Books Death Star Owner's Technical Manual: Imperial DS-1 Orbital Battle Station

I posted a similar reminder in the Fleet Junkie Thread, but it is appropriate to share it here too. These arguments & debates are fun (and encouraged!), but please remember to avoid personal attacks or name calling. If you come to a message board to find only like minded people, you will always be disappointed. Debate, argue, propose, refute, etc, but respect each other and remain civil.

--Adm. Nick

 

I'm with you on the latter, not the former. Fry's retcon for the Viscount was nice, because it provided an additional design in the Star Defender series and it showcased yet again more sizes within a particular production line, which brings me back to the Home One and the Home One Type in general. Now to be lobbied so the Home One herself is brought up into 3.2-3.6 km range, since we know this is an established practice in LFL.

 

Some variation I can accept. But when the class lead (The same art is used as both the Viscount herself and the Viscount class) is a mere ~1/2 of a percent (1/182) of the volume of the class named for it, we have a problem. And it would be easy to retcon back, saying that the Viscount in Vector Prime is the shuttle section of the full size ship (thanks to Home One for introducing this idea).

 

Its pretty laughable how these do this business of retcons and such. Oh well, I have always held little hope of their ever being a compromise or middle ground on any of the numbers, for me the Death Star 2 will always be much larger than the original.

Otherwise, I just started flipping through the book this morning and it all looks pretty nice. Just noticed that odd scaling issue on the torpedo sphere, which I now see earlier in the thread that the Iron_lord already pointed out. Has to be an error on the given diameter or on the diagram.

 

Given the existence of very large torpedo spheres (at least in the art) I like the notion that it's the given diameter that's wrong, and that the true diameter of a torpedo sphere is 19 or so km.

The Eye of Palpatine would still be slightly bigger in volume (to fulfill the statement that it's bigger than a torpedo sphere)- but not by much.

 

Heh, just look at what happened to the Eclipse-class prototype. It's like a reverse of this situation.

 

It would be interesting to know why the Eclipse II is so different from the Eclipse. Maybe the Byss shipyards revised the design after receiving it?

 

Possibly, at the size changes to the superstructure would be easier to see and take longer to do. Wonder what the prototype looked like before the conversion into the Tarkin?

 

Given how quickly it appeared after the first Eclipse was destroyed, I wonder if it looks different because they completed the critical systems, slapped the hull on, and rushed it into service, saying "we'll add things like space for passengers, gravity wells, computer security, and all those other unnecessary and redundant systems later."

 

Or just shoddy art work, it is Dark Empire after all.

 

As far as I know, construction on the two designs began almost simultaneously (the Eclipse at Kuat, the Eclipse II at Byss) and the Eclipse was evacuated from Kuat to Byss while still not quite complete, by the KDY staff when the Rebels took Kuat.

 

"Debate, argue, propose, refute, etc, but respect each other and remain civil."

Is this a dating site?

 

I can't be the only one positively sick to death of sloppy retcons ("unretcon" my butt) like this for necessarily spurious reasons. Not buying this thing.

 

Why are the reasons "necessarily spurious"?

If Ryder WIndham and the other two presented a convincing case to Leland Chee for using the old figures, when they lobbied him- then it's possible that this is what got him to agree to it.

 

Because their case could not have been convincing. Those figures are BS, sorry.

 

We know that the Forest Moon was sized as 4900km diameter in The Essential Atlas (possibly a retcon from earlier works).

Conclusion - the DS2 must be much smaller than the 900 km figure. Note that sizing based on the trench, that assumed there was no "super trench" beyond the one we see in the film, produces a 270km figure according to Saxton.

And even that figure's been disputed- with people such as Gary Sarli pointing out Saxton may have used the wrong bay for scaling- allowing a slightly smaller DS2 than Saxton's figure.

So, no, the figures aren't necessarily all that unsupported.

Somehow, I can't imagine Leland Chee just giving in to a bunch of completely unsupported arguments- after the DS1 and DS2 figures were first revised upward (in reference books) with the Inside the Worlds of the Star Wars Trilogy book.

 

When the one appearance of the Tantive IV in TCW is enough to radically alter everything we know about the ship and go against George Lucas' intent in RotS, then it becomes extremely difficult to take much of what they say seriously.

 

Sarli can argue what he likes, but his arguments were laughable. Second, Using the Forest Moon size to contradict ILM / the film / physics of Earth-like planets is similarly misconceived. Finally, what amongst any of that supports a figure of 160km, exactly? 270km, for example, isn't 160km.

If you start with the size you want and try and find evidence to support it, you're doing it wrong.

And the phrase "lobbied relentlessly" is the last thing I want to hear when talking about stuff like this. Its the completely wrong way to go about things. This isn't a political system.

 

Isn't that exactly what Saxton did- started with "over 500 miles in diameter" (based on an ILM quote) and then tried to find the evidence to support it?

I used to believe Saxton's writings- then I read The Essential Atlas, started getting suspicious, started looking around - and found counterarguments.

Don't know if Gorefiend did the same or not.

 

The ILM quote isn't the size he wanted, its evidence any honest analysis would be bound to consider - and extremely high order evidence at that since its contemporary with when the movie was made. Furthermore, Dr Saxton went through a whole range of estimates. His work is set out explicitly on his site, you should know, you pointed to an alternate measurement he himself came up with. Your trying to imply that he must've "wanted" a certain size is baseless.

The problem arises where you "find counterguments" (which often involves simply making stuff up, like Darth Vader's magic glove stopping the Endor holocaust or some similar nonsense) precisely because you don't like the consequences of what you're reading, as opposed to an honest and straightforward evaluation of evidence.

 

He begins with the assumption that the Forest Moon must be Earth sized, though. And he uses the 11.5:1 ratio even though many movie shots contradict it.

Now that the assumption that habitable planets in the SW universe must be approximately Earth-sized has been thrown out (several planets in The Essential Atlas are even smaller than the Forest Moon) - why are we constrained to the higher estimates of DS2 size rather than the lower ones?

And if there was indeed an error in Saxton's methodology for the low-end estimate - doesn't that mean the 160km figure approaches viability?

Ultimately though, we will never know for sure what arguments the Technical Manual writers used to convince Chee- unless they (or Chee) choose to tell us what they are.

 

That's not an assumption, that is the reality of the laws of physics.

First of all, the Essential Atlas didn't even exist at the time Dr Saxton did his analysis, so I don't see how going "ahah!" at a book that came out yeaaaaaaaars after is relevant. Second, that said book should control the laws of physics as to Earth-like planets is pretty silly on its face.

Why? 160km isn't the default position. There's got to be actual evidence to support it, and by evidence I mean something with a factual basis, not "WEG blurted it out and everyone just decided to mindlessly follow it".

 

Doubt everything Saxton has written heavily? That somehow comes naturally, because he always was just way to biased and selective in the stuff he threw together.

Ep 6 novel said the second one was about twice as big as the first, if you use the 120 for the first, you get the 160.

 

1. Why should anyone use 120km?
2. 120km x 2 isn't 160km, last I checked. So on what basis do you choose how to interpret that sentence?

 

Volume my friend, Volume and they used 120 because it was apparently what they were told to use.