It's a tiny hole, covers by shields, surrounded by guns. Out of the entire squadron, only two people got close enough to take the shot, one missed entirely, and the other used magical powers. Not to mention, luke would have also died if han hadn't suddenly come out of nowhere to save him.
This argument always iritated me. It's the science fiction cousin of the argument that knights were stupid for wearing armor because it had weak points.
Honestly it's one of the things I hate in Sci fi, the ship that has zero flaws. Look at any real world ship from any navy at any point in history, you will find flaws and some of those are only obvious when that flaw led to the ship being lost or very badly damaged. Personally a ship being shown to have flaws is something I love in Sci fi as it lends a bit of realism to the world
@@GrimgoreIronhide even Serenity had realistic faults throughout the show and the film though. The episode where she's adrift after the fire springs to mind
"Great shot kid, that was one in a millon." Han Solo wasn't exaggerating when he said this. Without Luke and his guidance from the force, the rebels had a million to one chance of exploiting the Death Star's "weakness".
Yeah, that zoom out from the plans, with the little torpedos really shows it. Luke didn't just need to get the torpedos into the port, he needed a magic shot that got the torpedos all the way down kilometers of narrow heat duct. Even firing straight down into the port would be a pretty low chance, but since the defenses forced the fighters to do the trench run they were coming in perpendicular to the shaft anyway. Short of a force curve setting the torpedos on the perfect course after they're already in the hole it wasn't gonna happen.
change the angle of attack. they aren't in an atmosphere they can literally fly straight down at the exhaust port and fire with a straight line of sight not million to one at all.
@@Weeping_Willoe Torpedos tend to have steering, though. Think about it... there were two that had to converge on their way from the ship to fit into the duct, they could steer a pre-programmed path down into the port, and then continue to navigate the duct. I guess I just find this more plausible. As you said, considering the distance they would travel to the core of the Death Star, Luke would have had to magick them (very) perfectly, because even a half a degree of variation in the approach angle (on all axes) would have them hitting the walls of the duct before they hit the target.
@@sixwingproductions did you not pay attention dolt! The trench on the space station colloquially known as the death star was out of the range of turret fire if the rebel ships called the y wing and x wing flew straight down the pilots would have been shredded by turbolaser fire
@@technounionrepresentative4274 except that the fighters were to small for the turbo lasers on the death star to be effective and there were turbo lasers in the trench. not to mention the fire they had to dodge to get into the trench in the first place. so what your saying is they could only dodge the turbo laser fire to get into the trench but not to go into a steep dive and fire. also that would imply that once they leave the trench they should get shot down immediately which is not what happened.
TBH, no one would really have planned for a Jedi attacking the death star... Think about it, a guild of space wizard that was wiped out several decades ago, with powers unknown to the public
Yeah, basically without Luke, this Death Star operation wouldn't be even successful even with full force attack from the Rebels. Which will be worse since sending fleets to Death Star will just make Tarkin at least send more Star Destroyers docked inside the Death Star. Luke literally made a miracle in this operation, which something Tarkin or any Imperial commander cannot prepare for. Darth Vader I think at least felt this and recognized the possible threat since he is a powerful Force user. Alas, they only sent small squadron of TIEs.
"A precise hit will start a chain reaction which should destroy the station... *only* a precise hit will set up a chain reaction." This line here is the one that always settled it for me. It takes the weak point from being a scenario of "line up your shot right here and you can shoot directly into the reactor" to "shooting this spot sets off a domino effect that causes a series of explosions to blast into the core." Considering real world design flaws like Tacoma Narrows, The Titanic & The Hindenburg. Cascade failures caused by small variables the engineers weren't thinking about exists well within the realm of possibility.
Late response, but it reminds me of how one of the Japanese carriers in the Battle of Midway went down. An American dive bomber landed a non lethal hit on its deck that penetrated down to its storage, there was a bunch of poorly stored munitions, fuel, and airplanes there, a chain explosion happened, and the carrier went down.
I’ve come to believe that the plan was to use the torpedoes to ignite the hot gasses coming out of the port. Luke using the force to create wire-guided torpedoes made this plan moot.
@@hanzzel6086 Typical Imperial Japanese Navy damage control includes such masterful plans as turning your own ship into a fuel-air bomb while trying to repair it.
Perhaps the death star exhaust port system was designed so that only that single exhaust port could cause the correct reaction while the others wouldnt. They could've tested the other ports for some chain reaction and said "see? Nothing happened"
More specifically: *The exhaust port is not just a hole that goes right into the main reactor!!* It's not like a chimney over a fireplace. They mention in both Rogue One AND in A New Hope, that the precise hit on the exhaust port would trigger a chain reaction that would eventually lead to the main reactor. That means that it goes in and hits a thing, that thing explodes, that explosion destroys another thing, on and on and on until the reactor goes. Yes, the schematics seen in the movie show a line all the way to the reactor. They also show the superlaser dish on the equator, so excuse me if I don't put a lot of faith in that.
Superlaser dish placement: That's only because that scene was filmed and then the superlaser placement was moved afterward. They would've had to reshoot large portions of the end battle planning scene in order to move the superlaser placement that we see there. They didn't have the time or the money to do that.
@@specialagent4575 I figured it would be that they didn't have the budget to redo the special effects, and that's understandable. But like, on the other hand, of all the things that they *could* have fixed in the 1997 Special Edition...! You'd think the one glaring error would be higher on the list than Stormtroopers riding on Dewbacks...
The dish location is not a mistake, the picture we're shown is a presentation meant to explain to the pilots the battle plan, they weren't the actual blueprints
@@GiubileiFernando As a corollary to that idea, maybe _all_ the small ports shared that weakness, but concentrating forces on just the one would maximise their chances. Might be the given one also happened to have the poorest defence coverage, for one reason or another.
i would argue putting in bends or something to make it impossible for torpedos to have a straight shot. a sensor array near the entrance that triggers a blast door to closer further inside. but then maybe Gallens sabotage was that these measures werent put in on this specific port
Covering an exhaust port completely is asking for trouble but an armored structure could have easily been built over it that still allowed excess thermal energy and exhaust to be vented. This is just one of those points everyone has an opinion over and will eagerly argue on.
@@nathanharrison2 You miss the point. it is NOT the Proton Torpedo that does the damage. It's using the explosion from the Proton torpedo that set off a chain reaction from the high concentration of high energy gasses being dissipated by the thermal exhaust ports. Only a direct hit, one that exploded with the volatile mix at a high enough energy state and at a high enough concentration would be able to set off such a reaction. The whole point of a thermal exhaust port is that you are trying to evacuate the high energy emissions far away from the primary exhaust, lowering the chance of catastrophic failure of the complete exhaust system under normal expected operating conditions. The only way to know any of this was to have enough technical knowledge of the Death Star itself in order to identify such a vulnerability. Lastly, as for the torpedoes themselves. It's also NOT Luke using force powers making them turn down like that. It was made pretty darn clear during the presentation that the torpedoes were programed in such a way to make that turn and hit the target. The key here is that the torpedo being programmed to make that dive at a specific coordinated point. Relying on the targeting computer, you are liable to miss that exact moment of release (especially given the surface velocity of the X-wings in the trench) and the nature of human reactions to prompts like the fire command. Red Leader made the run, got to the release point, and probably reacted either just quicker or slower than the window of opportunity the pilots had. Hence the torpedoes "Just impacted on the surface." Luke using the Force just meant he released the torpedoes at the actual exact moment because he knew the timing was correct, thanks to his force-enhanced instincts.
@@Skyfighter64 im not missing the point. Im arguing that there may have been structural placements in the other ports that didnt allow an explosion close enough to anything to allow for the chain, such as the bends or blast door sensors, which was due to gallens sabotage, or each port was of equal oppurtunity and they just chose the weaker defences. At no point did i mention targeting ability or the force coercing the shot
I, personally, never had an issue with the exhaust port idea. I always took for granted that the exhaust poet was tiny and thus it would be overlooked or easily missed. It also contextualized Rogue One's story into Gaelan sneaking a small detail past the Empire.
which shows just how well protected the damn thing is! it not considered a weakness for a REALLY good reason. after all, you have to dodge thousands of Turblasers, hundreds of Tie Fighters, then manoeuvre down a VERY confined trench loaded to the gunwales with more guns and fighters on your ass. its a total suicide mission. and that is assuming you don;t have an actual defence fleet on top of all that.
If I remember right, Rogue One never calls out the exhaust port itself either. Galen stated his design was so a small explosion near the reactor would trigger a station collapse, Galen never states "pick this exhaust port to hit my weakness." For all we knew, Galen assumed the reactor would be sabotaged by a crack commando team and the thought of trying to fly a torpedo through a narrow port to the reactor would have sounded crazy to him. Its likely that Rebel High Command knowing were Galen's weakness was and pressed for time due to the approaching battle station just chose the exhaust port as a Hail Mary type of plan, it was the fastest way to get an explosion in range to trigger the reactor failure Galen designed. It explains why in a lot of the expanded stories coming out now that the Rebels already had evacuated Mon Mothma and other key leaders from Yavin, with really only Leia, Dodana and two starfighter squadrons staying behind to lead the attack on the Death Star... it was a crazy plan they had no way of guaranteeing it would work.
@Lassi Kinnunen The bothan spies line is for the second death star in Return of the Jedi. Unless I am remembering wrongly the only thing really known about the data in A New Hope is that Leia has it and Vader was chasing her down because of it.
Jacob Lyman if you read the Rogue one Novelizasion it goes into more detail about the sabotage and it was fully intended to be a torpedo shot. Krenik even realizes this in his last moments as the Death Star charges up Over skarrif
Another, related, point is the Imperials suspected something was wrong. An officer told Tarkin they had analyzed the rebel attack and found a small change they could destroy the station.
I wondered about this myself. It introduces a small weakness in the Rogue One storyline, or it suggests that they looked at the consequences of a proton torpedo hitting the reactor housing, discovered the weakness, and reported it in terms of threat. Actually, given the battle situation, this was quite realistic; root cause analysis is not suitable when the enemy is already on approach. It also suggests that the Imperials were not complete dunderheads, and Erso not infallible. Stories are so much better when one side isn’t omniscient and the other side totally incompetent.
@@andyl8055 You could do a LOT of drill down on the military of the Galactic Empire. How they recruit. How they train and promote leaders. The status of Stormtroopers and how they relate to the rest of the military.
Indeed..... and that comment would seem to imply that there is a plausible reason why the port is not guarded against torpedoes beyond simple arrogance. It was a known risk, but one deemed necessary and manageable.
@@travissmith2848 Tarkin even said it. "You overestimate their chances" and think of it. If Han hadn't intervened Luke would have died. If Luke hadn't used the Force he would have missed.
IIRC Gailin Urso's Specific act of sabotage was to design the main reactor in a way that made it vulnerable to instability. Instead of being explosion resistant, a small explosion would trigger a catastrophic chain reaction. I have a feeling Gailin Urso was thinking someone might smuggle explosives and sabotage it that way. The 'shoot torpedoes down an exhaust port' thing was the rebellion trying to come up with a desperate last minute plan to get an explosive to the reactor.
Well keep in mind that the Death Star used kyber crystals. Those things become incredibly unstable if they have too much energy applied to them. The larger ones specifically will detonate and we've seen this happen three times: twice in Rebels and once in an unused Clone Wars arc on Utapau.
@@SoranoGuardias Now imagine how easy it would be for a genius architectural prodigy to design a reactor system that runs on these ridiculously dangerous exploding crystals that LOOKS good and safe to everyone else but is in fact a carefully constructed house of cards that'll implode upon itself and vaporize the entire station if you smack it with a shockwave.
Yeah, this has been my opinion since that scene where it was revealed he set up the flaw. The flaw was in the reactor, that it'd explode if poked wrong. He didn't _know_ how it might be best exploited, that's why they still needed the plans, instead of putting 'target the secondary port at Bearing 120' or whatever in the same message he mentioned he'd done it.
Which makes more sense tactically a small team especially one willing to die is more the rebels way. Space battles are always going to favor the Empire the Rebels need to hit and run.
You missed the line "The Empire doesn't consider a small, one-man fighter to be any threat, or they'd have a tighter defense." Only a fighter could have even gotten close enough to make the shot.
The novelization of RotJ states the second Death Star’s design eliminates the 2 meter exhaust ports and instead used thousands or even millions of tiny exhaust vents too small for any munitions to find and damage. Unfortunately the battle station was not completed and the rebel ships could fly directly to the reactor. Oops.
The entire point of the Emperors plans was that it was supposed to look unfinished and vulnerable, and that he was there to make the target even more tempting for the rebels. Had it been entirely unable to be attacked, then the rebels would just have gone to ground.
DE J but the Death Star was still unfinished, despite the main weapon being online. The rebels succeeded in breaching the shield and flying into the main reactor. The emperor should have at least had a separate shield generator on board to protect the reactor or a physical shield that sealed the core once the Endor shield failed. His best troops on the moon couldn’t handle the locals plus a small rebel commando unit, and his plan totally relied on them holding the bunker long enough for the imperial fleet to mop up the rebel fleet. And his best troops did not do their job. There should have been a million troops or more on the ground, he had at least that many personnel on the death star and on the fleet ships. That bunker could have been miles of tunnels with multiple ‘back doors’ in ensure a Truly overwhelming response to any incursion. A half dozen At-st walkers and less than a hundred stormies don’t cut it. Also immediate execution of captured rebels should been the order of the day.
Well if it was completed, then all you would need is an under cover operation to smuggle in an explosive and move it close to the explodey part of the reactor.
The fact that people complain yet doesnt realize if it has a giant laser it will need to release that heat after the shot and a single exhaust port wont do
@@Klipik12 first of all the emense heat that the death star gives off after full shot then it needs to be exited immediatly to avoid damage and prolonging it with zig zag pipes could destroy the pipes also the exhaust ports would have to big enough to avoid adding to many or too few
@@redmafiapanda this. this comment right here. too few people really understand just how important that port's design was. it HAD to be made the way it was, or it wouldn't have done it's job properly.
I think this actually has significant credibility. The Death Star has tons of systems and subsystems which probably needed various power generation and heat/chem/fume/spacemagic exhausts of their own. If this port was just for the main reactor for the laser so it kinda makes sense that it would have its own dedicated line of exhaust passage, rather than integrating with another system. Only with the plans in R2 could they identify which of the many exhaust ports would do the most damage. I also imagine that none of the other exhaust ports had anything more than ray shielding because the Empire "didn't deem small one-man snubfighters a threat" Throw in the physics bending required by Luke (potentially) and this explanation works rather well.
The exhaust port didn't even need to be for the main reactor, the ports could've been for each of the small lasers that combine into the giant laser. Blow up one of up the small lasers, which will then set off a chain reaction into the main reactor
Luke ABSOLUTELY used the force to hit that shot, thats part of the entire point of the scene, thats why Obi-wan literally says "USE THE FORCE LUKE". There is no doubt that the ONLY person that could have hit that shot, was Luke, nobody else had a chance.
He adds something in this video, the suggestion that perhaps The Force didn't just guide Luke's trigger finger, but *guided the torpedoes* themselves, without Luke even realizing it. Which I hadn't considered, but absolutely makes sense to me now that I hear it. What does "using The Force" in this situation mean, specifically? It means Luke reaching out with his mind, picturing the port *and the trajectory the torpedoes will have to follow* in his mind. He doesn't even have to be aware that he's actually influencing the torpedoes' path when he does this, it just happens the same way it happens that he fires at just the right moment.
