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How much would it cost to build a Death Star?
A few quadrillion and most of the Earth's core as it turns out
Ever wondered how much your very own Death Star would cost? Now, thanks to some boffins from Lehigh University, you don’t have to.
The students, who run their own blog called Centives, look at the “fun and quirky side of economics” and have estimated that the cost of building the massive space station would be $852,000,000,000,000,000 (£543,511,248,000,000,060).
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Most of the Earth’s core would also be needed to produce the necessary steel for the project.
Sean Goodwin, who wrote the article with Anjan Gupta, said: “The interest in the article from me stemmed from watching space battles in ‘Star Wars’ and wondering ‘Can we really build those things? Is there actually enough metal in the world to make a starfleet?’
“If I'm honest, the price of the Death Star was something of an afterthought to the question of "is it possible?"
They worked the cost out by using the reported measurement of the planet-destroying Imperial base (140km diameter) and comparing it to a modern warship to find the density of steel. The evil Galactic empire would need 1.08 x 1015 tonnes of the stuff.
Even if we could somehow harvest our planet’s own core (some might argue that destroying our planet for the sake of building a Death Star is stupid) it would take 833,315 years to produce the steel required.
Overall the project would cost $852 quadrillion as mentioned, a sum that is roughly 13,000 times the world’s gross domestic product (GDP).
Who knew ruling the galaxy with an iron fist would be so expensive!
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The students, who are clearly experts at wasting time, have also worked out how much parents must fork out for their little darlings to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry for a year. They reckon it’s £26,816, based on the average cost of top British public schools added to the price of wands, scarves and other assorted tat.
Considering at least one student dies a term, it’s a miracle that place survived long enough for Voldemort to attack it.
