Which is bigger - the Star Forge, or the Death Star?

Question

If you've played Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, you're familiar with the Star Forge:

I haven't found any definitive information regarding the size of the Star Forge, but I know that the conservative estimates for the sizes of the Death Stars are 120 km diameter and 160 km diameter respectively.

Estimates for the Star Forge itself vary DRAMATICALLY:

Star Forge Diameter = 91 kilometers

Star Forge Height = 272 kilometers
- Source

And:

Star Forge Diameter = 11 kilometers

Star Forge Height = 28 kilometers
- Source

I think SF&F can do better than this.

Assuming that these estimates of the Death Stars' sizes are correct, which is bigger? The Star Forge, or the Death Star?

Answer 1

Any way you slice it, the Death Star is much larger.

Based on the information given in the question concerning the specs of the Death Star, its radius is no smaller than 60,000 m, which gives a volume of 9.05 x 10¹⁴ m³.

Now, here is the Star Forge:

Based on this information about Hammerheads supplied by the OP,

(in particular that the length of the Hammerhead is 315 m), and based on this video also supplied by the OP,

I used some frames when the Hammerheads are between the fins of the Star Forge to give an upper bound on the diameter of the spherical part of the Star Forge as being at most 20 Hammerheads, which works out to a maximum radius of 3150 m. This gives a volume of 1.31 x 10¹¹ m³ for the spherical part.

Now, there are six fins on the Star Forge, three on top and three on the bottom. Now, let's say that each fin has twice the volume of the sphere, which is a gross overestimate given how thin they are. That would make the total estimated volume of the Star Forge thirteen times the volume of the central sphere, which is roughly 1.7 x 10¹² m³.

This still makes the Death Star a whopping 530 times more voluminous than the Star Forge (9.05 x 10¹⁴ divided by 1.7 x 10¹²).

Even if I make the radius 20 Hammerheads (instead of a diameter of 20 Hammerheads) — which is another gross overestimate on the Star Forge — I still get that the Death Star is bigger, but only by about 65 times.

Another Way to Compare: If we suppose that the Star Forge were a sphere, with radius from the center to the end of the longest fin, that would be about 60 Hammerheads — but let's say 80 to overestimate. This gives a radius of 25,200 m, which is still less than half the radius of the Death Star (and makes the Death Star about 15 times the volume of this sphere), and the actual volume of the Star Forge would be much less than that of this pretend sphere.

Answer 2

This answer addresses the first revision of the question before later edits were made.

There has never been an official source that states how big the Star Forge is. The best I could find is a fan estimate:

First image tells us that the station is 72.5 times wider than its control tower.

Second image tells us that the tower's width is roughly half of a Hammerhead's length. A Hammerhead is apparently 315 meters long, according to Wookieepedia, so the tower is roughly 155 meters wide.

That leaves us with a total width for the Star Forge of slightly over 11 km and an height of around 28 kilometers, give or take a kilometer in either direction. Actual figures might be slightly higher, but for ballpark figures these are pretty good.

Given that the first Death Star has a 120 km diameter and the second a 160 km, the Death Stars have a diameter about 11x and 14.5x larger respectively than the Star Forge. Also given that the Star Forge is not a sphere, the Death Star has a great deal more volume.

Answer 3

There is a second way to do this which instead puts the star forge at a similar size to Saturn (116,460km diameter). In the picture on Wookieepedia, we see it drawing matter from a star while perfectly side on, this gives us a direct comparison between it and the star it orbits, using an online compass tool to complete the circle the result I got was this:

If I then simply line up equally sized Star Forge pictures along the star until I get to the centre point we see that it is around 1/12 the diameter of the star it orbits and since this star supports life and I am lazy, I will therefore assume it is a star similar to our sun which has a diameter of 1.3927 million km, the resulting width would therefore be 1,392,700/12=116,058.3 km, obviously this answer could scale somewhat depending on the star, it appears to be a yellow dwarf or G type main sequence star which gives a possible radius of between 0.85 and 1.1 times the radius of the sun or multiplying those numbers by the original answer a possible range of 98649 to 127664 km, while there is likely a significant margin of error it is clear that when doing the calculation in this way the result is guaranteed to be vastly larger than either death star, even if we use the smallest star possible, a red dwarf with a radius of 0.102 R (R being the radius of the sun) we have 696350 times 0.102 which is 71027.7 times 2 for the diameter and then divided by 12 for the width of the star forge gets a width of 11837.95 km and if we then assume a margin of error of even 20% it is still 9470.36 km in width which is approximately 47 times that of the second death star (given a diameter of 200km by wookiepedia) before we even take the fins into account.

Answer 4

Following New Hope, proportional blueprints of ISD and DS1 appeared . But ISD was described just 500meters in length; further investigations concluded 1600 meters in diameter; it lead to diameter length of DS1 was 222km ( with radius 111 km); with canonized ratio 16/12 , it lead to 300 km diameter of DS2; it isn't bad proportion: with Endor's diameter 4900km maximum for DS2 was 420km, but with another comparation with ISD shadow ,270+ km /345 +-100km/ described as really diameter; 300km for DS2 is correct dimension. Star forge may have 90km diameter of central sphere.

Answer 5

We can found many arguments about DS2 diameter: it wasn't 900km because Endor hadn't Earth or Venus sized diameter. Endor has 4900km in diameter. About Star Forge that is not easy. Centerpoint station has length approximately equal with Death Star 2 ; A comparation Centerpoint vs Star Forge will be interesting.