How Much Would It Cost To Build The Death Star?
February 15, 2012 in Editorial, Top
Building a massive space weapon is all very well, but you have to find the materials to build it with. It’s easy to say that “sure, the Death Star would be expensive” but is there actually enough iron in the Earth to make the first Death Star? Centives decided to find out.
We began by looking at how big the Death Star is. The first one is reported to be 140km in diameter and it sure looks like it’s made of steel. But how much steel? We decided to model the Death Star as having a similar density in steel as a modern warship. After all, they’re both essentially floating weapons platforms so that seems reasonable.
 |
Name: HMS Illustrious
Volume: 28,591.2 m3 Mass: 22,000 tonnes |
Scaling up to the Death Star, this is about 1.08×1015 tonnes of steel. 1 with fifteen zeros.
Which seems like a colossal mass but we’ve calculated that from the iron in the earth, you could make just over 2 million* Death Stars. You see the Earth’s crust may have a limited amount of iron, but the core is mostly our favourite metal and is both very big and very dense, and it’s from here that most of our death-star iron would come.
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Name: Death Star Volume: 1,440,000 kilometres3 Mass: 1.08 x 1015 tonnes |
But, before you go off to start building your apocalyptic weapon, do bear in mind two things. Firstly, the two million death stars is mostly from the Earth’s core which we would all really rather you didn’t remove. And secondly, at today’s rate of steel production (1.3 billion tonnes annually), it would take 833,315 years to produce enough steel to begin work. So once someone notices what you’re up to, you have to fend them off for 800 millennia before you have a chance to fight back. In context, it takes under an hour to get the steel for HMS Illustrious.
Oh, and the cost of the steel alone? At 2012 prices, about $852,000,000,000,000,000. Or roughly 13,000 times the world’s GDP.**
But then again, you can just take out a loan from the entire planet and then default on them in the most awesome way possible.
(For the record when converting between iron and steel, Centives assumed a medium steel of 99.5% iron)
*Centives erronously reported this figure as 2 billion, not 2 million. Our thanks to commenter Shaun for pointing out this error
**Centives erroneously reported this figure as $8,100,000,000,000,000, which was off by a magnitude of 100. We’d like to thank commenter Ianvl for pointing this out. Despite our original error, the cost of the death star still comes out to be 13,000 times the world’s GDP as we originally reported. Sincere apologies for the mistake.
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I want death star
that’s way too expensive.
OMG, This and That! A solar system of 12 Halo ring worlds & The Ark, seems to be more useful than –
Even if a Death Star – Star Destour, Class Object. So it can be pointed at all sentian life ever to evolve.
Least keep an eye on Donnal Trump & the Rock-i-Fellows Families of Trillionaries & Evil Gold Sack, scume!
Make yourselves useful! or evolve a little, class 0 or class 1 can’t even do that much under their thumbs.. XD
Governing leaders are liers & cheaters robbing the would. WAR Is not to be Fought! Crime made us pay taxes!t
That’s why we have police & law enforcement!? No, their privately paid!
Start training for the 5th wave, hit the life bout – star ships, escape with the humanities intact from it’s self & aliens!
School is spoon fed & limmited information poorly staffed & over paided! the economy is BS & Money is a joke!
All wer tools, but now all is being used agaist ‘us the people!’ by the higher ups while they get Rich the Fat CEO’s!
The Light of the Force calls! Avoid the one tracked mind that of humanity, they are among us! & Religion? serusly!?
51% is kind of high for millitary taxes! i say give the top in the range of 1.0% to 2.X% to nasa, & Togetter…
bill gates, opara, mc donnals & even evil ass Wall Mart plus the Damn Pope could feed world hungar!!! So!?
Tell them, I dare them to do the right thing! But they all, sold their souls! So shit, why not!? NO Excussist!!!
That was an entertaining rant. I see a few problems with it though. The first thing I notice is the world hunger thing. They may be able to pay for the food to fix world hunger and I’m guessing here, but I’m pretty sure you live in an area where food is easy to get to. We don’t have enough food to feed everyone in the world unless the people who have easy access to food decide to give up a big portion of their food. I’m sure you don’t want that.
We pay so much for military because we are the best military in the world. You might say since we’re the best military in the world, we don’t need to pay so much money for it, the reason we stay the best military in the world is because we spend so much money on it.
The economy is not BS. You make something, you put a price on it. That person pays the price, boom. You’ve got money. The economy is the reason why people in America live such comfortable lives. We have jobs that we can earn money through to for everything we own. Either, you live with your parents still or you’re on your own, but you know that you depend on that job or you depend on your parents to keep the house running from their jobs. Or maybe they’re retired, in which case you’re living off of the money that they spent most of their lives stocking up.
The police may be paid privately, I don’t know enough about it to say so, but they are still protecting us. The reason you don’t have dozens of people roaming the streets looking for a person to hurt or a house to rob is because the police took care of them. If we didn’t have the police, we probably would be living in an anarchy right now. So show a little more respect.
First I would like to say that Star Wars is a fantasy world with some science and it. George Lucas created the death Star as the giant dragon that the hero had to slay. George Lucas had no idea about economy or scale that he was creating for said Dragon. For his hero to have the proper scale and scope of his story. The Dragon needed to be beyond belief so he (Lucas) made a giant starship so big so over the top that nothing could destroy it. That is until our hero shows up. That makes Skywalker’s victory over the the Death Star. That much more than if it’d been just a single starship or even a fleet of starships.
That being said, doing some quick calculations and looking up online sources. The death Star would probably cost about 12% of the Galactic’s budget. But that assumes the cost of metal and labor. In our own solar system. There are asteroids made of iron and nickel that are roughly the size of mountains. We do not have a cheap and reliable way to get to these asteroids to mind them. In this Star Wars universe space travel is easy and reliable. In the extended universe of Star Wars. There are many races that have been conquered as slaves and used as slave labor, as well as robots/droids.
The size of the Death Star seems to be somewhat variable. It ranges from a small as 120 km to as large as 900 km, if we use the largest size for this comparison. Then, this is roughly the same size largest asteroid in the asteroid belt known as Ceres. If we assume that the Death Star has an average density of water. Then it’s mass would be about 2×10^14 kg. We would only have to mine a couple of hundred asteroids made of nickel iron to get the materials needed to build the Death Star. If we use the smaller size we would only need to mind a few asteroids.
In the Galactic Republic. There was between 1 million and 5 million star systems. While in the entire galaxy of the Star Wars universe. There is said to be 180 billion star systems. If each of those had one habitable and a few that could be made habitable. Each system with its own asteroid belt. The cost of metal to build this technological terror known as the Death Star would be a small part in a Galactic budget.
To determine the cost of something like the Star Wars Death star, a moon size space station in terms we humans could understand is impossible, primarily due to the fact that the star wars universe is fictional and the technology is to us largely techno babble, and the materials do not yet exist, and the construction techniques of building such a mega structure is unknown to us,and are not yet known ,primarily due to the fact that currently Earth has not reached stage one society, the republic in star wars is a class three society, that is one that has the ability to use the resources of a large part of their galaxy, and with the use of droids and the ability to construct enormous robot factory’s to produce the materials needed on site, by the mining of not only the planets in a given system but any asteroids for any necessary materials and then using slave labor, who’s food and housing would only be supplied as needed, most likely at the bare minimum,and any who died would merely be deposed with the rest of the trash, the cost to the empire would be small compared to an all organic work force that had to be paid, and transported to and from the construction site, and the empire would have to merely conscript any materials needed from any world and the cost would be spread among all the members of the empire, IE the higher tech items such as computer cores and their subsystems. there may well be a ripple in the destruction of two such structures, though only one was completed, the second was still under construction, the cost might have been higher due to the demand that the main planet destroying weapon be made operational, what is not mentioned is the cost of a large number of imperial class star destroyers and a least one super star destroyer, it was never mention what the payroll of a craft such as the Death star which has a crew compliment 500.000 to one million or any craft in the empire and the cost of training crews to operate the replacement ships not insubstantial in of its self, the technology used in the star wars universe was understood by all the member planets by the time of the rebellion a language called standard was universal and was being used, and with translator droids commutations between the various species of sentient life was easily done this would allow the empire to conscript a work force consisting of beings from almost every planet in the empire, ,you did what ever the empire ordered you do, all the emperor cared about is the success of his plans to rule the galaxy, such a person as the emperor would not care about the death toll. In the end the death stars had the opposite effect,tan was intended it drove the rebellious star systems to greater efforts in stopping the empire, and after the emperor died at endor, the empire fell and fought among it’s self and the end was inevitable, the empire was gone, and the republic was rebuilt after much more death and sacrifices, of unsung hero’s there various factors to any thing such as the star wars death star, IE would it have been a long term asset to the empire, it was intended as a terror weapon, even if it has gone into along term service for the empire, and the rebellion crushed it would have been only a matter of time before the rebellion would have recovered form the shock and deployed a counter weapon, could the empire have sustained a number of such weapons with all of cost of supplying and training replacements crew, repairs , maintenance, upgrades, recreational facilitates even in a universe depicted in star wars, an empire such as emperor tried to created would have been hard pressed to maintain such weapon systems as the Death stars,
That’s awesome thank you very much I love it come over to our house if you are available at all 11vaulcuse street Brighton.
Every planet and sun has different gravity that greatly varies. Such as the surface of our sun has a gravity of 274 (of standard surface gravity m/s2), and that could be true for the whole sun. That means per a pound of mass for the sun it’s 28 times heavier than anything on Earth by weight, or atleast for the surface of the sun and the surface of the Earth. Earth’s gravity on the surface of various regions only differs from itself by decimals, but overall Earth’s gravity is 9.78. But for planets they can greatly vary in gravity away from just decimals. I believe about 2/3rds of inhabited evolutionary worlds in the universe have the same level of gravity, but other inhabited evolutionary planets can have great variances that will affect their race to be as small as 19 inches, or as tall as 45 feet. It could go higher than that, and it could go lower than that. About 1 world in every solar system is inhabited in all of the galaxies. It can be a different planet. All evolutionary races are fully bipedal, but they can have entirely different conditions and appearances. About 2/3rds of evolutionary worlds share may similar evolutionary conditions, but from our perspective they may still appear completely different in many ways. There’s lots of human races like us, some of which have gotten to much greater levels of genetic and cultural enhancement naturally. Genetically for a physical intelligent species we’re only 1% of where we should be at genetically. The bigger a planet is the more gravity it will have to make a race short because they’re pulled down by gravity, and the smaller a planet is the less gravity it will have to make the race taller because there’s less pull.
The Death Star to support beings primarily of our humans’ height range would have the same gravity as Earth’s surface. So the weight on the Death Star would be about the same equivalent as Earth since it has the same gravity. The Death Star generates this gravity which it needs to otherwise the people in it would have a lot of bone loss, and their bodies would be very deformed and frail. The mass of Earth is a lot less than the weight of the Earth. That’s because Earth’s gravity makes Earth 9.78 times heavier on the surface, and I’m not sure if the gravity is similar underneath the surface to the core. Earth’s gravity varies in different regions of the surface. The higher the gravity the shorter a people will be, and the lower the gravity the taller a people will be. Even though in those locations the gravity varies just a little bit, it makes a big enough difference in the peoples’ heights. People’s heights could change through the generations if they move to a different region, not sure. To generally track the amount of material a planet or sun has, they go by mass instead of gravity. Mass is universal, while there’s a lot more variables to look at when accounting for everything when factoring in gravity and weight. The weight ranges for the Death Star mentioned in the above article would be based on that the Death Star has the same gravity as Earth. If someone weighs 180 pounds on Earth, then their mass would be 18.4 pounds.
oh wow, how do I say that in a friendly way? “No offense, but you really have no idea what you’re talking about”. Hardly anything you say makes any sense… You explain so many things, but haven’t understood he difference between mass and weight at all. It’s a bit mixed in daily usage, but we don’t really use “weight” at all, we always use mass. Probably because mass is always the same (for a given object (excluding humans *g*)) but weight varies by where you are.
We buy steel (and potatoes) by mass (kg), not by weight (N). To make things more confusing, we use the wrong units in our daily lives, but that should not lead you on in a scientific discussion. “If someone weighs 180 pounds on Earth, then their mass would be 18.4 pounds.” -> That is bullshit. As much as it hurts me to use this strange unit (pounds), pounds is a(n obsolete) unit of mass, not weight. If your mass is 180 pounds, it will be 180 pounds everywhere. Your “weight on earth” would be roughly 1760 N.
The “difference in different regions” is minimal and you’re the first person ever to say that that’s what makes people taller or shorter. I’ve never heard this before and I’m “fairly sure” ™ that it’s not true. For one thing, as far as I know, people (in Europe) are generally shorter in the South (lower gravity!) and taller in the North (higher gravity!). It’s probably more related to climate (and supply of food and nutrients), but that’s speculation on my part now…
So much for now, I’ve just read your second (new) post and I’m really not sure any more if you’re trolling… oh well, good to clear up some confusion anyway…
To state this in a friendly way? You already show how stupid you are when you’re also completely wrong in your message. Why did you even reply to me if you don’t know what you’re talking about? We always use weight. We never use mass. Mass as far as I know is only used when describing the mass of suns and planets. When we talk about weight it’s for all matter on this planet that’s affected by our gravity. All matter on the planet has acceleration of constant movement even when it’s standing still which is gravity, and on the surface that would be standard surface gravity m/s2. When talking about planets information for the total mass of Earth has been given, but not of weight. I haven’t heard anyone say the weight of Earth. I’ve just heard of standard surface gravity so far. I don’t know if that just counts for the overall surface of Earth, or if it counts for underneath the Earth to the core of Earth. I will say my level of understanding on anything, and I’m flexible with it. I. Over the generations someone would be born smaller or shorter. I’m sure since I said that, someone else might point out more evidence. That has happened a lot when I’ve brought up a lot of new topics, and then so much more information is brought up on them as time goes on from other people of the many subjects I’ve talked about with top researchers directly. In the region I believe gravity is based on altitude, and there could be other factors. Whether the location is North or South, the Earth is always rotating so as far as I know that wouldn’t affect the gravity. So one region isn’t higher or shorter based on South or North, it would be based on the geography of the region of the formation of the lands and the altitude. There could be other factors involved, and if so, most people haven’t heard of them. If so, they’re nothing that you’re saying. You’re trolling and you’re a spam bot. You’re talking style is like some trashy people I’ve seen on other forums, so you’re just speaking under a different name. If there is more or less gravity in North Europe and South Europe that would be based on the altitude as opposed to it being a Northern or Southern region. Who helped you spell that, I can tell that’s not your own writing. Otherwise it would have taken you an hour to write just one sentence. Even with the people helping you write that, it was very poor.
A hacker caused me to post that too early with their programming otherwise I would have added one more sentence and cleaned it up a little bit more. There’s no edit feature here. You can tell when I said “I .” that the sentence didn’t complete because the hacker had it post too early when I was in the middle of writing and double checking it. Finch, your talking style is like some trashy people I’ve seen on other forums, so you’re just speaking under a different name. I am flexible, but with your talking Finch there’s no flexibility with you. The more gravity in a region the shorter the people will be, and the less gravity in a region the taller the people will be. Gravity pulls down. There could be other factors that affect height that I know of but would be too complicated to explain. There could be other factors I don’t know of too. Food availability also makes a big difference, so lack of food, also with improperly prepared food or poor quality food, for generations makes a people smaller and shorter with brain shrinkage. Then generations afterwards when they have food they’re bigger and taller. Sources talk about how groups of people and their families are getting bigger and taller with more food supply. For generations they could have been starving, malnourished, and in poverty. I’ve talked about how food affects that too before elsewhere. There’s certain genetics that can also affect height, so groups of a region could also be taller or shorter based on their particular genetics. You can’t go to a region with less gravity and become taller, but your children over the generations possibly could.
