Operating Cost of the Deathstar

Cafe Society
21

Krusty S. Clown on a freaking rubber crutch. I’ve been drawn into a dork debate. Screw it. In for a penny, in for a pound.

I still think my estimate in terms of unicorn insurance is as accurate as anything you guys are coming up with.

“Hmm, the cost of the death star would be equal to the cost of the number of Nimtz class aircraft carriers to equal the weight of 70% of the moon.”

Uh huh. I realize you threw in some fudge factors but that has nothing to do with anything. If I may draw another useless analogy it would be like the continental congress in 1776 estimating the cost of a Nimitz class, nuclear powered carrier by extrapolating the cost of wooden frigates to 95,000 tons. The answer is certainly an unambiguous number but it doesn’t mean anything as it has no context to the present reality.

22

I think you’ll find this site to answer most any question about the Death Stars.
http://www.theforce.net/swtc/ds/
It appears that both of the Death Stars were at least 100km in diameter. There’s a nice chart to compare sources, sizes and versions.
One linked from there:
http://www.theforce.net/swtc/ds/population.html
shows an estimate for the population on the Death Star of 31,622,963!! That’s alot of mouths to feed!

23

That’s a bad estimate… Earth’s Moon is a friggin’ huge moon, and one 70% of its size would still be quite a respectably large moon. For a small moon, you want something more like Phobos (9.6e15 kg, approx. 20 km diameter) or Deimos (2e15 kg, approx. 12 km diameter). A spherical body the size of Deimos would be obviously artificial, so I’ll be generous and say it’s the same size as Phobos.

Now, for mass, I’ll assume that it has the same density as water, since hollow metal things made by humans usually average out to about that. This gives us a total mass of about 4e15 kg of metal. Now, the materials were probably close to free, since they probably have asteroid mining technology, but it still needs to be shaped, which probably means melting it down. Iron has a heat of fusion of approximately 2.5e5 J/kg, so we’re talking 1e21 Joules to cast the Death Star. Unfortunately, I have no basis upon which to estimate energy costs in the Star Wars universe.

But there’s more. This thing is mobile. I’m willing to accept that hyperspace jumps require a minimal amount of energy, but at the end of a jump, it has to match velocities with a planet in order to go into orbit. This means a delta V of around 30 km/s, so we can estimate the energy needed to be at least 3.8e24 Joules every time the Death Star moves to a new system. Since this is a recurring cost, and is so much greater than the energy to melt the metal, I’m thinking that construction costs are relatively negligible. When one also considers that the R&D was already done, it becomes clear why the Empire decided to build a second one on the same designs, despite the spectacular failure of the first.

As for those R&D costs, judging from the political and financial maneuverings in the prequels, it looks like the R&D was at least comparable to the net trade activity of a prosperous planet, over a period of several months. So we’re talking trillions of dollars, in 21st century Earth terms.

I suspect that the biggest cost, though, both for construction and maintenance, was for labor. What’s the average pay of an on-duty enlisted serviceman?

24

Combined with COLA, Hazard Pay, and Family Separation Pay we can do alright guestimating an average of $2,500 dollars a month for E1-E9 US Enlisted ranks, based on this chart.

25

Surely labour costs could be reduced through utilising nanotechnology.

26

I expect a lot of the superstructure assembly work to be performed by droids, which are much more capable of zero-gee, zero-atmosphere, hard-vacuum labor. This transfers costs from “labor” to “droid op & maintenance,” as well as “droid purchase / lease.” As a security measure, all droids would be subject to a memory wipe on completion of their tasks.

Speaking of security… Slave / penal labor is good for resource collection, as previously noted. Primary assembly work (that is, building or installing actual Death Star components or sections, especially the BFG Superlaser), in any instance where people (Human or non) are a better choice than droids, will require laborers with security clearances. On one hand, obtaining the clearance for so many people costs money – on the other hand, the Galactic Empire has enough construction projects that there’s likely to be a sufficient supply of servicepeople and contract laborers with the appropriate clearances. Some of them probably transferred from the Super Star Destroyer production contract.

(Aside: This reminds me of the discussion about a year ago, right here in GQ, whether normal casualty insurance would cover an attack by Godzilla. We had a serious, factual discussion about a completely fictional scenario in that thread, and we are working on a similar discussion here. Ain’t the SDMB grand?)

27

I have heard the word refer to a rapier, so perhaps that’s where it came from.

They just did the design, and maybe not all of it. It was many years before the Empire got one built, so perhaps they hadn’t put the details together. According to the EU several other poeple were involved… though any excuse to say Qui Xux didn’t exist is fine by me.

But you could actually put trillions on that pace with room to spare. No reason why you would, but…

28

Wouldn’t that have been clone labor?

29

Not to mention the fact that “lightsaber” just sounds sooooo much cooler than “lightepee”.

30

Well I can get the answer, but I’m gonna need some suicidal Bothans for the mission.

31

If you’re going intergalactic, you gotta go FedEx.

I also must point out that in Davebarryland “Suicidal Bothans” would be a good name for a rock band.

