Operating Cost of the Deathstar

Cafe Society
1

So I was watching the original Star Wars trilogy with the boy this weekend and it got me to thinking: what would it cost to run this dang thing?

Now let’s assume that the technology exists. I’m sure there are some true Star Wars geeks out there who are up on the dimensions and the general concepts involved. Let’s assume present day costs of fuel, spare parts, oil, power, military labor in an evil but efficient dictatorship, etc. What would it cost to run, feed, cloth, resupply, etc? Also assume that you don’t build a big ol’ gun like that without firing it off a few times, so include energy costs for at least some test shots at asteroids.

Of course I’m only looking for order of magnitude, not an exact estimate. And I won’t hold you to an estimate even if you give one (“What do you mean you can’t do it for $99.95? That’s what it said in your estimate…”)

2

You know, I am only admitting this because you did. I always wondered the plausibility of the cost to build the thing. Not to hijack your thread, but I’d like to see those numbers too.

3

Figure slave labor into the books. :frowning:

4

Nope. I doubt there is any slave labor involved, at least with the primary contractors. Maybe with the tertiary ones, the ones who mine the rare earths needed for advance technology, but the rest of that sucker is too complex to leave to resentful slaves. Resentful, untrained slaves at that. I figure whoever won the contract for the Death Star, Mark One padded his estimate by a few billion credits and a few years on the schedule. Then subcontracted the job and headed for a resort planet. :smiley:

5

Yeah, if we go with The_Llama’s addendum on the cost to build then you should pretty much assume that Halliburton was awarded the contract in a no-compete bid; when they didn’t pay their subcontractors Darth Cheney did the distant throat squeeze on those who had the temerity to complain to the Senate. Net, don’t expect the cost to the consumer to be affected by net savings in the supply chain. I also agree that it’s unlikely to have slave labor do the any important detail work, like design, or they’d leave a small undefended area the size of a womprat that, if struck directly by photon torpedoes, could create a chain reaction that would destroy the whole kit-n-kaboodle. Okay, maybe even the Bosch engineers would leave that design flaw. So beyond some galley slaves, who would still need to be clothed and fed and boarded, everyone receives some nominal salary, with bonuses for fiendishness.

6

Ahem!

Proton Torpedos

Photon = Star Trek
Proton = Star Wars

http://www.starwars.com/databank/technology/protontorpedo/

7

Remember, though, that droid labor would probably factor in heavily. Artifically intelligent droid labor, too, not just robo-welding arms.

8

You also have to figure in the scale of the Empire. I think it would be very easy to pull in the tax revenue from a whole galaxy of trillions subjects to easily buy two death stars. A single planet like Earth would probibly have trouble financeing a Death Star, but if we had a co-op of thousands of other planets I’m sure we could buy at least build one death star.

9

IMHO it would cost twice as much as unicorn insurance.

A-hem. This isn’t much of a GQ unless you have a basis to even estimate a cost. One thing to consider is the vast amount of energy to do pretty much anything in the SW universe. The Millenium Falcon doesn’t jump to hyperspace on a few gallons of petrol (even with Ethyl™) and Jedi knights don’t power light sabres (that always annoyed me, a sabre is a curved sword) with a battery of the month card from Radio Shack and 'droids don’t run on Duracells™.

Assuming any of those things could be done they would require massive amounts of energy. So much that the concept of having to pay for energy is immiterial. The only way concepts are even possible is if energy is virtually free and plentiful. This changes everything as manufacturing such devices only require the planning and will to do so.

10

Spoil sport, we can estimate a cost

Now, my ideas follow:
the Death star was the size of a small moon, so some one calculate 70% of earth’s moon’s Volume. Now assume 50% of that volume is all titanium, how much titatneum would we need to get that volume? How much does it cost? Include the cost of Airshipping times 10 (becuase we would have to ship the Titaneum accross Space and that costs more ) (we are going to spare no expense on this Death Star)

Find the engineering fee to design an Aircraft Carrier, divide the Death Star’s Weight by the Aircraft Carrier’s weight, and multiply the result by the fee the Engineer’s charged to give the cost it would be to design a Death Star (and because I’m the CEO of this Death Star Building Adventure I will make an Executive’s Decision and say Multiphy the result by 2.7 to get the true cost of designing a death Star)

Figure out how many people spent how much time bulding the Twin Towers, Divide the Volume of the death Star by the Volume of the twin towers, and multiply the result by the number of many hours it took to build, this will give us the number of man hours to build a death star. We will assume man and druid hours are interchangeable. Now give each man and droid a wage/ lisencing fee of 18$/hour (only an average), multiply the number of man hours by that wage to get the cost of labour.

