Q & As About 'Star Wars': Why wasn’t the Death Star re-engineered after the Rebels exploited the flaw with the thermal exhaust port?
The Galactic Empire's Death Star 1 battle station in its final stages of construction. © 2016 Lucasfilm Ltd. Why wasn’t the Death Star re-engineered after the Rebels exploited the flaw with the thermal exhaust port? Actually, the Death Star was modified heavily after the destruction of Grand Moff Tarkin’s DS-1 at the Battle of Yavin. Although the movies don’t address this - there’s a three-year time jump between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back - it’s extremely likely that the Emperor called his most senior advisors and formed an Imperial Death Star Investigative Committee to discover how a single Incom T-65 X-wing fighter was able to destroy the Empire’s ultimate weapon with two proton torpedoes. Such an investigative body would have had access to archival copies of the DS-1 plans, perhaps provided by the Emperor himself. The original plans were destroyed along with the Imperial Citadel on Scarif shortly before the Battle of Yavin, but it’s not a stretch
