May The Force be with you.

   By Donna Cole

 Yesterday, it was reported by several media outlets that someone had created a new petition on the White House website "We the People." On this site folks can start a petition and if they get more than 25,000 signatures supposedly President Obama will address the issue. This new petition called on the government to build a Death Star, like the one in the movie Star Wars. They said it would be good because the project would create a lot of jobs (among other things).


 This reminded me of another article I read about building a Death Star. That article was on the blog "Centives" last February, on which economics students at Lehigh University (who must have a lot of free time) answer questions such as this, "How much would it cost to build a Death Star?" So, based on the student's calculations and some of my own ideas, here are some highlights of what it would take for Obama to build one.


 Their research found the original Death Star was 140km in diameter, before Luke Skywalker blew it up. They figure it must be made of steel, so they scaled up how much steel it takes to build a large warship to Death Star size. Their calculations say it would take 1.08 X 10 to the 16th tons of steel, roughly 1,000,000,000,000,000 tons. This is more than all the iron ore in the Earth's crust. So, you would need another iron source. Centives suggests getting it from the Earth's core, even though it would really be a bad idea to do that considering it would screw up things like the Earth spinning.


 The next thing is the rate at which you could produce the needed steel from the iron ore. If you took all the steel mills on Earth and had them all work to produce steel for the Death Star, it would take them 833,815 years to produce the amount needed. If you add in how slow the government completes projects, just think about all the delays, red tape, and bureaucratic foot dragging that goes on with highway projects, I think you can safely say it would take over a million years to get the supplies needed to begin construction.


 Of course, all this would have a price tag the taxpayers would be on the hook for. Just the steel, at 2012 market rates, would cost $852,000,000,000,000,000. This is around 13,000 times the whole world's GDP, and comes before the cost of the thousands of miles of copper wiring needed for the electronics. Another budget buster is the hypermatter core to power Obama's Death Star. I imagine that used, if you could even find one in decent shape, the motor would cost as much as the steel. And on a project like this, just like remodeling an Imperial Cruiser, it's the little things that nickel and dime you to death. Just the light switches and bathroom exhaust fans would be in the billions of dollars. Given these things, you can can easily triple the steel cost to cover all the other materials needed.


 However, the steel, copper wire, and motor come cheap when compared to labor costs. Obama would most certainly use this project as a big wet kiss for his buddies in organized labor. Millions of Teamsters to haul all the parts and pieces from Earth to the outer space construction site, United Steel Workers (Death Star Local 23) to weld it together, International Brotherhood of Boilermakers to install the hypermatter power plant, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers to pull all the wiring, and that's not to mention all the International Union of Operating Engineers needed to run the Death Star after completion or the United Food and Commercial Workers and Service Employees International Union workers to do all the cooking and cleaning. As you can see, the labor costs would be astronomical and surely eclipse the material costs. And that is not even thinking about what Death Starcare would cost.


 While the Death Star would come with a high price, I could still see President Obama supporting the idea. He has shown that he has no problem borrowing vast sums of money to buy favors from his political allies, and unlike Obama's failed stimulus packages the students at Lehigh have a way to deal with this debt. Once the Death Star is complete simply default on the loan by annihilating the creditor, i.e. blow up the Earth.


 Only here is where we run into some big problems, and by now you probably knew we would run into a few big problems. First is that Obama doesn't much care for defense spending, and this is a Death Star, not a Welfare Star. If it was spending somewhere north of $852,000,000,000,000,000 on a giant spaceship full of social programs then he might be on board, but I cannot see the president much interested in building the USS Obama Death Star just to blast a few planets. And it's blowing up those planets that is the real problem for the Emperor, (Ahem!) I mean Commander in Chief.


 The Emperor built the original Death Star as a matter of galactic foreign policy. This policy was the Tarkin Doctrine, which dictated he rule by fear and intimidation. In a galaxy of diplomatic sticks and carrots, the Death Star was the biggest stick of all, no carrot needed. President Obama's entire foreign policy has been one of appeasement, detachment, and denial or willful ignorance. How he has handled Egypt, Iran, Syria, and North Korea are just a few examples of this. The Death Star just doesn't fit into Obama's view of America's station on Earth, or floating around it.


 Lastly, it is a question of fundamental fairness. Putting aside the Tarkin Doctrine and using liberal doctrine, it would not be fair that one person had "The Force" and another didn't. In the same way, it would not be fair if we had a Death Star and another country or planet didn't.


 Given these factors, I think that even if this Death Star petition gets 25,000 signatures we don't have to worry about Obama building one. And since this president has never seen a dollar of other people's money he didn't want to spend on something big and/or frivolous, that is a good thing.