Also, IIRC, the DeathStar (registered trademark of the Hasbro Corporation) was somehow powered by a black hole, so the energy cost would mainly be whatever was required for the equipment to harness the BH and harvest the energy.

Also also, the “1920’s-style Death Star” line was a hoot.
RR

32

Ah, that’s right. I assumed on my own that since the Geonosians created the Battle Driods that they would use them to construct the Death Star.

In my defense, my mind wasn’t functioning properly by the end of the movie, having been slowly rendered stupid by the romance scenes…

33

According to my calculations…

4,780,000 Quatloos per micron

Don’t forget to factor in the exchange rate.

34

But remember: a lot of the Stormtroopers were likely indoctrinated clones, more akin to slaves than employees. So, you’d have to feed them, but you wouldn’t need to pay them.

35

What the hell is a Bothan?

Anyway, powered by a black hole??? Oh, that’s great. I suppose a really small black hole could be useful, because if you kept feeding it matter at a controlled rate, it would essentially be an exceptionally good matter-energy converter, via Hawking Radiation, which should be quite hot for a BH of atomic size (its radius, I mean; its mass would be greater than a large mountain, and it would evaporate rapidly if it weren’t fed more mass). The problem arises when you try to move. Unless the velocity of the Death Star changed exceedingly slowly relative to the BH’s velocity, the BH would drift away from the center of the Death Star; and unless the Death Star were enormously massive, that drift would not correct itself quickly. In a very short time the BH would come into contact with the wall of the containment at the center of the Death Star (the only location it could be safely housed), and, very rapidly, no more Death Star.

So, if you build the Death Star around the BH carefully, and just leave it there in orbit around whatever planet, fine. As soon as you try to fly it away to blow up Leah’s homeworld or wherever, you’ve got some seriousl problems.

For this reason, I can’t believe they use a black hole to power the Death Star.

36

Just to put some numbers into this analogy, the USS Constitution, a wooden frigate built in 1797 with a displacement of 2,200 tons cost $302,718 at that time. This gives a construction cost of approximately $137.60 per ton.

A current Nimitz Class Carrier costs about $4.5 billion and displaces 97,000 tons, for an approximate construction cost of $46,391.75 per ton.

Now, the cost for the Constitution is in 1797 dollars, and the Nimitz is in current dollars, so we have to account for inflation. The historical inflaction factor from 1797 to 2003 is 0.072. That is to say that one dollar today has the buying power of 7.2 cents in 1787. To convert the cost of the Constitution to current dollars, we must divide its cost by 0.072. In inflation adjusted dollars, the cost of the Constitution is $4,204,417 or $1,911.10 per ton.

Looking at this example, it is clear that the inflation-adjusted construction cost per ton of a 1797 wooden frigate ($1,911.10) is not comparable to the construction cost of a modern aircraft carrier ($46,391.75 per ton).

So, based on this single counter-example, it is unlikely that the construction cost of the death star can be extrapolated from a modern naval warship.

37

Since this is about a fictional construction project I’ll move this thread to Cafe Society.

bibliophage
moderator GQ

38

Well, you must have been tired from cutting off Anakin’s arm and fighting Yoda.

Many of them died gathering intel on the Death Star. They’re an alien race that tends to be good at spycraft.

Hey, here’s a site on building your own Death Star. Should only cost a few bucks, I don’t know where you guys are getting all these crazy numbers.

39

I can’t believe that somebody else actually made the 1797 Constitution extrapolation… Here are my figures.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Constitution
* Builders: Col. George Claghorn, Edmond Harrt’s Shipyard, Boston, Massachusetts.
* Unit Cost: $302,718 (1797 dollars)
* Displacement: 2,200 tons
* Speed: 13 knots (7 km/h)
* Crew: 450 including 55 Marines and 30 boys

Ok, $302,718 / 2200 tons gives about $140 per ton. $US1797

US Inflation calculator:
http://www.eh.net/ehresources/howmuch/dollarq.php
$14.38: 1 is the 1797: 2003 price ratio.

$140 * 14.38 = about $2000 per ton, in today’s money.

So, extrapolating from 1797, I would underestimate the cost of a Nimitz Aircraft carrier by a factor of 20. Hm. Not bad, IMHO. I was hoping that my Star Wars estimate would be accurate (ha!) to a couple of orders of magnitude.

Interestingly, maintenance costs as fraction of original construction costs were also high in the late 1700s.

The point is, even if you move the estimate around by 4 orders of magnitude, that’s still a pretty gosh darn expensive Death Star.

Some have suggested that nanobots might improve matters for the Federation. I agree, but Pixey Dust would be even more cost-effective: I won’t go into the detailed calculations here (they’re very complicated) but with improved technology I estimate that you could pick up a couple of Death Stars for $299.99, if they were on sale.

Unicorn labor, of course, would drive the cost down further.

40

An item made of wood costs less than an item made of steel, which in turn would probably cost less than an item made of whatever the Death Star is made from. I would imagine the structural supports a few km under the surface would need to be pretty strong.