ST POLL: The Death Star Wreckage

I'm part of the minority that believes it's the first DS. It makes sense to conclude the Sidious laugh and that scene would be DS2's resting place on Endor. (or, it's an intentional distraction.)

But....
DS1 had way more significance in terms of negative force energy, as in it destroyed not a few capital ships, but Alderaan, Scarif and Jedah.

In terms of making a Kyber bleed...DS1's crystals must be cherry red.

Also, DS1 has featured more prominently in the new canon novels, movies and comics. As well as Leia and...Tarkin.

 

Well this is a smash grab armed robbery copy paste of ROTJ. They already smash grab armed robbery copy pasted SW77. They already smash grab armed robbery copy pasted ESB. By the time the flash, bang, pop, whistle, sizzle, and other noises are done, as of theatrical release, it is going to be plain as day that the film was not worth the hype that goes into it from day 1, 44, 58, 2.4576, pi, or the day of this trailer.

What you do have is people that are trained to within an inch of their lives, and paid emperors' ransoms, to maximally extract the sparest fingerful of frames that can be juxtaposed to the greatest effect that makes the set of instruments, called viewers, all tingle in resonance at their own sympathetic frequencies.

In this detail here, this is DS II. Because it is Disney. Disney is not going to do the harder, broader thing. Disney's going to do the simpler, easier thing. It is irrelevant that Disney production design had a budget that all got blown drawing CGI motion capture porgs and they could only afford to put up a CGI mesh of DS I. They're going with it. They won't notice, they won't think the fans notice, fans that do notice will be pot shot in a blocked off street by self-appointed arbiters and gatekeepers of what constitutes non-toxic, rational fandom, and that will be the end of it. There will be no Big Endian conflict over whether this is DS I or DS II. It is DS I and it will be used to represent DS II because this is Disney.

Waaaaay too much intelligence is demanded to implement this as DS I.

 

I think it's a possibility

 

You know when I watched that scene in the trailer, I did not recognize that as a piece of the Death Star at all, and even now I'm still struggling to see it.

 

I know what you mean. I watched the trailer several times on my phone, and was like WTH???

When I finally saw it on my computer, I could make out the details.

 

You're trying too hard. But it's OK....it's the Bane of many an enthusiast. Pun intended.

 

I don’t think they’d make such a blunder. They’re always meticulous with these things.
I would’ve preferred DSII on Endor, but you’ve convinced me that it’s probably DSI, possibly on one of Yavin’s other moons.

 

Gareth Edwards was given carte blanche to destroy spatial integrity of the Blockade Runner / Corellian Corvette in order to achieve a fist-pumping revenue amplifying Vader fan service scene. What exists in RO now is a scene that requires the viewer who has the dimmest neuron awake at the moment to perceive that the rebels, and the stolen plans, got into the BR through a gangway tunnel that somehow went between two of the BR's many tightly packed rear engines. Disney can screw up CGI and declare victory if they can reach scheduled revenue despite the cut corners. Disney was meticulous in amping up a cameo of a revenue generating OT favorite. Disney will be meticulous in amping up a cameo of a revenue generating OT favorite. The Senate is back. Palpatine is like throwing fuel on fire. Half of the drug trafficking across the southern border straight into Internet memes is pure Palpatine. He's the best thing since sliced bread was rolled over by a wheel to make panini. Disney will not make any adjustments to this CGI mistake.

 

Well in theory it could be a piece of DS1 on Endor! I guess it could be flying for years and happen to land on Endor. but probably not for obvious reasons

But seriously, if they are going to dive into the wreck of DS2 then they probably find vader's saber or something and palp's ghost is there (not sure how that's gonna work if underwater).

 

I think it is the DS II, the 2nd ring could be explaned by the destuction of the outer shell, so it looks like a second ring. Since they reuse a lot of concepts from previous films that weren't used, I hoped from the moment I saw these concepts in the TFA Art book that we would see them realized. Maybe this was JJ and the story groups plan since the development of TFA that they saw that it would better fit in IX. I also remember the concept art on the walls from one of the earliest pic of preproduction where we see Luke in the cave from ESB (which was used to degree on Ach To in VIII) and the Falcon over a Jordan like environment (which is now also showing up in IX) plus that guy that does an Emperor force lightning impresson, wink,wink...

With Palpatine making a return it makes sense to feature the DSII. We also saw big chunks of DSII tumbling down, whereas DS went to space dust. I think this might be explained by Galen Ersos rigging the DS to be obliterated completely, which the partly fixed in DSII.
Lastly the geography could be easily explained by the forest moon of Endor having either Lakes and grasslands all along (Ewok movies and my beloved SWG Empire Divided featured these as well) or, that the Impact of these giant deris pieces destroyed the surrounding areas and scarred the lands around the impact so no trees but only grasses managed to grow there since...

