Why Not Just Slam a Starship into the Death Star?

4,250 Views | 35 Replies | Last: 7 yr ago by ABATTBQ11
3rd and 2
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AG
Ok nerds, I had a strange dream last night. I was a rebel on Yavin and was told the Death Star was coming to blow up the planet. Luke was off the team for molesting his sister. I had to come up with a plan to save everyone. I told my commanders to get a starship, point it at the death star and have a droid make it go into hyperspace. It would hit the Death Star with enough force to crack it apart like a rotten egg.

Kinetic Force = 1/2 mass * velocity ^2. And if you're going faster than the speed of light, that's a whole crap load of velocity.

I woke up before I could see if it worked or not.

How come no one thought of this in the movie?
Bigsteve713
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AG
I feel like there's too much to comment on in your post that I don't even know how to gather my thoughts
aezmvp
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How does hyperspace work with real space? Please keep your answer under 140 characters.
3rd and 2
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Here's a write up of an asteroid hitting the earth at close to the speed of light.

https://what-if.xkcd.com/20/


chipotle
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coppag92
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AG
DeathStar had forcefields or shields to protect it. Would disintegrate the starship before it reached that far.
nai06
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AG
quote:
DeathStar had forcefields or shields to protect it. Would disintegrate the starship before it reached that far.
I was going to post the exact same thing. The Death Star was protected by a SLD-26 Planetary Shield Generator. It terms of strength, it can protect a moon or space station for an indefinite amount of time and was supposedly impenetrable. That's why they had to take out the generator on Endor first. Without the shield turned of it was impenetrable. Even if you consider the force of a starship, it would likely not be as strong and all of the weapons they were firing at once which still didn't do squat to the shield. On top of that, Starships in the resistance were in short supply. If they crashed one into the Death Star and it didn't work they would have seriously handicapped any further fight against the Empire.


so theres that.
Duncan Idaho
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quote:



Riker and his leg
MGS
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You would need a hollow-point starship or else it would just leave a tiny starship-sized hole all the way through.
trueaggie2782
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AG
I was thinking hyperspace wasn't speed at all but rather the folding of the fabric of space-time. If that's the case, the starship would be moving very slow but the folding would give the appearance of speed.
ottc777
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The death star is huge and could probably withstand the hit.... if not, use that same logic and slam into a planets moon to knock it into a planet like cosmic billiards.
chipotle
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quote:
quote:



Riker and his leg

It made the video.


JJxvi
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Traveling through hyperspace ain't like dusting crops, boy! Without precise calculations we could fly right through a star, or bounce too close to a supernova and that'd end your trip real quick, wouldn't it.
ABATTBQ11
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You can hit stuff going at hyper speed. Does no one remember Han saying that he needed the computer so the didn't accidentally go through a moon or an asteroid?

Also, force shields would be somewhat negligible when it comes to a ship at light speed hitting them as opposed to lasers. There's a massive energy difference. The ship would carry millions of millions of times more energy than a laser. Think about it. If e=mc^2, and the mass of a laser blast was the equivalent of the energy of a few million photons, the energy of an entire ship would be unimaginable orders of magnitude higher. I don't think there'd be any kind of shield capable of stopping that considering it would need to output an equivalent amount of energy around a massive surface area to cover a moon.
titanmaster_race
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I think the rebellion would have bigger problems than "we just wasted a starship" if that plan didnt work.


Because, you know......Yavin gonna go *poof*
titanmaster_race
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We know from the newest movie that dropping out of hyperspace between the death star and the shield is possible.

So why not do that as part of the hyperspace kamikaze?
bobinator
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If you interpret Han's warning about blindly jumping into hyperspace and assume the risk isn't actually hitting a star or a supernova but being caught in it's gravity and not being able to escape, then the answer of "you'd go right through it" makes sense since the Death Star doesn't have enough gravity to capture something moving that fast like a supernova or a collapsing star might.

nai06
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quote:
We know from the newest movie that dropping out of hyperspace between the death star and the shield is possible.

So why not do that as part of the hyperspace kamikaze?
For the original Death Star I dont think that would have been possible. If it were, they wouldnt have needed to knock out the generator on Endor
bobinator
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quote:
For the original Death Star I dont think that would have been possible. If it were, they wouldnt have needed to knock out the generator on Endor
I think we have to assume that not every ship has the abilities of the Falcon, and not every captain has the abilities of Han, so the combined ability of the two to slow down safely from hyperspace in that tight of an area could be unique.

Or, nobody had thought to try it yet.
TexasAggie_02
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quote:
quote:
DeathStar had forcefields or shields to protect it. Would disintegrate the starship before it reached that far.
I was going to post the exact same thing. The Death Star was protected by a SLD-26 Planetary Shield Generator. It terms of strength, it can protect a moon or space station for an indefinite amount of time and was supposedly impenetrable. That's why they had to take out the generator on Endor first. Without the shield turned of it was impenetrable. Even if you consider the force of a starship, it would likely not be as strong and all of the weapons they were firing at once which still didn't do squat to the shield. On top of that, Starships in the resistance were in short supply. If they crashed one into the Death Star and it didn't work they would have seriously handicapped any further fight against the Empire.


so theres that.
wasn't the point of the death star to move around star systems blowing up planets? then why does it have a planetary-based shield generator? how does it generate shields while in transit, or after arriving in a new system?
bobinator
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I think we're mixing up our Death Stars here. The first one doesn't have a shield. The second one only has a shield because it isn't finished yet.
nai06
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the first one didnt have a shield because it could ward off attacks with its weapons. The second did have a shield. Neither was intended to travel very fast like a star destroyer..
bobinator
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quote:
Neither was intended to travel very fast like a star destroyer..
Well I'd hope they have a hyperdrive otherwise that's going to be a REALLY long term weapon choice. But they probably don't have any sort of low speed maneuverability.

