Everyone knows that Type II Mandalorian Thermal Exhaust Ports require Nal Hutta Crystalline-Ceramic Port Covers when installed against the hard vacuum of space. However, it was not so obvious to the Imperial Bean 
Counters during Death Star construction. Yes, you read that right, the Empire had more agents on the dark side than you realized: it also had accountants.
Energizing a planet destroying laser cannon generates gigajoules of heat, so the original plans for the Death Star included both interior and exterior thermal exhaust ports all over the station. In order to conform to Imperial Building Codes, all thermal exhaust ports were designed with exhaust port covers. Nal Hutta Crystalline-Ceramic Port Covers to be specific. That was a costly mistake, since interior (atmospheric) exhaust ports only needed low grade non-crystalline covers. Which, unfortunately for the architect, were also cheaper. A lot cheaper.
It didn’t take long for the Council of Imperial Accountants to feel a tremor in the finances.
The Council’s brutal response to budget overruns was well known. Many on the station feared the Council more than the Emperor himself. It was whispered that Darth Vader’s respirator could have been upgraded to a more efficient open face model. However, even Lord Vader couldn’t bring himself to stand before the Council to request such an extravagance. Such was the reputation of the Imperial Accountants.
It’s reported that Vader, when asked, would respond, “no, really it’s ok, I think I kind of like the mask. It makes me look cool. Seriously.”
You know what’s worse than being force choked by a cyborg Sith Lord? Appearing before the Council of Imperial Accountants once they learned you were the one who over designed the thermal exhaust port covers, costing them millions. There is no record of the name of the architect responsible, it is known only that he was from Alderaan.
How did the Council of Imperial Accountants manage this costly oversight? In order to shrink the oversized design costs, they value engineered their way out of the overspent design. For all the Emperor’s power with the dark side of the force, the Accountants had no fear of him. The only force they feared was the vacuum caused by a sinking financial money pit.
To the Accountants, there was just no way all those expensive port covers were necessary. What harm could there be in simply removing the covers? Anyway, the port covers were only there as a redundancy against outside high energy impacts. It would take the force of a proton torpedo to get past the built in ray shielding. The Accountants regarded the high cost crystalline-ceramic covers as designer gold-plating.
In the end, the Council decided the port shaft ray shielding would suffice. All thermal exhaust port covers were removed from the Death Star plans, reclaiming millions of credits, and bringing the battle station construction back under budget. The Accountants congratulated themselves on their uncompromising allegiance to the bottom line, and, with the extra savings, relocated their offices to a better view along the station’s perimeter trench.
Everyone lived happily ever after. With no unintended consequences whatsoever.
Our gratitude to the many Bothans who died to bring us this information.
This guest blog post is by Quentin Davis, Senior Software Engineer at Assemble Systems. If you enjoyed this post, please help it spread by emailing it to a friend, or sharing it on Twitter or LinkedIn.
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