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The Death Star was a giant Military Space Station in the Fiction al Star Wars universe. DESCRIPTION The Galactic Empire 's ultimate terror weapon, the Death Stars were mobile battle stations that mounted a directed Superlaser Weapon capable of completely destroying a Planet with a single shot. Planetary shields that could have held off entire Imperial fleets were ineffective against such a weapon. The first Death Star held 27,048 officers, 774,576 crew including troopers, pilots and officials, 400,000 support workers and over 25,000 Imperial Stormtrooper s. It also carried assault shuttles, Skipray Blastboats, strike cruisers, drop ships, land vehicles, and support ships as well as 7,200 TIE Fighter s. For surface protection it sported 10,000 Turbolaser batteries, 2,500 Ion Cannon s and at least 700 Tractor Beam projectors, plus, of course, the superlaser. Even without the primary weapon, the Death Star carried enough troops and ships to occupy an entire star system by force. Two Death Stars (I and II) were featured in the original movie trilogy: the first in '' A New Hope '', and the second in '' Return Of The Jedi ''. The designs for the Death Star are visible in '' Attack Of The Clones ''; and in '' Revenge Of The Sith '' Palpatine is seen viewing the plans before the war ends, and the basic structure of the first death star is seen near the end of the film. and Vader survey the captured "Great Weapon"]] The first Death Star was designed by the Geonosian s under Poggle The Lesser . At the start of the Clone Wars , they gave the designs of their "Great Weapon" (also referred to as the "Ultimate Weapon") to Count Dooku to prevent the designs from falling into Jedi hands. Dooku took the designs back to Coruscant and gave them to his master, Darth Sidious . Once the war was well underway, the Separatist leaders began to finance and build the weapon, using mostly Geonosians as their laborers. Due to the changing political climate, the Separatist leaders were all murdered, the Separatist movement was ended and the weapon fell directly into the hands of the newly-formed Empire . ''. According to the ''New Essential Chronology'', this IS the same Death Star seen in ''A New Hope.'' Despite this, some fans (including Dr Curtis Saxton on his Star Wars Technical Commentaries website) have claimed that this Death Star must be a prototype to the one seen in the original film. The construction was delayed while a test system was created at Maw Installation, and after a long delay for systems testing, construction was resumed on the battlestation. In '' A New Hope '', Han Solo and Luke Skywalker mistake the station for a small moon while following a lone TIE fighter. After escaping from the Death Star, the plans to the station, stolen by Rebel spies (according to the LucasArts video games, a secret signal interceptions asteroid, as well as Kyle Katarn ), are transported by Princess Leia (with help from Han Solo, Luke Skywalker and the droids R2-D2 and C-3PO ) to Rebel leaders. Luke Skywalker pilots an X-wing starfighter through a trench-like indentation on the surface of the Death Star, evading a pursuing Darth Vader long enough to launch a pair of proton torpedoes down a thermal exhaust port that leads directly the reactor core, causing a chain reaction which destroys the battle station. As mentioned in '', allow the player to personally take part in this orchestration, including killing some—but not all—Bothan spies to preserve the illusion that the Empire was trying to prevent acquisition of the plans). General Crix Madine and Admiral Ackbar devise a plan for its destruction. Han leads a team to the Forest Moon Of Endor to destroy its shield generator, while a group of fighters and the '' Millennium Falcon '' piloted by Lando Calrissian fly into the centre of the ship through a narrow maze of pipes and destroy the reactor directly, rushing out in just enough time to escape the ensuing explosion. One drawback of the original design was the power systems. The first Death Star's reactor required one full day to generate enough energy to fire. However, the second Death Star had redesigned systems and was capable of firing once every few minutes. It also had improved targeting computers, allowing it to fire the weapon at Capital Ship s. It is not clear whether the shorter recharge time applied only to the reduced-power shots used to destroy starships, or also full-power planet-shattering shots. The second Death Star corrected several flaws of the original design. The two-meter exhaust vent that doomed the first station was replaced with millions of Millimeter wide tubes, each designed to seal if excess energy was detected. The second station also boasted far more turbolaser batteries with redesigned targeting systems, allowing them to target starfighters more easily. The greatest concentration of turbolasers was located near the Emperor's throne tower. EXPANDED UNIVERSE In the early production of the original movie, the hollow dish was designed to be on the equator, but then it was decided to be on the "northern" hemisphere. This old design can still be seen in the grid plan animations seen in the movie, as the animation was created before the designer decided to change it. The space station seen in '''' is commonly thought to be a Blooper , since the original plan in it appears to show the "later" form, however this is not one of the Death Stars at all; it is the Geonosian Great Weapon, under construction by the Separatists and discovered, then analyzed by the Empire. The designs were later used for the actual Death Star. Many of the ''Star Wars'' games are concerned with the Death Star's destruction, or the theft, protection, and transmission of its plans by the Rebel Alliance, prior to the Battle Of Yavin . According to the Video Game '' Star Wars Battlefront 2 '', the Death Star's superlaser originated on Mygeeto . The 501st Legion of Clone Trooper s secretly helped Chancellor Palpatine retrieve energy crystals from an energy tower; the crystals are the power source of the laser. At the time of the first Death Star's construction, Sienar was designing a battlestation (without a