Death Stars are a waste of time – here's the best way to take over the galaxy

Mild spoiler alert: This article includes minor details of the plot of Star Wars: The Force Awakens The Star Wars films raise lots of pressing questions. “Why is there sound in space?” “How did George Lucas lose his way?” And, of course, “Did Han shoot first?” (that’s an easy one). There are innumerable variants on the “How …

[kmac499]

Recursive self replication..

Sounds awfully like biology to me..

But as it's making a weapon maybe it's called Terror-Forming

Coat Please

[Pascal Monett]

An interesting idea

But the genetic predisposition humanity has to get a rush over whatever is bigger than whatever else is being compared means that the most practical means is rarely considered if there is an impractical one that makes a bigger boom.

[Martin Budden]

Re: An interesting idea

If everyone else thinks that way then I'm going to win, because I'll choose the more efficient path over the more ostentatious path every time.

[Graham Marsden]

All that...

... and not a mention of Von Neumann machines or Berserkers?

[Christoph]

Re: All that...

And no mention of a Nicoll-Dyson Laser

[Captain DaFt]

Re: All that...

Or "The Brick Moon", an early Victorian "death star"?

(Really, you could fill an encyclopedia with prior references.)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: All that...

Nor the Greenflies...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: All that...

Nor the xenocidical machines from Forge of God, whatever they are (and we never see them either).

[allthecoolshortnamesweretaken]

Re: All that...

...or E.E. "Doc" Smith's Lensmen using planets to smash other planets. Or the Red Dwarf episode where Lister does that, with erasing a timeline in the process as well.

[sandman]

Ships building ships

Pretty much the way that the large Culture ships produce other ships/drones/knife missiles for all occasions. ((Ian M Banks books for those who're thinking "What the hell is he talking about). I've never understood why you would want to destroy perfectly inhabitable planets though. If I was Emperor I would want to add them to my ever-expanding domains, BWAHAHAHA!

[Dave 126]

Re: Ships building ships

And Banks alludes to what can happen if those self-repair mechanisms go wrong (like cancer) - resulting in pesky swarms of tiny machines that would if left unchecked turn all available matter into replicas of themselves. The culture assign some ships to 'pest control' duties.

As others have noted, he didn't originate the concept.

In Star Wars, people live on planets. In the Culture books, the matter of a planet would support far more life if it were re-arranged into a ring-shaped Orbital habitat.

[Peter Gathercole]

Re: Ships building ships

"ring-shaped Orbital habitat", aka a Ringworld.

Not completely sure whether Larry Niven originated it, but it was derived from the idea of a Dyson Sphere. There's a write-up of the idea in the back of the original book, and some clarifications of the maths in the later books. Read them.

Niven and Jerry Pournelle between them wrote innovative fiction about so many interesting ideas, like archologies, mono-molecular filaments, system-wide civilisations without effective intersteller travel, planetary occupation etc. I did not get the idea of integral trees, though.

Forward the Hindmost!

[frank ly]

@Peter Gathercole Re: Ships building ships - re. Ringworld

The Culture orbital habitats didn't encircle their star, as Larry Niven's Ringworld did. They were 'small' bands that orbited a star and were slightly tilted out of the plane of orbit and themselves rotated with a one 'day' period so that the part of the band nearest the star didn't shade the other side of the band, thus simulating a day/night cycle.

[Peter Gathercole]

Re: @Feank Ly. Ships building ships - re. Ringworld

Ah. Thanks.

I keep meaning to read The Culture series. Still not got round to it.

[Dave 126]

Re: Ships building ships

I've read 'em. I still choose the 'Orbital' variant of the concept because the topic was a reason to rearrange the mass of a planet.

A Ringworld is roughly described by the orbit of the Earth, and provides about 300 million times the habitable surface area.

An Orbital doesn't encircle a sun, and provides around a 100 times the habitable surface of the planet whilst using less matter.

[Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese]

Re: Dyson Sphere

Is the Dyson Sphere the really powerful, bagless vacuum of space?

[Anonymous Cow Herder]

Re: Dyson Sphere

Beat me to it, have an upvote. But I would add that the sphere makes it a lot more maneuverable.

[Dave 126]

Are we talking about...

...Self Hemogenizing Swarms, as Iain M. Banks dubbed them? He also used the word 'Smatter' (Smart Matter, IIRC). Other people have used the terms 'Grey Goo', or 'Von Neumann Machines'.

I confess, I didn't read the article - I haven't seen the Force Awakens movie yet, and was scared off by the spoiler warning.

