Bad design in Star Wars

[FSTargetDrone]

INS doesn't really work against moving targets. Maybe they had SPACE GPS!

Whatever they used, this is a society that accurately travels multiple light-years to distant worlds and other locations. It should be trivial to design a missile/torpedo guidance system that can find a specific point on an external surface of space station whose location is known and of which they have detailed plans.

As an aside, if we look at the attack run in the movie, the first torpedo strike was off by just a few meters. When Luke's torpedoes enter the vent, you can see the impact/blast marks from the first strike just to the left of the opening.

A guess:

To C3PO, a programming language is just another language. The message he gets from the ship's computer is probably the equivalent of all those lines of confusing shit that flash past on the screen of your computer while it's starting up*. Moreover, some of the software is probably corrupted, unique, or otherwise screwy, so a lot of the error messages he's seeing don't make sense or have to be interpreted. Viewed through the lens of a translator droid's AI and vocabulary, that is a computer that speaks "a peculiar dialect," sort of like it's running a very heavily customized version of LINUX or something.

*At least, on my computer, which runs the UNIX-based Mac OS X.

But since 3PO doesn't have much of a technical database, R2 would probably be better at dealing with this problem than he would.

Agreed, and if there are indeed multiple droid brains on the ship, interacting and possibly disagreeing with each other, this may compound the issue.

[Isolder74]

INS doesn't really work against moving targets. Maybe they had SPACE GPS!

Whatever they used, this is a society that accurately travels multiple light-years to distant worlds and other locations. It should be trivial to design a missile/torpedo guidance system that can find a specific point on an external surface of space station whose location is known and of which they have detailed plans.

As an aside, if we look at the attack run in the movie, the first torpedo strike was off by just a few meters. When Luke's torpedoes enter the vent, you can see the impact/blast marks from the first strike just to the left of the opening.

Which likely means if they had the time to just program the computer to fire on it's own they might have pulled it off with the first run. The miss is likely to human reaction time of Red leader being just a bit too slow to hit just the right spot. this might explain why the attack runs were made in groups of 3 instead of one at a time. The dialogue tells us that when making the run the targeting computers of all three ships were tied into the one looking through the scope. So when he pulls the trigger they all fire together tripling the change of a hit.

[FSTargetDrone]

Which likely means if they had the time to just program the computer to fire on it's own they might have pulled it off with the first run. The miss is likely to human reaction time of Red leader being just a bit too slow to hit just the right spot. this might explain why the attack runs were made in groups of 3 instead of one at a time. The dialogue tells us that when making the run the targeting computers of all three ships were tied into the one looking through the scope. So when he pulls the trigger they all fire together tripling the change of a hit.

Sure, this seems plausible. Bombing runs in the Second World War composed of multiple aircraft sometimes involved only the single plane in the formation lead having a bombsight. When that lead aircraft dropped its bombs, the others in the formation followed suit.

[ExarKun]

As for Han Solo not knowing what's wrong with the hyperdrive, well, sometimes, I don't know what's wrong with my engine, and you have to hook it up to a computer to get the codes. It's no big deal that his instruments couldnt' tell him. It's ridiculous to expect the ship to monitor every tiny part in a complex piece of machinery like that.

You mean... the way your engine computer does?

Yeah, but the exact problem sure as hell doesn't show up on your dashboard.

It wasn't so much that the Rebels thought that they could do it, so much as they knew that if they didn't do it they would get 'sploded. They decided to go for the one-in-a-million shot rather than sit around and wait to die.

We know from the next episode that the Rebels have the capability to escape. Even if they couldn't get everybody off, they could have got the leaders off, but they didn't bother, they knew the weakness, and that it can be exploited. They weren't exactly backed against the wall.

You do realize that had Tarkin ordered even another handful of TIE Fighters out, instead of Vader taking initiative with just his own squadron, Yavin IV would not exist any more in the EU. Right? That's akin to saying a carrier is a stupid design because it was destroyed by a squadron of prop planes when the officer in charge refused to allow his DDG escort to knock them down.

