Show us the Death Star II construction

One of the things that has bugged me a bit has been the protracted construction of the Death Star. It was once described as a “deadly countdown,” and I find that makes it an interesting story device. Nevertheless, the length of time it takes to build it is rather remarkable, and makes the construction of the DS II less believable. But as we are having more and more stories come out at different phases of the Star Wars timeline, something occurs to me: what if we had a story that took place between ANH and TESB or TESB and ROTJ? If timed right, it could be another heist story involving Bothans, but it could even take place prior to this. It could merely reveal the profundity of S.R. Hadden’s (from Sagan’s Contact) statement:

“First rule in government spending: why build one when you can have two at twice the price?”

It could merely represent the first discovery that the Empire had already begun construction on a second Death Star before the first was even operational.

I dunno, maybe it’s a stupid idea. But it just struck me as an interesting thought and the possible setup of some additional interquel stories on Disney+.

I’d love to see a series along the lines and style of Andor for the building of the Death Star II. The politics, fallout and uncertainty of the Imperials POV after losing their proud technological marvel to a bunch of plucky Rebels would be something to see, as they realise they now have to build a second Death Star, or perhaps already had and now needed to hasten its completion. And from Mon Mothma and the Rebel POV as well. The Rebel interactions with the Bothans, their network and their sacrifice. It would make for such an alluring concept.

Was anything written about this from fans before the EU, like with the popular Fall of the Republic story treatment on Anakin’s fall to the dark side by the highly talented John L Flynn?

Servii said:

I’ve always wanted a Star Wars movie or show with a nonhuman protagonist, so I’d be down for a Bothan spies show.

I’d love to see that. And made by the people who are making Andor.

Like Maroon Biker Scout says above, lead characters and scenes from an Imperial POV too.

The DS2 being constructed much faster than the DS1 really is not implausible at all. Of all the silliness in Star Wars, this is one of the least implausible things.

There’s many ways to easily explain this. It really depends on why the DS1 took so long. Firstly, the DS1 was developed secretly under a government that still nominally had some democratic organs and accountability to a pluralistic Senate. So planning, logistics, allocation of funds (a massive amount of funds!), would all need to be carefully orchestrated to appear harmless to the Senate, while also balancing the various competing interests inherent to any pluralistic governing body. But when constructing the DS2, the mask was already off. At that point, Palpatine was just like “Yeah, fuck it, I’m evil. Just deal with it.” So presumably there was no need to cleverly hide resource allocation to maintain a façade of accountability. Palpatine could allocate funds with dictatorial fiat.

Consider how in real life, planning and building the new World Trade Center tower in New York after 9/11 took over a decade, with around 8 years required for construction. Meanwhile, in the United Arab Emirates, a much larger tower, the Burj Khalifa, was constructed in only 5 years. This is because the construction companies involved in building the new WTC had to contend with the large bureaucracies and competing multi-agency interests in New York City, whereas the Burj Khalifa was constructed in a mostly monarchic (or oligarchic) state, with fewer competing interests.

Secondly, it’s also very plausible that part of the reason the DS1 took so long was due to the novel engineering and technical obstacles they encountered while building it. These obstacles needed to be overcome and solved for the first time, requiring extensive R & D. But once solutions were discovered, they knew exactly what to do the second time around. Perhaps they ran into technical difficulties with (I don’t know) heat diffusion caused by the superlaser. A lot of R & D would be required to solve this issue. But once an effective solution was discovered, they could easily replicate it a second time. This sort of thing is common in real-world engineering projects.

And thirdly, there was way more urgency to finish the project quickly the second time around, because after Yavin, the Empire was likely facing countless uprisings, badly straining the Imperial navy. The Empire played the “Tarkin doctrine” card but were then suddenly caught with no Death Star to back it up. They probably had to scramble to build a new one, while their military was stretched thin quelling endless uprisings.

So it’s really not particularly implausible to me that the DS2 could be constructed much faster than the first Death Star, because it was constructed under different political constraints with way more urgency, and they already solved all the engineering challenges required to create it the first time.

And finally, remember that the DS2 wasn’t actually ever completed. Presumably it still couldn’t move. And it was never demonstrated that the superlaser was yet capable of scaling up to the energy level required to blow up a planet.

Those are some well made and logical points you make, Channel72. I’m sold!

One thing that would require some explaining is the sheer volume of material needed: we know that DSI required a mass effort, and other Imperial projects shelved in favour of building that, so this much larger DSII would require even more effort, slave or prisoner workforces, mining for components and so on.

