Death Star (Back on Schedulde?)

At the end of Revenge of the Sith, the outer frame of the first Death Star is shown under construction. This imples, at least to me, the first Death Star took a whole generation to be built. Yet in Return of the Jedi an even larger Death Star is three-quarters completed a few short years after the destruction of its predecessor(sp?)? And Vader accuses the commander of dragging his feet?

 

The prototype is always difficult, the second one should go much faster. Try cooking a dish you've never made before, then make it again a few days later; it will go much faster, be less wasteful, cost less money, require less instruction, and probably taste better.

 

I agree with Sith_Rising and would like to add that many other things were happening throughout this time period that may have delayed things. I would think that the galaxy was a lot more stable during the time of ROTJ, the empire having a firmer grip and tighter control on everthing.

 

And DS II might have been started earlier than people think.

 

Remember there is a 20 year gap between Epi.III & IV that was more than enough time to get it built. Besides it may have only taken a year to build.

 

It's a theme that makes people chuckle, but some of the explanations being poste dhere are quite plausible.

 

There's what Sith Rising said, and then the fact that during the initial formative stages of the first Death Star, they hadn't yet enslaved the Wookiees for efficient construction.

There were endless set-backs, they still weren't sure 100% what they were doing, and by the time it came to make the second DS, they knew what they were doing.

 

As usual, the driving force in the Star Wars universe is Anakin's impatience.

 

@ Arawn -

With constructing an Empire from scratch, hunting down the rest of the Jedi, and suppressing all the Jedi followers, not to mention Vader's medical bills, I think Palpatine had his hands tied right up till ANH.

By ESB-RotJ, the Senate was disbanded, there was only that Skywalker brat to worry about, and pesty Rebels. Also, by then I think Palpatine was arrogant enough to devote more time to his pet project.

At least it explains the Alliance's luck concerning not being found by the Empire, they grew greatly in that time zone. Palpatine devotes more time to the DSII, less time to the Rebels, and they both flourish.

I think the DSII project was perfectly on schedule, just that Vader knew something was waiting in the wings to happen, and, Vader being Vader, couldn't handle waiting for it to happen in its own time. That something happened to be his death. Whoops.

 

Palpatine insisted on having the Death Star rebuilt automatically after it was destroyed. He killed its designer named Bevel Lemelisk and then cloned him and had him design one without the thermal exhaust port. The second Death Star was also bigger and had a better defense system. It was nearly complete in four years and despite how Vader acted about Palpatine's thoughts according to Wookieepedia Jerjerrod had met all the dealines. Aside from that there were nearby planets in which the Empire extracted the necessary materials to build making the trip to and back extremely short as far as supplies went.

 

And of course, in the twenty years they also built the Prototype Death Star as well to test all the superlaser features. And the DS II would probbyl have taken anothe couple of years to finish to the same standads as the frst, so about 7-8yrs, not too bad really...

Daft-Vader

 

I think DS2 was already in development waaaaayyy before ROTJ or even ANH. And, if you take EU into account, the DS at the end of ROTS was just a prototype shell.

 

I believe canonically it's the DS I:

 

Or how about: Let's-break-the-fourth-wall-and-assume-Death-Star-scene-in-ROTS-was-contrived-attempt-to-linkup-to-ANH-and-should-be-retconned-back-to-having-it-built-in-the-Maw-Installation-which-is-a-much-more-fitting-and-credible-backstory!

[/rant]

 

Don't forget about the Rebels stealing the Death Star plans every 15 minutes...

 

I forgot what book, but a OFFICIAL lucas arts book stated that the DS II was being planned to be built befor the DS I was ever finished.

 

I'm in the middle of reading the book Death Star right now...

This book really gives a great insight as to all the things that "would have been" involved with building this first one...all the problems, sabotage, delays, having to redo things cos the preliminary plans didn't fully explain things or anticipate possible setbacks...

Plus, as mentioned before, there was much more going on during the time between III and IV...the Rebellion was starting/growing in power, (a "new" threat at the time), the Empire itself was only a few years in place...

I would imagine that the second Death Star would have been started being built not long at all after the Rebellion was chased off of Yavin IV. which means there's around 4 years there to work on building it! And it was only about a little over 1/2 done by ROTJ. So looking at it from THAT timeline perspective, that actually makes perfect sense!

 

And the first time you build something it usually takes a lot longer to do it than the second time.

 

The first Death Star took a lot of time to build because it was a secret, right? Since the senate still existed, I think they would never allow for this object to be created in the first place. It was also the first time making the Death Star, where it was a prototype version actually, and those take a long time to figure out and get right. They must have had to make change to the structure over time.

There's also the power cell that the Empire probably easily duplicated in the events where the Death Star was almost completed.


While constructing the second, larder Death star, they already knew how to build it and had more man power since the Senate no longer had reason in the universe. They weren't even completed with the second Death Star in ROTJ on the first place anyways. The Empire were also behind on schedulde.