Deathstar and Ewoks

[mothman]

When the half-finished Death Star was finally destroyed in RETURN OF THE JEDI, wouldnt the following explosion destroyed all those EWOKS running around on the moon of ENDOR?
Wouldnt the explosion knock the moon out of orbit and/or wouldnt falling pieces of Death Star metal totally destroy any life on that moon?
Also if there is no oxygen in space how could that explosion resulted in such a large fireball?

[Zweistein]

Because Star Wars is a fairy tale, transformed into a movie,
and not an observation that would knock Stephen Hawking off his chair.

[Dr.Lao]

Wouldnt the explosion knock the moon out of orbit and/or wouldnt falling pieces of Death Star metal totally destroy any life on that moon?

I have no idea how large the death star is nor the size of the explosion, so it isn’t really possible for me to speculate on the effects of the explosion on the moon or it’s inhabitants.

As for falling debris, why would it fall? The death star was in orbit so after the explosion most of the debris would stay in orbit.

Also if there is no oxygen in space how could that explosion resulted in such a large fireball?

It is safe to assume that the explosion was a nuclear or anti-matter type explosion and not chemical. Therefore no oxygen was needed.

This topic is probably better suited for IMHO since there is no factual answer to this question.

[Diceman]

*Originally posted by mothman *

When the half-finished Death Star was finally destroyed in RETURN OF THE JEDI, wouldnt the following explosion destroyed all those EWOKS running around on the moon of ENDOR?

Not necessarily.

Wouldnt the explosion knock the moon out of orbit

Probably not.

and/or wouldnt falling pieces of Death Star metal totally destroy any life on that moon?

The rebel fleet is up there, and would presumably take care of clean-up detail.

Also if there is no oxygen in space how could that explosion resulted in such a large fireball?

Special effects

[Doubleclick]

Well…if we were to assume that what we see on teh screen really happened, then yes. The planet would fall into a nuclear winter.

http://www.theforce.net/swtc/holocaust.html

The ewok population is effectively extinguished. Most were killed in a mass-extinction event affecting life on their homeworld, due to unavoidable fallout and debris from the destruction of the Death Star II. The Rebel Alliance is culpable but perhaps innocent. All ewoks would have been better off if the tribe which made contact with the rebels continued with their original plan of killing and eating the commando team’s leaders. However once the shield fell and Jerjerrod began his attack, the ewok’s best interests were served by the Alliance naval forces bringing about a swift destruction of the battle station; the chance of ecological devastation ameliorated by partial evacuation and rehabilitation is better than near-instantaneous obliteration of the whole moon.

Knowledge of the Endor Holocaust is based primarily on the facts of the Return of the Jedi film, and the supportive passage in the Wedge’s Gamble is only secondary corroborative evidence. None of the Endor references in other tales of the New Republic era are in unresolvable contradiction with the catastrophe, though a very precise interpretation of Dark Apprentice may be necessary.

Studying the mechanics of the orbit and explosion of the Death Star II reveals, in brief:

• The Death Star II was not in a natural stable orbit. For a geosynchronous orbit (ie. the station staying directly above the ground facility) it would have to be several times further from the moon. Therefore it is being held in place by a repulsor field, which is probably associated with the deflector shield. When that blows up, the battle station’s substance falls from the sky, regardless of whether it has been disintegrated or falls in one piece.

• In Return of the Jedi we see debris shooting out in all directions, including down towards the surface of the moon. Some of the pieces are very large, dozens of miles across; which is wider than the effective depth of the atmosphere and probably more massive than the kind of asteroid needed for a mass-extinction impact. There are at least dozens of bodies in this mass range.

• Maybe the rebels, being environmentally conscious, attempt to blow up these fragments before they can hit the moon? Fine. You’re still left with the same amount of material falling from the sky. You can have it either in big chunks (which make huge impacts) or as a rain of fallout dust. Either way the upper atmosphere will eventually be clogged with either fallout dust or impact dust, resulting in one huge nuclear winter effect.

• Maybe the rebels think that they can move all of the Death Star material somewhere else? That doesn’t work because there’s too much to shift. The rebels don’t have the capacity to transport a moon-sized mass of material within a few minutes any more than the Imperial engineers could import it all into the construction site in the same length of time. They couldn’t budge the Death Star II when it was in one piece and they certainly couldn’t move it after it was disintegrated and spread all over the place.

Avoiding the Endor Holocaust is completely impossible. It is an inevitable consequence of observable facts of the Return of the Jedi film. Endor is a depopulated wasteland.

[Montfort]

*Originally posted by Doubleclick *
**http://www.theforce.net/swtc/holocaust.html
**

DC beat me to it, but I must point out that the SW Technical Commentaries are a must-read. Especially that one.

[Arken]

Want to really boggle yourself about Star Wars?

How the hell did the Death Star propel itself? We know it can move. Where are its engines?

(I think it moved on imperial march music…)

[Chronos]

Sigh. IMHO.

[Badtz_Maru]

How big was the Death Star? How far was it from Endor? How big is Endor? With that info you should be able to get a rough estimate of how much matter from the Death Star II explosion would have reached the Ewoks.

[Doubleclick]

I think one of the best Star Wars Techical sites is

Stardestroyer.net
(http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Empire.shtml)

Well written and the hate mail section is a hoot!

[msmith537]

I’m watching TLC last night and the have this show about space debris around earth. Every time we launch a rocket or satellite and a piece breaks off, that piece orbits the earth at 10,000 mph. Every once an a while, one of those pieces falls to Earth. Most burn up, but sometimes they reach the ground.

Those are just little 60 ft rocket engines. I imagine if something the size of a small moon blew up in the sky, a lot of really big pieces would land on the planet.

That’s fine with me. I hated the Ewoks.

Anyway, it just proves my theory that the Rebels were really the evil ones.
Now that I think about it, the same thing would have probably happened in Independence Day.