Death Star
The Death Star is a type of fictional mobile space station and galactic superweapon featured in the "Star Wars" space opera franchise. The first Death Star is stated to be more than 100 km to 160 km in diameter, depending on source. It is crewed by an estimated 1.7 million military personnel and 400,000 droids. The second Death Star is significantly larger, between 160 km to 900 km in diameter depending on source, and technologically more powerful than its predecessor. Both versions of these moon-sized fortresses are designed for massive power-projection capabilities, capable of destroying multiple naval fleets or entire planets with one blast from their superlasers.
Death Star
In 2012–13, a proposal on the White House's website urging the United States government to build a real Death Star as an economic stimulus and job creation measure gained more than 30,000 signatures, enough to qualify for an official response. The official (tongue-in-cheek) response was released in January 2013: the cost of building a real Death Star has been estimated at $850 quadrillion by the Lehigh University, or about 13,000 times the amount of mineable resources on Earth, while the "International Business Times" cited a Centives economics blog calculation that, at current rates of steel production, the Death Star would not be ready for more than 833,000 years. The White House response also stated "the Administration does not support blowing up planets," and questioned funding a weapon "with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship" as reasons for denying the petition.