do that, should have been doing that, and would have been doing that. You can claim they didn't, but without proof they didn't the default should be they were. Especially since the Emperor should have discerned what happened via the force instantly if not from the destruction of the DS itself then from the defeat of Vader.

OK, a few points:

--Yes, the notion of instanteous video communication has been around. I'm talking about a real-time feed from a battle, which is somewhat different. Even in TESB, Vader takes a time-out to talk to the Emperor. I'll concede that in-universe they do have the capability to do so; I'm saying that out of universe, at the time the film was made, that simply was not something that people were particularly aware of being a possibility, so they didn't feature a live streaming real-time feed of the Battle of Yavin in Star Wars in 1977.

--We don't see the Death Star engaging in continuous real-time streaming of their battle... so you want us to assume that they were. What's your evidence? Where is the line about 'stabilize the holo-comm link to Coruscant' or whatever? Just because they can doesn't mean that they were.

--Yavin was *not* considered to be a 'significant military threat'. It's an important point in the history of the Rebellion that up to the Battle of Yavin, the Rebellion was a very small thing, and only after the destruction of the Death Star coupled with Palpatine dissolving the Senate did worlds begin seceding en masse and joining the Alliance. As far as Tarkin and Vader knew, they weren't taking on a serious threat. Rather, they were going to find a base of this small rebel group that has dared to offend the Empire and destroy it. The main reason they sent the Death Star to deal with Yavin was to make an example and Tarkin was being arrogant. They were expecting fighters and a small fleet... something the Death Star was considered capable of handling on its own, and they hadn't bothered to notice the thermal-port weakness.

--Should Palpatine have been able to communicate with Vader, or... visualize him, whatever, via the Force, across half the galaxy or however far Yavin is from wherever he was at the time? Maybe. Out of universe, of course, they hadn't particularly bothered to think about that angle (and indeed may not have thought very much about the Emperor's character at that time).

Star Wars reactors are not real-world reactors. You shoot them, they tend to go bang. Stupid? Sure. But as noted in this thread, they tend to be in the middle of ships, protected by armour plating and shields. If you get to where you can shoot them (Death Star aside) the people around that reactor are probably screwed anyway.

Do you have any examples of this outside the Death Stars themselves? Reactors are shielded and protected because you need them to make the ship work, not necessarily because they explode on contact. If they don't explode when shot and are just inactivated the ship is just as useless as if it had exploded. For instance WWII battleship engines didn't explode when hit and they occupied the most protected space on the ship along with the magazines that did.

WWII battleships aren't Star Wars battleships. The reactor is not the engine itself; it's the power generation for the ship that may also supply power to the engines. Reactors do tend to be heavily protected, yeah, but I would say that their volatility is a prime reason why they're protected.

No, I don't have any examples outside of the Death Stars. Most warship kills in Star Wars tend to go very quickly-- shields are penetrated, a few shots hit home, and they explode. This is either from the power of the weaponry used, or it's from the weapons damaging onboard equipment such as magazines (which don't quite exist in SW per se thanks to using energy weapons, although there are some physical projectiles and of course oddities like guns ejecting shells in the Battle of Coruscant). So it makes sense to deduct that reactor damage does play a part in the quick detonation.

In any case, no, the DS crew would not be mounting organized competent planetary invasions from a crippled and failing DS. Again I take you to the Executor. Did its thousands of troops escape combat ready to the Endor moon to save the day? Hell the actual DSII had a non instantaneous destruction, enough time for Luke to luckily find a shuttle on a launch pad and escape. Did the Imperials he ran across on the way to the hanger seem organized and worried about taking the fight to the rebels? Did the hanger he escaped from look up to hosting a planetary invasion? Did hundreds of thousands of crew escape to Endor in fighting trim to reinforce the Executor's contingent already taking it to the enemy? Nope.

DSII is a different situation. It's been stated in the canon that the Emperor was a direct presence in the battle on the Imperial side, and his death literally threw them into confusion. The station also was not fully manned; it was operational, but definitely didn't look up to much other than blowing up a few ships. Executor also was destroyed too fast for anybody to really evacuate.

While the DSII didn't explode instantly, it also didn't take very long-- under 5 minutes, IIRC. Wedge and Lando don't blow the reactor until right after Vader throws the Emperor down the shaft and collapses. Luke then hauls him into the elevator, and we don't know which hangar they ended up in but presumably the Emperor's personal turbolift is a high-speed one. They take a few minutes in the hangar to exchange regards, then a shuttle is seen hauling ass out of the hangar as the DS explodes.

I said 'might', not 'are'. But since you asked so nicely.