A hacker is also somehow altering some of my comments, so I wish there was an editing feature.
Be careful! Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t really after you!
You’re doing this with people that are illegally hacking my computer. You’re lying. It’s unconstitutional what you’re doing and you stand for nothing you cowardly weak little liar.
As a biologist, I am certain that gravity (or very minor differences in gravity on the surface of the earth) does not affect stature – however new discoveries are always being made so who knows. Nonetheless the way you explain gravity changing the heights of people over time sounds very Lamarckian, which of course has been debunked since Darwin. Gravity does not change a person’s height – rather a person’s height is randomly changed (due to completely random mutation) and the environment must favor such a change and allow it to continue. So, perhaps people who live at lower altitude have a mutation that makes them shorter, and this mutation is more advantageous because the small gravitational increase is costly to them (in terms of energy expenditure needed to grow that extra inch) so the mutation sticks around and spreads through the generations. This is complete conjecture and I am unaware of data that supports this. And even if it were true, genetics would ultimately determine a person’s height anyway because all adaptation must work through genes. If I am short and from a low land area and move to a high altitude area, I will not grow and my children will not be any taller than if they were born at low altitude. Perhaps after thousands of generations you will see a difference but I have no evidence, at this time, to believe this to be true.
*lol* – ok, so now you’re proven beyond reasonable doubt that you’re a troll – a little in this post and a lot in the posts below… 🙂 Sign of a troll: aggressively defending something that is wrong…
Anyway, just in case you want to increase your “flexible level of understanding”: mass and weight are mixed up in everyday usage, but “the real weight” is very complicated and barely used outside of physics. In the unlikely case that you really want to know, check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_versus_weight
“I don’t know if that just counts for the overall surface of Earth, or if it counts for underneath the Earth to the core of Earth”
In case you want to know: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_earth#Depth
“Whether the location is North or South, the Earth is always rotating so as far as I know that wouldn’t affect the gravity”. So? It’s rotating west-east, not north-south. And earth isn’t round like a sphere, it’s “a little flat”. Measured from the center of the earth, everything at the equator is a lot “higher” than anything further north or further south. This makes more difference than mountains. A mountaintop in Sweden will still have higher gravity than the grassland in Africa. Other factors include centrigufal force, which is also higher near the equator (because that’s where earth is moving faster). The difference between lowest and highest gravity on earth is 0.7% (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24068-gravity-map-reveals-earths-extremes.html). So within one continent, it would be minimal.
“Who helped you spell that, I can tell that’s not your own writing. Otherwise it would have taken you an hour to write just one sentence”
Huh? Here, take a fish: >
how did you guys turn this into an argument
lumbo7332, Finch turned it into an argument and I was on topic. Finch is a complete idiot and he thinks he’s clever because some stupid ugly white trash women is literally spelling and writing for him. She’s telling him what to say. She’s really stupid too but she doesn’t know it. She probably spent a long time writing that reply to him to where his message probably took hours whereas I take about 5 minutes to reply with something that can be significantly longer than what he would say. I have no idea who he is, but I know he’s some ugly deformed looking borderline retarded moron.
There’s no need for name calling. And if you were so smart, you wouldn’t be making assumptions about how someone looks based on their writing. You had such potential Dan. I’m very disappointed in you.
Finch, you’re a complete idiot and you’re a troll. You put random links there and said random words without you knowing what you’re talking about at all. Some white trash woman or some trashy minority woman helped you put that with the way you reply. If you notice when you didn’t reply with your garbage I was on topic and you’re the one bringing in the BS. The gravity around Earth changes depending where it is. The surface gravity of Earth is generally about the same overall but it varies slightly in mountains and depending on the elevation. The gravity under the surface, and the gravity higher in the air can change. Surface gravity is the surface the person is standing on. If someone is in the mountains as higher elevation they’re going to be shorter but have more mass per weight because of higher gravity but only slightly within a 5 inch range or so which isn’t much in height difference. That’s sort of a theory but it’s probably true. For a man made Death Star the gravity should be about the same when it’s created for the ship because it doesn’t have the same complexity of a planet. Throughout it’s meant to be at surface gravity level in a man made Death Star or a man made ship made at the settings of the native race’s surface gravity so that their bodies can adjust to it. Weight is mass with gravity. The more gravity to mass and you’ll have more weight to every 1 gram of mass. I knew this when we began this conversation and I explained it to you several times. A Death Star would need a special gravity generator otherwise there would be very little gravity to where the body needs that gravity threshold in order to stay strong otherwise the bones will weaken and the knee caps will stick out the opposite direction to where the person may be permanently injured when they go back to their native planet. That’s a major issue with space travel is that astronauts can only be out so long because they haven’t figured out gravity generators yet which has to do with magnetism of gravity pull, planck length, and quantum mechanics. And probably other subjects.
Yo. Just because you got proven wrong doesn’t mean you need to hate on other people. You’re a troll and you got called out. Stop being a whiny bitch about it.
Really? Everything contains mass, its not just planets and suns. You contain mass, finch has mass. Your house has mass, your car has mass. Even your little piece of paper in the printer has mass. Weight is due to gravity. In space, things are weightless, but they still have mass. On earth, we call it weight because that’s how much gravity is pulling down on us.
The weight on the Death Star would almost be the same as the weight on Earth. Meaning that a pound of mass on Earth, would almost weigh the same as a pound of mass on the Death Star because they share very close amounts in gravity pull. I don’t know if once people are born in a certain altitude they carry that gravity in their weight. So if they go into a region with less gravity they’ll still weigh the same amount. If so people could have slight variances in the amount of mass they have compared to the amount of gravity they have pound for pound of mass. The amounts for what they gave on what the Death Star would weigh could be highly accurate, and that would be based on the same overall gravity pull of the surface of Earth. The Death star would have a lot less mass than Earth, and the Death Star would have a lot less weight than Earth.
You’re still confusing mass and weight. I have a mass of 75 kilograms, or 4.93 slugs (in US units). I weigh 735.5 newtons/165 pounds on Earth. Earth has a gravitational constant of 9.8 m/s^2. The moon has 1/6 of that, so I would still have a mass of 4.93 slugs but weigh 27.5 pounds. This is why in videos of astronauts on the moon they’re hopping in the air. Their muscles are used to moving, say, 180 lb on Earth, but on the moon all the sudden they’re too strong and end up jumping in the air.
For the Death Star to have the same gravitational pull as Earth, it must have the same mass. Because it’s described as “moon-sized” this means that overall the Death Star would have to be denser than the Earth. The weights described are assuming Earth gravity. If you were to take all that metal to the Moon it would “weigh” six times less, but the mass would be the same.
He’s a troll (see threads above), feeding him is useless… (plus, his post is 4 months old)
Apart from that, pound is a very bad unit for explaining weight vs. mass. Pound is a unit of mass, not weight. Well, usually. I looked it up and it seems that “The pound or pound force (symbol: lb, lbf, or lbf) is a unit of force in some systems of measurement including British engineering units and British gravitational units”… so very British. More commonly, it’s a unit of mass: “The pound or pound-mass (abbreviations: lb, lbm, lbm) is a unit of mass used in the imperial, United States customary and other systems of measurement.” (all from Wikipedia which lists additional sources).
Wikipedia also says: “Usage of the unqualified term pound reflects the historical conflation of mass and weight. This accounts for the modern distinguishing terms pound-mass and pound-force.”
I think that makes it a rather bad unit for explaining this difference 🙂
When planets are measured, they’re measured in mass, not weight. The planet’s weight would be much more than it’s mass. Weight is mass with gravity. Pounds can either be measured in mass or weight. Your calculation was off. 165 pounds of weight with Earth’s surface gravity is 16.87 pounds of mass at a surface gravity of 9.78. At the 9.8 surface gravity you said 165 pounds of weight would be 16.83 pounds of mass which isn’t that different from 16.87 pounds of mass. A gravity generator would be made for the Death Star to alter the gravity which would alter weight while the mass would stay the same. You can’t keep adding mass to increase the gravity because it doesn’t have the other complex parts of a planet for the magnetism such as that core and elements. The Death Star would then be a lot different than a moon with how gravity is with the Death Star even if the Death Star is a similar size to the moon. If the Death Star didn’t have a gravity generator it would be inhospitable to live in because it’s bad for the bone structure in low gravity. If out in space for too long in low gravity for a very long time, the knee caps will go into the opposite direction to where the person would be permanently injured when they return back to the surface gravity they’re normally at. On Earth the person’s weight is based on surface gravity which is 9.78, but you said 9.8. The surface gravity varies slightly all throughout the surface of the planet because of elevation such as mountains of higher elevations and lower elevations. It’s generally said to be 9.78, but it can change slightly by decimals depending on the elevation. I had a theory that if a person is born at a higher elevation the gravity will pull them down more to where they’ll weigh more, and they’ll have more weight per a gram of mass. That gravity pull also makes a person slightly shorter where the variances could be by 5 inches, so by decimals the height and weight are only slightly different. Other genetic factors can determine the height of the person in their ancestry.
haha no idea how I got here but it’s definitely the most interesting thing I’ve found on the internet.
things dont have mass in space dumbass
Things don’t have weight in space. Mass is different. Weight is basically an Earth thing, but Mass was made so it could be measure that doesn’t change regardless of where you are. Feel free to look it up, I might be off, but I think that’s the general idea.
mass is effectively how much material something is made of. Weight is the effect of gravity on a given mass. A person would weigh less on mars, and even less on the moon. Their mass would stay the same.
On a different note, anything with mass produces gravity. for the death star to naturally have the same gravity as earth, it would have to have equal mass. since the death star is the size of a small moon, it would have to be much denser than earth. (density is how much mass is in a given volume. on earth a pound of feathers and a pound of lead weigh the same, therefore have the same mass, but lead is much denser). since the death star as room for people to live and work inside it, it probable isn’t as dense as the earth. the thing to remember is that star wars is science fantasy, and they have artificial gravity.
You’re right about mass vs. weight, but not quite right on gravity. Gravity depends on two things (or probably quite a few more once you ask the theoretical physicists who care about weird stuff like curved spacetime, but let’s stick to simple physics): mass and distance. Gravity decreases quite quickly with distance so a smaller “thing” wouldn’t need quite the same mass to have the same gravity at the surface. And here it becomes tricky: we don’t really care about gravity at the surface – unless you want to go stargazing in a spacesuite. We care about gravity *inside* the death star which would be rather low either way… even inside Earth, gravity is much lower than it is at the surface. If you’re curious, take a look at the link I posted above: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_earth#Depth
But yeah, of course science fiction has found “solutions” for this problem 😉
Except weight can be caused by forces other than gravity! For example, were this hypothetical Death Star made to rotate at quite a significant velocity, the centripetal acceleration would cause an observed weight (towards the outside of the Death Star)*. Assuming this space station is built with floors oriented such that when standing, a passenger’s head is pointing towards the center of the craft, it would feel to the person as though they were standing on the surface of a planet. That’s (a part of) General Relativity in a nutshell: an accelerating reference frame is indistinguishable from a gravitational reference frame.
*This works if you’re okay with a cylindrical Death Star that fires from one of the ends
It could be built of a material much stronger than steel. If that’s true it would take even a lot more to build the Death Star. You based that for the first Death Star. The second Death Star is much bigger. The second Death must have been being built while the first Death Star was made. The purpose of the first was to gain as much extra power that they could, before they could get total power with the much bigger second model. Their technology would be far ahead of ours. It looks like Earth’s technology is developing fast so we could be caught up to them in less than 1000 years. I don’t know if they use plasma or lazer for their guns. The light sabers use plasma. Depending if they use lazer or plasma in their guns, vehicles, air craft, and space craft could tell you how strong their material is for their ships in taking that type of gunfire. Is their aircraft their space craft, and can both enter and exit through the ozone layers. If so then their material may be a lot stronger. That can also be factored in. It didn’t look like they could easily just break into the Death Star’s material through gunfire or explosives. Also the Death Star’s material layer could be extremely thick so we don’t know the thickness.
How much does the first and second Death Star weigh, if the first Death Star is about 160km in diameter (about 2,144,660km in sphere volume), and the second Death Star is over 900km in diameter (over 381,703,507km in sphere volume). Steel right now only costs like 10 cents a pound in bulk, and in the future in bulk it might only cost 1 cent a pound. We’ll come up with strategies to extract these materials a lot more efficiently. With my concepts the Death Star can be built significantly faster with non-sentient programming just like how the master chess players worked with computer programmers to create the computer chess program you had access to since atleast the computers in the early 1990s. I could be wrong but I think graphite is 334 times tougher than steel, and if it were modified it could be as much as 16,665 times tougher than steel. That would mean from 334 to 16,665 times less material would need to be used. It would be a much thinner but much stronger layer. The Death Star would also weigh 334 to 16,665 times less at the same size. If it needs to weigh more in battle gravity can be added to the structure to give it more weight temporarily. Steel can also be modified to be much stronger but I’m not sure by how much. Almost all of the internal body of the Death Star can also be built of this much tougher material. They can use hologram projectors to save a lot of money. Endumax polymer fiber might normally be about 15 times stronger than steel, and with the modification it can be made to be about 339 times tougher than steel. Graphene and carbon nanotubes could each be about 333 times tougher than steel, and when they’re modified they could be 33,333 times tougher than steel. Carbyne is about 667 times tougher than steel, and when it’s modified it’s atleast 70,000 times tougher than steel. The literal term when comparing I think is toughness. As time goes on endumax polymer fiber, graphite, graphene, carbon nanotubes, and carbyne will become significantly cheaper. Energy can collect more joules, so the Death Star could be projected of pure energy that works as a material, and then a hologram fills the projection so it has a physical appearance. The energy can be recycled so it doesn’t get used up such as cold fusion, and it can also have a radar grid energy collection parameter to collect joules given off so it can also reuse those joules. It has cloaking technology. That could be the fastest way to build it with energy grids where the programming could be the size of futuristic CD’s that store a lot more information. Then the projection takes the complex form so it can be housed inside of. Energy has joules too, and energy can be concentrated much higher in joules than any other material found on Earth. Joules can do many different things. A neutron star at the size of 1 gram of water is 1 trillion kilograms so it’s the most dense material but it doesn’t have as many joules per a gram as other sources such as matter and antimatter. A neutron star (dead star) is only 20km (4188km sphere volume) and has 1.4 times the mass (2,759,151,800,000,000,000,000,000,000,000kg) of our solar system’s sun Sol. The positive charge Absolute, the neutral charge Absolute, and the negative charge Absolute is the most dense and powerful type of substance, with the only thing more than that is Allness which is by far the most powerful type of substance but it’s beyond any of these realities including the highest reality below it. I don’t know about dark matter, ordinary matter, and dark energy which I think the 218 minerals/elements with 13 of those elements being ormus elements come from (it’s just taught of 120 elements in most sources but they’re saying 218, but there could be more found in the future).
http://www.algebra.com/algebra/homework/Triangles/Triangles.faq.question.117074.html
http://www.rkm.com.au/calculators/calculator-circle-sphere.html
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/know_l1/pulsars.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_star
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth
With those materials, the modification technique to make them much stronger, and nanites apart of a computer automated program the Death Star could be built so much faster, cheaper, and much higher quality. The gravity of the material in the entire ship could be altered to where they can generate more and less gravity in the material depending on the situation, while the gravity outside of the materials of the ship would stay the same to support the people in the ship. The ship’s gravity in the materials could be lowered to save life of the materials to where it just periodically increases the gravity temporarily of the materials based on the situation. The gravity in the ship outside of the materials would stay the same at all times to support the people on the ship. The people that wrote the message of the Death Star’s weight based the material that has Earth’s gravity pull of 9.78. The weight the people gave of the materials of the Death Star may be accurate. That would be the weight of the Death Star, not the mass. Mass is weight without gravity.
