Death Star II

Before being banned on SDN I have recieved lot of complaints why Federation should not be able to destroy DSII. Microconduits... which we never saw used by Empire. It was also argued that conduit throught which Rebels flew inside was to be removed after construction was finished... which is, to say at least, ridiculous, as seen from following screenshot.

Folks at SDN argue that it was impossible for Rebels to destroy Death Star II after it was completed and that it was main reason why they attacked it. Wrong. Main reason for attack was fact that Emperor was going to be there. Secondary reason was promptly displayed when DSII destroyed cruiser Liberty. Superlaser of DSI was unable to target capital ships.

Also, much simpler solution would be to just put chimney caps. Constructing thousands or millions of micro-exhaust ports with each being over 90 kilometers long (due to zig-zag structure of vents) would be engineering and logistical nightmare, not to mention that construction would be delayed enough to make canon timeframe impossible.

Death Star superlaser

ANH novelisation page 178:


"Theoretically, no weapon could penetrate the exceptionally dense stone of the ancient temple, but Luke had seen the shattered remnants of Alderaan and knew that for those in the incredible battle station that the entire moon would present simply another abstract problem in mass-energy conversion."
 
So, right from novelization we have statement that "superlaser" is not pure DEW.
 
(unfinished)

Links:

http://www.st-v-sw.net/STSWsuperl-main.html


http://www.starfleetjedi.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1583&sid=ed2fb46a7720b5a5d21e36be36226988

Death Star sizes

Death Star I

Death star is 135 mm high and 141 mm wide in this shot. Equatorial trench is 0.9 to 1 mm high.

Now we have following shots:

Falcon is around 22.5 meters width. That gives width of bay to be 33.088 meters. Height of bay is 33 mm or 14.55 meters at rate of 44 centimeters per milimeter.

If we return to previous shots, we will see that larger depression Falcon is entering is around 15 times larger in height than bay alone. That gives us 218.25 meters. Trench itself is 3 times larger in height than that area, or 654.75 meters. That gives us rate of either 654.75 meters or 727.5 meters for one milimeter in first shot. That means that DSI is either 92 or 102.6 kilometers wide. Height would be either 88.4 or 98.2 kilometers.

However, I found another shot which could give us better scaling:

In this shot, trench is 1 mm high, with DS being 187 mm high and 204 mm wide. Using previus values of 654.75 meters and 727.5 meters for one milimeter, we can get following values of either 122 438 or 136 042.5 meters for DSI height and either 133 569 meters or 148 410 meters for DSI width.

Death Star II

In this shot trench is 0.9 mm high. From RotJ it is clear it is similar in size to DSI trench, which means that 1 mm here is either 727.5 or 808.3 meters. DSII is around 198 mm wide; I measured height of 200 mm but it could be 181.5 mm if we assume DS1 height-width ratio. That means that DSII is either 144 045 or 160 043 m wide; height could be 132 041, 146 706, 145 500 or 161 660 meters.

Conclusion

I will go with DSI being 122 438 meters high and 133 569 meters wide; for DSII I would take values of 160 043 meters wide and 146 706.5 meters high.

P.S. : I would like to thank Darkstar beacouse I used some screencaps from his "Death Star sizes" page. Work on scaling is completely mine, thought.

I would also like to warn enyone who wants to check my work that shots here are rescaled by webpage; if you want to do scaling yourself, open images in new tab or new window or download them to your computer.

On my site.