The engineer who designed the Death Star

Colin Cantwell 1932–2022

Colin Cantwell was ingenuity personified. After a stint at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in the 1960s, he lent his imagination to Hollywood sci-fi epics. He conjured celestial scenes for 1968’s 2001: A Space Odyssey; for 1983’s WarGames, he helped create one of the first color desktop computer display screens to depict how a Soviet missile launch might have appeared to NORAD. But Cantwell made his most unforgettable impact with Star Wars, designing elements including the X-wing fighter, the TIE fighter, and the cockpit for the Millennium Falcon. His mold for the Death Star accidentally created what would become the planet-killing space station’s key weakness: the meridian trench. “I noticed the two halves had shrunk at the point where they met across the middle,” Cantwell told a Reddit Q&A in 2016. To avoid redoing it, “I went to George [Lucas] and suggested a trench.”

Born in San Francisco, Cantwell “was fascinated by space,” said The New York Times. As a kid, he spent two years in a dark room to treat tuberculosis and ocular impairment. After that, he said, “nothing else could slow me down.” He earned an applied arts degree from UCLA, then became a NASA media liaison, sitting “a few feet from the anchorman Walter Cronkite, feeding him information,” during the 1969 moon landing. Over the next decade, Cantwell moved into “the emerging field of computer graphics,” said The Times (U.K.). Under Lucas, he translated analog tinkering—his prototypes included pill bottles and model-airplane parts—into digitally created wonders. He took his inspiration for the X-wing from the flight of a dart in a British pub, while the rebel blockade runners evolved from an early design for the Millennium Falcon, which was “based on a lizard poised to attack.”

After Cantwell declined Lucas’ offer to run the special-effects shop, Industrial Light & Magic, said The Washington Post, the director downplayed Cantwell’s contributions to Star Wars’ visual world. But the publicity-shy designer finally came into his own in his 80s, “when he began appearing at fan conventions and selling prints of his concept art.” Still, he never wanted to use his imagination solely for special effects, said Sierra Dall, his partner of 24 years. “He liked to create things,” she said, “that people couldn’t unthink.”