Remember the "Return of the Jedi?"

[DragonSpawn]

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

 

    Well it seems that some intelligent individuals, among them a few with scientific bearing in their free time worked out a "Technical Commentary." Apparently in the final battle in Return of the Jedi the Ewok's were statistically wiped out.

     

   

The circumstances at the end of Return of the Jedi lead inevitably to an environmental disaster on the Endor moon. The explosion of a small artificial moon in low orbit sends a meteoric rain onto the ewok sanctuary, on a scale unmatched since Endor formed. Through either direct atmospheric injection of small particles, or showers of ejecta from large impacts, the atmosphere will be filled with smoke and fallout causing a gargantuan nuclear-winter effect.

 

      Yep,......rebels sacrificed a whole people of ewoks, in a move that ensured their destruction and their planets demise only to further their own political agenda. Yay rebels!

[ironcross]

even if they are right, oh well the good of the many outwaighs the good of the few.  besides they could hjave easily been moved to hoth or somthing

[DragonSpawn]

even if they are right, oh well the good of the many outwaighs the good of the few.  besides they could hjave easily been moved to hoth or somthing

 

How? They destroyed the planetary shield that could have protected the ewoks inorder to land their rebel ships on the planet. Meaning literally the ewoks are for all practical matters close to extinct now. 99% of the ewoks were probably fated to a painful death of a nuclear winter due to the largescale destruction wrought up in the immediate space above their home.

 

      Also how do the good outweigh the bad? The Empire was not defeated. The military genius Grand Admiral Thrawn pulled together the remnants of the Fleet and retreated to the rims of the former Empire. He was a brilliant military strategist and commanded the remnants of the Imperial Fleet in a series of stunning victories against the New Republic.

    So because the Empire was unable to be defeated, they had to co-exist side by side. Also looking at it pragmatically how was the Empire bad? It ended all schisms, and brought all people's under a single, strong government. What did Luke and Leia manage? Besides killing many young men only interested in keeping the peace of the galaxy by enlisting as Stormtroopers, they also managed to split up the Galactic Empire into many factions and create an atmosphere of anarchy. Warlords setting themselves up everywhere, oppressing the people since their is no more central power such as the Emperor to eradicate them and bring peace and stability back to the people on that planet. Whatever one can say about the rebels they destroyed an Empire who managed to give the galaxy peace and stability. Instead adding anarchy, chaos, civil war and mutual destruction in it's place.

  By causing this schism with a small weak instable New Republic at the core of the old Empire, Old Imperial loyalist at further rims of the Old Empire, warlords of independent planets far from the center of the Empire using the chance to set themselves up as tyrants putting the people on the planet completely at their mercy without any Imperial Laws,... this setting allowed the whole galaxy and most of humanity to almost be wiped out by the Yuuzhan Vong invasion later,.......yep the rebels are heroes. I mean they only almost led to the extinction of humanity through their selfish cause to split all people and take away the pillar stone of peace and stability in the galaxy,.....by assassinating the Emperor and his heir.

[Mr Ares]

even if they are right, oh well the good of the many outwaighs the good of the few.  besides they could hjave easily been moved to hoth or somthing

 

How? They destroyed the planetary shield that could have protected the ewoks inorder to land their rebel ships on the planet. Meaning literally the ewoks are for all practical matters close to extinct now. 99% of the ewoks were probably fated to a painful death of a nuclear winter due to the largescale destruction wrought up in the immediate space above their home.

 

       Also how do the good outweigh the bad? The Empire was not defeated. The military genius Grand Admiral Thrawn pulled together the remnants of the Fleet and retreated to the rims of the former Empire. He was a brilliant military strategist and commanded the remnants of the Imperial Fleet in a series of stunning victories against the New Republic.

     So because the Empire was unable to be defeated, they had to co-exist side by side. Also looking at it pragmatically how was the Empire bad? It ended all schisms, and brought all people's under a single, strong government. What did Luke and Leia manage? Besides killing many young men only interested in keeping the peace of the galaxy by enlisting as Stormtroopers, they also managed to split up the Galactic Empire into many factions and create an atmosphere of anarchy. Warlords setting themselves up everywhere, oppressing the people since their is no more central power such as the Emperor to eradicate them and bring peace and stability back to the people on that planet. Whatever one can say about the rebels they destroyed an Empire who managed to give the galaxy peace and stability. Instead adding anarchy, chaos, civil war and mutual destruction in it's place.

