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I don't see how that's a plot hole when General Dodonna tells the pilots in the briefing that the Empire doesn't consider small, one-man starfighters a threat, or they'd have a tighter defence. It's implicit in that line that the Empire was aware of the problem but disregarded it because of arrogance/not heeding it as a significant threat (considering only small, one-man starfighters could get close enough to the exhaust port for it to be any threat at all). It's interesting though that during the battle Tarkin was asked by one of his flunkies whether he wanted his shuttle standing by, and Tarkin responds by scoffing and saying he's overestimating their chances. So yeah, not really a plot hole if the only way that it can be exploited is if a pilot happens to be force sensitive and uses the force to fire those torpedoes rather than a targeting computer. (which as per the novelisation, could easily be affected by 'jamming' going on)

Stofsk wrote:I don't see how that's a plot hole when General Dodonna tells the pilots in the briefing that the Empire doesn't consider small, one-man starfighters a threat, or they'd have a tighter defence.

But that would only make sense if the Empire had done a detailed examination of the threat, and found no flaws a small fighter could exploit. Clearly they did not, and applied less detail design attention to a 160km space station then people applied to battleships 80 years ago when the primary threat was 100mph biplanes. This doesn't make any sense when the Rebels found this flaw so damn quickly, and it could be fixed so easily.

It's implicit in that line that the Empire was aware of the problem but disregarded it because of arrogance/not heeding it as a significant threat (considering only small, one-man starfighters could get close enough to the exhaust port for it to be any threat at all). It's interesting though that during the battle Tarkin was asked by one of his flunkies whether he wanted his shuttle standing by, and Tarkin responds by scoffing and saying he's overestimating their chances. So yeah, not really a plot hole if the only way that it can be exploited is if a pilot happens to be force sensitive and uses the force to fire those torpedoes rather than a targeting computer. (which as per the novelisation, could easily be affected by 'jamming' going on)

Yeah... that doesn't work either. A Maverick missile could hit a target less then 2 meters wide with purely optical guidance in 1972 well before the movie was written. For that matter even the earlier Homing Bomb System used from 1967 on could have a good chance of doing it. So its not like this is a hindsight issue; if the movie was made in 1950 I'd be more understanding. Plus we saw that the Rebels could get a lock with the computer, and scored a near miss. Simple probability means if an attacker can place weapons close to the target, then one is going to go in eventually. When all they need is a S curve or a two level grating in the vent to block such a critical threat it is just not plausible that it would be ignored on such a stupidly expensive project. Its like creating a super safe race car, and then not giving the driver a helmet because you don't think he'll ever crash. If the Rebels had more fighters or more time they easily could have scored a hit without Luke just by trying more times.

Isn't Death Star a novel where the main reason Yavin IV wasn't blown up was because the superlaser operator got cold feet after Alderaan and kept delaying the firing sequence out of guilt?
Sounds like more EU rubbish to me.

Gramzamber wrote:Isn't Death Star a novel where the main reason Yavin IV wasn't blown up was because the superlaser operator got cold feet after Alderaan and kept delaying the firing sequence out of guilt?
Sounds like more EU rubbish to me.

Apparently, the novel isn't half bad. And really, anything that at least tries to make the Imperials something other than cackling paper-villains gets marks from me.

I always had issues with where the rest of the 7,293 TIE Fighters were during the attack on Yavin. (I can think of a dozen reasons why we never see them, same as soon as we get to the Death Star most of the X & Y Wings disappear but it always bugged me a bit)

Gramzamber wrote:Isn't Death Star a novel where the main reason Yavin IV wasn't blown up was because the superlaser operator got cold feet after Alderaan and kept delaying the firing sequence out of guilt?
Sounds like more EU rubbish to me.

I actually liked that part of the novel - the character in question, Tenn Graneet, develops from a gung-ho ra! ra! type to someone having a breakdown because of what he did with destroying Alderaan. Before his delay in shooting at Yavin the novel covers very adequately how he notices the different reactions and stares others on the Death Star give him after they find out he was the one that pulled the trigger and his questioning of himself and his actions. It wasn't the main reason either because Luke had already fired his shot before Graneet started his delay.

