Is a Death Star physically possible?

[KSK]

4 hours ago, James Todd said:

Okay, but how would you get it into space?  Unless you put it together in space you would still need really big engines to get it all the way up there. 

You just answered your own question. Build it in space - it's what the Empire did in the films.

[James Todd]

56 minutes ago, KSK said:

You just answered your own question. Build it in space - it's what the Empire did in the films.

But how would you get the parts into space?

Checkmate.

[JedTech]

5 minutes ago, James Todd said:

But how would you get the parts into space?

Checkmate.

Start with something already in space (an asteroid or "small moon")

[fredinno]

Just now, JedTech said:

Start with something already in space (an asteroid or "small moon")

Hollow it out of Mimas.

[James Todd]

1 minute ago, JedTech said:

Start with something already in space (an asteroid or "small moon")

But how would you attach really big engines?

[JedTech]

7 minutes ago, James Todd said:

But how would you attach really big engines?

The asteroids materials would be converted in to metals and other substances used to construct engines and other parts.

[James Todd]

10 minutes ago, JedTech said:

The asteroids materials would be converted in to metals and other substances used to construct engines and other parts.

Okay awesome

[KSK]

Or you could just launch the really big engines into space on a rocket. Or for really, really, colossally huge engines, launch the pieces and put them together in space. But yeah building a Death Star would be like building the Mothership in Homeworld. First build your orbital infrastructure. Then use that infrastructure to build moar infrastructure. Repeat as necessary then use your nth generation infrastructure to build the Death Star.

[Ackoli]

star wars is definitely NOT scientifically accurate. unless the death star launches hundreds of millions of huge nuclear bombs, and is made out of carbon-fibre, no.

[GeneralVeers]

22 hours ago, KSK said:

Or you could just launch the really big engines into space on a rocket. Or for really, really, colossally huge engines, launch the pieces and put them together in space.

Other alternative: launch the raw materials via rockets, and use orbital factories to assemble the needed parts/superstructure/colossally huge engines on site.

[KerbMav]

 

[KSK]

Space tape - there's nothing it can't do!

 

[Alias72]

Someone needs to put that on a rocket! It weighs virtually nothing. CALL ELON!

[fredinno]

2 hours ago, Alias72 said:

Someone needs to put that on a rocket! It weighs virtually nothing. CALL ELON!

I don't think it will work unless you can compress it into CubeSat size somehow..

And while you're at it, add a lazer.

[GeneralVeers]

On 1/8/2016 at 5:33 AM, KSK said:

Space tape - there's nothing it can't do!

Can space tape tape space?

 

4 hours ago, Alias72 said:

Someone needs to put that on a rocket! It weighs virtually nothing. CALL ELON!

And once it's in orbit, what does Mission Control tell the press our new model Death Star is doing.....? That's right.......

"Orbiting the planet at maximum velocity."

[mjl1966]

One word: homogeneous.  All the comparisons to asteroids are invalid because an asteroid is a rigid body.  Rigid body physics are mind-numbingly simple compared to fragmented structures such as the Death Star.  A gazillion little compartments mean you have a gazillion vectors acting on them differently any time you do anything.  It would not be dissimilar to being glued together by a bunch of docking ports.  Once you realize a structure is an assembly of many different parts, the physics gets icky in a hurry.  I would imagine any kind of real acceleration from a propulsion device would risk caving in the structure as momentum is not transmitted linearly but instead is distributed along a static matrix, most of which is not designed to take the kind of force it's getting.  Walls are great for compression, not so much for torsion, for example.  (Take that, Mom and Dad, I did too learn something in college

BUT... it is very dramatic, which far outweighs the pesky details of reality.

Remember: Star Wars is fantasy, not science fiction.

 

Edited January 11, 2016 by mjl1966

[KSK]

9 hours ago, mjl1966 said:

One word: homogeneous.  All the comparisons to asteroids are invalid because an asteroid is a rigid body.  Rigid body physics are mind-numbingly simple compared to fragmented structures such as the Death Star.  A gazillion little compartments mean you have a gazillion vectors acting on them differently any time you do anything.  It would not be dissimilar to being glued together by a bunch of docking ports.  Once you realize a structure is an assembly of many different parts, the physics gets icky in a hurry.  I would imagine any kind of real acceleration from a propulsion device would risk caving in the structure as momentum is not transmitted linearly but instead is distributed along a static matrix, most of which is not designed to take the kind of force it's getting.  Walls are great for compression, not so much for torsion, for example.  (Take that, Mom and Dad, I did too learn something in college

BUT... it is very dramatic, which far outweighs the pesky details of reality.

Remember: Star Wars is fantasy, not science fiction.

