Mansfield Fox

Law student. Yankees fan. Massive fraggle. Just living the American dream.

Monday, May 23, 2005

Explaining the Death Star's Slow Construction...

...without blaming the Teamsters:

Law Jedi ruminates on why it took 20 years to build the first Death Star (construction on which is just beginning at the end of Episode III) and only about 4 years to create an incomplete but "fully armed and operation" second Death Star by "Return of the Jedi". But isn't the obvious answer the learning curve involved in building gigantic battle stations? I mean, if you've never constructed a space station the size of a moon, or a laser capable of destroying a planet in a single shot, it's going to be tricky. There's going to be lots of trial and error (and accompanying force-chokings), lots of seemingly promising roads that lead nowhere, etc. It could easily take 20-odd years to work out the kinks.

But once you've done it (and, despite its ignominious end, the Death Star was a success) it's a relatively simple matter to re-do it. Building Death Star II was a piece of cake compared to Death Star I, because they already knew how to do it. It was just a matter of accumulating an unspeakable amount of parts and labor, busting out the old blueprints, scaling everything up a bit, and going to work.