THE COST OF A DEATH STAR
Image via Flying Cloud (CC BY 2.0)
Space. The final, and really, really expensive frontier. Just ask NASA. And if you needed more evidence, some eggheads figured out how much it would cost to build the Death Star (and for the record, yes I know I’m starting to mix Star Wars and Star Trek references). Are you ready? 852 quadrillian dollars. That’s $852,000,000,000,000,000! And that’s before taxes!
They did the math by estimating that a real Death Star would be made of metal and would have the density of a modern day battleship. So actually, this cost doesn’t include the cost of researching and building a massive death laser array, or the cost of having a small thermal exhaust port, just below the main port. Strangely, the earth has more than enough metal (we have enough to potentially build billions of Death Stars) so most of the estimate comes from mining and producing the steel.
But what about just a starship? Well, some other really smart dude did try to figure this out before. At just one trillion dollars for a “budget” spaceship, we better start saving.