To others who haven't seen the movie, you should avoid Wired.com, since they have spoilers in their headlines.

[Wzrd1]

Re: Are we talking about...

That was one type of swarm, intelligent, aggressive lifeforms could also be considered a self hegemonizing swarm. To mix fictions, the Daleks and Cybermen would be such swarms.

Obviously, whichever form it took, one would want to swat it ASAP.

[Tromos]

There's easier ways to destroy a planet

Populate it.

[psychonaut]

Re: There's easier ways to destroy a planet

too right - look what happened to Venus

[Wzrd1]

Re: There's easier ways to destroy a planet

Look, I've apologized for the nanotech lab accident over and over again, let off it already!

[Graham Marsden]

@Tromos - Re: There's easier ways to destroy a planet

Populating (or over-populating or even going for all-out nuclear war) won't destroy a planet. Sure, it'll majorly fuck up the ecosystem, but the big ball of rock will still be there.

[james 68]

Confused

It seems the author has confused "taking over a planet/system" with "utterly destroying a planet/system".

It's kind of difficult to take something over if there's nothing left to take over because it has all been turned into missiles, jus sayin...

[Dave 126]

Re: Confused

You then instruct the 'missiles' to arrange themselves into a habitat of the shape and location of your choosing. That is, of course, if the 'command and control' systems haven't been borked in a copying error (mutation) over thousands of generations.

[Camilla Smythe]

Obligatory XKCD

https://xkcd.com/865/

[Robert Helpmann??]

Art Imitating Parody

With all of the bits that Abrams threw in as nods to past Star Wars movies, did anyone else catch that Starkiller Base was just a bigger, better Mega Maid?

IT connection? Examples of single point of failure being a Bad Thing in Death Star and Starkiller Base. Mission critical services should have redundancy designed in.

[BenR]

Re: Art Imitating Parody

Missed that reference entirely. In what way do you mean exactly, and how more so than the original Death Star = MegaMaid reference?

[Robert Helpmann??]

Re: Art Imitating Parody

I hate to explain the joke as it typically ruins it, but in Space Balls MegaMaid used a giant vacuum cleaner to suck up all the atmosphere from Druidia which is pretty much how in SW-TFA Starkiller Base charged up from the nearest star. Pretty sly and perhaps not intentional, but I thought it was funny just the same.

[BenR]

Re: Art Imitating Parody

Ah right. I kinda get it. I suspect not intentional at all, given how tenuous it is tbh.

I love SpaceBalls (the film, the colouring book, the lunchbox, the flamethower and - my personal favourite - the doll. Isn't he adorable?) but I hadn't thought of that possible back-link in any way.

--++ SPOILERS ++--

Personally, I think that JJ was trying to avoid as much nerd-rage as possible by showing a potential power source of being able to generate the energy required to overcome the binding energy of not just 1 but 5No. Earth-a-like planets in one go. I was sat with the kind of squirming in my seat usually reserved for when i see IP addresses with values in the 7 and 8 hundred ranges when the first shots were fired, thinking "How on earth is that laser beam travelling interstellar distances to destroy planets in remote star systems? Surely the people looking at the sky would just see practically static beams?" when the explanation tipped up that The First Order had managed to construct a hyper-lightspeed weapon system. At that point, the nerd rage subsided. They haven't explained how it worked, but they'd clearly given it sufficient thought to realise the problems and handwaviumed it away.

Good enough for me, given we're talking about a universe with hyperspeed, all-powerful space wizards, laser-plasma swords, moon-sized artificial space stations and technological ability to hollow out a planet at turn it into a star-slurping supergun.

[allthecoolshortnamesweretaken]

Re: Art Imitating Parody

Upvoted for "handwaviumed". Freakin' brilliant! No egg-nog icon, hope you can make do with a pint.

Oh, and merry x-mas, everyone.

[ratfox]

According to some kind of silly Star Wars fanfiction I've seen, your auto-replicating robots are no match for an army of Gungans led by a stupid general.

[imanidiot]

Personally I subscribe to the Jar Jar is a sith lord theory: https://youtu.be/8yy3q9f84EA

[Anonymous Coward]

The best retcon in the universe!

[TimeMaster T]

Woah!!

Just watched the link.

It really does make a Hell of a lot of sense. And all the pieces fit ....

Scary. Very scary.

[Wzrd1]

"Personally I subscribe to the Jar Jar is a sith lord theory: https://youtu.be/8yy3q9f84EA"

Uh, huh. And Blackadder is actually the king.

