Another Look at Star Wars: Destroying a Planet

Scott Manley's video does a nice job trying to make some sense of the planet destroying creations in the Star Wars movies, from the destruction of Alderaan to the latest film (Spoiler Alert!) that destroys multiple planets.  His video, How Much Power Do You Need to Destroy a Planet?, tosses in plenty of equations along the way discussing the destruction of Earth and Jupiter, but the bottom line is that the necessary energy and resulting destruction would fall outside of what Lucas and Disney have served up.  Of course, no one can be surprised, but it is interesting to speculate. 

However, the bottom line here is that you do not need a spectacular exploding planet to kill off a civilization.  All you need to destroy is the outer 1 percent and nothing will survive.  Why the overkill?  But more to the point, we already have the ability to do to ourselves what the Empire did to others.  That is a scary thought.

More on the Falcon 9 Mishap

SpaceX's Elon Musk earlier in the week announced that Falcon 9 failure was due to a faulty strut that did not properly contain a helium bottle within  the rocket's liquid oxygen tank.  This is certainly better news than an engine failure.  Mr. Musk is still hopeful his company can start sending humans into space in about two years.

This video by Scott Manley, the Scott astronomer, gives you a colorful explanation of the accident and cause.  He noted that the strut supplier will probably not be used again, which is a good idea. He also discusses accelerometers placed around the rocket tracking vibrations and waves that helped to pinpoint the area of failure.

The most important point is that the Dragon capsule survived the explosion, indicating that a human mission facing a similar mishap might have had a safe landing.  SpaceX is working on software and additional safety features in anticipation of such a need.  That is very encouraging.