They didn't even open a copy of this, so they failed:



And let's not forget, they built three Death Stars - the shell prototype in the Maw Installation (just a frame prototype, but it had a functional superlaser), and the two from the movies.

And that wasn't the full extent of the Imperial litany of superweapons. Seriously, the Emperor must have had a real hard-on for the Tarkin Doctrine:

The Eye of Palpatine
The Galaxy Gun
The Sun Crusher
The World Devestators (which were the only real efficient superweapon the empire ever built)

And then there's just the insanely large capital ships (mostly SSDs) - the Executor/Super-class, the Sovereign-class, and the Eclipse-class - though the Eclipse-class borders on being a superweapon in its own right, given the axial-mounted mini-superlaser it carried.

JeffMD: uhmmm yea.. the death star was made at a time where nothing on earth was relevant for comparison. Not only is the technology of the deathstar different (and not steel), but was made differently, by droids. Lots of droids.

Were they union droids?

so you are saying we should build one as a planet since it would be great for job creation and stimulating the economy?

MyRandomName: JeffMD: uhmmm yea.. the death star was made at a time where nothing on earth was relevant for comparison. Not only is the technology of the deathstar different (and not steel), but was made differently, by droids. Lots of droids.

Were they union droids?

It was built above the prison planet Despayre using prison labor, and the first functionality test of the Death Star was against the planet.

It makes the contractor dialogue in Clerks look absolutely cheery by comparison.

I'm guessing it would be more like Futurama at that point...

Bunch of nanobots doing the mining and building all while reproducing themselves to increase the rate of work. -Death Star built in a week.

Of course to make it even easier, find a small planet with the right material composition, infect it with these nanobots, come back when it is built and the nanobots have died at a predetermined date/time.

With the technology of the future, this would be economically feasible.

They clearly misjudged the cost. It's the Empire, labor would likely be next to free as would the raw materials. The empire would have taken over several planets and forced the population to process the ore, or given the prominence of robotic manufacturing, would have had minimal need for human involvement (think Chinese labor in space). To ensure maximum processing efficiency, the entire planetary system would have been dedicated to refining the ore, cutting the time down dramatically from the 833 thousand years estimated.

In other news, the entire world is still parsing the make make believe physics, social and cultural implications of 35 year old movie aimed at 12 year old kids.

bunner: In other news, the entire world is still parsing the make make believe physics, social and cultural implications of 35 year old movie aimed at 12 year old kids.

true, but remember many engineers and scientists only joined these fields because of movies like Star Wars that they saw as kids.

I'm willing to bet a lot of things we use today were influenced by science fiction novels of the past.

If you're looking for a better wage then you might have to start embracing evil. Students at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania worked out how much it would cost to build the Death Star and came up with a figure of $8,100,000,000,000,000 ($8.1 quadrillion!?), which is 13,000 times the world's GDP.

Consider the following quote on the New Republic:

"The New Republic is a mutual self-protection pact among over four hundred sentient species, and an economic partnership between eleven thousand inhabited worlds."
-Chief of State Leia Organa Solo

Assuming the Galactic Empire has most of those worlds still under them, that far into the future where money would start to become a non-issue, I imagine 8.1 quadrillion isn't that far fetched for the government budget to be working with... not that their numbers add up since they take into consideration our caveman civilization technology to be on-par with the technology and industry that exists in a galaxy far far away...

bunner: In other news, the entire world is still parsing the make make believe physics, social and cultural implications of 35 year old movie aimed at 12 year old kids.

You said make, twice...

simplicimus: Gabrielmot: bunner: In other news, the entire world is still parsing the make make believe physics, social and cultural implications of 35 year old movie aimed at 12 year old kids.

true, but remember many engineers and scientists only joined these fields because of movies like Star Wars that they saw as kids.

I'm willing to bet a lot of things we use today were influenced by science fiction novels of the past.

Well, Waldos for one. And Cell Phones. Pad Computers. Probably more.

I guess I just miss when works like these inspired leaps and bounds over a the course of a decade instead of dribs and drabs over almost half a century. I think we've been gazing into the navel of CPU architecture a little too long and a lot of things have suffered because we're pretty much convinced that if we can create a simulacrum of what already is, that we've done something new. We're just putting the same dog on the same pony, but wit a different suit. And we can't even make it pay for itself. And frankly, grown men arguing over who was cooler, Mace Windu or Lando Calrissian, is a bit silly.

McNignog: bunner: In other news, the entire world is still parsing the make make believe physics, social and cultural implications of 35 year old movie aimed at 12 year old kids.

You said make, twice...

Crap, yeah I did. Just switched browsers and the editing features are dissimilar. Sorry.

bunner: In other news, the entire world is still parsing the make make believe physics, social and cultural implications of 35 year old movie aimed at 12 year old kids.

In other other news, anonymous message board user amuses himself by uselessly criticizing other anonymous message board users for amusing themselves with useless criticism.