I always pictured it that the torpedoes were programmed to follow the path while the targeting computer was to let the pilot know exactly when to fire them so that they'll follow that path, meaning anybody can make that shot if they timed it right. Luke turned off his computer so that he could use the Force to know when to fire them.
To me, using the force as a weapon in space battles should be a "No Duh" sort of thing. That Vader didn't simply disable enemy spacecraft using the force, then blowing them out of the sky to me is a mystery.
@@twotone3471 Because force powers of that magnitude are only in expanded universe content. The force has never worked like that in any of the films. There's a reason Darth Vader needs a TIE Fighter and ship-to-ship weapons to destroy enemy fighters.
@@thomasp506 Well, yes, Vader uses a tie fighter, but the original series the force was basically line of sight, meaning one could have ESP from mind to mind outside of line of sight, but to use telekinesis one had to see what they were acting upon. Being in a tie fighter helps one see the enemy after all, and Vader's force choking of the incompetent admiral via viewscreen is another instance of seeing a target to affect it.
2:40 "Literally the best case scenario" incorrect. Y-Wing Gold Squadron was tasked with bombing the port, but was completely wiped en route. Red Squadron was to fly cover, but ended up having to attempt the bombing run themselves. Only Luke (and probably Obi-Wan's) use of the force completed the mission.
I did like that Rogue One didn't say that Galen added in a vulnerable exhaust port where there wouldn't have otherwise been one. Like the video says, it was already there, it was already as vulnerable as it would ever be. What Rogue One did tell us was that Galen sabotaged the reactor systems inside the Death Star. That way, if the Rebels did manage to fire a torpedo down the shaft, it wouldn't just take out one reactor, letting all the other ones pick up the slack. He ensured that any damage to any reactor would create the chain-reaction throughout the WHOLE reactor system that would destroy the station for sure. All the rebels had to do was get their hands on the Death Star plans, that would give them the intel to have the best chance at making the near-impossible shot down the only vulnerable exhaust port, which instigated this chain-reaction, and destroyed the station.
I assume Galen wasn't planning on the Alliance trying to thread a needle through a hole that the computer couldn't even pick up properly, his design and the message he sends to Saw and the fact he sent it to Saw of all people makes it seem like his plan was to make the Death Star vulnerable to internal sabotage. We saw that a skilled stealth agent namely Obi-Wan could navigate the Death Star relatively easily. Trained spec ops the likes Saw is and has at his disposal would have tried to infiltrate the station and set a chain reaction from inside the station. Now that's obviously a suicide mission given all the things that could go wrong if you tried a remote detonation and that makes even more sense as to why Galen entrusted it to Saw and not the Alliance. The reason why the Alliance had to go all out and risk everything on an all or nothing fluke shot was that they didn't have any other choice. The Empire knows to expect trickery and they cannot evacuate in time but they have 30 something Starfighters and a bunch of flyboys who would want to go down swinging may as well get one of the best military minds in the rebellion to have a crack at figuring out how to exploit Galen's weakness from outside the ship.
People on the Internet: Why didn't they just cover it up or something? Me, and intellectual: Yes, how bout we cover up your car's exhaust pipe and see how well it runs.
its a thermal exhaust port it lets out heat (or heated something, what we don't really know) not carbon monoxide, that is an example of false equivalence right there
@@Scortch-lo3xy The thing is, it WAS covered up, by a ray shield. Nobody would waste an incredibly valuable proton torpedo on what amounts to a window air conditioner. The ray shield would protect it from any stray lasers or turbolasers. The only way you would know to shoot it is if you had the plans.
@@Crosshair84 uh what? what does that have to do with anything? I talking about why there is a MASSIVE difference between an exhaust pipe on a car and an exhaust port on a space station, especially when there are some 18 other ports and a much larger main port. also window air conditioner? really?
@@Scortch-lo3xy I think it's safe to assume that there was more than just heat leaving the port, heat can be dispersed in a number of ways other than just a tube but gas is something that would require a structure such as what is seen in the movies
It is also an illustration of the Empire's hubris. "Evacuate? in our moment of triumph?" the Empire expected the rebels to throw everything they had at them, capital ships and such. also in the movie's dialog.
a small chance of defeat (that required the use of the force) to abandon a very expensive station. the only logical solution is to stay put and trust the only known force user (the emperor was still mostly secretly force user, and the jedi were dead) to shoot down a handful of enemies that make it down the trench.
@AKUJIRULE a) no it cannot. approaching from behind the gas giant allows for maximum surprise and gravity assist to close with the moon as fast as possible. It is not OCCLUDED but specifically stated NOT IN RANGE in the film. matching hitting range with line of sight is actually a defensive choice so they are protected from ground based weaponry (Such as a giant ion cannon for example- see hoth) for as long as possible. b) it can CARRY thousands of ties, but it cannot LAUNCH thousands of ties at a time-it does not have the hangar bay space- and they have to catch up to rebel fighters that slingshotted past a gas giant. - note standard tie fighters are slower than x-wings and y-wings when they divert power to engines- so they couldn't even keep up on the trench runs. C) the rebels have avoided ambushes thus far by using spies in the navy. The death star is under blackout. it has the best chance to wipe them out with minimal risk.
In the original edit there was no base. That was added in post to make the final battle more dramatic. Also, quite importantly: Tarkin is _not_ the empire. All the other generals and admirals are openly sceptical of his plans. And the empire also includes the opposition faction led by Senator Organa, as mentioned in the dialogue between the generals before Tarkin enters the room.
This comment will probably go unnoticed since it's so late to the party, but here goes. I was under the impression that Galen's sabotage wasn't the exhaust port, but the reactor itself. He intentionally made it unstable enough such that a good explosion would cause a chain reaction that would destroy the station. He had nothing to do with the exhaust ports being a possible entry point to the reactor.
the Empire's engineers may have knew about this weakness but chose to keep quiet as not to be punished for it . in a tyrannical system that punishes you for any little mistake , you keep your head down and keep quiet to save your own neck . its the same flaw the Soviet union had
The idea of small fighters penetrating the defenses and aiming for an exhaust port instead of, say, the main weapon dish, was unthinkable. Or a lack of imagination, to borrow the phrase from the 9-11 congressional investigation.
A massive, heat-generating metal object with no thermal exhaust is called an Oven. Everyone would have baked alive inside as heat built up within the station.
@@captainhellhound7451 I always imagined it was just fusion (or antimatter or black hole) powered. In RotJ it looks how I imagine a large black-hole power source would actually look, and the chamber it's within looks like a real fusion reactor, just absolutely enormous. The death star being able to radiate enough heat to avoid melting itself in seconds - that's the more unrealistic part compared to generating that kind of power (plus it isn't instantaneous energy - it emits a shot instantaneously but I always assumed the death star would need to charge up massive stores of energy like how real railguns and "super lasers" (think national ignition facility) use enormous banks of capacitors, and very powerful particle beams (synchrotrons like the LHC) are channeled around in rings so they can build up more and more energy over time - in fact they go through several boosting rings of increasing size leading up to the main ring. At the LHC these smaller rings are both predecessors to the current main ring, as the current main ring might likewise become a booster for an even bigger future ring. It would build up power over a long time before firing, it would have plenty of time to do so, not need to generate planet-destroying power immediately). I know Star Wars is soft sci fi or science fantasy but never thought the power sources for ships etc require hand-waving magic explanations. One of the most sci fi believable things is immensely powerful yet compact energy sources, the option of nuclear fission as an energy source was sci fi a century ago.
Except you do not vent gasses in space to cool something down, except in an emergency. If you vent coolant, you lose it, so it needs to be replenished, by tankers. The only option is radiation cooling, which takes radiators, pointed at something colder than what you need to cool. The whole premise of evaporative cooling onboard a spacecraft is bonkers.
@@Tore_Lund that would be insanely slow. Diffusing heat by radiation, for an object the size and shape of the death Star? Insanely impractical. Getting coolant shipped in would be a necessity, yes. So would food, unless they have a farm hidden there somewhere. They presumably are also getting hyperfuel shipped in.
@@cybersmith_videos They might have some way of sellectively tunneling high energy photons away as an effective form of cooling? Same with the light saber, its crystal can't be 100% efficient either, where does that heat go?
So what your saying is that once again people DIDN'T listen properly to what was said in the film and jumped to conclusions "cough" Midichlorians "cough" What a surprise
IMO the REAL oversight was not launching the untold numbers of TIEs. A ISD carries IIRC 72 TIE fighters. The Death Star should have carried over a thousand of them. The rebels attacked with 24 fighters and 1 converted freighter. Regardless how good the X-Wing is compared to the TIE it is not 100:1 better.
This right here. I always wondered how it was that the x-wings were not swarmed by literally thousands of tie fighters long before they ever got anywhere close. I always chalked it up to Hubris on the empires part.
@@DireMerc Hubris. It was suggested for Tarkin to launch fighters in the movie, but he turned it down since he didn't think snub fighters could damage it.
@AKUJIRULE They had some point defense turrets that took a few of them down, but they were inadequate once the fighters got close to the stations surface.
There are a couple of reasons- they short of did. They used their fastest craft- x wings and y wings, and slingshot around the gas giant to engage. The death star was not expecting or prepared for opposition- the rebels hadn't fought back before particularly. It also if anything was prepared for major capital ships. Also, they may store a thousand fighters but they are a battle station- not a dedicated carrier. They can only launch a limited number at a time due to hangar space and also not all of them will be flight worthy. There are other things that aren't as obvious. A big cloud of ties did in fact engage the main force of fighters- the attack runs were separate to the main engagement. tie fighters are not great in canyons- and they likely did not have the best pilots on a lumbering station. Thus, the sensible choice was not to pursue y-wings in a trench with rear firing turrets, instead using their own turrets freely. In the end only 2 x-wings (luke & wedge(damaged)) and a y-wing (iirc) survive the engagement of only a few minutes. So no, it isn't 100 times better, but they came in smaller waves, from distant hangars, so the longer the battle went on the more outnumbered they were. They only had standard tie fighters so they were actually slower than x-wings & y wings that pulled power from weapons- so they couldn't even catch the ones doing the run - except vader & wingmen.
@@carbon1255 You've seen the battle of Scarif, right? The swarm of Ties leaving the downright miniscule (compared to the DS) shield station? In seconds? Even if the hangars on the DS are positioned evenly around the equator, the thing has a diameter of (depending on source) 120-200km. That are a couple seconds for the Ties to reach. Also you can't tell me that the DS was not battle ready. Sure, they did not expect massive resistance but seriously, if they had no Ties ready for action at any moment when they left hyper they were more idiotic than I ever thought. So to recapitulate, they had to see the rebel fighters coming for a minute or two. They had to be ready to launch at least some Ties at a moments notice. They had to have thousands of Ties on board. The deployment system the empire developed for the Ties works pretty rapid. So WHERE were the swarms of Ties that should have defended the Death Star?
THANK YOU! This was by far one of the most idiotic things for people to latch on to. People who need to be "smart" and to find plot holes to show how "smart" they are is one of the most obnoxious things about fandom. Especially when it comes to the Star Wars Universe.
See this part I don't think EC is right about. I bet that all the smaller thermal exhaust ports around the top would have worked all 18 but there's no sense in splitting up only 30 fighters to try and do runs on all of them, that would leave them too vulnerable to fighter intercept. Or maybe they did split the attack up and that's why out of ~30 fighters we only see 3 Y wings make one run, maybe the other Y wings are attacking the other ports?
Man! I love your reasoning. Meaning, even the language you use is specific. You make every effort to quantify probability and possibility. Much appreciated.
I think Gailin Urso intentionally including this weakness is important, because it told the Rebels WHERE to shoot. As you said, without knowing which port to hit and what to hit it with, the odds of randomly choosing it are pretty slim.
Except he didn't, that is why the plans where important. Gailin Urso made a bomb but had to trust the rebels to figure out a way to set it off. AKA with his sabotage the DS would have only been disabled not destroyed .
Ray shields: protect against energy based weaponry, which would imply it also works as a radiation shield. Since proton torpedoes are a physical projectile they can pass through and hit the target. Also I think the Galen explanation works in the sense it would lead to fatal damage to the station, not severe damage. What i mean by this it's that Galen put a self destruct button on something that should probably not lead to that much damage to the station in the grand scope of things. He him self says it "a match stick" or "time bomb" can't remember exactly.
@@forrestpenrod2294 Indeed I remembered that scene. But "Ray shields" has also been used to refer to the shields that are used in hangars to stop air from leaking out. This would suggest that either: a) writers either don't know or don't like to use the "particle shield"definition so they generalise for any type of shielding; b) There are different types of ray shields that can become physical barriers or hurt on contact that are used like they were for Anakin and Obi-wan. I think we know which one it is.
@@forrestpenrod2294 That's because ray shields also repel organics by being hot, so whilst they could have walked through them they'd have burnt to death trying.
@@Gibbons3457 in canon, ray shields impart an electric shock on objects that pass through it. it does not affect star wars tech (like ships and missiles) but does affect organics
The only thing missing is something that strengthens your argument. The proton torpedo doesn't reach the main reactor itself, but causes a series of cascading failures that eventually reach the main reactor. After all the effort to hit the port with the right weapon, you're actually just hitting the first domino in a long series that will, in theory, eventually reach the main reactor. The rebels were counting on a chain reaction, but any interruption in the chain would prevent complete destruction. Depending on where the interruption was, the Death Star could have been severely crippled or only minimally damaged. Only if the entire chain reaction completed would the shot work, and once the first chain started, there was no way to start a second chain if the first failed.
In rogue one, the weakness which galyn urso created was a vulnerability and weakening of the main reactor that would cause it to explode with tremendous force and it turn destroy the Death Star. The exhaust ports were only a way to exploite the weakness, which the rebels found out by understanding the plans
You have a 120km diameter battle station, you can't expect every piece to be fool proof, every blueprint to be mistake free. The Death Star's defences weren't right enough to repel snub fighters because they didn't believe they were much of a threat. Just ask Dave Johnson in stormtrooper engineering.
Dave Johnson? Hold on one sec... So I just spoke to Dave Johnson and he absolutely thinks snub fighters are a threat. Maybe you're thinking of something Darth Vader said yesterday?
yeah, 120km diameter battle station, which means that these two tiny torpedoes designed to hit starfighters at short ranges would have to go this distance all while being pushed away be exhaust gases
olodemolo MCAroon That’s assuming that the exhaust gasses were exhausting at the time. Its quite possible that the exhaust port, or that one specifically, only exhaust excess heat and gasses after the superlaser fires.
I think the deliberate act of sabotage was important for an easily-missed fact about the whole plan. If you had the complete technical readouts of that battle stations, how in the hell is a small group of rebels going to manage to find an exploitable weakness within hours when an entire design team couldn't manage to find that weakness within years of development? That's the most unbelievable part of the whole thing. You can argue about the weakness being an oversight versus being sabotage, but either way it doesn't make sense that someone is going to find that weakness so fast unless they were deliberately told about it by someone on the design crew that knew about it.
Which is why I think that Galen Erso hid the sabotage as an actual upside. That way, he could simply frame the supposed weakness as a strength, and if anything ever went wrong, he could blame it on an oversight.
@@kennyholmes5196 "It'll be fine! The odds of it getting hit are millions to one, and the cost savings compared to a more distributed and hardened design are enormous!"
@@Neuttah Nah, it's more along the lines of "The energy output of the core, and therefore the savings on fuel relative to a more stable design, are worth it. After all, it's not like there's really any chance that they could use snub fighters to exploit it; you've already covered that scenario with the surface-level turrets, so we don't need to worry about the chain reaction possibility; it's stable enough to not do that if properly managed."
