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.
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.
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Registered: May 2005
Location: An uncomfortable red chair.
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
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.
Registered: Apr 2005
Location: Jedi Academy on Yavin IV
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.
Registered: Jun 2003
Location: The Utah of Australia ~haermm~
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....
Registered: Sep 2000
Location: Chelmsford, Essex, UK
Moderator
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.
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Last edited by Ushgarak on Feb 1st, 2006 at 02:56 PM
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 ^^
Jan 31st, 2006 12:01 AM
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.
