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Let's face it: Funding a Death Star would push the federal budget off the fiscal cliff and into a fiscal Death Valley.
The 25,000-plus signers of a "We the People" petition calling on the federal government to start building a Death Star by 2016 must be feeling as peppy as the Rebel Alliance, now that they've put their plea over the threshold that will trigger a response from the White House.
Campaigns on 4chan, Reddit and Twitter helped put it over the top with a day to spare. This means someone at the White House will have to take a good look at the Death Star issue and draw up a response (unless officials decide it would be improper to speak out on something that's more appropriately addressed by, say, the Defense Department, NASA or Lord Vader).
The rationale for securing the funding and resources to start construction was laid out in the petition, created on Nov. 14 by John D. of Longmont, Colo: "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."
Building the kind of moon-sized Death Star portrayed in the "Star Wars" saga would be a heck of a stimulus program, however. Earlier this year, Centives calculated the cost of the steel alone at $852 quadrillion, or roughly 13,000 times the world's gross domestic product. At the current rate of production, it would take more than 833,000 years to produce enough steel to begin work.
I'm afraid the White House's political deflector shield will be quite operational when that petition arrives.
Administration officials have had a lot of practice dealing with "We the People" petitions that address far-out topics like the Death Star: Last year, for instance, two petitions calling for full disclosure on extraterrestrial visitations reached the standard requiring a response, and the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy rose to the challenge.
"The U.S. government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of the human race," OSTP's Phil Larson reported on the WhiteHouse.gov website. "In addition, there is no credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public’s eye."
I'm hoping that the Death Star petition will provide an opportunity for Larson and his colleagues to come up with a pithier, more creative response ... maybe something that will satisfy the fanboys. Here are a few examples that have popped up over the past few days:
- "The farce is strong in this one." (Commenter on The Ticket)
- "We find its lack of signatures disturbing" (MSNBC's Ed Schultz)
- "We have a bad feeling about this" (Modern Man)
Which "Star Wars" cliches would be most fitting for the task? Try to think of some suggestions you can leave in the comment space below. On second thought, try not. Do, or do not. There is no "try."
More on the Death Star and other petitions:
- White House petitions range from serious to silly
- How the online petition program got started
- Management lesson: Don't rebuild the Death Star
- How much would the Death Star cost?
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
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And people wonder why there is such gridlock in Washington - - look at the local idiots that sent the elected idiots there!
I, for one, find this hilarious.
As much doom and gloom as there is in politics these days, its nice to have some comedy thrown in. Not everything has to be deathly serious.
I was laughing my ass off over this. It's nice to see some people still have a sense of humor.
833,000 years to produce enough steel? 13,000 times the worlds GNP?
Why don't they just get Bigelow to make a giant balloon that looks like the Death Star, load in a few canisters of compressed air, and launch it on SLS?
It would seem to be the simplest solution...
If we build one, can we not put the weakest point on the outside? An exhuast port 2 meters wide is big enough that some hayseed farm kid that is used to shooting wamprats could hit with his eyes closed...
The biggest problem I see with building the Death Star would be finding a way to get the 8 lasers to meet at a single point, and then collect together and change direction without any type of focusing device floating in space ahead of it.
C'mon, get in the spirit.... LOL
"Where's Halliburton when you need them..."
*Waves hand* these are not the democrats you are looking for..
Would it hurt to say I signed the Petition? :P
m
Instead of a death star, build a battle star gallactica.
I got this everyone. *waves hand* You do not want to sell me Deathstars. You want to go home and rethink your life.
brenda...great idea for the next, https://petitions.whitehouse.gov. I love the old and new BSG.
while the biggest idiot, you, whines on the internet like a spoiled little princess.
Frankly, I don't think the American people take their government seriously enough. This is just another distraction.
just retool the space station
With the current House of Representatives its doubtful we could declare war on a country for a Pearl Harbor type of attack.
Cool, another opportunity for the folks at the White House to practice their creative writing skills. To the one who said we don't take our government seriously enough, 1) life has to be fun or everyone would be looking for an escape hatch so we shouldn't take everything to heart all the time and 2) With the current political landscape, taking it seriously is bad for your health.
I bet we get as honest a response from this as we did from Benghazi from this Whitehouse.
