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Even if Rogue 1 didn't suggest the following:

That the Empire knew the plans were leaked and that the designer of the Death Star put in a vulnerability

It would be pretty evident to the survivors of Death Star 1 that the design was clearly flawed. So when building Death Star 2, did they reuse the same plans, perhaps not realizing the extent of the knowledge in the stolen plans in the first place but just assuming that the only threat was that the rebels had the plans and not necessarily confirmation that there was a flaw in design?

Or is there some evidence they never really figured out how the rebels managed to destroy Death Star 1, so they just shrugged it off, grabbed the old plans and started over... except somehow making it worse the second time around? Now instead of a tiny shaft through which a single shot can travel and completely obliterate a gigantic star base of unimaginable worth, they decide to add a shaft so large several ships can fly through with little discomfort. Or perhaps was that shaft explained somewhere? Maybe a utility while construction is under way and not such an evident, negligence riddled, glaring bullseye, taunting anyone with a medium/small vessel having at least one functional blaster of seemingly any power?

Or is it just clearly stated somewhere they redesigned it and yes, they really thought nobody would fly down that hole and shoot 2 blasts that blow everything up?

Kai Qing
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    The flaw with the exposed thermal exhaust port was fixed in the second Death Star. The shaft in the second Death Star that was "so large several ships can fly through" was incomplete. Once the second Death Star was completed it would not have been vulnerable to starfighters. – Null Apr 18 '17 at 04:25
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    The Death Star Architect Speaks Out – Cees Timmerman Apr 18 '17 at 11:54
  • I'm pretty sure they knew the Rebels had absconded with a full technical readout of the Death Star 1 schematics/engineering plans. – TylerH Apr 18 '17 at 15:14
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    @Null - makes sense but even Red Lobster has a gate they can close at night while under construction. You'd think they would have several in the shaft to prevent such an intrusion. – Kai Qing Apr 18 '17 at 16:49
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    @KaiQing That was what the shield projected from Endor's moon was for. – JAB Apr 18 '17 at 16:51
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    @Null - well yeah but even Red Lobster has protected areas within the construction zone to store tools, keep things safe, hide their one-hit-destroys-all generator. A simple mesh of pipes would have sufficed. Maybe they didn't protect it cause they figured any intruders would just fly into the giant open holes in the unfinished side if they didnt see the medium sized shaft on the side – Kai Qing Apr 18 '17 at 17:33
  • How could they reuse the plans? Wasn't the only copy of them stolen? – Wildcard Aug 14 '17 at 20:21
  • There's never one copy of anything important. At least the ones stolen were from that one data center. Could be others. Who knows – Kai Qing Aug 14 '17 at 20:24

1 Answers1

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It's highly unlikely to be the same design.

From the Return of the Jedi novelisation (page 3, prologue):

The Death Star was the Empire's armoured battle station, nearly twice as big as its predecessor, which Rebel forces had destroyed so many years before — nearly twice as big, but more than twice as powerful. Yet it was only half complete.

If this is the case, then it is likely an entirely new specification.

With regard to the shaft you mention, great swathes of the superstructure weren't constructed yet. I would assume those beams they flew in between would hold various levels, walls and equipment when complete. So when the Emperor declared just before they started firing on the Rebel fleet that they would "unleash the power of this armed and fully operational battle station", he could have meant anything from "everything's working, just needs a lick of paint" to "Well, the weapons are fully operational but we'll be having cold showers for a while."

Don't forget the Death Star was protected by the force shield from the Endor Moon. They'd expected to catch the fleet on the outside of the Death Star's shield as an ambush to be blasted by the might of the Imperial fleet while the Death Star remained safely inside. The Empire couldn't conceive of the idea that the strike team might actually be successful in destroying the shield generator.

