Death Star’s Cost; Can we build one?

Now that Star Wars is on everyone’s mind again, Professor Zachary Feinstein has been looking at blowing up the Death Stars. Far from the victorious climax the movies present, he has concluded that their destruction would in fact have been catastrophic for the galactic economy. Here we can examine the Death Star’s Cost along with the impacts of it on the markets.

The US government claims that the cost of building the first Death Star was $852 quadrillion. Factor in the cost of building the second, as well as all the necessary research and development, and the sum grows to $419 quintillion (that’s a billion billion). To put that into context, if the entirety of the world’s GDP (estimated to about $77 trillion) was put solely into Death Star construction, it would be 11065 years before we had finished the first one. Earth isn’t going to be blowing up Alderaan any time soon.

Feinstein that goes on to calculate the Gross Galactic Product by comparing the development of the Death Star’s cost to that of the first atomic bomb. Assuming that the cost of the battle station is 0.21 percent of the Empire budget (an equivalent figure to the Manhattan Project), the estimated GGP is $92 sextillion for the 20 years of the Empire.

it would take us 833,315 years to produce enough steel (at current production rates of 1.3billion tonnes per annum) to construct the moon-like station

However, assuming that we had the money, and technology to build such a space station, the raw materials alone required would be a major setback. Estimated by economists, it would take us 833,315 years to produce enough steel (at current production rates of 1.3billion tonnes per annum) to construct the moon-like station. On the bright side however, Earth can supply us with more than enough Iron. With all the Iron on Earth, we could build over 2 billion Death Stars, however almost all of that comes from mining everything from the Earth’s core, which is a slight problem for the continuation of our planet.

One last area to consider as always, are the markets. The financial markets might have been heavily invested in the Death Stars, with the construction costs likely the major outstanding debt. Thus, with all this money in trouble and the death of Palpatine, the Galactic economy would collapse. The Rebel Alliance would have to have a bailout ready of at least 20 percent of GGP ($18.4 sextillion) to prevent galactic financial collapse – I doubt Princess Leia’s pockets run that deep.

Now, this may all seem a bit pointless, but Episode XII seems to indicate that the Rebel’s victory was not quite as triumphant as we first thought. Not to mention, of course, that many Bothans died to bring us this information.