Suppose that you were lying on a beach blanket in your backyard, cozily looking at our spectacular night sky. You feel the gentle breeze and the crispy air surrounding you, making you want to fall asleep. You see our moon – our only moon – warmly looking back at you, gently giving off some reflected light. Then, you’re counting stars, seeing them gleam – such a peaceful night.
Now, suppose that you happen to see an object, dimmer-looking than a star – but a lot bigger than a regular star. You study it as it grows bigger and nearer – moving slightly across the sky! What is that object, and why is it moving so quickly? You guess that it’s a NASA spaceship, a rogue asteroid, or even a comet… but it doesn’t seem to have a tail or glow like a rocket or meteor entering the atmosphere.
You scramble to get to your room upstairs to examine the object with your telescope. You twist your telescope, hoping to get a good look at the object. Finally, you see a grayish object with a round depression above its equator. Then, you think it might be a moon – but there is only one moon. But as it moves even closer, you get a clearer view of the object. You stumble downstairs, where your dad sat in your living room, lazily watching late-night ESPN on your family TV.
You managed to say, “Dad! I just saw a weird object with my telescope! Want to check it out with me?” “Sure,” your dad answers, following you up the stairs.
You ask, “Is it another moon?” When your dad examined the weird object, he exclaimed, “That’s no moon; it’s a space station!”
Then, after a few seconds of awkward silence, you manage to say, “That’s too big to be a space station.” “I have a bad feeling about this,” your dad says. Doesn’t that sound familiar? Do you remember the famous Millennium Falcon run to the destroyed Alderaan? Do you remember the last Obi-Wan vs. Darth Vader duel on the Death Star?
Wait. Did I just say Death Star? The Death Star was Star Wars Imperials’ pride and joy, a planet-destroying weapon that would bring order to the galaxy – but unfortunately was destroyed by courageous Rebel pilots in their iconic Starfighters. And guess what? After that, the Imperials just rebuilt another Death Star, bigger, better armed, and way more powerful than it had been – “Death Star 2.”
But what if Earthlings wanted control of the Milky Way? How long will it take to construct it? How will we build it? What extremely unfortunate planet will be our planet first to be obliterated?
First of all, the Empire took nineteen years to finish the first Death Star. That’s nearly two decades – we’d better get started, or we’d never get it finished.
It was unclear how big the DS-1 Orbital Battle Station was, but it certainly was humongous. We estimate that it was between 120 km (75 miles) and 160 km (99.5 miles) in diameter. That’s extremely small – compared to our moon, which has a diameter of 2159.1 miles – but still, it’s ginormous compared to smaller moons.
We’d need one thing first to build it. Money, money, and more money! So much money that Elon Musk would be bankrupt perhaps more than a thousand times – actually probably even more than one hundred thousand times. Experts estimate the cost of the Death Star is $852 quadrillion (852 with 15 zeros). That’s only the cost of construction – we haven’t factored in maintenance.
Completed it would take 1.7 million people just to run the thing.
Then, add 25,984 Stormtroopers and 342,953 Imperial Navy soldiers, and you’ll get 2,068,937 people living in the Death Star.*
Let’s say each person on the Death Star created 1.13 kg (2.5 lb) of waste every day (average human). It would cost $564,925 to manage waste every day – so we don’t turn the Death Star into a landfill. Then, we have to make garbage compaction places more advanced – so people don’t fall in and get flattened.
It would take $52 billion for the electricity bill, $274,000 to feed everyone, and another $20,400 for snacks. And an estimated $233,000 for only a cycle or laundry. Even Empire Palpatine doesn’t want his troops in dirty socks and smelly underwear. This is just the money spent every day. If you want to do it, you’re paying more money every day for running the thing than you’ve spent building it.
And we’ve still got more bills. Added up, it’d take $7.8 octillion (an octillion has 27 zeros) every day, plus $8 octillion with every superlaser blast. That’s more money than we have here on Earth – I’m surprised Darth Vader’s wallet was big enough to hold so much cash.
Don’t tell me you still feel like building it – I thought I convinced you not to. Let’s say you have the money. How will you assemble it? Where would you get the instructions manual?
