How Long Would It Take Darth Vader To Mop The Death Star?
December 12, 2012 in Editorial
The White House is currently being petitioned to build The Death Star. If successful, the initiative is expected to stimulate the economy and create numerous jobs in glamorous fields such as engineering and space exploration. But there are logistical questions that have to be answered such as “how would we mop the floors?”
The Death Star is a sphere with a 140km* diameter, made up of layers upon layers of flooring. Picture a huge office building, except ball-shaped.
To figure out how much moppable floor space there was we decided to assume 4m high ceilings. This is higher than usual to take into account the space that is used by hangers/engines/planet destroying superweapons.
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Height of average ceiling: 4 metres Number of floors: 35,000 Area of each floor: Varies; bigger at the center |
We then used some clever mathematics (that you can find over here) to figure out that the total floor space of the entire space station is 359.2 million square kilometers.
Let’s assume a very generous mopping rate of 1 square meter per second. If Darth Vader were to try to mop the entire station without a break then it would take him 11.4 million years to do it. Which seems like a lot, but would at least give him plenty of time to think about his children.
Together we could finish in 5.7 million years!
But the canteen probably wouldn’t be pleased with a kitchen that is only cleaned every ten million years or so. There’s not too much mud in space so let’s assume that the entire station has to be cleaned once a year. We also assumed a standard workweek of 40 hours. To get the job done in a year 48.0 million workers would have to be hired. This represents around 33% of America’s total labour force.
If you could somehow convince them all to work for minimum wage then the owners of the Death Star would have to budget $723 billion a year to keep the floors clean. This would represent about 30% of the American federal government’s annual budget. Or, if the Pentagon was made responsible for mopping the weapons platform, then you’d have to more than double their budget if you wanted them to maintain existing operations in addition to the mopping. (Although the Pentagon would probably agree to make spending cuts in other areas if they were promised a Death Star in return.)
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Area of flooring that can be mopped per hour per employee: 3,600 metres2 Area of flooring that can be mopped per year per employee: 7.488 kilometers2 Annual wages per employee $15,080 |
Many Americans might be unhappy about working for minimum wage, especially with such a long commute. But if they raise the issue with their superiors then management may find their lack of faith…disturbing.
Our special thanks to commenter Philip ‘Moo’ Birch of Matlock, UK, for the inspiration and correspondence whilst writing this article.
*At the time of writing of our previous article on the Death Star, this was the figure given by Wikipedia for the diameter of the first Death Star, though this has now been changed to 160km. For the sake of continuity we’ve stuck to 140km. Students who quote Wiki, beware.
If you enjoyed this, then you’ll probably enjoy reading about how much it would cost to build the Death Star, and how much it would cost to become an unbeatable evil overlord. You can find this and other articles in our Editorials although for a selection of the best check out our Greatest Hits. And be sure to stay in touch:
if you have never been an infantry soldier, a lot of what you do is sweep, mop and buff floors. So, the Pentagon already has a class of people who get paid (less than) minimum wage and are well-versed in mopping…
You could just have the little driods that go around clean up as they get around. Or have some sort of swipers attached to the walls that sweep periodically. No need for humans to do it.
wipe your feet before entering
The calculations in the article (and the original proposal and amazing response) are based on the economy and workforce of one country (United States of America) on one planet (Earth, Terra, Sol III, etc); the Death Star is the flagship battle station of the Galactic Empire. Their material, labor, and financial resources are so high that they had a second one partially rebuilt and fully armed and operational within about 6 years. I agree that cleaning is probably mouse droids or nanotechnology (although they did oddly have a trash compactor, but it was so inefficient that a large lifeform survived inside it).
Ummmm…some Star Wars version of the Roomba that vacuums, mops, and waxes. This eliminates the need for 48 million laborers and their payroll.
I second this notion. Isn’t it likely that in a space station created with advanced technology, that robots would be responsible for menial tasks such as cleaning? Considering that in the Star Wars universe it isn’t unheard of for a droid to act as a bar tender, waiter, etc? I would assume that there would be a system in place that takes care of all cleaning and maintenance automatically (ie. the trash compactor on the first death star), unless the task required hands on assistance by a non-computerized entity.
The ultimate technology required for creating and operating the Death Star would have to take into account day to day mundane tasks that would be fully automated and run by droids. There would be no payroll or unionized labor.
You can’t think of the Death Star as having roughly the same interior as a skyscraper – that makes no sense. In reality, only a very small percentage of the Death Star would even be accessible to humans, let alone regularly visited.
Isn’t dust just dead skin? The stormtroopers, maintenance personnell…even Vader himself has some skin that would presumably shed.
Also, the odd Wookie.
The use of armor could prevent falling bits of skin.
Is there dust in space?
Dust is the basic materials for the universe, why wouldn’t there be dust in space? That is why the space shuttles are dirty when they come back down sometimes. Not always just the burning.
I wonder if it would be possible to just open up an entire floor and let the vacuum of space suck everything out and incinerate it? Granted the mechanism to do so would be arduous and expensive but it seems like mopping it isn’t all that realistic either…
This would probably work for loose particles of dust, provided everything is bolted down and each individual floor/section is sealed from the others. The floors would still require mopping though, as stuck on stains and grease and grime would not get sucked into space.
My one beef is that they forgot to account for Vader’s force powers, by which he could likely mop remotely. Assuming he could control somewhere around 10 mops effectively at the same time (he can do some pretty heavy lifting, but mopping requires precision, so I think 10 simultaneously working mind-control mops is pretty generous), it should actually only take him 1.14 million years to mop the deathstar by himself.
Holy Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Batman!
Small wheeled robots clean the “real” Deathstar and are terrified of Wookies.
Why in the world would a Death Star need a living being to mop it? I’m guessing robots or cleaning apps built into the walls and floors. Actually, by the time we had the tech to build such a project, we’d most assuredly have nanocleaners by the millions that just constantly cleaned.
Millions per room, per corridor =P.
So incidentally quite an amount. Would a follow up to this post maybe consider how many roombas would be necessary to mop the floors?