That's not the point. When you design a station the size of a moon, you make sure it is hard to destroy by a single fighter. Why do you need to rely on fighters to defend you when you invested untold $$$$ on this thing? It should be self sufficient. I don't think the carrier analogy is a correct one, there is a vast difference between a ship and a death star.

And here I was thinking the murmurs of disbelief in the briefing room, Wedge's complaint "that's impossible, even for a computer!" the demonstrated inability of the targeting computer to hit the target, and the fact that the only person who hit the target fired his torpedoes without its assistance and the aid of a supernatural force, was sufficient to demonstrate the extreme difficulty of the shot already.

As for 'curves' - what difference would that make? Those torpedoes didn't perform a hard turn into the exhaust port because they felt like it.

Why would you include Wedge's opinion, and not Luke's? At least be fair in your arguments if you can't contain your sarcasm
There is no way of knowing what the murmurs in the room meant; they could have simply thought that it was a difficult operation to undertake. Wedge's opinion is not worth all that when you have an otherwise naturally shy and lacking in confidence amateur pilot who is certain he can do it. Wedge, despite all his heroics in the books, comes across as a wuss.

As for the demonstrated inability of the computer to hit the target, well it missed once, I'm not sure it counts as enough proof. I'm not even sure why it missed, it must have been a pilot error; the torpedoes weren't released in time, which seems to be all that is needed: press the button when the computer tells you. I don't see how supernatural ability is much more useful than a computer in this instance. All the force did is tell him when to pull the trigger, same as computer. May be because he can feel it, he's reaction is faster, so he'll make more hits than someone using a computer, but that doesn't change the fact that it can be done without force.

As for the curves, yeah, the torpedoes can make a hard turn, but not too many tight turns moving at a fast speed. If you built the port so that there were a series of closely-spaced zig-zag patterns, it's hard to imagine that it would overcome them all, considering that it had hard time overcoming one turn when it was fired on the first run. There is nothing difficult about it, why rely on other fighters, ray shields, and arrogance, when you can build a simple physical barrier that requires no technology whatsoever.

Yes I was thinking the same, about Wedge's comment.

Really, we saw what happened when they tried it with JUST the computer: it didn't work. Like at all. Turns out the only way to make it really work is to have a sorcerer use his Force powers to guide the missile...something the Death Star designers could never have predicted.

He didn't guide it anywhere, the Force told him when to shoot. While that is impressive in of itself, no way could he guide torpedoes when he struggles to do basic things with Yoda in the next episode.

It's really simple, it was a stupid design flaw, there is no logical way around it.

[Samuel]

It's really simple, it was a stupid design flaw, there is no logical way around it.

It was intentional? If Tarkin goes rogue you need a way to take care of him. Preferably after he has toasted some worlds.

[Vympel]

Why would you include Wedge's opinion, and not Luke's? At least be fair in your arguments if you can't contain your sarcasm

Because Luke was spouting self-confident idiocy born from pure ignorance. T-16 Skyhoppers are not X-Wings, they don't have proton torpedoes, and, as he was told in the novelization, it's obviously not a combat situation (nor is there any jamming).

There is no way of knowing what the murmurs in the room meant

Yes there is, it's in the novel. They found it insane. If you can't figure that Wedge's comment is meant to give voice to that dissatisfaction, then that's your own issue.

Wedge's opinion is not worth all that when you have an otherwise naturally shy and lacking in confidence amateur pilot who is certain he can do it. Wedge, despite all his heroics in the books, comes across as a wuss.

Garbage. Wedge is a combat flyer, Luke's a bush pilot with no combat experience whatsoever. Your subjective idea that he's a 'wuss' mean absolutely nothing as to the validity of what he was saying.

As for the demonstrated inability of the computer to hit the target, well it missed once, I'm not sure it counts as enough proof. I'm not even sure why it missed, it must have been a pilot error; the torpedoes weren't released in time, which seems to be all that is needed: press the button when the computer tells you. I don't see how supernatural ability is much more useful than a computer in this instance.

