Two questions about the Battle of Yavin

1) Why don’t the rebels evacuate the base just in case?  A skeleton crew would have to remain behind to coordinate the attack on the Death Star, but they can do that from a ship, and everybody else can be getting the hell out of Dodge at light speed, leaving the Death Star nothing to destroy but an empty base.

2) The Death Star spends 30 minutes orbiting the planet to get a shot at the moon.  Wouldn’t it be a lot faster to just blast the planet?  Judging by the debris and shock wave resulting from the destruction of Alderaan (in the SE and later editions), the explosion almost certainly would take out the moon.  Even if it doesn’t, it would leave the Death Star with an open shot at the moon.  At the very least, the moon would be rendered uninhabitable and the base useless; people and ships might have a chance to get away, but they should be gone already anyway, especially if you give them an extra 30 minutes to evacuate while you circle the planet.

And talk about an “effective demonstration”!  It would say, “If you harbor Rebels in your system, you’re dead, no questions asked, so you better be vigilant about not letting Rebels use your system.”

1)...good question.

2) Also good but not a sure-fire way to take them out in one swift stroke.  And I don't know how much time the DS needs between shots.  Might be a day to recharge that thing but I'm sure someone here has a nice EU explanation.

Either way I'm glad both were incompetent enough to make the decisions they made....cuz I really liked ESB.

I think maybe the Rebels decided to make a "last stand"? It's not very clear how much time passes from when our heroes arrive on Yavin 4, and when the Death Star shows up. Possibly just enough time to study the plans, form an attack plan, and brief the pilots.

In Empire, it seems to take at least a day to pack up and prepare to flee Hoth. You don't want to leave stuff behind you're going to need later.

Also, it's clear from Jedi the entire Rebel fleet is not on Yavin 4. They may have wanted to make the Empire think all the eggs were all in one easily to blow up basket.

Yavin is like Jupiter. It's huge, mostly gaseous, and potentially combustable. Blowing us a gas giant you're in orbit around is probably a bad idea. See the end of 2010, for reference. ;)

Alderaan was used as an "effective demonstration" already.

I didn’t realize that Yavin was a gas giant.  That’s a satisfying answer to that question.

Question #3: if Leia suspected that there was a homing beacon on the Falcon, why didn’t they go somewhere else and hire another ship to fly to Yavin?  Did they want the Death Star to find their base?

The answers to questions 2 and 3 can be found here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzoeEdW-EDQ

A friend of mine used to wonder why they just didn't email the darn plans. ;)

The Falcon was "on the lam" after blasting out of Mos Eisely, so perhaps a spaceport free of an Imperial presence was too far away at the time. We also don't know if the Death Star moved on during the time our heroes were aboard.

Leia just saw her whole planet wiped out, so she was probably hell bent on getting the DS plans to the Rebels ASAP, before another heavily populated world was next.

She could also have had doubts about whether she really spilled everything under the mind probe.

Maybe they were betting on the DS coming in without any Imperial Navy support?

JarHead413 said:

I don't know how much time the DS needs between shots.  Might be a day to recharge that thing

That certainly was not the case in ROTJ, but who knows, maybe technology advanced in four years from “takes a day to recharge” to “takes moments to recharge even when the darn thing is only halfway built.”  True, this is a universe that had no significant technological development for thousands of years, but you never know.

G E Predator said:

cap said:

I didn’t realize that Yavin was a gas giant.  That’s a satisfying answer to that question.

 

Question #3: if Leia suspected that there was a homing beacon on the Falcon, why didn’t they go somewhere else and hire another ship to fly to Yavin?  Did they want the Death Star to find their base?

 

That I can answer definetly.  Leia is not the type of person to put innocent people at risk.  Since the Empire was following the Falcon to the secret Rebel Base - which they were trying to find to begin with - they would have assumed that the first place that the Millennium Falcon lands.

