The Death Star, whose concept had been explored even before the Clone Wars, was the first in a long series of superweapons developed to execute the Tarkin Doctrine. The Death Star was designed to allow Emperor Palpatine to more directly control the Galactic Empire through fear. In most instances, a Death Star was to be commanded by a Moff.
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One Death Star was completely built by the Empire, with a second and third one never reaching full completion, as well as a prototype being in existence. In addition, a scaled-down version, the Tarkin, and a Hutt knockoff, the Darksaber, would be created by the Empire and Durga the Hutt, respectively.
Both Death Stars were destroyed by the Rebel Alliance shortly after they became operational. The first Death Star was destroyed by Luke Skywalker, with the help of Han Solo, and the second Death Star was destroyed by Wedge Antilles and Lando Calrissian. Prior to the second Death Star being built, the Galactic Empire tested out a planetary superlaser for protecting its installations on the planet of Dubrillion. At some point after the second's destruction, the Rebel Alliance also attacked and destroyed a third mock Death Star. Following their destruction, other planet-devastating superweapons followed, including the Galaxy Gun, the Darksaber, the Sun Crusher, and the World Devastators.
The Death Stars, the Galactic Empire's ultimate terror weapons, were battle stations several hundred kilometers in diameter and mounting a directed energy superlaser capable of completely destroying a planet with a single shot along with 15,000 lasers, ion, turbolasers batteries, and heavy turbolasers in all plus an additional 768 tractor beam emplacements. However, the first Death Star's defenses were not tight enough to stop starfighters from penetrating them.
The first Death Star was 120 kilometers in diameter,[3][4] while the second Death Star was 160 kilometers in diameter.[5] Much of its interior space was devoted to systems required to maintain its massive superlaser and power plant. At the heart of each Death Star was a gigantic hypermatter reactor, which possessed an output equal to that of several main-sequence stars. Within this chamber burned a reaction of prodigious proportions, fed by stellar fuel bottles lining its periphery.
Splitting the station into two equal hemispheres was a huge equatorial trench approximately 503 kilometers in length for the first Death Star and 2,827 kilometers for the second Death Star. This area of the station housed most of the major landing bays, drive thrusters, sensor arrays and tractor beam systems. Halfway between the equator and each pole were two supplementary trenches. The Death Star was divided into 24 zones, 12 per hemisphere, each controlled by a "bridge". To further organize the immense amount of activity aboard, there were specific "sectors" denoting function. These included the General, Command, Military, Security, Service, and Technical sectors.
Since service onboard the Death Star was a long-term affair, the station maintained a number of civilian amenities to make the time aboard a deep space station more comfortable. Parks, shopping centers, recreation areas, and taverns such as the Hard Heart Cantina could be found in the general sectors of the station.[6]
Facilitating the Death Star's realspace propulsion was a network of powerful ion engines that transformed reactor power into needed thrust. In order for the Death Star to be a deadly threat, it needed to be mobile. Using linked banks of 123 hyperdrive field generators tied into a single navigational matrix, the Death Star could travel across the galaxy at superluminal velocities. The incredible energies harnessed by the station combined with its great mass gave the Death Star magnetic and artificial gravitational fields equal to those found on orbital bodies many times greater in size.
The Death Star's superlaser derived power directly from the hypermatter reactor. Its faceted amplification crystal combined the destructive power of eight separate tributary beams into one single blast with the intensity of a stellar core. After firing a blast, though, the Imperial engineers had to recharge the reactor, which took at least 24 standard hours. Though the energy output of this blast could be scaled to fire at smaller targets such as capital ships, as was the case during the Rebel assault on the second Death Star, the two major instances in which the superlaser was fired were at full power at planetary bodies.
The Death Star's interior followed two orientations. Those areas closest to the surface were built with concentric decks with artificial gravity oriented towards the Death Star's core. Past this shell of surface "sprawls", the Death Star's interior had stacked decks with gravity pointing toward the station's southern pole.
