Feb 04
Death Star Costs $15.6 Septillion, 1.4 Trillion Times the US Debt
- By Scott Johnson on February 4th, 2009
A guy called Ryszard Gold—who probably is an alien villain from the Outer Rim planets and got a 49-point score in our Geek Social Aptitude Test—made the calculation of the most basic Death Star’s price with current materials and space transport costs here on Earth. Here’s a quick summary:
So worth your reading time.
Loading ...
I copy blueprints for a living. Even the most basic single-story commercial building requires twenty pages.
For the Death Star, they MUST have millions of pages of blueprints for each of those thousands of contractors.
The Bothans died of BOREDOM trying to find a flaw in the defenses.
Maybe I just don’t have a good grasp on it but that seems like a pretty small number considering all the planetary systems in the empire’s possession.
AND not to mention the billions spent on hiring the workers (or droids) to build it in the first place.
I did like the Eddie Izzard sketch that went with the item. Nice find, Scott!
I wonder if that number includes the cost of covering up a certain thermal exaust that coud prove to be fatal in case of a small ship attack, if not then it seems like a waste of money.
But in the future, all evil empires are LOADED. So its not a problem.
Maybe it was an Ikea do it yourself problem.
“hmmm… I’m positive this 1000 tons of armored plate was supposed to go right there.”
“Oh, well, probably not important anyways.”
“But in the future, all evil empires are LOADED. So its not a problem.”
.
True, but this is a long time ago… in a galaxy far far away.
@BlueNight – “The Bothans died of BOREDOM trying to find a flaw in the defenses.”
Man, that is some SERIOUS Star Wars geekdom terminology right there! I stand in awe of your awesomeness, good sir.
Didn’t a few star systems go bankrupt to build it? I heard that somewhere…
Obviously he forgot about the Imperial Union. Should overrun about 100 fold into the octillions.
The cost estimates are overinflated by several orders of magnitude. Firstly, the materials don’t need to be launched into space – they are already floating around in the asteroid belt, free for the taking. Secondly, the cost of building infrastructure in orbit to turn raw materials into Death Stars is an investment, an will provide a return many times the initial cost, because (assuming there’s going to be people in space) whoever builds that infrastructure will be able to sell processed materials and finished spacecraft, and even the Government won’t sell them at a loss.
This article is completely bogus, and typical of Jesus Diaz’s idiot rants on Gizmodo.