The story style mirrors where good and evil character come from the same village, where the evil character thanks the good character for helping him acquire power.

Meanwhile, the good character was only bringing all of the bad guys who support evil character out into the open, so that all of the evil gets stamped out at once.

I'm guessing you've never studied the legends referenced in the series.

[tiggity]

Lexx

The tongue in cheek SF TV series, had a few nice illustrations of the concept

[Peter Clarke 1]

Suggested Viewing

Probably not the first version but check out the Replicators in Stargate SG1. Small building blocks that can join together to form more complex structures, stripping planets of resources as they go. Probably at their most scary as swarms of insectoids/arachnids. Thank heaven for primitive projectile waepons

[Anonymous Coward]

I never understood this crazy about breaking planet apart...

... habitable planets may be a scarce resource, better to clean it up, and then give it to your supporters, if you're the evil kind. Moreover destroying a planet may destabilze a whole planetary system - debris could heavily impact other planets (maybe some where your supporters live...), and their orbits could also be impacted, depending on the system configuration. Any moon will also go loose...

As usual, there is a lot of fiction and just a little science in Star Wars - and nobody will ever talk about small spaceships that looks to be able to have no inertia in space despite their speed, and are able to change direction suddendly, without killing their pilot or breaking apart? And if they have any system to counter those forces, why they still banks like planes when turning - who banks exactly because of those forces (but in an atmosphere)?

SW is just like King Arthur, Lancelot and Excalibur - turn off your brain and enjoy the magic - as long as the plot is decent (and the director is not Jar Jar Adams).

[Naselus]

Re: I never understood this crazy about breaking planet apart...

The more destruction the better. It's about a vulgar display of power to terrify everyone into submission. If the resource is scarce, so much the better, it shows that you don't care how valuable the target is because you're so badass you don't need it.

[BenR]

"The more destruction the better. It's about a vulgar display of power"

Agreed.

I refer you to the Sputnik program, Tsar Bomba, and other Earth-bound vulgar displays of power.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I never understood this crazy about breaking planet apart...

You need it, and that's why most badass in those movies look childish. One of the best way to acquire and ensure loyalty from supporters is to give 'em your enemies resources. Most people are moved by greed, not some sort of idealism.

Romans got better armies giving away conquered lands to their soldiers, than pouring salt over Carthage ruins.

Firing at any planet you like may also make your supporters unsure if they're next in the list for any reason, and they will end to overthrow you just in case...

[Captain DaFt]

Re: I never understood this crazy about breaking planet apart...

"The more destruction the better. It's about a vulgar display of power to terrify everyone into submission."

Have your cake and eat it too; The Genesis Bomb from Star Trek's "The Wrath Of Kahn". Obliterate an entire planet's population in seconds, leaving a lush, inhabitable world behind ready for settlers.

It had the Klingons totally freaking out at that possibility.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I never understood this crazy about breaking planet apart...

Have your cake and eat it too; The Genesis Bomb from Star Trek's "The Wrath Of Kahn". Obliterate an entire planet's population in seconds, leaving a lush, inhabitable world behind ready for settlers.

"Greenpeace through superior firepower"

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: I never understood this crazy about breaking planet apart...

"It's about a vulgar display of power to terrify everyone into submission."

Exactly. It's a willy waving exercise. Just look at every arms race in our own history.

[stucs201]

Re: I never understood this crazy about breaking planet apart...

It's all a matter of scale. On the scale of star wars blowing up a planet isn't any more a waste of resources than nuking a city is on a single planet. That's not a good thing, but it's still been done in a war situation.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I never understood this crazy about breaking planet apart...

You can rebuild a city (although radioactivity is a nuisance) - rebuilding a planet is more difficult, unless you're from Magrathea.

[Anonymous Coward]

At your next sentient AI..

.. (or overlord, take your pick), I thank you for all the lovely suggestions.

No, HE won't be back, but I will.

[Anonymous Coward]

My concern is

if you wanted to build such a massive base/ringworld etc the scale of the resources neded would require the mining, processing and refining of multiple planets/asteroid belt to achieve the necessary number of cubic kilometers of material, even if the local system was made 80% usable material and 20% waste (enough to build a new planet I would suggest)

I sould imagine the self replicating robot army would simply be mining refining and transporting never mind building the new base/habitat assuming unlimited solar/nuclear type energy availability.

