More on the SW TV show (Lucas + McCallum)

[Mark S]

I don't think the Empire would have seen the exhaust port as a flaw. You have to exhaust somehow and their computers were probably telling them that the chance of an explosive getting in there was incredibly low. None of the rebels really thought they could make that shot.

[Freeman's Trigger-Finger]

That completely contradicts.

Not really. While I said that the Death Star 1 was capable of great destructiveness and was a fear throughout the galaxy, it still had faults, faults which resulted in it's eventuall destruction. Now, if the Imperial army could construct a Death Star with all the same properties of the Death Star 1 in terms of power, but with tighter defences and no revealing weak spots, then it serves as a much superior station.

What I was saying was that, until such a superior DS finalised construction, or until it was planned and able bodied enough to go into commision, then it certainly is worth the effort of retaining and operating the DS1, since it's expendable anyway if worst comes to worst (which it did), and it still retaines great power.

[Mad]

Regarding the Death Star, here's an explanation I posted on SB.com about a month ago:

First off, the senate was around until ANH. It took around 20 years to completely remove remnants of the Old Republic from the Imperial government. As a result, keeping big projects hidden may have been far more difficult. After ANH, the Empire was at its height and had more opportunities to keep projects hidden.

Next, management issues may have come into play. In real life, bad management can make a project go from a few months to years. And the later in a project design flaws are discovered, the more time-consuming it is to fix them. If the original plans to the Death Star were flawed or poorly designed and those issues weren't caught until they started constructing the thing, the time lost would easily have been tremendous with all the re-working required to account for changes to the plans and what has arleady been built just to fix the problem. (This is why various project management and related courses stress finding issues with the project as early as possible, because it costs big bucks to fix them later.)

By the time of ANH, the Imperial design teams would have had knowledge as to the problems encountered with the first Death Star, and probably a much better project management methodology.

Since the original plans seemed to be designed by aliens, at least some redesign may have been required to make things more comfortable for an all-human crew. And those changes wouldn't necessarily be trivial. (Height of the room too low to be comfortable for a human? Lots of things would likely have to be changed to fix that.)

[Diamedes]

Or just flatout distrust on the part of the Geonosian's led to them giving Dooku subpar plans.

[Kurgan]

Simple: the Empire hired the Duke Nukem Forever team to build the first Death Star. After it's failure, they were all sacked, and replaced by a more competent team...

[Crossroads Inc.]

Simple: the Empire hired the Duke Nukem Forever team to build the first Death Star. After it's failure, they were all sacked, and replaced by a more competent team...

Of course!!! That would Explaine Everything!

[Illuminatus Primus]

What, the Death Star taking 20 years to build? It was always obvious to me ever since I first heard about it as a legitimate plot point. I just don't get why anyone cares.

Its really fucking stupid, but what can you do? Saxton's waving it off as the Seperatists' realization of the concept and not the final model, and its possible for any number of reasons it is not the ANH Tarkin Death Star, but its also obvious that's not the intent.

Oh well, fuck the intent. As long as they don't harp on the stupid in this show and the EU, I won't care.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Regarding the Death Star, here's an explanation I posted on SB.com about a month ago:

First off, the senate was around until ANH. It took around 20 years to completely remove remnants of the Old Republic from the Imperial government. As a result, keeping big projects hidden may have been far more difficult. After ANH, the Empire was at its height and had more opportunities to keep projects hidden.

Next, management issues may have come into play. In real life, bad management can make a project go from a few months to years. And the later in a project design flaws are discovered, the more time-consuming it is to fix them. If the original plans to the Death Star were flawed or poorly designed and those issues weren't caught until they started constructing the thing, the time lost would easily have been tremendous with all the re-working required to account for changes to the plans and what has arleady been built just to fix the problem. (This is why various project management and related courses stress finding issues with the project as early as possible, because it costs big bucks to fix them later.)

By the time of ANH, the Imperial design teams would have had knowledge as to the problems encountered with the first Death Star, and probably a much better project management methodology.

Since the original plans seemed to be designed by aliens, at least some redesign may have been required to make things more comfortable for an all-human crew. And those changes wouldn't necessarily be trivial. (Height of the room too low to be comfortable for a human? Lots of things would likely have to be changed to fix that.)

The major problem with this is they're ought not to be a pretty recognizable framework of the station like there seems to be. That's way too much structural strata to represent these problems or a few months of a twenty-year construction cycle. The apparent film content would tend to argue away from the intent itself. Meh, hardly the first time THAT has happened.

[YT300000]

Simple: the Empire hired the Duke Nukem Forever team to build the first Death Star. After it's failure, they were all sacked, and replaced by a more competent team...

Of course!!! That would Explaine Everything!

No it wouldn't. I mean, they eventually finished the Death Star, so it can't have been George Broussard.

[Jim Raynor]

You do realize which part of that article certain people here will be focusing on, right?

I know which part Darkstar will be focusing on:

"It's a different world unto itself between episodes three (Revenge of the Sith) and four (Star Wars: A New Hope)."

[Solauren]

Actually, the 20 year construction time of the Death Star is not a big deal.

Okay, they've designed the Death Star. And built the frame.

Great. Wonderful.

Do you really think the Death Star is using STOCK parts?
Hell, I'm willing to bet, since it was one of the biggest constructs in Star Wars (Han; it's to big to be a space station) sort of artificial planets, alot of it's systems required massively reinforced parts, that required redesigns.

Also, up until the Clone Wars, Star wars was in a state of technical stagnancy, right?

Suddenly, the various industries had the Emperor going 'hey, I need a new system designed to these specifications'

Also, redesigns are common on any large project.

