Rogue One (Spoilers)

[Galvatron]

Dash Rendar will always just be a 90's Cable without 80 guns slung about him.

I'd love to see a picture of Dash Rendar drawn by Rob Liefeld.

[Sea Skimmer]

Aren't they speaking some unfathomable language called Galactic Basic too, and not English?
Sort of how in The Hunt for Red October, Captain Ramius is supposed to really be speaking Russian, but we the audience hear it as Scottish-accented English?

Yeah, though I think it got a different name then basic in later legends canon, and Lucas was always a bit pissed supposedly, that they made him put "tractor beam' in English letters in the scene where Obi Wan powers it down in case the audience forgot his task. I believe this was edited out in the Special Edition.

[Prometheus Unbound]

But as to blasters, while we don't know for sure, there is the implication that something ignites/heats the plasma-to-be, may as well be a laser. Or have been a laser. Whatever.

That makes sense - the initial spark or whatever to get it reacting could well be a laser beam, like the flint in a lighter or something.

[Admiral Valdemar]

You see a red laser start as a nucleus in the terribly-not-safe-due-to-lack-of-railing tunnel the super laser starts with. I take that to be one of the multiple focusing beams of the DS1 since the DS2 had the super laser use the central emitter.

The beam itself is clearly not abnormal laser since you can freeze frame on the beam just prior to hitting Jedha in the Japanese trailer.

[Galvatron]

Yeah, though I think it got a different name then basic in later legends canon, and Lucas was always a bit pissed supposedly, that they made him put "tractor beam' in English letters in the scene where Obi Wan powers it down in case the audience forgot his task. I believe this was edited out in the Special Edition.

I think the cartoon from the Star Wars Holiday Special might have actually been the first appearance of what became Aurebesh. This is for Elfdart:

[GuppyShark]

As far as I can remember, the word laser only appears once in the entire series of films - "They're so small they're evading our turbolasers".

They call them blasters everywhere else.

[Galvatron]

Do "laser sword" and "laser brain" count?

Or how about when Han said: "That was no laser blast! Something hit us."

[Simon_Jester]

Dash Rendar will always just be a 90's Cable without 80 guns slung about him.

Okay, so Death Star question: When we see the one-reactor shots kicking up seemingly an entire continent of crust, does that mean the Death Star's superlaser really is just a huge, kinetic, brute force kinda thing? If it was an actual laser, wouldn't its effects have no kinetic effects, just a hell of a lot of fire/boiling/melting?

I suspect that if the beam is narrow enough, or if it initially starts out relatively 'weak' and then intensifies after a second or two... I suspect it can burn a track down into the mantle and then release most of the energy deep inside the planet, creating (momentarily) an underground camouflet.

That way, you get a massive underground explosion that throws huge masses of rock up into the air, at least vaguely like what we saw on Jedha.

If you fire into the ocean, you probably get a similar effect- but the effect may be less visible because of the huge amounts of superheated steam, plus the air itself being converted into extremely bright plasma that resembles a nuclear fireball. There might still be a lot of rock getting thrown up from the blast, you just wouldn't see it.

[Ender]

Okay, so Death Star question: When we see the one-reactor shots kicking up seemingly an entire continent of crust, does that mean the Death Star's superlaser really is just a huge, kinetic, brute force kinda thing? If it was an actual laser, wouldn't its effects have no kinetic effects, just a hell of a lot of fire/boiling/melting?

Fortunately Mike wrote a page for the main site about this very topic

http://stardestroyer.net/Resources/Scie ... sives.html

[eMeM]

Pablo & Co. talking about various details:


Explaining, amongs others, what was Tantive doing over Scarif, why was Mustafar not labeled and what's up with the exhaust port.

[Reyvan]

Probably the part thats of no surprise but is interesting nonetheless is Pablo talking about the Death Star 1 and 2 at the end. It didn't take 20 years to build the Death Star, just 20 years to get the Superlaser working, once that was done they could easily build the second Death Star because they already knew how to build the laser.

[darthscott]

I enjoyed the movie a lot, and the Death Star background story is much better now IMO. It took so long because it was difficult to get the superlaser working, makes so much more sense than resource or labor shortages. Though I wonder how big the Death Star II is now since the original is back at 160 km again. I also did enjoy the fact planetary shields did not stop the Death Star, and that the first test firing on Jedha could be passed off as a mining disaster. If that was a mining disaster I wish we could see what "conventional" Imperial grade weaponry can do one day.

I was a little disappointed in the performance of the two ISD's over Scarif, wish there would have been some more capital ship action. One thing I was wondering though is when the two ISD'ds over Scarif collide, I would have thought the shields on the operational Star Destroyer would helped. Don't know if the novelization shed anymore light on that, and I know Star Wars shield have been a bit inconsistent over the years anyway.

[Mange]

Though I wonder how big the Death Star II is now since the original is back at 160 km again.