Great, that is all we need to move the fiscal cliff 100 feet closer, another trillion dollars given to the military to expand their already bloated carcass.
The only target feasible for the death star at this point in history is the earth, so as a terror weapon it does not appear to be practical. As a doomsday weapon, the cobalt thorium enhanced hydrogen bombs suggested in "Dr. Strangelove" would be a hell of a lot cheaper.
Didn't Bush II used the elimination of that in Iraq for the Iraqi war?
oh my god, Detroit Storm, i just laughed so hard i pissed my pants! and i'm at work!
I wouldn't mind a bit of humor in politics if the hard questions were actually being answered. After all, that's their job that I'm paying them for.
not to be a downer or anything...but... is there even enough raw material to make enough steel to build a metal planet?
i've also got my fingers crossed that someone who posted before me was able to work in a SPACEBALLS quote.
Yeah, that was a dumb idea. What we should do instead is put a self destruct button between it's ears with a couple of guards to make sure no one pushes it.......
I admit, this is a bit over board. Can't we settle for something a little more realistic? Let's just build a Star Destroyer. They're only 10 times the size of a Nimitz class aircraft carrier. Surely we can squeeze that into the budget.
Yoda's reaction to the petition originated by John D. of Longmont, Colo:
"Up the hell this one should shut. A life he should get."
This is clearly obummers fault.
All I heard from Lego was:
"Blah, blah, blah, the wheels fell off my house."
Shut it, Loser. Man up and deal with it.
You got nothin'
Actually a massive construction project would be a great idea to stimulate the economy, but maybe one that goes across the country, rather than to build something on par with our moon
Me I like the space elevator concept, a lot less out there than a Death Star, but potentially a lot more useful.
Hey as long as we talk about massive construction projects, hmmmmmm about build some of those cyclers everybody's been talking about, hooo or even better, begin building a starship(begin doesn't mean its finished any time soon, or completely technically feasible for all parts, but hey we are talking about far out proposals).
Hoo what about a tunnel through the Earth, go straight through the Earth, get to China like that, gotta worry about all the pressure, and magma and whatnot, but hey its far out stuff so what.
The problem with the space elevator is location. To get the most function it should be situated on the equator, which we are not. I do like the idea of subterranean high speed rail systems. Connecting North America to Russia via the Bering Strait would greatly speed trade.
Why not just build a laser on the moon and have the moon be the death star?
Richard, because then it would be the Austin Powers Petition:
"You see, I've turned the moon into what I like to call a "Death Star"."
"The key to this project is the giant laser, which was invented by the noted Cambridge physicist, Dr. Parsons. So therefore, it is fitting to call it: "The Alan Parsons Project"."
lol
That would work great, if the only planet we wanted to destroy was our own. However, considering that the purpose of the Death Star is to be a planet-killing movable battle ship, the moon might pose a few challenges (to say nothing of what would happen to the Earth if we actually moved the moon out of it's orbit).
I still cant wrap my head around 833,000 years. Amazing. I wonder if the Earth even has enough natural resources to complete construction.
Well, that's easy enough to fix, Nick_L. First we put a giant hyperdrive on the moon (preferably on the other side as the laser, to avoid "accidents").
Then we blow up the earth with the laser. No more need to worry about what moving the moon would do to the earth then!
(And the Earth definitely has enough natural resources to complete construction. The earth's core is a ball of nearly pure iron even bigger than the moon. Extracting it might be a challenge, but hey we've got 833,000 years to figure it out.)
Why woulds most of the Death Star need to be made of steel in outer space?
Umm. just so we're clear... no one believes there is intelligent life beyond our solar system because there isn't any proof? Welllll... I have to say, all of the things they said were impossible, like flight, space travel, etc, are now commonplace, despite the fact that at the time there was no proof such things were possible. Only theories. So with all of the amazing advances humans by themselves have wrought, no one can conceive beyond human hubris that we are not the only intelligent life in the universe, and that there are races that are far older and can travel the stars? Wow! People wake up! the universe is vast and mysterious. Even the most conservative of physicists have beeen forced to come to grips with the observer-oriented nature of the universe. A universe where the only rules are self imposed limits. Limits dictated by lack of will and imagination. Through quantum physics we can see plainly that the universe is largely non-material, that mass is just a ghost effect, that atoms are mostly empty space and that our physical being is not much more substantial than the wave probability functions that describe us. Explain to me how the possiblity of extra-terrestrial life is a joke or non-starter, considering the latest mission to Mars is looking for that very thing?