@@Neuttah There's a difference between sentiment and content. Yours is targeted at the exhaust port count and number, while mine is targeted at the core. Remember, Galen specified that he put the flaw in the core, not the exhaust port.
Great analysis! This doesn’t change the way I look at Rogue One, since I find the sabotage subplot still really interesting and feasible, but like you said, it was never really a plot hole. Love your videos!
@ECHenry , I definitely agree. People forget the exhaust ports are to discharge the MASSIVE amount of radiation and heat caused by the reactor and the main weapon system when it fires. Which is similar in design to both other weapon systems throughout Star Wars, and in our real world. However, I like the addition of the Rogue One tie in of the flaw in the reactor itself (not the fact of the exhaust ports). The reactor on most space stations or starships is extremely well protected, but throughout the novels/comics/video games if you cripple the reactor of a capital ship, it explodes like a nuclear warhead and obliterates the vessel with ease. I like that Galen hid an instability in the reactor that any minor explosion would cripple it and set of a chain reaction throughout the station. But since he contacted Saw Gerrera to find the schematic layout, I think Galen assumed Saw would attempt to take a commando strike team into the station while it was still under construction/testing, and literally set "internal" charges with a hope of successful sabotage. However, since they were too late and the Death Star was underway to assault the Alliance at Yavin IV, it was up to General Dodonna to find an "external" way to assault the station while exploiting this weakness. In short, I don't think Galen ever thought to suicide attack the battle station with snub fighters....... This nicely weaves the canon stories into one (which I think the films explain very well and in great length), in which Dodonna reveals that a direct torpedo hit to the main reactor will set off a massive chain reaction to destroy the battle station, and points out the only exhaust port that even gives the Alliance a chance at exploiting the weakness, due to the station's construction design. And, as you pointed out it was still a longshot with all this information and it is ONLY through Luke using the Force to accurately fire his torpedoes (in lieu of the computer-guided system) that the attack works. Moral of the story, always bring a Force User into a battle........
I totally agree! I’ve always explained it to myself as they deliberately showed Red Leader miss his shot to show that it’s impossible, and that Luke needed to use the Force to focus enough to make it.
You said they needed to target a single exhaust port; that is not stated in the movie. They say they will target THAT one, but the weakness could have been common to all exhaust ports and obfuscated away from empire enginers by a force-user-requirement to exploit it.
The fact the other exhaust ports couldn't be exploited and only this one leads credence to it being a dilibrate move especially since it destroys the entire MOON SIZED death star and not just causing some damage to the structure. The entire station with two tiny torpedos.
@@arcticdino1650 The exhaust port doesn't lead to the reactor, but to something much closer to the surface that can explode, setting off a chain reaction.
In a movie about a tiny band of heroes against seemingly insurmountable odds, the whole set-up was that exploiting the one weakness of the Death Star was almost incalculably unlikely. The Empire did not screw up.
Not to mention the Death Star is literally the size of a small moon. You can imagine how much energy it takes up and how much exhaust and refuse it produces. The fact that they managed to funnel all the exhaust from that huge thing into a few small exhaust ports is an engineering marvel (and shows what a genius Galen Urso was)
EC Henry, I am completely with you on this one. The original film had this covered. I do love Rogue One, but they never really needed to explain why it is is a weakness. Also, an exhaust port that blocked physical objects wouldn't be an exhaust port, would it? Ray shields were the best they could do.
I mean it would seem silly that one single port is slightly bigger than the others to the point that it's a weakness. Even more so since its on the plans for it even.
You missed 2 major things: 1: The exhaust port wasnt the weakness talked about in R1, the weakness was in the reactor, apparently if Galen hadnt messed with it hitting it with a high explosive WOULDNT blow up the whole station? 2: The Empire knew for a fact that ray shields dont protect against proton torpedos, they should have planned accordingly and added additional protection. Nothing has ever covered that plot hole.
They could have installed the Death Star version of those animal-proof caps you can put on a house's chimney that let the chimney function but keep out animals and rain.
From what I can tell a proton torpedo usually doesn't curve and then go in a straight line, avoiding the very close walls perfectly. Proton torpedoes ordinarily wouldn't be a threat because that shot is nearly impossible. It's like trying to thread a needle with a bullet.
But the thing to consider is that Galen's sabotage wasn't the exhaust port. Galen worked in the power system for the station and the superweapon. He explicitly said that he’d built a weakness INTO THE REACTOR: “Saw, the reactor module, that's the key. That's the place I've laid my trap. It's well hidden and unstable, one blast to any part of it will destroy the entire station. You'll need the plans, the structural plans for the Death Star to find the reactor.” Galen didn’t include the exhaust port in the design, otherwise he would’ve mentioned it by name. He explicitly directs them to look for a way to hit the reactor module. Because he didn’t worked on the rest of the station he probably doesn’t know of any way to reach the reactor module from outside. This implies that even a direct hit like the one Luke pulled off shouldn’t have blown up the station. This is reinforced by the fact that the officer’s suggestion to Tarkin when they figure out what the Rebels are doing is to recommend preparing the shuttle. They appear to be operating under the impression that even a worst-case scenario with the reactor will leave them time to evacuate the station. A sudden and complete destruction of the entire station doesn’t appear to cross their minds.
on the point of why Urso doesn’t mention an exhaust port, it may have been a cover in case the message was intercepted. If he spelled it out they could have know about the weakness and covered it up. keep it vague about the reactor and they still have a guessing game
There's also the fact that at the time, the Super Laser was powering up, and ready to shoot, that's a lot of power that was channeled into a very small space... like when you fill a balloon with air.... it only needed a pin-prick. Which means, if the Rebels caught the station either after the Super Laser had fired, or in an area where it wouldn't use the Super Laser anyway, the reactor going up would've still destroyed the station, but much more slowly (like Star Killer Base in EpVII or even the DSII in RoTJ)
Henry, you're not only correct - it was in the originally filmed version of the Battle of Yavin. Originally, Luke made two (2) runs on the trench. One using the targeting computer that bounced off like Red Leader's. And the one we see in the film where he uses the Force. The Force was ultimately able to allow the rebels to win, because Not!Wedge was right: the computers couldn't make that shot. But the Force allowed the impossible shot. And for anyone wondering why the release version only had one trench one - it was cut down in editing by Marcia Lucas who pointed out that the battle was already running long and having both trench runs would add another 5 minutes to the battle that as Henry points out, was already covered in Red Leader's trench run and the exposition. The thermal exhaust port might be a fatal weakness, but the odds of anyone doing it are impossible. Even Tarkin dismisses it when he was approached by an underling. Its such an insignificant flaw. Only luck or the use of the Force (or both) would allow an enemy to exploit it.
It is shielded with ray shields, which means energy weapons would be stopped dead. A reason I dug up somewhere for the trench approach was that it also had particle shields (eg. physical shields what would stop a ship or torpedo) but those only formed a flat "umbrella" over the top that did not cover the sides because they don't interact well if they touch surfaces. Planetary shields (same thing but bigger) have the same issue, which is why you can fly ships in under the edges to land troops if it's not a planet-wide shield network. All things considered the port _was_ invulnerable to any practical assault, and I like to think the non-valid ports simply had a kink or a turn a warhead would have to make that would screw even all the above: the exploitable exhaust pipe was the only straight one, probably for structural reasons (or sabotage disguised as structural reasons). A proton torpedo was needed because it was a physical projectile (bypassing the ray shield) and was a guided munition that could turn sharply (allowing it to be fired under the particle shield and then dive into the port). Like you said, this is an incredibly precise set of conditions that must be met. I don't think it required a space wizard, but absolutely _nobody_ was going to pull that off without the stolen plans, space magic or no.
Also remember, it's an exhaust port, as in outward resistance air pressure, making it that much more difficult to get a projectile of any type down the entire radius of the huge sphere. The absolute only way to exploit the port is by using the Force. So if Luke hadn't been on the team, the mission would only fail.
@@matthiuskoenig3378 It's not that massive. Air pressure at the bottom of the troposphere is only 1 bar. The real question is with what force the exhaust gas was pushed out. But that doesn't matter. It's a torpedo, which means it is self-propelled and self-guided. It only needs to find its target before its energy supply runs out. And its target is not the core of the Death Star, its something that will set off a chain reaction that will eventually reach the core.
Out of the 12 trenches leading out from the north, is the one with the exploitable weakness the one that is closest to the superlaser? This might also explain 1) why it was the specific one that was exploitable, and 2) why it happens to blow up right as they were about to fire. Yes, I know, they did that in order to build up tension, but there are always "explanations" for such things as well. The precise hit would have destroyed the Death Star anyway, but the way I see it, them charging it up and preparing to fire is what made it explode so suddenly and violently. We would probably have seen a more gradual death like Death Star II otherwise. But that's my theory.
I also subscribe to something along those lines. The specific line by Jan Dodonna was 'A precise hit will destroy the station." But that word, destroy, is rather vague if you consider it. If you look a destroyed ship, they're more husks, wrecks, and dead hulks, not completely annihilated like the Death Star was when it blew up. So my belief was that if the Death Star hadn't been preparing to fire at full power, Luke's torpedo would've rendered the station inoperable, but not completely obliterated it.
I love how people rip into the Last Jedi over the use of “bombers” and “gravity” when this is exactly what they did in a New Hope. This is.. of course, because the Battle of Yavin was basically WWII... IN.... SPAAAACE!!! The Dambusters and 633 Squadron. In both you had bombers running a gauntlet of enemy anti aircraft fire.. with a Norwegian fjord being used instead of a trench in 633 Squadron... using a sighting system with two vertical lines in Dambusters.. to precisely bomb a major target (to breach the Möhne Dam.. or to cause a rock slide on a fictional V2 rocket factory). Proton torpedoes. Whether it’s proton torpedoes, photon torpedoes, Mk 46 torpedoes, the Sperry Aerial torpedo, spar torpedoes attached to a ship, or those “torpedoes” Katherine Hepburn invented in the African Queen... they are all a form of guided munition. Whether it’s infrared, radar, computer, gyro, or human guidance. So.. given that the effects of gravity are minimal in space (the Death Star is in orbit or otherwise effectively in free fall relative to Yavin... and the proton torpedoes and X-wings likely easily exceed escape velocity from any Death Star gravity) the idea of a level trench run combined with a precise release to follow a ballistic path is kind of ridiculous. How much better it would be to park your X-Wings 100 miles above the surface of the port, fire a massive volley of proton torpedoes, and wait for one or most of them to destroy the Death Star. But of course, that makes for poor drama. Space is incredibly boring. A real space battle would be opposing forces trying to adjust their orbital altitudes and inclinations over hours to try and destroy each other or escape while conserving fuel. This is where TLJ actually gets space battles right... more like naval battles than what Star Wars usually depicts. Most battles seem to be atmospheric, now (Roque One, TFA, TLJ) because the high relative motion makes for more excitement. The Tie Fighter attack on the Millennium Falcon required repeated panning to be exciting. But yeah... no explanation needed. The rebels found a flaw and exploited it.
Indeed, those bombers were literally analogues to lancasters or b-24s. Hell they were even named after such. And of course the trench run is just a scifi version of the dambusters. It's entirely silly compared to real physics, but it's never meant to be realistic.
The proton torpedoes are minor in comparison to the bombers. There is always a bit of a stretch with physics in movies, but it can't be immersion breaking. Torpedoes and atmospheric flight work, but the bombers draw too much attention to themselves.
@@crazyjoeshorts5256 As opposed to the space wizards with telekinetic powers. Those are totally realistic... cause... they're realistic in the Star Wars universe! Wait, doesn't that mean we can just throw realism out the window, since it explicitly is about hewing to our own reality above all else? You wanna see radar blips hundreds of kilometers away calculate firing trajectories and orbital mechanics, then wait five seconds for anything to happen? All in dead silence?
Huh????? They fly down the trench so they barely have any turrets shooting at them. And they DON'T follow a ballistic path, they are programmed to 90 degree into the exhaust. I think you are putting too much stock in a graphic.
You're right. There was enough exposition in the movie not to warrant the need for a prequel to explain it. Furthermore, the emphasis that there may have been 19 other ports answers the question about why the Empire would design a space station with that kind of flaw.
Just like simpletons asking about how luke is such a good pilot The awnser is simple, he had a ship back on desert planet that couldn't go out of orbit but could fly and shoot Therefore he practiced
there was only one exhaust port leading Directly to the main reactor which was also only Ray shielded (allowing Proton torpedoes through) . such a huge structure this weakness was overlooked
Was it Robot Chicken that did a sketch with the Death Star engineer reaming out someone critical of the exhaust port? Something like "This thing releases enough energy to destroy a planet! It's a friggin' miracle there's just the one exhaust port!" etc
My headcanon is that he sold the instability as a necessity to the sheer amount of power it needed to destroy a planet, a not-insignificant feat. "Why is the main reactor so unstable, Erso?" "Because it was a design necessity. If I didn't pump so much fuel into it, it wouldn't be able to generate enough power to destroy a planet in a single shot. Would you like to explain to the Emperor that his grand weapon is not capable of fulfilling its design specifications?" "Point taken. Carry on." I like to think that since Erso was the chief engineer, his patents and designs were carried over to the second Death Star because they were literally the only ones available. If you need to design a car, you always design it around the engine because that's where you get your power. If you need to design a Death Star, you need to reach for the top shelf and find the most insanely powerful reactor you can, and Erso's design was that reactor. There simply wasn't any other reactor design remotely powerful enough to do what his could do, and so they reused it for the second Death Star. They were still aware of the problem, but their solution to get around it was to use thermal exhaust ports that were too small to sink a torpedo into. This likely factored into the reason they had to build the second one bigger than the first; smaller vents means more surface area needed to disperse heat, so they had to make the weapon bigger as a result of making it sabotage-proof. The fact that the service corridors were still open during construction was likewise not a design flaw since they were likely going to be closed up after construction was complete and were necessary for transferring material into the battle station's superstructure. So yeah, I don't really think of the reactor's design flaw as a design flaw, more like something that Erso engineered into it so that it wasn't totally impregnable and something that could be exploited in a one-in-a-million shot that, if the pilot wasn't Force-sensitive in a big way, likely was impossible, even for a computer.
I also think the core being exposed to space let the big laser fire more often. Taking almost no time to cool down rather than minutes. A really good feature for an ambush.
In the novelization of Rogue One, the way Erso gets the modifications introduced is quite sneaky and is itself basically using an exploit in the design approval process. This backstory is spelled out over the course of several snippets from internal project correspondence, used as chapter headers. It's clever and satisfying. Rogue One might not've been a necessary film, but it's a good story and true to the Star Wars universe, unlike the new trilogy.
Thank you for pointing this out. Yes, it's all right there in the film. It's a small, tertiary exhaust port only identified as significant because the Rebels had access to the plans. The port is ray shielded and defended not only by turbolasers on the station itself but also presumably by the station's support craft (cruisers and fighters). Dodonna comments that the "target area is only 2 meters wide", to which the general reaction, summed up nicely by Wedge, is "That's impossible, even for a computer". They weren't even confident that their own targeting computers were capable of meeting the challenge. In fact, as we see with Red Leader's attempt, it didn't. All he was able to do was impact the surface near the port. Yeah, it took a Force-sensitive Luke, encouraged by Obi-Wan, to put down his targeting computer and call on all his instincts to make a million-to-one shot. Hardly a "glaring design flaw" worthy of as much grief as it's given.
