The Death Star's power output confirmed!

[Mike DiCenso]

Wong would not be banned, neither because of who he is, nor for holding an opposing viewpoint in the debate. Given prior experiance, it's more likely Wong would fail to control his tendencies towards pendantic smash mouth behavior, and would within time fall into insulting people and that is what he would likely wind up getting banned for. Also, anyone claiming to be Wong would have to present their credentials, so to speak, to prove that they really are him, and not some imposter.

As for 500 ST ships being unable to generate one single 200 gigaton TL blast equivalent of energy, that is easily disprovable. We know from episodes such as "True Q" that the E-D can generate at least a stated 12.75 billion gigawatts or 3 gigatons. Another Delta Quadrant race's ship in "Riddles" was able to generate 9 million terawatts or 2.15 gigatons, and appeared to be just an even match for the medium sized Voyager. So 500 ST ships should be able to generate between 1,075 and 1,500 gigatons, or between 5 to 7.5 times a single heavy TL's output.
-Mike

[Admiral Breetai]

I find it equally crazy seeing as Riker seemed to find nothing unrealistic about the enterprises weapons easily pulverizing a moon

[Praeothmin]

SWST, it seems even at SB.com, a lot of people disagree with you...

Even Leo1/Vympel seems to agree the DS is not a DET weapon...
Surprising, but fun to read...

[StarWarsStarTrek]

SWST, it seems even at SB.com, a lot of people disagree with you...

Even Leo1/Vympel seems to agree the DS is not a DET weapon...
Surprising, but fun to read...

Uh, not to be pressuring, but our debate?

Also, I did not claim that the Death Star was 100% DET, so ha. Sorry, but you still don't seem to understand my point in this thread. It's not about the nature of the superlaser, and not directly about 200 gigatons. It's about power generation, and if I can prove that star destroyers have the high power generation stats given to them in the AOTC and ROTS ICS's, then the 200 gigaton claim is quite justified.

[Praeothmin]

SWST, it seems even at SB.com, a lot of people disagree with you...

Even Leo1/Vympel seems to agree the DS is not a DET weapon...
Surprising, but fun to read...

Uh, not to be pressuring, but our debate?

Also, I did not claim that the Death Star was 100% DET, so ha. Sorry, but you still don't seem to understand my point in this thread. It's not about the nature of the superlaser, and not directly about 200 gigatons. It's about power generation, and if I can prove that star destroyers have the high power generation stats given to them in the AOTC and ROTS ICS's, then the 200 gigaton claim is quite justified.

But since the DS isn't a pure DET, it shows that it's power generation need not be as high as you want it to be... ;)

And no, until to provide proof with calculations that do indeed show GT firepower in SW's highest canon, or even in T-Canon, or give a very, very good reason for the TESB asteroid destruction with firepower levels less than 0.002% of the ICS cklaimed figures, than our debate is pretty much over.
What you always ignore is that not all bolts passed through the asteroids, meaning that the power displayed in the asteroid's destruction was indeed the power used in the bolt.
You ignore the fact that the power shown in TESB is 2 OOM lower than the ICS claimed figures.
I am tired of repeating arguments which seem to go over your head...
When you have evidence of anything, not just your faulty assumptions (assuming all the power goes into guns, ignoring the huge ass engines of an ISD needing huge ass amounts of power to move the ship its SDN claimed acceleration), then we'll talk...

[StarWarsStarTrek]

SWST, it seems even at SB.com, a lot of people disagree with you...

Even Leo1/Vympel seems to agree the DS is not a DET weapon...
Surprising, but fun to read...

Uh, not to be pressuring, but our debate?

Also, I did not claim that the Death Star was 100% DET, so ha. Sorry, but you still don't seem to understand my point in this thread. It's not about the nature of the superlaser, and not directly about 200 gigatons. It's about power generation, and if I can prove that star destroyers have the high power generation stats given to them in the AOTC and ROTS ICS's, then the 200 gigaton claim is quite justified.

But since the DS isn't a pure DET, it shows that it's power generation need not be as high as you want it to be... ;)

Except that I've already proved that it's already that high anyway.

