cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/1104168
The first one.
this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2024
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Any chance you know the canon explanation of how they counteract the gravity generated by the Deathstar's mass?
How much gravity would the Deathstar’s mass provide? I feel like it would be very small considering it has no real massive central solid or liquid core.
It's the size of a moon and made from metal: It's definitely generating some gravity (even a small amount of mass generates gravity) but I guess whatever tech they use to generate gravity overcomes it.
It's the size of a very, very small moon, and mostly hollow.
I should call her
Yeah the fact it's called a small moon is slightly deceptive to us because our moon is absolutely huge as far as moons go. The natives of the SW universe would be used to much much smaller moons.
For reference, our moon is 3475km across and the death star is 150km across, so it's diameter is 23 smaller. It's also weighed at about 900million tonnes or 9*10^14kg.
If I'm right (which I'm likely not). g=(GM)/r² or g=(6.66710^-119*10^13)/75².
That's a gravity of 1.086x10^-5m/s² or if I round with pure disrespect for physics, 100,000 times weaker than earth's gravity. Essentially it's totally negligible compared to their artificial gravity. Hell, I don't even think a marble on the floor would overcome it's own grip and roll towards the center of the space station.
My maths is almost certainly wrong somewhere here, I failed it badly.
Our moon is huge for a planet of Earth's size, but not compared to the big moons of Jupiter and Saturn.
Last time I looked it up, I used Pluto's moons as a reference because some of them are smaller than DS1, but Charon is quite a bit bigger. Based on the shapes of Pluto's moons, I think even if DS1 were solid it would still be too small to compact itself into a sphere with its own gravity.
Fun fact: Charon is even more huge relative to Pluto (just over 50% of Pluto's diameter) than Luna is compared to Earth (about 25% of Earth's diameter).
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The gravity is negligible. The official sizes of the Death Stars have been 120 - 900 km in diameter according to rebel scale. For comparison, Earths moon is ≈3500~~0~~ km in Idiameter, and its gravity is 1/6 of earth’s. On top of that, the Death Stars are mostly hallow, being a metal framework, instead of solid rock.
the Death Stars are mostly hallow
Our Death Star, who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name,
Thy empire come, thy will be done,
On Alderaan as it is in heaven,
Give us this day our daily rations,
And forgive us our rebellion,
As we forgive those who rebel against us,
And lead us not to the light side,
But deliver us from the Jedi,
For thine is the empire, and the unlimited power, and the dark side forever,
Amen
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Earths moon is ≈35000 km in diameter, and it’s gravity is 1/6 of earth’s.
Off the a factor of 10. The Moon has a diameter of almost 3500 km (Earth's circumference is about 40,000 km, so your diameter would make the Moon larger than Earth).
However, the Death Star being mostly filled with air still means you're probably right about gravity being negligible.
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It’s not massive enough to create its own gravity. They use gravity deck plating.
Even if it was massive enough, if they can keep people sticking to the ground in a tiny ship they can surely counteract the gravity of a space station.
Also, most of their spaceships have wings. We're thinking about this way too hard.
They don't all have wings. Only the X-Wing and Imperial transport ships have actual wings, and we've seen them fly through atmospheres.
Well, yeah, but we've also seen the ones that look like a hamburger patty fly through the atmosphere (and, in fact, outmaneouver the winged ones). Clearly that's not what they're for.
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Artificial gravity and inertial compensators are pervasive (if relatively handwaved/unexplained) in the SW universe
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Damn this makes the OSHA holes even more ridiculous
Bingo. See also, the guys in the laser shaft for the main cannon. The beam fires along / past them. Not from below.
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I know we'd all like some scientific actualisation of Star Wars but I mean:
- They made noise in space 'cause that's fun.
- There was always gravity on pretty much any ship.
- I don't really recall any spacewalks so we don't see any instance of 'no gravity'
- There's hyperspace since lightyears is a bit of a long time.
