There's a nifty little site called How Stuff Works that I check out from time to time. There are articles on "how so and so works" on just about anything you can imagine. It's a great idea for a site, very educational and it does quite well.

At any rate, a reader brought to my attention that How Stuff Works put up an article on How The Death Star Works. The article reads like a mockumentary. It's hilarious, and even an die hard Star Wars geek like me learned a few things about this moon sized oppressor of freedom. The introduction of the article says it all:

Simply put, the Death Star is the most ambitious space station project in Galactic history. It takes more than a million military personnel to run this station, which is the size of a small moon.

But the Death Star is no moon. Despite its size, the Death Star can still travel at superluminal velocities just like spacecraft with only a fraction of its mass. But the real power and purpose of the Death Star lies in its Superlaser. The Death Star's Superlaser is capable of firing a beam of directed energy powerful enough to completely destroy a planet of any size! Needless to say, nothing quells chaos and disorder faster than the threat of total planetary annihilation.

It's a fun article, go on over and give it a read!