And no, until to provide proof with calculations that do indeed show GT firepower in SW's highest canon, or even in T-Canon, or give a very, very good reason for the TESB asteroid destruction with firepower levels less than 0.002% of the ICS cklaimed figures, than our debate is pretty much over.
What you always ignore is that not all bolts passed through the asteroids, meaning that the power displayed in the asteroid's destruction was indeed the power used in the bolt.
You ignore the fact that the power shown in TESB is 2 OOM lower than the ICS claimed figures.
I am tired of repeating arguments which seem to go over your head...
When you have evidence of anything, not just your faulty assumptions (assuming all the power goes into guns, ignoring the huge ass engines of an ISD needing huge ass amounts of power to move the ship its SDN claimed acceleration), then we'll talk...

Sorry, but the idea of lower limits still eludes you. Finally, you seemed to have get it and point out that not all the bolts go through the asteroid. Ok, ever consider the possibility that they dialed the yields down in order to not expend more energy than is needed? Gasp!

"oh, but that's ridiculous that the ISD used 0.0002% of its power"! No, actually, it's just common sense. Why bother using any more power to vaporize a bunch of asteroids?

Also, have you considered that maybe turbolasers detonate as soon as they hit something of sufficient mass, instead of simply continuing to go on? Therefore, the turbolasers fired could have still been very powerful, but just detonated upon hitting the asteroids.

[Kor_Dahar_Master]

Except that I've already proved that it's already that high anyway.

Actually all you proved was that you have no clue about the problems regarding moving such a huge structure like a DS.

They have been pointed out and you did recognise the fact as you clearly replied to me pointing the flaw out and tried to modify it poorly and without realising that even a 99% reduction is nowhere near enough.

NOW yet again you have ignored that prior rebuttal and instead of conceeding or modifying your flawed theory PROPERLY you continue you preach your flawed math here and claim it as being "PROOF" when it clearly is not.

[StarWarsStarTrek]

Actually all you proved was that you have no clue about the problems regarding moving such a huge structure like a DS.

They have been pointed out and you did recognise the fact as you clearly replied to me pointing the flaw out and tried to modify it poorly and without realising that even a 99% reduction is nowhere near enough.

NOW yet again you have ignored that prior rebuttal and instead of conceeding or modifying your flawed theory PROPERLY you continue you preach your flawed math here and claim it as being "PROOF" when it clearly is not.

You've completely misread my rebuttal. Do you understand what even if means? I was stating that, even if they reduced the mass by 99%, it still would mean that their engines were uber powerful. Nowhere near enough? You were the one that was claiming that they use mass lightening. Nowhere enough for what? To allow the Death Star to be moved? That's because it's engines/reactor are super powerful.

In other words, your original point has been abandoned, and you use the classic and highly dishonest method of bluffing some imaginary flaw in my math that you have not explained. EXPLAIN IT.

[Kor_Dahar_Master]

You've completely misread my rebuttal. Do you understand what even if means? I was stating that, even if they reduced the mass by 99%, it still would mean that their engines were uber powerful. Nowhere near enough? You were the one that was claiming that they use mass lightening. Nowhere enough for what? To allow the Death Star to be moved? That's because it's engines/reactor are super powerful.

In other words, your original point has been abandoned, and you use the classic and highly dishonest method of bluffing some imaginary flaw in my math that you have not explained. EXPLAIN IT.

I did explain it, you still do not understand it so il use small words this time.

EVEN at 99% mass lightening the DS would rip itself apart as soon as it tried to accelerate, the material stresses of trying to move such a huge structure at even 1% of its mass are VAST and that is to just move it slowly let alone accelerate it to the velocities you are claiming in the time frame you are claiming.

----------------------------------------------

The STAR WARS blueprints quote the maximum acceleration of the first Death Star as "0.0001 grav", which probably means a ten-thousandth of the surface gravity of a standard habitable planet. This would mean something like 0.001 m / s² in metric units.

http://img262.imageshack.us/img262/4255/dsblue2.gif

The Mandel blueprints indicate that there are 68 "antimatter engines", which presumably are the sublight drives....so much for hypermatter powering the drives...