Another powerful energy source that can be used is Nikola Tesla’s teleforce. It can generate any amount of energy from anywhere in the world. I think he was able to generate electricity anywhere at any amount. It was an advanced form of a charge particle beam projector. He knew how to make it but he kept it in his head. He called it the peace ray and the death ray. It was meant to create unlimited energy, stop all wars, and create an eternity of peace for everyone.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleforce
And just think, all that run by a Commodore 128!
Great work. I like thinking about things like this. Next project: identify how much energy the Death Star would require to spectacularly blow apart the earth. What are the candidates to create that energy? What storage methods would provide enough energy density to hold all that energy within the volume of the Death Star before projecting from the giant deflector dish at the Earth? and how long would it take using all the power plants on Earth to generate that much energy?
I dont think the human race would ever be able to build a reallife death star anyway
Not with that attitude…
fire a laser into the planet to create a hole to the core, then blast in a few tonnes of anti-matter….
In the movies it was some kind of reactor core
Does the price include bulk discount?
probably not, but it should have a slave labor discount. the empire was evil.
I like trains
Yes you do.
I have already started building my version. With 3D printers. Unfortunately my calculations revealed there weren’t enough 3D printers to complete it within my lifetime. As a result I will be printing 3D printers for the first 11 years. BUT THEN I will start on the trash compactor.
Be careful: if the Trash Compactor in the Star Wars “long ago and far away” universe had been designed properly, the second Death Star wouldn’t have been needed…
I have already started building my version. Using 3D printers. Unfortunately my calculations showed there are not enough 3D printers to complete it within my lifetime. Therefore I will be printing 3D printers for the first 11 years. BUT THEN I begin on the trash compactor.
about the new Star Trek movie. I’ve always found it really, really difficult to describe or articulate how this invisibility feels, how it affects you and the way that you view and experience media. I remember someone posted a one page article or so much wherein all of the actors .bye the way your page is so nice.thanks your posting.
Is this the ramblings of the dumbest human being on earth?
no, because the dumbest human being on earth wouldn’t be able to calculate the math
If you are talking about a fictional space station, then you have to use the fictional world. In the Star Wars universe, they wouldn’t need to mine steel from a planet’s core, as the organisation building it, in this case the Empire, have access to metals from millions of other planets. We can also assume that the empire takes tax from all the planets, so that would take care of the financial issues. The only real problem would be that it would take too long to make a difference in any war. That is unless someone else can come up with an answer to speeding up the build time.
I came here by accident – I stumbled here. I have always thought that most of the Internet was trivial and pointless but this page is the epitome of pointlessness. A hypothetical discussion about the present day cost of building a fictitious future artefact. I am overwhelmed by the number of levels on which this is nonsense and amazed by the number of people who have responded taking this seriously. Here’s a suggestion for a new discussion: How much of the current US military budget would have to be given up to guarantee the end of world hunger?
I read around 1 percent of the us military spending for 10 years could do the trick
What’s funny is you coming here acting like some holier-than-thou asshole when you can’t even spell “artifact”. We know it’s not serious, Johnny Raincloud. It’s just a fun conversation, for the fun of it. Lighten up, jerk. You’ll live longer. And even if all of the US military disbanded and we cut ALL the funding for it, that still wouldn’t even scratch the surface of the world hunger problem, you idiot. And then, of course, we’d be defenseless. Next time try thinking a little before your open your fat dumb mouth.
Also funny is that while calling someone an asshole and idiot and mocking their spelling, you’re completely oblivious to the concept of non-US spelling. Regions outside North America include an island near Europe called “England.” The Englandians use an archaic form of spelling in which “artefact” is in fact correct. You may also see words like “humour, colour, doughnut, through” and their alphabet includes the letter “zed.” Some people in Australia also write in Englandian – we aren’t all native German speakers.
The correct spelling is : ‘Arsehole’ .
‘Donkey-hole’ makes no sense, does it ?
I agree that was a jerk thing to do but he did have a point aboute the military we currently spend 3.8 trillion anually on military spending an the united nations estimates it would take 30 billion every year for ten years the US spends more on military than the next ten highest countries if we could just pull out of the wars and raise taxes a little we could accomplish allot. You are a jerk for leaving that comment of course the ideas impracticle it involves opening up the earths core. Us nerds just find these things fun.
yah but lets say we do disband the entire military. Then those starving people wouldn’t die from starvation but rather death by warlords, terrorists, dictators and any type of physco with an agenda. Also, don’t check my grammar, (not an English major).
Oh, so you (The US) would continue to manufacture weapons and sell them to any third-rate dictator with some oil to spare or what ?
If you don’t think that the Death Star is cool then fuck you.
yea what he said
To end world hunger? I’d say it will cost around $852,000,000,000,000,000. No one on Alderaan is complaining of hunger.
What gets me about you hand wringing types is that you don’t understand basic humanity. To feed someone, someone else has to do work. Now if everyone is guaranteed to be fed, who will bother working?
Do you own work. Don’t force your charity work on other people.
Internets. Srs bsns.
and most of the people in the “world hunger” category are pretty much useless. this is why we don’t notice when they die.
also it not a future artifact as star wars happened a long time ago in a galaxy far far away and that was in the 70’s
hahaha
This is not a future artifact. The Death Star was built a long time ago, and in a galaxy far, far away.
Whats the point? We cant travel faster than the speed of light so it would sit around our orbit until we blew ourselves up with it. To get anywhere worth annihilating, it would take centuries, if not millennia. Besides, who do we even want to blow up with a Death Star? As of yet, there are no alien species that has pissed us off bad enough. Or even said hi.
It’s just a nerdy conversation we’re having for fun. Lighten up, jerk.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive
[…] if you can imagine quite a bit, Centives, the economics blog of students of Lehigh University, says it would cost […]
Financing the Death Star (Stage One): https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/become-energy-producer-building-one-million-6-megawatt-wind-turbines-over-next-10-years-and-selling/JC63gjkl
why don’t we just hijack Vesta and pull it into near earth orbit and start carving
I can’t believe this – the premise is all wrong. As my Dad (a corrosion chemist, actually)pointed put to me when we saw the original movie in the theatre way back when, the walls would need to be quite thin, which is why the Princess (I can’t believe I’m writing this) knew she could laser through the wall.
So what is the Death Star made of? Air, mostly. Flimsy plastic in the middle, except for occasional stronger sections to seal off in case of emergency. (Forgot the term.)
The whole issue is the weapon anyway. Doesn’t matter what it’s housed in.
Besides, can’t you just destroy all life on the planet – which is the goal, after all – with a few H-bombs with carbon filters? Or is that old thoery disproven?
Actually there are a few other mistakes.
First its not steel or iron. It’s synthetic carbon fiber, the same high strength, stronger than steel but produced like pkastic. For the filler. Second. It costs almost nothing for a company like DSI (deep space industries) to fish for steel in asteroids. If you knew what you were doing you could build a manufacturing plant and do it for under one mil.in space. I bet that guy who owns virgin and their space program could do it for the cost of renting s mining vessel.
Has anyone considered converting the moon into a heavily modified death star? The amount of iron required would be cut down massively. Most of the construction cost would be devoted to hollowing out the myriad areas beneath the moon’s surface required to house the power source, living spaces, control spaces, defensive systems, etc… Either way, likely cheaper that creating the actual death star.
PLUS
Has anyone considered the gravitational effect constructing the death star would have on the earth? It would need to be built well away from both the earth and the moon, further complicating and extending construction time. As opposed to creating it by hollowing out the moon, which, while having dire consequences on the earth’s tides, etc, would still be more cost effective and timely than the actual death star.
What is it with the gravitational effects people keep mentioning? For the gravitational effect on earth, let’s do a quick reality check: It’s *tiny*! The diameter reported above is 140km compared to the moon’s 3500km. That’s exactly one 25th… (how handy). The volume is a multiple of the diameter to the 3rd power, so the volume of the moon is 15,625 times larger than that of the death star (earth vs. death star: ~750,000).
In addition, the average density of the death star would likely be lower than that of the moon… Iron/steel is not even three times heavier than the moon’s material, but of course it wouldn’t be (anywhere close to) solid.
So the gravitation of the death star would probably be between 1/20,000 and 1/100,000 that of the moon – unlikely to cause tidal waves on earth 😉 (unless it’s in low orbit maybe…)
Yeah, transforming the moon might be easier than building the death star “from scratch”, but it would have its own challenges… it would be hard to navigate… and a “stationary” death star is no fun… also, as you change the moon’s mass (assuming you do), it would come closer to earth or drift away… and given the masses mentioned above, it would be hard to do anything against that…
Also, I thought we’d want to use the death star not against earth, but against other planets so it would be good if we could move it. Maybe I’m naive… 😉
no manches mugres gringos locos mejor deberian aventarse unos tamales
bueño mexicali ….los gringos soys vosotros americaños nosotros gallegos,,,
a) all very well, The first one is reported to be 140km in diameter and it sure looks like it’s made of steel.?
steel is iron and carbon….you can make a SPHERE of pure nano robots of C….or paper or rubber and take the iron of
and you paint all with gray pidgeon ink….
But how much steel? We decided to model the Death Star as having a similar density in steel as a modern warship….no a warship in the sea needs armour plating and in space you have a electromagnetic one or what shit is…ergo a thin armour is needed
less than the two or five inche’s of naval ships
one armour plating uni molecular …only one layer of molecules you know
After all, they’re no gravity in free space except the death star gravity
Scaling up to the Death Star, this is about 900,000 tonnes of steel.9 with six zeros.
a colossal mass like yours have a heavy gravity near the center of the death star 140 km’s below
remains the technology to make nanotubules of steel
but if you have nanotubules of pure carbon in you….is only a question of time
one 1,000,000 years or two hundred millenia
the volume…see avogadro number see the density of cast iron or steel
and put 20% for internal compartimentation
Connectivity and compartimentation of the death star accounts for 10 to 30% of total mass
and you can walk over magnetic fields……the connectivity and compartimentation can be made of electrical fields
With that much mass in a Death Star, one wonders if today’s steel, or steel in general, can actually hold up to the gravitational pull that ensues in this sphere.
But money-wise: would not it be cheaper and quicker to just build a 600m-diameter Borg Sphere?
For modern warships, the cost of the hull structure (mostly steel) is only about 10% of the entire cost of the ship, including engines, systems and weapons. The actual cost of the Death Star would be therefore be ten times the reported value, in other words about $9 quintillion in today’s money.
Even more, because we’re talking about getting all this stuff into space, which today cost’s about $10,000 per pound to do, according to NASA.
“In today’s money” being the key item. Since this will take nearly 900,000 years, at a rate of inflation of 3.5 (the average rate of construction inflation over a long period of time) the actual inflation-adjusted cost would be 14,000 times higher (escalated to the mid-point of construction) by the end of the project, or 126 Sextillion. Still would be 13,000 times the earth GDP as that rises that same 3.5% per year as well.
Umm… too bad this post is wrong both in the math and the reasoning… First: We really don’t care about the cost in some 900,000-years-in-the-future prices… I really doubt we’ll still have dollars by then. The “number on the bill” really doesn’t matter – what matters is purchasing power and that is best expressed in today’s dollars because those are the ones we know best… so basically, if anything, you should point out that it would be *less* in today’s dollars if it’s spend over a long timeframe.
Then, 900,000 years of 3.5% inflation doesn’t mean prices increase by a factor of 14,000 (they do *that* in less than 280 years), they increase by a factor of 10^13,500 (10 to the 13,500th power, i.e. a 1 with 13,500 zeroes… I’d like to write down the actual number, but it’s not even worth starting with that, it would fill the screen! Yes, 900,000 years is a long time…). It’s hard to convey the size of those numbers… people think you’re off by a factor of 4 or 4,000, while actually, you’re off by a factor of 10^13,495…
And that would *not* still be 13,000 times the earth GDP because that increases by 3.5% PLUS inflation (i.e. in “real” terms). If GDP increased exactly as much as inflation, we wouldn’t gain anything… IF GDP continued to rise like that, the pure dollar amount would be pocket change in 900,000 years. Might seem weird, but think back 900,000 years… value of just 1 pound of steel (in the right shape…)… or just about any item you can buy for 1-5 dollars now…
Last but not least, I think it’s safe to assume none of the above will continue for the next 900,000 years… But hey, you started the math…
The amount of power generation and fossil fuels needed just to power the ray would be insane. I’d like to see you guys come up with the required power source, batteries, etc. calculated out! That would be hysterical.
you could us a fusion reactor that would give more than enough power
Let us not forget a little thing called gravity. How big is this thing? The size of the moon? Well it wouldn’t have to be very big for it’s own gravity to crush it. So in order to have any cavities or quarters inside of it we would need some sort of force field or anti-gravity technology. Possible, but this is several hundred years into the future before we’ll have anything like that…
Why is everybody so obsessed with gravity?? The gravitation of the death star would probably be between 1/20,000 and 1/100,000 that of the moon (see just a few posts above). Actually, a little gravity would be quite handy on a spaceship…
And seriously: “Well it wouldn’t have to be very big for it’s own gravity to crush it.” – is that so? Does the earth’s gravity crush anything we build except for cardboard houses? Is it impossible to have any cavities or quarters under the surface??
There are several things wrong with your comment, respectfully. I’ll try to break them down one by one. First, where did you come up with your estimate of the gravity of 1/20,000 that of the moon? I’m not going to scour the comments above to look for it. Whoever said it was wrong… So that’s why I asked the question of just how big is this thing going to be? If it’s about the size of the moon, or larger, which is the indication in the movie, then yes, it’s own gravity would crush it. If you put a cardboard house 3,000 miles beneath the surface, yes, it would be crushed by all the rock above it. And metal is more dense than rock…
So you know that there are several things wrong with my comment but you haven’t even read the article we’re talking about? And you know that some comment is wrong without knowing the numbers it’s based on? I just mention that respectfully, of course 😉 And you cannot be bothered to check the comments above, which are FOUR (plus replies), btw… I can recommend Ctrl-F…
but oh well, back to the topic: The article we’re talking about says “We began by looking at how big the Death Star is. The first one is reported to be 140km in diameter”… Far from the moon, which is 3500 km in diameter. So the volume of the moon would be 15,625 larger than that of the death star. Sure metal is more dense than rock, but the moon is solid and the death star most certainly would not be.