Gramzamber wrote:Isn't Death Star a novel where the main reason Yavin IV wasn't blown up was because the superlaser operator got cold feet after Alderaan and kept delaying the firing sequence out of guilt?
Sounds like more EU rubbish to me.

That's what I was trying to say. And it seems like it wasn't necessary since the novel does somewhat agree with me and makes it a mix of the shot already happened and the aforementioned cold feet.
I understand wanting the Empire to be a more three-dimensional villain, but there are plenty of other possibilities than the Death Star gunner. I would also think the Empire would have some clue and did the same sort of psych evaluations for the gunnery teams that the US armed forces do on the soldiers who are in charge of launching nuclear ordinance.

Here is the article in question.

It's by nick mamatas and his arguements are as follows.

1.)“Why didn’t Obi-Wan Kenobi tell Luke that Darth Vader was Luke’s father? Clearly, Vader could have told Luke at any time.” “If Vader wanted to blow Luke’s mind, he could have had the words ‘Luke, I am your father, xoxo, DV’ burnt into the side of some nearby mountains with the laser cannons of his Star Destroyer at any time.”

2.) He also says that because Palpy and Vader are so powerful in the force and politically, then they should be able to find luke instantly in the force while still a baby. “Didn’t Luke sense Vader’s power and Han Solo’s plight from across interstellar space after a few days of hanging out with Yoda and getting Force training in Epidose V?” “Or how about when Vader confronts Leia? No mention of paternity or the Force, which is supposed to be strong in her as well.”

3.) "In Episode IV, [Obi-Wan] still fails to recognize the droids, and has no reason to simply be pretending not to recognize them.”

4.) “Leia, through Episodes IV-VI, is ignorant of her heritage … Did nobody in the Empire ask the Organas from where they adopted this girl?”

5.) “Biochemical technology is such that in Episode I Qui-Gon can analyze a blood sample and send it over Magic Radio Waves to Obi-Wan on the Queen’s ship, where Obi-Wan can check the blood for midichlorians. Leia is certainly awash in those sparkly little Force germs, germs that apparently can be e-mailed to people.”

6.) “R2-D2’s butt-rocket came in handy in Episodes II and III and could have also come in handy any number of times in Episodes IV through VI.”

7.) “[W]hy no mention of midichlorians, no glimpses of all the goofy robots and vehicles exclusive to Episodes I-III, no discussion of how the Empire came to be?”

8.) “They also went from tri-wings in Episode II to X-wings in Episode IV.

9.)“Why did Obi-Wan take Luke to Tatooine and send him to live with the Skywalkers?”

10.) He also says that motti is an athiest, before citing several brin arguements before finally bitching about how star wars supposedly ruined american cinema.

Darth Yan wrote:
1.)“Why didn’t Obi-Wan Kenobi tell Luke that Darth Vader was Luke’s father? Clearly, Vader could have told Luke at any time.” “If Vader wanted to blow Luke’s mind, he could have had the words ‘Luke, I am your father, xoxo, DV’ burnt into the side of some nearby mountains with the laser cannons of his Star Destroyer at any time.”

Because he didn't want Luke to break down with the realization that his father is a mass murderer? As for the second part, what the fuck does that even mean?

2.) He also says that because Palpy and Vader are so powerful in the force and politically, then they should be able to find luke instantly in the force while still a baby. “Didn’t Luke sense Vader’s power and Han Solo’s plight from across interstellar space after a few days of hanging out with Yoda and getting Force training in Epidose V?” “Or how about when Vader confronts Leia? No mention of paternity or the Force, which is supposed to be strong in her as well.”

When was it ever said that the Force worked like a GPS?

3.) "In Episode IV, [Obi-Wan] still fails to recognize the droids, and has no reason to simply be pretending not to recognize them.”