Uncle Owen, this government unit is a bad motivator!!!
We haven't found intelligent life within our solar system, why would think there's some beyond it.
Evidently, those that do not believe in life outside of the solar system are not familiar with the Drake Equation. Simply put, given the number of stars in the universe combined with the number of planets in the "Goldilocks Zone", statistically, there must be live elsewhere.
Drake Equation: N = R* • fp • ne • fl • fi • fc • L
Where,
N = The number of civilizations in The Milky Way Galaxy whose electromagnetic emissions are detectable.
R* =The rate of formation of stars suitable for the development of intelligent life.
fp = The fraction of those stars with planetary systems.
ne = The number of planets, per solar system, with an environment suitable for life.
fl = The fraction of suitable planets on which life actually appears.
fi = The fraction of life bearing planets on which intelligent life emerges.
fc = The fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space.
L = The length of time such civilizations release detectable signals into space.
However, also given the vastness of space, the probability of finding such life outside our solar system given current technology is extremely small. So, the plausibility of life elsewhere is born directly of science.
Watch this TED lecture for a more thorough explanation...
Calculating The Odds of Intelligent Alien Life
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6AnLznzIjSE
"BAM-5709383
We haven't found intelligent life within our solar system, why would think there's some beyond it."
Seriously?
What does not finding life here (yet) have to do with it possible being somewhere else? Apparently you can't grasp the size of the known universe.
i know there's a lot of silliness going on here... just gotta throw out there that removing the core of the planet would be bad... like... epically bad... so bad we'd have to quote Peter Venkman from Ghost Busters say 'BAD'
Reagen's fault!
Of course I have a better idea: Lets just tow Mimas into obit, hollow it out, fit it with a propulsion system, and laser cannon, and boom, you have a Death Star au naturale.
You'd have to shield it better for high c velocities but hey why not?
This is an utterly ridiculous, sadly immature proposal.
And you are a miserable waste of oxygen better inhaled by someone who hasn't forgotten that there is life outside the drudgery of "maturity".
Do us a favor and die, please.
Little over the top James, but I agree, Radical is wasting some oxygen on what is obviously satire :P
Yeah, well, your mom is immature!
maturity is an issue right now?...ya'll know we're talking about whether or not to build a death star... right?
We could taxiderm Chris Christie whenever he dies, load a laser cannon in his willie and blast him in low earth orbit using three Saturn 5 rockets
Are you sure that 3 Saturn V's would be enough?
"I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of
voicesdemocrats suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened."Well I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of
voicesrepublicans suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened." Yep me too".@Rainier
Probably because it's setting a double standard on the Democratic model concerning weapon(s) controls. That and Obama was re-elected...
That's no moon... that's just our over-sized government.
You beat me to it.
How do people who believe in this sort of horse manure even get jobs?
How do people who actually believe people believe this sort of horse manure even get jobs?
Probably by being more imaginative than you.... or delusional... either works. Hence we have things that would have been nuts not that long ago. People who express your commentary would most likely side with "No that's not reasonable" Others decided to push the envelope. Guess that's what I would call invention, innovator, creator, artist, revolutionist. You would have said the trip to the moon was stupid, and a waste of money. A novice dream. We may not be able to build a death star, but that kind of conversation asks what is it that we can strive to achieve. Failure to recognize that kind of achievement is basically throwing in the towel.
Are you sure, GeoHog, that backtobasics actually has a job?
Forget the Death Star. I want a fully functional Starship Enterprise. Just make sure the tractor beam gets there before Tuesday.
I'm giving her all she's got Cap'n, but I cannot promise I can do it by Tuesday
... and the medical staff, Jonathan.
Damnit Barry he's a blogger not a Doctor!
Seriously; check out the plans on http://www.buildtheenterprise.org/ ... it's not going to make Warp speeds, but it's a very interesting concept.
Michio Kaku (doodle-doo) will show us how to build it!
or Neil deGrasse Tyson.
my favorite is when Tyson goes to see a sci-fi movie and then shreds the physics online.... 'willing suspension of disbelief' brother!