When he says “a exhaust port” means it’s like any other on any vehicle, or weapon, it’s kinda like saying we are destroying the engine of this car or something like that. That’s what I got from it. Not theirs multiple.
but the model clearly has multiple, and most vehicles have multiple exause ports (especially larger ones), tanks will have 2 to as many as 6. ships will also have multiple exaust ports. its only logical that something that big will have multiple exaust ports
I love that you can prove such things by just looking at the movie and listening to what they actually say, that's something many fans, almost all forget to do. if I ever start my own channel, this would be one of the things I want to do, because there's so much misunderstanding that could so easily be explained if you just looked carefully enough
Possible, although the way Galen Erso said seem to implies that his sabotage was about making the reactor much more unstable than it should be, rather than deliberately place an exhaust port just for that. (more like "I make sure a single proton warhead explosion at the reactor will cause a total destruction. As to how to get a warhead down there, that's your problem." than "I place an exhaust port right here just for you, my daughter"). This would be support by the fact DS1 destruction is way faster than DS2. From what I count, in Episode 4, the time between Luke's torpedoes enter the exhaust port and the destruction of DS1 is around 12 seconds, while in Episode 6, the time between Londo shooting directly at the reactor and the station's total destruction take about 40 seconds. Keep in mind, when I measure the time, the total time in Episode 4 include the torpedo moving down the exhaust port, hit whatever is down there, and trigger the detonation of the main reactor. The total time in Episode 6 start when the reactor was already starting to explode. Also, the way both Death Star explode are different as well. In Episode 6, we see the inside of shuttle bay falling apart as Luke tried to escape, and that is around 30 seconds before station's complete destruction. In Episode 4, everything just went on as normal. We see everything inside is still very calm, and the firing procedure is still going on as usual. Then the whole station just explode. This might simply be due to dramatic reasons, but these different might indicate possible sabotage at the reactor.
If you pay very close attention to Galen Erso's explanation in Rogue One, he states that he's made the core, the power generator, of the Death Star very unstable, and that any pressurized explosion to that area will set of a chain reaction that will destroy the entire station. I'm literally quoting Galen at this point. Even if the shot were easy, this video still goes a long way to explaining why this is significant. With a multitude of exhaust ports, the Empire would think about what would happen if one just so happened to lead straight to a potentially unstable part of the core, or, as the idea occurs to me, the kyber crystals that power the Death Star, which would certainly destroy the entire station.
General Dodonna also say's it's not a just a big empty tube going straight to the reactor: "A precise hit will start a CHAIN REACTION which should destroy the station." There might have been many barriers and machines in the way but the power of a proton torpedo exploding will cause a cascading chain reaction effect that will eventually cause the destruction. There may not even be a tube all the way, maybe the exhaust port leads to machinery that will explode and cause an overload that affects the reactor. "Chain Reaction" is a big all encompassing term that may be anything from a mostly empty tube to a complex Rube Goldberg machine of failures.
Multiple exhaust ports, and in Rogue One we hear dialogue during the test firing on Jeddah that implies that the Death Star has multiple reactors. "Single reactor ignition".
I love to see the exaust port from so many ancles :D thanks EC Henry, as always good job. You see me on my knees hoping one day you'll be responcible for the SW look
General Jimmies but while it’s going through that miles long tube that wouldn’t be a vacuum and the heat could set off the torpedoes though I’m not an expert so I won’t comment
@@brendanmccabe8373 that depends what kind of a vent it is. If it vents radioactive particles then there might not be much, if it only vents when the gun fires, there won't be any. The other issue is that gas in the tube would actually make the torpedo more stable in the tube as gas pressure would potentially keep it centred.
Good luck with that- it certainly can't be realistic, cause entropy devours all in time. "Waah, it violates entropy!1! You can't have a giant battle robot that doesn't need maintenance!"/s
Have you watched the movie? I have. Galen Erso sabotaged the Death Star by rigging the reactor, to the point where just a tiny instability causes massive systems failure. This leads to the kaboom. Without Galen's sabotage, Luke's proton torpedoes might've done diddly squat. At best, the reactor infrastructure is disabled until repairs can be made. They definitely wouldn't have caused the entire battle-station to explode. Jeez, does anyone even pay attention these days?
Barry Bend very practical since it was the only city remaining after the zentradi destroyed the earth. And not very since the sdf-1 was a bit slow to act during the assault on earth.
@@russellharrell2747 ok about the slow bit: one the SDF-1 was at lunar orbit, two the Bodol fleet defolded at low orbit with weapons hot. Actually Australia and Asia had their incomplete grand canons used as shelters which saved a few thousand people.
About the Galen Erso thing: In the Audio Book for Rogue One, it was said Galen Erso kinda tricked the Empire into putting it there. He explained the issue and gave three solutions. His favored solution was not the exhaust port, but another one (I didn't quite understand it, something like a large funnel, but long story short it made sure to mention that his preferred method was quite expensive and the exhaust port was the cheapest. He especially made it clear taht though the exhaust port wouldn't protect the standard crew quarters from radiation, it would protect the Officer Quarters, and seeing as he was presenting this to an Officer (some lieutenant, I believe), that would be fine with the Empire). Though it made it sound like there was one thermal port, it didn't technically say that, and I think it still fits well with your explanation (which I like). He made sure that one was flawed, but the others were not flawed.
Rogue One (movie, I've heard the book messes it up) doesn't say the exhaust port was Galen Erso's idea, in the message to Jyn he reveals he built a flaw into the reactor itself (any pressurised explosion will set off a chain reaction and so on), he doesn't suggest a delivery method, and instead of just telling her about the port or including the relevant part of the plans, he instructs her to steal the entire goddamn technical documentation of the monstrously huge battlestation from a top secret facility. This suggests Galen counted on the Rebel Alliance to find a way to deliver explosives to the reactor, and that's why they needed plans of the whole thing. As an example Rebel spies could infiltrate the Death Star and drop a thermal detonator, but obviously this would require a lot of time which the rebels didn't have at Yavin so they went with the extremely risky fighter assault.
That is wonderful, it strengthens the movie for me as I once thought about the movie. Ive let myself be influenced by all the jokes and critique over the years about this weakness in the deathstar. Thanks!
Yeah, but Gaelen put the one exhaust port, with a map to it, named with his daughter's nickname, where it leads to the oscillator with only ray shields, not the shields the others were protected with. Yeah, maybe 5 of those 19 other ports were a possibility, but they had those options which were basically the same thing. They wouldn't have known without the plans Jyn sent out. I don't know. It's all speculative and stuff, but I think it gave them a better chance - otherwise, failure would have been eminent.
Nope, he didn't put in that exhaust port. He designed a weakness in the system. "I've placed a weakness deep within the system a flaw some small and powerful they will never find it...................Saw, the reactor module, that's the key. That's the place I've laid my trap. It's well hidden and unstable. One blast to any of part of it will destroy the entire station. You'll need the plans, the structural plans for the Death Star, to find the reactor......Any pressurized explosion to the reactor module will set off a chain reaction that will destroy the entire station."
@@lukerope1906- right? So maybe all 18 other trenches had the same ports and the same chance of getting a proton torpedo in the hole causes a pressurized explosion. The instability itself was there, but how to exploit it was what the *StarDust* plan was needed for. Gaelen also wrote those plans, or found them and renamed them for her to find. I'm just saying the story has a valid point is all. What would've made more sense is; they send ships down each trench, but then there'd be a chance for more than one hero. Damn the plot!!!
As many in the comments are saying, I feel your explanation actually further strengthens the Galen Erso Sabotage explanation, explaining how easy it would be for others working on the Death Star to miss/overlook the intentional weakness beyond just "it's a very complex system".
I think all 18 smaller exhaust ports were probably weaknesses. You might think it doesn't sound that way from the briefing, but you have to look at it from the rebels perspective; They only know the deathstar exists and its very rough look from the encounter at scariff. Otherwise they have no idea about anything, except maybe that the large disk thing shoot a big bad laser. So once they got the plans they probably determined the smaller exhaust ports were the weakness, not one small exhaust port in particular.
"I've placed a weakness deep within the system a flaw some small and powerful they will never find it...................Saw, the reactor module, that's the key. That's the place I've laid my trap. It's well hidden and unstable. One blast to any of part of it will destroy the entire station. You'll need the plans, the structural plans for the Death Star, to find the reactor......Any pressurized explosion to the reactor module will set off a chain reaction that will destroy the entire station."
THANK YOU!!! I’ve always believed exactly as you say, that there’s nothing strange or “plot hole” like in the idea that the Death Star would have such a small, difficult-to-exploit weakness. The only aspect of the A New Hope story that is hard to swallow is that their analysis would uncover the flaw so quickly; to be more believable, it should have required days or weeks of analysis to find it, even with automated, computerized analysis. In fact, the explanation in Rogue One is even more puzzling. If someone were going to intentionally create a weakness, wouldn’t it need to be something that wouldn’t require a “one in a million” shot to exploit? What would be the point of introducing a flaw if it was such a long shot for anyone to take advantage of it?
Small nitpick: Galen Erso didn’t make the exhaust port a weak point. He sabotaged the reactor so that a sizable explosion near it would set off a chain reaction that would destroy the entire station. He left it to the rebels to determine how to deliver a payload to the reactor. They deemed the exhaust port would be the best target. Otherwise excellent video as always! You have one of the most unique viewpoints on sci-fi and I cannot appreciate it enough!
Great video! You may have missed one small point from the rebel briefing. I haven't read through the comments to see if someone mentioned it, but it's stated in the brief, itself, that the empire didn't consider a small, one-man fighter to be a threat and that it's defenses were aimed at a direct, large-scale assault, otherwise their defense would be tighter. Even though the DS's construction would have, presumably, withstood a direct attach by such fighters, they still had a huge compliment of tie fighters on board and did try to destroy the rebels, ship to ship, coming very close to repelling the assault. Even without a super-tight static defense the DS still had the capability to stop the rebels. To refer to Luke Skywalker as a "Magical Space Wizard", who used the force to make his "impossible" shot, leaves out the fact that Darth Vader was also a "Magical Space Wizard" and he failed to stop Luke. It also leaves out the pang conscience that motivated Han Solo to change his mind and save Luke from Vader and two other tie fighters. The DS technicians analyzed the rebel attack and saw a danger and tried to fight back, even warning Grand Moff Tarkin in the process. His arrogance, alone, is what may have cost the empire the death star. It doesn't come across well in the movie, but in the book Tarkin is almost insane, over-confidently believing that the rebels have no chance, basically saying, "... So what?" To the new information. None of the nay-sayers even account for how much information was brought to the rebels and how much time they took to go over the technical readouts, just to find that one and only bit. Whether it was sabotage or not doesn't mean much because the shot was impossible for anyone who wasn't a magical space wizard; wasn't it Gold Leader who made the the only other shot and he missed. I get this feeling that some people think that Luke using the Force to make his shot was unfair, or some such nonsense like that. The Force was the only chance he had and he was the only one strong enough to use it. Besides, the Force is a hugely major underpinning of the whole damn story; without the Force none of it would've happened: there would've been no Sith, no Jedi, no clones, no emperor, no empire. To shit on Luke because he used his one special ability to do the impossible is ridiculous. The idea that the empire should've built the perfect weapons station is also ridiculous. Basic military theory dictates that if you make it impossible for the enemy to get in you make it impossible for you to get out and no weapon system is entirely Grunt Proof. I'm a Grunt; I know from personal experience. I may have gone off-topic, sorry. To pick this one idea to dump on, when you compare it to the dozens of other irregularities and inconsistencies in the story is stupid. After all this guff I've typed out, I think you're right; they did a great job of covering all the bases in planning the attack and the empire did a good job of covering the defense. Nothing in the building of the DS could've accounted for Tarkin's idiocy and Luke's Jedi ability and the attempt to plug a non-existent plot hole is a waste of time. I think most people are still pissed it was Luke and not Han who destroyed the death star. I really enjoyed the video and I hope you have a nice day. Sorry for being windy.
It's a tiny hole, covers by shields, surrounded by guns. Out of the entire squadron, only two people got close enough to take the shot, one missed entirely, and the other used magical powers. Not to mention, luke would have also died if han hadn't suddenly come out of nowhere to save him.
This argument always iritated me. It's the science fiction cousin of the argument that knights were stupid for wearing armor because it had weak points.
Honestly it's one of the things I hate in Sci fi, the ship that has zero flaws. Look at any real world ship from any navy at any point in history, you will find flaws and some of those are only obvious when that flaw led to the ship being lost or very badly damaged. Personally a ship being shown to have flaws is something I love in Sci fi as it lends a bit of realism to the world
@@themadhammer3305 The only truly flawless ship in sci fi is the Firefly class Serenity.
@@GrimgoreIronhide even Serenity had realistic faults throughout the show and the film though. The episode where she's adrift after the fire springs to mind
@@themadhammer3305 That wasn't Serenity's fault! That's just because Kaylee wasn't listening to the engine T_T
@@GrimgoreIronhide true, however it is still a realistic fault that happens to ships in the real world.
"Great shot kid, that was one in a millon."
Han Solo wasn't exaggerating when he said this. Without Luke and his guidance from the force, the rebels had a million to one chance of exploiting the Death Star's "weakness".
Yeah, that zoom out from the plans, with the little torpedos really shows it. Luke didn't just need to get the torpedos into the port, he needed a magic shot that got the torpedos all the way down kilometers of narrow heat duct. Even firing straight down into the port would be a pretty low chance, but since the defenses forced the fighters to do the trench run they were coming in perpendicular to the shaft anyway. Short of a force curve setting the torpedos on the perfect course after they're already in the hole it wasn't gonna happen.
change the angle of attack. they aren't in an atmosphere they can literally fly straight down at the exhaust port and fire with a straight line of sight not million to one at all.
@@Weeping_Willoe Torpedos tend to have steering, though. Think about it... there were two that had to converge on their way from the ship to fit into the duct, they could steer a pre-programmed path down into the port, and then continue to navigate the duct.
I guess I just find this more plausible. As you said, considering the distance they would travel to the core of the Death Star, Luke would have had to magick them (very) perfectly, because even a half a degree of variation in the approach angle (on all axes) would have them hitting the walls of the duct before they hit the target.
@@sixwingproductions did you not pay attention dolt! The trench on the space station colloquially known as the death star was out of the range of turret fire if the rebel ships called the y wing and x wing flew straight down the pilots would have been shredded by turbolaser fire
@@technounionrepresentative4274 except that the fighters were to small for the turbo lasers on the death star to be effective and there were turbo lasers in the trench. not to mention the fire they had to dodge to get into the trench in the first place. so what your saying is they could only dodge the turbo laser fire to get into the trench but not to go into a steep dive and fire. also that would imply that once they leave the trench they should get shot down immediately which is not what happened.
TBH, no one would really have planned for a Jedi attacking the death star...
Think about it, a guild of space wizard that was wiped out several decades ago, with powers unknown to the public
Dorkly reference?
Yeah, basically without Luke, this Death Star operation wouldn't be even successful even with full force attack from the Rebels. Which will be worse since sending fleets to Death Star will just make Tarkin at least send more Star Destroyers docked inside the Death Star.
Luke literally made a miracle in this operation, which something Tarkin or any Imperial commander cannot prepare for. Darth Vader I think at least felt this and recognized the possible threat since he is a powerful Force user. Alas, they only sent small squadron of TIEs.
"Several decades"?
Less than two decades based on Luke's age.
the death star started construction when the Jedi order was still around, but ok
Except the two guys in charge of the bad guys that know how this crap works.
"A precise hit will start a chain reaction which should destroy the station... *only* a precise hit will set up a chain reaction."
