Lit Death Star 2

I've been told that work on the second Death Star began after ANH. Surely that can't be true, can it?
The original took 20 years, even with the benefit of hindsight it would take lo ger than 3 years to build another?

Btw, is it canon that it is larger than the original still?

Who was in charge of the project; who was the Tarkin?

How did these projects not bankrupt the Empire? lol

 

I wouldn't be surprised (would almost be surprised otherwise) if there's a hint if not direct mention of the second DS in Rogue One. Sort of like Contact with the alien machines -- why build one when you can have two? Or really any new gadget today. Start building one of something and realize there's a better way halfway through, start work on v.2.0 and in the meantime sell v.1.0 like it's the best thing ever until next time.

Intro to ROTJ:
Little does Luke know that the GALACTIC EMPIRE has secretly begun construction on a new armored space station even more powerful than the first dreaded Death Star.

 

More powerful doesn't have to mean bigger though. Tech seems to get smaller and more powerful as time goes on.

Maybe if Rogue One is a huge hit we'll get rogue two witha group of Bothans...

 

According to Ultimate Star Wars (which, despites its occasional mistakes, is still a canon book), DS 1 is 120 km in diameter, while DS 2 is 160 km.

An yes, Moving Target: A Princess Leia Adventure makes it clear that the Emperor ordered the construction of DS 2 right after the Yavin defeat.

 

Could it be that the empire only announced it at that time? I haven't read the book.

 

In Moving Target the Rebels see it on a recon flight and it doesn't sound too far off what we see in ROTJ - the superlaser dish is in place and 'huge chunks of the battle station were missing, with skeletal fingers of metal outlining the whole sphere'.

Ackbar says 'The Empire has begun construction on a second Death Star' and then a couple of paras later Leia frets:

Just based on Moving Target you can't really tell when construction started, but the implication seems to be that it's new; I suppose it's quicker to rebuild something like that than to build it in the first place; and the Emperor would be throwing absurd resources at it.

 

The EU dropped hints that work on the Second Death Star began before the first was destroyed. Zahn's Mos Eisley Cantina short story: Hammertong: The Tale of the "Tonnika Sisters" revolved around a prototype DS2 component, The Essential Guide to Warfare said the DS2 was already in the initial stages of construction at the time the DS1 was destroyed, and the Imperial Handbook (intended to be thought of as an in-universe book published right before ANH) mentioned the two possible ways of following up on the DS1 - one was to produce several more, the other was to produce a single larger one.

In Choices of One (set 9 months after ANH) the DS2 has already attained "half-sphere" appearance, and in Brian Wood's Star Wars comic series (also set only shortly after ANH) it already looks not far off its ROTJ appearance.

It'll be interesting to see how the newcanon handles it.

 

The Death Star 2's origins have always been a mystery in EU, here's hoping new canon decides to give us a full explanation when and where the concept came from.

Personally I've always just assumed that the Death Star 1 took twenty years because they were taking they're time and doing it right. However after Yavin Palpatine was like "I want a new one and I want it completed yesterday, work whole worlds to death if you have we need a new death star!"

 

How about they recon Admiral Daala and the Maw Installation. only this time the prototype death star, the proof of concept is transfered to Endor following the destruction of the Death Star and they build on that?

 

But 20 year to 3? The empire must have had no idea what they were doing on the original. Maybe we'llget a new DS book in the future and it will be explained that they basically had to restart several times because the superlaser didn't work.

 

Hey, there's this movie coming out...

 

DS1 Tech Support: "Did you try turning it off, unplugging it, plugging it back in and restarting it?"

 

There's also the fact that the first Death Star had to be built in complete secrecy. the second one probably didn't need to be as hidden, so you didn't have to have the supplies being sent from one system to another to another, sections built piece by piece in different areas, the occasional genocide, etc.

 

Who knows maybe with the first death star, the empire used moderation when it came to supplying it, a couple thousand slave labour from planet one planet a quarter of the durasteel supplies from another. Then with the second Death Star they depleted entire star sectors of slaves and such in a single go to get it up and running.

 

I always thought showing the Death Star already well on its way to construction at the end of ROTS was one of that movie's sillier parts. Showing us a copy of the plans on Geonosis in AOTC was a perfectly good bit of foreshadowing, but the final scene in ROTS was just begging for something like this.

As for who was in charge, wasn't it simply Jerjerrod?

The expenses. Eh. It's the Empire. If their resources weren't enough, I'm sure generous credit was extended by the Intergalactic Banking Clan. They have an interest in keeping on good terms with the rulers of the known universe.

The real question for me is, if it's possible for one Star Destroyer to turn the surface of a planet into a post-nuclear apocalyptic wasteland, why was a Death Star ever needed? You don't actually need planets physically blown to bits if you can destroy all human activity on the surface. Star Destroyers are much more cost-effective than Death Stars. For what it takes you to build one Death Star, you can build dozens, maybe even hundreds of Star Destroyers, which can be spread out all over the galaxy in a way that a Death Star can't. It's a lot harder for an enemy fleet to blow up a hundred Star Destroyers than it is to take out one battle station (as we saw). It takes a little longer for a Star Destroyer to slag a planet than for a Death Star to blow it to itty-bitty pieces, but what difference does that make, really?

(Of course, I know the answer: because the Imperials love shock and awe. The galaxy knew what Base Delta Zero was, it had been a thing for centuries, but the shock of actually watching a planet destroyed is something else, even if a lot of that is in your mind. So is the shock of seeing on the scale of the Death Star. Honestly, half the reason the Empire built the thing was probably just to prove that they could. "Yes, we built our own goddamn moon. A moon that's capable not just of ruining a planet but of blowing it right out of space. That's the kind of military resources we have. And if you blow it up, we'll just build another one! If we have that kind of will and those kinds of resources, what hope do you have?" And I can appreciate that. But still, in terms of actual practical military applications, the Death Star's value seems... limited).

 

If I recall the Darth Vader comics correctly, the Imperial big brass does tend to follow that mentality. Tagge distinctly prefers a well equipped starfleet to the superweapon monstrosities.

 

It certainly came as a surprise to Commander Ree - and the Sanctuary Pipeline (referenced in Lost Stars as I recall) did seem like at least an attempt to keep it secret - since they'd created a special new hyperdrive pipeline to it rather than using standard routes.

 

Kreniiiiiic.

 

If you go by the newcanon junior novelization of ROTJ, Jerjerrod was heavily involved in the first Death Star's construction in addition to that of the second Death Star.

 

And I still don't get why our army man Tagge has anything to do with ships, but let's not digress.

 

I think Saxton speculated that it was TaggeCo's semi-commercial fleet (armed freighters?) that Motti was referring to.

 

The F22 Raptor was in R&D for over a decade before the first one flew, though this included a YF22 which flew. Then it did not hit full production until another decade passed. Now it takes something between 6 and 10 months to build one. Just scale it up to planet buster size needs.