Even without doing any math on your own, the article says that the metal in the earth would be enough to make 2 million death stars… that alone tells us a lot about its gravity…
Actually, it’s a simple force of gravity calculation. F=Gm1m2/r^2=m1g where m2 is the mass of the death star, r is the radius, G is the gravitational constant, and g is the acceleration due to gravity. Since the volume is given, using V=(4/3)pir^3, we can find the radius of the death star to be 182033-m and 1.08 x 10^15 tonnes is 1.08 x 10^18-kg.
Plugging this all in, g would be somewhere around 2.17 x 10^-6. Gravity on Earth would be about 4.5 million times greater than it would be on the Death Star, i.e. gravity would be mostly nonexistent.
One question that no one has answered is how many toilets are there on the Death Star? Or is there just a communal trough ( Or was that the Equatorial Trench ) that fed into the 2m exhaust point?…
Ok, Deathstar? Its maybe a bit to much? But still a one Battlestar like Galactica will be possible. It has just a one million tons, like ten aircraft carriers. And have classic weapons, missiles, guns and some nukes. Just need FTL drive but we can still build a body, like Chinese with aircraft carrier, they token about 20 years to build it complete…
Since the petition reached over 25.000 signatures now, I think we can expect the construction of the star to begin shortly. Great! I would be willing to pitch in 50 bucks for the funding if that helps to speed things up.
Well, the White House isn’t going to build a Death Star, but they did link (https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/isnt-petition-response-youre-looking) to this blog.
Transported to GTO by SpaceX (54 Million for 10692 lbs) the price for the transfer of the needed steel to orbit would be 10 Trilliarden Dollar. So better build a space elevator. Or build it from asteroids – theres only enough coal on earth to makethe coke to produce 568 billion tons of steel – not nearly enough for the death star.
The transport cost would be 10*10^21, i.e. 10 Sextillion Dollars, (“Trilliarden” is German for 10^21)
Well, thank you for your research, but I think we’ll have to think outside the box here.
If the project[1] goes ahead as planned, we’ll have to begin construction by 2016, so we’ll have to change some variables…
[1] https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/secure-resources-and-funding-and-begin-construction-death-star-2016/wlfKzFkN
Make a death star.. put giant ass solar panels on the surface.. place it between earth and mercury. Make the Death Star into a profit.
quiet weird how i end up here i was working on similar project 🙂 project is:We need to create new pay system as TIME(money)it is means we need to get rid off all money currencies, sample of TIME ERA if you work 160 hours a month any where in the World its means you will get to your (time account)160 hours, or any hours you work for-in this World all prices will be priced on (hours,minutes,seconds)sample bread cost 1 working second, water 1 working second, house 500 working hours, energy 3 working minutes and so on…All of us live in the moment which last only 70 or 100 years(remember what you buy what you own it’s only a moment when you die 95% of us saying we want that our children to have better future so after death we leave everything for them is important then to leave for our new generation good back ground or modern time system where the future generation can look forward in money-less system on which can improve even more) at present hard money system everything you work and live for, restricting your big ideas all ideas at present comes to budget, it makes you wonder how energy resource been used from our Earth which belong to all mankind not big corporations who decide price. As soon as possible we need to write off 50 trillion Worlds debt, make United World, all army needs us protect from asteroids which can strike the Earth no more wars as wars just speed up human death compare to natural human death. All of us we need create strategy for future generation to leave planet Earth as time running out and soon Earth will be not habitable to live, Buy creating time system all of us can rebuild complete new World system change the way we think (about money)and calculate how much is our life moment worth and start living science time with massive science and medicine projects with future education for life which able to humankind to live new era of space time. Remember first money was shells from Seychelles and our human minds progress them or made thousand years later to 50 trillion debt. Our human conscious is bigger than universe and faster than speed of light so do not tell me is not possible to live without money everything is possible but all of us on this have to work together… cybermind-Episode 1- if we build 100 km space ship it will be enough work for all planet as space ship will be round like” atom hydrogen” , earth pressure energy collectors from core will help easy to lift 100km anti gravity space ship…
floating factory in space, attracting asteroids for source, delivering water and oxygen or even producing from reactions in space.
Its could be even few times cheaper.
I’m giving about 1000 years for humanity to be capable to do death star, even 100 to start the saturn moon or our(joke or not as you will), I mean take look how big progress we have made in over one century, its just mind blowing.
I greet
I think the Death Star would cost a whole lot more, because its made of more then just steel flooring.
The first Death Star took between 20 and 30 years to complete.
And that was organized by a galaxy spanning government with hyperlane infrastructure, in a culture that had mastered FTL space flight for like 8000 years. 🙂
If you where to build a DEATH STAR use it to blow up the star the planet it orbits around. It would cause much more damage. ☺☻☺☻☺☻§§
Ever heard of the Sun Crusher?
If you drink coffe/tea/soda, you are using amphetamines to help your work.
Coffee does not have any amphetamines in it. Amphetamine and Caffeine are different classes of stimulant.
13.000 times would be if you’d pay it at once. But if you can spread the cost over 800.000 years, it’s just 1.5% of the worlds GDP / per year. And think about all the people that would have a job. No more ppl without a job for 800.000 years.
Lets’ start building one tomorrow.
13,000 times the GDP I guess these are not union workers. Sounds more like the real cost of Obama Care
hahahah funny =)
or just half of the US debt…
I have figured out how to fund this! Apple has more money in there reserve than the US, steal all Apple’s money and we are good to go!
Hollow out the moon to use as a Death Star so we can legitimately say, “That’s no moon, that’s a space station.”
Man,it’s a good thing Dick Cheney never became president….this project would have been built by Halliburton.
Why has not anyone thought of this. The Empire controlled mulitudes of planets in countless star systems right…then why in the hell are we concerned about Earth.. They have all the resources they need to accomplish this daunting taks
How about we colonize Mars first and use its iron. Hasn’t anyone thought of the fact that the red planet is red because of the ridiculous amount of iron there?
Excellent idea, plus the lower gravity will require less energy to lift the iron into orbit.
u could also use iron from aseroids
More importantly Mars has a very thin atmosphere so getting loads off the surface is much, much easier than on Earth.
Now we can build a Death Star with Ludicrous speed!
REI is great if you can get a deal.
All these figures are wrong, according to Wookieepedia, the 1st death star was 160 km in diameter and the 2nd was 900km in diameter.
Most of it will be for housing the reactor for hyper drive and laser.
So I believe using weight or mass to scale up cost is wrong.
I think volume will be better.
It will definitively not be made of steel.
I propose carbon fiber.
To scale up lets use the volume of a f-18 (most it is for the engine and made of carbon fiber).
Thus
Volume Death star = 2+e16 m3
volume F-18 = 355 m3
equivalent to 5.6+e13 F-18 @ $50 millions each.
cost of Deathstar = $2.8+e21
Let me see if I can get a loan.
I like your idea. We need to get this going.
i shall back you! i have $25 in my piggy bank, and with a little ingenuity, we can get $30! ah HA! watch out (princes Laus home planet) here we come!!!!
>:)
Dude an f-18 isnt 355*355*355 m big that is a HUGE frickin plane
355*355*355 is 44738875 cubic meters because of math. 355 cubic meters is a 7m x 7m x 7m cube. sounds about right.
Could you share the calculation on how you found that the Earth could be used to make 2 billion death stars. I am getting a different number.
Here is how I am finding my number:
1 Earth Mass = 5.9742 × 10^24 kilograms
According to your source, 36.4% of the Earth is iron
http://www.worldofmolecules.com/elements/iron.htm
36.4% of 1 Earth Mass = 2.1746088 x 10^24 kg
By your own calculations, the death star is approximately 1.08 x 10^15 tonnes of steel (iron)
I believe you divided these number to get 2 billion. However, we need to convert kg to tonnes.
1 kg = .00110231131 tonnes
This means that the iron in the Earth is 2.1746088 x 10^24 kg x .00110231131 tonnes/kg = 2.22487075 x 10^21 tonnes
dividing this by the death star measurement gives us 2,060,065.51 death stars
Please let me know if I am missing something. I would like to share this with my students.
ur on crack
Dude that is my math teacher
Dude, don’t be saying ppl r on crack. That’s just rude, and 2, he’s also my math teacher!
Come on man! Don’t go around saying people are on crack, ESPECIALLY not MY math teacher! He’s got a way better comment than yours. Let’s not bring drugs into this.
google paul erdos. he was notorious for his amphetamine use to help his work.
Yo! that my teacher! Don’t call people like that! That ain’t cool!
He said that it was 2 million and not 2 billion and it was a mistake.
ehm….
1t = 1000kg
==> 1kg = 0,001t
Why are we using steel from the earth’s core. It seems that something like the death star is best built in orbit, and while we are imagining construction of a giant battle station, why not use the iron and heavy metals located in our asteroid belt? Seems like a lot less work than most heavy steel from earth into orbit.
The asteroid belt is VERY far away (betweeen Mars and Jupiter).
Well, yes it is far away. But it also avoids the problem of having to lift that iron to orbit, and, for bonus points, if an asteroid is moved to a near-sun orbit, it can be smelted much more inexpensively with some (very) large reflectors.
Alas, I don’t think it could be spin-cast, nor blown like a glass vessel.
In any event, there would be definite effects of scale involved.
also as you lift the iron up into orbit you’r making earth that much lighter….
I’m not sure I would take the iron from the Earth’s crust. There are plenty of Metalic Asteroids, which would actually be easier to use because it’s already up in space and wouldn’t have to be lauched. And the energy could come from the sun, which would mean you’d probably produce it a different place, which would be good for gravitational reasons. The great trick would be getting enough coal in space. We have lots of it, but getting it up there would be expensive.
I also disagree with the use of a warship’s statistics. The death star had large amounts of open space inside, whereas a warship is pretty tightly packed. I’m not sure about the hull densitiy, but there would also be no need to make the inside walls particularly thick.
As for why bother with the calcuation, BECAUSE IT’S FUN! 🙂
If living a Resource Based Economy, we could have less trouble. Why to build a Death Star in a RBE, anyway…
Sorry about the English.
http://www.aftonbladet.se/nojesbladet/film/article14415029.ab
I found this blog-post by reading this article on the biggest newssite in Sweden. This was acctually one of the few times I discovered something useful there….
I thought it would be really interesting to estimate how many workers the Death Star would require. If one uses the same comparisons you do( with HMS Illustrious) and relate the amount of workers to operate that ship, I would say that it would require more staff to manage the Death Star than now currently living on earth. Am I totally wrong here?
I don’t know I got a pop of 33 to 34 trillion which seems way too many. But I checked it with both pop/ton of steel and pop/volume calculations. Can’t tell what I may have done wrong. What did you get? Anyhow aside from that I would say that in “reality” the population density wouldn’t be analogous based on volume from and aircraft carrier to a deathstar. I think the pop density of the latter would be less. Even though it is so much larger I don’t think there would be an equal increase in things such as sensor arrays, communications etc based on logic of necessity and surface area/volume from a carrier to a deathstar. I mean the surface areas would be manned but what possible jobs could exist for the vast interior spaces other than some reactor personel and maybe hanger bays.
In the SW realm, there are tons of worlds and systems to take materials from. It doesn’t all need to come from one planet there. Empire used slave labor as well, and they built the thing out in space – no need to “launch it” to get it out there.
Robot labor. Robots mine and refine steel from the asteroids. Robots build more robots. It scales itself up exponentially.
The cost is more about management and defense of the shipyards and the initial investment to start the work. The longer it takes the more it costs because the people who can manage a project of that size and complexity are really expensive and it will take a lot of really smart and motivated people to get a job that big done right.
Probably have to get a gigantic mining lease too, to get permission to extract that much ore from the system where it is built. So it’s not like the materials are free even if they do come from the asteroid belt, someone wants to get paid for them if you remove them from their system forever.
why go through the trouble of building a death star? the same technology to propel the death star can be used to propel the earth through space.once you got the reactor beam and deflector sheilds working,use the proplusion system to move the earth through space and start destroying planets.
LOL
Well, you have to encase the earth so we don’t all freeze to death after we depart our orbit around our solar heater (the sun).
PWNing planets would be fun!
i like this guy!
once you destroy just one planet you could use the materials from the destroyed planet to build a whole fleet of Death stars, and you would have defenses for the capitol planet (Earth) in the Galactic Empire! MAWHAHA!!>:)
That’s pocket money to me
Sent at 10:50
Hey – who are you…Bill Gates? 🙂
You an evil despotic egomaniac bent on ruling the galaxy… Slaves… You are going to build your weapon with slaves working long hours, with little food, and privileges for the overseers who will keep the rest in line. This will greatly reduce your costs. Plus the iron will be mined from asteroids that no one owns. The only real costs would be the engineers and guards along with any fixtures and fittings that coud not be built by your slave labor force that you actually have to pay for. Slaves, a huge cost reduction benefit, just ask Apple.
You forgot the best building material of all,,,, Unobtainium.
lol
Nazi Death Star
So the First Galactic Empire’s grand scale weapon might be beyond our grasp, but how about the earthly Third Reich of yesteryear. If pop culture has taught us anything, it’s that if the Nazi’s didn’t build the craziest, most sinister and weird stuff first, you can be damn sure it was at least on the drawing board: http://www.shockandahh.com/2012/02/even-nazis-had-death-star-almost.html
Why not building an entire storm of Executor (Darth Vader’s Big Dreadnought )??If you consider the quantity of Iron, commodities, troops and energy needed for Ds,building them will be very less expensive because of scale size production, very useful considering the warp-mode, and as destructive as DS. So build more with the same resources…more powerful spacefleet 😉
A better method of estimating cost is to use a similar structure then scaling it to the new project. The closest structure to the Death Star is not an Invincible-class light aircraft carrier, rather a Nimitz-class supercarrier.
Thus, with rounding to make the calculations simpler:
Death Star: 1.0e15 tonnes
Nimitz Carrier: 1.0e5 tonnes
1 Death Star = 1.0e10 Nimitz Carriers
Nimitz Carrier Cost = $4.5e9 ($4.5 Billion) or $45,000 per tonne
Death Star Cost = $4.5e9 * 1.0e10 = $4.5e19 = $45,000,000,000,000,000,000
Original Estimate: $852,000,000,000,000,000, about 50 times less than scaling a Nimitz Carrier.
This estimate is for the Death Star only and excludes support fighters and crew costs.
wouldnt technology advance enough to just build the deathstar-nano? If you build it smaller you wouldnt have to waste so much steel and you can even include an mp3 player etc
This is the very best comment so far.
does NASA know about this?
They don’t need to
Admittedly I gave up and didn’t exactly read all the comments, but it seems obvious that the Death Star was built largely out of polymers and composites.
The Death Star was built primarily of permacrete and durasteel.
This is all very good and well, but I think the fundamental error in all of this math resides in the use of today’s GDP analysis and steel prices. It is clearly stated that all of this happened a long long time ago.
Also, it wasn’t anywhere near here. :p
I really don’t get this at all… Why build the death star when the world is already scared to death that the polar ice caps might melt and drown us all. Wouldn’t it make more sense to calculate how much it would cost to build the “Laser” from the movie Austin Powers and then threaten to melt the ice caps in a couple of weeks? The cost to terror ratio would be far greater in this instance. Not to mention the thing looks like a gigantic penis so you could possibly find several congress members to allocate ear marks for the project as modern art before they realized what it was really going to be used for. You might also get sponsorship deals or naming rights from Virgin Galactic and Trojan as well. The irony of such a weapon would be legendary.