[Jedi Master Spock]

A few points:

1. JMS, where is your evidence for the majority of main sequence stars being red dwarfs?

Take your pick. It's very well known that red dwarf stars outnumber all the brighter main sequence stars.

Otherwise, the E30 joule figure is correct, and then Star Wars basically wins? Why? Because it confirms through scaling the power generation shown in the AOTC and ROTS ICS's. Having enough energy means that 200 gigaton turbolasers are pretty feasible, as are teraton level shields. Then, with ICS confirmed, Star Wars steamrolls Star Trek with laughable ease.

There are four significant problems with that scaling through power generation.

Imprimus is that there's no guarantee that the power generation capability actually scales down volumetrically from a Death Star to a Star Destroyer; or that the type of reactor used by a Star Destroyer is in any way equivalent.

The prequels have made it perfectly clear that Star Destroyers were being fielded reliably in numbers well before all the kinks of the Death Star were worked out. In the EU, and in the Death Star novel in particular, it's highlighted quite frequently that the Death Star's reactor is unique and highly experimental in nature. Much like the superlaser itself, it may require being a certain magnitude before taking off.

The others we will get to shortly.

2. JMS, the fact that the hypermatter reactor was said to be capable of it implies a controlled reaction; well, not controlled in that it misfired, but controlled in that it isn't the reaction of all the hypermatter at once. A misfire means that it either didn't work or hit the wrong thing/exploded on itself. The latter is the case here. In fact, this is a common English, um, sentence structure, sort of: "If anything went wrong; well, the Sun could in a single single produce more energy than all of human kind has in our existence, so we'd be screwed"; the part mentioning the feats of the Sun is not referring to what would happen if things went wrong, but using such a feat to predict what would happen. Similarly: "if he got mad; well, he could knock out other boxers twice his size, so we'd be screwed". Does the part about his feats mean that he can only do that if he gets mad? No, because it isn't directly referring to the conditional phrase, but being used as evidence supporting it. Also, why would hypermatter explode/react, and why would it all explode/react? Even an uncontrolled antimatter reaction of that magnitude would involve most of the antimatter and matter being pushed away and not actually reacting.

4. JMS, your response to my claim of the quotes being misinterpreted is a red herring. Of course hypermatter is basically technoblabble, but it's still canon, and it actually make more sense than thinking that nuclear fusion could power the Death Star. Not even a 100% M/AM reactor that large the density of iron would produce even a significant fraction of the energy produced in the Death Star's hypermatter reactor.

Secundus.

In the example of a sun, the worst-case scenario might be an induced nova, as in "Half a Life." The power output of the star increases by many orders of magnitude. The scenario being described is not a controlled reaction, and thus we have little reason to assume that it's the same level of energy normally released by the reactor.

If the Death Star's systems were actually capable of handling the level of energy discussed in the event of a misfire, the misfire wouldn't be lethal.

I actually don't have a problem with the idea that the Death Star uses a hypermatter reactor rather than nuclear fusion. If you allow the EU into play, that's what the EU says it has. However, the treatment of hypermatter and fusion within the EU have additional consequences.

5. Lucky, your rebuttal is basically a red herring. Your accusation was that the Death Star's explosion was not as powerful as it should have been because the Endor Holocaust didn't happen. However, I countered with the fact that the hypermatter and much of the debris was canonically sucked in through some technoblabble hyperspace wormhole. Your counter is a complete red herring, because my canon explanation rationalizes it, and your counter has nothing to do with your original claim.

Tertius.