Maybe because for all he knows they're just another one of the billions of identical 3PO/R2 units in the galaxy?

4.) “Leia, through Episodes IV-VI, is ignorant of her heritage … Did nobody in the Empire ask the Organas from where they adopted this girl?”

What, is it too difficult to assume they had a cover story?

5.) “Biochemical technology is such that in Episode I Qui-Gon can analyze a blood sample and send it over Magic Radio Waves to Obi-Wan on the Queen’s ship, where Obi-Wan can check the blood for midichlorians. Leia is certainly awash in those sparkly little Force germs, germs that apparently can be e-mailed to people.”

Huh? So?

6.) “R2-D2’s butt-rocket came in handy in Episodes II and III and could have also come in handy any number of times in Episodes IV through VI.”

When?

7.) “[W]hy no mention of midichlorians, no glimpses of all the goofy robots and vehicles exclusive to Episodes I-III, no discussion of how the Empire came to be?”

Because there was no need?

8.) “They also went from tri-wings in Episode II to X-wings in Episode IV.

And?

9.)“Why did Obi-Wan take Luke to Tatooine and send him to live with the Skywalkers?”

So that he could have an upbringing? Something he knows his former pupil who tried to kill him lacked?

10.) He also says that motti is an athiest, before citing several brin arguements before finally bitching about how star wars supposedly ruined american cinema.

He's a dumbass.

Srelex wrote:

8.) “They also went from tri-wings in Episode II to X-wings in Episode IV.

And?

More wings = better, obviously.
The Rebellion should be fielding fighters with ten wings!

Not trying to necro, but why does vader just walk away after sensing obi wan on the falcon?

Perhaps he was confused about sensing him at all and went to Tarkin or wanted to communicate with Palpy? It does seem a little screwy. But, it doesn't drive the movie to a screeching halt or act as a symptom of a greater problem dragging down the whole trilogy.

Sea Skimmer wrote:

phongn wrote: Apparently in the Death Star novel, the construction and on-site design-revision team noticed the extra exhaust port and were going to excise it but got busy, forgot to put it in writing and then it ended up staying. Kaboom.

That's still bullshit when the only way you could ever design all the details of something that huge would be a lot of automated computer programs which should easily notice the risk. It would have been a basic design standard that such ports are protected, no matter what such a port leads into you would still not want enemy weapons to be able to enter it and explode inside the hull. But then certain parts of the EU basically try to insist that a single person designed the fucking thing so what do we expect.

There are plenty of examples in history of flawed designs leading to the destruction of major weapons or structures. Flagship for I think the French that rolled over on launch due to having too many cannons and dooddads up top, the theory of the battle-cruiser proven unsound in actual combat in WWII, the debate between the Brits and Americans over the need for armored vs. unarmored carrier decks, the Sherman being a piece of absolute shit for a tank, American air-to-air missiles in the early days of Vietnam being next to useless, the Army's early M-16's being plastic pieces of shit that killed more Americans than VC's, etc. Screwups can happen. And there are examples of flawed designs that get approved due to politics, engineers know damn well in advance what the vulnerabilities are and yet nothing is done until a disaster happens and the engineer says told'ja so. Another classic example would be the shitty watertight bow doors on auto ferries. We've had a number of sinkings due to design flaws with the way the doors latch. Fixing them hasn't been a priority.

There's also the matter of the lucky shot. Historically we've had examples like the Bismarck getting whacked on the rudder by an obsolete biplane, kings and generals killed by lucky shots through the eye slits of their helmets, and so forth.

All that being said, I agree that it seems a bit astounding that the Rebs were able to figure this one out in hours. Just imagine being the engineer saddled with that task! I'm willing to give it a pass because it's a good movie. Not as forgiving of the nutrilogy.

Anguirus wrote:

The biggest plot hole? I always wondered how the Millenium Falcon crossed interstellar distances with no hyperdrive and arrive at Bespin without relativity affecting things. Thank god the EU invented 'backup hyperdrives' to address this issue, since nothing else does.