   By causing this schism with a small weak instable New Republic at the core of the old Empire, Old Imperial loyalist at further rims of the Old Empire, warlords of independent planets far from the center of the Empire using the chance to set themselves up as tyrants putting the people on the planet completely at their mercy without any Imperial Laws,... this setting allowed the whole galaxy and most of humanity to almost be wiped out by the Yuuzhan Vong invasion later,.......yep the rebels are heroes. I mean they only almost led to the extinction of humanity through their selfish cause to split all people and take away the pillar stone of peace and stability in the galaxy,.....by assassinating the Emperor and his heir.

It's a little bit like Iraq - a stable, if oppresive, government is destroyed for one which promises greater freedom but results in greater chaos. Still, can anything that results in the destruction of the Ewoks really be considered a bad thing?

[Lanthirrhos]

I'd just like to point out, that most of the Storkies were still the last remaining clones.... sure, no new ones were being produced, so they had to train 'normal' people, but there was still a large amount of clone troopers.

 

aside from that note, i agree ;D If anyone has read Outbound Flight, Timothy Zahn's new Star wars book, You find out **spoiler if you're going to read it** that the Emperor knew that the 'Far Outsiders' were coming to their galaxy, so he took over to build a fleet that would be capable of wiping them out when they arived. So he was much like Revan in that respect....**end spoilers** ... except not as smart, powerful, yadda-yadda :P So the Rebels defeating the Empire really hurt the galaxy.

 

Altho, the Empire was bad enough to make its people willing to join in the rebellion (especially non-humans) So I'd say that they were bad enough... Humans would have been fine under their rule, but thats about it.

[Toman Zahere]

Apart from being cute and cuddly, are the loss of the Ewoks a big deal. I never really liked them in the movie anyway.

[Lanthirrhos]

Nope! ;D The Ewoks have yet to save the galaxy.... but they will!! :P

 

lol Despite what I just said, i don't think that the Empire could have defeated the Yuzzhan Vong...It was the Jedi that defeated them in the end, or atleast the results of their actions. I can imagine the Empire pouring Stormtroopers into a mission to kill the Voxyn Queen... ::)

[lou]

even if they are right, oh well the good of the many outwaighs the good of the few.  besides they could hjave easily been moved to hoth or somthing

or the one.....star trek referencing duly noted.

[TurboZ]

If memory serves many of the Stormtroopers were not only clones but quite a few were droids. See IG-88's POV in Tales of the Bounty Hunters. Oh and the ewoks sucked. Lastly I would think that the Death Star had mass much less than that of an actual moon as most of it was hollow. The energy of the blast would also have incinerated quite a large amount of the debris. And where is the evidence that it was in low orbit? It seemed to be at a fairly high orbit judging by the movie.

[TurboZ]

Also depending on your source the diameter of Death Star 2is either 160km or slightly over 900km our own moon comes in at 3,474km in diameter. And does anyone have any quotes that the rebels did not provide tractor beams, shields and various other means of defense for the moon? I don't think Leia would leave her precious Ewoks to extinction.

[DragonSpawn]

Also depending on your source the diameter of Death Star 2is either 160km or slightly over 900km our own moon comes in at 3,474km in diameter. And does anyone have any quotes that the rebels did not provide tractor beams, shields and various other means of defense for the moon? I don't think Leia would leave her precious Ewoks to extinction.

 

  The only defence on the planet. The shield powered by the Imperial Regiments, was blown up by the rebels on the floor remember,.. so they could land their ships,.....leaving the planet defenceless.

[Tenshin_Xo]

The moon still had the protection of at least its atmosphere, ionosphere, and various other planetary phenomenon(magnetic fields at a minimum).

 

The resultant debris would have by and large either been so small as to be inconsequential (as shown in the movie by the lack of large debris), or it would likely have been pulled into an orbit around Endor the planet, or even into several decaying orbits around the Forest Moon.  If the latter is the case the orbits would most likely cause incineration of all but the largest of the debris as it skipped through the atmosphere, also the debris would have fallen over time as opposed to all at once.