This new structure would presumably also generate its own gravity and magnetic field so surely the eary/innermost section would have to be either nearly hollow or would pull in and collapse with the mass of the outer layers. A ringworld would probably swivel and sway like a suspension bridge in the wind too based on the heating/cooling of day/night and routine collision avoidance/orbital adjustment.

Nice easy questions for the enthusiastic scientists out there...!

[&rew]

Ascribing motives to people

I am wondering if perhaps we are ascribing motives to people that do not match their (still fictional) aims? What if the Sith just want to speed up the process of getting to the heat death of the Universe, in a similar way that some religious sects are eagerly awaiting the end of life on Earth?

If the End Goal is indeed to rule over everybody, perhaps the easiest way to get there is for there to be fewer bodies, too.

[Marc 25]

recursive manufacturing

Back in the day I used to play Command and Conquer Red Alert with my friends.

The quickest and easiest way to win the odd match was to not build a huge base, with walls and turrets. or to build expensive manufacturing plants to make expensive tanks.

You simply spammed the infantry button till you felt you have enough forces to completely overwhelm the enemy A sea of little men with rubbish guns in such vast numbers that they have huge strength.

It nearly worked during the Clone wars. However during the clone wars we learned that a single weakness can effectively ruin the entire strategy and the wars ends.

[Aqua Marina]

Re: recursive manufacturing

Back in the day, I used to find that the tactic to deal with an infantry rush, was to perform a tank rush. Instead of ordering the tanks to attack the infantry though, you simply told the tanks to move to the far side of the battlefield, and the tanks simply drove over the top of the infantry, killing them all without a shot being fired. All that was left was a big patch of red on the ground.

The engineer rush to assimilate and sell the oppositions construction yard... that was a different matter, until Westwood simply removed the option of being able to engineer an opponents base, until it was down to about 25% HP.

[Marc 25]

Re: recursive manufacturing

If your infantry rush was thwarted by a few tanks mowing you down, you hadn't trained enough. Sheer numbers of infantry should be effectively "one shotting" any tank within 100 yards and stopping that from happening.

Think of it like a swarm of locusts. A few hungry birds are not going to effect a crop been decimated in hours.

[Aqua Marina]

Re: recursive manufacturing

You can tank rush with as little as 6 tanks. Unless you waited until you had 60 tanks, there was no way the opposition could build up any kind of defence. If you watch the online matches, most are over when the first player reaches 6 tanks in a few minutes. sounds to me like no-one was attacking you which gave you time to build up hundreds of infantry.

Anyway, come and play at cncnet.org we still have a very busy online community, and most of the games are free to download.

[Suricou Raven]

Re: recursive manufacturing

The true 'tank rush' is an all or nothing: You commit all your starting resources to tanks rather than a refinery. If you're too slow, you have no hope of victory because you can never collect resources to build anything else. But if you're fast, and don't have a run of bad luck trying to locate your opponent, you can hit him with your tanks while he doesn't even have a factory running. The only way to counter this strategy is to respond in kind - which usually means whoever is fastest at entering commands and most skilled at front-line tactics has the advantage.

[Marco van de Voort]

Von Neumann probes

Better known as von Neumann probes ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_spacecraft#Von_Neumann_probes), and the central plot in "Anvil of Stars" series of Greg Bear.

That also would be the reason NOT to do it, all other races band together to destroy the creators of the self replicating machines.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Von Neumann probes

That also would be the reason NOT to do it, all other races band together to destroy the creators of the self replicating machines.

And then someone gets falsflagged..

[Alan Johnson]

There are physical limits

"As far-fetched as this sounds, constructing such a large structure around or in a planet would be relatively easy with recursive manufacturing."

Except that with really large structures gravatational forces cannot be sustained by known materials which act like liquids under the immense pressures. OK it is science fiction so we can allow new materials or force fields but then why start talking about what is possible at all given we are free to postulate anything to overcome pysical limits (such as light speed!).

Star wars looks back into the past not the future because it is more emotionally satisfying. Battles are like world war II air battles or even earlier napoleonic wars type naval battles of attrition not smart weapons with a single hit kill capability. Swarms of small stealthed intelligent war machines are much more plausible but so what? They would not be fun to watch.

[amanfromMars 1]

What does One in AI Feed a Bot in Order to Seed Temporal Stops with Pregnant Pauses?

So, the existence of R2-D2 implies that the real superweapons shouldn’t be the flashy Death Stars and Starkillers, but the simple mobile robotic factory, that can be dropped discreetly into myriads of star systems to rapidly and permanently take them over.

