I read that 34,000 people signed an online petition asking the US government to build a Star Wars–inspired Death Star. In Star Wars, the Death Star was about the size of Earth’s moon and could destroy an entire planet with an energy beam.
The Moon is 2,159 miles in diameter, so even a 1/20th scale model would be over 100 miles in diameter. But these folks wanted a full size Death Star. Obama’s science adviser estimated it would cost $850 quadrillion – that’s $850,000,000,000,000,000. Or to put it another way, that’s enough money to fully fund the federal budget at the 2012 level for 226,304,579 years.
However, the Obama administration nixed the idea. Quoting Paul Shawcross, a science advisor to the administration, “The administration does not support blowing up planets.”
Shawcross added, “Why would we spend countless taxpayer dollars on a Death Star with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship?”
I won’t discuss the coolness factor of being able to blow up planets, but you can’t argue with that last point. Still, when the day comes that astronomers spot a huge, killer asteroid heading toward Earth, we’re going to wish we had a Death Star.
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