 

They destroyed the planetary shield that could have protected the ewoks inorder to land their rebel ships on the planet.

  Actually it was so they could attack the Death Star II.

 

Finally, Kyp Durron returned to Endor, and there were no significant environmental disasters so any issues were relatively minor on a planetary scale. 

 

This would be a fun thread in D&D. ;)

[DragonSpawn]

ehhhh. People it wasn´t just the Deathstar II. Remember a good portion of the Imperial fleet also got turned winto debris? And what were they orbiting around,...right endor. Meaning where ould all the Debris of the Imperial executive class ships rain down on,...Endor.

 

 

[TurboZ]

Larger debris probably would have been caught in orbit or would be floating in space. It wouldn't be until their orbit decayed that they would be a major problem. Taking off from the plant without any kind of shielding, but I don't think the environmental impact would be anything like a nuclear winter.

[DragonSpawn]

The technical principles underlying power systems in STAR WARS technology are not fully clear to us. "hypermatter" annihilation is the main and ultimate power source for large warships and battle stations [sW:ICS p.10, AOTC:ICS p.5], however nuclear fusion and antimatter annihilation play a subsidiary or secondary role. For all we know, they may also employ more exotic and potent technologies: perhaps tapping into deeper subatomic realms, portable miniature black holes or other phenomena unfamiliar to Earthly engineers. We know that hypermatter involves supralight particles [AOTC:ICS p.5], and we can infer that its annihilation produces radiant decay products like antimatter annihilation or nuclear reactions do. The mass/energy conversion of hypermatter must be as complete and as practically effective as antimatter annihilation, otherwise the latter would have been used instead.

 

The destructive magnitude of the superlaser implies power systems of vast power and admirable efficiency. The main reactor core of the Death Star II was a machine of immense scale operating on what probably were post-nuclear technological schemes. As a general tendency of human works, the deeper the technology, the worse may be the by-products of its uncontrolled failure: disasters of pre-nuclear technology produce poisons or fires; nuclear explosions leave abundant radioactivity; the detonation of a Death Star could be at least as dirty. But we don't know for certain.

 

Even if exploding hypermatter power sources are completely clean, the subsidiary antimatter and fusion devices in the Death Star II must have created an enormous burst of gamma-rays and high-energy particles. [Meltdowns are mentioned in ROTJ novel, chapter 9.] The magnitude of this flash is difficult to assess without intimate knowledge of the superphysical mechanisms of the runaway reaction and the evolving gamma-ray opacity of the debris cloud, but at least the outermost layers of the explosion must have emitted high-energy by-products. The visible parts of the surface of the nearby moon, which was as near as two thousand kilometres at the closest point, amount to 5/36 of the total area and must have been bathed in radiation. Living organisms on the irradiated side of the moon would be disposed to radiation sicknesses, if not sterilised or killed outright. Lingering radioactivity from affected areas of the moon's surface and radioactive debris fallen from the battle station would be a perpetual hazzard. Although the specifics are hard to estimate, the initial radiation flash and the long-term contamination may actually be more deadly than the climatological damage described below.

 

The Death Star II was in a very low orbit. According to geometric studies, the construction site was at an altitude which put its orbit within a double-radius of the moon's centre. A likely estimate for the moon's radius is 5200km, based on the surface gravity and realistic ranges of planetary composition. Assuming this scale, the orbital geometry is such that the battle station is only another 2000km above the surface.

 

The Death Star II remained stationary above the surface facility which generated its protective shield. In order to remain synchronous with the surface, the station's orbital period needed to exactly match the duration of the Endorian day2. However for all plausible ranges of the moon's composition, the orbital period will be very short for any object in a free orbit at this level. It should circle the globe in only a few hours.

 

There is good reason to believe that the moon does not have such a short rotation period. If the day was so short then the shadows would be move visibly during scenes, and the globe would be rotationally distorted. In other words the moon would have a noticeably oblate aspect, with the diameter through the poles being visibly narrower than the diameter through the equator. The observed profile of the moon is a nearly perfect sphere.

 

Therefore an object moving at the altitude of the Death Star II and which also has a period slow enough to be synchronised with the moon's rotation cannot be in a free natural orbit. In other words, the battle station was moving around the moon too slowly and with insufficient energy to stay up by itself. It needs supplementary support against gravity or else it will literally fall from the sky. The Death Star II therefore possessed an artificial support mechanism.

