Why is Leia okay with being tracked to Yavin?

Question

In A New Hope, after Han and Luke fight off the TIE Fighters while escaping from the Death Star, these exchanges happen:

           INT. DEATH STAR - CONTROL ROOM

           Darth Vader strides into the control room, where Tarkin is 
           watching the huge view screen. A sea of stars is before him.

                                 TARKIN
                     Are they away?

                                 VADER
                     They have just made the jump into 
                     hyperspace.

                                 TARKIN
                     You're sure the homing beacon is 
                     secure aboard their ship? I'm taking 
                     an awful risk, Vader. This had better 
                     work.

           INT. MILLENNIUM FALCON - COCKPIT

           Han, removes his gloves and smiling, is at the controls of 
           the ship. Chewie moves into the aft section to check the 
           damage. Leia is seated near Han.

                                 HAN
                     Not a bad bit of rescuing, huh? You 
                     know, sometimes I even amaze myself.

                                 LEIA
                     That doesn't sound too hard. Besides, 
                     they let us go. It's the only 
                     explanation for the ease of our 
                     escape.

                                 HAN
                     Easy... you call that easy?

                                 LEIA
                     They're tracking us!

                                 HAN
                     Not this ship, sister.

           Frustrated, Leia shakes her head.

                                 LEIA
                     At least the information in Artoo is 
                     still intact.

                                 HAN
                     What's so important? What's he 
                     carrying?

                                 LEIA
                     The technical readouts of that battle 
                     station. I only hope that when the 
                     data is analyzed, a weakness can be 
                     found. It's not over yet!

Leia doesn't even know if there is a weakness, let alone whether they'll find one. If she (correctly) realizes that they're being tracked, why doesn't she suggest that the Millennium Falcon go somewhere besides Yavin 4 instead of just frustratedly shaking her head? I know the plans apparently have to be delivered in person, but it seems unlikely that continuing to fly to the secret Rebel base in the ship she's certain is being tracked is the only option. They are already in hyperspace when this conversation happens, but they apparently have time to talk for a little while after, so presumably they'd have time to stop and reroute.

Answer 1

Carrie Fisher's audition tape for "A New Hope" indicates that, at least in that draft, Leia knew they were being tracked, and decided to lure the Death Star to Yavin, as Colin Q. Bang's answer said.

Leia's lines read:

I know they'll follow, and they'll bring the Death Star. Our only hope is to destroy it before it destroys us. Look, hiding is useless now! With the Death Star they'll continue destroying systems until they've found us. We have no alternative but to process the information and use it while there's still time.

Answer 2

(tl;dr summary in bold)

Leia wouldn't have had to merely suggest an alternative and try to persuade the others: she was the only one on the Falcon who knew where the secret rebel base was, and therefore was in control of the decision.

Clearly she made the conscious choice to use a rope-a-dope strategy. Having just witnessed the obliteration of her home by the dreaded space station, she knew full well that the same fate could soon befall any other planets--and their millions or billions of inhabitants--that refused to fall in line, so defeating the Death Star was not only vital, but urgent. Enticing Tarkin to use it to attack their base was likely the only way to guarantee an engagement in the near future.

The secondary question then becomes "was this a foolhardy strategy?" Well, there were at least two problems with it. One is that it assumed the Empire would even use the Death Star for the attack, when a couple of Star Destroyers could presumably have been sent instead. Another, raised in the question, is that no one at that time had any idea if an attack on the battle station would have even a remote chance of success.

This would be troubling if the rebels could not evacuate Yavin 4 in advance of an attack, so you might say it was pretty flaming reckless. However, I surmise the rebels did temporarily flee the (otherwise sparsely populated?) moon except for those needed in the "command center" for the attack. (Brazen retconning? Taking away some of the drama from the countdown to the Death Star's arrival? Perhaps, but I don't think this speculation is contradicted anywhere in canon.) Aside from the uncertain amount of time they would have had to load equipment onto a transport ship, it should have been quite doable considering the apparently tiny total force there (even compared to the later evacuation of Hoth). Leia could thus sacrifice the secrecy of the base on the chance of the rope-a-dope panning out, without sacrificing the entire rebel force itself (Well, sorry General Dodonna--but, hey, Leia was willing to stand and die with him, and by that time they believed they had at least a fighting chance). Therefore, without going outside of movie canon the plan was clearly justified by the desperate situation. Even if for some reason they couldn't evacuate, the unprecedented and urgent threat that the Death Star apparently posed might justify the bold strategy if there were other rebel allies elsewhere.

Answer 3

I'm certain that Leia was the decision maker as to going to Yavin. She wouldn't have given Han the location if she didn't want to go there. When arguing with Han about how easy it was to escape, she was just asserting her own intelligence and her perception of Han's lack of intelligence. At this point, neither character was yet totally likeable (note that Leia had called Chewie a walking carpet, suggesting "speciesism" on her part).

Answer 4

The real reason was that the script originally had the Rebels going to attack the Death Star. However, in the editing process, they realized there wasn't enough tension. To create a sense of urgency, voice overs saying things like "5 minutes to the Rebel base" were added along with the awesome music that accompanies the build up to the Death Star's destruction. There's a YouTube video called How Star Wars was saved in the edit. I used to wonder for a long time why the plans were taken directly to the Rebel base, but I only realized it was a weird decision after I'd seen the movie lots of times!!