This is simply "ignore what the movie is clearly telegraphing to the audience" territory. I guess Obi-Wan was just exhorting Luke to turn off the targeting computer and use the force because he's an idiot?

All the force did is tell him when to pull the trigger, same as computer. May be because he can feel it, he's reaction is faster, so he'll make more hits than someone using a computer, but that doesn't change the fact that it can be done without force.

Based on what? You've presented no evidence of this. All the evidence points in the exact opposite direction, in fact.

As for the curves, yeah, the torpedoes can make a hard turn, but not too many tight turns moving at a fast speed. If you built the port so that there were a series of closely-spaced zig-zag patterns, it's hard to imagine that it would overcome them all, considering that it had hard time overcoming one turn when it was fired on the first run. There is nothing difficult about it, why rely on other fighters, ray shields, and arrogance, when you can build a simple physical barrier that requires no technology whatsoever.

The torpedoes turned just fine, that's why they impacted on the surface.

It's really simple, it was a stupid design flaw, there is no logical way around it.

That's immaterial. You're trying to make out it's some sort of really obvious glaring weakness, and it just isn't. Your attempts to argue otherwise fly in the face of the entire movie.

[Vympel]

It was intentional? If Tarkin goes rogue you need a way to take care of him. Preferably after he has toasted some worlds.

That's dumb.

[Isolder74]

It was intentional? If Tarkin goes rogue you need a way to take care of him. Preferably after he has toasted some worlds.

That's dumb.

There are easier ways to do it to. Including a sleeper command to power down the Superlaser for instance.

[Stark]

Yeah, but the exact problem sure as hell doesn't show up on your dashboard.

Oh, yeah, it's impossible to monitor and diagnose a complex technological system because you say so.

*looks at computer in front of me*

OH WAIT! I hear 'engine fail' systems are incredibly basic 'trip sensor to start light' stuff, but that engine management computers are complex enough to control almost every function of the engine and output it to a logger. But it's impossible in the far future of FTL-science, EVEN THOUGH THE FALCON KNEW WHAT WAS WRONG. A simple text popup on a monitor would have communicated the information you stupidly assert is impossible to gather.

[FSTargetDrone]

There is no way of knowing what the murmurs in the room meant

Yes there is, it's in the novel. They found it insane. If you can't figure that Wedge's comment is meant to give voice to that dissatisfaction, then that's your own issue.

You don't even have to look to the novel for this. In the video on page 6 here, it's painfully obvious after even the most casual of viewings that the pilots are downright uneasy about the mission, to say the least.

Gold Leader asks "What good are snubfighters against that?"

When Dodonna answers him about fighters not being considered threats by the Empire and follows up by a description of the requirements of the attack (around 4:30 in the clip), Gold Leader is shown clearly taken aback as the room murmurs. Solo is clearly unconvinced and even Luke, despite his enthusiasm for the cause, briefly shows concern before reassuring the other pilot that they can hit the target. In general, there's no doubt about the mood of the pilots.

[Havok]

That's not the point. When you design a station the size of a moon, you make sure it is hard to destroy by a single fighter.

Right, because single one man fighters are ALWAYS going around blowing up moon sized objects. I mean, that is a common problem. The Empire really should have focused on stopping a single fighter.

Man, where the fuck do you come up with this bullshit.

And in all your dumbass rantings, did it not once occur to you that no one actually knew about the secondary exhaust port? Other than whatever computer or engineer designed it, no one knew about it. Even the Imperials didn't know... "We've analyzed their attack sir, and there is a danger."

As for it being a design flaw, I'm not an engineer, but it seems like designing and building a straight exhaust port that is only two meters wide that is kilometers long, makes a hell of a lot more sense than putting unnecessary bends and curves in it. Even then, the designers had enough forethought to ray shield it specifically. Clearly, NO ONE, either engineer or military, felt that a projectile attack had any real hope of success, if it could even be tried. And as has been pointed out numerous times, it literally took a supernatural Force to make the shot successful.