 

The most important consequence following the debris shower is what has been called "nuclear winter effect". This kind of cataclysm is believed to have befallen Earth on several occasions, each time due to the natural impact of an asteroid or comet. One such episode was the mass-extinction 65 million years ago (which eliminated a majority of extant species, including dinosaurs). Atmospheric dust blocks sunlight from reaching the surface, casting a pall of twilight and causing temperatures to plummet. Vegetation dies due to lack of light; and this causes starvation of herbivores. Carnivores persist for a while by feeding on carcasses, but they too must perish. Only tiny, hardy, primitive animals of rodent size or less may survive through the cold dark years. After several years, the fallout gradually settles, leaving behind a devastated biosphere in which a majority of the former species have perished.

 

The severity of the effect on Endor must be much greater than the versions projected for Earthly nuclear wars and single asteroid impacts, since the amount of dust involved is comparable to a small moon rather than insignificant portions of the planetary crust. Such is the magnitude of the Endor event that it is yet unclear whether the atmosphere would even remain breathable. The chemistry of the air, land and water may be grossly altered (because of the burning meteoritic material). The explosion probably is accompanied by a huge burst of deadly radiation. Additionally, the remains of the Death Star II might have been highly radioactive, depending on the characteristics of the station's power technology. The scope of mass-extinction will be nearly total. Only very simple lifeforms will survive on Endor, and the ewoks are not quite simple enough.

 

   

For the first time, the Death star rocked. The collision [with Executor] was only the beginning, leading to various systems breakdowns, which led to reactor meltdowns, which led to personnel panic, abandonment of posts, further malfunctions, and general chaos.

    — Return of the Jedi novel, chapter 9, p.201 [illustrated edition].

 

One of the important implications of this passage is that the station's habitable surface layers locally include reactors which undergo dirty meltdown like nuclear reactors on Earth. They pose a danger to the crew. How much harmful radioactivity will the battle station's solid fragments and fireball deposit into the Endorian environment?

 

As for the last scene in which they are celebrating near the central and buried Darth Vader;

 

As soon as the battle station was destabilised, the rebel starfleet clustered together and moved between the moon's surface and the imminent explosion. This may have been a premeditated attempt to shelter the region surrounding the commando team, perhaps extending to an area as wide as a couple of miles. Although the rebel cruisers would be inadequate for affecting the majority of the moon-sized bulk of debris, judicious use of combined deflector shields, tractor beams and firepower might deflect dangerous fragments towards neighbouring regions of the moon's surface (rather than falling directly on the commandoes' heads).

 

The "fireworks" and dark circumstances of the rebel celebration are suggestive of the meteoric rain of debris and the spread of fallout across the sky. The Radio Play [p.182] explicitly states that pieces of the Death Star II were burning up in the atmosphere during the lighting of Lord Vader's pyre.

 

    LUKE: What could be more fitting? It's a night of lights. Ewok victory fires. Rebel fireworks. Even the last pieces of the Death Star burning up in the atmosphere.

 

The rebel starfighters seen flying through the air are probably providing air cover protecting the commando team against straggler impacts. At the very least this would have been necessary during the first few minutes after the station's explosion. Pilots would blast apart any dangerously large fragments endangering the site. However, the smaller broken particles left by such intervention will still ultimately burn up and contribute to the atmospheric fallout layer. Furthermore, it is impossible for the rebels to break apart or repel more than an insignificant local portion of the total shower's mass, which is moon-like in magnitude. Other regions of the globe will still suffer their giant impacts, and the finer debris will still reach the high airborne soot layer. If the rebels ever had the ability to avert the biocidal calamity then they would also have had the ability to propel the whole battle station around the system before the destruction, which is a ludicrous proposition.

 

The rebels brought a large number of medium transports to Endor. their role is not immediately obvious, but the novel indicates that at least some of them were loaded with explosives and sent into deliberate collisions with Imperial ships. Surviving transports might have been useful for evacuating allied Ewoks, after being emptied of the deadly cargo. However there is not way in which the transports could carry and deposit useful heavy machinery like a portable planetary shield in the few minutes between the battle station's explosion and the time when the debris reached the moon's atmosphere.

