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

Planet destruction

Star Trek

Xindi superweapon

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-q0hjSnbUA

As seen here, Xindi superweapon fired beam which penetrated planet's crust, reached its core and blew up planet from inside. Basically "Enterprise" version of Death Star - beam destroys planet despite not having DET power to do so.

General Order 24

General Order 24: An order to destroy all life on an entire planet. This order has been given by Captain Garth (Antos IV) and Captain Kirk (Eminiar VII). On neither occasion was the order actually fulfilled. (TOS: “A Taste of Armageddon”, “Whom Gods Destroy”)

Founder's sun-crushing bomb

Founder posing as Deep Space 9's Dr. Bashir attempted to destroy the sun using a bomb composed of trilithium, tekasite and protomatter. (DS9: "By Inferno's Light"). He was prevented from doing so by Defiant; it should be noted that bomb was relatively small, smaller than full-sized photon torpedoes used by capital ships.

Star Wars

Canon

Death Stars

Two battlestashions with ability to destroy planet. Effects of planetary destruction do not correspond to DET weapon, but rather to some sort of hyperspace-based or other technobabble weapon - that wiev is supported by ANH novelization.

Expanded Universe

Base Delta Zero

Star Wars version of General Order 24. Heavily inconsistent - in some cases turbolaser bolts merely 'put large patches of forrest on fire' while in others entire surface of planet was 'evenly cratered' and looked like surface of Moon after attack by single ISD. Given that turbolaser's firepower is in megatons, order is actually realistic.

HERE is a quote about a BDZ:-


"“Sir, what about bombardment? Is there a stage for that?”

“Blasting a planet from orbit is easy — you don’t need me to tell you how to do that. Limited orbital strikes would occur during the invasion stage. Just hope you are never given a Base Delta Zero order, lieutenant. Ah, yes, another question?”

“Sir, what’s the Base Delta Zero order?”
“Base Delta Zero is the Imperial code order to destroy all population centres and resources, including industry, natural resources and cities. All other Imperial codes are subject to change, as you well know, but this code is always the same to prevent any confusion when the order is given. Base Delta Zero is rarely issued. ….”
– “A World to Conquer” "


Sun Crusher

Small starship with special torpedoes used to destroy stars. Possibly influenced by Founder's sun-crushing bomb.

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.