We actually have quantifiable levels of energy available to relate to these incidents. The first is the amount of energy actually released by the Death Star when it fires third-power shots in the novel. The first third-power shot unleashes continent-shattering firepower.
Tenn looked at the images from the targeting cam. He still had his hand on the firing lever. He released it and stared, watching as the very air on the prison world caught fire in a runaway planetary holocaust. Seismographic sensors showed that massive groundquakes had begun, rumbling down into the bowels of the planet. Giant waves in the ocean, generated by the shifting of tectonic plates, rushed for the shores of the big continent. Volcanoes spewed lava. Clouds of steam and volcanic ash began to rapidly obscure the surface from view - but not fast enough.
He had just killed everything on the planet Despayre. If all life wasn't dead already, it would be soon.
The CO moved to look over his shoulder. He didn't congratulate Tenn on the shot; he just stood there.
This is actually less destructive than a Saxtonite BDZ, which requires e24-e25 joules. Granted, most of the effect should be interior to the planet.
An hour and fifteen minutes after the first beam, Tenn fired the second one.
The planet Despayre, already scorched lifeless and beset with cataclysmic groundquakes and volcanism, began to shake like some tormented creature in its death throes. Massive cracks, thousands of kilometers long and tens of klicks wide, striated the world. Mountains collapsed in one hemisphere as they jutted up and rose in another. It was impossible to see all this directly, of course, because of the cloud cover that had blanketed the surface, but the IR and VSI scopes showed everything all too clearly. The molten core of the globe, already venting through innumerable new volcanoes, oozed to the surface and produced oceans of lava that spread across the land. This was how the planet had been born, and this was how it was dying.
The second shot represents heating the interior molten portion of the planet, leading to thermal expansion, which has some consequences... e27, maybe e28 joules involved.

And then, of course, the third shot:
An hour and nineteen minutes later, when Tenn fired the third beam that blew the charred and burned-out cinder apart, shattering it into billions of pieces, it seemed almost pointless. Everybody and everything on it had already been roasted, scalded, or drowned. The system's gravity twisted as the planetary well ceased to exist. Shield sensors quietly recorded the thousands of fragments, from the size of pebbles to that of mountains, deflected from the station.
Is much more dramatic in effect. But this is not a new problem. In the EU, there's the Eclipse to consider, with its "eighth power" beam that has only the power to sear a continent.

And then we get to the G canon. It's not just speculation that the Death Star's reactor might go kablooie. It's canon fact that it did. And neither the DS1 nor DS2 exploded with anywhere near the energy equivalent of a week's output for several main sequence stars. Not even small ones.

3. JMS, even the lower end interpretations of several main sequence stars would scale down to more power than the Enterprise, so either way it's a win.

6. Lucky, why don't you back up your claims? Show me contradictions of the ICS 2 and 3, and also, you do realize that the ICS 2 and/or 3 state that fusion is also used to contain hypermatter, right? It effectively retcons the claim of Star Wars ships being fusion powered.
7. Praeothmin, blasters don't use hypermatter, so your analogy is invalid.

Please let me know if I missed something very, very important.

Quartius.

Discussion of fusion reactors, fission reactors, and nuclear weapons in the EU is distinct from the discussion of hypermatter reactors. It's actually established in the Death Star novel that hypermatter reactors are a rather new technology. Fusion is not, and nuclear fusion is very widely used in the Star Wars universe.

Children on Tatooine tell each other of the dragons that live inside the suns; smaller cousins of the sun-dragons are supposed to live inside the fusion furnaces that power everything from starships to Podracers.

Like it or not, the EU that gives us hypermatter reactors puts them side by side with fusion reactors, used extensively by older and smaller ships - both of which are able to compete in battle! This leads into the fourth major problem with scaling. We can scale the Death Star down to the size of an ISD. We can also scale a fighter up to the size of an ISD just as meaningfully. A 160 km DS is 100x the length of a 1.6 km ISD, which is 100x the length of a 16m Y-Wing.

Problem: Starfighters - sophisticated, top-of-the line craft, which in the EU can be observed taking down SDs many times their size like packs of hungry wolves running through a retirement home for sumo wrestlers whose knee injuries have left them crippled, e.g., see the entire X-Wing series of novels and games - have very readily quantifiable firepower.

Very readily quantifiable maximum firepower. Proton torpedoes only cause moderate destruction. In the EU, they rarely if ever are seen creating nuclear-scale explosions (for numerous older references, see here if you haven't already). They have tubes of liquid deuterium for their warheads (this is information of quite recent provenance; NJO: Tempest) and are almost certainly the "thermonuclear firecrackers" described in the ROTJ novelization.

