A guy called Ryszard Gold—who probably is an alien villain from the Outer Rim planets and got a 49-point score in our Geek Social Aptitude Test—made the calculation of the most basic Death Star's price with current materials and space transport costs here on Earth. Here's a quick summary:
First, assume that 1/10 of the 17.16 quadrillion cubic meters of the Death Star is something other than empty space and 6/10 of the total volume is pressurized space.
That will require 1.71 quadrillion cubic meters of steel, about 134 quadrillion tonnes. That's $12.95 quintillion in current 2008 prices, and that's without counting strange alloys and elements. Shipping that to space will cost $95 million per tonne:
So add $12.79 septillion in transport. Now you need to add air, which will require 8.23 quintillion cubic meters of Nitrogen, and 1.65 quintillion cubic meters of oxygen, for a total delivery cost of $2.81 septillions and $212.46 quintillion.
The total: $15,602,022,489,829,821,422,840,226.94$
Yes, that's a whooping 1.4 trillion times the current US Debt. Or a sightly more meaningful number: 124 trillion years of war in Iraq.
That will only get you the very basic model of Death Star, no options, no GPS, no radio, no leather heated seats, no mega-laser to obliterate planets, no turbolaser towers, no computer systems, no miscellaneous life support systems....
See the whole report of Jesus Diaz here..... We laugh our arses of reading that....
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