…would make a great stimulus and green energy project.
From my point of view, just think what the demand for that much material lifted from earth would do for launch costs. Unless they used SLS, of course.
11 thoughts on “A Death Star”
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Actually, since the thing is supposed to be the size of a moon, it would be cheaper to turn our own moon into a “death star” by mounting weapons and building infrastructure on (in?) it.
First off, it’s the size of a “small moon”, not the size of our Moon. The Death Star is a mere 80 km in radius, only 1/7th the size of Tethys, the smallest moon in our solar system.
Second, the Death Star was mobile. Building a battlestation that can only shoot at (maybe!) 1/4 of the Earth’s surface at a time, and can’t even threaten Mars or Venus would be pretty stupid.
Sheesh
Orion Drive. And a whole lot of mining 😀 No, more than that. Think “Aerogel”.
Mark,
Would that not be the “Alan Parsons Project?” of whence you speak?
I guess you people never heard that joke where Mao is showing Stalin a great dam construction project with thousands of workers shoveling dirt around. Stalin asks why aren’t they using bulldozers instead of shovels. Mao says this way they employ more people in the construction project. Stalin then quips that if that was the intended purpose of the project they should be digging with spoons instead.
Do you suppose that the powers that be, instead of sending one intelligent and articulate liberal to “troll” Rand’s fine Web site, they send over a squad of less capable people to insure this place is not an “echo gallery”?
I disagree with Godzilla quite a bit but he isn’t a troll. TM on the other hand is rather up front about trolling.
I didn’t accuse or even hint at our esteemed friend Godzilla being a troll.
Godzilla told about the “full employment falacy” in the context of a joke, in which the dictator Stalin chided the dictator Mao for not going “all in” on non-labor-saving methods by having the workers use spoons to excavate a dam.
One of my common responses to the more-lame responses and challenges made on this site directed at our esteemed host Rand riffs on the meme that the Left sends their True Believers out over Cyber Space to troll sites such as this, perhaps to “speak truth to power”, perhaps to demoralize the Right by spreading FUD. Yes we are demoralized, not so much that our inner beliefs are being challenged but more because there are people “out there” who are beyond the reach of reason.
My joke was that in trolling this site, that “the Left”, instead of sending “bulldozers” of one or two intelligent and persuasive people over here to effectively argue their case, they send a small army of less intellectually powerful people over here with “shovels” and in some cases “spoons.”
So what I am suggesting is that the Left believes its own Full Employment Narrative in sending large numbers of people out over the Web equiped with lame talking points instead of a fewer number of people who can actually think . . .
I heard that before, but attributed to Milton Friedman (not Stalin). Which would make more sense, seeing how he understood economics.
Wouldn’t that be a “We’re going to get very upset if you kill us and so we’ll pass a law saying you can’t kill us” Star?
You can’t have a government program with a name less than 10 letters length … gotta pay the acronyme monkeys !
Being the government building the Death Star, they will put the biggest cannon on it and forget to put an engine big enough to move it around.