Figure out how many people will live in the death star, find the cost of issueing each one two chairs (300$), a bed (250$), a suit of armour (15000$), etc

Finally, the cost of all futuristic stuff that I didn’t think of will be 2 trillion dollars.

Add all the numbers together, once or twice even, and add the GST and PST (currently 7 and 7%) and vola you have the cost of your very own Death Star

If someone wants to do all of that you will have your answer.
Other people can and should add more numbers to make the final number that much larger.

Personally I think the number will be the Gross National Product of the world times the number of people on the world, divided by the length in feet of Darth Vader’s little buddy.

(applicaple lisencing fees extra, offer void where prohibited, quotes will not be honourd past 10 seconds, property destruction will void warrenty, batteries extra

11

No doubt the costs were partly defrayed by the Starbucks on every second level.

12

Are we all forgetting that it was firmly established near the end of Attack of the Clones that the Geonosians were responsible for building the Death Star?

13

7, 3, 28

14

Well, they built it, or at least the prototype (I don’t really remember anymore as I’m out of the hardcore teenage boy Star Wars stage) around a penal colony using prisoner labor.

15

It’s gotta be some kind of wild, weird, and rare sort of energy too. I mean, if “light sabres” are really made of “light”, danged if I can figure out how you get an incredibly powerful beam of it to just stop at the desired length. Also, I’m sorta stumped as to how you can have a sword fight with these whacky gizmos; because, as everybody knows, photons are bosons, which can occupy the same quantum state as other photons, no prob. A “light” sabre would pass right through another one like it wasn’t even there. I’m thinking this is some expensive shit; 'cos they invented a new kind of light to run it, and that’s gotta be costly.

16

A regular Death Star or a 1920’s Style Death Star?

There. Now that’s out of the way.
Carry on.

17

I was thinking I want a 1977 Death Star, not a 1997 Death Star (or whenever it was that the “Special Edition” came out.)

18

Ok, here are the facts:

"On average, a Nimitz-class carrier costs about $4 billion to build and $2 billion a year to operate, according to the General Accounting Office."link

(“The 80 or so planes are extra. And the fact that they become obsolete faster than the ships adds substantially to total costs. The F/A-18E/F program to equip carriers with the next generation of aircraft comes with an $81 billion price tag. Add to this the cost of the scores of ships needed to service and protect carrier battle groups and you get a sense of the cost problem. “Some members [of Congress] believe that alternatives to the Nimitz design offer a more cost-effective means of basing aircraft at sea,” says defense analyst Scott C. Truver.” Where was I? Oh, right: Star Wars.)

Weight of Nimitz: About 100,000 tons (same source).

Cost per ton of aircraft carrier, not including maintenance or planes: $40,000 per ton.
Weight of moon: 73,490,000,000,000,000,000 tonslinky link.

Weight of Acme Death Star, Model G7a: 25% of the moon.

Weight of Death Star: 18,373,000,000,000,000,000 tons

Preliminary Cost of Death Star: $US: $734,920,000,000,000,000,000,000

Cost of Death Star, including Bear_Nenno adjustments:

$734,920,000,000,000,000,000,038

or $735 billion trillion or $735 Septillion(?).

US GDP: a little over 10 trillion dollars.

Death Star: The output of 73 billion US economies.

One hundred trillion here, one hundred trillion there, pretty soon you’re talking about real money.

19

I thought it operated under a permanently renewable contract with Haliburton.

20

We know that the Geonosians were responsible for designing the Death Star. They might have subcontracted out the actual construction of it. (Possibly using prisoner, slave, or droid labor.)