Um, this actually makes MORE sense without the backup hyperdrive. It gives Luke a timeframe of months to train, rather than the hours that are experienced by Leia and Han. It also gives Boba Fett all the time he needs to fly around, report back to Vader, the two of them to lean on Calrissian and set up the picture-perfect ambush, etc., etc.

If they can get to high relativity speeds quick enough, then they don't have to worry about supplies. The closer they get to light speed, the quicker the trip will seem.
In fact, with time dialation a given relativity voyage could seem QUICKER than hyperspace.
(I remember reading that relativity shields and whatnot, but thats EU crap.)

At slower than light speed, luke has YEARS to train with the muppet.

IIRF the hyperspace tracker on the falcon tracks via interfacing with the holonet. The holonet relays the broadcast.
I find it likelythat holonet servers would be closer to populated star systems. Rather than only being in deep space. Not too many paying customers in deep space.

Han could have lucked out (not unlikely) and been in an area of deep space where boba couldn't track him over the holonet easily. Boba knows that Han is not going in a straight line, and can be anywhere within a 360x360 sphere. He also doesn't want to travel at relativistic speeds, when he knows Han is going to land eventually.

Boba makes a cup of coffee, and takes a few more side jobs. years go by.
Darth meanwhile is still searching the galaxy for Luke. He has lots of time to think over his relationship with Palpi.

When the falcon nears Besbin, and starts deceleration, the tracker interfaces with the holonet server. Boba gets a text message on his mPhone. He casually finishes off his latest bounty, and zips off to Bespin with Darth.

Darth makes lando his bitch in the few days it takes Han to decelerate from the local Oort cloud.
During this time, Luke gets a premonition, and zips off. At this point luke has had years, not hours of Jedi training, and it takes Vader several minutes, not seconds to cut off his hand.

Tarkin has to shoot at Yavin IV, and therefore wait for it's orbit to come in range of the Death Star's superlaser, when he could have just destroyed Yavin, which would have destroyed all the moons around it as well, long before the rebels could have even launched their fighters.

Except that Yavin is obviously a gas giant, not to mention the little problem of recharging the superlaser...

Though to address the old thermal exausht point and not being considered a threat by the Empire, it's worth noting that a comptuer calculated shot with the torpedeos still missed.

This after the only approach for the small one man fighters being through the hard to fly through killing field of a trench which makes even the afformentioned computer targeting nigh impossible, as the rebel pilots themselves noted before the mission.

If Luke hadn't had the belence of being the protag- I mean a Force user, then it seems almsot certian that the attack on the weakpoint would have done a grand total of nothing, seems it's not such a big weakness afterall.

the afformentioned computer targeting nigh impossible

The first run missed by little more than two or three meters, I'd hardly say that makes the shot impossible.

therefore wait for it's orbit to come in range of the Death Star's superlaser

Tarkin didn't wait for it, the Death Star went around the planet to get its firing solution. Why they didn’t do that via hyperspace is another question but Tarkin was hardly in a hurry and it could likely interfere with the charging of the superlaser.

Flagship for I think the French that rolled over on launch due to having too many cannons and dooddads up top

I think you mean the Mary Rose which was English and sank largely because of poor sea conditions and negligent command during battle rather than any critical design flaws. However the key difference is that the Death Star is being designed by a civilization with tens of thousands of years of hi tech engineering experience and computer aided design, there is no reason to think they simply accepted a gaping hole leading to the reactor in the design when we know better than to do that now.

but why does vader just walk away after sensing obi wan on the falcon?