You just can’t beat the thrill of blowing stuff up.
Well put…
So is this just the cost of the steel? What about lifting it into orbit (currently reported as $8800 per kg)? I suppose that as you dismantle the core the gravitational force will be reduced, but let’s be serious(!) for a moment:
You’re going to get your steel from the asteroid belt, not from the bottom of a gravity well. You’re going to smelt it in a solar furnace, not in an Earth-bound foundry.
So what was the point of this?
do something with your life Star Wars is just a movie just to let you know
obtain an imagination and don’t read things you don’t care about. problem solved.
You are typing on a personal computer, which is the product of the imagination of someone about 50 years ago. Connected to other computers all over the world, which again was imagined by someone about 45 years ago. Star Wars, Star Trek, the writings of Asimov, to name a few of the tens of thousands of fictional works out there with a science subject matter inspired nearly all the stuff you take for granted now. So perhaps YOU might should get a life by reading a book or two.
Luke actually said this..? :]
Don’t you have something more interesting in your life ?
Yep 🙂 Its shoving light sabers up peoples who name is lukes’, ass :). But that will have to wait. Right now, All I care about is reading through the logical comments of gravity wells vs. asteroid/lunar mining, GDP and steel prices, kilograms current rockets can lift to LEO, (btw, its volume you really need to worry about), and potential designs for power generation. I am sure you interesting thing to do is sit in front of the computer with one hand in a fried chicken bucket and the other on your dick. Ours is engineering, computers, and logistics. Please go back in your corner you friendless pity creating human being.
This is silly the Iron isn’t the problem the carbon is, where are you going to get 5400000000000 tons of carbon & if it’s just made of steel wont it just rust away.
There are other problems like the cost of licensing the technology.
You wall also have the MAFIAA trying to take control of it like they are trying to take control of the Internet today.
Bovski… do you know what rust is??
There is no oxygen in space. It cant rust.
Also I’m guessing that its probably not just regular carbon steel. More likely it’s some kinda star warsy space steel. Who knows what kind of alloys you can make once you’ve colonized thousands of star systems?
No oxygen? What do they all breathe inside the blasted contraption?
Space is a vacuum. There is no air. That’s why you need a pressurized space suit in space. But you can put oxygen INSIDE the ship. That’s how NASA does it fyi…
And guess what. Even with oxygen inside the ship, there’s this nifty stuff called PAINT. You might have heard of it. It makes your house and car all colorful. But it also prevents the metal on your car from rusting. There are industrial grades of paint that prevent the steel I-beams in buildings and factories from rusting. They use it on Naval ships too. That’s how they keep that aircraft carrier from rusting.
No oxygen in space= The outside can’t rust.
Inside is painted or coated= Inside won’t rust.
Obviously there isn’t much oxygen in the near vacuum of space. My point was that the entire inside of the Death Star is clearly filled with oxygen (and probably a lot of nitrogen.) The statement that it *can’t* rust is quite incorrect. The statement that it *won’t* rust is optimistic at best. Even with coatings, iron or steel will still rust, just much, much more slowly than without coatings.
What about copper there is gonna be miles of wire in this thing if it has lights and switches that crap costs 2.00 a lb or more
Holy crap. I wonder how much the paint costs? For that matter, what about the cost of floor coverings, furniture, light fixtures, tractor beam on/off handles (that sound is playing in your head now, isn’t it?), levitating syringe-laden torture bots, repairing blaster damage, fixing jammed trash compactors…
There are a lot of other problems with the scale of the Death Star. With an assumed diameter of 140 km, it would have approx. 3×10^9 km^2 of floor space, or about 20 times the land area of the Earth’s surface. Who is going to fill up all that space? I’m guessing it much be mostly empty. And even if only 1/10 of it is filled with air, that’s still 1×10^15 m^3 of air. The Earth’s atmosphere is 4×10^18 m^3, so filling the Death Star with air would require about 1/4000 of the Earth’s atmosphere. It seems to me it could be just as effective at a fraction of the size, and wouldn’t require billions of people to operate.
ERROR: the term millennia means thousands of years, so in this case it would be 0.8 millennia
He said 800,000 years
.8 millenia = 800 years, not 800,000
ERROR: You’re wrong and the article is correct, 800 thousand years = 800 millennia, which is what the article says. Fail.
Uh, no….833315 years/1000 years/millenia = 833 millenia. Learn how to use units
Using this logic, the cost of the aircraft carrier would be only something like $17,355,000 (i.e. the cost of the steel). Since the actual cost of a new aircraft carrier (we were using today’s steel prices, remember, so not the original cost of the HMS Illustrious) is in the ballpark of $22 billion (with a ‘b’), then perhaps the Death Star cost estimate might also be off by at least three orders of magnitude. Oh, and this is before you consider operational costs, which come in at something like half a million dollars a day.
It’s strange! ….I work for a satellite systems provider and we did a study on this quite recently. Thing is, the money isn’t really that much of a problem (where do you think all those losses in the financial sector really went !?). The real problem is getting the staff! Finding people who are ready to push buttons and bring on armageddon just isn’t as easy as it used to be (we did have a few ex-politicians apply though). The pay’s OK, if you don’t mind your Ferrari being disguised as an asteriod, conditions not bad (if you don’t mind the company of droid clones and C3PO bleating in your ear all the time). Last I heard, there was talk of offering out laser swords as an incentive but the guy behind the idea accidently sliced his legs off in a whilst making an enthusiatic gesture! Watch this space – one day it will be where the Earth was!
Windows or Mac?, What will run the Death Star.
Mac 🙂
Linux!!!
Solaris!!! What else for a star…
Damn right!
Illumos surely 🙂
I’d say that an entirely new OS would have to be written. None of those would be able to handle that system.
It would give a whole new meaning to “Blue Screen of Death….”
Chuck Norris
Windows ME. Duh.
It could be run on a 486dx. I mean, NASA’s made it to the moon and back with less.
No it couldn’t there are a whole lot more systems that need to be run like shields, main weapon, secondary weapons, power distribution, tractor beam controls, lighting, hyper-drive, sub-light engines, radar, weapon aiming, fighter fueling, and targeting systems
True, it would probably require at least a 14-core 486CPU ..
Duh? It’s Droid!
But is it the Droid they are looking for?
☺☻☺☻LOL§
OS/2 Warp, duh
If it was possible, if we had the tech. how much would it cost to build an actual TARDIS?
Nothing. Cause and effect have little significance when you can travel through time. If you spent money developing and building a TARDIS you could send it back to yourself before you spent a penny so it would be free or at the very most the cost of a cup of tea.
The Infinite Improbability Drive is a wonderful new method of crossing vast intersteller distances in a mere nothingth of a second without all that tedious mucking about in hyperspace.
It was discovered by a lucky chance, and then developed into a governable form of propulsion by the Galactic Government’s research team on Damogran.
This, briefly, is the story of its discovery.
The principle of generating small amounts of finite improbability by simply hooking the logic circuits of a Bambleweeny 57 sub-meson Brain to an atomic vector plotter suspended in a strong Brownian Motion producer (say a nice hot cup of tea) were of course well understood – and such generators were often used to break the ice at parties by making all the molicules in the hostess’s undergarments leap simultaneously one foot to the left, in accordance with the Theory of Indeterminacy.
Many respectable physicists said that they weren’t going to stand for this – partly because it was a debasement of science, but mostly because they didn’t get invited to those sort of parties.
Another thing they couldn’t stand was the perpetual failure they encountered in trying to construct a machine which could generate the infinite improbability field needed to flip a spaceship across the mind-paralysing distances between the furthest stars, and in the end they grumpily announced that such a machine was virtually imposssible.
Then, one day, a student who had been left to sweep up the lab after a particulary unsuccessful party found himself reasoning this way:
If, he thought to himself, such amachine is a virtual impossibility, then it must logically be a finite improbability. So all I have to do in order to make one, is to work out exactly how improbable it is, feed that figure into the finite improbability generator, give it a fresh cup of really hot tea … and turn it on!
He did this, and was rather startled to discover that he had managed to create the long sought after golden Infinite Improbability generater out of thin air.
It startled him even more when just after he was awarded the Galactic Institute’s Prize for Extreme Cleverness he got lynced by a rampaging mob of respectable physicists who had finally realized that the one thing they really couldn’t stand was a smartarse.
Nice one 🙂
But you should cite the source, which is the Douglas Adams’ book The Hitch Hiker’s Guide To Galaxy.
Most people reading this would probably know, but it’s just good manners.
NOTHING!!! If you actually have seen the show you would know that the TARDIS(s) are living.NOT machines!!! Id10t
Just my thoughts,
The cost of steel used is the commodity price, not the production price, I would imagine with the volume of steel involved in a single project a commodities market wouldn’t function and it would revert to cost plus. Also the time and cost of conventionally mined steel isn’t comparable to core derived steel. Putting aside discussions on the composition of the Earths core, it is, in effect ready smelted iron, you just need to tap it off, treat, roll or cast it as you wish. Once you had access to the earth’s core steel would be cheap and freely available.
I was also thinking that core iron could be considered an energy source offsetting some of the costs.
My final thought for the day was not on the feasibility of construction, but on manning. As you would live within the volume of the sphere you could get rather lonely at your station, assuming 4m between floors and also assuming half the area was taken up by equipment, you would still have a greater area that the entire land surface area of the Earth.
We are just talking about steel here. What about electrical components, plumbing, and not to mention the trash compactor. While I do appreciate the fun in trying to “recreate” the economics of a Death Star, I think the math took a ride on the lazy river here. I mean come on, did the HMS Illustrious just cost what the steel and iron cost? No. In addition to all of the missing components that the new Death Star would have to be retrofitted with, you would still have to launch all of the supplies into space and assemble them.
Yes, fair enough to all that. But I’m not sure the Evil Empire would build it using money of any sort. I reckon it’s a ‘things get done or else’ and so there might not even be a cost of steel, all steel being property of the Empire etc. However, trash compactores cost money, no matter how evil your empire.
You would be better-off using iron from a nearby body, like the moon, which has a much lower gravity. The technology is coming soon to be able to make atmospheric elevators to transport the materials outside of the gravitational field of the planet without using rockets. This would also be useful for getting workers up to the death star as it is being built.
I think the the focus on just the steel requirements served to illustrate just how bananas the idea would be to construct a Death Star. “If it takes all this just to come up with the steel, imagine how much everything else would cost!” That sort of thing.
After all, there’s the obvious stuff: sustainable atmosphere, artificial gravity, deflector shield, etc.
The real problem here is that the Empire had access to iron mined from the entire galaxy, not just one planet. If there is a higher supply of a product, the price will be less, if I’m correct. If we were using a galactic economy, the price of steel might be less. And then production would probably be mostly done by droids, with perhaps minimal human/organic supervision, greatly decreasing the cost of construction, and decreasing the amount of time required for construction (since you can always use a few million more droids and not have to pay any more money than before, aside from making the droids, I suppose, but yeah). Am I right?
Great fun and nice work guys!
Now I wonder when that will build real lightsaber. Then I see advantage!
I Don’t thing a Lightsaber could deflect a death star super laser!
I Forgot to add the k in Think
I know no one is going to read this comment.
HOWEVER… that will not stop me from injecting my thoughts on the economic climate of a fictional situation. At last I checked the Empire had a near endless supply of slave labor (clones) coming out the factory gates. Has a free labor source been factored into the cost of the DeathStar?? I mean you would have to feed them I imagine but lets be real, you wouldnt have to feed them that well, they’re slaves and worse, they’d be clone slaves!
The cost they discussed was only for the steel. So it would actually go way up if you factored in the cost of room in board for however many millions of clones.
you would not have to pay for room and board for slaves.
I read your comment.
me too
I READ YOUR COMMENT TOO!!!!!☺☻§§
How much for JUST 1??? Why does this article keep discussing 2 billions death stars?
You can just divide the number by 2 billion.
The cost *IS* for one, as are the time estimates. The 2 Billion only refers to how many Death Stars could be made out of all the iron on earth.
THANK you. That’s exactly what I was thinking. An interesting subject and all he talks about is raw steel cost and 2 billion death stars and how difficult it would be to get all that iron out of the earth. YOUR ONLY TRYING TO GET 2 DEATH STARS WORTH OF IRON OUT OF THE EARTH.
If you could use the moon as a foundation I think you could save some money.
What’s all this talk about steel? Advances in Lego technology will allow the Death Star construction to come in on time and under budget.
You are a bunch of negative nabobs bitching! We are talking about Darth Vader here! What DV wants, he gets!
Which one you value more, your ability to BREATH or your MONEY!? Yeah, you guys did forget that one, didn’t you 🙂 Plus he got hundreds of planets under his heavenly power, so if us bitchy earthlings won’t chip in, there are plenty of planets to choose from.
What you actually meant was “What Moff Tarkin wants, he gets!”
Actually.. What Senator Palpatine wants… 🙂
*runs*
I just wanted to say to everyone that is saying that the Death Star wasn’t practical, it was never meant to be. It’s a weapon of terror. Show up, blow up a moon or neighboring uninhabited planet, demand fealty. End of discussion. Who’s gonna say no when your home is literally getting bombarded with meteorites that used to be part of your moon?
I just find the number of comments made interesting. And a lot of them are redundant. Almost as if the person posting didn’t take the time to read what others had already said. Maybe it’s just me, but knowing what’s been said already is important.
And my two cents:
Building a death star might possibly be good for the economy, but it might also lead to civil unrest. Even more so than now. All I know is I wanna work on building the thing if they ever decide to do it.
Regarding civil unrest, the easiest way to prevent that is to ensure that every Imperial world gets a piece of the contract for manufacturing one of the components of the Death Star. It also would ensure that the project will never get cancelled, never get held to budget, and never be required to prove it actually works.
Oh, you left out a bunch of stuff…
First of all, you have to grease the local for the sudden zoning problems that always come up.
Then there’s the kickbacks to the carpenters.
And if you plan on using any cement in this building Im sure the teamsters would like to have a little chat with you, and that will cost you.
Don’t forget a little something for the building inspectors.
There’s the long-term costs, such as waste disposal.
I don’t know if you’re familiar with who runs that business, but i assure you its not the boy scouts.
now if you will excuse me, I have to cancel a check to Kurt Vonnegut
Nicely done!
From one film-nerd to another; Kudo’s on incorporating Thorton Mellon’s business 101 from the “Back to School” film! Rodney Dangerfield rocks and would have made an awesome Dengar in my opinion! (See ESB, bounty hunter scene)
So – what part of malevolent Empire is unclear?
Darth Vader: “Chief Inspector, did it pass?”
Chief Inspector: “No way – your project planning and over site sucks!
<> ((Thud!))
Vader: “New Chief Inspector, did it pass?”
New Chief Inspector: “Yes, sir, with flying colors!”
Historical Reference – See: Great Wall of China – Ming Dynasty
Oh you left out a bunch of stuff…
First you got to grease the local politicians
First of all, you have to grease the local politicians
for the sudden zoning problems that always come up.
Then there’s the kickbacks to the carpenters.
