Science-fiction lovers will occasionally take realism in our movies, games, and TV shows for granted. Science fiction is about pushing the limits of of our imagination when it comes to what is possible. Hyper-intelligent machines, laser guns, and faster-than-light travel are just a few of the commodities that science fiction has give to us that exceed our current reality. And perhaps no other science fiction franchise is as well known or as beloved as Star Wars.
We love Star Wars for the magnificent space saga it has given us about the Skywalker family. But come on, we all have to admit that the technology that Star Wars showed us is the real draw. Who has not wanted a lightsaber at some point? Who hasn’t pretended to have their own Millennium Falcon? And let’s not forget the Death Star, the ultimate weapon of villainous proportions.
But is the Death Star all it’s really cracked up to be? The more I think about how the Death Star functions and what it is intended to do, the more I see flaws in its conception. If you really think about it, the Death Star is the most nonsensical science-fiction item ever created. I can no longer ignore the fact that the Death Star is, quite frankly, the most inane piece of equipment a bad guy has ever wasted his/her time building. You think I’m kidding? Read on if you want to learn how and why the Death Star is more than a little bit dumb.
25 How Does It Move?
The Death Star is exactly what it looks like. It’s a giant ball in space. So have you ever wondered how it moves? It does move, as shown in A New Hope when it shifts into position to attack the Rebel Base on Yavin 4 and in Rogue One when it shows up to fire on Scarif.
But how? As far as I can tell, there is no sign of a propulsion system on its rear. What exactly is the Death Star using to push itself forward in a gravity-less environment?
24 How Can They Afford This?
Economics students at Lehigh University actually attempted to calculate how much the Death Star would have taken to build. The answer was ginormous.
It would take roughly $852 septillion just to construct the Death Star.
That figure does not even take into account the funds necessary to pay the employees needed to run the thing or the equipment necessary to fund additional TIE Fighter battalions. There is honestly no way that the Empire could have paid for the Death Star, let alone two of them.
23 Bad Management
Darth Vader may have been the Dark Lord aboard the Death Star, but we all knew that Governor Tarkin was the man in charge. He just did a terrible job. Think about it. Tarkin knew the Rebels had just stolen plans to the Death Star that could reveal a weakness in the battle station.
Instead of regrouping and searching for what that weakness might be, Tarkin decided to confront the Rebels immediately. He basically attacked an enemy group knowing he had faulty equipment.
22 Why Didn’t They Get To The Point?
If you’re trying to attack a small thermal exhaust port, why not just fly directly to said exhaust port instead of zooming along a trench for several minutes beforehand? It is like science-fiction creators sometimes forget that space is a three-dimensional area, and that there are multiple ways to approach things.
Did Luke and his fellow X-Wing pilots really have to travel through that trench in order to reach the port? Couldn’t he and his fellow Rebels have just flown directly to it?
21 Paint A Bullseye On The Weak Point
Speaking of the trench run in A New Hope, how silly is it that the Death Star would have a trench leading directly to its one weakness. Are trenches normal adornments for thermal exhaust ports? Was there any logical reason for that port to have a trench leading directly to it?
Granted, I’m no engineer of Death Stars, so I have no clue what I’m talking about. It seems to me, however, that all a thermal exhaust port needs to be is a vent releasing heat. A trench has nothing to do with it.
20 A Humongous Secret
The prequels revealed to us that the Death Star had been planned since before the Clone Wars. The Separatist leadership had apparently been preparing for the enormous battle station for a while.
But if that was the case, how did the Death Star remain a secret for so long?
A construction of that magnitude requires a ton of workers. Are you telling me that all of these employees kept their mouths shut about what they were working on? Someone had to spill the beans.
19 A Door To The Vacuum
One of the things I never really noticed until I was older was how the Death Star apparently has an open hangar bay door to outer space. How do the Imperials retain any atmosphere within the hangar with such a gaping hole like that?
In the Star Wars universe, magnetic shields over open doors prevent the loss of oxygen and atmosphere from an enclosed space. Umm, okay. What exactly is this technology and how are more people not using it?
18 That’s Not How A Shield Works
The second Death Star got an upgrade in protection from the first. Thanks to a facility on the forest moon of Endor, the second Death Star had a shield surrounding it that the Rebels could not penetrate.
But if the Rebels were not able to attack the Death Star II because of that shield, shouldn’t the shield have prevented the Death Star from firing upon the Rebels? That presentation of how the second Death Star was operational was total bologna.
17 Keeping The Falcon In Mind
When the Rebels are finally able to make an attack run on the second Death Star, Lando pilots the Millennium Falcon into the bowels of the half-constructed space station. He leads a small group of ships along some pipelines that eventually lead to the reactor.
The Death Star is understandably gargantuan, but mayhaps, while they were building this second station, they could have made the pathways leading to the reactor smaller. There’s no reason why the Millennium Falcon should have been able to fit inside those tunnels.