 

I voted DS II, but after reading a few pages of responses some of you are beginning to sway me toward DS I. I especially like the idea that taking us back to Yavin makes a beautifully complete circle in the story. That seems like something JJ would love.

Also, there is the appearance of the Yavin medal in the trailer, another hint.

 

This is why Fandom is truly tragic: I think we always put too much heart and soul in our theories, and in the end Hollywood just slaps stuff together. LOL

As for me, I think it's logical it's DS2. Palp return. The Disney model of copying the the OT (EP9 = ROTJ). As far as the planet it's on, again, the moon of Endor is the logical choice, or another close moon.

I do hope they DON'T use TFA laws of astrophysics, meaning: Star Killer base blew up like 5 planets at once and everyone, everywhere in the Galaxy witnessed it like it was just above them.

If the DS blew up, even after 30 years could only travel so far. Literally the DS would have to blow up and those big pieces would have to be flying at like warp 9 to get to another solar system. Not to mention slow down to land instead of crash "Holdo style" into the planet.

The only reason I would want it to be DS2 is so they can find Tarkins skeleton!!

 

In addition, as we saw in TLJ, the remaining rebels are seeking refuge in long abandoned bases. There's one on Yavin.

 

Does anyone else think the wreckage looks too small to be either Death Star. It looks like it's sitting a couple of miles out at sea, and we can essentially see the entire diameter of the dish, and part of the trench line.

Not trying to cook up some conspiracy or weird concept...just saying...I thought the DSII was supposed to be huge. Even the DSI was so big that it took the x-wings like 10 minutes to fly along the trench to find the port. This thing looks like a baby death star.

 

According to Wikipedia (not Wookiepedia), the high end of the assumed width of Death Star 2 was 900 km. I estimate visually that the dish is about a quarter of the total diameter, so an estimate of the dish diameter would be 225km.

We see half of it, so about 112.5 km high.

So it is not possible to be the dish of Death Star 2 if we consider its maximum size.112.5 km is more than what we consider the distance to space on Earth.

The minimum size of Death Star 2 is 160km, so if we consider its smaller size, using the same calculations, half a dish would be 20km high, double the altitude of an airliner.

More or less reasonable, then.

So according to the image, it could be Death Star 2 if we consider its smaller size, or also Death Star 1.

Ps: Wookiepedia sizes are 160km for DS1, and 200km for DS2. Both sizes would allow half dish to be double of airliner altitudes, or close.

 

The explosion could've sent the fragments of Death Star light years away, it doesn't have to be a local planet. Something that came back to me thanks to those pointing out the Art of TFA book, I wonder if there is a BTS connection between this and the unused concept of the lightsaber floating through space before landing on a planet.Then we had the hand to, all these objects from the OT in space before being found. Add to that Vader's helmet and you have four objects that could all serve as a MacGuffin before they settled on the lightsaber.

 

For what it's worth, the concept art that we're all factoring into our hypothesis, is (clearly?) the Death Star 1. The gun towers, the trench.

I know they don't need to stick with what was conceptualized and packed away...just...food for thought.

 

While the "other" option obviously isn't popular, it did make me think. The thought of Palpatine at one point having multiple failed proto-death stars scattered about is a terrifying thought.

 

The link to Palpatine makes me think that this is Death Star II, on Endor.

 

But the planet's/moon's gravity would pull most of the loose material down anyways.

 

Click here to go to post in the ZOMG thread discussing DS scale

Even with a 10,000 foot (roughly 2 miles) deck for those clouds, it's too small by at least a factor of three.

I know, space clouds...

But, scale is kind of important to an epic space opera set in a galaxy capable of harnessing the output of millions of inhabited worlds. That the image scale is off may seem trivial but, there's a non-trivial segment of the audience that is instantly removed from the drama when the "that doesn't look right" tingle happens.

Wouldn't it have been cool to see that chunk of debris at "truer" scale from a ship approaching the planet? Taller than any mountain on earth, the peak scratching the edge of space, a band of ice and snow beginning below the curvature of the atmosphere extending down to just above the cloud tops. Then, from the cliff it fills the screen with only a narrow band visible below the clouds lashed by rains and waves, covered with vegetation and flocks of alien birds nesting in the many crevices and appurtenances.

I vote DS2 using a DS1 model cause budget.