Jane S
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    Empire's contigency planning: 0 -> "Either every single detail goes perfectly and we smash the rebels or... I don't know, we run around in circles until they destroy us. But that definitely won't happen". The Force is basically a statiscal anomaly generator. The Empire would be just fine if they just did a bit (or rather, a lot) of contingency planning against that 1 in a million chance that will definitely happen. – xDaizu Apr 18 '17 at 08:44
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    @xDaizu Or maybe the Force doesn't really exist, except that we happen to watch one of the possible worlds where things appear as if it did - where all those 1 in a billion chances happen the way they need to in order to make a good movie. In a vast majority of the parallel universes, the Death Star is never destroyed. The problem with contingency planning is that eventually, you need to stop (thinking otherwise is just hindsight bias) - and whether it's just a selection effect or The Force, you'd just exploit that bit instead. Many things needed to go wrong for the Empire to fail. – Luaan Apr 18 '17 at 08:51
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    @xDaizu This is especially true with the second Death Star; the Rebels required the precise planning, not the Empire. They needed a fleet at the right time, in the right position to enter the DS; they needed the Imperial fleet to be away, and both the Emperor and Vader at the station; they needed the strike team to pass through the shield, and then disable the heavily guarded shield generator; just watch RotJ again and note how much had to go wrong for the Empire to lose. It was definitely "against all odds" for the Rebels. Multi-worlds or The Force, it was an extremely unlikely plan. – Luaan Apr 18 '17 at 08:55
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    @Luaan I'd say that leaking the plans of your battle station, when it's massively incomplete and it's defenseless except for a small bunker with a bunch of soldier (laughably denoted as "the best ones"); and not having a backup plan whatsoever in case the bunker (or even the very moon it is in) blows up is reckless and "not enough contingency planing by any measure". Oh, and you invite the rebel space wizard aboard, just in case! But what do I know.... I'm no galactic wizard emperor. – xDaizu Apr 18 '17 at 08:57
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    @xDaizu Defenseless? It could obliterate the entire Rebel fleet at any time, and was protected by a significant chunk of the Imperial Navy to boot. It was perfectly shielded as long as the generator worked (just like a modern fleet carrier is "safe" as long as its screen is intact). The generator was in a huge bunker, guarded by the whole of Vader's Fist. It was protected by a planetary shield strong enough to deflect any bombardment the Rebels could bring. There were layers upon layers of defenses. The Emperor cared about Luke, not the station ("insignificant next to the Force"). – Luaan Apr 18 '17 at 09:09
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    @xDaizu If anything, the whole series clearly shows that Vader's off-hand comment in A New Hope is entirely correct - the Force is far more powerful than the Death Star, and both Death Stars were destroyed through the Force. The Rebels wouldn't have stood any chance otherwise, and you can't plan contingencies around a force like that. It will always find a way, which is why the Emperor wanted Luke on his side. – Luaan Apr 18 '17 at 09:11
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    @Luaan It was in quite a small bunker, with no perimeter walls, fences or other defences, guarded by a small number of lightly-equipped scouts with no monitoring equipment and particularly low alertness. There were few enough troops that a minor skirmish with stone-club-equipped Ewoks wiped them out. As show in A New Hope, one Star Destroyer had a couple of orders of magnitude more troops spare for a simple ceremonial guard than were present on the whole of Endor. So yes, pretty much defenceless. – Graham Apr 18 '17 at 11:55
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    @Graham We've only seen the whole installation in a few-seconds scene. It was big enough that the army stationed there didn't have enough time to get to the fight fast enough (that's why you only see scouts in the battle). The shield generator itself was almost twenty square miles in area, in a very rough terrain, and IIRC it was explicitly called out that the monitoring equipment was mostly useless (in part thanks to the Empire's own jamming). You could argue that they should have simply eliminated the jungle around the base or avoid the back entrance, but that's about the only weaknseses. – Luaan Apr 18 '17 at 12:04
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    @Graham And do not underestimate that the whole thing was supposed to be a trap. It could have been a better trap (say, the backdoor leading to a fake power generator, rather than the real thing), but it actually worked - they managed to force engagement with basically the entire Rebellion, and they captured the ground team right away. At basically every point since the engagement started, they were this close to complete victory, up till the final bit where all the Imperials started acting like total morons (in some EU explained due to the Emperor losing influence over them). – Luaan Apr 18 '17 at 12:14
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    @xDaizu The Force is basically a statiscal anomaly generator -- No, George Lucas is a statistical anomaly generator. – tonysdg Apr 18 '17 at 15:22
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    Twice the size but half complete... so it was the same size! :P – Machavity Apr 18 '17 at 15:43
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    I am pretty sure that the didn't think it was all complete except for a lick of paint. One side still had massive holes in the structure (though I am assuming that it was meant to be spherical and that the ragged holes weren't a stylistic choice). https://lumiere-a.akamaihd.net/v1/images/open-uri20150608-27674-u9edei_827be8e5.jpeg is a visual reminder. There is no way the emperor meant anything except that the main weapon systems were online (though he was presumably only referring to the main long ranged weapon which is all that would have reached past the main shields). – Chris Apr 18 '17 at 16:31
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    @tonysdg George Lucas must be a very powerful Jedi. – SethWhite Apr 18 '17 at 18:05
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    @SethWhite I bet his midichlorian count is higher than Master Yoda's! – Jeutnarg Apr 18 '17 at 18:47
  • While I do like this answer and will probably accept it, Doubling in size doesn't necessarily mean they knew of the chain reaction flaw and could well have used the same basic foundation to build off of. Not totally convinced yet. – Kai Qing Apr 18 '17 at 20:49
  • @KaiQing If you simply scale everything up, then that "small thermal exhaust port" would also be considerably bigger and would make any direct connection to the central core more obvious. Additionally, with substantially more mass to move around, the design would almost certainly have to change unless you wanted to have huge gaping holes all over the outer hull which just invites "let's fly a ship-sized bomb into there!", not just launching a torpedo. – Jane S Apr 18 '17 at 21:00
  • @Jane - I didn't suggest just doubling like scaling x 2. They could have just added more rooms to the outside for all we know. Maybe they just recruited a bunch more people and realized they had more troops than dorm rooms. but if Erso was so brilliant and irreplaceable they could have adopted the logic that the core and all that brilliant weapon work he did was perfectly good as is. But closets and bathrooms would be nice so add a bunch more rooms to the outside and we're good. – Kai Qing Apr 18 '17 at 21:18
  • @KaiQing That will still have an impact on the mass of the station, its energy requirements and the power required to move it, and so by definition its design. It just doesn't add up to use the same design simply adding closets and bathrooms to the outer hull. Also, don't forget that the Death Star's weapon still needs to be situated on the (much larger) outer hull and linked to the reactor in the middle :) – Jane S Apr 18 '17 at 21:23
  • @Jeutnarg Wow, you're right, since one of them is fictional and therefore can't have any midichlorian count... ;-) –  Apr 18 '17 at 21:35
  • @JaneS, of course! Double everything...just multiply every dimensional measurement by the cube root of 2...man, the Death Star II must have had some really uncomfortable bathrooms. ;) (Or else they got some sane architects and actually, y'know, designed it differently.) – Wildcard Aug 14 '17 at 20:20