Official Whitehouse response to Death Star build

[Rabs]

Official White House Response toSecure resources and funding, and begin construction of a Death Star by 2016. .

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/isnt-petition-response-youre-looking

 

This Isn't the Petition Response You're Looking For

 

By Paul Shawcross

 

The Administration shares your desire for job creation and a strong national defense, but a Death Star isn't on the horizon. Here are a few reasons:

•The construction of the Death Star has been estimated to cost more than $850,000,000,000,000,000. We're working hard to reduce the deficit, not expand it.

•The Administration does not support blowing up planets.

•Why would we spend countless taxpayer dollars on a Death Star with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship? (haha thats the best bit :)

 

However, look carefully (here's how) and you'll notice something already floating in the sky -- that's no Moon, it's a Space Station! Yes, we already have a giant, football field-sized International Space Station in orbit around the Earth that's helping us learn how humans can live and thrive in space for long durations. The Space Station has six astronauts -- American, Russian, and Canadian -- living in it right now, conducting research, learning how to live and work in space over long periods of time, routinely welcoming visiting spacecraft and repairing onboard garbage mashers, etc. We've also got two robot science labs -- one wielding a laser -- roving around Mars, looking at whether life ever existed on the Red Planet.

 

Keep in mind, space is no longer just government-only. Private American companies, through NASA's Commercial Crew and Cargo Program Office (C3PO), are ferrying cargo -- and soon, crew -- to space for NASA, and are pursuing human missions to the Moon this decade.

 

Even though the United States doesn't have anything that can do the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs, we've got two spacecraft leaving the Solar System and we're building a probe that will fly to the exterior layers of the Sun. We are discovering hundreds of new planets in other star systems and building a much more powerful successor to the Hubble Space Telescope that will see back to the early days of the universe.

 

We don't have a Death Star, but we do have floating robot assistants on the Space Station, a President who knows his way around a light saber and advanced (marshmallow) cannon, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is supporting research on building Luke's arm, floating droids, and quadruped walkers.

 

We are living in the future! Enjoy it. Or better yet, help build it by pursuing a career in a science, technology, engineering or math-related field. The President has held the first-ever White House science fairs and Astronomy Night on the South Lawn because he knows these domains are critical to our country's future, and to ensuring the United States continues leading the world in doing big things.

 

If you do pursue a career in a science, technology, engineering or math-related field, the Force will be with us! Remember, the Death Star's power to destroy a planet, or even a whole star system, is insignificant next to the power of the Force.

 

Paul Shawcross is Chief of the Science and Space Branch at the White House Office of Management and Budget

[rocketman]

To borrow from one of my favorite movies (Dr. Strangelove)...Mr. President, we must not allow a Death Star gap!!!

[Flight959]

Ha ha great thread!

 

Thanks for sharing!

[badbluesplayer]

Oh man, I thought that would be a fun project.

[milod]

All kidding aside, the first thing I thought of was, "somebody's gotta be kidding."

 

Let's assume all but reaction-force propulsion remains out of the picture, I think "earth" could build a doggone big orbiting platform, but it'd take likely a century or more with relatively current technology to assemble sufficient metals and/or other materials to build something as big as a small moon.

 

I doubt that short of literal destruction of the planet such materials could be gleaned from "here." So... that leaves other planets or, more likely, asteroids. Catching and/or mining them would take a long, long time with reaction-force propulsion.

 

And even reaction-force propulsion for that much "stuff" has some questions on resources. You've gotta figure that if it takes a bunch of power to accelerate to practical speeds to get to "the asteroid belt," it takes equal power to stop; ditto on the return trip with significantly more mass...

 

I don't think it even makes for good science fiction in this case. Could it be done in theory? Probably, but consider not just the dollar costs, but the resource costs off this little planet.

 

It seems to me we'd need a marvelously more efficient converter from mass to energy just for relatively slow interplanetary travel. Ain't even close to that yet. Our Rocketman certainly could figure the math on courses for such travel, I figure that's the "easy" part with today's tech. I'm likely as big a "space nut" as anyone, but...

 

(Herr Professor Dr. Fremtlieb? Nein! Herr Dr. Merkwürdigliebe!)

 

m

[Rabs]

All kidding aside, the first thing I thought of was, "somebody's gotta be kidding."

 

Let's assume all but reaction-force propulsion remains out of the picture, I think "earth" could build a doggone big orbiting platform, but it'd take likely a century or more with relatively current technology to assemble sufficient metals and/or other materials to build something as big as a small moon.

 

I doubt that short of literal destruction of the planet such materials could be gleaned from "here." So... that leaves other planets or, more likely, asteroids. Catching and/or mining them would take a long, long time with reaction-force propulsion.

 

And even reaction-force propulsion for that much "stuff" has some questions on resources. You've gotta figure that if it takes a bunch of power to accelerate to practical speeds to get to "the asteroid belt," it takes equal power to stop; ditto on the return trip with significantly more mass...

 

I don't think it even makes for good science fiction in this case. Could it be done in theory? Probably, but consider not just the dollar costs, but the resource costs off this little planet.

 

It seems to me we'd need a marvelously more efficient converter from mass to energy just for relatively slow interplanetary travel. Ain't even close to that yet. Our Rocketman certainly could figure the math on courses for such travel, I figure that's the "easy" part with today's tech. I'm likely as big a "space nut" as anyone, but...

 

m

And yet.. It still got 34,435 signatures.. lol :)

 

I would like to think that no one actually ever took this seriously. But when we live in a world where one can get a qualification in Klingon... you cant help but wonder sometimes ;)