A bit weird indeed but perhaps he thought of the idea of using the Falcon to find the rebel base once he realised the ship was not abandoned, tearing the ship apart there and then after all does nothing to achieve that.

jollyreaper wrote:
There are plenty of examples in history of flawed designs leading to the destruction of major weapons or structures. Flagship for I think the French that rolled over on launch due to having too many cannons and dooddads up top

If you mean the British Mary Rose, she sank because she was one of the first of an entirely new era of warship design, was overloaded with armored men (not a design flaw) had been modified by the Kings Orders from her original design and was sailing with gunports open to impress the king in weather when she should not have done so. She was also simply built in an era before designers could not make scientific stability calculations, making it fairly amazing that anyone could design warships at all. If the Death Star was the first armored warship the Empire had ever built then this would be understandable but as we in fact see they have been building colossal armored ships and using them in combat in the Empire and before the Empire for a long time.

In fact the Death Star was designed and built right after a major war, which would have provide a colossal trove of empirical research data which would show exactly what is destroying ships and which would highlight small dangerous like poorly designed hatches or ineffective armor gratings. Ships designed and built after WW1 had way better survivability features then those built before it, the same is true of WW2 and we’ve learned a fair bit since then too. Since we don’t see much naval combat anymore we just routinely blow up our own ships to study them instead, and to validate computer models of survivability.

By the time you get to the year 10 million or however long it would take to reach Star Wars level development and you have sentient/near sentient computers to remind you of details you just have no damn excuse for such a glaring and easily corrected vulnerability.

the theory of the battle-cruiser proven unsound in actual combat in WWII

Not a design flaw, the British ships blew up because of bad ammo and more importantly unsafe loading practices based on revised orders issued during the war. They did not blow up because someone left a completely unarmored hole the enemy could attack that led right to a critical piece of equipment.

, the debate between the Brits and Americans over the need for armored vs. unarmored carrier decks

No design flaws or glaring stupidity was involved with that, nor did any of the carriers involved ever actually sink in action. It’s merely a difference of priorities in treaty limited ships. The unarmored deck was proven decisively superior in action though, but only when you had a decent supply of aircraft to put on top of it. The RN didn’t thanks to the RAF controlling its aircraft supply nor did it believe fighters could be an effective defense which was true in 1937, but not 1942. Both types of ships had armoring and especially armored the magazines and AVGAS supply.

, the Sherman being a piece of absolute shit for a tank

No. I’m not even going to waste time explaining why that is just stupid. We’ve had more then enough Sherman threads before. Suffice to say the Sherman is one of the best tanks around for its weight.

, American air-to-air missiles in the early days of Vietnam being next to useless

And guns would have been totally useless against supersonic bombers (literally, the bomber flies as fast as the bullets do… not good), which were the designed target of those air to air missiles, not small enemy fighters fought under insane ROE. Without those crazy ROE bombers would have just flattened the MiG airfields and made the 1:1 kill ratio moot.

Anyway the missiles did fundamentally work, they just had reliability problems, it’s not like someone designed a missile which didn’t have a fuse or guidance fins.

The Death Star flaw is like building a superhardened ICBM silo, and then putting a plate glass window in the roof.

, the Army's early M-16's being plastic pieces of shit that killed more Americans than VC's, etc. Screwups can happen.

The M16 was bad; this was also because the M16 was allowed to bypass a lot of the normal design and procurement process because it was viewed as being ‘off the shelf’. This is most markedly not the case for the Death Star.

And there are examples of flawed designs that get approved due to politics, engineers know damn well in advance what the vulnerabilities are and yet nothing is done until a disaster happens and the engineer says told'ja so. Another classic example would be the shitty watertight bow doors on auto ferries. We've had a number of sinkings due to design flaws with the way the doors latch. Fixing them hasn't been a priority.

Funny enough militaries abandon LSTs, aside from the safety hating Russians, specifically because bow doors are so troublesome in high speed designs. The low speed LSTs of WW2 were incredibly resilient ships in contrast. Vulnerabilities tend to be a result of complex interactions anyway, not just because someone left a damn gaping hole in the ship.

There's also the matter of the lucky shot. Historically we've had examples like the Bismarck getting whacked on the rudder by an obsolete biplane, kings and generals killed by lucky shots through the eye slits of their helmets, and so forth.

