How tall are the buildings on Coruscant?

Again, I'm watching the ROTS DVD right now. I see the Senate building (the circular building next to the smaller dome -- I think that's the Chancellor's office). I read somewhere that the Senate is two kilometers in diameter. This is the only hard figure I've come across in the literature regarding the size of a specific building on Coruscant.

In one of the shots, some of the background buildings appeared to be taller than the Senate is wide. Wouldn't this pose a problem for people standing on open balconies, given the presumably lower oxygen content at such high altitudes? Of course, this is assuming Coruscant has the partial pressure of oxygen similar to Earth, and that the tallest buildings have open balconies.

Another bit of evidence is the fall time of Anakin when he jumped out of the building in Episode Five. That building I think had an open balcony, but nobody seemed to have any problems breathing. Nonetheless, the descent was for several tens of seconds. Assuming Coruscant has a gravity similar to Earth, and that Anakin wasn't pulling any tricks on slowing his fall or whatever, that translates to well over a kilometer in height at least.

A third piece of evidence is at the very end of Episode Five. A bunch of people are standing on a balcony watching large "star destroyer"-looking ships take off into the distance. They take off near some buildings, and the buildings look several times the size of the star destroyers. *If* the ships that were taking off are comparable to the star destroyers of the old Star Wars (i.e., about 1600 meters), the buildings in the background are definitely several kilometers tall.

In any case, is there any definitive data on the height of the buildings on Coruscant?

 

Hahh, I just recently watched ROTS with my father. Being an analytical smart-ass, he made sure to point out, "How far up are they? At that altitude, you'd have no oxygen!"

So, yeah. Just a funny thing there.

 

Interesting topic....
I'd like to see what we can come up with.

I'm pretty sure that all of the buildings are within breathable oxygen levels. I mean, none of these buildings are sky-needles....even from "groud level", you can see the tops of them well enough. I'd think that they're on average 1.5 to 2 times the height of the former WTC towers....but even then they would still have the higher levels of those buildings sealed off pretty well.

However, that set aside, the thing I'd like to point out most of all is that we're not just talking about heights ABOVE "sea-level" (or whatever Coruscant uses as that equivalent) here....the BELOW "sea-level" distances also need to be taken into consideration. The buildings might well LOOK taller because you're also seeing the deeper chasms between them. Think about something like the Grand Canyon here....it looks huge, but you still have breathable atmosphere at both the top and the bottom of it, do you not? The Republic Cruisers might not be as tall as the building because they are on a LOWERED platform. And as for Anakin's free-fall, I believe it's certainly fair to assume that he WAS using the Force, if only to prevent acceleration and maintain a constant/safe speed. Different things like that....just be sure that the heights of the buildings you're checking out couldn't possibly be partially optical illusion.

 

Well its a planet wide city, you would think they could atleast regulate oxygen levels of the planet.

 

I read somewhere that the Senate is two kilometers in diameter. This is the only hard figure I've come across in the literature regarding the size of a specific building on Coruscant.
Based on scale of other things, I would say 2 kilometers in diameter is too high an estimate. I would guess maybe about 1 kilometer. The thing about the atmosphere is that we dont know what Coruscants atmosphere is like. It may have oxygen content much higher up than Earths.

 

Seems as if I recall that buildings are built on the ruins/foundations of older buildings.

The whole planet is a city.

 

According to the novels and other canonical sources, Courscant's city structure is millions of feet above the actual ground level of the planet. From the time the planet was first founded to where we are in "Legacy Of The Force", Courscant has built up on the ruins of the old structures. Or simply put, pile all the skyscrapers in the world together and that's about how talk Courscant's buildings are. It should be noted that in the opening shots of AOTC, we see several rooftops peaking through the clouds. The clouds are the lower level ones and not the upper atomosphere ones. When Anakin and Obi-wan both go free falling, they were a long way from hitting the bottom of the planet. They were barely even at what would be considered the halfway point of the city. The district where the nightclub was located is low enough to be on the seedy side, but not as low as the places where some of the outcasts of society are.

You're best asking some of the people in the Literature forums, as they can describe it better.

 

Courscant's city structure is millions of feet above the actual ground level of the planet.


which sources? . Millions of feet?. i wonder if EU writers know how many feet a Million is . there are 498 feet in a Kilometer. so that would make Courascants cities 2008.03128562248995983939743 miles above the surface. that's just plain ridiculous. that is why EU should be banned.

 

The millions was my estimation. I know that I'm off, I suck when it comes to units of measurement. But my point is that the city structure huge. Tall enough to poke through the clouds and no building on Earth is that tall. One of, if not the tallest structure is in Canada.

 

Dark Lord and the OS databank has the EmPal SuRecon Center in one the tallest buildings on Coruscant. Didn't seem particularly high to me. It didn't pierce the clouds like those AotC buildings did. But, then again, that could be attributed to the weather. It very well could've been fog we saw in Clones.

 

there are 498 feet in a Kilometer

Nope. A kilometer is .62137 of a mile, so there are about 3281 feet in a kilometer.

 

OWNED

We must remember that Coruscant and Earth are not the same planet. The distance between the surface and atmosphere is probably much, much bigger on Coruscant (not that I think it's millions of kilometers).

 

your right that would make 304 miles above the planet. still ridiculous though. .