This line here is the one that always settled it for me. It takes the weak point from being a scenario of "line up your shot right here and you can shoot directly into the reactor" to "shooting this spot sets off a domino effect that causes a series of explosions to blast into the core."
Considering real world design flaws like Tacoma Narrows, The Titanic & The Hindenburg. Cascade failures caused by small variables the engineers weren't thinking about exists well within the realm of possibility.
Late response, but it reminds me of how one of the Japanese carriers in the Battle of Midway went down. An American dive bomber landed a non lethal hit on its deck that penetrated down to its storage, there was a bunch of poorly stored munitions, fuel, and airplanes there, a chain explosion happened, and the carrier went down.
@@404found00 Not helped by the incompetent attempts at damage control.
I’ve come to believe that the plan was to use the torpedoes to ignite the hot gasses coming out of the port. Luke using the force to create wire-guided torpedoes made this plan moot.
@@hanzzel6086 Typical Imperial Japanese Navy damage control includes such masterful plans as turning your own ship into a fuel-air bomb while trying to repair it.
Perhaps the death star exhaust port system was designed so that only that single exhaust port could cause the correct reaction while the others wouldnt.
They could've tested the other ports for some chain reaction and said "see? Nothing happened"
More specifically: *The exhaust port is not just a hole that goes right into the main reactor!!* It's not like a chimney over a fireplace. They mention in both Rogue One AND in A New Hope, that the precise hit on the exhaust port would trigger a chain reaction that would eventually lead to the main reactor. That means that it goes in and hits a thing, that thing explodes, that explosion destroys another thing, on and on and on until the reactor goes.
Yes, the schematics seen in the movie show a line all the way to the reactor. They also show the superlaser dish on the equator, so excuse me if I don't put a lot of faith in that.
Superlaser dish placement: That's only because that scene was filmed and then the superlaser placement was moved afterward. They would've had to reshoot large portions of the end battle planning scene in order to move the superlaser placement that we see there. They didn't have the time or the money to do that.
@@specialagent4575 I figured it would be that they didn't have the budget to redo the special effects, and that's understandable. But like, on the other hand, of all the things that they *could* have fixed in the 1997 Special Edition...! You'd think the one glaring error would be higher on the list than Stormtroopers riding on Dewbacks...
Also, the pilots didn't need to know the exact technical details of the flaw. All they needed was a simplified version.
The dish location is not a mistake, the picture we're shown is a presentation meant to explain to the pilots the battle plan, they weren't the actual blueprints
@@GiubileiFernando As a corollary to that idea, maybe _all_ the small ports shared that weakness, but concentrating forces on just the one would maximise their chances.
Might be the given one also happened to have the poorest defence coverage, for one reason or another.
+ covering completely a thermal exhaust, with a wall or something… isn't it kind of Dangerous ?
Well covering this one and making a new one somewhere else would've made some difference.
i would argue putting in bends or something to make it impossible for torpedos to have a straight shot. a sensor array near the entrance that triggers a blast door to closer further inside. but then maybe Gallens sabotage was that these measures werent put in on this specific port
Covering an exhaust port completely is asking for trouble but an armored structure could have easily been built over it that still allowed excess thermal energy and exhaust to be vented. This is just one of those points everyone has an opinion over and will eagerly argue on.
@@nathanharrison2 You miss the point. it is NOT the Proton Torpedo that does the damage. It's using the explosion from the Proton torpedo that set off a chain reaction from the high concentration of high energy gasses being dissipated by the thermal exhaust ports. Only a direct hit, one that exploded with the volatile mix at a high enough energy state and at a high enough concentration would be able to set off such a reaction.
The whole point of a thermal exhaust port is that you are trying to evacuate the high energy emissions far away from the primary exhaust, lowering the chance of catastrophic failure of the complete exhaust system under normal expected operating conditions. The only way to know any of this was to have enough technical knowledge of the Death Star itself in order to identify such a vulnerability.
Lastly, as for the torpedoes themselves. It's also NOT Luke using force powers making them turn down like that. It was made pretty darn clear during the presentation that the torpedoes were programed in such a way to make that turn and hit the target. The key here is that the torpedo being programmed to make that dive at a specific coordinated point. Relying on the targeting computer, you are liable to miss that exact moment of release (especially given the surface velocity of the X-wings in the trench) and the nature of human reactions to prompts like the fire command. Red Leader made the run, got to the release point, and probably reacted either just quicker or slower than the window of opportunity the pilots had. Hence the torpedoes "Just impacted on the surface." Luke using the Force just meant he released the torpedoes at the actual exact moment because he knew the timing was correct, thanks to his force-enhanced instincts.
@@Skyfighter64 im not missing the point. Im arguing that there may have been structural placements in the other ports that didnt allow an explosion close enough to anything to allow for the chain, such as the bends or blast door sensors, which was due to gallens sabotage, or each port was of equal oppurtunity and they just chose the weaker defences. At no point did i mention targeting ability or the force coercing the shot
I, personally, never had an issue with the exhaust port idea. I always took for granted that the exhaust poet was tiny and thus it would be overlooked or easily missed. It also contextualized Rogue One's story into Gaelan sneaking a small detail past the Empire.
which shows just how well protected the damn thing is! it not considered a weakness for a REALLY good reason. after all, you have to dodge thousands of Turblasers, hundreds of Tie Fighters, then manoeuvre down a VERY confined trench loaded to the gunwales with more guns and fighters on your ass. its a total suicide mission. and that is assuming you don;t have an actual defence fleet on top of all that.
If I remember right, Rogue One never calls out the exhaust port itself either. Galen stated his design was so a small explosion near the reactor would trigger a station collapse, Galen never states "pick this exhaust port to hit my weakness." For all we knew, Galen assumed the reactor would be sabotaged by a crack commando team and the thought of trying to fly a torpedo through a narrow port to the reactor would have sounded crazy to him. Its likely that Rebel High Command knowing were Galen's weakness was and pressed for time due to the approaching battle station just chose the exhaust port as a Hail Mary type of plan, it was the fastest way to get an explosion in range to trigger the reactor failure Galen designed. It explains why in a lot of the expanded stories coming out now that the Rebels already had evacuated Mon Mothma and other key leaders from Yavin, with really only Leia, Dodana and two starfighter squadrons staying behind to lead the attack on the Death Star... it was a crazy plan they had no way of guaranteeing it would work.
@Lassi Kinnunen The bothan spies line is for the second death star in Return of the Jedi. Unless I am remembering wrongly the only thing really known about the data in A New Hope is that Leia has it and Vader was chasing her down because of it.
@Lassi Kinnunen Bothat spies stole data for the SECOND Death star.
Jacob Lyman if you read the Rogue one Novelizasion it goes into more detail about the sabotage and it was fully intended to be a torpedo shot. Krenik even realizes this in his last moments as the Death Star charges up
Over skarrif
Another, related, point is the Imperials suspected something was wrong. An officer told Tarkin they had analyzed the rebel attack and found a small change they could destroy the station.
I wondered about this myself. It introduces a small weakness in the Rogue One storyline, or it suggests that they looked at the consequences of a proton torpedo hitting the reactor housing, discovered the weakness, and reported it in terms of threat. Actually, given the battle situation, this was quite realistic; root cause analysis is not suitable when the enemy is already on approach.
It also suggests that the Imperials were not complete dunderheads, and Erso not infallible. Stories are so much better when one side isn’t omniscient and the other side totally incompetent.
@@andyl8055 You could do a LOT of drill down on the military of the Galactic Empire. How they recruit. How they train and promote leaders. The status of Stormtroopers and how they relate to the rest of the military.
Is that Florian geyer in your profile pic?
Indeed..... and that comment would seem to imply that there is a plausible reason why the port is not guarded against torpedoes beyond simple arrogance. It was a known risk, but one deemed necessary and manageable.
@@travissmith2848 Tarkin even said it. "You overestimate their chances" and think of it. If Han hadn't intervened Luke would have died. If Luke hadn't used the Force he would have missed.
IIRC Gailin Urso's Specific act of sabotage was to design the main reactor in a way that made it vulnerable to instability. Instead of being explosion resistant, a small explosion would trigger a catastrophic chain reaction.
I have a feeling Gailin Urso was thinking someone might smuggle explosives and sabotage it that way. The 'shoot torpedoes down an exhaust port' thing was the rebellion trying to come up with a desperate last minute plan to get an explosive to the reactor.
Well keep in mind that the Death Star used kyber crystals. Those things become incredibly unstable if they have too much energy applied to them. The larger ones specifically will detonate and we've seen this happen three times: twice in Rebels and once in an unused Clone Wars arc on Utapau.
@@SoranoGuardias Now imagine how easy it would be for a genius architectural prodigy to design a reactor system that runs on these ridiculously dangerous exploding crystals that LOOKS good and safe to everyone else but is in fact a carefully constructed house of cards that'll implode upon itself and vaporize the entire station if you smack it with a shockwave.
@@shingshongshamalama That only happens when you invert the power supply. XD
Yeah, this has been my opinion since that scene where it was revealed he set up the flaw. The flaw was in the reactor, that it'd explode if poked wrong. He didn't _know_ how it might be best exploited, that's why they still needed the plans, instead of putting 'target the secondary port at Bearing 120' or whatever in the same message he mentioned he'd done it.
Which makes more sense tactically a small team especially one willing to die is more the rebels way. Space battles are always going to favor the Empire the Rebels need to hit and run.
You missed the line "The Empire doesn't consider a small, one-man fighter to be any threat, or they'd have a tighter defense."
Only a fighter could have even gotten close enough to make the shot.
The novelization of RotJ states the second Death Star’s design eliminates the 2 meter exhaust ports and instead used thousands or even millions of tiny exhaust vents too small for any munitions to find and damage. Unfortunately the battle station was not completed and the rebel ships could fly directly to the reactor. Oops.
Russell Harrell You could blame the Emperor for that. He was way too overconfident.
Peter Krochmalni classic villain hubris, only to be overshadowed by classic hero hubris like in TESB. And TLJ, if that counts
The entire point of the Emperors plans was that it was supposed to look unfinished and vulnerable, and that he was there to make the target even more tempting for the rebels. Had it been entirely unable to be attacked, then the rebels would just have gone to ground.
DE J but the Death Star was still unfinished, despite the main weapon being online. The rebels succeeded in breaching the shield and flying into the main reactor. The emperor should have at least had a separate shield generator on board to protect the reactor or a physical shield that sealed the core once the Endor shield failed. His best troops on the moon couldn’t handle the locals plus a small rebel commando unit, and his plan totally relied on them holding the bunker long enough for the imperial fleet to mop up the rebel fleet. And his best troops did not do their job. There should have been a million troops or more on the ground, he had at least that many personnel on the death star and on the fleet ships. That bunker could have been miles of tunnels with multiple ‘back doors’ in ensure a Truly overwhelming response to any incursion. A half dozen At-st walkers and less than a hundred stormies don’t cut it. Also immediate execution of captured rebels should been the order of the day.
Well if it was completed, then all you would need is an under cover operation to smuggle in an explosive and move it close to the explodey part of the reactor.
The fact that people complain yet doesnt realize if it has a giant laser it will need to release that heat after the shot and a single exhaust port wont do
DJ Panda Gaming yeah, but what if your exhaust ports have zig-zagging paths to the reactor, or are smaller than proton torpedoes? Easy fix.
@@Klipik12 first of all the emense heat that the death star gives off after full shot then it needs to be exited immediatly to avoid damage and prolonging it with zig zag pipes could destroy the pipes also the exhaust ports would have to big enough to avoid adding to many or too few
@@redmafiapanda this. this comment right here. too few people really understand just how important that port's design was. it HAD to be made the way it was, or it wouldn't have done it's job properly.
@@natesmodelsdoodles5403 no it would but it would just be destroyed after one shot because that heat needs to be let out
@@redmafiapanda exactly. if the heat's not getting out, then the thermal exhaust port isn't doing it's job properly.
I think this actually has significant credibility. The Death Star has tons of systems and subsystems which probably needed various power generation and heat/chem/fume/spacemagic exhausts of their own. If this port was just for the main reactor for the laser so it kinda makes sense that it would have its own dedicated line of exhaust passage, rather than integrating with another system. Only with the plans in R2 could they identify which of the many exhaust ports would do the most damage. I also imagine that none of the other exhaust ports had anything more than ray shielding because the Empire "didn't deem small one-man snubfighters a threat" Throw in the physics bending required by Luke (potentially) and this explanation works rather well.
future9er24
Fantastic point.
The exhaust port didn't even need to be for the main reactor, the ports could've been for each of the small lasers that combine into the giant laser. Blow up one of up the small lasers, which will then set off a chain reaction into the main reactor
Luke ABSOLUTELY used the force to hit that shot, thats part of the entire point of the scene, thats why Obi-wan literally says "USE THE FORCE LUKE". There is no doubt that the ONLY person that could have hit that shot, was Luke, nobody else had a chance.
He adds something in this video, the suggestion that perhaps The Force didn't just guide Luke's trigger finger, but *guided the torpedoes* themselves, without Luke even realizing it. Which I hadn't considered, but absolutely makes sense to me now that I hear it. What does "using The Force" in this situation mean, specifically? It means Luke reaching out with his mind, picturing the port *and the trajectory the torpedoes will have to follow* in his mind. He doesn't even have to be aware that he's actually influencing the torpedoes' path when he does this, it just happens the same way it happens that he fires at just the right moment.
I always pictured it that the torpedoes were programmed to follow the path while the targeting computer was to let the pilot know exactly when to fire them so that they'll follow that path, meaning anybody can make that shot if they timed it right.
Luke turned off his computer so that he could use the Force to know when to fire them.
To me, using the force as a weapon in space battles should be a "No Duh" sort of thing. That Vader didn't simply disable enemy spacecraft using the force, then blowing them out of the sky to me is a mystery.
@@twotone3471 Because force powers of that magnitude are only in expanded universe content. The force has never worked like that in any of the films. There's a reason Darth Vader needs a TIE Fighter and ship-to-ship weapons to destroy enemy fighters.
@@thomasp506 Well, yes, Vader uses a tie fighter, but the original series the force was basically line of sight, meaning one could have ESP from mind to mind outside of line of sight, but to use telekinesis one had to see what they were acting upon. Being in a tie fighter helps one see the enemy after all, and Vader's force choking of the incompetent admiral via viewscreen is another instance of seeing a target to affect it.
2:40 "Literally the best case scenario" incorrect. Y-Wing Gold Squadron was tasked with bombing the port, but was completely wiped en route. Red Squadron was to fly cover, but ended up having to attempt the bombing run themselves. Only Luke (and probably Obi-Wan's) use of the force completed the mission.
Just Luke. Kenobi basically said in _TESB_ that he couldn’t do anything.
I did like that Rogue One didn't say that Galen added in a vulnerable exhaust port where there wouldn't have otherwise been one. Like the video says, it was already there, it was already as vulnerable as it would ever be.
What Rogue One did tell us was that Galen sabotaged the reactor systems inside the Death Star. That way, if the Rebels did manage to fire a torpedo down the shaft, it wouldn't just take out one reactor, letting all the other ones pick up the slack. He ensured that any damage to any reactor would create the chain-reaction throughout the WHOLE reactor system that would destroy the station for sure.
All the rebels had to do was get their hands on the Death Star plans, that would give them the intel to have the best chance at making the near-impossible shot down the only vulnerable exhaust port, which instigated this chain-reaction, and destroyed the station.