 

There is one piece of debris falling away that if scaled to DS II size would be larger than the SSD that crashed into it. Good catch. It's an obvious retcon to assert that pieces larger than that made it away intact, but, meh. A literal or astrophysical interpretation of a 500 mile ball of metal accreting onto the surface of a Earth biosphere is "devastation". What you're saying is a nice middle ground gesture to "what would actually happen" and what the state of play needs to be to have any human interaction with this venue, and not steer it too hard into hard sci-fi. A roughed-up Endor moon where the trees have been burned away and only ground cover has returned is a reasonable way to represent consequences of the DS II's destruction. That could subsequently explain a lack of Ewoks. Any Ewoks that had the Forkhead box protein P2 grabbed a speeder bike and got away. I am certain, without looking, that some Peace Corps fan fiction writer asserts that the Rebellion took time to evacuate Ewoks.

Spoiler

DS I was "100" miles across from behind the scenes statements by Richard Edlund. DS II is "500+" miles across by a cosmic distance ladder that starts with the height of a Shuttle Tidirium. DS II can look extremely small compared to Endor moon depending on when the camera is looking. When Shuttle Tidirium first approaches the Command Ship and DS II is behind it, it is obviously composited small enough to unmistakably form a complete contiguous shape inside the 21:9 aspect ratio. (Yes, ILM had issues with scale, because the perspective on the DS II is changing at the same rate as the Command Ship, thus coupling them in size. They are not. Command Ship is like 1/thousandth the size of DS II and lower.) The closest analog to this shot from the trailer is when the camera in ROTJ establishes on DS II floating overhead and then pans down to the landing platform. How high up is it? It doesn't appear to be higher than its 2x or 3x its diameter. That shield emitter is roughly below it. Maybe 1000-1500 miles altitude (ISS gets up to 270 miles altitude). When Lando Ltd. drops out of hyperspace the DS II is 1/12 the diameter of Endor moon. So if DS II is 500 miles, Endor moon is 6000 miles diameter. Earth's diameter is 7900 miles. To get a DS II scaled to a 1 g surface like Earths, DS II would be about 660 miles. The dish is 1/3.5 of the DS II; for a range of between 140 miles and 188 miles. From the top of Mt Everest one can see 210 miles. So, short of it, if the tippy top of the wreckage is at an altitude of Mt Everest, it's going to be seen from a many day's walk away. If their speeder bikes go 100 mph, they'll make that distance inside movie time.

In Disney era, RO has DS coming in over the horizon of Scariff in a starkly unphysical way. This is people with unlimited CGI power foisting their artistic whim upon a retina that has any judgement at all. Same with TFA Ceres-size SKB sucking plasma from a K or G type star. Any oversight is just gone. Inmates running the asylum. I'm certain there were people that caught this kind of stuff and reported it and I'm sure they're buried in the concrete foundations of the mega campus NSA data center for Disney streaming servers. R.I.P., scale. "This tombstone is here just for scale."

Gun towers of that design also dot the DS II equatorial trench and protect the hangars, and also dot the DS II unfinished surface that the fighters fly over. So the arrangement in the TFA concept art recommends you think it is the DS I north pole longitudinal trench, but it does not contraindicate being DS II towers in the large equatorial trench.

Disney asserts that the dish of DSII was manufactured separately. So they can assert that it is made of stronger stuff to fit the engineering specifications of its role.
https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/H4g...475871/rogue_one_death_star_tarkin_845.0.jpeg

 

Yavin is an orange gas giant though.

There's also this concept art.








It's easier for me to believe that the remains of the second death star crashed down into the southern hemisphere of the forest moon of Endor than the first death star remains somehow gravitating towards a moon around Yavin and not being pulled down into Yavin itself. Since the Emperor and Vader both supposedly died on the second death star, one would think the heroes and villains have more interest in that wreckage.

That said, any death star remains should just be a mangled mess of metal and certainly not as the concept art depicts. Unless they're going to say the dark side protected the Emperors tower.

 

Yes but was DS1 close enough to Yavin IV for the moon's gravity to overpower the force of explosion? I think DS1 might've been closer to the planet Yavin than the planet's 4th moon, so wouldn't it have been pulled in by the greater sized planet?

And was DS2 actually in the atmosphere of the moon of Endor to be pulled by it's gravity?

I'm just not sure the overriding energy from the blast wouldn't negate the gravity.

 

Atmosphere has nothing to do with it. All the planets in our solar system are affected by each other's gravity . Jupiter's gravity actually pulls the sun a little off-center.

And the debris streams from the DSII do not stray too far away from the main body.