There's actually an explicit yield given for them in an older technical source - something quite rare, the AOTC:ICS's explicit yield figures were highly unusual when they hit the stage. Star Wars Technical Journal #3:

Each proton torpedo carries a nuclear warhead rated at just
under one kiloton.

Every possible analysis - everything, essentially, except for the ICS and Saxton - points to starfighters and small craft having overall power output in the sub-TW range, from the AOTC asteroid chase scene to the anemic explosions caused by TIE bombers in TESB to the way that a tripod-mounted blaster cannon threatens the Millenium Falcon in TESB to the ROTJ quotes, et cetera. Many fighters are fusion-powered.

Even Wong only estimated a "lower limit of 60 GJ" for X-Wing laser cannons on his website (originally authored pre-ICS). This fourth problem is, in my opinion, the elephant in the room that Saxtonites refuse to address. Many Saxtonites go to the extreme lengths of attempting to deny that fighters are even practical in the Star Wars universe.

We can try scaling the Death Star down to capital ships, but we don't see capital ships taking out the Death Star, so we don't know that the Death Star couldn't just eat its weight in capital ships and go home. Fighters, however, do take out capital ships, and are much more common, so scaling up from fighters makes more sense than scaling down from Death Stars. It's a superior alternative.

In summary:

Why do Saxtonites scale down from the Death Star? Because the numbers look more generous that way. The Death Star is a reality-defying superweapon whose mechanism of operation is left unclear, whose true power generation capabilities are left ambiguous, and which represented by itself a major shift in the balance of power within the entire Empire. Scaling down from it is one of the shakiest methods of determining the capabilities of a Star Destroyer. It's unsound for all four of those reasons; it's only commonly done because it happens to be the technique that leads to the highest numbers.

It has a significant problem of induction ("Why should this scale down? It's unique!"), a non-negligible problem that comes from the narrowness of your interpretation (in this case "Why should an uncontrolled overload be the same order of energy as a controlled power draw?", and classically, ala normal Saxtonite arguments, "Why should this be a DET weapon and not a MCR weapon?"), a significant empirical problem ("Actual behavior of the Death Star's reactor and superlaser don't match up with that level of energy."), and a superior alternate technique ("Scale up from fighters, not down from a Death Star!") that contradicts its results.

[Mr. Oragahn]

No really, this is not going anywhere. We already covered ALL those points in WILGA's thread, and I already put a link to it.
There is nothing new presented here.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Some of these quotes below were already posted in several places of this forum, but since they're quite relevant to the Death Star's main weapon, and also contain usable data regarding the power generation, here they are...

Instead of weakening a shield, the superlaser is able to pierce through it by using a coupled neutrino charge. This neutrino charge not only plunges through the shield, but it penetrates the mantle and lower levels of the planet. Great chunks of the crust can be vaporized, sometimes sending the surface exploding outward with enough force to shatter the world.
[...]
Alderaan had no shields of any kind, so it was utterly vaporized. A shielded planet that is overcome by a superlaser may "merely" have its entire surface burned off or split into several pieces. Note that planets don't have to be destroyed to be rendered uninhabitable.

The Eclipse was also intended to devastate entire worlds. Its main weapon was a superlaser weapon although its power was only two-thirds that of the main weapon aboard the first Death Star--it was 'merely' powerful enough to crack the crust of a planet rather than destroy it outright.

2/3 of the power of the DS's superlaser can only crack a crust.
Notice that in this case, "destroy" isn't telling us that the planet is blown to little pieces at a tremendous velocity.
As for cracking a crust, couldn't you achieve that locally with focused teratons of energy?

The Death Star also carried the most powerful weapon of destruction ever devised--a superlaser capable of blasting a planet into billions of asteroids with a single shot. Such a weapon was thought impossible until the Death Star designers devised a way of focusing eight separate laser arrays into a single laser beam with the intensity of a star's core.

Even if you pick a most powerful star that has 10,000 times the luminosity of Sol (3.846 e26 W), you're still two orders of magnitude short of n e32 W.