The Death Star was born in the mind of Raith Sienar, who had conceived of it as an Expeditionary Battle Planetoid, although he believed the design was impractical. He shared his idea with his friend Wilhuff Tarkin, who presented it to Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, having been impressed enough about the design to champion it in spite of Sienar's doubts about its practicality. Palpatine then turned Sienar's idea to Bevel Lemelisk and ordered him to pursue the needed advances in hypermatter science with the Geonosian hives led by Poggle the Lesser, to which he succeeded in doing so with the Twi'lek scientist Tol Sivron, although the plans ended up falling into enemy hands when the Geonosians joined the Separatists.[8] In actuality, Palpatine, as Sith Lord Darth Sidious, arranged for the designs to be supplied to the Separatists, led by his apprentice, Separatist leader Count Dooku, with Lemelisk being unaware of this. Dooku then had Geonosian Industries accomplish further technical modifications to the original plans.
During the Battle of Geonosis, Archduke Poggle the Lesser, leader of the Geonosians, returned the top-secret designs to Count Dooku to prevent it from falling into the hands of the Jedi. Dooku took the designs back to Coruscant and gave them to Darth Sidious, his dark master.[9] The Separatists then continued to build their superweapon in the Geonosis system.[10]
The 501st Legion was sent to Mygeeto during the Clone Wars to collect an ancient Mygeetan crystal which was an experimental power source that the Chancellor required for a top-secret tributary laser-stream project codenamed "Hammertong," which would be used on the first Death Star.
Darth Sidious later ordered the Death Star's construction after the Galactic Empire was formed, in order to secure his new-formed absolute power. Wilhuff Tarkin was appointed to mastermind the secret development project, though other stories have it that Raith Sienar was the superweapon's creator. Tarkin's creative work and thought resulted in the realization of the Death Star as the Empire's ultimate weapon.
After the beginning of the Great Jedi Purge, an assault was led on the planet Kashyyyk to enslave the native Wookiees for the Death Star's construction. Various prison planets were also known to have their captives unwittingly construct various sections of the station. The Empire also had Mrlssi scientists working on some of the technology that would go into the station.[11]
Nevertheless, the project nearly ended before it began. Because much of the technology of the Death Star was impressive, actually building it proved to be more difficult than anyone imagined. Efforts were not helped by repeated (and often unsuccessful) attempts to sabotage construction. In addition, spies belonging to Gentis were also planted on the development team in charge of the Death Star since a few weeks after the creation of a New Order, which factored into his military coup against Palpatine a few months afterwards.
Of particular concern was the technology required to create the massive superlaser, the heart of the weapon, which was derived from the long-running Hammertong Project. The Superlaser cannon was initially going to be placed in the equator, but for reasons unspecified was later moved to the dorsal hemisphere. In addition, the tributary lasers required fine-tuning and perfect alignment during development, otherwise, it would result in the central beam misfocusing and dissipate in a flurry of backscatter that ended up being far more dangerous to the superlaser housing than to any target. As the superlaser at that time required a significant amount of power generation to maintain, and it was powered primarily by the station's hypermatter reactor, it also had to disable all other functions of the ship, including shields and life support, were knocked offline when it was in use. Lastly, the firing process also generated magnetic flux and gravitational flux, which also needed to be dissipated in fear of either misaligning the crystals or, in the worst case scenario, tear the station apart.[8] To this end, Tarkin brought together some of the most brilliant minds of the Galaxy, including Tol Sivron, Qwi Xux, and Bevel Lemelisk, and built a proof-of-concept model at the Maw Installation. This model would eventually become known as the Death Star prototype. These scientists also found and corrected several flaws in the Geonosian blueprints, which had been used in that phase of construction. Renowned physicist Rorax Falken worked with the Empire at some point during the construction of the Death Star, though he was not aware that his ideas and knowledge were being used for a battlestation.[11] During this time, the Death Star construction also frequently relocated, from Geonosis to Seswenna to Patriim to Horuz, the latter location being the location when the battle station was starting to become a reality.[8]
With the concept completed and the plans finalized, Lemelisk took the plans to Despayre, where construction would finally be completed after twenty years of hard work and the death of many individuals. In celebration, the Death Star turned its massive weapon on Despayre itself, completely destroying it.[13] After the completion of the first Death Star, codenamed the DS-1 Orbital Battle Station, Lemelisk and the IDMR have explored two potential concepts for the Death Star's future: Either having various factory worlds switch their output to the production of assembly-line duplicates of the current DS-1 model, or have the Empire build an even larger and more dangerous Death Star reaching 160 km in diameter.[14] The Empire would ultimately opt with the latter concept.
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