‘Understood properly, the Death Star is not worth it.’

Wonkblog ^ | Gregory Koger

[SLB]

I wish to address the most important policy question of the millennium: Should we build a Death Star? This debate picked up this year after some Lehigh University students estimated that just the steel for a Death Star would cost $852 quadrillion, or 13,000 times the current GDP of the Earth.

[GingisK]

...failing develop the Type XXI boat in time...

My high school Physics/Chemistry teacher was a captain in the US Navy and served as a submarine skipper during WWI and WWII. After WWII he took a type XXI U-Boat for a shake down and subsequent refit for service in the US Navy. He loved the type XXI boat.

[C19fan]

All the non-nuclear submarines post-WW II are the grandchildren of the Type XXI.

[GonzoGOP]

Of course once you get to this point you begin to realize that a death star in the star wars sense isn’t necessary anyway. Its better to choose an asteroid to burrow in and build outward from to create your mega station.

John Ringo came up with a great idea in his Troy Rising series. If you want to have real fun you inflate an asteroid. You start by building a big honking solar laser. Then use it to drill a hole to the center of an iron asteroid. Fill the core with water ice and back fill the hole, using the laser to melt it shut. Then put some spin on the asteroid and use the laser to heat the whole thing up until it goes molten. The ice in the center converts to steam and inflates the whole asteroid like a basket ball.

You end up with an iron sphere with kilometer thick walls. Use your mega laser to cut a door and sum gun ports. Fill the inside with lots of cool battle station stuff. For fun carve a giant hoplite face on the front. Install an Orion drive and send it crashing into the nearest enemy fleet. Tons of fun for the whole family.

[IronJack]

I think the DS also ignores the granularity of the Revolution. It is an all-or-nothing planet buster, which is awesome, but given that not all revolutionary activities occur on a planetary scale, it is a lot like swatting a gnat with a howitzer. What if the revolutionary cell is limited to a few zealots dispersed across several continents? Do you vaporize an entire planet to get rid of them? What about all the Loyalists and neutrals on that planet? They get blown to plasma just for occupying the same space as the Rebel malcontents?

And the operational overhead of sending a moon-sized weapon to the far corners of the galaxy just to zap a few dozen whiners is prohibitive.

Sometimes you need a scalpel, not a chainsaw.

[GonzoGOP]

Did they mention anything in all that about covering up the hole that you can shoot into and make the whole thing blow up?

This stunning new invention will guarantee the survival of the empire.

[Erasmus]

Somehow, that one got missed in the final Design Review.

[Little Ray]

After WWII, the Type XXI was pretty much the basis for all new sub construction until the USS Albacore, AGSS-569, which became the basis for current submarine design, starting with the Barbel and Skipjack classes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Albacore_%28AGSS-569%29

[zeugma]

Great post. It would fit right into the Friday Silliness thread