Which Is Bigger: The Death Star, Or The Asteroid In Armageddon?

(NOTE: Based on time elapsed since the posting of this entry, the BS-o-meter calculates this is 13.266% likely to be something that Ferrett now regrets.)

Armageddon is a terrible fucking movie.
Now, I know many of you enjoy it, and you are objectively wrong.  I won’t judge you for the terrible awful tastes you keep pent within your blackened hearts, but Gini watched it for the first time yesterday and was rightfully appalled at everything from the four-second average cut length to the ludicrous mangling of physics to the message that the government is incompetent at everything and we’d all be better off if these manly men who Do What They Gotta Do would just be left to build spaceships out of the purest goodness of their heart and then fly into space to nuclear bomb-drill ALL THE THREATS.
But I’m not here to discuss the quality of Armageddon.  I cannot.  That would involve it having some.
I’m here to discuss the Death Star.
For my wife and I were discussing the asteroid in Armageddon, which as we all know is “the size of Texas,” and whether the Death Star was bigger than that.  And I argued quite strenuously that the Death Star was bigger than Texas.  It’s a moon, for fuck’s sake!   It has to be bigger than Texas!
And I…
…was wrong.
The Death Star, at least according to Wookieepedia, was a mere 160 kilometers in diameter – about a hundred miles.  Which means the Proclaimers would have to mall-walk the Death Star five times before they would finish the first verse.  The second Death Star was 900 kilometers, about 550 miles, and what an interesting disappointment it was for me to realize that I could fit four supersized Death Stars into the Appalachian Trail.
Texas?  Texas remains big.  It is 660 miles wide and 790 miles long.  In fact, Texas whomps Death Star I by, well, a Texas-sized margin.
And yet…. the Death Star is a moon?  Well, then we start getting into minutiae, such as the fact that Han is not a trained astronomer, and the removal of Alderaan from the vicinity means that he had no comparison planet to give visual reference, and as Leons Petražickis points out, some asteroids (like Ceres, 950km in diameter, far larger than the Death Star) are bigger than some moons (like Styx, 25km diameter, which would roll around in the Death Star one like a billiard ball).
So alas.  On this one aspect, Armageddon is superior: their threat is larger than the Death Star.  Not as deadly, of course, as the Texas-sized asteroid would merely exterminate humanity and not the planet – although who knows?  With Armageddon’s bollixed take on physics, perhaps the Texas-sized asteroid would have sent the poor earth exploding to smithereens.  I mean, blowing apart a Texas-sized asteroid within the orbit of our moon was perfectly safe for some reason, despite the fact that it was stated in the movie that basketball-sized meteors could destroy buildings, so who the fuck knows what’s going on?
My wife, however, feels quite vindicated in besting me in this argument.  So yes, honey, you were right.  As you usually are.  About everything.
So when Gini tells you that Armageddon sucks, she is also correct.
 

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