And of course, we only have your say so that the torpedoes couldn't make the necessary maneuvers to make it down the exhaust shaft if there had been turns.
In fact, we can't even say for certain that the shaft DIDN'T have any turns in it. The simulation we see of the shaft and torpedo hit is obviously not to scale or in any way detailed, but hey, why actually watch the movies.

Yeah sorry dillhole, a design 'flaw' it is not.

[Drooling Iguana]

There are easier ways to do it to. Including a sleeper command to power down the Superlaser for instance.

Or having a Sith Lord on board.

[Ritterin Sophia]

That's not the point. When you design a station the size of a moon, you make sure it is hard to destroy by a single fighter. Why do you need to rely on fighters to defend you when you invested untold $$$$ on this thing? It should be self sufficient. I don't think the carrier analogy is a correct one, there is a vast difference between a ship and a death star.

No, not really. What is the Death Star made for? Overwhelming power projection and intimidation factors. What is a US Super Carrier for? Overwhelming power projection and intimidation. It's the reason every time the US has a major diplomatic situation where they need someone to back down, we park a carrier just outside their coastal waters or beyond range of any AShM's they may have. This still ignores the fact that you haven't shown how my analogy is incorrect.

[Thanas]

I love how ExarKun just ignored my reply which basically showed that the Rebels tried a massive starfighter attack of 500+ X-wings and a lucrehulk carrier against an unfinished DSI and still failed massively.

But clearly, after a demonstrated failure against an unfinished target, the Imps were supposed to give a lot of thought about the danger of starfighter attacks.

[VF5SS]

Sorry mang, when talking about the movies some people tend to forget the fanfic EU material that fixes all the problems with the wave of a pen. I still think the addition of an armored door over a vulnerable area in the face of an attack isn't an unreasonable option even for stuffy arrogant, space British people.

[Thanas]

^An armored door over a vent? That kinda defeats the purpose of one, doesn't it? It needs to stay open.

And yeah, EU, but still. The movie itself has plenty of reasons why it was not a great risk.

[VF5SS]

Who says it needs to stay open all the time? The Death Star isn't an XBox 360 or some old car :3 I'd be more inclined to think the movie didn't make it seem like a problem if they hadn't let two guys get close enough to even attempt it. Here's another solution if you're not feeling the door. How about if there was a wall right in front of the where the port was? Basically the port is still open from the top but now you can't approach it from the sides where the guns can't get you. Basically preventing the whole Skee ball effect.

[Serafina]

Who says it needs to stay open all the time? The Death Star isn't an XBox 360 or some old car :3 I'd be more inclined to think the movie didn't make it seem like a problem if they hadn't let two guys get close enough to even attempt it. Here's another solution if you're not feeling the door. How about if there was a wall right in front of the where the port was? Basically the port is still open from the top but now you can't approach it from the sides where the guns can't get you. Basically preventing the whole Skee ball effect.

It needs to be open all the time, since the death star would run a lot systems all the time.
During the attack, it certainly would have to be open, since the death star used a lot of its weapon systems, run its shields, ECM and so on.

Most likely the open hatch WAS an design error - or rather, a design oversight.
It's certainly possible that the engineer(s) that designed the reactor cooling system simply did not think that it might be a problem. Which reasonable person would think that one little starfigther might specifically attack it and that this might blow up the whole station?
We know that DSII had a lot of tiny exhaust ports that solved the problem - after the destruction of DSI, the problem was glaringly obvious.

[Simon_Jester]

OH WAIT! I hear 'engine fail' systems are incredibly basic 'trip sensor to start light' stuff, but that engine management computers are complex enough to control almost every function of the engine and output it to a logger. But it's impossible in the far future of FTL-science, EVEN THOUGH THE FALCON KNEW WHAT WAS WRONG. A simple text popup on a monitor would have communicated the information you stupidly assert is impossible to gather.