Anyway the second death star isn't important since he's dreaming about Yavin (like ya do.)

redd38
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I feel like OP has never even flown a starship.
Tomdoss92
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Maybe the next movie will have a completely new concept.

Like... an even bigger gun that can blow **** up.
wee_ag
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quote:
Maybe the next movie will have a completely new concept.

Like... an even bigger gun that can blow **** up.
I keep expecting Unicron to show up.
SlackerAg
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Send a drone into the exhaust port.
PatAg
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quote:
Send a drone into the exhaust port.
Launch a red shirt into the exhaust port.
ABATTBQ11
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quote:
Maybe the next movie will have a completely new concept.

Like... an even bigger gun that can blow **** up.
Nah. It'll be the empire's replacement attacking a rebel base, the main characters barely escaping, followed by what's her name getting captured in a cliffhanger ending. Then the next one will be about how the rebels are finally victorious and eliminate The Empire 2.0. after that, there'll be a really, really ****ty trilogy of movies that take place between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens to explain all of the crap about Han and Leia, their kids, and the new emperor wannabe.
TheVarian
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I like how Vader's little chest console is the old Nintendo controller
AggieEP
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The more pressing concern to me is who the uncreative idiot was on the death star that didn't suggest that they just blow up Yavin's moon and then proceed to blow up Yavin. You design a weapon that can vaporize planets, and then the film proceeds to have a major plot point be that the death star has to orbit this dinky moon before it can destroy Yavin. Certainly the navigator deserved to be force choked for charting a path that forced them to orbit a moon. Han used the hyperdrive to get to Yavin and the Death Star wasn't far behind, so it's safe to assume the Death Star jumped into hyperspace and came out on the wrong side of the moon. When you're fighting a battle to crush a rebellion you can't make dumbass mistakes like that.

Perhaps the Death Star takes a long time to reload? Who knows?

Also, for being the flagship of the fleet, where the hell are all the star destroyers to accompany it. Even when your capital ship is a badass planet destroying one, you still send it out with some protection. If there are about 10 Star Destroyers and plenty more Tie's out there the exhaust port isn't going to be accessible to the rebels.


And just while we're nerding out here, why the hell would the rebels plan an attack run that required them to shoot proton torpedoes that have to curve downwards? Making the approach in the trench was ridiculous. They needed to line up the exhaust port and approach it from above so they could fire straight into the port. Also that method wouldn't have forced them to attack in such small groups, they could have stayed together to protect each other better.
bobinator
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AG

quote:

Perhaps the Death Star takes a long time to reload? Who knows?
This is the answer according to people who've researched the expanded universe material. Though "recharge" would be the term.


quote:
And just while we're nerding out here, why the hell would the rebels plan an attack run that required them to shoot proton torpedoes that have to curve downwards? Making the approach in the trench was ridiculous. They needed to line up the exhaust port and approach it from above so they could fire straight into the port. Also that method wouldn't have forced them to attack in such small groups, they could have stayed together to protect each other better.
The port is only accessibly by making a horizontal run (since apparently at least one safety officer looked over the designs.) Plus by getting into the trench you get away from most of the weapons on the surface of the Death Star. (A second safety officer would probably say "hey uh... this trench that clearly creates some firing line issues for our external defenses... is it really necessary?") That's part of the "they didn't think about one small fighter being able to destroy it" thing.

MGS
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quote:
The more pressing concern to me is who the uncreative idiot was on the death star that didn't suggest that they just blow up Yavin's moon and then proceed to blow up Yavin. You design a weapon that can vaporize planets, and then the film proceeds to have a major plot point be that the death star has to orbit this dinky moon before it can destroy Yavin. Certainly the navigator deserved to be force choked for charting a path that forced them to orbit a moon. Han used the hyperdrive to get to Yavin and the Death Star wasn't far behind, so it's safe to assume the Death Star jumped into hyperspace and came out on the wrong side of the moon. When you're fighting a battle to crush a rebellion you can't make dumbass mistakes like that.

Dude, the rebel base was on Yavin's moon. Yavin was a gas giant.
AggieEP
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If it's a gas giant, just fire through it or hit the core and blow it up it makes no difference.

Still doesn't excuse the navigator from pulling them out of hyperspace in a situation where they have to orbit to get into firing position.

And bobinator, if there is some sort of covering there how does luke pull out that late (fify protected)
?
AggieEP
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Also the trench also has turbo lasers, it's not unguarded.

And how does a moon sized space station only scramble like 12 ties? Send 1000 up, you're literally seconds away from destroying the rebellion leaders and have a great chance to kill luke who is the only person who can defeat you long term.
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