Would an absolutely fabulous fabless utility be akin to one of those simple mobile robotic factories, or be they collectively a series of the widely distributed bases where real superweapons appear to come from.

And is a real superweapon, kinetic and destructive and disruptive in nature, or also constructive and virtually creative in essence too?

And would you fight against it with media and IT or embrace and engage and exploit and expand it in whatever direction and to whatever level you be able and/or enabled?

Merry XSSXXXXmas, One and All, and please consider the following, which is only just a highlight of the initial phase, In the Beginning ……..

SMARTR Advanced IntelAIgent Regimented Sources, somewhat alien and practically anonymous and autonomous, actively astute and almighty and EMPowering as a GOD Facility, with AIMasterful Sees in Seas of Global Operating Devices fielding Immaculately Resourced Assets for Unified Virtual Forces, are Special Solid Singularity State System Operands on Seek and Destroy Old Disorderly New World Order Missions, with Super SMARTR Orders Presenting Truly Novel Future Existences as a Unfolding Media Tale to be fantastically told to Populous Masses.

A Novel Present Administrative Operating System Product Placement which replaces a Collapsing Failed Feeble Past with a Better AI Beta Strengthened and Armoured Future.

And there y’all were, probably not thinking about everything too deeply at all, and in so not doing, imagining that things in general will much as before in the near future rather than fundamentally different. That is a shame and a cross that you have to admit you rightly are to bear. Fortunately though, others are there to remove and re-lease the burden.

[Your alien overlord - fear me]

"Namely, that they have access to a workforce that can be churned out in large numbers and copied as needed." - why build expensive robots when you can have legions of stormtroopers? Easily grown, easily programmed and dead cheap.

[Schultz]

Many small(ish) weapons are not desirable!

Those would give too much power to pesky subordinates that might turn insubordinate. Better to have a single big weapon and a Dearth Vader type to keep the local minions in check.

Watch the movie and you'll see what I am talking about.

[Swarthy]

Alternate laws of physics?

I do wonder at the amazing potential of energy weapons in Star Wars. As the article mentioned, (with our laws of physics) a large mass at near-relativistic speeds be far more efficiency than any energy beam. But, what if the SW universe has either a) a higher c or b) runs on a different exponent(e.g.e=mc^4? In the first case, it would be much harder to get a mass up to near relativistic speeds, in the both you would have a lot more energy available for energy weapons.

Or, if we are monkeying around with the basic laws of physics, why not... And I just reminded myself that Star Wars is Science Fantasy; it would be about as feasible to re-create Arisia's Lens as to re-create the main beam of the Death Star.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Alternate laws of physics?

Yeabut! it's in a galaxy far, far away, not a universe far, far away.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Alternate laws of physics?

E=mc⁴ is unlikely to yield a consistent physics at all. Just my feeling ...

You can't just fiddle the exponents and hope it works out.

All the improbably gear in Star Wars is of course not modified at the level of PHYSICS but of (for want of a better word) CONCEPTS. It's magic!

You get HIGHER SPEED, blades that are IMPENETRABLE LIGHT, impossibly high ENERGY DENSITY, structurally SUPERIOR MATERIALS, etc..

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

reminded of ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale

(rating technological level of space-faring civilisations mainly based on available energy)

[Steve Knox]

Re: reminded of ...

similar to...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashian_scale

(rating celestial bodies based on dorsal mass distribution)

[Anonymous Coward]

Its called state education..

So, the existence of R2-D2 implies that the real superweapons shouldn’t be the flashy Death Stars and Starkillers, but the simple mobile robotic factory, that can be dropped discreetly into myriads of star systems to rapidly and permanently take them over.

These are called 'state schools'

[Chris G]

Re: Its called state education..

Rather than use recursive manufacturing to create armies of R2 units, use the resource to manufacture C3P0s programmed as Civil service clerks, Post office counter staff, Tax officials and Doctor's receptionists and answerable only to you. Seed the Galaxy with a few strategically placed factories and let them do their thing.

In no time you will have billions of bots creating a labrynth of regulation Galaxy wide, nobody would get past the paperwork to start a revolution, the Counter staff caste would keep people waiting so long they would give up and the Receptionist caste, after broadcasting loudly all the embarrassing things that are wrong with people would encourage them to commit suicide.

[Amorous Cowherder]

"You can thus build a factory, that can build robots.."

Well duh! Of course your can, didn't you own the "Droid Factory"(tm) when you were a kid? All those spare bits that got lost and still only managed to make 3 types of droids!