The frame we will see at the end of Revenge of the Sith might not have been the full Death Star frame. For all we know, that's the initial 10 kilometer shell around the core.

Also, there where probably lots of unforeseen problems.

Imagine if during the first test fire of the Superlaser, turns out the conductors couldn't take the energy output and basically shorted out the entire Death Star because the material in use had never been tested at that power level? You'd then have to come up with the materials to take it, and refit the Death Star.

Combine that with buercractic stalling, unions (I have no trouble picturing a 5 year strike slowing the Death Star construction down), and other problems, and well, you get the idea.

The second death Star wouldn't have had those problems, because when your a dictator, you can just go 'okay, execute the strikers', 'you're stalling, you're dead', 'unsafe work conditions? Which is worse, your work conditions, or talking to Lord Vader?'

[Rommie2006]

The Death Star taking 20yrs to build?
WHAT THE FUCK is Lucas thinking?

Is this gonna screw our calculations on the Empire's industrial capacity?
I can forsee the rabid trekkies nitpicking on this point.
I hope Lucas is not gonna tell me the DS2 took 30yrs to build!

Oh come on man! The 20 yrs explanation better not be attributed to the Empire's lack of industrial capacity!

[Spanky The Dolphin]

If you ever bothered to pay attention here within the last month, you would see that it doesn't.

[VT-16]

Its really fucking stupid, but what can you do?

JESUS FUCKING ROLLED-UP CHRIST!!!!

Have you even been reading this thread before the usual DS-construction whinefest? There´s already plenty of good explanations why it took so long in contrast with the DS II (which wasn´t even finished at the time). Why is there still a problem with this? You´d think this was a positive detail, the Empire´s ability to rapidly adapt and improve a design once in total control of resources.

[Ravengrim]

Well first off, and Im sure Mike can vouch for this, whenever something goes from the engineer's original designs to the actual contruction tons of things pop up that just cant be accounted for no matter how well the planning. That goes double for something as massive for the Death Star. So 20 years to
1) Convert the station designs from a Geonosian habitable station to a human habitable station (that is a lot of redesign, from the walkways to the cafeterias to the bathrooms)
2) Design or actually create the tech required to make the thing work.
3) Computer test the shit out of it
4) Gather materials, facilities and manpower, all secretly
5) Begin construction and allow time for complications
Im not an engineer so there are probably more things that I didnt think of. Even if a lot of those things were happening at the same time, it still would take a long time. I dont think 20 years is that unreasonable. As an aside, it took GM 10 years to get a reliable working model of their new variable-ratio transmission because of one part they couldnt get right.

[Admiral_K]

For comparison, didn't the Enterprise D take 20 years to construct?

First production runs typically take longer because problems are encountered and solved etc.

[Kurgan]

That's still quite a dramatic improvement... 20 years for a 160 km station, and then 6 months for a 900 km one (that wasn't even finished at that size and supposedly "non-operational" even though that was just bad intel)!

It's almost six times bigger, surely there'd be more problems with an even bigger station, plus one without the design flaw of the first (though you could just blast your way through this one, but you had to do more work to destroy it).

[Master of Ossus]

That's still quite a dramatic improvement... 20 years for a 160 km station, and then 6 months for a 900 km one (that wasn't even finished at that size and supposedly "non-operational" even though that was just bad intel)!

It's almost six times bigger, surely there'd be more problems with an even bigger station, plus one without the design flaw of the first (though you could just blast your way through this one, but you had to do more work to destroy it).

The EU implies that they had to use a quickfix solution to the exhaust port, where they just split it up into lots and lots of smaller ones. Also, the station would've been closed when construction ended, so there would've been no way to destroy it with fighters.

[Eframepilot]

Considering that the Separatists intended to build the Death Star themselves with resources that would be a small fraction of the Empire's at their peak and that the Separatists almost certainly didn't expect their ultimate weapon to take 20 years to finish, it is the 20 year construction time of the 1st Death Star that is the bizarre anomaly and says nothing against the Empire's industrial capacity. Maybe the first three Death Stars were blown up by Rebels, the fourth was completed but hijacked by time travelers for use in some ancient conflict and the fifth... stayed up? Until Luke blew it up, that is.

[NecronLord]

I'm voting for B5 esque string of death stars. The Death Star, the Death Star Two and the Third Death Star got blown up, and the Fourth Death Star disappeared through a time hole shortly after construction.

[Nephtys]

I'm voting for B5 esque string of death stars. The Death Star, the Death Star Two and the Third Death Star got blown up, and the Fourth Death Star disappeared through a time hole shortly after construction.

So the Fourth blows up Yavin in a distant past after a good couple of two-parter episodes? Alright, Death Star 5. Our last, best hope for tyrany.

[VT-16]

Who was it that said the Empire was building two smaller DSs at Coruscant while the DS II was being built? Was it in the ROTJ novelization? (I remember the concept art but not any canon reference).

If they could do that, maybe they built several smaller DSs while the DS I was being built as well. Like Torpedo Spheres, only with a central laser?

[Old Plympto]

Who was it that said the Empire was building two smaller DSs at Coruscant while the DS II was being built? Was it in the ROTJ novelization? (I remember the concept art but not any canon reference).

Ralph McQuarrie's Art of the Star Wars Universe (or some title like that) book.

[VT-16]

So, ideas in that book counts as canon? (I know of things like Tibannopolis, Aldera and a Jawa fortress hailing from McQuarrie´s art, but I was just wondering.)

[Spanky The Dolphin]

The book is part of the EU, afterall.