Louis and he lays out his argument in a paper titled "It's a Trap: Emperor Palpatine's Poison Pill." Chock-full of economic thought-exercises, the paper lays down a pretty agreeable framework. The two Death Stars would have cost roughly $611 quintillion total to design and build, using the real life $17 billion USS Gerald Ford as a rough measuring stick for price. And by comparing the development of the first Death Star to the development of the atomic bomb, Feinstein was able to flesh out the rest of the rest of the galactic economy.