I assume Galen wasn't planning on the Alliance trying to thread a needle through a hole that the computer couldn't even pick up properly, his design and the message he sends to Saw and the fact he sent it to Saw of all people makes it seem like his plan was to make the Death Star vulnerable to internal sabotage. We saw that a skilled stealth agent namely Obi-Wan could navigate the Death Star relatively easily. Trained spec ops the likes Saw is and has at his disposal would have tried to infiltrate the station and set a chain reaction from inside the station. Now that's obviously a suicide mission given all the things that could go wrong if you tried a remote detonation and that makes even more sense as to why Galen entrusted it to Saw and not the Alliance. The reason why the Alliance had to go all out and risk everything on an all or nothing fluke shot was that they didn't have any other choice. The Empire knows to expect trickery and they cannot evacuate in time but they have 30 something Starfighters and a bunch of flyboys who would want to go down swinging may as well get one of the best military minds in the rebellion to have a crack at figuring out how to exploit Galen's weakness from outside the ship.
Gibbons3457 Oooh, that’s a good point, I’d never thought of that before, that’s very likely!
People on the Internet:
Why didn't they just cover it up or something?
Me, and intellectual:
Yes, how bout we cover up your car's exhaust pipe and see how well it runs.
its a thermal exhaust port it lets out heat (or heated something, what we don't really know) not carbon monoxide, that is an example of false equivalence right there
@@Scortch-lo3xy The thing is, it WAS covered up, by a ray shield.
Nobody would waste an incredibly valuable proton torpedo on what amounts to a window air conditioner. The ray shield would protect it from any stray lasers or turbolasers. The only way you would know to shoot it is if you had the plans.
@@Crosshair84 uh what?
what does that have to do with anything? I talking about why there is a MASSIVE difference between an exhaust pipe on a car and an exhaust port on a space station, especially when there are some 18 other ports and a much larger main port.
also window air conditioner? really?
@@Scortch-lo3xy yes, thernal exhaust, that ac gotta get cool.
@@Scortch-lo3xy I think it's safe to assume that there was more than just heat leaving the port, heat can be dispersed in a number of ways other than just a tube but gas is something that would require a structure such as what is seen in the movies
It is also an illustration of the Empire's hubris. "Evacuate? in our moment of triumph?" the Empire expected the rebels to throw everything they had at them, capital ships and such. also in the movie's dialog.
a small chance of defeat (that required the use of the force) to abandon a very expensive station. the only logical solution is to stay put and trust the only known force user (the emperor was still mostly secretly force user, and the jedi were dead) to shoot down a handful of enemies that make it down the trench.
The Rebels had already thrown the bulk of their fleet at the Empire over Scariff. Remeber the end of Rogue One dovetails right into A New Hope.
@AKUJIRULE a) no it cannot. approaching from behind the gas giant allows for maximum surprise and gravity assist to close with the moon as fast as possible. It is not OCCLUDED but specifically stated NOT IN RANGE in the film. matching hitting range with line of sight is actually a defensive choice so they are protected from ground based weaponry (Such as a giant ion cannon for example- see hoth) for as long as possible.
b) it can CARRY thousands of ties, but it cannot LAUNCH thousands of ties at a time-it does not have the hangar bay space- and they have to catch up to rebel fighters that slingshotted past a gas giant. - note standard tie fighters are slower than x-wings and y-wings when they divert power to engines- so they couldn't even keep up on the trench runs.
C) the rebels have avoided ambushes thus far by using spies in the navy. The death star is under blackout. it has the best chance to wipe them out with minimal risk.
In the original edit there was no base. That was added in post to make the final battle more dramatic.
Also, quite importantly: Tarkin is _not_ the empire. All the other generals and admirals are openly sceptical of his plans.
And the empire also includes the opposition faction led by Senator Organa, as mentioned in the dialogue between the generals before Tarkin enters the room.
This comment will probably go unnoticed since it's so late to the party, but here goes.
I was under the impression that Galen's sabotage wasn't the exhaust port, but the reactor itself. He intentionally made it unstable enough such that a good explosion would cause a chain reaction that would destroy the station. He had nothing to do with the exhaust ports being a possible entry point to the reactor.
Interesting
He was probably hoping someone would put a bomb near it.
the Empire's engineers may have knew about this weakness but chose to keep quiet as not to be punished for it .
in a tyrannical system that punishes you for any little mistake , you keep your head down and keep quiet to save your own neck .
its the same flaw the Soviet union had
Sounds like Chernobyl... I have to watch that show.
@@WesMordine yep. I just made a review of it so it was fresh in my mind. Check it out
He's in shock, take him to the infirmery!
I thought all engineers were executed on that mountain planet in Rogue One, why would they choose to keep quiet if they knew the consequences ?
The idea of small fighters penetrating the defenses and aiming for an exhaust port instead of, say, the main weapon dish, was unthinkable. Or a lack of imagination, to borrow the phrase from the 9-11 congressional investigation.
A massive, heat-generating metal object with no thermal exhaust is called an Oven.
Everyone would have baked alive inside as heat built up within the station.
Cybersmith_Videos well this one is magic powered.
@@captainhellhound7451 I always imagined it was just fusion (or antimatter or black hole) powered. In RotJ it looks how I imagine a large black-hole power source would actually look, and the chamber it's within looks like a real fusion reactor, just absolutely enormous. The death star being able to radiate enough heat to avoid melting itself in seconds - that's the more unrealistic part compared to generating that kind of power (plus it isn't instantaneous energy - it emits a shot instantaneously but I always assumed the death star would need to charge up massive stores of energy like how real railguns and "super lasers" (think national ignition facility) use enormous banks of capacitors, and very powerful particle beams (synchrotrons like the LHC) are channeled around in rings so they can build up more and more energy over time - in fact they go through several boosting rings of increasing size leading up to the main ring. At the LHC these smaller rings are both predecessors to the current main ring, as the current main ring might likewise become a booster for an even bigger future ring.
It would build up power over a long time before firing, it would have plenty of time to do so, not need to generate planet-destroying power immediately).
I know Star Wars is soft sci fi or science fantasy but never thought the power sources for ships etc require hand-waving magic explanations. One of the most sci fi believable things is immensely powerful yet compact energy sources, the option of nuclear fission as an energy source was sci fi a century ago.
Except you do not vent gasses in space to cool something down, except in an emergency. If you vent coolant, you lose it, so it needs to be replenished, by tankers. The only option is radiation cooling, which takes radiators, pointed at something colder than what you need to cool. The whole premise of evaporative cooling onboard a spacecraft is bonkers.
@@Tore_Lund that would be insanely slow. Diffusing heat by radiation, for an object the size and shape of the death Star? Insanely impractical. Getting coolant shipped in would be a necessity, yes. So would food, unless they have a farm hidden there somewhere. They presumably are also getting hyperfuel shipped in.
@@cybersmith_videos They might have some way of sellectively tunneling high energy photons away as an effective form of cooling? Same with the light saber, its crystal can't be 100% efficient either, where does that heat go?
So what your saying is that once again people DIDN'T listen properly to what was said in the film and jumped to conclusions "cough" Midichlorians "cough"
What a surprise
Ikr
I, also, have to keep the chlorine levels in my pool in the mid-range in order to jump like a Jedi.
Also stormtroopers "missing".
Or the dumb "use the eagles" argument in LotR
IMO the REAL oversight was not launching the untold numbers of TIEs. A ISD carries IIRC 72 TIE fighters. The Death Star should have carried over a thousand of them. The rebels attacked with 24 fighters and 1 converted freighter.
Regardless how good the X-Wing is compared to the TIE it is not 100:1 better.
This right here. I always wondered how it was that the x-wings were not swarmed by literally thousands of tie fighters long before they ever got anywhere close. I always chalked it up to Hubris on the empires part.
@@DireMerc Hubris. It was suggested for Tarkin to launch fighters in the movie, but he turned it down since he didn't think snub fighters could damage it.
@AKUJIRULE They had some point defense turrets that took a few of them down, but they were inadequate once the fighters got close to the stations surface.
There are a couple of reasons- they short of did. They used their fastest craft- x wings and y wings, and slingshot around the gas giant to engage. The death star was not expecting or prepared for opposition- the rebels hadn't fought back before particularly. It also if anything was prepared for major capital ships. Also, they may store a thousand fighters but they are a battle station- not a dedicated carrier. They can only launch a limited number at a time due to hangar space and also not all of them will be flight worthy.
There are other things that aren't as obvious. A big cloud of ties did in fact engage the main force of fighters- the attack runs were separate to the main engagement. tie fighters are not great in canyons- and they likely did not have the best pilots on a lumbering station. Thus, the sensible choice was not to pursue y-wings in a trench with rear firing turrets, instead using their own turrets freely.
In the end only 2 x-wings (luke & wedge(damaged)) and a y-wing (iirc) survive the engagement of only a few minutes.
So no, it isn't 100 times better, but they came in smaller waves, from distant hangars, so the longer the battle went on the more outnumbered they were.
They only had standard tie fighters so they were actually slower than x-wings & y wings that pulled power from weapons- so they couldn't even catch the ones doing the run - except vader & wingmen.
@@carbon1255 You've seen the battle of Scarif, right? The swarm of Ties leaving the downright miniscule (compared to the DS) shield station? In seconds? Even if the hangars on the DS are positioned evenly around the equator, the thing has a diameter of (depending on source) 120-200km. That are a couple seconds for the Ties to reach. Also you can't tell me that the DS was not battle ready. Sure, they did not expect massive resistance but seriously, if they had no Ties ready for action at any moment when they left hyper they were more idiotic than I ever thought.
So to recapitulate, they had to see the rebel fighters coming for a minute or two. They had to be ready to launch at least some Ties at a moments notice. They had to have thousands of Ties on board. The deployment system the empire developed for the Ties works pretty rapid. So WHERE were the swarms of Ties that should have defended the Death Star?
THANK YOU!
This was by far one of the most idiotic things for people to latch on to. People who need to be "smart" and to find plot holes to show how "smart" they are is one of the most obnoxious things about fandom. Especially when it comes to the Star Wars Universe.
Imagine the rebel attacked the wrong exhaust port
"Boy, wipe the space egg off my face."
"Sir, we've analysed their attack pattern and there's no danger. Shall I have your champagne ready?"
"You may toast when ready"
I think comics there Luke missed exist
See this part I don't think EC is right about. I bet that all the smaller thermal exhaust ports around the top would have worked all 18 but there's no sense in splitting up only 30 fighters to try and do runs on all of them, that would leave them too vulnerable to fighter intercept.
Or maybe they did split the attack up and that's why out of ~30 fighters we only see 3 Y wings make one run, maybe the other Y wings are attacking the other ports?
Man! I love your reasoning. Meaning, even the language you use is specific. You make every effort to quantify probability and possibility. Much appreciated.
I think Gailin Urso intentionally including this weakness is important, because it told the Rebels WHERE to shoot. As you said, without knowing which port to hit and what to hit it with, the odds of randomly choosing it are pretty slim.
Except he didn't, that is why the plans where important. Gailin Urso made a bomb but had to trust the rebels to figure out a way to set it off. AKA with his sabotage the DS would have only been disabled not destroyed .
Ray shields: protect against energy based weaponry, which would imply it also works as a radiation shield. Since proton torpedoes are a physical projectile they can pass through and hit the target.
Also I think the Galen explanation works in the sense it would lead to fatal damage to the station, not severe damage. What i mean by this it's that Galen put a self destruct button on something that should probably not lead to that much damage to the station in the grand scope of things. He him self says it "a match stick" or "time bomb" can't remember exactly.
Except they screw the concept up slightly because Anakin and Obi Wan get trapped in Ray Shielding on General Greivous’s ship in ROTS.
@@forrestpenrod2294 Indeed I remembered that scene. But "Ray shields" has also been used to refer to the shields that are used in hangars to stop air from leaking out. This would suggest that either:
a) writers either don't know or don't like to use the "particle shield"definition so they generalise for any type of shielding;
b) There are different types of ray shields that can become physical barriers or hurt on contact that are used like they were for Anakin and Obi-wan.
I think we know which one it is.
@@forrestpenrod2294 That's because ray shields also repel organics by being hot, so whilst they could have walked through them they'd have burnt to death trying.
@@Gibbons3457 in canon, ray shields impart an electric shock on objects that pass through it. it does not affect star wars tech (like ships and missiles) but does affect organics
So, Galen turned the Death Star into the DeathStarinator.
The only thing missing is something that strengthens your argument. The proton torpedo doesn't reach the main reactor itself, but causes a series of cascading failures that eventually reach the main reactor. After all the effort to hit the port with the right weapon, you're actually just hitting the first domino in a long series that will, in theory, eventually reach the main reactor. The rebels were counting on a chain reaction, but any interruption in the chain would prevent complete destruction. Depending on where the interruption was, the Death Star could have been severely crippled or only minimally damaged. Only if the entire chain reaction completed would the shot work, and once the first chain started, there was no way to start a second chain if the first failed.
In rogue one, the weakness which galyn urso created was a vulnerability and weakening of the main reactor that would cause it to explode with tremendous force and it turn destroy the Death Star. The exhaust ports were only a way to exploite the weakness, which the rebels found out by understanding the plans
Disney mess is not canon. No gaylinurso
YES! THANK YOU! I still have to convince some friends that the Trench Run wasn't on the equator of the Death Star.
The equator is huge and has all the hangars on it xD
You have a 120km diameter battle station, you can't expect every piece to be fool proof, every blueprint to be mistake free.
The Death Star's defences weren't right enough to repel snub fighters because they didn't believe they were much of a threat.
Just ask Dave Johnson in stormtrooper engineering.
Dave Johnson?
Hold on one sec...
So I just spoke to Dave Johnson and he absolutely thinks snub fighters are a threat. Maybe you're thinking of something Darth Vader said yesterday?
Can we punch gareth “they all got to die, right” edwards in the face now?
yeah, 120km diameter battle station, which means that these two tiny torpedoes designed to hit starfighters at short ranges would have to go this distance all while being pushed away be exhaust gases
olodemolo MCAroon That’s assuming that the exhaust gasses were exhausting at the time. Its quite possible that the exhaust port, or that one specifically, only exhaust excess heat and gasses after the superlaser fires.
I mean, one single weakness on an otherwise perfect moon-sized station is actually really impressive.
Galen Erso's sabotage wasn't the exhaust port; it was making the reactor module(s) susceptible (in a critically destabilizing way) to damage.
I think the deliberate act of sabotage was important for an easily-missed fact about the whole plan. If you had the complete technical readouts of that battle stations, how in the hell is a small group of rebels going to manage to find an exploitable weakness within hours when an entire design team couldn't manage to find that weakness within years of development? That's the most unbelievable part of the whole thing. You can argue about the weakness being an oversight versus being sabotage, but either way it doesn't make sense that someone is going to find that weakness so fast unless they were deliberately told about it by someone on the design crew that knew about it.
Which is why I think that Galen Erso hid the sabotage as an actual upside. That way, he could simply frame the supposed weakness as a strength, and if anything ever went wrong, he could blame it on an oversight.
@@kennyholmes5196 "It'll be fine! The odds of it getting hit are millions to one, and the cost savings compared to a more distributed and hardened design are enormous!"
@@Neuttah Nah, it's more along the lines of "The energy output of the core, and therefore the savings on fuel relative to a more stable design, are worth it. After all, it's not like there's really any chance that they could use snub fighters to exploit it; you've already covered that scenario with the surface-level turrets, so we don't need to worry about the chain reaction possibility; it's stable enough to not do that if properly managed."