[/quote]

Okay sure, but this is why warship designers went to considerable trouble not to provide opportunities for golden BBs, and unlike a helmet you have the weight and space to avoid nasty compromises. The rudder of a warship was simply an innate vulnerability, you couldn’t do anything about it, but in for example Bismarck’s case it wouldn’t have mattered nearly as much if a battleship was used as part of a fleet and not as a lone raider. Sinking merchant ships is not a rational use of battleships but this is a failure of Nazi doctrine not the design of Bismarck, which was abysmal overall. But even such an abysmal design created by designers with no references (the British burned everything after WW1) did remember armor the steering motors like other warships did. The flaw on the Death Star is akin to having not provided that armor at all and then having a 4.7in shell from a destroyer knock it out.

The Death Star makes life all the easier because the station is so massive, its internal volume goes up far quicker then the surface area, which means a minimization of the armor penetrations compared to the total design effort. Proportionally the bigger the ship, the easier it is to protect. A straight shaft to the reactor is just completely retarded. Modern battleships had to protect larger openings while being smaller ships and did so quite well at it. Like I said all they needed was a grating or a bend. Its just stupid, movies are made out of stupidity most of the time.

In all fairness the hole was protected by a shitload of sensor jammers (which actually thwarted all but luke's weapons) and shielding that blocked lasers.

Darth Yan wrote:In all fairness the hole was protected by a shitload of sensor jammers (which actually thwarted all but luke's weapons) and shielding that blocked lasers.

Yeah, which makes a defense as simple as a grating are the more impossibly stupid since they had to have known about the risk. Real battleships had this exact same problem with the funnels, and armored them successfully. Nothing can rationally explain this. Likewise nothing will ever explain why the hell the Death Star 2 had no less then four tunnels leading to its main reactor without such basic defenses as a door or a gate or even just parking construction material or empty fighters to block the way. Sure you can claim they needed the tunnels to exist in the first place to give the Rebels a credible way to attack... but the whole setup was a planned ambush and someone could have blocked those tunnels on 10 minutes notice.

Well, according to the novel Death Star, the exhaust port was there as an oversight; besides, would a grating do any good anyway? Would not the torpedoes just burn or tear through it?

And for all we know the tunnels were an easy way for construction materials for the interior to be ferried in. I mean, the thing was still being built, and I doubt the Imperials expected the rebels to down the shield. Or perhaps the Big Metal Doors of Doom had been delayed till Tuesday.

Well, the fact is, when you're dealing with a structure over 100km wide, absolutely no design or engineering mistakes to occur during construction is just silly. I mean, in proportion, the exhaust port is like the opening to a battleship's gun barrel, or a deck funnel; you don't see people grating those up on the off chance that an enemy shell might go in there and blow the thing?

Two possibilities occur to me about the infamous exhaust port; first that it may be effectively unpluggable because it is part of the SCRAM system- if something starts to let go, if the reactor destabilises and they need to vent right now now now, a column of multi-trillion degree plasma (probably composed of melted bits of the inner wall of the reactor vessel and control systems) is going to come flushing up that shaft. The ray shielding and the physical location of it isn't perfect, but it is the best solution consistent with it's being able to function as an emergency overload safety valve for a stellar- energy level reactor. Any physical barrier in the way is going to be either irrelevant or very, very counterproductive.


The other thought is that it may be a deliberately unplugged vulnerability- in case it needs to be exploited by Skywalker senior. Tarkin was known to be a megalomaniac, that was what Vader was doing there in the first place- keeping an eye on him. The possibility of Tarkin going rogue with the thing was definitely non-zero; it would have been a feat of leadership to get Motti, Tagge, etc to go along with it but it wasn't completely impossible, and Vader's ability to make friends and influence people could have made it more likely.

The idea of a vulnerability being deliberately designed in or at least not designed out, that could only be effectively exploited by a pilot talented in the force, as an ultimate security fallback for the Empire...maybe it's just me, but there's a poetic justice to that idea. Unfortunately, this is just fanon and nothing of the sort was ever stated. Oh well.

