The Death Star

This is no moon. It's a space station.

Ahh yes, the Death Star. Emperor Palpatine's greatest triumph. A fully operational battle station capable of destroying an entire planet with a single blow. The most feared superweapon in all the galaxy.

Pretty cool, huh?

Not so fast. Despite the Death Star's totally sweet credentials, a second more inquisitive look reveals that it's not quite as "totally sweet" as it first appears.

First of all, let's take a look at it's output. For all intents and purposes, the Death Star both the original and the remake have had a total of two military targets. That's right, two. The first target was Princess Leia's home planet of Alderaan. Grand Moff Tarkin demonstrates the awesome power of the Death Star on Alderaan in hopes of getting Princess Leia to admit the whereabouts of the Rebel Base.

I'm sorry, I'm just not that impressed. As we are told by Princess Leia, Alderaan is a peaceful planet, and they have no weapons. Which immediately makes me think that Alderaan is the galactic equivalent of Switzerland.

Look, the USSR tested a nuclear weapon that could've destroyed Switzerland way back in 1961. And they didn't even have the unlimited power of the Galactic Empire. Alderaan was a good target because of Princess Leia, but as a demonstration of the Death Star's power, ehhhhh.

It get's blown up by the rebels shortly afterwards.

The second Death Star is even less impressive. I believe it's only target in it's brief existence was one Rebel command ship. And not even the command ship that had Admiral Akbar on it. A squadron of tie fighters and a few Star Destroyers could've done that, for much cheaper and less man power.

Not only that, why in the hell is the Death Star so easy to destroy? According to Wikipedia,

The first Death Star had a crew of 265,675, as well as 52,276 gunners, 607,360 troops, 30,984 stormtroopers, 42,782 ship support staff, and 180,216 pilots and support crew. Its hangars contain assault shuttles, blastboats, Strike cruisers, land vehicles, support ships, and 7,293 TIE fighters. It is also protected by 10,000 turbolaser batteries, 2,600 ion cannons, and at least 768 tractor beam projectors.

Did you read that? 7,293 TIE fighters. In "A New Hope" when Luke and the rest of the Rebels mount their attack on the Death Star, by my counts it appears that only three, count them three, TIE Fighters emerge from the Death Star to repel the attack. Why not send all 7,293? Or better yet, why not use your 768 tractor beams to capture the entire Rebel fleet? Instead, they do exactly jack shit, Luke fires a proton torpedo down a hole and the thing blows up.

In the "Return of the Jedi", it appears that the Empire has learned nothing from it's previous defeat. First of all, blowing the Death Star up is even easier this time around, as all you have do do is fly down a shaft that is convieniently Millenim Falcon sized and fire at the main reactor.

Now, with the first Death Star they didn't know it had a weakness. The second Death Star, they know. If I were the emperor, my strategy would be, "Don't let the rebels get to the main reactor". How many TIE fighters chased Lando into the Death Star? You guessed it, 3.

So let's take a look at this. The Death Star's accounted for two offensive attacks, and were subsequently blown up twice. Each time we're assuming they were full, which using the stats from earlier, translates into a million people on board at the time of destruction. A million friggin people. Each. All dead. Not good. Not mention your hard earned tax dollars that were wasted in creating such a vulnerable piece of junk.

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