About the Death Stars' huge reactors

McNum · Post by **McNum** » 2004-07-19 01:42pm

This is probably going to sound a bit newbish, but I've pondred a question for a while...

Why did the Death Stars have such huge main reactors? I know that it needs a huge amount of power to fire the Superlaser and probably to carry out the daily routines, but in both Death Stars that main reactor proved to be the fatal weak point.

The Empire itself seems to be fairly decentralized (apart from the Emperor) since regional govoners do have some sort of control over the system they govern. Supervised control, but still control.

This leads me to think that the Death Stars might have fared better with more, but smaller reactors powering individual sections of the station. This may take up more space on the station, but as I see it they had the resources to bouild not one, but two Death Stars, so the additional cost for doing a more modular design probably wouldn't be too tough on the Empire. But they opted for the huge reactor model instead.

Why? Is this some kind of Imperial design philosophy? Or have I missed something crucial about the Death Stars that a modular design couldn't do?

Ma Deuce · Post by **Ma Deuce** » 2004-07-19 02:24pm

When you have a superlaser that has a million times the firepower necessary to destroy a planet, you need alot of juice to power it

. But still: the Death Star's firepower could be squeezed into a much smaller frame, a la the Darksaber. The Death Star was more than just a mobile siege gun: it was also a massive garrison, and thus needed alot of space to hold the legions of Stormtroopers and TIE fighters it carried. I suppose the huge reactor space could have been necessary for heat dissapation, given that it was surrounded by hundreds of kilometers of Death Star. With the Darksaber (which unlike the Death Star, was nothing more than a superlaser platform), it's possible that the reactor could have been made much smaller, given the fact that there is far less bulk surrounding it, and thus heat dissapation wouldn't be as much of a problem.

2000AD · Post by **2000AD** » 2004-07-19 02:29pm

It also needed to power the engines. Something the size of a moon takes a hell of a lot of juice to move!

Spice Runner · Post by **Spice Runner** » 2004-07-19 02:30pm

I think they needed the large reactor to power the superlaser.

Instead of changing the size of the reactor, they should have had better control on access to the reactor area. They should put closable blast doors in the access tunnel to the reactor in case intruders get in.

I believe it was Imperial arrogance more than design philosophy.

vakundok · Post by **vakundok** » 2004-07-19 03:15pm

The question is: Why one huge reactor instead of eight or so smaller ones?
There must be a reason to offset the safety that would have been resulted from the multiplication.
For example a reactor is much more powerfull than a similar with half the diameter, or that kind of reactors require special radiation shielding or something, so they cannot be smaller ...
Actually, I have no idea.

Batman · Post by **Batman** » 2004-07-19 03:27pm

vakundok wrote: There must be a reason to offset the safety that would have been resulted from the multiplication.

That assumes there would have been a measurable safety margin from using several reactors.
The 'fatal weak spot' argument is of course garbage: given the firepower of the Death Star, unless we're talking thousands of reactors a reacor hit would still have killed the DS, the only difference would have been the size of the fragments.
Ditto for redundancy in case of battle damage: If the enemy has the firepower to get through the DS's defenses, he has the firepower to kill it anyway.
And that's ignoring that the Imp's WERE arrogant as hell WRT the DS1, and the lets-blow-the-reactor gimmick only worked on the DS2 because it was still under construction...

McNum · Post by **McNum** » 2004-07-19 05:01pm

My line of thought was more like that they are able to mass produce Star Destroyers which all had to have some kind of powerful reactor to do what has been established that they're capable of. Why not mass produce just the reactors for fitting in the individual Death Star sections? I'm not thinking let's have eight reactors. I'm thinking what would amount to probably several thousand reactors spread evenly around the station.

Should a reactor go critical then a part of the Death Star would be destroyed, but at least it would either be possible to repair it, or at least give the big brass time to evacuate.

I'm not too well versed in the EU books, but this Darksaber was more or less a Super Star Destroyer (as in a really huge Star Destroyer, not as in Executor class) with a Superlaser? If so ten its that kind of reactor I'm referring to for powering the Superlaser and probably some of the more power intensive functions of the Death Star.

I guess it as usual comes down to Imperial Arrogance...

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2004-07-19 05:04pm

There are enough issues with the power cores mass/energy equivalent wise, without having multiple powerplants spread throughout the structure. Its likely that it has to be in the center because of its enormous mass.

And they don't need security on the core; there IS no way in. DS2 was unfinished and heavily shielded, what do you want?

