CT ROTJ: Reason for deflector shield deactivation for the shuttle?

The whole thing with the stolen code and shield deactivation does not make real sense to me.

As seen in the hologram the deflector shield protects only the Death Star construction just around it and a thin "tunnel" up from Endor.

When Vader arrives in the beginning the shield must be deactivated through a correct code because he is entering the actual Death Star.

However, later in the stolen shuttle, the rebels is just planning to land on the moon itself. Why would the shield have to be deactivated at all? Just land somewhere else and through suitable transport get to the site seems more reasonable.

 

The "thin tunnel" may not be all that thin on a planetary scale. And with a deadline, a lot of forest, and so forth, it may be extremely hard to get to the site if you land outside the shield.

 

If the hologram model is to scale, the width of the "tunnel" may be as much as 500 kilometers. It's far better to have the shuttle land inside that tunnel than outside.

 

In the EU, the Forest Moon was 4900km in diameter (about the size of Mercury) and the Death Star 2 (depending on the writer) was either 160km or 900km in diameter.

In the newcanon, we don't know yet how big either of those are.

 

Because the plot made it so?
Does the DS have a shield around Endor? What is generating a shield around Endor.

What doesn't make good sense is why they allow an older code to be used. Why bother having a newer code?
Yes I know it's a trap, but Vader didn't seem in on it till later. He tells the Emperor the rebels landed on Endor after letting them on.

 

There is no shield around the planet itself and it wouldn't be wise to force a shuttle to the far side in order to make their descent. As to why the shuttle was allowed to land by Vader, it was because he sensed Luke was aboard. If he ordered the shuttle to be attacked, there would be the possibility of his son being killed or escaping. And he knows that Luke can sense him, so he chooses to let them land and then go make a report to Palpatine about it.

 

What doesn't make sense is that the rebels expected the Imps to not care that a shuttle that was cleared to deliver parts and crew to the base on Endor landed out in the woods without delivering anything to the base.

 

you have to take down the shield to get into the infrastructure.

 

Is that really correct? How large should the death star be if so?

 

Depends on who you ask. But if you have an Earth-sized Endor and a 900km DS2, then a lot of the shots in ROTJ really don't make sense.

 

I would say that the "tunnel" endpoint is quite close to 1 / 10 of the DS diameter.

 

Oh, they expected it. But they figured that they'd make it to the generator in time to take control and thus be in position to cover their tracks before it was time to destroy the thing.

 

Sarge wrote

What doesn't make sense is that the rebels expected the Imps to not care that a shuttle that was cleared to deliver parts and crew to the base on Endor landed out in the woods without delivering anything to the base.

I'm pretty certain Solo faked an emergency and a crash over the radio and provided wrong coordinates so that the scout and rescue party would be busy looking where they wouldn't accidentally meet the Rebel strike team.

 

Yeah, we can come up with retcons that make sense, but it would have been nice if the film makers had given us a hint of what was actually going on.

 

I thought it was clear. The assault had to commence soon before the DS was operational so the ground team did not have the time to land far away, plus the Empire was monitoring all traffic on the planet.

 

Sarge

Not a "retcon" but a rationalization proposal. All we saw was an Imperial shuttle fyling over the treetops on Endor, we didn't hear what they were talking about in the cockpit. With security being otherwise very tight, I'm sure Solo and company expected a search & rescue party and prepared for that.

 

I figured it was another shield, this one protecting portion of the planet, such as the Rebels used to protect Hoth in TESB.

Also, they had to look legit in the eyes of the Empire. There would be no reason for an Imperial shuttle to approach and not report in, as it would have been seen from the Star Destroyers. They HAD to follow procedures or the plan would have failed.
The crew on the Star Destroyers would have probably followed its trajectory, at least for a while, so they'd have to land close enough to the base to keep from attracting attention.

 

Disney

Canon DS-2 is 160km now. 99% certain. If DS-2 was 900km it would of require trillions of labourers 2 get it 3/4 complete in the 4 years after the destruction of DS-1.

 

ILM stated the diameter of DS1 as 100+ miles in the old Bantha Tracks. According to the ROJ novelization DS2 was twice as big, but failed to specify whether that referred to diameter or volume.
According to my own analysis (size of known hangars in relation to matte painting of equator in relation to actual model) DS2 had a diameter of 289 km.

