Is The Death Star Cost Effective ?


Recommended Posts

A group of students at Lehigh University have recently calculated that the construction cost of the Death Star was roughly 852 Quadrillion Dollars. While that sounds like a lot of money and, given the ultimate fate of the two iterations of the project it all seems like a total waste, Kevin Drum argues that the project would be surprisingly cost effective:

For starters, this number is too low. Using the same aircraft carrier metric they did, I figure that the price tag on the latest and greatest Ford-class supercarrier is about 100x the cost of the raw steel that goes into it. If the Death Star is similar, its final cost would be about 1.3 million times the world?s GDP.

But there?s more. First off, the technology of the Star Wars universe is well in our future. How far into our future? Well, Star Trek is about 300 years in our future, and the technology of Star Wars is obviously well beyond that. Let?s call it 500 years. What will the world?s GDP be in the year 2500? Answer: assuming a modest 2% real growth rate, it will be about 20,000 times higher than today. So we can figure that the average world in the Star Wars universe is about 20,000x richer than present-day Earth, which means the Death Star would cost about 65x the average world?s GDP.

However, the original Death Star took a couple of decades to build. So its annual budget is something on the order of 3x the average world?s GDP.

But how big is the Republic/Empire? There?s probably a canonical figure somewhere, but I don?t know where. So I?ll just pull a number out of my ass based on the apparent size of the Old Senate, and figure a bare minimum of 10,000 planets. That means the Death Star requires .03% of the GDP of each planet in the Republic/Empire annually. By comparison, this is the equivalent of about $5 billion per year in the current-day United States.

In other words, not only is the Death Star affordable, it?s not even a big deal.

Even if this is true, though, one has to wonder if the Galactic Empire really got its money?s worth. For one thing, there?s the lost tax revenue from the destruction of Alderaan. For another, there?s the fact that the project stands as the greatest failure in the history of military contracting.

source

post-37120-0-59916000-1330180748.jpg

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Star Trek takes place in the future. Star Wars takes place in the past.

Also, they're not taking into account slave labor, jedi powers, or the discovery of new materials or manufacturing & construction processes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Star wars is in the past hence the "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away bit"

I do love these kinds of articles there just so geeky. :geek:

Star wars is a tale spoken on the far futur and it takes place in our future (or not).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Does this also that into the cost of Software. What OS would they be running, Linux?

Considering that it was destroyed relatively easily, I would guess it was running Windows NT. When they got a BSODS (Blue Screen of Death Star), they prepped the escape pods.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So if we built it could we put all the illegal immigrants on it and send it far,far away.Thus a large proportion of the costs would ergo be savings on the economy ~ :D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

...the Death Star.... cost would be about 1.3 million times the world?s GDP.

...What will the world?s GDP be in the year 2500? Answer: assuming a modest 2% real growth rate, it will be about 20,000 times higher than today. So we can figure that the average world in the Star Wars universe is about 20,000x richer than present-day Earth, which means the Death Star would cost about 65x the average world?s GDP.

They might be geeky... but fail a basic understanding of economy and growth:

If intergalactic GDP went up 20,000x in 500 years the cost of steel would also go up at a near similar rate.... (that is unless more abundant supplies were found, that were easily resourcing and no new "beings" required them)

Therefore the cost compared to GDP would stay almost the same... even with this error assuming the rest of their maths is correct the final figure of "just" 0.03% should actually be 20,000x bigger... or rather 600% GDP or all the planets.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Star wars is in the past hence the "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away bit"

I do love these kinds of articles there just so geeky. :geek:

the article spoke as if the technology, as invented on earth, would be in the future.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This topic is now closed to further replies.