Skip to main content

Where do you park a Star Destroyer at the Death Star?


The Death Star is a huge space station, literally the size of a moon. Now I know you can park TIE fighters and shuttles and even craft as big as the Millennium Falcon inside of the station. But when you see this photo:


Death Star 1 and a star destroyer



Where exactly do you park a Star Destroyer at the Death Star? In the first episodes of the series, we've seen that the older version of star destroyers could actually land on the surface of a planet. While I'm certain that this newer version doesn't normally do that, would the Death Star actually have a landing bay for a vehicle this size?


Once again, where do you park a Star Destroyer once it's at the Death Star?



Answer



First, I find it hard to believe that those are scaled similarly. The Imperial Star Destroyers (both the first and second class) are 1,600 meters long. Essentially, they are about a mile long. You could run from one end to the other in less than 10 minutes.


The Death Star was the size of a small moon. The first Death Star was a rough sphere 120 kilometers in diameter. In other words, a Star Destroyer's length was 1.3% of the Death Star's diameter. A docking bay capable of holding a Star Destroyer would need to be enormous. Let's assume the Star Destroyer is a rectangular block 1600 meters long, 800 meters wide, and 800 meters high (which it isn't, it is significantly smaller than that) and that a docking bay needs to hold two of those with sufficient space for clearance and maintenance hardware. Let's say this results in a bay that is 1800 meters long, 2400 meters wide, and 1000 meters high. That is a volume of 4,320,000,000 cubic meters (4.32 cubic kilometers).


That sounds HUGE, right? It really isn't, compared to the internal volume of the Death Star. The Death Star has an 60,000 meter (60km) radius. Plugging that into the calculations for the volume of a sphere, we find that it has a volume of 904,779 cubic kilometers.


That's means the theoretical bay would be less than 0.0005% of the internal volume of the Death Star.


So you can see, there could be LOTS of places they could put a docking bay for a Star Destroyer.




That said, there's no real need for them to have a docking bay for ships that size.



The purposes of docking bays is to allow maintenance, restocking of provisions/fuel, personnel movement, etc for small craft. You park the Millennium Falcon, Chewie can climb up on top and mess about with hardware, you can attach feeder hoses to restock the water reserves, reclaim waste, refill consumables, etc. People can walk onboard or leave. All of this is needed with small ships, where space is as a premium.


Star Destroyers don't need to dock to accomplish this. All of their routine maintenance is done without docking. They were designed such that anything they can repair out of onboard capabilities can be done without needing to dock. They have personnel who are trained to work EVA in those rare cases where external repairs are needed, and they have machine shops and engineers who can produce most of the parts they could need.


Refueling is not something that has been addressed. We know (according to Wookiepedia) that the ships are powered by an 'I-a2b solar ionization reactor', which is referred to as seeming like a miniature sun. This reactor uses fully half of the volume of the ship, and the fuel it consumes is unknown. The Imperial Star Destroyer is listed as carrying 'consumables' for 2 years for its standard crew complement (according to a rulebook publishes in 2014 for a licensed game). Given that, we can assume that the ship was expected to not need to take on consumables for about a year at a time. It would be reasonable to assume that it refueled when it restocked.


Star Destroyers that aren't in need of severe maintenance would find it easy to orbit the Death Star (as it could any moon-sized object). Those which did need serious maintenance would likely have been sent to a dedicated repair facility, such as Kuat Drive yards (where many were constructed).




TL;DR: Your picture is way off scale, the Death Star is easily big enough to have docking bays big enough for Star Destroyers to land within, but it's unlikely that anyone would build them in because why would they need to land Star Destroyers within the Death Star?


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

harry potter - Did Dolores Umbridge Have Any Association with Voldemort (or Death Eaters) before His Return?

I noticed that Dolores Umbridge was born during the first Wizarding War, so it's very likely she wasn't a Death Eater then (but she is pretty evil -- who knows?). After that Voldemort was not around in a way that could affect many people, and most wouldn't know he was planning to rise again. During that time, and up through Voldemort's return (in Goblet of Fire ), did Umbridge have any connection with the Death Eaters or with Voldemort? Was she doing what she did on her own, or was it because of an association with Voldemort or his allies? Answer Dolores Umbridge was definitely not a good person. However, as Sirius points out, "the world isn't split into good people and Death Eaters". Remember that he also says that he doesn't believe Umbridge to be a Death Eater, but that she's evil enough (or something like that). I think there are two strong reasons to believe that: Umbridge was proud to do everything according to the law, except when she trie...

story identification - Animation: floating island, flying pests

At least 20 years ago I watched a short animated film which stuck in my mind. The whole thing was wordless, possibly European, and I'm pretty sure I didn't imagine it... It featured a flying island which was inhabited by some creatures who (in my memory) reminded me of the Moomins. The island was frequently bothered by large winged animals who swooped around, although I don't think they did any actual damage. At the end one of the moomin creatures suddenly gets a weird feeling, feels forced to climb to the top of the island and then plunges down a shaft right through the centre - only to emerge at the bottom as one of the flyers. Answer Skywhales from 1983. The story begins with a man warning the tribe of approaching skywhales. The drummers then warn everybody of the hunt as everyone get prepared to set "sail". Except one man is found in his home sleeping as the noise wake him up. He then gets ready and is about to take his weapon as he hesitates then decides ...

What is the etymology of Doctor Who?

I recently decided to watch Doctor Who, and started viewing the 2005 version. I have the first two episodes from the first season, and I can't help but wonder what is the etymology of the name "Doctor Who"? And why does the protagonist call himself "the Doctor" (or is it "the doctor")? Answer In the very first episode of Doctor Who (way back in 1963), the Doctor has a granddaughter going by the name "Susan Foreman", and the junkyard where the TARDIS is has the sign "I.M. Foreman". Barbara, who becomes one of the Doctor's companions, calls him "Doctor Foreman" (probably assuming that is his name given his relationship to Susan), and Ian (another early companion) does the same in the second episode, to which the Doctor says: Eh? Doctor who? What's he talking about? "Foreman" is most likely selected as a convenient surname for Susan to use because it happened to be on display near where the TARDIS landed....