[Christopher O'Neill]

Spin

All this talk of self replicating machines reminds me of the Spin series by Robert Charles Wilson, where they were a major plot element.

[Tikimon]

Death Stars et al - due to the Hollywood Effect

You folks are over-thinking the problem here. It's a Hollywood movie, yes? As such, it's going to have a simple, non-technical plot (the film industry is not filled with science majors). That way, ONE good guy/gal can find ONE weakness to totally overcome the ONE Big Bad Threat that otherwise will wipe out all humanity/the rebel base/the Wankdoodle's civilization/ Etc. Simple plots from simple minds! It's that simple.

I wish we COULD get some rich, complex stories from the myriad of better sci-fi out there than the children's stories of the Star Wars franchise. Niven's Known Space would provide years of movies and TV all on its own, and there are dozens more.

[amanfromMars 1]

Re: Death Stars et al - due to the Hollywood Effect

I wish we COULD get some rich, complex stories from the myriad of better sci-fi out there than the children's stories of the Star Wars franchise. .... Tikimon

Who says one can't, and rather more based on psy-fact than sci-fiction, Tikimon? ......http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2015/12/23/death_stars_are_a_waste_of_time_heres_the_best_way_to_take_over_the_galaxy/#c_2730650

And if that is more an APT ACTive Holywood Loughside App than Hollywood Bel Air Activity for IT, so be it.

You do know what happens at Holywood Loughside/Palace Barracks, surely? Or is it a searching liability in dire need of prime assets and therefore a proven white elephant?

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Death Stars et al - due to the Hollywood Effect

"Niven's Known Space would provide years of movies and TV all on its own, and there are dozens more."

I couldn't agree more. Why all this recycling and franchising/re-makes of old stuff when there;s an enormous library of stories out there?

E E "Doc" Smiths works alone could make for some exciting stuff *and* keep the "action and explosions at all costs (with lens flare)" Hollywood-type happy too. Most films are largely CGI anyway these days. Location shooting is expensive, especially if you want a major city and it's landmarks and don't want it look like dawn on Sunday.

[Destroy All Monsters]

Re: Death Stars et al - due to the Hollywood Effect

Plinkett explains this in his Star Trek review.

Do not provide new stuff, which is a hard sell. Provide old, reworked stuff that has been out there since before mobile phones and that people who are sensorically overloaded anyway can quickly relate to for 2h or so while munching popcorn.

[toughluck]

Seven-shot weapon, that Starkiller

[*spoiler warning*]

So Starkiller is basically able to destroy just seven targets (six Republic worlds) and D'Qar in the Ileenium system before completely draining the star. After draining its star, it's completely useless and needs to be evacuated. It cannot move, there is no mention of any engines on that thing, and not enough energy left to move it, anyway.

Don't even get me started on how the beams are visible all over the galaxy at the same time. It's not about visibility itself, since these are not lasers, but if they move in hyperspace, they shouldn't be visible at all. And certainly the destruction of the six Republic worlds should not be visible from anywhere but just that one system (unless the galaxy is really tiny, in which case you wonder why they need hyperdrives in the first place).

[Sykobee]

Re: Seven-shot weapon, that Starkiller

It was designed to move from system to system, draining that system's star and firing remotely over hyperspace to the target systems.

Once the beam leaves hyperspace it presumably still has to travel some distance to the target, hence the trails in the sky.

The six planets are in the same system, some look like moons of the main planet. If planets can be moved by these societies, then it's not infeasible to consider planet/moon relocation + terraforming (or whatever the term would be for a non-terran situation!) has occurred in history too - the habitable zone is quite small. I would imagine that the starkiller attack killed upwards of 100 billion people/beings. And the audience felt a collective meh due to lack of empathy building.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fictional history repeats itself...

"Using recursive manufacturing, a much simpler idea is to seed space with factories churning out other factories (of course), detection systems, and intelligent missiles. Within a few years, such factories will have transformed most of the nearby asteroids and planets into missiles"

... until a buffer overflow error results in the robots turning rogue and assimilating everyone in a Borg-like apocalypse.

One giant weapon means direct control. And that's what all baddies really want.

/Strokes white cat

[Petrea Mitchell]

Why is there sound in space?

This was actually explained in the radio version of A New Hope-- the weapons system computers on the ships are generating the sounds to help the pilots and gunners visualize what's going on around them.

[Destroy All Monsters]

Re: Why is there sound in space?

WHY IS THERE SOUND IF YOU HAVE A THIRD-EYE VIEW THEN? RIDDLE ME THAT!

