[lfjokes] On the Implausibility of the Death Star's Trash Compactor

[Adam Shand]

Via: William Thompson <william.thompson at jda.com>
From: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2002/01/10deathstar.html

On the Implausibility of the Death Star's Trash Compactor
BY JOSHUA TYREE

I maintain that the trash compactor onboard the Death Star in "Star
Wars" is implausible, unworkable, and moreover, inefficient.

The Trash Compactor Debate turns on whether the Death Star ejects its
trash into space. I, for one, believe it does. Though we never see the
Death Star ejecting its trash, we do see another Empire ship, the
so-called Star Destroyer, ejecting its trash into space. I therefore see
no reason to suspect that Empire protocol dictating that trash be
ejected into space would not apply equally to all Empire spacecraft,
including the Death Star.

The Death Star clearly has a garbage-disposal problem. Given its size
and massive personnel, the amount of waste it generates — discarded
food, broken equipment, excrement, and the like — boggles the
imagination. That said, I just cannot fathom how an organization as
ruthless and efficiently-run as the Empire would have signed off on such
a dangerous, unsanitary, and shoddy garbage-disposal system as the one
depicted in the movie.

Here are the problems, as I can ascertain them, with the Death Star's
garbage-disposal system:

1. Ignoring the question of how Princess Leia could possibly know where
the trash compactor is, or that the vent she blasts open leads to a good
hiding place for the rescue crew, why are there vents leading down there
at all? Would not vents leading into any garbage-disposal system allow
the fetid smell of rotting garbage, spores, molds, etc., to seep up into
the rest of the Death Star? Would not it have been more prudent for the
designers of the Death Star to opt for a closed system, like a septic
tank?

2. Why do both walls of the trash compactor move towards each other,
rather than employing a one-movable-wall system that would thus rely on
the anchored stability, to say nothing of the strength, of the other,
non-moving wall, to crush trash more effectively?

3. Why does the trash compactor compact trash so slowly, and with such
difficulty, once the resistance of a thin metal rod is introduced?
Surely metal Death Star pieces are one of the main items of trash in
need of compacting. It thus stands to reason that the trash compactor
should have been better designed to handle the problem of a skinny piece
of metal. (And while I hate to be the sort of person who says I told you
so, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that a one-movable-wall system
would have improved performance.)

4. Why does the trash compactor only compact trash sideways? Once
ejected into space, wouldn't the flattened, living-room-sized, and
extremely solid panes of trash that result from such a primitive,
unidirectional trash compactor pose serious hazards for Empire starships
in the vicinity?

5. And what of the creature that lives in the trash compactor?
Presumably, the creature survives because the moving walls do not extend
all the way to the floor of the room, where the liquid is. After all, if
the walls reached the floor, the creature would be killed each time
trash is compacted. The design employed on the Death Star must allow the
organic trash to filter down to the bottom, where the parasitic
worm-creature devours it. But what happens when heavier pieces of
non-organic trash fall down there? Would such trash not get wedged under
the doors, causing them to malfunction? Do stormtroopers have to
confront the creature each time they retrieve pieces of un-compacted
trash?

6. Why not have separate systems for organic and inorganic waste, thus
allowing full compaction of the inorganics and a closed sanitary system
for the organics?

7. Why does the Empire care, anyway, about reducing its organic garbage
output? Are we to believe that the architects of the Death Star, a group
of individuals bent on controlling the entire known universe, are also
concerned about environmental issues? Would organic garbage rot in
space? So what? Furthermore, why has the Empire gone to the trouble of
acquiring a frightening parasitic worm-creature and having it eat all
organic trash, especially given the aforementioned flaws in the design
of the compactor and overall maintenance hassles?

8. Personally, were it up to me, I would have designed special garbage
ships instead of employing a crude, cumbersome, and inefficient (to say
nothing of unsanitary) compactor-worm combo to deal with the trash.

9. If the Empire insists on ejecting trash into space, why do they
bother compacting it? Space is infinite, is it not? In such an
environment, it hardly matters what size the trash is. In fact, a
persuasive argument can be made that it's actually better for the trash
to take up more space, so that it appears on radar systems as something
for Empire ships to avoid. Compacted trash creates smaller chunks of
harder trash that would undoubtedly cause serious damage to Empire
starships. And needless to say, damage to starships would, in turn,
create yet more hassles and headaches for the Empire.

Please understand, gentle reader, I am all for creating hassles and
headaches for the Empire. I just doubt that the Empire would have
created so many for itself. Q.E.D.