Yeah. I'm guessing it was just that when the computer tried to explain the problem to Han, Han couldn't interpret the message. I can imagine it now:

"Error Message #250623? What the hell does that mean... Consult manual? Where's the manual... shit! Lando must have overwrote the help files with Twi'lek porn! Dammit!"

At which point Han gives up in disgust.

Sure, this seems plausible. Bombing runs in the Second World War composed of multiple aircraft sometimes involved only the single plane in the formation lead having a bombsight. When that lead aircraft dropped its bombs, the others in the formation followed suit.

This was arguably a really bad idea, because the other planes tended to drop their bombs too early, resulting in a line of explosions starting near the target and marching away along the bombers' line of approach. I'd think you'd get better results with independent targeting and fire.

We know from the next episode that the Rebels have the capability to escape. Even if they couldn't get everybody off, they could have got the leaders off, but they didn't bother, they knew the weakness, and that it can be exploited. They weren't exactly backed against the wall.

Nonsense. If you watch the scenes inside the Rebel base, it's quite obvious that they're nervous as hell. Why would they be nervous if they expected the X-Wing gambit to work reliably?

And if they had the choice to evacuate before the Death Star could blow up the planet, why the hell didn't they do it anyway and send the X-Wings in, instead of just sitting there while the Death Star moved into firing position? They already knew the Death Star had plenty of TIE fighters and shit, so they had to know that their plan might fail.

Even if you thought your X-Wing plan had a 99% chance of working or whatever, you'd have to be a complete fool to just sit there and do nothing instead of boarding a transport and commanding the battle from safely out of superlaser range.

That's not the point. When you design a station the size of a moon, you make sure it is hard to destroy by a single fighter. Why do you need to rely on fighters to defend you when you invested untold $$$$ on this thing? It should be self sufficient.

It was hard to destroy with fighters; you will notice that fighters actually had to defy the laws of physics using a supernatural force to destroy it.

The Death Star was armored and shielded such that no conventional fighter attack could possibly have destroyed, or even seriously threatened it. All they could do was shoot up the surface. Only by having the exact blueprints, analyzing them carefully, and launching what they had to know was a suicide mission did they even get close to succeeding. Even then, they had to use magic.

Why would you include Wedge's opinion, and not Luke's?

There is no way of knowing what the murmurs in the room meant; they could have simply thought that it was a difficult operation to undertake. Wedge's opinion is not worth all that when you have an otherwise naturally shy and lacking in confidence amateur pilot who is certain he can do it. Wedge, despite all his heroics in the books, comes across as a wuss.

Wait, what? Why is an amateur who thinks he can do it to be trusted over a professional who thinks his tools aren't up to it?

As for the curves, yeah, the torpedoes can make a hard turn, but not too many tight turns moving at a fast speed. If you built the port so that there were a series of closely-spaced zig-zag patterns, it's hard to imagine that it would overcome them all, considering that it had hard time overcoming one turn when it was fired on the first run. There is nothing difficult about it, why rely on other fighters, ray shields, and arrogance, when you can build a simple physical barrier that requires no technology whatsoever.

Why would a torpedo that can make one turn be unable to make several? That makes no sense.

[FSTargetDrone]

Sure, this seems plausible. Bombing runs in the Second World War composed of multiple aircraft sometimes involved only the single plane in the formation lead having a bombsight. When that lead aircraft dropped its bombs, the others in the formation followed suit.

This was arguably a really bad idea, because the other planes tended to drop their bombs too early, resulting in a line of explosions starting near the target and marching away along the bombers' line of approach. I'd think you'd get better results with independent targeting and fire.

I'm not arguing that it was necessarily a good idea, I'm just saying it was a plausible idea. Some of what I and others have been trying to do here is to show real-world examples of various engineering choices as analogues for what we see in the movies, be it lack of safety railings or whatever. In the case of the WW2 bomb sights and their absence in some aircraft, that may have been done because there were not enough of the more sophisticated sights available for each individual aircraft, or they were not installed in every aircraft for other reasons (trying to limit the number of more sophisticated sights potentially being scavenged from shot-down aircraft by enemy forces, etc.).