On the other hand, there is no Imperial Senate around to placate and swerve around, like there was for DSI. Nobody in the way asking questions or or investigating just why there are so many prisoners or slaves working on certain projects for this. Or why resources and efforts from planets and systems across the galaxy are being diverted into “black holes” or classified projects.
 

I agree with Servii above, in that the more we have seen on DSI, the more abrupt it feels DSII was built in comparison.

I’d love to see something along those explained, in a short feature or animated anthology episode; something like in “Tales Of The Jedi” if that series is going to expand beyond doing Ahsoka-themed and Dooku-backstory episodes.

Or even in a one-off Disney+ film on the building of DSII, with the Bothans, having the Rebels and Imperial POVs, the Emperor’s plan being implemented by his underlings, along with his deception that the superlaser wasn’t ready and so on.

Whether it could move or not is unclear, but I think it was able to fire at full power if they wanted? It’s very odd that no canon media from ROTS to Andor has ever shown the Maw Installation. Which means all this construction is done out in the open.

I mean, pretty much any complicated engineering project should be quicker the second time around, because the technical challenges have already been solved and the infrastructure to build more is already in place.

A “not quite analogous but analogous enough” example is the Atomic Bomb. The first atomic bomb took about 5 years to go from concept to first successful test (and arguably 20 years before that to lay the theoretical groundwork). But the hydrogen bomb, a much more powerful weapon, only took about 2 years to develop (started in 1950, first detonation test in 1952). This is because most of the engineering and theoretical problems were already solved, and most of the infrastructure was already in place to build more bombs, etc.

This doesn’t necessarily apply if you’re building a much more advanced/improved version of something with fundamentally new capabilities, instead of just duplicating or scaling up something. Like the F-22 fighter jet took around 6 years to develop, but the much more advanced F-35 took over 20 years. That’s because the latter was such a leap forward and so ambitious that it introduced many new engineering problems, and ended up getting bogged down in defects and budgeting issues.

The DS2 should be quicker to build than the DS1 unless it’s doing something way more advanced than the DS1. We know the DS2 is bigger, it can fire the superlaser at an angle, and I think it recharges faster. So there might be some new engineering challenges. There’s no way to say for sure since it’s all fictional. But the MAIN challenge (scaling up a laser to such ridiculously insane energy levels that it can blow up an entire Earth-sized planet) is already solved.

Plus, with the DS2 you also have other factors that should make it quicker to build than the DS1, such as less political obstacles due to the Senate not existing, and more urgency to get it done. (ROTJ begins with Vader showing up and threatening an Admiral to speed up construction.) I bet the DS2 would have had tons of defects if it was actually completed, due to being so rushed by Palpatine.

I’m not much of a fan of Wookieepedia apart from using it merely for reference, but

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/DS-2_Death_Star_II_Mobile_Battle_Station#Construction

does do a half reasonable job at explaining the construction of it. Nearly as good as Channel72 has in here!
 

One thing I do very much like from their description, coupled with Channel72’s reasoning, is that:

"The construction of the Death Star II was conducted in four main stages. The primary stage focused on assembling the components necessary for construction of the reactor core as well as the two massive cylindrical polar columns used to distribute power around the station. With the main power systems in place, four reactor shafts were then fixed to the reactor. Next, a polar cap was fixed to the free end of each polar column, and subsidiary shafts were added to the columns and the four reactor shafts. The equatorial, or “waistband,” regions were then constructed, as they contained important docking facilities and the ion thrusters that rotated the station. The third stage prioritized construction of the superlaser. After the main weapon’s completion, construction efforts were then focused on the station’s outer shell and inner levels, including the Emperor’s tower, which was anchored to the station long before his arrival.

As was confirmed during development of the first Death Star, construction advanced most efficiently when the working surface allowed for sufficient space for the greatest possible number of self-replicating construction droids. This was Moff Jerjerrod’s justification for filling the inner structures in a piecemeal manner."

The 4 stages breakdown, and the piecemeal manner of filling in the inner structures later does lend an air of believability to how it could be constructed so quickly, with the reminder it was not anywhere near finished as we saw on screen. Along with the surprise that the super laser was in fact fully operational, and that this was part of Emperor’s plan to lure the growing rebellion out.

Channel72 said:

The DS2 being constructed much faster than the DS1 really is not implausible at all. Of all the silliness in Star Wars, this is one of the least implausible things.