@@kennyholmes5196 I maintain; It's more or less the same statement, mine is just shorter. :P
@@Neuttah There's a difference between sentiment and content. Yours is targeted at the exhaust port count and number, while mine is targeted at the core. Remember, Galen specified that he put the flaw in the core, not the exhaust port.
Bind Blown! For thirty years I assumed they were travelling along the equatorial trench. I guess I had no idea where this exhaust port really was.
Have been saying this for years nice you are spreading the good news
Great analysis! This doesn’t change the way I look at Rogue One, since I find the sabotage subplot still really interesting and feasible, but like you said, it was never really a plot hole. Love your videos!
@ECHenry , I definitely agree. People forget the exhaust ports are to discharge the MASSIVE amount of radiation and heat caused by the reactor and the main weapon system when it fires. Which is similar in design to both other weapon systems throughout Star Wars, and in our real world.
However, I like the addition of the Rogue One tie in of the flaw in the reactor itself (not the fact of the exhaust ports). The reactor on most space stations or starships is extremely well protected, but throughout the novels/comics/video games if you cripple the reactor of a capital ship, it explodes like a nuclear warhead and obliterates the vessel with ease. I like that Galen hid an instability in the reactor that any minor explosion would cripple it and set of a chain reaction throughout the station. But since he contacted Saw Gerrera to find the schematic layout, I think Galen assumed Saw would attempt to take a commando strike team into the station while it was still under construction/testing, and literally set "internal" charges with a hope of successful sabotage. However, since they were too late and the Death Star was underway to assault the Alliance at Yavin IV, it was up to General Dodonna to find an "external" way to assault the station while exploiting this weakness. In short, I don't think Galen ever thought to suicide attack the battle station with snub fighters.......
This nicely weaves the canon stories into one (which I think the films explain very well and in great length), in which Dodonna reveals that a direct torpedo hit to the main reactor will set off a massive chain reaction to destroy the battle station, and points out the only exhaust port that even gives the Alliance a chance at exploiting the weakness, due to the station's construction design. And, as you pointed out it was still a longshot with all this information and it is ONLY through Luke using the Force to accurately fire his torpedoes (in lieu of the computer-guided system) that the attack works.
Moral of the story, always bring a Force User into a battle........
Moral of the story is Rouge One was a pointless garbage movie
I totally agree! I’ve always explained it to myself as they deliberately showed Red Leader miss his shot to show that it’s impossible, and that Luke needed to use the Force to focus enough to make it.
There's also the fact that the force ghost of Obi Wan instructs Luke to use the force to target the exhaust port.
You said they needed to target a single exhaust port; that is not stated in the movie. They say they will target THAT one, but the weakness could have been common to all exhaust ports and obfuscated away from empire enginers by a force-user-requirement to exploit it.
The fact the other exhaust ports couldn't be exploited and only this one leads credence to it being a dilibrate move especially since it destroys the entire MOON SIZED death star and not just causing some damage to the structure. The entire station with two tiny torpedos.
The sabotage mentioned in Rogue One is in the reactor module, not the exhaust.
@@arcticdino1650 The exhaust port doesn't lead to the reactor, but to something much closer to the surface that can explode, setting off a chain reaction.
In a movie about a tiny band of heroes against seemingly insurmountable odds, the whole set-up was that exploiting the one weakness of the Death Star was almost incalculably unlikely. The Empire did not screw up.
Not to mention the Death Star is literally the size of a small moon. You can imagine how much energy it takes up and how much exhaust and refuse it produces. The fact that they managed to funnel all the exhaust from that huge thing into a few small exhaust ports is an engineering marvel (and shows what a genius Galen Urso was)
This needed to be said to us by someone who isn't a bad comedy show. Thank you.
EC Henry, I am completely with you on this one. The original film had this covered. I do love Rogue One, but they never really needed to explain why it is is a weakness.
Also, an exhaust port that blocked physical objects wouldn't be an exhaust port, would it? Ray shields were the best they could do.
I mean it would seem silly that one single port is slightly bigger than the others to the point that it's a weakness. Even more so since its on the plans for it even.
You missed 2 major things:
1: The exhaust port wasnt the weakness talked about in R1, the weakness was in the reactor, apparently if Galen hadnt messed with it hitting it with a high explosive WOULDNT blow up the whole station?
2: The Empire knew for a fact that ray shields dont protect against proton torpedos, they should have planned accordingly and added additional protection. Nothing has ever covered that plot hole.
@@katt842 Kenobi was their only hope after all...
point 1 nullifies point 2.
They could have installed the Death Star version of those animal-proof caps you can put on a house's chimney that let the chimney function but keep out animals and rain.
"Should have added additional protection"… Like a dozen massive turbolasers all along the trench leading to the exhaust port ?
From what I can tell a proton torpedo usually doesn't curve and then go in a straight line, avoiding the very close walls perfectly. Proton torpedoes ordinarily wouldn't be a threat because that shot is nearly impossible. It's like trying to thread a needle with a bullet.
But the thing to consider is that Galen's sabotage wasn't the exhaust port.
Galen worked in the power system for the station and the superweapon. He explicitly said that he’d built a weakness INTO THE REACTOR:
“Saw, the reactor module, that's the key.
That's the place I've laid my trap.
It's well hidden and unstable, one blast to any part of it will destroy the entire station.
You'll need the plans, the structural plans for the Death Star to find the reactor.”
Galen didn’t include the exhaust port in the design, otherwise he would’ve mentioned it by name. He explicitly directs them to look for a way to hit the reactor module. Because he didn’t worked on the rest of the station he probably doesn’t know of any way to reach the reactor module from outside.
This implies that even a direct hit like the one Luke pulled off shouldn’t have blown up the station.
This is reinforced by the fact that the officer’s suggestion to Tarkin when they figure out what the Rebels are doing is to recommend preparing the shuttle. They appear to be operating under the impression that even a worst-case scenario with the reactor will leave them time to evacuate the station. A sudden and complete destruction of the entire station doesn’t appear to cross their minds.
on the point of why Urso doesn’t mention an exhaust port, it may have been a cover in case the message was intercepted. If he spelled it out they could have know about the weakness and covered it up. keep it vague about the reactor and they still have a guessing game
There's also the fact that at the time, the Super Laser was powering up, and ready to shoot, that's a lot of power that was channeled into a very small space... like when you fill a balloon with air.... it only needed a pin-prick.
Which means, if the Rebels caught the station either after the Super Laser had fired, or in an area where it wouldn't use the Super Laser anyway, the reactor going up would've still destroyed the station, but much more slowly (like Star Killer Base in EpVII or even the DSII in RoTJ)
Henry, you're not only correct - it was in the originally filmed version of the Battle of Yavin. Originally, Luke made two (2) runs on the trench. One using the targeting computer that bounced off like Red Leader's. And the one we see in the film where he uses the Force. The Force was ultimately able to allow the rebels to win, because Not!Wedge was right: the computers couldn't make that shot. But the Force allowed the impossible shot.
And for anyone wondering why the release version only had one trench one - it was cut down in editing by Marcia Lucas who pointed out that the battle was already running long and having both trench runs would add another 5 minutes to the battle that as Henry points out, was already covered in Red Leader's trench run and the exposition.
The thermal exhaust port might be a fatal weakness, but the odds of anyone doing it are impossible. Even Tarkin dismisses it when he was approached by an underling. Its such an insignificant flaw. Only luck or the use of the Force (or both) would allow an enemy to exploit it.
The port itself was never the problem. Galen routed something else near it that would cause the chain reaction.
It is shielded with ray shields, which means energy weapons would be stopped dead. A reason I dug up somewhere for the trench approach was that it also had particle shields (eg. physical shields what would stop a ship or torpedo) but those only formed a flat "umbrella" over the top that did not cover the sides because they don't interact well if they touch surfaces. Planetary shields (same thing but bigger) have the same issue, which is why you can fly ships in under the edges to land troops if it's not a planet-wide shield network. All things considered the port _was_ invulnerable to any practical assault, and I like to think the non-valid ports simply had a kink or a turn a warhead would have to make that would screw even all the above: the exploitable exhaust pipe was the only straight one, probably for structural reasons (or sabotage disguised as structural reasons).
A proton torpedo was needed because it was a physical projectile (bypassing the ray shield) and was a guided munition that could turn sharply (allowing it to be fired under the particle shield and then dive into the port). Like you said, this is an incredibly precise set of conditions that must be met. I don't think it required a space wizard, but absolutely _nobody_ was going to pull that off without the stolen plans, space magic or no.
Also remember, it's an exhaust port, as in outward resistance air pressure, making it that much more difficult to get a projectile of any type down the entire radius of the huge sphere. The absolute only way to exploit the port is by using the Force. So if Luke hadn't been on the team, the mission would only fail.
especially in space (ie a vacuum, so massive air pressure difference)
@@matthiuskoenig3378 It's not that massive. Air pressure at the bottom of the troposphere is only 1 bar. The real question is with what force the exhaust gas was pushed out.
But that doesn't matter. It's a torpedo, which means it is self-propelled and self-guided. It only needs to find its target before its energy supply runs out.
And its target is not the core of the Death Star, its something that will set off a chain reaction that will eventually reach the core.
Out of the 12 trenches leading out from the north, is the one with the exploitable weakness the one that is closest to the superlaser? This might also explain 1) why it was the specific one that was exploitable, and 2) why it happens to blow up right as they were about to fire. Yes, I know, they did that in order to build up tension, but there are always "explanations" for such things as well. The precise hit would have destroyed the Death Star anyway, but the way I see it, them charging it up and preparing to fire is what made it explode so suddenly and violently. We would probably have seen a more gradual death like Death Star II otherwise.
But that's my theory.
I also subscribe to something along those lines. The specific line by Jan Dodonna was 'A precise hit will destroy the station." But that word, destroy, is rather vague if you consider it. If you look a destroyed ship, they're more husks, wrecks, and dead hulks, not completely annihilated like the Death Star was when it blew up. So my belief was that if the Death Star hadn't been preparing to fire at full power, Luke's torpedo would've rendered the station inoperable, but not completely obliterated it.
I love how people rip into the Last Jedi over the use of “bombers” and “gravity” when this is exactly what they did in a New Hope.
This is.. of course, because the Battle of Yavin was basically WWII... IN.... SPAAAACE!!!
The Dambusters and 633 Squadron. In both you had bombers running a gauntlet of enemy anti aircraft fire.. with a Norwegian fjord being used instead of a trench in 633 Squadron... using a sighting system with two vertical lines in Dambusters.. to precisely bomb a major target (to breach the Möhne Dam.. or to cause a rock slide on a fictional V2 rocket factory).
Proton torpedoes. Whether it’s proton torpedoes, photon torpedoes, Mk 46 torpedoes, the Sperry Aerial torpedo, spar torpedoes attached to a ship, or those “torpedoes” Katherine Hepburn invented in the African Queen... they are all a form of guided munition. Whether it’s infrared, radar, computer, gyro, or human guidance.
So.. given that the effects of gravity are minimal in space (the Death Star is in orbit or otherwise effectively in free fall relative to Yavin... and the proton torpedoes and X-wings likely easily exceed escape velocity from any Death Star gravity) the idea of a level trench run combined with a precise release to follow a ballistic path is kind of ridiculous.
How much better it would be to park your X-Wings 100 miles above the surface of the port, fire a massive volley of proton torpedoes, and wait for one or most of them to destroy the Death Star.
But of course, that makes for poor drama. Space is incredibly boring. A real space battle would be opposing forces trying to adjust their orbital altitudes and inclinations over hours to try and destroy each other or escape while conserving fuel. This is where TLJ actually gets space battles right... more like naval battles than what Star Wars usually depicts. Most battles seem to be atmospheric, now (Roque One, TFA, TLJ) because the high relative motion makes for more excitement. The Tie Fighter attack on the Millennium Falcon required repeated panning to be exciting.
But yeah... no explanation needed. The rebels found a flaw and exploited it.
Indeed, those bombers were literally analogues to lancasters or b-24s. Hell they were even named after such. And of course the trench run is just a scifi version of the dambusters. It's entirely silly compared to real physics, but it's never meant to be realistic.
The proton torpedoes are minor in comparison to the bombers. There is always a bit of a stretch with physics in movies, but it can't be immersion breaking. Torpedoes and atmospheric flight work, but the bombers draw too much attention to themselves.
@@crazyjoeshorts5256 As opposed to the space wizards with telekinetic powers. Those are totally realistic... cause... they're realistic in the Star Wars universe! Wait, doesn't that mean we can just throw realism out the window, since it explicitly is about hewing to our own reality above all else?
You wanna see radar blips hundreds of kilometers away calculate firing trajectories and orbital mechanics, then wait five seconds for anything to happen? All in dead silence?
when an object is sent into space it will not change course, so there is no problem with bombers
Huh????? They fly down the trench so they barely have any turrets shooting at them. And they DON'T follow a ballistic path, they are programmed to 90 degree into the exhaust. I think you are putting too much stock in a graphic.
You're right. There was enough exposition in the movie not to warrant the need for a prequel to explain it. Furthermore, the emphasis that there may have been 19 other ports answers the question about why the Empire would design a space station with that kind of flaw.
Just like simpletons asking about how luke is such a good pilot The awnser is simple, he had a ship back on desert planet that couldn't go out of orbit but could fly and shoot
Therefore he practiced
there was only one exhaust port leading Directly to the main reactor which was also only Ray shielded (allowing Proton torpedoes through) . such a huge structure this weakness was overlooked
Man... I never thought of it this way. Makes sense, as all your videos do!
Was it Robot Chicken that did a sketch with the Death Star engineer reaming out someone critical of the exhaust port? Something like "This thing releases enough energy to destroy a planet! It's a friggin' miracle there's just the one exhaust port!" etc
@Dread StarZ awesome, thanks man!
My headcanon is that he sold the instability as a necessity to the sheer amount of power it needed to destroy a planet, a not-insignificant feat.
"Why is the main reactor so unstable, Erso?"
"Because it was a design necessity. If I didn't pump so much fuel into it, it wouldn't be able to generate enough power to destroy a planet in a single shot. Would you like to explain to the Emperor that his grand weapon is not capable of fulfilling its design specifications?"
"Point taken. Carry on."
I like to think that since Erso was the chief engineer, his patents and designs were carried over to the second Death Star because they were literally the only ones available. If you need to design a car, you always design it around the engine because that's where you get your power. If you need to design a Death Star, you need to reach for the top shelf and find the most insanely powerful reactor you can, and Erso's design was that reactor. There simply wasn't any other reactor design remotely powerful enough to do what his could do, and so they reused it for the second Death Star. They were still aware of the problem, but their solution to get around it was to use thermal exhaust ports that were too small to sink a torpedo into. This likely factored into the reason they had to build the second one bigger than the first; smaller vents means more surface area needed to disperse heat, so they had to make the weapon bigger as a result of making it sabotage-proof. The fact that the service corridors were still open during construction was likewise not a design flaw since they were likely going to be closed up after construction was complete and were necessary for transferring material into the battle station's superstructure. So yeah, I don't really think of the reactor's design flaw as a design flaw, more like something that Erso engineered into it so that it wasn't totally impregnable and something that could be exploited in a one-in-a-million shot that, if the pilot wasn't Force-sensitive in a big way, likely was impossible, even for a computer.
I also think the core being exposed to space let the big laser fire more often. Taking almost no time to cool down rather than minutes. A really good feature for an ambush.
I mean, the second death star had like, massive chunks of itself not completed, so even closing service ports probably wouldn't change much lol
In the novelization of Rogue One, the way Erso gets the modifications introduced is quite sneaky and is itself basically using an exploit in the design approval process. This backstory is spelled out over the course of several snippets from internal project correspondence, used as chapter headers. It's clever and satisfying.