superlaser) of similar size and prestige as the Geonosian/Imperial superweapon. The best elements of both were apparently merged together with final detail work taking place in the secret Maw Cluster on Kessel . This laboratory completed a scaled-down prototype that was later destroyed by the New Republic . One of the primary designers of the Death Star was an engineer named Bevel Lemelisk . Lemelisk worked with the Geonosians to convert Sienar's Expeditionary Battle Planetoid into a superlaser-armed battlestation, and later designed more Imperial superweapons in the Maw Installation before overseeing the Death Star's construction at the planet Despayre. In the novelette "Therefore I Am" (from '' Tales Of The Bounty Hunters ''), bounty hunter droid IG-88 infiltrates the second Death Star while under construction; its genocidal tendencies compel it to take control of the deadly battlestation by transferring its AI to the systems of the Death Star itself, whereupon it would traverse the galaxy, destroying planets one by one. IG-88's timing was poor, however; it completed the transfer during the Battle of Endor, and the story ends moments before the Death Star II is destroyed. Durga The Hutt also built a small version with only the central laser core and a small living quarters, which was destroyed in the asteroid field around Hoth . This was known as the Darksaber but shoddy construction techniques meant that this attempt was an abject failure even before its destruction. Smuggler Booster Terrik later bought the Darksaber's technical schematics and installed a scaled-down version in his ''Imperial''-class Star Destroyer '' Errant Venture ''. This weapon was less powerful, but had far better workmanship and was used to great effect to cover the Jedi evacuation from Yavin IV during the Yuuzhan Vong invasion. CONTRADICTIONS IN OFFICIAL LITERATURE There is some disagreement about the size of both Death Stars. According to most also shows that the second Death Star was 900 kilometers in diameter, though there are critics who have made their own scaling calculations and come up with a figure closer to 160 kilometers. According to Star Wars Insider #68, page 23, DK nonfiction (which includes the book claiming the 900 kilometer length) is considered canon by Lucasfilm Limited . Unfortunately, the level of canon (there are various levels of Star Wars Canon , and the Expanded Universe also has a level of canon status) was not revealed, and so the confusion continues. FAN SPECULATION It has been calculated A page on "How to Destroy the Earth." that overcoming the gravity holding together an Earth-sized planet takes on the order of s of energy, or on the order of millions of times more than necessary to permanently break apart the planet. This is equivalent to Tonnes of resting matter converted directly into energy (per Albert Einstein 's E=mc&2 formula). This is not to be confused with Energy-TNT Equivalence ). This massive quantity of fuel leads to obvious problems if storage is considered. If the energy is produced by matter-antimatter annihilation with the reagents being stored in a sphere with density , this would give a ball of matter and antimatter fuel between 1300-2900 km in diameter. Even the joules estimated as the minimum to destroy a planet would require a 13 km globe of such fuel. Conservation of momentum also causes interesting problems for this weapon system; these and other problems lead to dissent The Death Star Research Project on ST-v-SW.net among some fans, who dispute that the Death Star's reactor could (or did) supply this quantity of energy. Calculations have also been made for the destruction of the Moon of the planet Kessel by the Prototype Death Star; assuming it to be similar in size and composition to Earth's moon, this would require joules. Star Wars Technical Commentaries on the Death Stars In terms of carrying out the mission of destroying a planet, megastructure battle stations are notably inefficient. A variety of easier methods are available A page on "How to Destroy the Earth." . A rock of any significant size hitting an inhabited planet at relativistic speeds will at best burn away the biosphere, and probably shatter the mantle just as dramatically as the Death Star's superlaser. Another substantially less troublesome method is to simply ''push'' the planet into its primary. However, the Death Star was intended as a weapon of terror, the threat of its use acting as a deterrent to star systems who defy or displease the Empire - a policy known as the Tarkin Doctrine . While modifying an asteroid's orbit would be an effective way to wipe out life on a planet, it wouldn't have the same psychological impact as a weapon of the Death Star's magnitude being deployed. Planetary shields, seen in the Expanded Universe , may also be the reason for deploying the Death Star rather than kinetic weapons. Such shields, designed to withstand planetary bombardments, may also deflect asteroid impacts. Alderaan, the first victim of the Death Star, was protected by a planetary shield. The shield held together for about 1/10 of a second before collapsing. CULTURAL IMPACT , a moon of Saturn ]]
: "After months of speculation, it was confirmed yesterday that the Death Star, the Empire's vaunted, planet-destroying space station, has added a new, state-of-the-art day care center to its already vast array of capabilities. The massive four-room day care center, which, according to Grand Moff Tarkin, will "provide a safe and fun learning environment for tots between the ages of one and four," has already begun spring enrollment and is expected to be fully operational by June 1." The article concluded with quotes regarding the Day Care Center's safety: : "There is an opening in the Death Star's main shaft that leads to the core," parent and dissenting voice Annette Voss said. 'If a small rebel ship were to somehow break through the deflector shield and enter the shaft, it's possible it could hit the reactor core with a single, well-placed proton torpedo shot and destroy the entire space station.' Experts, however, scoff at Voss's theory, dismissing such a shot as "a million to one."
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