Batman · Post by **Batman** » 2004-07-19 05:14pm

Very well- what is the maximum explosive yield in case of reactor explosion you think the DS can limp away from, at least for a while?
Divide the yield of the superlaser by that and the number you get is the MINIMUM number of reactors you need for this to be feasible.
And that's ignoring the engineering nightmare of funneling power from all those reactors into the superlaser...

EDIT:Just in case this wasn't obvious, this was directed at McNum, not Stark.

McNum · Post by **McNum** » 2004-07-19 06:07pm

I was just wondering if there was a good reason for having one huge reactor compared to a cluster of many. The mass and power lines arguments do make sense. Well, the mass argument mostly.

With hypermatter reactors having so heavy cores, placing it at the center will probably cause the least headaches from an engineer standpoint since a reactor of that size will most likely have some sort of gravity effects on the station. Splitting that effect around the station will be very hard not to do in a lopsided way while still being able to power the Superlaser.

The power lines argument isn't as bad, though. Each section would be more or less self sufficient powerwise and only the Superlaser would really get special treatment with a Darksaber size reactor. Of course, that's where the lopsidedness comes in...

I guess the thing that irked me was the line of thought that "We just lost our superweapon to a main reactor failure... Let's build a bigger one with an even bigger reactor at the center!" Granted, they did fix the exhaust port weakness, but still... Just seemed odd. And from what I hear Palpatine didn't lose his taste for exotic superweapons in the EU either.

Of course, as said, the DS2 wasn't complete when the Rebels attacked. I still think that the DS2 reactor went down far too easily, though. But that's probably for another thread...

So at least I can put that nagging thought a bit to rest now. Thanks!

Techno_Union · Post by **Techno_Union** » 2004-07-19 08:48pm

Darksaber was built by the Hutts, not the Empire. All it was, was a big mobile superlaser.

Elheru Aran · Post by **Elheru Aran** » 2004-07-19 11:10pm

McNum wrote:I'm not too well versed in the EU books, but this Darksaber was more or less a Super Star Destroyer (as in a really huge Star Destroyer, not as in Executor class) with a Superlaser? If so ten its that kind of reactor I'm referring to for powering the Superlaser and probably some of the more power intensive functions of the Death Star.

Darksaber was actually more or less a long tube, mostly superlaser with some crew and command floors and engines at the end; think Giant Lightsaber of Doom (TM) and you have a good picture of it... from the impression I got of it, it was probably at least twice as large as a SSD, possibly bigger (in the OT ICS, the superlaser is shown to be fully as long as the radius of the DS-- about 80 km?). They would've scaled it down for reasons of cost and less concern about safety, though.

Ma Deuce · Post by **Ma Deuce** » 2004-07-19 11:49pm

Techno_Union wrote:Darksaber was built by the Hutts, not the Empire. All it was, was a big mobile superlaser.

But it was designed by Bevel Lemelisk, who was also the chief designer of both Death Stars.

Darth Yoshi · Post by **Darth Yoshi** » 2004-07-20 01:52am

McNum wrote:I'm not too well versed in the EU books, but this Darksaber was more or less a Super Star Destroyer (as in a really huge Star Destroyer, not as in Executor class) with a Superlaser? If so ten its that kind of reactor I'm referring to for powering the Superlaser and probably some of the more power intensive functions of the Death Star.

What you're describing in the bold is closer to the Sovereign and Eclispe classes of Star Destroyer rather than the Darksaber.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2004-07-20 07:16am

Its worth remembering that Eclipse and her ilk were at very least millions of times less powerful than the DS; DS could blow the shit out of a planet, whereas Eclipse couldn't even disrupt its entire mass. So obviously its not as demanding on power.

McNum · Post by **McNum** » 2004-07-20 01:27pm

The Hutts built a Superlaser? And shaped it like a huge lightsaber? Wow... That's an odd story concept... I still wonder if it's good or bad that I haven't read much EU material...

Spice Runner · Post by **Spice Runner** » 2004-07-20 02:19pm

I wish I had not read Darksaber. The story was absolute crap. What else can one expect from KJA.

Techno_Union · Post by **Techno_Union** » 2004-07-20 03:33pm

Ma Deuce wrote:
Techno_Union wrote:Darksaber was built by the Hutts, not the Empire. All it was, was a big mobile superlaser.
But it was designed by Bevel Lemelisk, who was also the chief designer of both Death Stars.

I was shrt on time so I couldn't say anything more, but I was mainly replying to him saying it was probably an SSD type.