A more feasible alternative would be to bury our deceased presidents inside pyramids the size of the great pyramids at Giza.(one pyramid per president, of course).
The Farce is strong with some people.
Many Bothans died to sign that petition...
The Farce can have a strong influence on the weak-minded.
If we build it, they will die
It's not a joke, it's a great idea. Build two of them, but make them smaller to save money. Stick them at L1 & L2 and they can guard against rogue rocks slamming into our planet.
Understand, the first Death Star was about 160km across...
But let's take the path of least resistance here. Let's say we could (violate several laws of physics, and) whip up something with that capability.
Are we really going to dissuade our enemies with a weapon system whose primary purpose (yes, I know the main guns could be run at less than full power) is to destroy planets?
Like the Alpha-Omega bomb in 'Beneath the Planet of the Apes,' an all-or nothing 'doomsday' weapon is pretty much useless, when you have nowhere else to go, and no one else to intimidate by showing that you mean business...
Actually you would have to power the hypothetical Death Star with something even larger, say a planet girdling solar power station covering all of Mercury, then beam said power to the Death star. Then you manufacture the required steel by harvesting the asteroid belt, perhaps using energy to convert some of the mass of the solar system into the required materials. Once you have it built, you send it off at high C velocities, still powered by the power being beamed from the solar power station. The built Death Star would serve two purposes, one its a great stimulant for the economy, and two it would serve notice on any potential aliens out there that they should fear all humans. :)
Also a aside, it occurs to me you could use its planet destroying laser toned down as a debris deflection method, destoying large damage high c rocks, and also to ionize the interstellar medium, where magnetic fields would stow all the rest. You know it occurs to me that something the size of the death star would be really slow even with a decent propulsion (say lots of antimatter manufactured at our hypothetical planet girdling solar power station), so it would perhaps be more accurate to say it would serve notice to aliens that they should eventually fear all humans.:)
Nothing stopping us building a Death Star Mini to get rolling, it does not need to be planet size.
We could use it to exile the morons who want to secede (don't tell 'em the cannon only shoots confetti)
Those so called "morons" you're speaking about, the majority are weapons owners/carriers (most live in the south...) - pretty sure that cannon will work sooner than later.
I don't know what to say. My jaw dropped open when reading the news article. Did someone say that there is intelligent life on earth? There may be some but it's not within the "death star" bunch!
Actually, a zero-gee factory complex at one of the Lagrange points would make more sense; mines and rail guns on the lunar surface could lob ore to it, and you could do a lot of really interesting things with a virtually unlimited source of raw material like that- and no environmental considerations- and unlimited solar power.
As one example, there are alloys you can make only when gravity and oxygen aren't present.
You can also grow amazingly large, pure crystals with plasma deposition- diamonds, for instance.
Once you had the factory up and running, you could start to build seriously large-scale interplanetary gear for things like, oh, asteroid mining- and perhaps even enjoy the capacity to intercept rocks that might otherwise give anyone not wearing sunscreen with an spf of three million a really bad day...
Not a death star, but a life star.
We have allowed our government to go to the dark side. They have already sent in the drones.
(hilarious seeing posters who don't realize it is a joke)
Let's start simple... one step at a time.
Small wheel to house workers of metal refinery/manufacturing/engineering, and a fleet of asteroid harvesters.
Here's a cleché for you: I think millions of voices will be suddenly silenced.
Actually, there is something stopping us from building one of these things, aside from the impossibility of doing so: the treaty banning offensive weapons in space.
No, no, no, okie joe, you don't understand. It's a defensive weapon. The laser is for preemption!
The administration is not going to go through with this. We don't have the technology or the tools to build one. Furthermore, the Space Preservation Act of 2001 forbids space-based weapons.
dude...i'll spell this out for you... j.o.k.e. ...get it!?
i think the problem is that is just not funny except to star wars nerds. strange they know how much steel if would require. they have plans? so sad that james blish, ursula k laquin, issac assomov, arthur c clark, morcock, silverberg, gardner, etc and ppl worship star wars crap to the point the annoy us through this prank, not a joke, but a prank. i guess IT ppl has to do something as work.