To make it fit with the low end figure given by Saxton and Wongies, we need to at least reach 2 e32 J, and as Saxton said, go up as far as e38 J.
Now let's say it's being charged for the better part of a day. Say 24 hours, the maximum. That's 86,400 seconds. According to the book "Death Star", the superlaser's power is a mix of the capacitors' discharge and the core running at a given percentage of maximum. The lowest documented occurrence being 4% of both, against a 3 km wide rebel cruiser and 500 X-wings, all vaporized, literally.

That's a total of 3.323 e35 J. The power coming directly from the core is negligible in comparison.
Oh great, now we finally got above the 2 e32 J mark, and we're getting closer to e38 J.
But there's a problem there. 3.323 e35 J is nowhere like the "intensity of a star's core."
The intensity of a star's core, as pointed out just above, can at best be equaled with the output of a blue super giant.

Besides, the funniest part of all is that most stars in the universe aren't even as powerful as Sol, but ten to be a thousandth weaker.
So based on this quotation above, we'd have to accept that the superlaser has a true energetic component rated at some multiples of e22 W, perhaps tens of it at best.

Eclipse
[...]
The Eclipse-class axial superlaser is two-thirds as powerful as one of the component projectors of a Death Star superlaser, and thus lacks the power to destroy a planet-sized target. It can, however, smash through any conceivable shields and render a planet uninhabitable or destroy any lesser target.

That one makes the Eclipse's superlaser apparently worth 2/3s of one of the Death Star's superlaser component projectors.
Technically, the difference with the quotation from The Essential Guide to Vehicles and Vessels is that in this one, the DS's superlaser = Eclipse superlaser x 8.

Let's also remember that the bit about the liberated energy when the reactor would explode was already addressed in the ANH novelization:

Space filled temporarily with trillions of microscopic metal fragments, propelled past the retreating ships by the liberated energy of a small artificial sun.

Picked from an old post of mine. I took the liberty to enhance my older post.

[Mr. Oragahn]

The original Death Star resembled a small moon measuring 120 kilometers in diameter. One of the largest starships ever constructed, the Death Star could travel through hyperspace in search of suitable targets for the Emperor's wrath. The battle station's primary weapon was a planet-shattering superlaser, which Tarkin unleashed to destroy Princess Leia's homeworld of Alderaan.
The Death Star superlaser was powered by an immense fusion reactor located in the heart of the station. The superlaser itself was actually produced by several individual beams, which were in turn generated by amplification crystals located around the cannon's circular well. The beams combined over a central focus lens, creating an energy blast with more firepower than half the Imperial fleet.
[...]
The Empire improved on the superlaser design when constructing the second Death Star. While the first superlaser was fairly inefficient, requiring a recharge period of twenty-four hours, the second Death Star could fire once every few minutes.

This excerpt points out several things. First, the DS is 120 km wide. It's powered by a fusion reactor.
The beams are passed through crystals, so obviously the particles are related to photons, or are not photons but can be altered by bizarro crystals nonetheless.
The first design required recharge rates of 24 hours, while the superlaser on the DSII could fire once every few minutes.
A strict interpretation would suggest that a full recharge with the second design could be achieved in minutes.
It certainly refutes the idea that the Death Star could fire sooner than after 24 hours of charge. The book "Death Star" and the following and older quote disagree with that idea. It's also an odd thing, since in ROTJ, the rapid ROF of the DSII was pretty much capped (otherwise the Rebel cruisers would have been taken down faster). Those shots came once every few minutes as well, but were nowhere close to full blasts. Based on the vaporization of cruisers, if we go with pure DET, it would suggest near-teraton firepower in order to turn those ships into superheated gases, while not providing excessive amounts of energy that would actually harm nearby Rebel warships. Funnily enough, a full charge would then correspong to a blast a thousand and half more powerful, which conveniently fits with the effects noticed on Despayre as in the book "Death Star".

Last but not least, the DSI's superlaser has a firepower superior to that of half the Imperial fleet.
Before you rejoice, let's remember that it is the same book that also gives the planetary turbolaser "a large power core with enough energy to power a small city."
Assuming an oddly power hungry small city, at 1 TW, even if you assume a full day charge, you could only count on 86.4 PJ.
It can destroy a Star Destroyer in orbit. So anyway, at best, coupling this figure with those often touted millions of smaller warships (smaller than ISDs), the superlaser's maximum firepower would be about several teratons with the most generous initial parameters.