Ok let’s say I wrote the manual for you – because I’m such a nice guy. Now, you’d need a hyper matter core (whatever that is) – let’s say you already have one. You’d need four reactor shafts all joined along the equator. Next, you’d need an extremely large column from up to down just to support the thing. Then, you’d need tons of steel. An estimated two million Death Stars can be built – just from the steel here on Earth! But thankfully, we’re building one – who would need more anyways?
Now, even if you took all the steel needed for one single Death Star, from iron ore to finished steel, it’d take 830,000 years just to get the parts for construction. Now, you’d need to assemble these parts into fairly bigger parts to get it up to space. It’d take millions of rockets to get it into space – and by the time you’re finished, the air would be way too polluted for you to breathe. We may have to find another home planet.
Now, after we’ve gotten some parts, where will we assemble them? We can’t have it too far – it’d cost way too much money. If we do this too close to Earth, it’d probably fall down and create a gigantic crater. So we’d build it outside of Earth’s atmosphere – enough for it to orbit Earth. But let’s hope nobody accidentally blasts Earth into bits during the process.
Speaking of the super laser, you’d need to collect all of our sun’s energy for a week before you’d be able to destroy an Earth-like planet. And in reality, our super laser won’t exactly behave the way the super laser in the franchise does.
And don’t stay near the beam. Even if you were just standing near the beam it would probably obliterate you in a matter of seconds. So you’d have to protect your crew from the beam – unlike the Star Wars Death Star.
Oh yeah, now there’s recoil. If you packed all the energy from the sun for the blast, it would send you in the opposite direction at a speed of 48 miles per hour (77km) – according to Newton’s 3rd law.
But thankfully, there’s a solution to this. If you had just an antimatter device aboard the Death Star, there won’t be a noticeable recoil. Antimatter is the matter with its electrical charge opposite that of normal matter. So when antimatter meets matter, they destroy each other. You would need 0.00000002% of your targeted planet’s mass to balance the recoil.
But don’t aim the superlaser at any planet in our Solar System – there’s a better test for this.
We could use it for good – maybe call it the Alive Star? Anyways, when a life-threatening asteroid is hurtling towards Earth, we could use the super laser to destroy it before it reaches Earth. But I guess the super laser is a little too overqualified for that. You still want to control the Milky Way, don’t you?
Building this does seem kind of tiring. Why don’t we save this for Empire Palpatine? But if you really want the galaxy to be yours, I guess I have given you the blueprint for taking it!
Now, suppose that you happen to see an object, dimmer-looking than a star – but a lot bigger than a regular star. You study it as it grows bigger and nearer – moving slightly across the sky! What is that object, and why is it moving so quickly? You guess that it’s a NASA spaceship, a rogue asteroid, or even a comet… but it doesn’t seem to have a tail or glow like a rocket or meteor entering the atmosphere.
You scramble to get to your room upstairs to examine the object with your telescope. You twist your telescope, hoping to get a good look at the object. Finally, you see a grayish object with a round depression above its equator. Then, you think it might be a moon – but there is only one moon. But as it moves even closer, you get a clearer view of the object. You stumble downstairs, where your dad sat in your living room, lazily watching late-night ESPN on your family TV.
You managed to say, “Dad! I just saw a weird object with my telescope! Want to check it out with me?” “Sure,” your dad answers, following you up the stairs.
You ask, “Is it another moon?” When your dad examined the weird object, he exclaimed, “That’s no moon; it’s a space station!”
Then, after a few seconds of awkward silence, you manage to say, “That’s too big to be a space station.” “I have a bad feeling about this,” your dad says. Doesn’t that sound familiar? Do you remember the famous Millennium Falcon run to the destroyed Alderaan? Do you remember the last Obi-Wan vs. Darth Vader duel on the Death Star?
Wait. Did I just say Death Star? The Death Star was Star Wars Imperials’ pride and joy, a planet-destroying weapon that would bring order to the galaxy – but unfortunately was destroyed by courageous Rebel pilots in their iconic Starfighters. And guess what? After that, the Imperials just rebuilt another Death Star, bigger, better armed, and way more powerful than it had been – “Death Star 2.”
But what if Earthlings wanted control of the Milky Way? How long will it take to construct it? How will we build it? What extremely unfortunate planet will be our planet first to be obliterated?
First of all, the Empire took nineteen years to finish the first Death Star. That’s nearly two decades – we’d better get started, or we’d never get it finished.