That doesn’t make sense.  If they had gone to a place where ships can be hired (Mos Eisley on Tatooine, or a similar place), Tarkin would have gone, “That must be where the Rebel base is! Destroy that planet!”?

cap said:

That doesn’t make sense.  If they had gone to a place where ships can be hired (Mos Eisley on Tatooine, or a similar place), Tarkin would have gone, “That must be where the Rebel base is! Destroy that planet!”?

Of course. And it would have sucked for Mos Eisley on Tatooine, or a similar place! You do realize everyone working under Darth Vader has to be slightly dumber than Vader, and judging by what an absolute retard Anakin was it has got to be a challenge for them to find people meeting that criteria. I suppose then that Tarkin, while he seems a pretty intelligent guy, must be one of the finest idiots they could find in the galaxy, and beyond a doubt the sort of fellow who blow up Tantooine with the simple comment, "Well, these rrrrrrebels have certainly done a convincing job of disguising themselves as a simple spaceport filled with the typical aliens and traders. Glad the Prrrrincessss was foolish enough to lead us hear, rrrather than seeking out a waypoint to abandon our transmitter first. Gunners! You may fire when ready!"

G E Predator said:

"if Leia know that the Falcon was being tracked, wouldn't she have tried to find and disarm the homing beacon?"  Again, another simple answer:  Han Solo would not allow anyone to mess with his ship in anyway for whatever reason.

ROTFL! I like this predator guy.

Observe:

Tarkin would have gone, “That must be where the Rebel base is! Destroy that planet!”?

The question mark (?) at the end of this quote indicates that it was a question.

He is asking, not stating. Basically he was asking you, do you actually think Tarkin would have blown up the planet the Falcon was traced to, regardless of whether or not there was evidence to indicate there was Rebel activity taking place there?

G E Predator said:

C3PX said:

Observe:

Tarkin would have gone, “That must be where the Rebel base is! Destroy that planet!”?

The question mark (?) at the end of this quote indicates that it was a question.

He is asking, not stating. Basically he was asking you, do you actually think Tarkin would have blown up the planet the Falcon was traced to, regardless of whether or not there was evidence to indicate there was Rebel activity taking place there?

Yes, I believe that he would.  Since no one in the Empire had any idea where the Rebel Base was, they would have assumed that whatever planet that the Millennium Falcon would be where the Rebel's hidden base was located.

In that case, they should have gone to hire another ship on whatever planet the Emperor was on. 

(Probably Coruscant.  I never liked that planet anyway.)

Nice!

If the Empire was that much of a baboon circus, Leia absolutely should have seen that as a opportunity to get rid of some of the more Imperial heavy planets. Or she could have simply landed inside an asteroid or an uninhabitable planet to get rid of the transmitter, if only Han wasn't so anal about his ship. ;)

Leia: Okay Captian Solo, you're going to have to land this hulk someplace so we can get rid of the tracking device the Empire planted on it.

Han: No way! Now how! Your highness! Nobody is laying another figure on my ship! She has been tampered with enough for one day.

Leia: But... the Empire is tracking us. Meaning they will know where you are where ever you go until you remove that tracker. Meaning, you're always being watched. You every activity being monitored.

Han: Doesn't matter! Nothing you can say is going to change my mind!

Leia: You've just broken a high profile prisoner out of a prison from a top secret Imperial space station! If they catch you they're sure to kill you and your Wookie!

Han: La la la la la! I aaaam nooooot liiiiisteeening! La la la!

cap said:

JarHead413 said:

I don't know how much time the DS needs between shots.  Might be a day to recharge that thing

That certainly was not the case in ROTJ, but who knows, maybe technology advanced in four years from “takes a day to recharge” to “takes moments to recharge even when the darn thing is only halfway built.”  True, this is a universe that had no significant technological development for thousands of years, but you never know.

I think it's been established the DSII was deliberately made to look incomplete, so as to make it a more tempting target. It can also be argued the superlaser was not firing at full strength when taking out Rebel fleet ships, so faster recharge time.

Of course, none of this explains away making an even bigger design flaw than the original. Exhaust ports big enough to fly into! ;)

SilverWook said:

Of course, none of this explains away making an even bigger design flaw than the original. Exhaust ports big enough to fly into! ;)

They didn’t see that as a design flaw because those exhaust ports were protected by a shield they believed to be invulnerable.