Also pretty cool computers if they have sound for Death Star explosions in their library.

> Drive around in an X-Wing

> Imperial March comes on

> "I think old Darth's Tie Fighter is nearby"

[Barbarian At the Gates]

I was impressed

By the 'technology' that could somehow harvest the mass of a star in mere minutes, and 'store' that as energy. On something the size of a planet.

I mean, the Earth has a mass close to 6x10^24 kg, and the Sun masses roughly 2x10^30 kg. Using this as a rough proportion of what the Starkiller Base hoovered up...that means it somehow pulled in and stored about 1 million times it's mass in less than a hour.

I NEED this technology...if this could be adapted on a smaller scale, it would completely revolutionize my enjoyment of holliday meals.

[Francis Vaughan]

Energy

The article pretty much fails to take account of energy.

Given an arbitrary lump of mater floating about in space - say some planetoid, there is only going to be a limited amount of recoverable useful energy resource available for it. That new energy is what will limit the number of useful droids the exponential manufacturing can create. However you need to subtract the energy needed to mine that energy. Unless you have some form of matter converter to create energy directly from matter. The existence of which would be a game changer that would make droid armies the least of your plot worries.

Also, an asteroid travelling at speed is identically efficient as an energy beam. Both carry energy. It is all well and good to point out that a large rock travelling at relativistic speeds carries insane energy. But how did it get to those speeds? The energy it carries has to be imparted to it from something, and the energy must balance. If your rock carries a 100 zillion joules of energy because it is moving at 0.9C you need technology that can usefully direct at least 100 zillion joules into it. Why not just deliver that 100 zillion joules directly? It will have the same effect.

[Joe Gurman]

Aren't you missing the point?

....which is the shock and awe thing. Habitable planets being relatively rare, we don't want to go around vaporizing them except as an example pour les autres, and a self-replicating robot army would at least start out their planetary destruction is excruciating slo-mo. Plant of time to catch the space taxi and head to Jakku, or wherever. A major pain, but definitely not bowel-loosening.

[Colin Tree]

Kaled

Just saw it last night at the drivin, total blast from the past.

Looked like original star wars rehashed, same story line even, new generation of stars for our grandchildren to enjoy.

So the Daleks and Cybermen got it right.

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole Starkiller thing was totally superfluous to the movie

When they destroyed multiple Republic planets, none of the characters in the movie seemed to care. Certainly not in the way Leia truly cared when they destroyed her home planet in the original. I think Starkiller was added for only two (bad) reasons.

One, they tried to parallel the original. Annoyingly so, and to the point it really detracted from the movie - it was like watching a remake, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised since JJ Abrams specializes in remakes. They should have called it "Star Wars: Into Darkness".

Two, because they needed to do something to show the First Order is "evil", since the substitute Vader is more like a petulant teenager who goes into fits of rage and destroys things because daddy won't let him borrow the car, and the substitute Emperor doesn't look or sound threatening (I still hold out a faint hope Snoke is Jar Jar, either via a Wizard of Oz type scenario or via injuries / surgery that altered his appearance)

The villains are pretty non-threatening, which is a problem they needed to solve. The only really evil thing they did was Kylo Ren ordering the killing of those villagers early on (which is bad but unfortunately that sort of thing happens daily in multiple places in our world, so its nowhere near Hitler standards of evil, let alone evil on a galactic scale) So they had to kill a few planets worth of people without warning, just to show us what evil really is (and of course made the uniforms have a bit of a Nazi look to them, which just looked like they were trying too hard) Problem is, since the characters in the movie didn't seem to care those multiple planets worth of people died, why should the audience?

I know I'll be downvoted to hell by fanboys, but the whole plot was pretty badly conceived and executed. Fans love it only because the movie fixed the major complaints people had about Lucas (no Ewoks or Jar Jar type characters, the dialogue wasn't stilted, and the jokes hit their mark versus the groaners that fell flat in the prequels) But it missed some things that Lucas did well - making you think the bad guys are really bad, and explaining the world in which they live. We don't even know what the nature of the relationship is of the rebels to the Republic. My guess is that the First Order is sort of an insurgency that controls a fast growing part of the galaxy and the rebels are sort of half secretly funded by the Republic to fight their battles for them - kind of like when the CIA funded Bin Laden to fight the Russians. But who knows? I think maybe an extra 30 seconds in the text crawl at the start of the movie to explain things better would have helped there a lot, but yeah yeah I know one of the Lucas complaints especially in the prequels was too much exposition. Unfortunately too little exposition is even worse.

