Thinking about the Death Star like the Cybertruck. The boss kills anyone who tells him why space stations aren’t moon sized. Weeping with shame, an engineer designs a reactor vent straight to the surface because otherwise it melts down instantly.
There were probably a slew of other design failures we didn't hear about. The inner 3/4ths is just empty rooms because the Empire doesn't have a billion crew members to house, and ventilation doesn't work because the Emperor will never travel 500 miles down there anyway.
Imagining the planet destroying weapon has a 10% chance of exploding every time it fires. It has an enormous ‘fatally trapped in a gravity field’ range. The engineers know, but the Emperor says moon sized planet buster, and you can’t tell him it’s a terrible idea.
This is basically the yeerk empire in a nutshell, too. Visser Three murders his scientists because a fancy ray gun failed a single test against a single captive. The scientists lie to save their skins, say the "hamburgers that erase your free will when you eat them" project works. Bad boss results.