Lucasfilm has gone back and forth with the DS size, but while the 160 km size for the first has been re-established, there have been no official word on the size of the second (except for the "over 160 km" blurb in the recent Complete Locations book). Based on the (quite frankly ridiculous) "that was the Death Star, this is the Starkiller"-scene in TFA, I guess it may up in the same size range, though it was intended to be much bigger of course.

[Galvatron]

I really don't see the point in making the DS2 significantly larger than the original now.

[Ender]

I really don't see the point in making the DS2 significantly larger than the original now.

You don't want to win a 20 year old internet feud?

[Lord Insanity]

I really don't see the point in making the DS2 significantly larger than the original now.

Well aside from the fact that the ROTJ title crawls states the DS2 is larger and more powerful. Maybe making it bigger was a necessity for it to do its job with conventional materials after the kyber crystals blew up with the DS1.

[Galvatron]

Kyber crystals are rare, but Jedha wasn't their only source and the Jedi were no longer around to prevent the Empire from obtaining more.

And I can accept that the DS2 is larger and more powerful, but 900km? I don't see the point.

[Lord Revan]

one possibility is that being that big is what's needed to power the superlaser without the kyber crystals, or just with inferior quality crystals, if DS1 had their full supply of "high quality" crystals DS2 could explained by needing more crystals or a bigger reactor to get the same superlaser energy per shot.

Or the size DS2 was only way they solve the "exploding main reactor" flaw Galen Erso introduced into DS1. They did loose their engineering team including the only person who knew about the flaw as we as DS1 so there isn't much to guess what went wrong.

[Lord Insanity]

Kyber crystals are rare, but Jedha wasn't their only source and the Jedi were no longer around to prevent the Empire from obtaining more.

I could be wrong but the impression I got from Rogue One is that the Empire was mining Kyber crystals all over the galaxy not just Jedha. Either way I was referring to the fact that the Death Star itself blew up losing all the crystals in it.

one possibility is that being that big is what's needed to power the superlaser without the kyber crystals, or just with inferior quality crystals, if DS1 had their full supply of "high quality" crystals DS2 could explained by needing more crystals or a bigger reactor to get the same superlaser energy per shot.

That is exactly what I was suggesting. It would be like modern day magically running out of circuit boards and needing to use vacuum tubes for a computer. (but without the speed limitations that would cause.)

[Imperial528]

The big differences between the DS1 and DS2 was the faster recharge time for the superlaser and the ability to fire at mobile targets such as starships.

As far as the latter, the DS1 in Rogue One does clearly have impressive accuracy assuming the Scarif shot was intentionally aimed at the transmitter, though the archive tower on Scarif is essentially stationary compared to space ship.

The former point, faster recharge, may well demand a larger reactor regardless of using kyber crystals as a power source. Of course without any exact references for how much faster the DS2 recharges we can't accurately estimate just how much larger that reactor may need to be.

[eMeM]

Kyber crystals are rare, but Jedha wasn't their only source and the Jedi were no longer around to prevent the Empire from obtaining more.

I could be wrong but the impression I got from Rogue One is that the Empire was mining Kyber crystals all over the galaxy not just Jedha.

It was, see Catalyst and Ahsoka.

The big differences between the DS1 and DS2 was the faster recharge time for the superlaser and the ability to fire at mobile targets such as starships.

As far as the latter, the DS1 in Rogue One does clearly have impressive accuracy assuming the Scarif shot was intentionally aimed at the transmitter, though the archive tower on Scarif is essentially stationary compared to space ship.

"Sir, shall I begin targeting their fleet?"

The former point, faster recharge, may well demand a larger reactor regardless of using kyber crystals as a power source. Of course without any exact references for how much faster the DS2 recharges we can't accurately estimate just how much larger that reactor may need to be.

IIRC in the Rogue One novel there is a corespondence between Tarkin and Krennic that states that the Emperor (or Tarkin) wanted the superlaser to be rapid firing, but it's unclear if they managed to pull that off.

[Shroom Man 777]

A 100km+ spheroid of doom with heavy grade planetary shields AND festooned with turbolasers of all kinds would've murdered the Rebel fleet just as well as Vader's solo ISD.

Did we see other ISDs emerge with the Devastator?

[Galvatron]

Since when does the DS1 have heavy grade planetary shields? Wouldn't they have prevented the rebel fighters from attacking during the Battle of Yavin?

[Gandalf]

Kyber crystals are rare, but Jedha wasn't their only source and the Jedi were no longer around to prevent the Empire from obtaining more.

And I can accept that the DS2 is larger and more powerful, but 900km? I don't see the point.

Perhaps Palpatine had a good relationship with the corporations which built the components, and sought to send some Imperial pork spending their way?

If he gives them some easy work and no-bid contracts, maybe they don't sell to others or something.

[Shroom Man 777]

Since when does the DS1 have heavy grade planetary shields? Wouldn't they have prevented the rebel fighters from attacking during the Battle of Yavin?

My bad. Right, those are permeable combat shields not planetary shields. Early morning rapid typing.