If you’re a fan of Star Wars, then you’re likely familiar with the Death Star, the space station and planet destroyer constructed by the Empire. In 1977’s Star Wars: A New Hope, the Rebel Alliance obtains the technical readout for the station and discovers a flaw in its design that they could exploit — all it would take is for one of their X-Wing fighters to make a precise hit with proton torpedoes into the Death Star’s two-meters-wide thermal exhaust port. Thankfully, the Alliance had a new hot shot pilot named Luke Skywalker who used to bullseye womp rats in his T-16 on his home world of Tatoonine, and as we all know, womp rats aren’t much bigger than two meters, so piece of cake!

Of course, Luke hits the targets and blows up the massive Death Star. But for years now, people have wondered how such a design flaw could have made it into this technologically advanced super-powered weapon of mass destruction. Now, one of the Death Star’s architects — namely who was the person responsible for the exhaust ports on the space station — is speaking out and he wants everyone to know, it wasn’t his fault!

Check out Death Star architect Dak Exhaustport‘s open letter here below.

“Dak” not only feels like he should actually get some credit for being able to make such a small exhaust port for something the size of a moon, but also says that without the Force, the shot that took down the Death Star would be impossible to make — and he’s got a point.

Remember that scene in Star Wars: A New Hope in the conference room when General Motti was bragging about how the Death Star was the ultimate power in the universe and Darth Vader was like, hold up there, pal, this space station ain’t shit compared to the power of The Force (and then there’s some more smack talk, leading to a Force Choke, etc.)? Vader says that the ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force, which lets us know that no matter how powerful a weapon the Death Star is, the Force can defeat it — and that’s exactly what happens. Luke uses the Force to nail his target (remember he turned off his targeting computer!) and blow up the space station, and does so at a time when the Jedi were supposed to be all be extinct, except for Darth Vader, so it’s highly doubtful that the Death Star architects would factor in defenses against the Force into their design.

Open Letter

Video

[Source: Dorkly via Reddit]

Follow me on Twitter.