Pricing a Death Star

With Star Wars Episode 9: The Rise of Skywalker hitting theaters, it’s time to travel to a galaxy far far away and take a look at the insane for just a moment. Everyone who knows Star Wars is familiar with the Death Star. It’s iconic. So much so, JJ Abrams couldn’t think of anything better for Episode 7, so he made Star Killer Base. So, what exactly would be the cost to make a Death Star? Is it even possible? Read on and look at the insane numbers of this beast of a machine.

In 2012, Centives wrote an article specifically about this. One of the first things is to find something comparable in order to get an accurate number. Centives went with modern-day warships. Both are floating weapons that house people. Obviously the Death Star is going to need steel. Here’s the first hiccup. There isn’t enough iron on this planet to create the steel needed to build a Death Star. There is, however, enough in the earth’s core. Obviously that shouldn’t be removed, so that’s not a possibility. But even if it was removed, the steel for a project this large would reportedly be $852,000,000,000,000,000. That’s just for steel production.

Not all costs of having a Death Star have been laid out, but here are some that’ll make your eyes pop out. According to Fortune Magazine, it would cost $7,800,000,000,000,000 for day-to-day expenses. Some of this includes laundry for crew members ($200,000,000) and lighting ($52,000,000,000). Adding steel costs to expenses, we get $859,800,000,000,000,000. The steel alone would cost 13,000 times more than the worlds GDP in 2012. With today’s GDP at $80 trillion, that would be about a 200% difference.

So, can the Death Star be built? No. Not at all. One other thing to keep in mind is the time it would take to even assemble this thing. Centives calculated the amount of time it would take to make the steel for the Death Star. With steel production at what it was in 2012, it would take 800,000 years. A Death Star just isn’t in the cards.