White House Deletes Death Star Funds from NASA's FY2014 Budget
This Isn’t the Petition Response You’re Looking For, White House
“The Administration shares your desire for job creation and a strong national defense, but a Death Star isn’t on the horizon. Here are a few reasons:
– The construction of the Death Star has been estimated to cost more than $850,000,000,000,000,000. We’re working hard to reduce the deficit, not expand it.
– The Administration does not support blowing up planets.
– Why would we spend countless taxpayer dollars on a Death Star with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship?”
Keith’s note: So … is Charlie Bolden going to pound the table with his light saber over this latest snub from the White House?
Hey – Let’s Make NASA Build a Deathstar! (Update), Earlier post
When science fiction inspires science, instead of science inspiring science fiction, something is wrong. What is the purpose besides killing a “death star”? There are other cheaper ways to kill. It’s a sickening thought, and scientifically infant. Lucky that the president is a lucid man.
For all the years I’ve known Paul, from his reply to the petition, it looks like he’s still got a good balance of humor with a nicely metered response and positive revectoring. Given his chronic exposure to OMB over the years, which often tends to fossilize its residents, that’s pretty remarkable.
I would like to know from Paul, if OMB’s estimate of $850,000,000,000,000,000 is a cost plus fixed fee or fixed price figure, whether he would reconsider if the planet-blowing up could be shifted to asteroid / NEO blowing-up, if the Death Star could achieve revenues that would result in a positive return on investment, or if the management could be shifted from one man with a bad control-drama psychosis to a typical Washington DC bureacratic committee structure (god help us).
The common mistake the Hill (and frequently OMB) makes is, they always conclude that all expenditures have negative ROIs and fail to create positive GDP and value gains. (See Paul, you didn’t ask the upside question and short circuited to assuming it was a invariably a money sink.)
They fixate on cost-containment and completely forget to ask about value-creation. They needed to ask the right questions: “Well, how much money and value can the Death Star produce? The Death Star can be renamed Happy Star and can produce $998,000,000,000,000,000,000 ?? What a bargain! Let me write a check for that 850 x 10 to the 15th right away. Did you want that in small bills?”
And Paul, I like your closing about pursuing STEM and all of that “the Force will be with you” stuff. But I’d have liked it more if you’d said:
If for every $1 dollar you spend doing something be it Death Stars, light sabers or marshmellow cannons, always make sure it creates $10 dollars of value. Then not only will the Force be with you but our Nation will free itself from its economic stresses and fiscal cliffs and declining wealth and will prosper once again.
No, the sentence said that private interests are pursuing human mission to the moon.
I think this means we’re leaving it to KBR to build a Death Star.
And Halliburton
Don’t you get it? Of course we’re already building a Death Star. When you go to build a Death Star, you never announce it ahead of time. You build it in secret.
You don’t really believe NASA spent $8 billion on Constellation and was left with nothing to show for it do you? And isn’t it convenient that the James Webb Space Telescope is keeps sucking up billions more? No wonder Congress and the big aerospace companies are so fiercely defending SLS — it’s obviously just another Death Star cover story. NASA can’t really be so wasteful as it seems, so it’s clear now where the money is really going.
Shhhhhh
He has no clue what he’s talking about. He is crazy!!!
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Chris! Hush or they will make you disappear!
Folks:
Don’t fret! The Death Star was a boondoggle from square one! An Ego Suit for a deranged mind!
Especially since planet killing could be done on the cheap. If you want to destroy a planet, why not just use a kinetic weapon instead? Take something like a nickel iron asteroid and speed it up as close to the speed of light as your starship can push it. Wouldn’t have to be very big either. Do the math. Your target wouldn’t even see it coming because it’s right behind the light ‘bow shock’ as it’s coming in. Unstoppable.
When we colonize space, we’ll just have to learn to be nice to each other because kinetic weapons will make space war cheap and very, very deadly.
tinker
“When we colonize space, we’ll just have to learn to be nice to each other because kinetic weapons will make space war cheap and very, very deadly.”
Or avoid gathering large numbers of us at single immobile locations, like planets.
Yeah, I just don’t see the appeal of planets going forward. So much gravity to overcome to get anywhere, and so fragile.
So maybe that’s the real reason to have a Death Star — not as a weapon, but to break up big clumps of building materials. One giant zap and that annoying gravity well is gone, with lots of useful building materials flying in every direction.
Bah! Bet SpaceX could build it for only $250,000,000,000,000,000.
“Obama soft on rebel scum.” – Fox News
Keith, Charlie Bolden would have a Light Sabre, is not with the force and so must use a Blaster instead. Sad but true.
Forget the Death Star. I recently began a White House petition to develop a nuclear thermal rocket. You can read it here:
http://wh.gov/UVuD
We’re far from the required 25,000 signatures (and have less than the DS petition received!) so please get your friends, relatives, and complete strangers to sign!
It doesn’t sound too expensive to me. Just coin about a million of those trillion dollar coins and you’ll have plenty enough money. Or better yet, print about ten of the $100 quadtrillion dollar bills with the centaur and unicorn on it. Hell we might as well. The federal government borrows about half of what we spend each year, and Paul Krugman said a fake alien invasion would spur economic group. At least by building the Death Star we have military hardware for what was spent 😛 😉
And why would THEY build death star at a good price??? 🙂
Regarding the White House Petition response from Paul Shawcross, linked above:
Paul,
I enjoyed your positive and humorous petition response, but take a look at your comment
“Even though the United States doesn’t have anything that can do the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs, we’ve got two spacecraft leaving the Solar System and…”
In less that 12 parsecs? I’ve heard that a light-year is a long time too.
A parsec is a unit of length, not a unit of time.
Not to worry. All of the young folks you’ve inspired to pursue STEM will be well trained in units of measure and conversions and will catch such errors.
Looking forward to more of your openness and humor.