1st Death Star took them 20 years to build but 2nd one?

I dunno. How could Death Star construction have progressed so much considering that Tarkin freaking WIPED OUT his construction crew the moment the first one was completed?

 

rick mcallum has stated that the who and how the first death star is built will be covered in the tv series

 

I think its safe to assume the empire begain work on the 2nd death star right after the first was destroyed or maybe even before ANH.

 

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That would be an incorrect assumption as the RotJ crawl states that the empire has secretly BEGUN to build a second Death Star. In other words they have not been working on it for several years as you then would not use the word BEGUN.
The only way that they could have started before ANH and BEGUN would still be logical would be if one assumes that the passage of time between ANH and RotJ is rather short, perhaps a few months or maybe a year at most. Official sources would invalidate this but the films give no indication as to how much time actually passes.

So the second Death Star have nor been under construction for very long at the time RotJ starts and it seems that the empire did not have all that much left before it was complete.

That means that the difference between the build time of the two DS is about ten times faster for the second one, despite it being bigger.
A little odd but nothing that ruins the films to me.

Regards
Nordom

 

Its 3 years between ANH and ESB and 1 year between ESB and ROTJ. It is logical for them to have started building it after the 1st death star was destroyed and still say BEGUN in the crawl.

 

I assume the budget for the DSII was also significantly larger than for the original. Remember that after the first one was blown up, Palpatine probably could have gotten away with leveeing much higher taxes (tribute?) on member systems by claiming that the Empire was under attack by terrorists and needed more money for defense.

 

The Home Depot built the second Death Star. Those guys can do anything.

 

Yeah. They have Saturday workshops on trash compactor construction with tips and simple how to's. Very imformative.

 

The second Death Star would have taken a hell of a lot more manpower than the Imperial Army could muster so they must have brought in independetn contractors to get the job done. You think a stormtrooper knows how to install a toilet main? No all they know is killing in white armor. So the Empire hires independent contractors basically civilians to do the job. So then the Rebellion comes in blasting everything in sight and all those workers get killed in the process. Casualties of a war they had no involvement in.

 

While 19 years for the first and 4 for the second may be a bit of a stretch...it is kind of explained at the beginning of ROTJ when the Imperial Commander (can't remember his name) is telling Vader that the Emperor asked the impossible, referring to the amount of time they had to build the second Death Star, forcing them to double their efforts.

If that was to be taken literally, then it would suggest that a Death Star should take around 8 years to build, although since the "double our efforts" line happens in ROTJ it's unlikely, however for arguments sake, let's say it takes that long to build a Death Star and the Empire has to work twice as fast to get the second Death Star ready...doing it in four.

However 8 years is still less than half of the time it took to build the first one, so how can it be explained? Well it should be noted that the second Death Star was incomplete and the main focus appeared to be on getting the superlaser itself operational, whereas in the ANH, the first Death Star is complete and space worthy, however the superlaser isn't operational until halfway through the movie, suggesting that the structure was finished for a while but up to ANH they were still working on the superlaser.

So how does all that fit into a conceivable timeline?

19 BBY - Construction begins on the first Death Star.
4BBY- Construction of the superlaser begins, initial structure of the Death Star is completed.
0BBY - Death Star is complete.

0-4ABY - Construction begins on second Death Star.
1BBY - Construction begins on superlaser
2 ABY - Extra crews are added to speed up construction, building of the overall structure is slowed to concentrate on the superlaser.
3ABY - Death Star is now able to hold lifeforms, though it remains incompleted. All work on the structure is halted to concentrate fully on building the superlaser.
4 ABY - Superlaser is completed.

The above timeline is just theoretical, however it should be noted that the second Death Star has no defence systems and relies on the shield generator from Endor to stay protected. Since no gun turrets have been installed on the second Death Star yet, that would reduce the timeframe and while the sield generator has to built on Endor, it would be quicker to build than placing gun turrets on the Death Star.

So to summarise, how was the second Death Star built so quickly:

1. Following the competion of the basic internal structure (so that it could support life and perform basic operations) work began on the superlaser, leaving the main structure unfinished.

2. No conventional weapons systems were built and installed to protect the Death Star, forcing it to rely on the Imperial Fleet and the Endor shield generator for protection. The tureets etc would have been installed after the Battle of Endor, once the Alliance was defeated.

3. The Empire had already built one Death Star so it knew what it was doing and so was able to work faster, whereas the first Death Star was a slow process, given the unknown variables of building such a massive space station.