The new "official" figure (I prefer the onscreen evidence) apparently comes from a pre-production (!) sketch in the ROJ Sketchbook. ILM's Richard Edlund provided a 500 miles diameter figure in the ROJ issue of Cinefex.

 

Yup - Ultimate Star Wars and Star Wars Absolutely Everything You Need to Know (coming out after I'd said "We don't know yet") both use this figure, as well as repeating the 4900 km figure for the Forest Moon.

 

If you were really interested in accurate dimensions, I'd suggest to first analyse the height of the Emperor's and the smaller VIP hangar Vader arrived in (the dimensions of the shuttle are known). Alternately you can use the Transamerica Pyramid from San Francisco as a ruler (left side, just in the middle below the largest dark hangar). That would give us an idea about the average height of the equator.

Now cross-reference that with a high-res shot of the actual model and let me know what diameter you really arrive at, based on the onscreen evidence.

 

Somebody else did that already:

http://www.st-v-sw.net/STSWdeathstarsizes.html

they got 160 km.

 

Wow, apparently from my old "friend" Mike Wong. Yes, that's the kind of methodology I find commendable. At first I wondered why our results are incompatible but there is an obvious and simple reason - he didn't feature any high-res shots of the Death Stars so we could actually follow the final and ultimately decisive step!

Death Star I:

He arrived at a total equatorial trench height of approx. 1.23 km. One of the best "full" Death Star I pictures in existence was featured in Steve Sansweet's Star Wars: From Concept to Screen to Collectible book (page # 41). The Death Star on this photo is 230 mm wide with the equatorial ring being 1.7 mm tall. 230 mm x 1.23 km : 1.7 mm = 166.41 km (103.40 miles) horizontal diameter.
This figure matches almost perfectly the number provided by "ILM" ANH chief model maker Grant McCune in Bantha Tracks # 6, i.e "102+ miles".

So the official figure provided by the model maker matches an accurate onscreen examination. Death Star I has a horizontal diameter of 102 - 104 miles / 166 km.

Death Star II:

According to the actual Lambda-Class shuttle studio set prop, the shuttle is 37' / 11.3 m wide (and not 12.5 m according to Wong) but for argument's sake I go along with his equatorial trench height of 1.21 km. I calculated 1.56 km trench height (based on the hangars) which interestingly matched the suggestions of the Transamerica Pyramid "ruler" (i.e. 1.54 km).

Picture evidence is tricky. The largest DS II image is in Sculpting A Galaxy, but it doesn't show the whole station. But it reveals a dish diameter of 111 mm and a trench height of 2 mm. A smaller (but) full view is avaible in The Art of ROJ where the dish has a diameter of 41 mm of and DS II has a horizontal diameter of 141 mm.

Based on Wong's trench height (111mm x 1.21 km : 2 mm) I get a dish diameter of 67.15 km. Based on that diameter (67.15 km x 141 mm : 41 mm) I get a horizontal diameter of DS II of 231 km.

Based on "my" / ILM's Transamerica Pyramid ruler (111 mm x 1.55 km : 2 mm) I get a dish diameter of 86 km. Based on that diameter I arrive at a horizontal DS II diameter of 295.75 km.

Death Star II has a horizontal diameter between 231 km (Wong trench height) and 296 km (ILM Transamerica Pyramid ruler trench height) / 143.53 miles - 184 miles.

I think this example just shows that despite impeccable methodology it's impossible to skip the ultimate reference pictures of the whole Death Star, if you want to arrive at correct and accurate results.

P.S. Here's to you, Curtis Saxton! Your 270 km diameter for DS II is still within the accurate range.

 

I've been 2 the Curtiss Saxton site many a time. Didn't the Executor crashing (assuming she is 16km long) proved the DS-2 diameter around 900km?

Count me in the bigger is better camp.

 

The Executor is 11 miles long according to ILM's display card at the Marin County Fair 1988 Lucasfilm exhibit. Suffice to say that this awful West End Games 5 mile figure (based on a mis-transcription in Velasco's Star Wars Guide) was eventually fixed by people that rather trusted their eyes than what they were being told. Still would like to know sometime how the WEG length figure got kicked out at Wookiepedia, so there's still hope that accurate Death Star sizes will reflect eventually one day and there, too.

But yes, the crash of the Emperor's Super Star Destroyer should have revealed a curved surface. That might be one reason why Richard Edlund propagated a 500 mile diameter and Saxton much more (still don't know where Saxton's 270 km figure comes from, was this one before or after the large figure?).