The fault in our Death Star

Whenever you read a ‘How To Build’ booklet or website, they always list blowing up among the side effects of bad engineering. But, in fact, blowing up is not the side-effect of bad engineering. Blowing up is the side-effect of stupidity. (‘How To Build’ failures are also a side-effect of stupidity. Almost everything is). But The Empire believed they could just swing, so they took the plan to their regular engineer, who thought that the dark side was absolutely bonkers and absolutely bonkers to be having even ideated this plan that therefore they should maybe focus more on training the Storm Troopers.

But, we’re talking about the Dark Side here.

Here’s the thing, when your entire army’s fate depends on a spherical ship floating in space, maybe avoid making the most vulnerable part of your space vehicle easily accessible to your enemies. A thermal exhaust port was an outlet for dissipating the excess heat. These ports drew excess heat energy away from the reactors and other equipment in a structure and expelled it into space to prevent damage to systems or injury to the crew. Thermal exhaust ports were very much vulnerable to damage or sabotage. An explosion in an exhaust port could trigger an explosive chain reaction that caused the main reactor to go critical and explode. For this reason, they were often protected, either physically, or with ray-shielding against energy weapons.

The first Death Star blew, or was blown up, by the Rebels as they went whoosh-whooshing and pew-pewing through. In fact, on the said day the Rebels made the acquaintance of one Luke Skywalker, who piloted through while sitting in his X-Wing. It was he who helmed the perfect shot that blew up the Death Star into smithereens. The fault was acknowledged though. The Death Star 2 seem to let go off the feature.

Lying around in the empty space must be emotionally draining. More so, when you know that the ones residing in you, are on the verge of being dead because of the absolute stupidity of the one controlling them. The existential crisis of you missing every shot you attempt is an added baggage that drags you down. And in the empty of space, your scream for help just dies out. And no matter who you blame for this, it's just about the fault in our Death Star.