There’s many ways to easily explain this. It really depends on why the DS1 took so long. Firstly, the DS1 was developed secretly under a government that still nominally had some democratic organs and accountability to a pluralistic Senate. So planning, logistics, allocation of funds (a massive amount of funds!), would all need to be carefully orchestrated to appear harmless to the Senate, while also balancing the various competing interests inherent to any pluralistic governing body. But when constructing the DS2, the mask was already off. At that point, Palpatine was just like “Yeah, fuck it, I’m evil. Just deal with it.” So presumably there was no need to cleverly hide resource allocation to maintain a façade of accountability. Palpatine could allocate funds with dictatorial fiat.

Consider how in real life, planning and building the new World Trade Center tower in New York after 9/11 took over a decade, with around 8 years required for construction. Meanwhile, in the United Arab Emirates, a much larger tower, the Burj Khalifa, was constructed in only 5 years. This is because the construction companies involved in building the new WTC had to contend with the large bureaucracies and competing multi-agency interests in New York City, whereas the Burj Khalifa was constructed in a mostly monarchic (or oligarchic) state, with fewer competing interests.

Secondly, it’s also very plausible that part of the reason the DS1 took so long was due to the novel engineering and technical obstacles they encountered while building it. These obstacles needed to be overcome and solved for the first time, requiring extensive R & D. But once solutions were discovered, they knew exactly what to do the second time around. Perhaps they ran into technical difficulties with (I don’t know) heat diffusion caused by the superlaser. A lot of R & D would be required to solve this issue. But once an effective solution was discovered, they could easily replicate it a second time. This sort of thing is common in real-world engineering projects.

And thirdly, there was way more urgency to finish the project quickly the second time around, because after Yavin, the Empire was likely facing countless uprisings, badly straining the Imperial navy. The Empire played the “Tarkin doctrine” card but were then suddenly caught with no Death Star to back it up. They probably had to scramble to build a new one, while their military was stretched thin quelling endless uprisings.

So it’s really not particularly implausible to me that the DS2 could be constructed much faster than the first Death Star, because it was constructed under different political constraints with way more urgency, and they already solved all the engineering challenges required to create it the first time.

And finally, remember that the DS2 wasn’t actually ever completed. Presumably it still couldn’t move. And it was never demonstrated that the superlaser was yet capable of scaling up to the energy level required to blow up a planet.

You nailed it.

As another point, they could have even started working on the second death star before the first one was finished.

In my head-canon, I like the idea that the DS2 was always the goal, as the ultimate mobile centre of imperial power, and that the smaller DS1 was what they could produce in the time available to finally dissolve the senate and crush a growing rebellion. I think construction on DS2 had begun with whatever resources were available before construction of DS1 was even complete. I agree with everything that’s been said about how much more quickly the construction would be after the technology had developed and many of the problems ironed out, though. But, at the very least, I find it improbable that the Empire would have left it at one Death Star, and once one had started construction, or even after it had been designed, plans for a second, bigger, better Death Star would already be filling imperial drawing boards.

(Even though destroying a planet completely is utter overkill anyway. But I view the Death Stars more as mobile governing centres than just superweapons.)

Pete Byrdie said:

(Even though destroying a planet completely is utter overkill anyway. But I view the Death Stars more as mobile governing centres than just superweapons.)

Yeah, I mean presumably all life on a planet could be destroyed with just a few Star Destroyers and an extended orbital bombardment. But various rationalizations for the Death Star have been proposed over the years, including (1) some planets had planetary defense shields that could withstand an extended bombardment from conventional Star Destroyers (e.g. Hoth), but could not withstand the Death Star superlaser; (2) the whole point of the Death Star was massive overkill for the purpose of psychological warfare; or (3) the Death Star can also serve as a “mobile capitol” and administrative/military center as you said. I think a combination of all 3 rationalizations works pretty well to justify the existence of the Death Star story-wise.

Interestingly, regarding point 3, in A New Hope Palpatine doesn’t seem to be interested in relocating to the Death Star, and is instead content to entrust command to Tarkin. (But that’s really because at the time ANH was written, Palpatine was an ambiguous political puppet and an insignificant background detail, rather than a powerful evil sorcerer/mastermind.)

Channel72 said:

Interestingly, regarding point 3, in A New Hope Palpatine doesn’t seem to be interested in relocating to the Death Star, and is instead content to entrust command to Tarkin. (But that’s really because at the time ANH was written, Palpatine was an ambiguous political puppet and an insignificant background detail, rather than a powerful evil sorcerer/mastermind.)

Yeah, he was waiting for DS2 to be built with a shiny throne room, squash court and jacuzzi, before packing up his My Little Pony collection for transport. It was already planned, I reckon.