Anyway, all of the X-Wings and Y-Wings in the movies appear to have the targeting sight installed, but not every pilot is using his sight. This suggests that they could, but they simply aren't for some reason.

What I want to know is, is the exhaust port they are attacking the only one on the whole of the Death Star? That seems strange. Or is it the only one they actually have a chance of reaching?

[Simon_Jester]

I'm not arguing that it was necessarily a good idea, I'm just saying it was a plausible idea. Some of what I and others have been trying to do here is to show real-world examples of various engineering choices as analogues for what we see in the movies, be it lack of safety railings or whatever.

Good point.

What I want to know is, is the exhaust port they are attacking the only one on the whole of the Death Star? That seems strange. Or is it the only one they actually have a chance of reaching?

It seems incredible that a reactor as powerful as the Death Star's would need only one 4 m^2 exhaust port. It's more likely your second guess: there are thermal exhaust ports all over the place, but most of them don't lead directly to the reactor, so all you could do with them is thread torpedoes down inside and hit less critical targets- without doing fatal damage. And of the exhaust ports that do lead directly to the reactor, most of them aren't buried in the equatorial trench where a fighter run can use the trench as cover against the surface guns. Thus, most of the other ports would be far more difficult to attack safely.

[Batman]

Would it need more exhaust vents? It's not just to get rid of excess heat, you can do that with radiators (and with neutrino radiators you could even bury them deep in the hull) which wouldn't need a physical conduit to the core. It must be for getting rid of something physical, like hot gases. Would the reactor necessarily produce so much of those that more (perhaps many more) shafts would be necessary? (Honest question-I really don't know).
As for the winding/zig-zagging exhaust shat, wouldn't that severely reduce the throughput of the shaft requiring a LARGER one that would be considerably EASIER to hit? I suspect that a shaft that can phase 70,000g turn torpedoes is bound to be the next best thing to nonfunctional.

[FSTargetDrone]

As for the winding/zig-zagging exhaust shat, wouldn't that severely reduce the throughput of the shaft requiring a LARGER one that would be considerably EASIER to hit? I suspect that a shaft that can phase 70,000g turn torpedoes is bound to be the next best thing to nonfunctional.

Well, simplified as it is, the diagram shown in the briefing shows a direct line from the surface to the reactor. Dodonna says that "the shaft leads directly to the reactor system."

A shaft that's angled here and there along its length, seems like that would be something he'd mention. Then again, there is nothing the pilots can do about that, so he may have omitted that detail, hoping for the best (hell, the entire plan itself involves lots of hope!). But these diagrams he's showing, are they exactly what R2 delivered as taken from the Empire, or are they a sort of Power Point presentation put together by Dodonna's staff after looking over the data? If they are simplified diagrams as produced by the Empire, then I think it stands to reason that something like a kinked thermal exhaust shaft would be displayed, unless the angles are small enough that they do not show up in the simplified and not-necessarily-to-scale plans

[FSTargetDrone]

Addendum:

Here is a cutaway taken from the main site's TL commentaries section:



Can anyone find the ICS cutaway of the Death Star (or is this also from the ICS?)? Squint and you'll see that this cutaway shows the shaft (to the upper left) going nowhere near the station's core, cutting through many decks at an angle. The reactor is above the equator of the station, roughly centered between the pole and the equator, so the shaft doesn't travel to the core itself. The shaft in the image shown here clearly conflicts with the simplified briefing room presentation.

The shaft is also obviously not within the equator, so that's either another shaft, or the diagram shown here is way off.

[Batman]

Oh I agree there's absolutely NO evidence for a winding/zig-zagging shaft to begin with. I was pointing out reasons why I thought it probably wouldn't work which is why they DID go with the straight shaft we DO see represented.