- Stormtroopers seem very scientifically and inefficiently accurate
At this point I think the Star Wars movies (the oldies) pretty much ignored a fair bit of the science.
But if it was a death star literally put there in our universe, I think there would be a bit of structural considerations for gravity, but not huge due to it being quite hollow. Gravity is pretty strong when the sphere is entirely comprised of dense rock and no air. A mostly hollow sphere of air where air is something close to 1/1000 that of rock (yes, used the density of water lol) is not going to get much of a rollicking from gravity.
Edit: an interesting 'expose' on the moon landings claim one thing: why were the photos so relatively boring? Because they were real and that's all they could get for all the limited resources they had at the time.
I don’t really recall any spacewalks so we don’t see any instance of ‘no gravity’
in The Last Jedi, Leia gets blasted into hard space and experiences weightlessness.
And then it really gets accurate.
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Lightyears measure distance, not time.
Quantum Physics joined the chat
When time is measured in meters you know you're in for one hell of a ride.
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One of my gripes with star wars is a pilot can fly any ship from any faction without prior flight experience on that ship. They just go in flip some switches, push some buttons then jumps into the pilot seat and off they go.
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There's plenty of spacewalks in Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels. They don't have gravity there and instead have to use thrusters or magnetized boots.
Good call on it being hollow and mostly air.
FYI for soil, air is ~1/2000 the density.
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The construction of the first Death Star 
Cross-sections of the DS-1 Death Star. 
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/DS-1_Death_Star_Mobile_Battle_Station
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It's not gravity, it's the Force^TM^
You’re held down by middlefloorians.
Besides technical diagrams from supplementary stuff, the Falcon lands in a docking bay that's oriented towards the first option. There could be some kind of transition point to the second option, but we don't see it and it'd be really awkward.
Both.
The Millenium Falcon landed in a bay that was oriented with the N/S axis of the station, but was accessed on the equator. So the interior of the station has a gravity well with "up" pointing to one of the polls.
The surface cannons, surface towers, and trench defenses were all radially oriented with "up" pointing out into space, like you'd expect on a moon.
This also suggests the station was littered with gravitational dead spots and areas where you'd have to carefully transition from one gravity well orientation to another. No wonder everyone is wearing a helmet.
One of the reasons Star Wars gets called space fantasy is that these objectively cool scenes to shoot simply never make it into the movies because no one even thought of these details in the first place.
Imagine how cool a lightsaber duel would be in these gravity transitional areas, or zero g for that matter! Instead we just got one scene in A New Hope where they're in the gun turrets fighting off TIES and it's a pretty subtle detail.
The one thing we can really say for sure is the gravity tech is everywhere and apparently crazy reliable.
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There's no way they used that much of the interior. Where do all those giants pits go?
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Logic says B but LEGO says A
Get your science out of my Star Wars
The second one, but standing on the outside of the sphere. It rotates around the gun.
Probably A. It would likely have used artificial gravity just like any starship. Star-Trek has it built into the deck plates but I dunno how Star Wars does it. Artificial gravity can then be dialed in to compensate for the natural gravity of the structure. Which is probably less than you'd think. Without normal gravity effects, the internal air and water pressure will be mostly uniform across the ship instead of denser towards the core.
Same with the matter making up the structure. It'll largely be hollow and filled with air, so much lower natural gravity than an actual moon of the same size. According to official sources (referenced here: https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/92401/is-the-death-star-s-gravitational-force-strong-enough-to-hold-an-atmosphere) it's between 120 & 160 km radius, for a probable gravity of ~0.04g. That's not quite microgravity, but still far too low to be walking around in. For comparison Lunar gravity is ~0.166g.
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i don't know much about star wars, but wouldn't gravity be weaker near the centre as you'd have less mass below you and more above you
Assuming the mass is evenly distributed the mass above you doesn't contribute any additional gravitational force. The mass above you can be described as a hollow sphere. Inside such a sphere all gravitational components cancel out. So its just important that less mass is below you
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