 

And lastly;

 

Immediately following the Battle of Endor, the heroes of the Rebel Alliance departed to attend to a bizarre and urgent crisis in the Bakura system. They spent only one night at Endor, with Han Solo then morbidly inspecting the site of Anakin Skywalker's pyre. Nothing in this tale is affected by the Endor holocaust. Luke Skywalker and his companions can be excused for not knowing or understanding the extent of the calamity since:

 

    * they were preoccupied with grief, healing and celebration; they were not in the mood for pondering astrophysical and climatological circumstances;

    * they spent too little time in the system to witness the climatic aftermath;

    * rebel leaders would be embarrassed by the hardship which they had unwittingly inflicted on the ewoks, so there would be an official cover-up;

[Tenshin_Xo]

The Death Star II was in a very low orbit. According to geometric studies, the construction site was at an altitude which put its orbit within a double-radius of the moon's centre. A likely estimate for the moon's radius is 5200km, based on the surface gravity and realistic ranges of planetary composition. Assuming this scale, the orbital geometry is such that the battle station is only another 2000km above the surface.

See next post.  Errors in your calculations.

 

The Death Star II remained stationary above the surface facility which generated its protective shield. In order to remain synchronous with the surface, the station's orbital period needed to exactly match the duration of the Endorian day2. However for all plausible ranges of the moon's composition, the orbital period will be very short for any object in a free orbit at this level. It should circle the globe in only a few hours.

  The orbital period is 18 hours for the death star 2.  Don't ask, just trust me.  I am that much of a geek.

 

 

DS, you also forget that a period of time later, some years, but not enough to re-terraform the moon, Kyp Durron revisits Vader/Anakin's pyre site.  There is no evident destruction.

 

I suppose that the radiation released from the resultant explosions would have created an aurora borealis like event accross the Forest moon's sky for a period of a day or two.  Additionally there would have been initial meteoric shower, though nothing significant, for a period of 2 weeks or so.  After that the debris would have been stuck in decayed orbit and disintigrated as it fell due to a shallow re-entry vector.

 

The meteoric events on the scale we're talking about are similar to the catastrophic re-entry of the space shuttle Colombia.  Its an example of a large object which is re-entry capable and falls out of control, rather like the debris of a Star Destroyer.  The Executor and DSII were all but vaporised as shown in the movie(hence the talk about radiation and borealis events).

[Tenshin_Xo]

If you'd like I can calculate the exact distance of the DSII from the surface of the Endorian moon, based on it having a 1G mass, or if you know its mass, I can be more precise. 

 

 

Edit.  To be in unassisted Geo-Sych orbit, the DSII would have to be 30,418.1 km from mean sea level of the Endorian moon.

 

Gravitational pull of the planet is .85 of Earth, and Period of Rotation is 18hrs. Planetary Diameter is 4900km.

[TurboZ]

Lastly you all forgot to make one very important calculation- if you take the mass of DSII and divide my the total distance of it's low orbit from the moon's surface you find that the answer is simple-it's science FICTION!. You guys can debate the science in it all day until blue in the face and your hands have cramped from typing so much but, the movies are done and made and the story written.

[Tenshin_Xo]

I've got four words Turbo.  "Willfull suspension of disbelief."

[TurboZ]

Well here is the thing. Most of the science is completely sound. I can't say it all is or isn't so I'll say most. However, this is something occurred in a fictional world, with fictional characters for a series of events for which we only see a small window. Others have then come along and given us more glimpses into this world at a later time frame then we are debating. According to this source the events that are argued to have happened, in fact did not so the argument is in fact pointless.

[Tenshin_Xo]

Preaching to the choir on that one.  As I've said, Kyp Durron had been back afterwards to view the pyre site of Anakin/Vader, and there is no reference to anything on the scale of the supposed "Holocaust of Endor" and therefore it never happened.  I just use scientific commentary to lend credence to the possibility that it didn't happen and to explain why it didn't happen.  Kevin Anderson and the rest of the EU writers have decided that it didn't happen.

[Barmacral]

Turboz.. give over... no matter if its fiction or not, its a fun debate to have and read. Let them have it. I've enjoyed it so far.