Srelex wrote:Well, the fact is, when you're dealing with a structure over 100km wide, absolutely no design or engineering mistakes to occur during construction is just silly. I mean, in proportion, the exhaust port is like the opening to a battleship's gun barrel, or a deck funnel; you don't see people grating those up on the off chance that an enemy shell might go in there and blow the thing?

The gun barrel runs into the turret which is already isolated from the rest of the ship by blast doors as well as its own mass and breach. Actually the gun ports themselves were vulnerability too, but any shell that entered a gun port would strike the rear of the turret or barbette and burst against tit. It would not plunge straight through the ship to explode below the waterline.

Assuming you mean air intake by a deck funnel, they did not run those directly into the magazines from the main deck in the first place (that would have led to sucking in gun blast into the magazines at best). The ones into the machinery space, which then fed the rest of the ventilation system often did have armor gratings, were dog legged between the armor decks, and generally did not represent a critical threat to the ships safety because you can keep fighting after loosing a boiler room. That's a big difference from running a straight open hole from the main deck to a magazine or similar space. And this was all being done all in an era before ship design was fully understood like we do today, let alone the absurdly far future, and before any kind of precision weapons threat existed.

Anyway we are not talking about zero mistakes. We are talking about no easily located by people who have never even seen the actual station, glaringly fatal vulnerabilities. A shaft running straight through every fucking deck is an obvious flaw, and you have sentient fucking computers to look for it for you! The Rebels found this in hours! What the hell was the Empire doing when they fuck talk about final inspections during the movie? Or during the entire rest of the several year design and construction process?

Eleventh Century Remnant wrote:Two possibilities occur to me about the infamous exhaust port; first that it may be effectively unpluggable because it is part of the SCRAM system- if something starts to let go, if the reactor destabilises and they need to vent right now now now, a column of multi-trillion degree plasma (probably composed of melted bits of the inner wall of the reactor vessel and control systems) is going to come flushing up that shaft. The ray shielding and the physical location of it isn't perfect, but it is the best solution consistent with it's being able to function as an emergency overload safety valve for a stellar- energy level reactor. Any physical barrier in the way is going to be either irrelevant or very, very counterproductive.

You could just have explosive bolts or a blast valve or a number of other solutions to deal with that, and don't forget the Death Star 2 was specified to have solved by the problem by using numerous very small vents, so theories of a straight open shaft of that size being required just don't work.

Hell you know it’s actually in US government bunker design manuals that air ducts must be too small for people to crawl through? How many movies would that beat? Humans, being not retarded on average, do think of stuff like this.

The other thought is that it may be a deliberately unplugged vulnerability- in case it needs to be exploited by Skywalker senior. Tarkin was known to be a megalomaniac, that was what Vader was doing there in the first place- keeping an eye on him. The possibility of Tarkin going rogue with the thing was definitely non-zero; it would have been a feat of leadership to get Motti, Tagge, etc to go along with it but it wasn't completely impossible, and Vader's ability to make friends and influence people could have made it more likely.

You've got billions of crew on board, mutiny is not very plausible and if the Emperor somehow feared that enough he just wouldn't build the damn station. It makes no rational sense to have a built in fatal flaw like that when the Empire could at worst attack the station with thousands of its own ships, disable the superlaser and just recapture it. In all probability, since the Death Star was merely the largest, not the only superlaser ever built the Emperor just had something handy that could blow the Death Star up in turn as well.

Anyway like I already pointed out, you do not need a force sensitive pilot. If you could make repeated runs on the port someone would eventually get a hit, modern weapons could have a chance of doing this already. The defenses might be heavy, but clearly not that heavy when a single X-wing strafing run is enough to set off internal explosions and knock out turrets. A larger attack force could have just wiped out all the turbolaser turrets on the first pass. The Death Star was supposed to control the entire Galaxy, which means confronting people will significantly more resources then the rebellion. Intentionally designing it to be vulnerable to anything less then a full scale capital ship assault is just insane.