Rogue One might not've been a necessary film, but it's a good story and true to the Star Wars universe, unlike the new trilogy.
Thank you for pointing this out. Yes, it's all right there in the film. It's a small, tertiary exhaust port only identified as significant because the Rebels had access to the plans. The port is ray shielded and defended not only by turbolasers on the station itself but also presumably by the station's support craft (cruisers and fighters). Dodonna comments that the "target area is only 2 meters wide", to which the general reaction, summed up nicely by Wedge, is "That's impossible, even for a computer". They weren't even confident that their own targeting computers were capable of meeting the challenge. In fact, as we see with Red Leader's attempt, it didn't. All he was able to do was impact the surface near the port. Yeah, it took a Force-sensitive Luke, encouraged by Obi-Wan, to put down his targeting computer and call on all his instincts to make a million-to-one shot. Hardly a "glaring design flaw" worthy of as much grief as it's given.
When he says “a exhaust port” means it’s like any other on any vehicle, or weapon, it’s kinda like saying we are destroying the engine of this car or something like that. That’s what I got from it. Not theirs multiple.
but the model clearly has multiple, and most vehicles have multiple exause ports (especially larger ones), tanks will have 2 to as many as 6. ships will also have multiple exaust ports. its only logical that something that big will have multiple exaust ports
I love that you can prove such things by just looking at the movie and listening to what they actually say, that's something many fans, almost all forget to do. if I ever start my own channel, this would be one of the things I want to do, because there's so much misunderstanding that could so easily be explained if you just looked carefully enough
FINALLY! I'VE BEEN SAYING *EXACTLY THIS* FOR YEARS NOW!
Possible, although the way Galen Erso said seem to implies that his sabotage was about making the reactor much more unstable than it should be, rather than deliberately place an exhaust port just for that. (more like "I make sure a single proton warhead explosion at the reactor will cause a total destruction. As to how to get a warhead down there, that's your problem." than "I place an exhaust port right here just for you, my daughter").
This would be support by the fact DS1 destruction is way faster than DS2.
From what I count, in Episode 4, the time between Luke's torpedoes enter the exhaust port and the destruction of DS1 is around 12 seconds, while in Episode 6, the time between Londo shooting directly at the reactor and the station's total destruction take about 40 seconds.
Keep in mind, when I measure the time, the total time in Episode 4 include the torpedo moving down the exhaust port, hit whatever is down there, and trigger the detonation of the main reactor. The total time in Episode 6 start when the reactor was already starting to explode.
Also, the way both Death Star explode are different as well. In Episode 6, we see the inside of shuttle bay falling apart as Luke tried to escape, and that is around 30 seconds before station's complete destruction. In Episode 4, everything just went on as normal. We see everything inside is still very calm, and the firing procedure is still going on as usual. Then the whole station just explode.
This might simply be due to dramatic reasons, but these different might indicate possible sabotage at the reactor.
If you pay very close attention to Galen Erso's explanation in Rogue One, he states that he's made the core, the power generator, of the Death Star very unstable, and that any pressurized explosion to that area will set of a chain reaction that will destroy the entire station. I'm literally quoting Galen at this point. Even if the shot were easy, this video still goes a long way to explaining why this is significant. With a multitude of exhaust ports, the Empire would think about what would happen if one just so happened to lead straight to a potentially unstable part of the core, or, as the idea occurs to me, the kyber crystals that power the Death Star, which would certainly destroy the entire station.
Emperor Plalpatine:
“Exhaust Plorts!!!” 😂
Yes! All the Yes! Been saying this for years.
Also, Erso said that he made the core unstable... I thought *that* was his sabotage.
General Dodonna also say's it's not a just a big empty tube going straight to the reactor: "A precise hit will start a CHAIN REACTION which should destroy the station."
There might have been many barriers and machines in the way but the power of a proton torpedo exploding will cause a cascading chain reaction effect that will eventually cause the destruction. There may not even be a tube all the way, maybe the exhaust port leads to machinery that will explode and cause an overload that affects the reactor. "Chain Reaction" is a big all encompassing term that may be anything from a mostly empty tube to a complex Rube Goldberg machine of failures.
I recall Pablo Hidalgo tweeting about how Galen didn’t design the Exhaust port, but an unstable reactor.
Multiple exhaust ports, and in Rogue One we hear dialogue during the test firing on Jeddah that implies that the Death Star has multiple reactors. "Single reactor ignition".
>Pablo Hidalgo
I love to see the exaust port from so many ancles :D thanks EC Henry, as always good job. You see me on my knees hoping one day you'll be responcible for the SW look
Yep, that's fairly Solid Logic.
You are totally right, i allways tought the "bad design" theory was suspicious, now i have evidence from a third party.
Also it’s an exhaust it blasts out heated air it would push on the torpedoes making the shot even harder to make
That would only be the case in atmosphere, there's no noticeable flow of air in a vacuum.
General Jimmies but while it’s going through that miles long tube that wouldn’t be a vacuum and the heat could set off the torpedoes though I’m not an expert so I won’t comment
@@brendanmccabe8373 that depends what kind of a vent it is. If it vents radioactive particles then there might not be much, if it only vents when the gun fires, there won't be any.
The other issue is that gas in the tube would actually make the torpedo more stable in the tube as gas pressure would potentially keep it centred.
If I were a superweapon designer, I would simply make my design completely invincible and have no weaknesses whatsoever
Good luck with that- it certainly can't be realistic, cause entropy devours all in time. "Waah, it violates entropy!1! You can't have a giant battle robot that doesn't need maintenance!"/s
Everything has a weakness.
Good video, and you've outlined why I think Rogue One shouldn't have emphasised the 'internal sabotage' plot.
Have you watched the movie? I have. Galen Erso sabotaged the Death Star by rigging the reactor, to the point where just a tiny instability causes massive systems failure. This leads to the kaboom. Without Galen's sabotage, Luke's proton torpedoes might've done diddly squat. At best, the reactor infrastructure is disabled until repairs can be made. They definitely wouldn't have caused the entire battle-station to explode. Jeez, does anyone even pay attention these days?
You’re absolutely right. I’ve been saying this for years-the port was never a plot hole that needed addressing. It was already explained perfectly.
How practical is the SDF-1 from SDF Macross. City included.
Barry Bend very practical since it was the only city remaining after the zentradi destroyed the earth. And not very since the sdf-1 was a bit slow to act during the assault on earth.
@@russellharrell2747 ok about the slow bit: one the SDF-1 was at lunar orbit, two the Bodol fleet defolded at low orbit with weapons hot. Actually Australia and Asia had their incomplete grand canons used as shelters which saved a few thousand people.
“The exhaust port was never a problem”
That’s what Galen Erso wanted you to think...
"Why does this have a weakness?"
EVERYTHING has a weak point if you look for it.
About the Galen Erso thing:
In the Audio Book for Rogue One, it was said Galen Erso kinda tricked the Empire into putting it there. He explained the issue and gave three solutions. His favored solution was not the exhaust port, but another one (I didn't quite understand it, something like a large funnel, but long story short it made sure to mention that his preferred method was quite expensive and the exhaust port was the cheapest. He especially made it clear taht though the exhaust port wouldn't protect the standard crew quarters from radiation, it would protect the Officer Quarters, and seeing as he was presenting this to an Officer (some lieutenant, I believe), that would be fine with the Empire).
Though it made it sound like there was one thermal port, it didn't technically say that, and I think it still fits well with your explanation (which I like). He made sure that one was flawed, but the others were not flawed.
Rogue One (movie, I've heard the book messes it up) doesn't say the exhaust port was Galen Erso's idea, in the message to Jyn he reveals he built a flaw into the reactor itself (any pressurised explosion will set off a chain reaction and so on), he doesn't suggest a delivery method, and instead of just telling her about the port or including the relevant part of the plans, he instructs her to steal the entire goddamn technical documentation of the monstrously huge battlestation from a top secret facility. This suggests Galen counted on the Rebel Alliance to find a way to deliver explosives to the reactor, and that's why they needed plans of the whole thing. As an example Rebel spies could infiltrate the Death Star and drop a thermal detonator, but obviously this would require a lot of time which the rebels didn't have at Yavin so they went with the extremely risky fighter assault.
That is wonderful, it strengthens the movie for me as I once thought about the movie. Ive let myself be influenced by all the jokes and critique over the years about this weakness in the deathstar. Thanks!
Yeah, but Gaelen put the one exhaust port, with a map to it, named with his daughter's nickname, where it leads to the oscillator with only ray shields, not the shields the others were protected with. Yeah, maybe 5 of those 19 other ports were a possibility, but they had those options which were basically the same thing. They wouldn't have known without the plans Jyn sent out.
I don't know. It's all speculative and stuff, but I think it gave them a better chance - otherwise, failure would have been eminent.
great super-tiny detail idea, makes sense!
Nope, he didn't put in that exhaust port. He designed a weakness in the system.
"I've placed a weakness deep within the system a flaw some small and powerful they will never find it...................Saw, the reactor module, that's the key. That's the place I've laid my trap. It's well hidden and unstable. One blast to any of part of it will destroy the entire station. You'll need the plans, the structural plans for the Death Star, to find the reactor......Any pressurized explosion to the reactor module will set off a chain reaction that will destroy the entire station."
@@lukerope1906- right? So maybe all 18 other trenches had the same ports and the same chance of getting a proton torpedo in the hole causes a pressurized explosion. The instability itself was there, but how to exploit it was what the *StarDust* plan was needed for. Gaelen also wrote those plans, or found them and renamed them for her to find.
I'm just saying the story has a valid point is all.
What would've made more sense is; they send ships down each trench, but then there'd be a chance for more than one hero.
Damn the plot!!!
I never thought the exhaust port was a problem to begin with either. Thanks for sharing!
As many in the comments are saying, I feel your explanation actually further strengthens the Galen Erso Sabotage explanation, explaining how easy it would be for others working on the Death Star to miss/overlook the intentional weakness beyond just "it's a very complex system".
That plot was stupid. It was a movie nobody asked for. The only good thing we got out of it was an awesome space battle.
Awesome video! People overthink this too much sometimes.
So...that whole “getting the death star plan” was actually a suicide mission without accomplishing anything
No. Galen Erso specifically says they need to steal the plans in order to find the reactor and exploit the station's weaknesses.
no, that part was actually mission critical and without it finding the right exhaust port would've been next to impossible.
I think all 18 smaller exhaust ports were probably weaknesses. You might think it doesn't sound that way from the briefing, but you have to look at it from the rebels perspective; They only know the deathstar exists and its very rough look from the encounter at scariff. Otherwise they have no idea about anything, except maybe that the large disk thing shoot a big bad laser. So once they got the plans they probably determined the smaller exhaust ports were the weakness, not one small exhaust port in particular.
"Which one?"
"Shut them _ALL_ down!"
"I've placed a weakness deep within the system a flaw some small and powerful they will never find it...................Saw, the reactor module, that's the key. That's the place I've laid my trap. It's well hidden and unstable. One blast to any of part of it will destroy the entire station. You'll need the plans, the structural plans for the Death Star, to find the reactor......Any pressurized explosion to the reactor module will set off a chain reaction that will destroy the entire station."
THIS. For some reason, people are willfully ignoring what Galen ACTUALLY did.
THANK YOU!!!
I’ve always believed exactly as you say, that there’s nothing strange or “plot hole” like in the idea that the Death Star would have such a small, difficult-to-exploit weakness. The only aspect of the A New Hope story that is hard to swallow is that their analysis would uncover the flaw so quickly; to be more believable, it should have required days or weeks of analysis to find it, even with automated, computerized analysis.
In fact, the explanation in Rogue One is even more puzzling. If someone were going to intentionally create a weakness, wouldn’t it need to be something that wouldn’t require a “one in a million” shot to exploit? What would be the point of introducing a flaw if it was such a long shot for anyone to take advantage of it?
Regardless, the torpedo hit caused a negative void coefficient and the Imperial bureaucracy tried to cover it up. ;)
Small nitpick: Galen Erso didn’t make the exhaust port a weak point. He sabotaged the reactor so that a sizable explosion near it would set off a chain reaction that would destroy the entire station.
He left it to the rebels to determine how to deliver a payload to the reactor. They deemed the exhaust port would be the best target.
Otherwise excellent video as always! You have one of the most unique viewpoints on sci-fi and I cannot appreciate it enough!
do a video on why the NX shuttlepod is the most realistic shuttle in Star Trek
I really loved the Dorkly video on this. It was hilarious and, while not as studied as your explanation, still sounds pretty valid.
That's impossible. Even for a computer...
My thoughts exactly. Although I used to bull's eye womp rats in my T-sixteen back home. They're not much bigger than two meters.
Your channel rocks! I automatically subscribed after watching one episode, which is something I rarely do for channels!
I love you. Fighting the Star Wars fandom's dumbassery since 2k16
Great video! You may have missed one small point from the rebel briefing. I haven't read through the comments to see if someone mentioned it, but it's stated in the brief, itself, that the empire didn't consider a small, one-man fighter to be a threat and that it's defenses were aimed at a direct, large-scale assault, otherwise their defense would be tighter. Even though the DS's construction would have, presumably, withstood a direct attach by such fighters, they still had a huge compliment of tie fighters on board and did try to destroy the rebels, ship to ship, coming very close to repelling the assault. Even without a super-tight static defense the DS still had the capability to stop the rebels. To refer to Luke Skywalker as a "Magical Space Wizard", who used the force to make his "impossible" shot, leaves out the fact that Darth Vader was also a "Magical Space Wizard" and he failed to stop Luke. It also leaves out the pang conscience that motivated Han Solo to change his mind and save Luke from Vader and two other tie fighters. The DS technicians analyzed the rebel attack and saw a danger and tried to fight back, even warning Grand Moff Tarkin in the process. His arrogance, alone, is what may have cost the empire the death star. It doesn't come across well in the movie, but in the book Tarkin is almost insane, over-confidently believing that the rebels have no chance, basically saying, "... So what?" To the new information. None of the nay-sayers even account for how much information was brought to the rebels and how much time they took to go over the technical readouts, just to find that one and only bit. Whether it was sabotage or not doesn't mean much because the shot was impossible for anyone who wasn't a magical space wizard; wasn't it Gold Leader who made the the only other shot and he missed. I get this feeling that some people think that Luke using the Force to make his shot was unfair, or some such nonsense like that. The Force was the only chance he had and he was the only one strong enough to use it. Besides, the Force is a hugely major underpinning of the whole damn story; without the Force none of it would've happened: there would've been no Sith, no Jedi, no clones, no emperor, no empire. To shit on Luke because he used his one special ability to do the impossible is ridiculous. The idea that the empire should've built the perfect weapons station is also ridiculous. Basic military theory dictates that if you make it impossible for the enemy to get in you make it impossible for you to get out and no weapon system is entirely Grunt Proof. I'm a Grunt; I know from personal experience. I may have gone off-topic, sorry. To pick this one idea to dump on, when you compare it to the dozens of other irregularities and inconsistencies in the story is stupid. After all this guff I've typed out, I think you're right; they did a great job of covering all the bases in planning the attack and the empire did a good job of covering the defense. Nothing in the building of the DS could've accounted for Tarkin's idiocy and Luke's Jedi ability and the attempt to plug a non-existent plot hole is a waste of time. I think most people are still pissed it was Luke and not Han who destroyed the death star. I really enjoyed the video and I hope you have a nice day. Sorry for being windy.