And if you plan on using any cement in this buildingIm sure the teamsters
would like to have like to have a little chat with you,and that’ll cost you.
And don’t forget a little something for the building inspectors.
Then there’s the long-term costs,such as waste disposal.
I don’t know if you’re familiar with who runs that business, but I assure
it’s not the boy scouts.
Now will you excuse me? I have to cancel my check to Kurt Vonnegut
So nice he had to say it twice.
ah…that was a FAIL on my part. i didnt hit refresh the first time and thought it didnt post. so i had to retype it 🙂
This article is full of crap on so many levels, of which I will mention only a few on this forum.
1) There is no way that it would take 833,000 years to build the first Death Star because it was constructed within a single generation, as Darth Vader (formerly Anakin Skywalker) was a young man when construction began and in his mid-to-late forties when it was finished.
2) Titanium is lighter and stronger than steel.
3) Who in the hell made up the 140 km figure and how did they arrive to that conclusion? Since Luke and the gang seemed to cover the distance quite quickly, I have serious doubts about the final figures.
4) I doubt the effects of a proton torpedo veruses steel or titanium were considered.
5) You dudes need to get laid-BIG TIME.
5) You dudes seriously need to get laid-BIG TIME.
P.S.
The second Death Star was built in only six years.
well for starters, the empire had waaay more than one planet that they could simultaneously mine for resources, this considerably shortens the time needed for construction. along with this there are more people available simultaneously to construct it.
2. that has no application to this at all
3. there isnt a real figure, all the dimensions are based off of conjecture but 140 is about the middle of the spectrum
4. the proton torpedoes never hit the actual metal, the went straight to the reactor core, causing the explosion
5.quite possible
5.redundant but quite possible
Actually if you know your lore, it was only 4 years from the end of ANH to the beginning of ROTJ
If you know your lore, the Endor deathstar was started during the construction of the first one. (they weren’t built sequentially)
These numbers of cost/time to build a Death Star is based off of what we have here on Earth. Obviously it is easier and faster to build the Death Star when you have an inter-galactic empire at your disposal. Millions of planets and floating rocks to tactically acquire such resources. Lastly, it’s a movie. Until someone makes an actual lightsaber, then maybe I can belive someone can make a Death Star faster than 800,000 years.
Wait, are we talking union workers? If so, the cost just went up another 130 x GDP and the timeframe extended another 1-2 centuries.
Explain how to construct a Death Star and/or why Star Trek is the better franchise to me, and I’ll explain what a vagina feels like to you. Tit for tat, so to say.
Geek girl vagina is sooooo much better than bar skank vagina, so I’ll pass.
if you really think the spectrum of poon is limited to geek-girl vaj and skank vaj, you have not experienced the many wonders of the world my friend
So you touched your little sister when you were both little tykes – big deal. I can tell you how one TASTES, recently.
Heh – amazing that three decades into the high tech revolution someone still believes tech geeks can’t get laid
The best part of this article is the comments. Star Wars is fiction, geeks!
There are so many unknowns, such as the actual main weapon itself, the power-core design, and the interface between them.
Also, the density figure could be refined by comparing shots form Star Wars revealing the interior of the Death Star, to shots of the interior of an aircraft carrier. We may find that the Death Star is indeed less dense, and actually less equipment-laden than a nuclear powered aircraft carrier.
By reverse engineering the weapon based on the discussion of it’s destruction-potential in Star Wars, we can take those figures and, with modern laser technology, find out what we would have to build, at minimum, to actually destroy a planet. That would help w/ the weapons system. Then the power system would follow in a similar way: what is the probable crew count, based on what we see in the movies/book? What is the average power consumption per person, assuming very efficient lighting? What is the requirement going to be to kep the weapon in standby mode, or provide the weapon with power enough to fire? All while powering the base? This will help give a ballpark estimate of the required power system size/cost.
For purposes of realistic build-potential… we could calculate the cost of building a DS one one-hundredth the size, which could be put into orbit around our planet, using our latest laser technology, nuclear power technology, and space technology. This mini-DS would provide elation to nerds, a quick-strike potential to hostel nations or incoming asteroids, and a steppign stone to the real deal.
One final thing- the statement that it would actually take that long to extract the necessary iron should not put us off from the goal… if the world agreed that we needed a Death Star… Iron Ore would see unprecidented extraction rates as nations united to develop/ship as much as possible to the build location (china). If the mini-DS were completed first, then nations could be forced to unite in the material provision for such an undertaking.
The main difficulty is getting all systems to integrate well. Again, the mini would help pave a way for something that could possibly scale up. Assembly would be difficult, and getting the components into space would require such a massive effort. One method would be to construct a machine that turns large iron slugs into beams… and send it into space. Then, design a railgun capable of sending slugs of iron into space. Predict the path of the round and use electromagnetic power to draw it to the receiving bay where it is transferred into an iron beam or some sort of component… just a thought. A nuclear-reactor powered electromagnet would do the job, along with a nuclear-reactor powered railgun of proper size, with advanced telemetry instruments, all of which we basically have or have the means to produce.
The way I see it, the cost is not in the materials but the construction. It would realistically take enslavement of nations to produce the weapon in a timely manner (under 300-1,000 yrs) through various full-time space programs… but not until the means of construction have been designed, prototyped, tested and proven (another 100 yrs)…
and then what? then the richest nerds would draw straws to see who gets to be darth vader… a new world order emerges, rebels take control of the railgun and start punching holes in the deathstar in an act of rebellion, and the death star cannot shoot back with full force for fear of destroying the earth that supplies it’s many commodities, troops etc…
It amazes me that no one actually understands the construction techniques and materials involved.
The DS is actually a balloon made of super-elastic-metal-plastic. It is expanded using the flatulence of 1.089×10^24 invisible pink unicorns. The required gas is “harvested” by having “little people” gently squeeze the abdominal area of the unicorns.
As we all know super-elastic-metal-plastic is easily manufactured using common household chemicals. Please see our website at http://www.rentaunicorn.com for details on bulk unicorn rentals and sales.
According to the calcualtions of my scratch-built quantum computer (see “How to build a quantum computer using tinfoil and Llama spittle” on wikipedia), the total cost of construction is equal to the annual GDP of Greece or US$ 6.98 for those of us not yet on the metric system.
http://www.reactiongifs.com/?p=689
It’s useless weapon to begin with. There a lot easier ways to destroy a planet than building a large slow moving target like the DS, especially one that was easily destroyed by a simple shot through an obvious porthole weakness. P**s poor engineering and design, I’d say.
Hell, in Star Trek Capt. Kirk killed a planet killer that was far more effective than the DS, it could travel at warp speed and fueled itself on planetary rubble so it could theoretically could go for centuries. It Kirk could could kill a successful planet killer using a wrecked starship, he’d of made short work of the illconceived Death Star.
Besides, for the price you could build a massive fleet of Constitution class Starships the would be far more effective. If the Death Star was such a great idea, the Klingons would have thought it up long ago.
Yes, another example of George Lucas’ crappy writing and plot construction and why Star Trek is superior to Star Wars.
Flame away.
And Why Star Wars has made so much more money and had so much more impact on society than Star Trek? But thank you for playing.
How much each franchise made is irrelevant. The article refers to the cost of a machine. Since the tactical use of such a device is relevant to the discussion, so within the context of the Lucas films, it is salient to point out the cost versus efficacy of such a weapon, which even according to the Star Wars films in which they appeared, they were hugely expensive and mostly ineffective. A waste of resources.
Sorry you missed the entire point, but I am happy to direct you back to the issue at hand.
If your desire to discuss the relative quality of a film as it relates to its box office receipts, I’d point out that ‘Blade Runner’, ‘Metropolis’, ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’, ‘Alien’ and even ‘Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (to name a few) were far better written, acted and filmed movies than Star Wars but were not as financially successful. I think the difference here is Star Wars appeals to a vicseral crowd that likes to see things blow up and buy toys as opposed to folks who appreciate good film.
Your comment clearly identifies which you group you belong to. Have a nice day.
Yes, Star Wars has made more $$ – much more, I believe. Cool, happy for George. But Star Trek has proved to be almost prescient with the tech that first started on the show and has since become reality. And that is still ongoing, as tricorders are being worked on and are almost here, for example.
Happy to have them both.
The cool thing about the original 3 movies was that it didn’t try to explain that which doesn’t need to be explained. It was a sword and sorcery adventure in space – merging two tired and creatively moribund genres together to form something new and exciting.
Startrek was in many ways the opposite: trying to explain every little thing with pseudoscientific sounding bull poopie, even where there is no need for such explanations to advance the story: a soap opera in space. Detected quantum fluctuations in the space-time manifold? Reverse the polarity! (This criticism applies much more to the next generation et al than to the original series).
But then along came the midichlorians. Ah well.
This doesn’t make any sense, it’s a work of fiction, genius. Lucas didn’t construct the DS himself.
I only commented on the thing in the context in which it appeared. If you want to throw barbs at folks for taking the time to note the absurdity of such an object, you’d be better off ripping the good folks at Centives and Lehigh University for taking the time to calcuate the costs of the Death Star.
In fact, Lucas did construct the thing in terms of writing and film making. And yes, it is fiction, as is the idea that George Lucas is a good writer.
Sorry, I like star trek but the only reason the ds was destroyed was because a Jedi used the force to make an otherwise impossible shot. So unless Jim or jean Luke Target wamprats back home and have the messiah of the jedi for a dad their probably not gonna do to well. Plus, the enterprise really wasn’t what you would call a warship and would probably be the first to go… If you wanted to stand a chance your best bet would be a tag team Klingon/romulin full frontal assault, and good luck with that…
It astounds me that people exist who believe they have to explain that 1.star wars is a work of fiction and 2. Lucus didnt build an actual death star. I bet the little kids love you around Christmas.
I wonder if Gene Roddenberry and George Lucas ever met. The Death Star may have been a rip-off of an early Borg prototype.
Effective? Nope. Practical? Hardly. But then Star Wars is a Flash Gordon-ish space opera filled with canyons that exist for no reason other than for our hero to swing across with the damsel in distress and Flying Castles in the air and kung-fu monks with laser swords and all manner of crazy shit.
And you can bet OSHA will be there telling you what you can & can’t do.
Also, what are the permitting costs for a project this big? Even after it’s done you will still have to wait two weeks for the building inspector to show up to give you your C.O.
You could use an easy loophole here, though. Space is outside of OSHA’s jurisdiction. Done and done.
Who says we even need to make it out of steel? I mean .. it’s not like anyone else would have something to counter attack it, well atleast not for long. Let’s just make it like a hyundai and stuff it with plastic.
I could get through the 124 comments and counting… What I did see was very strange approach to the scale of this creation. You are looking at it all wrong. There would be no contracting disputes, labor worries and supplies shortage as we would know it. This is the EMpire we are talking about. They have installed Imperial Govenors in every sector. They don’t just have a few ships they have hundreds of thousands of ships. The simple fact is because the empire is building this it would get done with little knowledge and without interruption. Whole systems would be dedicated to building this station… WHole systems would be mined to build the station. Don’t look at this as an enterprise of a free market. Look at it as if Nazi Germany had built the Death Star. Since George modeled the Imperials off the Nazi’s it is quite easy to use them as a scaled down model of what would happen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZEdDMQZaCU
Lots of good ideas about how to do it here… I just hope we invest in good exhaust port covers.
Can you imagine if the the public service was asked to build the deathstar.
First of all open tenders for construction, would go to the cheapest manufacturer, and then your problems start.
Sorry we can’t get the laser operational until we get a laser safety certificate, we don’t want anyone injured. Its a frikken laser that is supposed to injure people.
The issuing of pass cards to get on board for the sub contractors, Sorry we can’t let you on board, because we need to do a security safety check. Subbies employed who aren’t getting paid, dodgy Baklavian labor that are underpaid, don’t speak english and leak green goo everywhere.
As for the operational software /shudder. “Prepare the laser, FIRE ALL WEAPONS”!! “sorry, the weapon system is off line for tuesday night maintenaince”. The interface software doesn’t talk to each other, and the turbo lift system software is 2 years date, because it doesn’t interface with the security software, the weapons system causes the communications system to crash, and the work around is only one system can be used at a time, as for the internal public transport ticketing, forget it.
the TIE fighter fleet, “LAUNCH ALL FIGHTERS”, “er we are waitnig for part number x442 sdf w-mark 2 which are on back order for 18 months from the corellian ship yards and we have been canibilising the fleet and have only 3 available, the mark 3’s are grounded due to a incident taht air services are currently investigating, the report should be available in 3 months.
public sector catering? death star canteen comes to mind.
Unionised labor, good luck with that.
Electricians, welders, plumbers that actually turn up.
It would be an administrative nightmare.
Not to mention the fine for safety infringment for not building a rail near the operation control, its a long way down…
What would be cool is if there was a working Death-Star necklace (I could just blast people that bug me!)
Beltbuckle! Then you could hip-thrust while blasting!!!
Nano tubes most likely would be used and the Death Star probably was created out of technology that we as a race have not yet conceived.
Lest we forget:
“A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away….a great adventure took place…..”
OK technology that does not yet exist in this part of the universe
But I think we can deduct that at least the Death Star is created out of technology that we don’t have. A death Laser would probably melt steel when firing.
Big is not better. Just as current size of Aircraft Carriers is outdaed, so was the Death Star oversized for Drama. All you need are several small mobile stations with maybe a larger Mother Ship that is defensable and even able to move.
Smaller Robotic Drones controled from a mother ship with smaller but more powerful weapons is the future of warfare. The smaller the craft the easier it will be to move,conceal, and defend. Also the more you can produce.
The most important defense will be of your computer electronics. A strong nuclear magnetic wave that is not shielded could disrupt memory and electronics. Also, the smaller and lighter, the easier to maintain orbet.
If you want to maintain your free society, you best get to work on this or we will control you and your activities from orbet with the system that we are developing.
There are several assumptions here that need to be questioned. First of all, this assumes that private contractors will build the death star. I think this is probably wrong, because this has “government contract” written all over it — likely for job creation purposes as well. This means that there will be several cost over-runs at least 2x or 3x the original cost, and you will likely get a Death Planet or a Death Dwarf Star if your contractors are really good.
Secondly, you have to assume that in the time that the original Death Dwarf Star is getting built, private contractors will likely have built 200 Death Black Holes, rendering the technology and the iron obsolete.
Third, Galactic competitors will come up with alternatives that are faster, cheaper, and better, and cost less and our planet’s consumers will buy them and put all of our Death Dwarf Star workers out of work.
We haven’t even gotten to the engineering yet, the software systems, the weapons systems, the ongoing R&D, the faster-than-light drive (that’s a gajillion right there), and the funky humanoid robots.
Of course private contractors will build it … that’s what happens when government builds things anyway. 140km sphere of steel smacks of massive scope creep due to uncontrolled user requirements and a compliant contractor who sees every change as an opportunity to suck more tax dollars out of the Pentagon. Oops. Empire. I bet the original design was probably for something that could take an x- fighter down – maybe it was even meant to be the next model of the Tie fighter. JSF, anyone?
It was huge, not for drama, but because it was essentially a superstructure built around a hypermatter reactor to power the 64 different lasers that were eventually converged down to 8 main lenses positioned around the concave firing dish.
Also, they did not calculate the cost of producing said lenses (they are huge) or the reactor itself, which are costs that have no frame of reference.
