Why didn't they broadcast Death Star plans?

[Bellosh101]

Let's not forget that the Imperial military and government had a monopoly on the Holonet; the most reliable method of galactic communication. Leia would have been stuck with inferior transmission options that may not have been up to the challenge of transmitting the complete technical readouts of a 160km battlestation light-years across the galaxy. Ergo, her options were to either head over to Yavin IV only to have the Imperial Navy follow her and locate the Rebel fortress, or she can head back to Alderaan where she can secretly hand over the DS plans to the Rebels while claiming that she has merely returned home from a diplomatic mission. Bail's decision to have Leia recruit Ben Kenobi on Tatooine before heading home was merely an instance of mission creep.

[Batman]

She was under suspicion, wasn't she? And why not? I don't find it inconcievable for Imperial authorities to look out for 'file sizes of suspicious nature, e.g. 1.567 biggabytes' or whatever. Similar principle to unusually large bank deposits often tipping off the authorities in RL.

That's because those deposits ARE unusually large for the persons doing them. The same is not necessarily true for data transmissions in the Wars universe. Again, Leia could shove the entirety of the DS plans into R2's free memory so I seriously doubt that kind of message size is all that unusual.

[Srelex]

How do you jump to that conclusion? I mean, the plans could have taxed his spare memory for all we know. Besides, wasn't the large memory space for storing hyperspace co-ordiantes or something a feature of R2's droid model?

Besides, what would the average file size transmitted be? Why would people want to transmit files the size of moon-sized battlestation blueprints on a regular basis?

[Batman]

How do you jump to that conclusion? I mean, the plans could have taxed his spare memory for all we know. Besides, wasn't the large memory space for storing hyperspace co-ordiantes or something a feature of R2's droid model?
Besides, what would the average file size transmitted be? Why would people want to transmit files the size of moon-sized battlestation blueprints on a regular basis?

A moisture farmer on Tatooine thought he had use for an R2 unit, I doubt their memory capacity is all that exceptional. And I'm sorry, look at the modern WWW. People ROUTINELY download GBs worth of porn. Extrapolate to Star Wars technology. The Death Star plans are going to disappear in the clutter.

[Srelex]

Really? Okay, let's actually try quantifying how big the files for the Death Star plans would be. How big, are, say, the schematics of an aircraft carrier? Or a large building? I mean, are you really arguing that people in SW download quantites of porn comparable to what at least must be a file size equal to every database available to the US government? o_O

[Bellosh101]

The Death Star plans are going to disappear in the clutter.

Except that there is no clutter because Palpatine had the bloody Holonet dismantled and reconstructed strictly for exclusive military-government use.

[Jim Raynor]

There was a battle. And Leia was there in the Tantive IV. We don't know for sure that it wasn't Toprawa in Lucas' head. And if it wasn't then, it is now. As is the galaxy map by which the Toprawa/Yavin distances are tiny compared to running all the way to Tatooine on the equivalent of an intragalactic space highway that passes right next to the police station.

So Lucas himself makes up EU planets and draws the maps?

I guess you missed the part where the Empire is an evil dictatorship, and Tarkin wanted to expand military control over the systems using the Death Star to intimidate them.

Hitler was a pretty mean dictator, yet he totally turned Germany around after the Western Powers violated the initial peace accords to impose the inequities of Versailles and raped the country for 10 years in the 20s (Yes, I am aware that it began with Stresemann and Kellogg-Briand/Locarno back in '27-'28...).

You're bitching about how stupid the blatantly evil Empire was for killing its own people, yet you're using NAZI GERMANY as your counterpoint? The same Nazi Germany that thought it was productive to commit genocide against millions of people within its own borders?

The GNP of the planet would be worth considerably more than Bael Organa's head on a stick.

Which is why you go to Alderaan, dial up your psyops transmitters to override the local holonet stations and announce: "Thanks to these hidden recordings (role tape), we now know that Alderaan is engaged in seditious activities in support of the illegal terrorist organization known as 'The Alliance to Restore the Republic.' Because it is realized that not everyone on the planet could have known of this illicit and treasonous cooperation and as we are far more merciful than your present leadership, we are hereby giving you 24hrs to kill the entire royal family in a public location, telecast live on the Holonet. OR ELSE, the huge battlestation you currently see above your home world will blow up the entire planet."

Because killing the unseen Bail Organa was clearly the purpose of the planet's destruction...Oh wait, that supposed motivation of yours was never mentioned.

It's not like the Death Star plans clearly label a weakness. It's a moon-sized battlestation with one 2-meter hole in it. A 2-meter hole defended by a crapload of turbolasers and TIE Fighters. Which no Rebel pilot, using the targeting systems of their fighters, could hit. Only Luke, who had the Force, was able to do it.

I put that poorly, because it's not the plans themselves which are necessarily the threat. I would expect a security screen and sanitizing force to pre-sweep any system the Death Star was headed for to protect it from high yield mines or ambush attack. As well as to provide accurate targeting and general exclusive operating area blockout of local space.

Just like we do with a CVSF.

The Death Star is not analogous to an aircraft carrier. It is not a warship that lacks the ability to defend itself properly, and is easily killable if the enemy so much as gets a shot through at it. The Death Star is heavily armed and armored, and is basically a fleet unto itself. You have done nothing to prove its vulnerability to "high yield mines" or "ambush attack."

Yeah, "fire the writer" after the first Star Wars movie. Billions of people would disagree with you.

I don't believe George Lucas wrote 'Star Wars' I believe a consortia of his friends acting as ghosts did.

Stop it with the conspiracy theories, you whack job.

[bz249]

She was under suspicion, wasn't she? And why not? I don't find it inconcievable for Imperial authorities to look out for 'file sizes of suspicious nature, e.g. 1.567 biggabytes' or whatever. Similar principle to unusually large bank deposits often tipping off the authorities in RL.

That's because those deposits ARE unusually large for the persons doing them. The same is not necessarily true for data transmissions in the Wars universe. Again, Leia could shove the entirety of the DS plans into R2's free memory so I seriously doubt that kind of message size is all that unusual.

To store the data in physical memory is way easier than broadcast it, bandwidth is much more limited resource nowadays than data storage capacity. What is demonstrated in the movies is incredible data storage and processing ability not anything related to data broadcasting ability. Indeed the Holonet images are not remarkably high quality. Whether it is because of bandwidth issues or some other limitations of technology is AFAIK is not discussed.