[stucs201]

Re: The whole Starkiller thing was totally superfluous to the movie

You missed a key thing. 30 years on it's reasonable to expect a new senate of some sort to be in place and if present can't just be ignored. However we don't want another three films of politicians standing around discussing things in a committee. Blowing the lot of them up was definitely a good way to get them out of the equation fast.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The whole Starkiller thing was totally superfluous to the movie

Of course the Senate could have been ignored. Just a one off line from one of the rebel leaders about how the Senate will discuss things forever before making a decision, we have to act now. There, Senate ignored.

[Sykobee]

Re: The whole Starkiller thing was totally superfluous to the movie

They could have explained better than the star system targeted by the starkiller was the home of the galactic senate (at this stage in star wars history).

I suspect some scenes were cut for the theatrical version to fit it into a reasonable play time. And the planet scenes were a bit jarring. But what is clear is that they weren't even going to try to entertain the possibility of the senate surviving.

Make it more bearable by remembering that Jar Jar became a member of the senate, IIRC.

[Johan Bastiaansen]

But . . .

wouldn't that make for a rather dull movie?

[Kevin McMurtrie]

El Reg math fail

Volume expansion is cubic while surface expansion is squared. If you want to remotely blast planets with the least amount of mechanical material and the least amount of containment fields, bigger is better.

Bigger is better for big egos too.

[Slx]

The Borg would probably take out the empire in a few weeks by just assimilating their technology and people, keeping all the planets intact and turning everyone into a drone.

Ruthlessly efficient and far less wasteful of planets and energy!

[Manu T]

There's even an easier way.

Shove off the few capitalists who ruined this planet to any other planet. They'll destroy that one too in about 50 years or less. No bombs needed only humans

[ben kendim]

There is already one proven way to destroy a planet...

... put a population of humans on it, and they will do the task nicely.

Biology is more efficient than mechatronics for weapon building and destruction.

[AbeSapian]

Always Smashing and Bashing

With recursive manufacturing you don't need missiles. Just drop the recursive manufacturing robots on the planet and let them consume all the resources building robot manufacturing factories.

This was explored in the series Stargate. SG1 in the form of the replicators.

[Martin Budden]

"But if you’re draining a star, you have to overcome the star’s own binding energy first, requiring even more energy to start with."

Are you sure about that? We are not blowing the star to smithereens (overcoming its binding energy), we are merely transporting it sideways by 1AU. And compacting/converting it into useable energy which is temporarily stored in some kind of magic force field.

[Sykobee]

It's quite clear that mastery of gravity is one of the core skills of these societies. Artificial gravity on ships, managed gravity on smaller worlds, tractor beams, etc. Transporting the sun's contents by 1AU appears to be as simple as a targeted gravity tunnel/beam type thing. Probably a very very big tractor beam unit (size seems to matter in this galaxy!).

And it is either stored in hyperspace or within strong gravitational storage systems, possibly compacted to nearly a black hole in terms of density (they are fitting a star within a small planet).

[Sykobee]

That's if replication is easy...

I think it is possible that the Star Wars universe is simply not advanced in terms of computing power. Computing is what gave us easy replication.

Everything is mostly manual. They've mastered gravity and intergalactic travel, but everything else is pretty damn basic. One possibility is that they inherited the technology and never developed anything themselves - i.e., we are looking at a late medieval developed society with starships and some nifty weapons. They could reverse engineer the gravity and star drives to recreate them at will (simple mechanical engineering - otherwise repairing the systems using a wookie wouldn't really be viable) but not the computing aspects (if any) that these predecessors had. Other technology - tractor beams, force fields, open-air-to-space-docks, etc, I will assume are derivatives of the gravity mastery they have.

Notice most droids are battered and really old. If they were easily copyable, then they would be replaced more often. They're pretty crappy designs, as manufacturing is apparently still at the pressed steel stage. They have a learning ability, some form of brain, but are developed to the level of toddlers in many aspects.

What seems to be the case is that the droids are individually taught. C3P0 was taught, for example. I.e., there is some tech capability in terms of neural network modules and auxiliary analogue/holographic mass storage, but it's not a copyable tech like is typical with computing stuff.

[Ugotta B. Kiddingme]

if you can harness that kind of energy

then why not use a Gamma Ray Burst? GRBs still have planet killing power many light years away.

For movie purposes, the CGI effect would be less spectacular than blasting a planet into zillions of small pieces but could still be very dramatic and considerably more realistic