How many Fetts does it take to screw in a Death Star?
This article makes Special Education look like Mensa. The whole Death Star is not made of steel. Let’s talk about space-age materials for a change. And who said we would have to launch it into orbit?? AHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA
Really?? You all have so little collective knowledge of logistics, mechanical engineering, and systems design that you can’t fathom a {relatively) realistic way to produce the Death Star. A degree really is meaningless in this country.
Assuming you’ve actually taken the time to design this thing (as opposed to just jettisoning the earth’s core into space and calling it a spacecraft), here’s how you start:
Step 1) Locate a small, iron-rich (or some infinitely more suitable material) asteroid or moon.
Step 2) Build the outer framework right on the surface. You can begin reinforcing this outer hull right away, to protect your project.
Step 3) As you work your way inward, you mine out the necessary materials, essentially turning the station into a self-consuming forge. This can be done fairly efficiently, because the process involves “siphoning” the molten metals out of the interior of the body, and directly into production centers.
This way you build on the stable foundation of a planetoid body, but when you are finished the station requires no launching. And the best part is that upon completion, you will have already destroyed your first heavenly body. Bravo!
This is from a performing arts drop-out.
Excellent envisioning from a performing arts drop-out. You’re hired!
I love it, it’s like eating turkey chili in a bowl made out of bread. Bread bowl George! First you eat the chili, then you eat the bowl!
There’s nothing more satisfying than looking down after lunch and seeing nothing but a Death Star.
DoodFace.. You basically just described a Dyson Sphere.. Larry Nivens Ringworld if you geeks wanna geek. Or Greg Baer Anvil of the Stars or Lucifers Hammer. And of Course A Mote in Gods Eye
Can you say Kickstarter project?
“After all, they’re both essentially floating weapons platforms so that seems reasonable”.
That one sentence tells me everything I need to know about this analysis. And then, you econo-nuts actually get the numbers wrong, too. Why does this not surprise me. A job in government is waiting for the lot of you, no doubt.
I’m more curious about how the electricians kept all the wiring sorted out when they were putting it together.
separate systems. Simple, really.
I’m in for $20. Now wait, just found another $3.17 in my other pocket. I’m in for $23.17.
This is the single funniest thing I have ever read.
Can we just build one 1/3 the size? It may still be able to blow things up and carry a military capable of invading some smaller distant moons or remote planets. If we privatize the effort and sold shares we could get it done fast! I’ll chip in!
That was called “Independence Day” and look were it got them.
I think you misunderstand the difference between Aerospace (and space) vs. Naval engineering. That death star would have to be lifted
I think you misunderstand the difference between Aerospace (and space) vs. Naval engineering. That death star would have to be lifted to orbit by rocket at $10,000 per pound (or so) meaning that 13,000x the world GDP = radical underestimate. Things are better if you use Aluminum and mine it from the moon. The moon also has other minerals – an iron core if you are looking for it [1].
One could argue anti-gravity technology for lifting, but if they are going to use ‘star-trek physics’ then why not feed a replicator with massive amounts of solar power (build near orbit of mercury) and compose the thing of sunlight?
[1] http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/01/070111-moon-core.html
We need to start thinking out of the box. We are missing one real possibility – to use the technology of the Star Forge. If Revan could build an entire fleet with it, why not as many Death Stars as one likes? Yes, I know it was destroyed but a piece survived and began to grow again. A decent chunk was found later on Nar Shadaa. By the time of Palpatine thousands of years on, it was probably huge again.
On using Star Trek physics, I would advise against it. Can you imagine the consequences if Dr. Moriarty got loose in the networks of a fully-armed and operational battle station?
Exactly. From the wookieepedia:
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Star_Forge
Nobody has yet studied the economic benefits of Force Sensitivity, but we learn from canonical sources that the price of robots and ships must have dropped to what would today seem like zero during the Old Republic. (Just think about how nuclear fission energy was called “Energy that’s not worth metreing” – and we have sent approximately 1 vessel to explore the solar system, not the galaxy.)
Also think about the Clone Wars, only 2 decades before the construction of the Death Star. The cost of the Clone Wars dwarfs the single-project Death Star, just as the total cost of WWII dwarfs the mere $45bn the US spent on Nimitz class aircraft carriers or paltry $50bn per stealth bomber. Again from Wookieepedia, we learn that
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Separatist_Droid_Army
If in fact they outnumber the clones by only 100 to 1, that would mean that there were tens of quadrillions of clones.
Now this may sound like a lot, but that’s because you’re not thinking on a truly galactic scale!
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/The_galaxy
(The 100 quadrillion life-forms number doesn’t include small stuff like lichens and bacteria; we have ~1 nonillion bacteria on Earth alone, so there should be more like a cattuordecillion life-forms that Yoda could meditate about. [American counting system])
We are talking about a war on a truly galactic scale here. Remember that these are people who jump into hyperspace on a whim and travel from one star system to another in an Augenblick. Earth might be totally destroyed in the course of the battle and that would only be a minor tragedy because there are so many other battles (300 billion star systems in the Milky Way).
Since their galaxy has 400 bn stars (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/The_galaxy) then the cost of the Death Star would only be $250 per planetary system. Come on, chip in, guys! This is going to be the Destroyer of Worlds!
Granted, only ten thousand worlds comprised the Separatist Alliance (confederacy) [http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Confederacy_of_Independent_Systems#Astrography], but we’re not dividing $1,000,000,000,000,000,000 among ten thousand people, but ten thousand planets – and the quintillion-dollar figure assumes our planet’s benighted ways of obtaining iron and making it into steel.
Also think about it this way: $1,000,000,000 trillion might sound like a lot now – but world GDP today stands at $62 trillion, which is only 14 doubling times away from being $1,000,000 trillion. If the Earth experienced GDP growth of 2% for the next . (And how long do you think it might take us to colonise not just nearby star systems, but to have republics and trade federations that stretch all the way across 120k × 1k light-years of the Milky Way? Then add another 25,000 years to that because the Republic was established in 25,053 BBY – already a mature space exploration society by that point. http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Galactic_Republic)
If the Earth’s denizens grew the economy at 2%/year for 25,000 years (not even counting the time it took various planets to develop the technology to travel the galaxy, just the age of the already-mature Galactic Republic) then the world GDP would reach $14035922178528374107397703328409120821806021155655454250255643688895\
55231394382192264007935008343209192842427520010692106385097126013547\
71346028851171749783993777743156021874752453075102024782800374931976\
256881844391709.238 trillion! And that’s not even counting the gains from galactic trade! Just intraplanetary growth.
That’s a bit too large of a number to comprehend so just think about this one. The GDP of Cambodia today stands at $32 bn or $2500 [PPP] per capita. Cambodia’s economic growth has jittered and started between 4.5% and 9% during the last few decades. But let’s just assume 3% stable growth to be conservative. If Cambodia’s economy grew at 3% per year for only the amount of time Yoda was a Jedi master (800 years) then Cambodia would be producing $955,724,857.68 trillion per year, in other words in very short order a few million life-forms occupying .12% of the earth’s land mass could buy a few Death Stars every year and still have enough money left over for food and beverage. Again this is just a miniature of the changes in economics and warship financing we could expect to see as Earthlings expand their demand curves out into the galaxy over future millennia.
Back to the Wookieepedia, of course you remember the Banking Clan is on the Separatist side — how else would you finance these projects?
(22 BBY is 22 years Before the Battle of Yavin, in which the Death Star was destroyed. Everything has a weak point. Many Bothans died to find out what it was.)
What I take away from the Star Wars allegory is that we had better spend an equal amount of research studying the political economy as we do on space exploration technology. Let’s say we built a Star Forge and the price of robots dropped effectively to zero. Then we would be incredibly f*$#ed if we lacked an incentive structure that prevents even a sleuthy, sly, slick Sith Lord from destroying life on the colossal galactic scale.
This would be the case if you only consider using current technologies, but a venture of this size becomes it’s own economic force. The number of supporting and spinoff ventures (i.e. “pick and shovel” companies) that would develop would create an economic subsystem that would not only support an expanding population, but most likely inspire multiple spin-off verticals within the “Death Star Industry.”
WOT? AFRICAN OR EUROPEAN?
I’m interested in just 1 Death Star not 2 billion
Everyone is crediting the Death Star to Emperor Palpatine. But wasn’t it Grand Moff Tarkin’s brain-child?
Almost. Actually, it was the same guy that designed the TIE fighter that came up with the idea for the death star. He was friends with Tarkin, and gave the idea to him to present to Palpatine.
And on a side note…The first Death Star was 160km, not 140.
::begin uber-nerd
One thing I forgot to mention in addition to the fact that the diameter of the first Death Star is 160km, and not 140km is the fact that it’s made of quadanium steel, which contains…quadanium. I’m going to assume that’s on some remote planet we’ll be able to go to once we uncover the prothean mass relay that’s near Pluto.
Ferris Bueller you’re my hero.
160 km? That’s it? Thats about 100 miles. When they compare it to a small moon on the movie, they must mean realllly small. The Earth’s moon is about 2,000 miles in diameter. For more comparison, the mother ship on Independence Day is 1/4th the size of our moon, or about 5 times this size and it’s extremely mobile!
Raith Sienar http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Raith_Sienar
I think it would be a lot more appropriate to build it from wood and nails, with perhaps a few nails and glue to hold it together.
This would take the weight down by about 600000 million tonnes as well as reduce costs by around $400.
This is a completely logical build of the death star. The wooden frame would support the 10 trillion degree heat easily. And any planet that is destroyed would add to the comfort of…
DINOSAUR
You dummies forgot a couple things:
Energy production.
To think this think operates off of one of your green “technologies” (read: charlatry, or snake-oil), would be to assume your stupid “THE DEATH STAR’S MADE OF STEELLLL” is valid as well. The energy to drive this would be on the order of what mankind is capable of (from a SWAG statement) which is around 230TW. Remember, dummies, this is in Watts, so it is energy consumed, produced, lost. This would have to be increased, probably several orders, as it must command a station, as well as a gi-fuckin-massive death ray. [It obviously must be much, much more, as this station moved from one star system to another, yet Lucas provided no wicked proof of how this unit moves in ~43 minutes from Luke/Leia/Han/Carpet/gay-butler-robot left this galactic Winnebego, to the point Luke dueces the star]. This price would have to increase by ~$100Q USD.
Reason? The world’s econ is ~$50T USD. That is surface based. The star is volume base. Besides, the generator, like the one Lando destroyed, had to be union-made. Add another $100Q USD to facilitate that turd.
What about feeding these lifeforms? Beyond comprehension.
Nice you spent time looking at one sliver of a thing you attribute to our world, but it needs a lot more work.
Go back to the drawing board.
definition of the biggest virgin dork on earth
Yeah, they totally didn’t even consider the unique economy of the Death Star, as the implications of Big Government.
Idiot.
i reckon the death star moved from system to system using warp speed travel, maybe a super warp speed travel but yes i see your point about its energy consumption but seeing that all the star destroyers had fusion reactors on board to generate their power, power similar to that of a small sun, i dare say the death star had a much larger version of that
ERROR: the term millennia means thousands of years so in this case it would be 0.8 millennia
“Economics students .. have figured out how much (the) cost to build the Death Star”. The question is; is this price the standard model or are all options included? Drive Away-No More To Pay? Registration included? Tow Bar? Has this costing model created by the (US) university, considered any additional costing for Right-Hand-Drive variants for use in most British Commonwealth countries and dependancies? Is NASA interested? Does NASA really care? What about the real cost to run after leaving the factory?
I find this part of the internet extremely difficult to masturbate to.
You have no idea how much you’ve made me laugh.
But not impossible?
You’re doing it wrong.
This is the funniest thing I have read in a long time!
Thank you Thank you Thank you FUNNIEST comment ever!
Why don’t we just make a Borg cube instead?
A agree! But then again, a cube actually has a far nigger mass by diametre than a sphere. And a cube is inherently structurally weaker. But what they hey 😀
RACISM ALERT!
I think he meant “bigger.” The “n” is right next to the “b.”
Greatest typo ever.
Seriously…I laughed SO hard at this typo.
What if we built an econo sized (and massed) Death star like the traditional spoke wheel space ports, (only spherical) rather than just a single torus, use perhaps a hundred or so spoked tori at different angles then cover the gaps with solar panels to help keep our Mini Deathstar “Green”
keeping with the Green theory..
since aluminum is recyclable, what we first do, is take over all the beer companies, we drop the price to increase demand, then we collect the empties, and ship them to our moon base recycling center for processing into beams and struts for our Deathstar.
Our motto will be Have a Beer… Save the Planet! he he, little do they know Earth will be our practice planet! 🙂
So… this article is about making a hunk of steel the size of the Death Star, but what about everything else?
Like Obama’s stimulus, it will all sort of pay for itself somehow, eventually, I guess, more or less… maybe if they give all the stormtroopers unemployment pay when the droids take over, it’ll all sort of work out…
Actually, on second thought, this thread should be closed. If Obama learns he can buy a Death Star with taxpayer dollars, he’ll make that the centerpiece of his campaign.
Better spent on republican wars and empire building, right?
Well we better start now. At the rate Washington moves, it WILL take 800 millenia to build an interstellar empire, and we wouldn’t want to need this Death Star and not have it, now would we?
your sugar daddy Obama didn’t end the war. Remember that. We left because the Iraqi’s told us to GTFO.
Death star construction might be an effective form of stimulus for the US. It will keep countless low skilled workers in steel factories and associated industries until the year 835327. This is the one thing the Republicans might agree to since it caters to their two favorite things: the military industrial complex and environmental degradation and destruction.
as it stands, right now in the real world, there are 3.2 million unfilled jobs in America, most of which are in the skilled labor fields, such as steel factories and welders… so I doubt it. People just don’t want to do hard work anymore.
I don’t care if its Obama or someone else, if they have a Death Star, they get my vote.
If they have a Death Star, why would they NEED your vote?
so you also mean laying all the carpets and tiles and installing all the lights and air circulation systems and also how to generate the artificial gravity for such a thing, something we dont even have the technology for as yet, then theres the matter of dealing with all the sewerage…
A lot of people have commented on the Death Star creating it’s own gravity, but if we take the mass of 1.08 x 10^18 kg and the radius of 70000m as good estimates then the gravity at the surface of the death star is:
6.67×10^-11 x 1.08×10^18 / 70000^2.
I get 1.47×10^-2 ms^-2 or about 1/650th of the gravity experienced on the surface of the earth. Presumably inside the death star the net graviational force would be less, since some of the mass would be away from the center of mass, from the perspective of someone inside the DS. This would be especially true is the majority of the mass makes up the outer shell of the DS. In any case, the gravitational field of the DS is pretty much negligible, even at the 140km size. That might sound huge but is still only about 1/25th the size of our moon.
Planet mining in low gravity. In stead of lifting cargo from big planets like Earth, the logical step would be to tear an entire smaller planet apart in close to zero gravity and refine the stuff in space. Thats what I would do.
I only need to know if smaller planets might still contain iron and other heavy stuff?
That, or mining asteroids. I can imagine a big ship with a “mouth” at one end, refinery in the middle, an iron-pooping back end. All done in zero-G with minimal effort (relatively speaking, of course).
Don’t you need oxygen for the refining process?