 

Not all asteroids are rigid bodies either but I agree that they're still a poor comparison to the Death Star. With that said, I don't agree with your analogy either. The Death Star may have a gazillion little compartments but it's not a giant sponge ball consisting of nothing but those compartments welded together. You can see here that it has a significant underlying skeleton with (what look like) some fairly hefty load-bearing members. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to assume that the Death Star designers would place their engines so that any thrust is acting along a suitable part of that skeleton.

Manufacturing single piece structural members of a suitable size and quality is an exercise I leave to the reader.

[Tourist]

I think the more interesting question is, why do you need a giant space laser as a planet destroying weapon when you have the ability to create artificial gravity, that does not seem to be related to the ships mass or centripetal (or whatever) force. Just add more power to this system there's your system destroying weapon right there. Clearly the device which does this amazing feat is not prohibitively large, small shuttles and freighters have them.  

Edited January 14, 2016 by Tourist

[Ackoli]

On ‎25‎/‎12‎/‎2015 at 8:01 AM, NuclearNut said:

You dont need a airplane or missile to deliver nukes, just three people with a lot of strength.  Or one if you do not need it delivered onto the enemy themselves / can get their undetected.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W54

'three people with a lot of strength' -- soon to become a pile of carbon atoms in the middle of a huge crater.

[Kerbart]

On 1/11/2016 at 7:43 AM, KSK said:

Not all asteroids are rigid bodies either but I agree that they're still a poor comparison to the Death Star. With that said, I don't agree with your analogy either. (...) I don't think it's too much of a stretch to assume that the Death Star designers would place their engines so that any thrust is acting along a suitable part of that skeleton

Exactly! It's not like we don't have real world examples for that either—large moving structures like supertankers, bulk freighters and large container ships (some might even consider "large airplanes" but when you compare an Airbus 380 to a large ship... nah.)

Of course, the scale of a Death Star is a bit larger, but if we're comfortable with the Empire building on that scale, then we can also be comfortable with them designing on that scale. It's not like they're limited to slide rulers and paper, after all.

Edited January 15, 2016 by Kerbart

[GeneralVeers]

45 minutes ago, llanthas said:

This thread is absolutely glorious. 

I want to point out, however, that in TFA, we see Kylo-douche fighting the heroes on the planet's surface (presumably near the equator, and the thermal port).  They are standing perpendicular to all decks of the Starkiller base. 

What?? Just a minute, Starkiller Base is not the Death Star! We're talking about the Death Star here. (wasn't Starkiller Base simply built on a planet....?)

In fact, screw Starkiller Base--Starkiller Base is a poser. A wanna-be. It's not a superweapon, it's a pooperweapon. Ever since Return of the Jedi, Star Wars fiction writers have been trying to come up with the Next Big Thing, and invented one superweapon after another. Sun Crusher. Galaxy Gun. Centerpoint Station. World Devastators. The Shawken Device. And all of these superweapons suck. None of them will ever be as cool as the Death Star was. Even its NAME. It's the best-named superweapon ever.

THE DEATH STAR.

[KSK]

I did wonder about Starkiller base. The star killing part was enough really - take away the star and you don't really have much of a star system left. Using the slurped up sun to blow up planets in the next sector over was just vulgar excess.

 

[GeneralVeers]

45 minutes ago, llanthas said:

False.  All of those weapons were much cooler than the Death Star.

I've got a bridge to sell you.

In fact, I'll take it a step further: when Return of the Jedi came out and I saw it on the silver screen, my reaction to the Galactic Empire's shenanigans was one of not being impressed. "They're building another Death Star?? Meh." The FIRST Death Star was much cooler than the second one, which came across to me as unoriginal (and "meh"). Good movie, but not as great as the first one.

 

46 minutes ago, llanthas said:

Even if we stick to the TWO death stars (which one do you want to look at??)  We can see that gravity appears to run toward the floors from all reference points.  Obviously, this means that the gravity generators are in the floors. 

Uhhhh.....yeah, I covered that.

[fredinno]

5 hours ago, KSK said:

I did wonder about Starkiller base. The star killing part was enough really - take away the star and you don't really have much of a star system left. Using the slurped up sun to blow up planets in the next sector over was just vulgar excess.

 

Well, you kind of need to get rid of all that stuff somewhere, you know?

[A35K]

One thing I didn't get about Starkiller base, is that according to 'Wookiepedia' it is on a planet in the unexplored regions or whatever they're called (the outer part of the galaxy). Yet they destroy the seat of the New Republic, Hosnian Prime, which is apparently towards the Centre of the Galaxy (sort of near Coruscant), so in the movie they show them firing and a few second later hitting the planets. So either this is a REALLY small galaxy, or that's one fast light beam. Also, this is unrelated but why move the Republic to some other random planet and not keep it on Coruscant where it has been for 25,000 YEARS??? Plus, the destruction of Coruscant would have made us care a lot more, since we were shown a lot of it in the Prequels, rather than some random planet we never heard of before.