16 Expecting Trouble
Let’s return to the first Star Wars movie for a moment. Remember how we were talking about how insane it was for the Empire to have built a trench leading directly to the Death Star’s one weakness? (It’s almost like they knew it was a weakness.)
It is also insane to have placed guns inside the trench to ward off an attack. Seriously, there is no reason for the Imperials to have turrets there unless they knew that the thermal exhaust port was going to come under attack.
15 Inconsistent Timing
The first Death Star was being planned all the way back during Attack of the Clones. It became operational in A New Hope. That’s roughly twenty years of planning before that moon-sized battle station came to fruition.
However, the second Death Star was operational within four to five years after the destruction of the first. What gives? Why did the second one take such a short time to build compared to the first one? Did the Empire just happen to have a spare Death Star lying around?
14 That’s How You Dispose Of Trash
The Empire appears to run a tight ship. When Luke, Han, and Leia roam the halls of the Death Star, they are stark and clean. Imperials don’t seem the sort to suffer uncleanliness or untidiness. I wonder if they’re aware there is a monster living in their trash compactor.
Known as the dianoga, this creature resides aboard the Death Star and nearly consumes Luke when he and his friends fall down the garbage chute. He’s cute and all, but I don’t think this dianoga can live up to Imperial standards of order.
13 Acceptable Explosive Casualties
Twice in the Star Wars universe has a Death Star exploded. Both times that a Death Star erupted into a fiery blossom, several ships fled the area and survived the blast after just being nearby. How is that possible?
Each Death Star was roughly the size of a planetoid. I’m assuming that any explosion caused by such large constructions would have caught anybody flying nearby. So I’m sorry to say that Luke, Han, Chewie, Wedge, Darth Vader, Lando, and Nien Nunb should not have survived the end of the Death Stars.
12 Poor Palpatine
For the Emperor of a Galactic Empire, Palpatine was not that smart. He boasts to Luke at the end of Return of the Jedi that he leaked the plans to the second Death Star in order to entrap the Rebels. He gave them the weakness of the station so that they could attack and he could then show them that it was operational.
I get ensnaring your enemies. But why on earth would you give them the actual plans to the Death Star?! Why not leak fake plans to the Rebels so that even if they managed to get the shields down, their attack would be ineffective?
11 So Long, Alderaan
One of the major things that I don’t understand about the Death Star is how it is able to generate enough energy to destroy an entire planet. This is where science fiction stretches the imagination to unreasonable lengths.
The Death Star generates a beam of energy that manages to blow up a planet.
How does that even work? It’s incomprehensible. What exactly in is this green laser of light that causes a planet to burst into tiny pieces? Will the science of the Death Star ever be explained?
10 Where Is The Security On This Station?
In A New Hope, the Millennium Falcon is caught in the Death Star’s tractor beam and pulled into the station. Before Han, Chewie, Luke, and the droids can leave, Obi-Wan Kenobi has to disable that tractor beam. He manages to sneak next to a panel and accomplish just that without much fuss.
But are you saying that no one on the Death Star noticed that the tractor beam was turned off? There was no dude who was sitting at his desk who suddenly got an alert that something that should be on was no longer working?
9 Could You Be More Specific, Dad?
Rogue One introduced us to Galen Erso, the man responsible for the construction of the Death Star. Unwillingly forced to work on this weapon, Galen planted a weakness in the designs so that the Rebels could later exploit it. He even sent a message to his daughter, Jyn Erso, telling her about this weakness.
If he was willing to risk sending her a message about the weakness, couldn’t he have just told her what it was in that message? Instead, all he told her in that message was that a weakness existed.
8 Mind The Gaps
The way I see the Death Star is that it’s an enclosed sphere that can shoot a giant laser from a small opening. But when I look at the second Death Star, which was still under construction when we saw it, it has none of the security that the first had.
The interior is open to the elements.
Was the atmosphere held in by some other means? How were people able to exist within the Death Star II if a large portion of it was just left open to the vacuum of space?
7 Why Make The Whole Thing When Half Is Fine?
As stated earlier, the second Death Star was only partly finished when we encountered it in Return of the Jedi. However, as the Emperor so gleefully points out to Luke when he has him as a captive audience, this Death Star is still operational.
I’m no great great thinker, but if a half-built Death Star can do the job of a full-built Death Star, wouldn’t it make more sense to just build half-Death Stars in order to save on expenses? Who needs an entire Death Star when part of one can function just fine.
6 Hotel Death Star
The Death Star is not only a weapon of mass destruction; it is also a battle station. Imperial officers can reside within it. If the goal of the Empire is to build a weapon to terrorize the masses with, making that weapon a battle station makes no logical sense.
There is no reason why people should be able to live on the station.
The Death Star could have just been a floating space weapon. Instead, resources had to be devoted to make it habitable for humans.