The power figure would be in the low exawatt range.

[Palpatine's] single demand was that the new battle fortress have the ability to destroy an entire planet with one quick, massive stroke, against which there could be no planetary defense.
The Imperial code name for the project became Death Star. A new, frighteninly powerful superlaser system was created, one which required an energy supply so huge that it demanded, in essence, an artificial planetoid to house it. All Imperial estimates showed that a single blast from the Death Star's cannon would equal the combined firepower of the entire Imperial flet, and the Emperor, pleased with the concept, ordered construction to begin.
[...]
At the core of the Death Star was an immense, cavernous housing for the battle station's power generator matrix. A fusion reactor of incredible proportions, fed by stellar fuel bottles lining its periphery, produced the raw energy demanded by the Death Star's suerpaser and hyperdrive systems. Much of the station's interior volume was filled by the machinery necessary to sustain such a fusion core, with sublight propulsion systems and defense field generators lining the outer equatorial regions.
[...]
The Death Star's superlaser cannon was once thought to be beyond the capability of Imperial military science. Its faceted amplification crystal combined and intensified eight separate initiator beams into a single laser with all the intensity of a stellar-core ; the impact of this beam could be controlled and scaled to suit the destruction of any target. A beam of one power level was used against enemy capital ships, while a much grater laser could cause the fracturing and disintegration of a target planet.
The superlaser's power had to be recharged between firings and the intensity of each firing determined how many times per day the weapon could be used (from once per minute against spaceborne vessels to once per day against planetary targets).
[...]
At 120 kilometers is diameter, the Death Star was the single largest object ever built.

In this one, the DS could fire once per minute at the lowest possible setting, which would be more than enough to destroy warships.
It's interesting to see how "Death Star" seems to have made an effort to fit closer to this source -safe for the battle station's size- than with the Essential Guide. It provided a case of a capital ship being destroyed by the superlaser, although the SWTJ says that several capital ships had been destroyed. But no other older source ever made such a claim, afaik.

Now, we find another piece that speaks of the firepower of the superlaser.
That one would actually allow ICS power levels, since the stellar core intensity can be pushed as far as n e30 W.
We get ICS firepower both by extrapolating from the statement about the fleet firepower equivalency, and the fact that the core is so small in the schematics of that book that scaling it down would end putting lots of power into the core of an ISD.
However, it's again capped to a lower capability by the fact that it houses a fusion core. Besides, the diagrams show that this core is extremely small. Nothing to do with the gargantuan core seen in the OT:ICS.

[Mr. Oragahn]

The most important advancement in the Eclipse is its main weapon, a spine-mounted superlaser modeled on the main weapon of the Death Star itself. The Death Star's prime weapon was composed of eight individual lasers that could focus together, generating enough power to destroy an entire planet. By comparison, the Eclipse carries only a single laser, but recent focussing and generator advances make this ray much more powerful than the units used on the Death Star. The beam packs enough destructive power to shatter the most powerful planetary shields and sear whole continents in a flash.

Depending on how you understand how powerful this laser cannon is, either greater than the sum of the Death Star's entire weapon system, or at least greater than one of its tributary beams, it's interesting to see that if we understand the last sentence as a description of a single event, then the superlaser can punch through a planetary shield, shatter it and scorch entire continents.

It would aptly mirror the quote about the effect of the DS' superlaser against planetary shields.

[StarWarsStarTrek]

Official Star Wars website:

"The Death Star's prime weapon unleashed unthinkable levels of raw energy capable of tearing apart entire worlds."

'Raw' power dismisses any claims to it being a chain reaction*.



*Which is completely undefined. If you are going to claim chain reaction, you need to explain WHAT this reaction is. The novel Star Wars Death Star handwaves the halo rings, all while still including a "power generation of several main sequence stars" quote, meaning that any weird effect from the superlaser is really just a side effect that does not alter the energy needed to generate the laser.