OWNED

Totally. thanks

 

Tall enough

 

There you have it.

 

Well, let's see. The entire planet is a city. Don't see too many trees or plants laying around in the parts we DO see. Granted, they are the most "Downtown" parts, but I get the impression there is no Tropical Rain forest on Coruscant. No plants, no way to make oxygen. No way to make Oxygen...need artificial atmosphere. With an artificial atmosphere, there is no telling how far up there is oxygen. An artificial atmosphere isn't that far out of context, as doesn't the RoTS novel talk about some kind of Sun Mirror to deflect the Rays or something wacky like that?

Carnage

 

I believe that the building on Curoscant are about 10X the height of the ones on Earth.
Thus the taller building are about 2.5-3 miles high.
The average buildings are probably around 3000 feet to 1 mile.

There was actaully a building propsed in Japan in 1989 that was to be 6,668 feet tall which is about 1.3 miles and would take 25 years to build, so it is not completely unreasonable that these heights can be attained. The talles building on the planet could be 6 miles high perhpaps.
but the super tall 3 mile buildings would be about the equivilent of the Rocky mountains in Colorado.
Hardly a worry about weather you can breathe. I was on top of Pike's peak which is just shy of 3 miles in elevation and had no trouble breathing at all.
Plus, as others have mentioned, the chasms may be super deep as well so some buildings from top to sub terranian level may appear to be 5-10 miles.

As for feet per Km, well I believe that would be a little over 3000 feet per km.

one mile = 5,280 feet, 1 kilo = .62 miles

 

Granted, they are the most "Downtown" parts, but I get the impression there is no Tropical Rain forest on Coruscant. No plants, no way to make oxygen. No way to make Oxygen...need artificial atmosphere.

But the surface of the planet does look hot. Some rocks release oxygen when heated, which may explain where Coruscant gets its oxygen.


In AOTC, Anakin goes straight down into Coruscant at a high rate of speed for 23 seconds. Even then, he looks like hes only half way down. So the buildings have to be many many miles up.

 

Those were street lights when you see Anakin and Obi-wan doing their free fall acts. I don't recall reading too many books that mention lava in the lower levels.

The Sun Mirror goes back to the Jedi Academy Trilogy, IIRC. It was designed to allow sunlight to hit the necessary parts of the planet, so that even some of the lower levels can have the sun. Prior to the PT, Courscant did have some bare spots where the city structure did not cover. The mountains near the poles, a small ocean and a small arid type reigion. You can't see these when you watch the films, but they're still there. The Solos and Kyp Durron go on vaction to the snow packed reigions in "Dark Apprentice".

I can't recall if there is an atomosphere processing system in place or not. Though I would assume so.

 

oh oh oh EU you know!!! Sun Mirror? that's cool I guess, but where is this in ROTS is it even in the novel? Just curious.

 

Scale can be misleading in live action sequences. Nonetheless, the Senate IS about two kilometers in diameter according to a fairly reputable source (http://www.starwars.com/databank/organization/galacticsenate/?id=eu).

If you look at the picture of the Senate, there is some sort of ground level. The ground level can also be plainly seen when the Grevious' ship crashes into the spaceport, which was on the ground level.

 

I don't think it's MILLIONS, but the main thing you're getting at here is a valid point. The actual ground surface of the planet itself it buried WAY down there....although I don't think it could possibly be more (and is probably significantly less than) than a mile. The point is that the city structure of the planet has been built up so much that the original zone of breathable atmosphere has shifted up (and expanded as necessary) to accomodate the NEW "ground level"....even though it's an artificial ground. So it really doesn't matter. "Ground level" on Coruscant might not ACTUALLY be the surface of the planet, but it's still the "ground level" reference point as far as we're concerned here.

I believe that was early morning fog.
The best shot of regular clouds I can remember right now is the ROTS scene where Anakin is piloting the forward half of the Invisible Hand, and they make their re-entry into the atmosphere....just after Obi-Wan's line "We're in the atmosphere!", and as the smoke starts trailing off the ship before the fire-ships arrive.

 

According to Inside The Worlds of Star Wars Episode I it states that many of the buildings reach 6,000 meters or 20,000 feet, just a bit under 4 miles.

In the real world this would be possible with carbon nanotubes. In a GFFA they would not only have that but have the pseudo-science of gravity control and force fields. Coruscant's gravity is supposed to bit a bit higher than Earth's, ut any being need only to configue their own quarters with the appropriate gravity along with force fields to keep the air where they need it within and just outside of all the buildings.

Coruscant is an example of an ecumenopolis.

 

It's OK to assume that Coruscant and Earth are roughly the same size with the same atmosphere and the same gravity and the same 24 hour time period (give or take an hour). The reason for this is that it's easier for an audience to accept. To make Coruscant too alien will confuse the audience and you certainly don't want to do that.

Remember that Coruscant is based on the planet Trantor from Asimov's Foundation novels.

It almost sounds like we need an "incredible cross sections" on the SW planets as I too would be keen to learn about the building heights and were exactly is the "ground".

 

Why didn't those people freeze on sky city in TESB! They are freaking floating in the sky!

It's a movie. I don't like those sort of responses but this is the best one. When dealing with alien planents I don't think we can always make earth-centric presumptions.

Someone also mentioned how does Coruasant have O2 when there are no trees! It's a movie!