Death Star blueprints, not going to inline the image as it's pretty big

Note in particular: 'ion drive reactor', 'power cell', 'stellar fuel bottles'. Unless you want to suggest that there's a feedback mechanism or some such that might burn out the entirety of their power generation, they have power available besides just the primary reactor. Also, I didn't say it would keep the station running entirely, just powering the guns, which is quite possible-- they don't want a main reactor shut-down to affect the station's defensive capabilities in case, for example, sabotage shuts it down in open space with a Rebel fleet nearby.

Power cells and fuel bottles are irrelevant. Can you drive you car with a full gas tank but no engine?
[snip for length]
Now we don't exactly know how the power systems on the DS works but unless you think the main reactor is there solely to service the super laser it is obviously the main power source for everything. If that's the case its size relative to any identified backup means those backups can only support a small fraction of the DS's normal operating power load. And note that unlike say an Arleigh Burke that has three separate equally sized generators for main power the DS has one reactor. That means that its all or nothing for main power, not just a mission kill for like for said DDG. This is not that uncommon really, a modern US carrier has two reactors for some redundancy but every submarine class has only one reactor. If it goes down its lights out.

Anyway, the point is yes warships go down hard due to losing one reactor, and even get mission killed when losing one of many. The first things to go are not the little things like lights, secondary weapons or communications but the big things like primary sensors (if they are large power draws, they are in the real world), main propulsion, and things I assume take a lot of energy like gravity.

I would argue that they aren't irrelevant. I'm also not saying the DS can run at 200% of capacity. Something along the lines of, say, 125% perhaps. Power cells are most likely some form of monstrous battery, and 'stellar fuel', while largely unknown, can be deducted to have something to do with powering the ion engines, which it should be noted do have their own reactors separate from the main reactor itself. Presumably the main reactor primarily powers weapons, superlaser, and perhaps the hyperdrive. The superlaser does have its own power cell.

So it's not that hard to deduct that even if the main reactor went down, the ion drive reactors may still be able to function, and the power could be reassigned to other divisions with a concomitant loss in drive power. The power cells would provide backup energy until they were drained.

So don't make it hang slowly in a barely decaying orbit. And honestly I think the problem of organizing a planetary invasion gets worse the more castaways you have, not better. How do you feed 650K people, many probably injured, on a wilderness planet hosting a well appointed and dug in hostile enemy force ready and waiting?

So... the Death Star exploding removes both those problems from the equation. I don't see the issue there.

[biostem]

I'd also like to point out that, if we go by the movies, Tarkin seemed to have a huge amount of autonomy in Ep 4 - it didn't appear that the Emperor became personally interested until Vader was sort of "promoted" to be the one heading the anti-rebellion efforts in TESB.

[Patroklos]

Tarkin was Paltantine's creature, just like so many. Nobody was really independent in his Empire, though he liked to let them think they were. They all fit into a vast constellation of competing courtiers struggling for power against each other with him pulling the strings from behind the scenes. Every detailed description of Palpantine corroborates this. It's his thing.

But that's really irrelevant. The USS Nimitz disappears tonight while doing nothing particularly noteworthy. How long do you think it takes someone to notice this? The answer is instantaneously. It's plugged into so may comms networks and data links thousands of people across the DoD would instantly go WTF. Now let's say it goes missing while running sorties into Afghanistan...

The counter to this so far is the DS and the Imperial military are Luddites and lack the coordination and IT resources of a pre-fusion terrestrial maritime Navy. Also a dictatorial dystopian government universally depicted as paranoid and surveillance obsessed culture to include against itself (ISB anyone?) dominated by untrusting alpha personalities in competition and one in particular with magic powers to do so all of a sudden stopped giving a shit about all that for the first military victory of a new super weapon controlled by one of them. Yeah..

Also to address something said earlier the Executor didn't leave the asteroid field because they didn't have comms there. They left it because someone like the Emperor warrants a crystal clear signal. What that scene tells us is that even in the middle of an asteroid field an Imperial warship can engage in realtime holographic communication at galactic distances, even if perhaps with a bit of static. Note the Emperor had zero difficulty getting in contact with the Executor, nor did the Executor and its attending ISDs have any problem communicating with each other from within the asteroid field. It's a demonstration of communications prowess, not weakness.

[Lord Revan]

the thing is what we have to remember that DS was (at least if the legendaries are to belived) a black op in and of itself, so it's not impossible that it would be "dark" unless explictly told to be in constant contact. That said I dout anyone is implying that the Empire doesn't have the technology to keep DS in constant contact however it's not impossible or even unlikely that even the military HoloNet is in rather poor condition in the Outerrim systems and while point to point connection exists we also know that local conditions effect those transmissions.