Stopping a rebellion is costly
The Star Wars galaxy celebrated the end of the Empire when the Rebel Alliance blew up the second Death Star, but a new study says the battle station’s destruction would have sent the galaxy into economic despair — with a $500-quintillion shortfall.
Zachary Feinstein, a financial engineering professor at Washington University in St. Louis, published a study where he calculates the Empire’s gross galactic product (GGP) and compares it to the costs of building both Death Stars in Star Wars: A New Hope and Return of the Jedi.
The U.S. government once wrote that the cost of the steel needed to build the original Death Star was $852 quadrillion. Feinstein used the ratio of steel to total cost of the recently completed USS Gerald Ford aircraft carrier and came to the final number of $193 quintillion. The costs include both research and development, Feinstein says.
With its 900-kilometre diameter, the second Death Star would have cost the Galactic Empire $419 quintillion.
Feinstein then calculated the gross galactic product by comparing it to the costs of the Manhattan Project in the U.S. To create the atomic bomb, the U.S. spent 0.21 per cent of its gross domestic product. Assuming the Empire did the same, its GGP would have equalled $92 sextillion during the 20 years it controlled the galaxy.
Working with the assumption the Empire would have owed the galactic banks 50 per cent of the cost of the first Death Star and the full cost of the second one when it was destroyed, the rebels would have needed to gather at least 15 to 20 per cent of the GGP to avoid a galactic depression. The bailout would have cost the rebels more than what the U.S. spends in a year, an estimated $3.69 trillion.
Darth Vader once called it a “technological terror,” but if Feinstein is correct, the horror associated with the Death Star would have extended far beyond its ability to obliterate a planet.