Before spending 130 GDPs on building your Death Star, spend a little time on how you’d be able to protect your 140 km diameter planetoid from a swarm of nuclear-tipped missiles.
It’s not enough to stop most of the incoming missiles, you have to get them all otherwise you’ve got radiation problems at the very least.
Duh: deflector shields.
Why do you think we’ve spent so much on the Star Wars Missile Defense System?
I find your lack of faith disturbing.
Wouldn’t it be a lot faster/cheaper (and, dare I say, borderline _practical_) to “just” snag a stray asteroid, hollow it out, and put up nice paneling on the walls?
And this is why star wars is stupid and gay…because once you start asking questions you arent supposed to you realize that moze of the shit they built was impractical
Which is precisely why its classified as science fiction champ…
It’s fiction…
Not real…
Idiot
actually, time for me to be a literalist dork… it’s science fantasy, not science fiction. The difference being Science Fiction generally has it’s roots in reality, just projected to the maybes that tomorrow may hold. Science Fantasy just uses science styled things instead of magic and monsters and the like, otherwise it’s just standard fantasy, with not intention of being based off of real life. It’s about the story, not the probability of it being realistic.
Look up the Eye of Palpatine
Seriously, have none of you read John Ringo’s Troy series? Laser calibrated mirror lenses with solar panels and Ion Drives. Small sat can melt out the necessary material for creating larger sats until you have a network of large enough sats that you can hollow out a nickel asteroid.
Pack the asteroid with ice, cap the hole with the material cut from the hole and heat the entire object evenly across the entire surface. Sufficient slow heat will cause the interior to turn to plasma and expand without explosion. A solid mass of metal could expand to quadruple the size or more and retain sufficient thickness to provide significant protection.
Cool it off, cut a door and build whatever you want inside using any materials you want. Call Martha in to decorate.
Take another asteroid and melt it into a huge spring and a giant dinner plate. Fuse the spring ends to the habitat on one side and the plate on the other.
Propulsion provided by tossing nukes onto the plate for a reaction drive.
Made with solar power AND eliminates the world’s supply of nuclear weps. What’s not to love?
Presumably the Death Star is so huge because most of it IS the planet buster weapon. At which point, we don’t know whether it’s reasonable to guess that its density is that of iron. Not an especially fun answer I admit.
As another poster mentioned, the cost is hardly in the price of materials; it’s in creating such a highly ordered object. You’d probably get a better guess by proportionally scaling up the cost of the Illustrious, rather than just the cost of its steel.
There’s a number of technologies the Galactic empire could employ to reduce their cost. First being their apparent mastery of gravity field manipulation – gravity on their ships, floating vehicles. Second AI is clearly on an order well beyond our primitive computers so an orderly giant piece of tech shouldn’t be too hard for them to design. Third they have a seemingly endless supply of clones and or droids to slave away at the construction.
Their plan is not all that well thought out, plus does not include the cost of getting all that iron off the surface of the earth. A better i.e. faster and cheeper plan would be to use the moon which also has plenty of Iron is already in space. Moving people robots and initial supplies would be far cheeper. From a rough estimate including the technological advancements made during the extended time period plus that the project would after 500 years become self sustaining using robot labor and solar power, would be a little over 2000 years and 1500 years of Earths GDP.
Several D.S.s could built from the resources in the moon but it might be better to just turn the moon into a larger D.S. so it would not be necessary to escape the remaining materials.
M.
You Stupid Earthlings.
I am on my way there. It will take in a lot less than 13,000 years travel time before we meet.
Moo-Hoo-Haa-ha
And if one uses -where possible- ceramic materials, stone and/or wood? It is more abundant and cheaper. Scaling up may not be correct. You also need large amounts of water. A ship hasn’t got that. Scaling up a cell -consisting of 80% water- is not correct either but something in between perhaps. You also need large amount of soil to grow vegatebles. Soil is much cheaper than steel.
I think they needed to spend some more money on security… after all, blowing it up was no more difficult than shooting womp rats in a T-16.
Most importantly, who does the catering?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hp69rg6Hdlo
As a manager myself, I have to ask: In determining the cost, have you factored in the cost of all the additional infrastructure besides just the steel to construct the frame and hull? There would also be the following expenses to consider:
1) Wiring, conduit and ducting to transport power, data, air and water around the entire structure;
2) Electrics/Electronics (interior and exterior surveillance cameras, sensors, lighting, air conditioning, automatic doors, consoles, servers, routers, and associated IT infrastructure.)
3) Ordnance (missiles, ammunition, turret cannon, beam weapons and power sources for same, TIE fighters [which I assume might cost about as much as say an F-22A], tractor beams and other munitions.)
4) Services (hydroponics for food and air production, tools and equipment for workshops and maintenance, fabrication plant, internal transport mechanisms [eg turbolifts, monorail tubes etc], material for clothing, uniforms, bedding, medical supplies – the list here is endless.)
All of these require materials other than steel – you need silicon, copper, titanium and other transitional metals, and rare earths for the electronics. You need cotton or other fabrics for the clothing and such, chemicals for the hydroponics and medicines and so on.
There’s also labour costs involved, not just in construction but manning the thing once operational. Besides command and assault crew, you need maintenance workers repairing damage, running the hydroponics farms and plant, managing the IT systems, and so on. You’d need a working crew in the tens or hundreds of thousands to run and maintain a vehicle of that size.
Granted, you could use robots in many of those roles, but robots are also damned expensive, not just to build but to maintain. There would be some roles where robots would be economically viable but there would still be many roles where human crew would actually be cheaper and more effective than robots.
In the end, I can see this lot costing a sight more than $8,100 trillion, not just to build but also to run. I’d be interested to know what the quarterly budget would be just for running this thing on standard ops!
You can’t build the planet. Simply put:
The blueprints you have for the planet won’t meet the city’s code, so you’d have to change them. Then the city would say you were violating zoning ordinances by building the planet in someone’s front yard. So, you’d have to get a variance.
Then the Forest Service would require tree-cutting permits! Then the EPA would request an environmental impact statement concerning the work. And the Army Corps of engineers would want a map of the proposed planet!
Of course, the Equal Opportunity Commission would jump in claiming you weren’t hiring enough minorities. The FAA would refuse to let you launch because the planet was not marked by an identification number. And, to top it all off, the IRS would probably decide to seize all your assets, claiming you were trying to avoid paying any taxes by leaving the country!
And it’s 8.1 Quadrillion… not 8.1 Trillion…
Only a thousand times different…
Genius
Genius read again…
“In the end, I can see this lot costing a sight more than $8,100 trillion”
I don’t see where they said 8.1 Trillion? Clearly it was 8,100 trillion, which equals 8.1Q…
Real Genius
If they build it like they do an aircraft carrier they will just use all the salvageable inside’s from any available decommissioned ship… Cuts down a lot of the cost…
What if the Death Star allready exsist and we don´t know…
“But then again, you can just take out a loan from the entire planet and then default on them in the most awesome way possible.”
So THAT’S what Greece has been up to!
Well, they are paying for a lot of military contracts with European partners…
no gravity in space. less dense than battle ship.
The death star had artificial gravity, thus it must be as dense – and more.
Even without artifical gravity, that amount of matter will create its own gravity field.
Density is measured as the amount of matter divided by the volume the matter takes up.
In short, gravity matters not.
Actually there is gravity in space. Newton’s Universal Law of Gravitation states that all matter exerts a gravitational force on every other object in the universe. Also, the strength of that gravitational force is determined by the mass of both objects and the distance between them. If the Death Star is the size of small moon, then it will have a pretty significant gravitational field. Our own moon exerts a force of gravity roughly equal to 1/6 of that felt here on earth.
no gravity in space. Death star is less dense than battle ship.
How much to build a Tardis?
You could easily scale it down in my opinion. Is a 140km diameter really necessary? Scale it back to a 10 or 20km diameter and you’d still have a massive death star – which is more economically viable to boot!
It’d still be huge!
It would be HUGE in Haggerstown.
Size isn’t just necessary for holding the equipment and personnel. The heat created by tunneling that kind of energy requires massive heat exchangers and a humongous store of liquids which can be converted to gas for heat absorption.
Even more important, though, is that the mere size of the thing is muy impressivo! Imagine how those Aldaraanians cowered when the shadow of the Death Star crossed their entire planet!!
I am a little concerned that anyone would want to build this. It basically has one weapon and must be used at a relatively short distance. Why not build something that could fire a long range weapon (missle)?
Wasa messa saying, It’s a freakin death star, I want 10!!!!!!!
They wouldn’t use iron anyway.. and the output of the thousands of worlds in the empire would be more than enough to fund it and resource it.
Thanks for the information but I’m concerned that one thing wasn’t addressed.
How many Bothans died to bring us this information?
many.
Admiral Ackbar, please?
I believe that it is evident between Episodes 4 and 6 that they had been building a second one all along. Unless I’m mistaken, at the end of Episode 3, we see the skeleton of the Death Star, with a significant amount of construction already completed. It’s 19 years between the events of Episode 3 and Episode 4, and the Death Star comes online in Episode 4… the gap between 4 and 6 isn’t very long, so they must have been building a second one all along.
the first law of government spending. Why build one when you can build two for twice the price.
Wow! You live in a country with a Beneficent Government! Ours (USA) believes in “Why build one when you can build four for eight times the price, then pocket 80% of it?” That may seem like faulty math, but substitute a little synthetic dura-plas for dura-steel in places where no one will notice, ‘forget’ to open a few hatchways (resulting in whole large rooms that don’t need expensive equipment), economize on blast-doors… why you could even leave the blast partitions off a vent conduit all the way from the surface to the power core, and who’d be the wiser?
Not that it makes a difference, but $8,000 trillion is around 130 times the world’s combined GDP (around $62 trillion in 2010), not 13,000 times.
Thank you for pointing this out – we’ve updated the article accordingly. We appreciate it and apologize for the mistake, good math Ianvl!
Hi,
Think the reference “In context, it takes under an hour to get the steel for HMS Illustrious” is also incorrect.
At 1.3 billion tonnes annual production divided by 365 days, then by 24 hours and finally by 60 minutes is ~2.47 tonnes/min. In UNDER 10 minutes, there should enough steel to make one HMS Illustrious (22,000 tonnes.
Cheers.
under 10 minutes means under 1 hour, isnt?
But they use synthetic Durasteel in the empire so not so much. Plus, there’s lots of worlds to get materials from, not just one.
Yes, now it has been costed and an action plan drawn up, when do we get started, and where ?
This isn’t a reasonable assumption. Based on the reactor attack sequence in return of the Jedi, most of the Death Star is a large central void, so their density is probably much lower than an aircraft carrier.
But the second death star in Jedi wasn’t even close to completed yet. We don’t actually know how filled in the original death star was.
Is it scalable … can I have just one death “asteroid”
I have some corrugated iron and a wheelbarrow in my back shed that I am willing to contribute as seed capital
You don’t need nearly as much steel because the structure doesn’t ever see gravity and doesn’t need to be strong.
-dk
Won’t see gravity? Where in the universe would you build it?
You’d build it in space obviously!
Everything creates its own gravity, and it is directly in relation to its own mass. You can do an experiment by blowing bubbles in water which barely weigh anything and wait for them to eventually come together.
It’s hard to make a realistic assessment of gravity between bubbles in water, because there are _so_ many greater forces involved, including the gravity which holds the water in the tub. Surface tension, viscosity, etc etc etc. And if you’re talking about bubbles on the surface, you add the water-air interface, which also is not in Space.
According to one of the books in the annexed canon, things like Death Stars were built in space near small moons or asteroids so the gravitation on them would, indeed have been considerably less than if they had to deal with being real close to Earth. On the other hand, how close does a Death Star have to be to the planet it is Deathing in order to get the right Evil penache?
As for the claim that building a Death Star in Space means it doesn’t have to be strong, picture a Death Star made of aluminum foil: it doesn’t have to be strong, it’s in space…right up until the first time someone fires a big rock at it. I think the “doesn’t have to be strong” has to be taken with a grain of vacuum.
If you’ve come this far, then you could also question whether the deathstar platfrom has to come in a globe format at all.
All that surface covering ..for what ?
You only need the weapon support, protection for energy core, small defenses against X-wing attacks , a berth place for a number of tie-fighters… and presto, you can do with a lot smaller and denser space ship…kinda like ..a ..space craft carrier with a big gun on deck. 🙂
which brings us back to the first assumption of steel density of a naval air craft carrier. 😀
There was a prototype Death Star that was built first at the Maw Installation that consisted of just the necessary parts for the superweapon and hyperdrive.
If you’ve come this far, then you could also question whether the deathstar platfrom has to come in a globe format at all.
All that surface covering ..for what ?
You only need the weapon support, protection for energy core, small defenses against X-wing attacks , a berth place for a number of tie-fighters… and presto, you can do with a lot smaller and denser space ship…kinda like ..a ..space craft carrier with a big gun on deck. 🙂
which brings us back to the first assumption of steel density of a naval air craft carrier. 😀
Or just build an Eclipse class star destroyer that has a superweapon built into a super star destroyer.
Confusing – I’m interested in just 1 Death Star not 2 billion
Confusing – I only interested in 1 death star not 2 billion (looks like a big ship to me)
Given that some of the capital ships from Attack of the Clones could land and take off from planets, I’ve always assumed that they were made of something much, much lighter and much, much stronger than steel. But it’s definitely interesting to do the math on just how much sheer volume is contained within a structure of that size. 34 trillion crew members? Holy Cow!
When you have what appears to be complete control over gravitational forces and nearly-complete control over inertial resistance, the rest is just math.
Of course, you’d have to be able to control it both ways so you didn’t, say, create a gravitationally-induced toroid and blow a big chunk of atmosphere into space every time you took off.
What about the copper for the electronics. How much Copper?
They won’t use copper then, it will all be based on quantum lights. cost=1/100000 of copper
right.
What about the copper for all the electronics. How much copper?
Take a look at the staffing requirements…Assuming the same crew per cubic meter yields 34 trillion crew members on a death star – I’d hate to be the paymaster.
Solution = Droids
And the steel for the droids?
Right, now you see why it’s so easy to sneak around the Death Star — it was a little under-staffed. (Really amazingly fast and large elevators, though.)
Hey DC, good maths there. I get the same number of crew per cubic metre as you do, but wiki reckons the *real* figure as being a quarter of a million. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Star. So I guess I agree with Ryan; understaffed!
Depending on which schematic you prefer, a large proportion on the interior volume is filled with power generation and distribution equipment. This would reduce crew estimates, but change the cost estimates.
http://www.theforce.net/swtc/Pix/magazines/starlog/ds1tj2.gif
http://www.dk.co.uk/static/html/features/starwars/locations_gallery/images/12%20Death%20Star%20Cutaway.jpg
THIS is the solution to current unemployment woes, YES WE CAN
Yes, working holiday in space
You just need to find new ways to motivate them. The emperor is not as forgiving a I am.
nice read.. so when do we get started.. 😀
Awesome!
one small question…. it blew up… there was a rather large design flaw… why would you want to recreate it in the first place?
Did you math in the cost of a cannon of that freakin big hole that let the buggers in?
dumb
The second design corrected the problem – which is why the rebels went to blow it up before it got completed.
thats correct!!!!
I like it very much so thank you.
Hehehehhehehhehehehehehhehehe
I liked this!