4. During the first 20 years of the Empire, the Empire would have been busy with other aspects of rule, bringing seperatists under the control of the Empire, hunting down Jedi and enforcing Imperial law among other things, so the Death Star wouldn't have been the Empire's top priority. However,by the completion of the first Death Star, resistance to Imperial rule had become a full-scale rebellion and after the Death Star's destruction, the second Death Star would have been seen as a top priority and the Empire would have devoted more resources to it, to get it built quicker to aid in the war against the Alliance.

5. Independant contractors...

 

Meh, I'm fairly annoyed that Lucas decided to put the Death Star construction scene into ROTS. I mean firstly, the film is about Darth Vader, not Death Stars. Secondly, Death Star construction, including the skeletal prototype has already been covered by EU authors, whom to my knowledge have been cleared by Lucas to write about these things. For him to go back and say "Oh, none of that's true anymore!" is just stupid.

 

Except that most movie-goers don't have a clue what happens in the EU. For me personally, if the movies contradict something in the EU, I go with the movies.

 

Exactly, the films supercede any EU crap!

 

They all have points...

But I mean it makes sense the Empire would want more than one "planet destroyer" aka death stars floating around...


I did think it was a heap cop out to just redo the death star thing in ROTJ...Would have been better if they built another type of superweapon.

 

I would go with the movies too, but I still feel that putting the DS construction in was like Lucas going "ME! ME! ME! ME! ME!!"

 

Retcon is needed and a hell of a retcon at that.

 

Haven't read the EU stuff about the Death Star, but I remember reading somewhere that it was changed so that the prototype Death Star was used to test the superlaser before installing it onto the real Death Star (from ROTS/ANH) or something.

 

Why in the world does this need 'retcon'?

 

This question arises all the time and I am jsut so astounded that anyone would need to waste their time.

Its called EXPERIENCE people. Everything always goes faster the second time, and that concept isnt supposed to be rocket science.

 

Just some numbers you might find interesting. They come from a book called Mining The Sky talking about the resources available in our main asteroid belt.

There is enough asteroidal iron to build:

A 2.4 billion mile long, 1 kilometer wide cylinder.

Or 4 million 1,000 kilometer long spaceships, each could house 2.5 billion people.

4 billion kilometer sized ships.

Making a rough guess, we have enough iron in our asteroid belt to build a few hundred thousand Death Stars, for size anyway, no FTL and no planet busting.

There is a web page in which a very smart person estimated that a mature Type II civilization could use the contents of our solar system(not just the asteroid belt) to build 100 billion Moon-sized optical telescopes and place them in a ring equal in size to Jupiter's orbit.

 

Vader says "They'll be no one to stop us this time." so its possible that the Rebellion may have sabotaged the 1st Death Star and slowed construction.

 

Yes i believe there is some kind of "Halt" to the construction of it by the Galactic Senate, the Rebels destroyed it, or something of that nature.

There is some kind of story to it i'm sure someone mentioned to george that the death star is 15+ years to early and he probly has a whole story to that situation.

If the Senate did stop the construction it would make sense that the Emperor would want to "dissovle" of them.

 

I think the first death star took 20 years to build, since it's 19 years between rots and anh, and at the end of rots there is a partial skeleton so far, so they've been working on it for at least a year, up to 3 years if he started right after getting the plans from dooku at the end of aotc.

The second death star didn't take 4 years to build, because it's not done yet!! Yes the superlaser works, and that's why palps was ready to spring the trap, but looking at the structure itself, it's only about 2/3's of the way completed. Meaning if it took 4 years to get it that far, it probably had another 2 years to go yet to completely finish it. So that would make it completed in 6 years, which is still a lot faster than 20 years, but like other people have said, it's a lot easier to build the second one after having the experience of building the first one, as well as advances in technology for construction I'm sure as well, so it could be possible.

 

I think the idea is that the second ( third, fourth, fifth ) Deathstar began construction not to long after the first. Palpatine wanted more then one Deathstar from the very beginning. Remember? Palpatine = Ironic God Complex?

 

Everyone seems to presume that they would wait until they were finished the first Death Star before constructing the second.

however, what if during construction they realize all of the flaws in the initial design, so immediately they begin working on a replacement.

The original one can either be scrapped or completed in say, three years. The new one will take another 8 to build. So instead of scrapping the first one, the build both together.

The first death star is only destined to be temporary until the second one is complete.

then the new twist....

knowing there is a second death star being constructed, the emperor decides to allow the rebels to learn of the vulnerabilities of the first death star hoping that they will amass their forces and attack it, allowing him to crush the rebellion in one quick stroke