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[Sirus]

but since you will never have enuff dakka, it is sadly impossible.

False, on both counts! Never is a long time, thus possible, if improbable.

See, you're talking about having enuff dakka for a single task, which is theoretically possible. Moonie there, on the other hand, was talking about the very ideal of having "enuff dakka", which is completely impossible. One can always use more dakka.

[TheDarkStar]

What if you put a big enough bomb inside the planet? If you were to do something like that to Earth, wouldn't it crack like an egg?

I'm starting to think that "For Science" is a perfectly valid reason for destroying the Earth.

Well if you want to utterly destroy the Earth, here's the Wikipedia page with info on the required energy to send every particle of the planet to escape velocity relative (i.e. vaporize the planet). The value it gives for the earth is 2.24 x 10³² joules, or the Sun's entire energy output for a week or two.

If you just want to crack the earth, that's still a major undertaking since much of the interior is liquid or malleable and pressurized and it would likely cave in again afterwards. Exploding the Earth might be more doable. If you just want to split it in two and move the halves at some reasonable speed away from each other (like, say, 5000 m/s?) I get a required energy of 3.73x10³¹ joules (according to this table, enough to turn the Earth into an asteroid belt with energy left over). Even for a slow speed like 100 m/s (which should cause the pieces to collide again after about 20 seconds) it would take 1.49x10²⁸ joules (calculated from (1/2)mv²), which is (according to the same site) about half the energy needed to melt the entire surface. This is about 100 seconds of the Sun's entire energy output.

Could you break the Earth in half? Theoretically yes. In practice you need a LOT of dakka.

[Frumple]

Sadly, as in-depth as Aurora is I don't believe it's that in-depth. The best you can really do is so badly irradiate and pollute a planet that it's virtually uninhabitable.

Didn't recall it being that in depth, heh. I'm just saying, if you really want to be sure, using fragments of their planet as the opening volley of a KKV bombardment on some other entity that's annoyed you is the way to go. Nothing says surety like the space frozen ashen wastes of their civilization turning to slag as it burns through another planet's atmosphere and crushes their habitable environments to ruin.

[TalonisWolf]

So you... want to send your alien foe a bombardment of the remains of their former planets that you destroyed?

That's a new level of harsh- to put that in perspective, that'd be like bombarding the Rebel Base on Hoth (Echo Base) with bits of Alderaan.

[ChairmanPoo]

Tarkin did nothing wrong

[TalonisWolf]

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for the Empire as a villainous entity, but you can't claim the guy who ordered the destruction of a populated planet to send a message to dissenters 'did nothing wrong'.

If he really needed to display the power of the Death Star, there are plenty of unpopulated planets that'd do the job just fine without turning an Entire Civilization into a Intergalactic Matyr.

[EnigmaticHat]

I really liked the bit in Rogue One where the rebels

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

shouted "for Jedha" as they went into battle

It made me wonder why we never got a moment like that in the original trilogy.

[ChairmanPoo]

But you're taking rebel propaganda at face value!  If they told you those weren't the droids you were looking for, would you believe it? Wake up sheeple!

:-P

[Reelya]

At least no Earth nation would ever completely annihilate some civilian population centers as superweapon tests, mainly to send a message to their rival superpower*

*Oh wait, USA did that.

According to an account by Walter Brown, assistant to then-US secretary of state James Byrnes, Truman agreed at a meeting three days before the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima that Japan was “looking for peace”. Truman was told by his army generals, Douglas Macarthur and Dwight Eisenhower, and his naval chief of staff, William Leahy, that there was no military need to use the bomb.

“Impressing Russia was more important than ending the war in Japan,” says Selden. Truman was also worried that he would be accused of wasting money on the Manhattan Project to build the first nuclear bombs, if the bomb was not used, he adds.

Basically there's a strong argument that they dropped two bombs because they'd spent the budget developing two types of bombs and they thought they couldn't justify the expense to the taxpayers otherwise. Hiroshima was dubious, Nagasaki was just criminally unnecessary. They only had to tell the Japanese that they had more of those bombs and give them a few days to make a formal surrender.

In fact, this is the reason that Alderan was blown up by Vader, it had been budgeted in by the Galactic Senate before it was dissolved, so if they cancelled "blowing up a planet" then the paperwork would have been never-ending.

[scriver]

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for the Empire as a villainous entity, but you can't claim the guy who ordered the destruction of a populated planet to send a message to dissenters 'did nothing wrong'.

If he really needed to display the power of the Death Star, there are plenty of unpopulated planets that'd do the job just fine without turning an Entire Civilization into a Intergalactic Matyr.

He's doing you a Hitler meme bamboozle

[Akura]

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for the Empire as a villainous entity, but you can't claim the guy who ordered the destruction of a populated planet to send a message to dissenters 'did nothing wrong'.

If he really needed to display the power of the Death Star, there are plenty of unpopulated planets that'd do the job just fine without turning an Entire Civilization into a Intergalactic Matyr.

I agree. Tatooine would have been a better target. Take out the hub of a major intergalactic criminal organization(the Hutts, possibly more), not to mention it's somehow the homeworld of several people who are a major pain in the ass to the Empire(Luke Skywalker for one, but there's others). I mean, they should have realized that there must have been somebody important on Tatooine if Leia was running there with the Death Star plans, even if he wasn't on Tatooine at the time they destroyed Alderaan, but the Empire could not have known that.

[scriver]

Tatooine isn't really a hub of the hutts', it's just a place under their influence.

And I don't think Leia was deliberately heading to Tatooine, they just exited hyperspace there for whatever reason, and she sent the droids to the only known ally on the planet when her ship got intercepted and boarded.

[Reelya]

Take out the hub of a major intergalactic criminal organization(the Hutts, possibly more)

But the empire liked Jabba. A corrupt regime enjoys having some thugs around that you can give the dirty jobs to.

And nuking Tatooine would have no propaganda value. Remember that only Vader was after the stolen plans, Tarkin was higher in the chain of command than Vader before he died, as pointed out by Leia saying he "held Vader's leash" and Tarkin never cared one jot about the stolen plans, because he thought they would be useless to the rebels.

And I don't think Leia was deliberately heading to Tatooine, they just exited hyperspace there for whatever reason, and she sent the droids to the only known ally on the planet when her ship got intercepted and boarded.

You're right, I was going to write that but I just thought we couldn't discount the fact that she might have gone past there on purpose. She did write the message mere seconds before the escape pod left, so it wasn't a pre-planned thing. Still, it'd be one hell of a coincidence if tatooine just happens to be on the route from Scarrif to Alderan. And on the route from the Corsucant to Naboo. And on the route from ... etc etc. One hell of a "remote" planet.

[scriver]

Tatooine moves around. It is wherever it needs to be whenever it needs to be.

[Frumple]

So you... want to send your alien foe a bombardment of the remains of their former planets that you destroyed?

That's a new level of harsh- to put that in perspective, that'd be like bombarding the Rebel Base on Hoth (Echo Base) with bits of Alderaan.

You're getting the idea, yes. Probably make a closer comparison to bombarding whatever outer rim world was next with bits of bakura, after getting fed up with trying to stuff their population into your computers' batteries.

Hoth was pretty empty, if you're going to drop the wreckage of a destroyed planetary population onto another planetary population you want to hit something with a bit more impact, and the whole needlessly sadistic alien lizard people stuffing the souls of xeno non-people into pain matrices to power their kitchen appliances and whatnot is a lot more in line with turning a planet's debris field into the proverbial rocks fallen.