That didn’t take long.
Last month, “John D” of Longmont, Colorado created a petition on the White House webpage “We the People” titled, “Secure resources and funding, and begin construction of a Death Star by 2016.”
The nature of the petition is fairly self-explanatory. (Read more…) Someone reportedly living in a city in Colorado wants Barack Obama to build a real-life version of the Death Star from Star Wars—the gargantuan spacestation officially named the DS-1 Orbital Battle Station, the construction of which Darth Vader himself oversaw:
As of Tuesday morning, the petition has upwards of 1,300 signatures (if a “We the People” petition reaches 25,000 signatures within 30 days, it merits an official response from the White House). It reads:
Those who sign here petition the United States government to secure funding and resources, and begin construction on a Death Star by 2016. By focusing our defense resources into a space-superiority platform and weapon system such as a Death Star, the government can spur job creation in the fields of construction, engineering, space exploration, and more, and strengthen our national defense.
The unfortunately fictional Death Star, the Galactic Empire‘s moon-sized base capable of obliterating whole planets with a single beam of energy, would be a substantial stimulus project indeed: Students at Lehigh University estimated that the steel alone (assuming the Death Star’s mass/volume ratio is roughly equal to that of an aircraft carrier) would cost $852 quadrillion—13,000 times the world economy’s GDP. My colleague/Star Wars buff Kevin Drum puts steel costs closer to 1.3 million times world GDP.
So, yes, such a massive, unprecedented project would almost certainly “spur job creation,” and the Obama administration’s development of a planet-destroying spacestation would likely guarantee an invincible national-security apparatus (save for certain circumstances).
[VIA MoJo Blogs and Articles | Mother Jones]