As long as we’re on the “Why didn’t they...” theme, I don’t see why the Rebels decided to let everything depend on a ground assault force defeating the (assumed, for no good reason, to be small) Imperial force protecting the shield generator and placing explosives.  The Alliance may not have had the power to destroy a planet, but they certainly had enough firepower to blast a sizable crater in one.  Why not take out the shield generator by nuking the entire site from orbit?  (In the words of Ellen Ripley, “It’s the only way to be sure.”)  Is there any reason given why this wouldn’t work?

It probably would have required them to get too close to the moon to keep from being detected.  The whole plan was based on the element of surprise.  As soon as the Imperials realized that their shield generator had suddenly been blown up... BAM, the entire Rebel fleet shows up at their unprotected doorstep.

Then again, this is another thing about ROTJ that irks me (but only just a little bit).  Did Han just suck at coordinating his team or reading a watch?  They had only just met resistance when the Rebel fleet showed up.  It seemed like the fleet might have given them a tiny bit more time to complete their mission just in case of complications (or, you know, maybe keep in touch with one another to be sure), or maybe Han made a mistake of camping out with Ewoks all night and overslept.  Who knows?

Gaffer Tape said:

It probably would have required them to get too close to the moon to keep from being detected.  The whole plan was based on the element of surprise.  As soon as the Imperials realized that their shield generator had suddenly been blown up... BAM, the entire Rebel fleet shows up at their unprotected doorstep.

How much time would it take?  The entire Rebel fleet suddenly shows up at the Death Star’s doorstep, for 15 seconds they throw everything they’ve got at the site of the shield generator, then they turn their attention to the Death Star.  It would be a hell of a lot faster than a ground assault.

If, for some reason I can’t imagine, you’re committed to a ground attack, you don’t need an entire assault force equipped with plastic explosives.  One martyr (or, for that matter, a droid) equipped with one really BIG bomb would do the trick.  We don’t have to be talking Chicxulub here.  Winslow Arizona would do the trick.  Surely the Alliance has that level of technology.

Come to think of it, a single space cruiser flying at relativistic speed into the planet would pack a hell of a lot more bang than the Chicxulub impactor.  It would pulverize the planet on impact.  Why did they need the Death Star for the power to destroy a planet?  If they had the technology to move a large vessel at lightspeed, they already had the technology to destroy a planet.

Touche.  But maybe a laser-powered superweapon is more cost-efficient in the long run.  But unfortunately, I'm not up to date on my dollars-to-credits conversions, nor do I know the difference between the cost of building and maintaining a laser-firing superweapon and building, somewhat-maintaining, and destroying a fleet of disposable light-speed-capable ships.

Wow.  I'm really beginning to sound like a nerd.

cap said:

SilverWook said:

Of course, none of this explains away making an even bigger design flaw than the original. Exhaust ports big enough to fly into! ;)

They didn’t see that as a design flaw because those exhaust ports were protected by a shield they believed to be invulnerable.

As long as we’re on the “Why didn’t they...” theme, I don’t see why the Rebels decided to let everything depend on a ground assault force defeating the (assumed, for no good reason, to be small) Imperial force protecting the shield generator and placing explosives.  The Alliance may not have had the power to destroy a planet, but they certainly had enough firepower to blast a sizable crater in one.  Why not take out the shield generator by nuking the entire site from orbit?  (In the words of Ellen Ripley, “It’s the only way to be sure.”)  Is there any reason given why this wouldn’t work?

 

Noted author Norman Spinrad asked the nuke question in a controversial review that ran in Starlog back in the day. It generated a lot of angry letters, IIRC. And a cartoon depicting Spinrad in carbonite. ;)

Either nobody really wants to use nukes, or they don't exist as weapons in the galaxy. At least among the advanced cultures.

Gaffer Tape said:

Wow.  I'm really beginning to sound like a nerd.

This must be some strange use of the word "beginning" of which I was not previously aware.

Shut the H-E-double hell up, C3PX.  :)