It was unclear how big the DS-1 Orbital Battle Station was, but it certainly was humongous. We estimate that it was between 120 km (75 miles) and 160 km (99.5 miles) in diameter. That’s extremely small – compared to our moon, which has a diameter of 2159.1 miles – but still, it’s ginormous compared to smaller moons.
We’d need one thing first to build it. Money, money, and more money! So much money that Elon Musk would be bankrupt perhaps more than a thousand times – actually probably even more than one hundred thousand times. Experts estimate the cost of the Death Star is $852 quadrillion (852 with 15 zeros). That’s only the cost of construction – we haven’t factored in maintenance.
Completed it would take 1.7 million people just to run the thing.
Then, add 25,984 Stormtroopers and 342,953 Imperial Navy soldiers, and you’ll get 2,068,937 people living in the Death Star.*
Let’s say each person on the Death Star created 1.13 kg (2.5 lb) of waste every day (average human). It would cost $564,925 to manage waste every day – so we don’t turn the Death Star into a landfill. Then, we have to make garbage compaction places more advanced – so people don’t fall in and get flattened.
It would take $52 billion for the electricity bill, $274,000 to feed everyone, and another $20,400 for snacks. And an estimated $233,000 for only a cycle or laundry. Even Empire Palpatine doesn’t want his troops in dirty socks and smelly underwear. This is just the money spent every day. If you want to do it, you’re paying more money every day for running the thing than you’ve spent building it.
And we’ve still got more bills. Added up, it’d take $7.8 octillion (an octillion has 27 zeros) every day, plus $8 octillion with every superlaser blast. That’s more money than we have here on Earth – I’m surprised Darth Vader’s wallet was big enough to hold so much cash.
Don’t tell me you still feel like building it – I thought I convinced you not to. Let’s say you have the money. How will you assemble it? Where would you get the instructions manual?
Ok let’s say I wrote the manual for you – because I’m such a nice guy. Now, you’d need a hyper matter core (whatever that is) – let’s say you already have one. You’d need four reactor shafts all joined along the equator. Next, you’d need an extremely large column from up to down just to support the thing. Then, you’d need tons of steel. An estimated two million Death Stars can be built – just from the steel here on Earth! But thankfully, we’re building one – who would need more anyways?
Now, even if you took all the steel needed for one single Death Star, from iron ore to finished steel, it’d take 830,000 years just to get the parts for construction. Now, you’d need to assemble these parts into fairly bigger parts to get it up to space. It’d take millions of rockets to get it into space – and by the time you’re finished, the air would be way too polluted for you to breathe. We may have to find another home planet.
Now, after we’ve gotten some parts, where will we assemble them? We can’t have it too far – it’d cost way too much money. If we do this too close to Earth, it’d probably fall down and create a gigantic crater. So we’d build it outside of Earth’s atmosphere – enough for it to orbit Earth. But let’s hope nobody accidentally blasts Earth into bits during the process.
Speaking of the super laser, you’d need to collect all of our sun’s energy for a week before you’d be able to destroy an Earth-like planet. And in reality, our super laser won’t exactly behave the way the super laser in the franchise does.
And don’t stay near the beam. Even if you were just standing near the beam it would probably obliterate you in a matter of seconds. So you’d have to protect your crew from the beam – unlike the Star Wars Death Star.
Oh yeah, now there’s recoil. If you packed all the energy from the sun for the blast, it would send you in the opposite direction at a speed of 48 miles per hour (77km) – according to Newton’s 3rd law.
But thankfully, there’s a solution to this. If you had just an antimatter device aboard the Death Star, there won’t be a noticeable recoil. Antimatter is the matter with its electrical charge opposite that of normal matter. So when antimatter meets matter, they destroy each other. You would need 0.00000002% of your targeted planet’s mass to balance the recoil.
But don’t aim the superlaser at any planet in our Solar System – there’s a better test for this.
We could use it for good – maybe call it the Alive Star? Anyways, when a life-threatening asteroid is hurtling towards Earth, we could use the super laser to destroy it before it reaches Earth. But I guess the super laser is a little too overqualified for that. You still want to control the Milky Way, don’t you?
Building this does seem kind of tiring. Why don’t we save this for Empire Palpatine? But if you really want the galaxy to be yours, I guess I have given you the blueprint for taking it!