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If I am not mistaken, then the Deathstar was able to destroy an entire Planet.

So when the Imperials followed the Millennium falcon to the secret hidden base, on the moon of Planet Yavin, why did they have to fly around the planet instead of destroying the Planet, and attack the moon right afterwards, if that should be necessary, imaging that anything survived the loss of gravity and so on.

What do you guys think?

i know just fire at the red planet then fire again at yavin, unless it can only shoot once then takes a while to re heat, or lucas wanted it to be dramatic with suspense

The First Death Star could only fire a shot capable of destroying a planet once a day. Tarkin didn't want to risk the chance of missing or hitting the gas giant's core. If such a thing happened, then the rebles could escape or launch a larger offensive against the station.

The death star was pretty close to that planet as well if i remember rightly. I imagine that firing a laser of that size at such close range would have probably caused more damage to the death star than the rebels. Remember how much damage it did to Alderan at a distance? Imagine that but with the death star sitting pretty much right next to it.

This of course comes second place to the only firing once a day fact.

First Death Star could fire only once a day, the second one 1 every ten minutes. And with no destroyers, it's hard to attack a planet, just with fighters

borg Or maybe its because its in the script, but realistically why wasn't the rebel fleet there to back up them like in ROTJ on the second death star.

Originally posted by kanis
borg Or maybe its because its in the script, but realistically why wasn't the rebel fleet there to back up them like in ROTJ on the second death star.

Well this kind of answers can be given to any threads here around and won't help discussion

They should have invented "mirror ships". Those would take off carrying huge mirrors with them. Then they would be placed in a good position for deathstar to fire towards them. The laser would hit their mirror and reflect from it towards the real target.

ummm, yeah.

The Rebel's had virtually no fleet that could contend with even just the lone DS.

I'm pretty sure those "mirror" ships would get blown up by the Death Star beam. -_-

Anyway, Yavin is a gas giant. If they would have just hit it, it would have caused such a huge explosion the Death Star itself would have been engulfed and highly damaged, if not destroyed. And, as other people have said, it took about 24 hours to recharge it's Superlaser.

Okay. But don't get me wrong. even if they had to recharge for a day, by destroying the planet, the moon's surface will collapse. Take our moon for example, if earth gets destroyed, it will lose for example all the gravity it has, everything would be destroyed by an earthquake or so. And if they have been to close, than they should have fired from greater distance.

So at the end, it was just a stupid strategy of Tarkin.

Tarkin doesnt see a weakness in the DS until the end after they ''analyzed their attack..'' etc. So he'd be plodding along and savouring the moment, not worrying about a thing...he wouldnt need/want to rush things and feck up. Everything went to plan except the final 5 seconds, so his plan did work, it was just a weak point of the DS. If I was him, I'd want to make sure I'd be taking out the rebels completely by waiting to destroy the moon too....

silly tarkin, chewbacca shud have killed him.

Ganner already answered.

Yavin is a vast gas giant. The DS- designed to destroy much smaller solid planets- cannot destroy it. It had to get around it to target the solid moon.

If Yavin had not been a gas giant, I imagine the Rebels would have put their base on it, rather than a moon.

Meanwhile, what made you think the Rebel fleet existed at this point? Before the Death Star was destroyed, the Alliance was very weak.

Good question~ now Im curious too~

Do people actually bother to read replies here?

What should be the difference between destroying a gas giant and a "solid" planet?
That explanation is not very satisfying.

Err, because a gas giant is made out of gas? It's not solid. You can't shoot it any more than you can shoot the air.

It's also, btw, far too big.

The main problem with a gaz giant is that all that gaz it's made from could just enlarge the blast radius of the planet, maybe causing a chain explosion in the system, mass supernova, cf Ossus ^^

Look, I know Star Wars is junk science, but there is no need to make up more than needs be done.

It's made of gas and it was too big. That was actually the official answer when given by the JC at the Star Wars site (now sadly no longer in business) when this question was asked years ago.

The Death Star can't blow up EVERYTHING, obviously. It cannot blow up stars. It blows up planets. Gas gaints are a step larger than planets and are not solid. It's that simple.

Bah, my version was ways better ^_^

even, gaz giants have a solid core. Jupiter for instance has a solid core.

Plus if this would lead to a chain reaction, then fire from safe distance and blow up the moon with it.

As if you even know what kind of range it has.

But regardless, the actial answer is that gas giants are too big for the Death Star to destroy (core or otherwise being totally irrelevant, and you clearly misunderstand about what the 'core' of a gas gianty would be anwyay- the obstacle would remain). The Death Star CANNOT destroy Yavin.