Shooting The Star

While trolling the usual sites for story ideas, I came across this article, which simply had to ruin the first Star Wars film for me.

Well, not ruin, but it did make me think for a moment – and I hate thinking.

Think about it – the hangar they land in, the detention bay, the tractor beam controls, and the garbage chute are all within an elevator ride and a heroic chasm swing of each other. Luke and Han are in and out of the Death Star in maybe an hour.

Sure, the Death Star has turbo lifts, and we do see Luke and Han riding one, but those things aren’t moving at the speed of light. The circumference of Earth’s moon is 6,783 miles. Assuming the Death Star is around the same size, even if the turbo lifts were moving as fast as a commercial jet (about 500 miles per hour), it would still take 13 hours to get from one side of the facility to the other.

It would be a nightmare to work in a place that size. What if Vader needed you to take some documents down to Accounting, which is 12 hours away from your department by turbo lift?

I wonder if they hired stormtroopers for that, or just some nebbish like Milton Waddams? “Um, I believe you have my hydrospanner…”