Civil Discourse: anonymous message board user amuses himself by uselessly criticizing other anonymous message board users

I'm not criticizing anybody. Or did you mean you? : )

I'm not all that anonymous, either. I'll forward you my name and address and you can pop by and we'll crack a couple of cold ones and turn the game on and discuss the social implications of globally accessible forums that offer anybody with a QWERTY, an ISP and a practiced smirk the ability to criticize anonymously. I'll make some pizza rolls. : )

UNC_Samurai: They didn't even open a copy of this, so they failed:

[photo.goodreads.com image 318x407]

And let's not forget, they built three Death Stars - the shell prototype in the Maw Installation (just a frame prototype, but it had a functional superlaser), and the two from the movies.

And that wasn't the full extent of the Imperial litany of superweapons. Seriously, the Emperor must have had a real hard-on for the Tarkin Doctrine:

The Eye of Palpatine
The Galaxy Gun
The Sun Crusher
The World Devestators (which were the only real efficient superweapon the empire ever built)

And then there's just the insanely large capital ships (mostly SSDs) - the Executor/Super-class, the Sovereign-class, and the Eclipse-class - though the Eclipse-class borders on being a superweapon in its own right, given the axial-mounted mini-superlaser it carried.

And yet it would still take but one Constellation-class cruiser to blow it up.

theorellior: bunner: In other news, the entire world is still parsing the make make believe physics, social and cultural implications of 35 year old movie aimed at 12 year old kids.

I bet you hate the fact that one of the most beloved movies of all time is an animated film featuring a 1000 year old fairy tale aimed at 8 year olds.

Nope. It probably has a little more character dev than a month old cocaine fueled script treatment. I'm just not sure where our brave new future is going when everything seems to reference something else that somebody else did before, someplace else. And I got no problem with Star Wars as an industry. It paid a lot of bills and it's a jazzy bit of whimsy if you can ignore the soap opera bits.

KellyX: Assuming the Galactic Empire has most of those worlds still under them, that far into the future where money would start to become a non-issue, I imagine 8.1 quadrillion isn't that far fetched for the government budget to be working with...

Also, when you have crazy religious rebels that attack and go into hiding you have the fear factor helping to push extra spending into military developments. They would even have no problem running a deficit. This probably holds true for the Star Wars universe also.

It's at least a billion quatloos. I think that's roughly equivalent to one-hundred thousand bricks of gold-pressed latinum . Or whatever else you want to just make up as it's just a movie.

The TIE Fighter games long ago reasoned the costs of the Death Star was the reason you end up fighting pissed off Imperial Admirals who'd rather fund highly advanced starfighter technology than vulnerable superweapons of terror.

What good would a planet destroyer be anyway (as imagined in Star Wars)? It'd cost a fortune to build (so your military would be deficient in other areas) and blowing up whole planets doesn't really win you much.

I don't know what the big deal is.

Everybody know that the ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the force. Big Van Vader told us that!

theorellior: bunner: I'm just not sure where our brave new future is going when everything seems to reference something else that somebody else did before, someplace else.

Some guys from 400 BC called, they want their complaints back.

Yeah! Perfect example. Lame, clapped out, 30 year old wiseass remark with Your Personal Witty Spin_©. Thanks.

Guess what? Luke killed everyone on that thing. That's a lot of emotional distress.

John Buck 41: Really? I'm the first?

[media.screened.com image 400x300]

No, the first was first. Didn't you read the initial, thread-starting post?

My calculations put the total cost at just under 12 parsecs.

SocratesNutz: My calculations put the total cost at just under 12 parsecs.

How much is that in furlongs of gold pressed latinum?

theorellior: The Pak looks on with vague amusement at such a piffling project.

the xeelee laugh at the pitiful tiny ephemeral things made by the pak in only one pass through time.

"Within the Xeelee Sequence, they are considered to be the most advanced of all Baryonic life-forms and possess technology and abilities far beyond other spacefaring civilization. They have demonstrated the ability to routinely construct Closed Timelike Curves and have exploited time travel to engineer their own evolution and history as far back as 13.5 billion years ago (within two hundred million years of the Big Bang). Their abilities in the series far exceed that of a Type III Civilization on the Kardashev scale."

The Xeelee constructed a huge light years wide torus of singularity matter just to fark with their own past because the universe didn`t last long enough for them to build the shiat they wanted to if you went through it linearly...

bunner: SocratesNutz: My calculations put the total cost at just under 12 parsecs.

How much is that in furlongs of gold pressed latinum?

It`s about 4 quarts to the hogshead

The kids were aware that the Death Star was built by the lowest bidder, right?

/Explains the exhaust port.

theorellior: bunner: Yeah! Perfect example. Lame, clapped out, 30 year old wiseass remark with Your Personal Witty Spin©. Thanks.

You'd be much more comfortable without that stick up your ass. But, I'm sorry, someone might have said that exact turn of phrase in your hearing before, so I guess I'm not original enough for you to grasp the concept involved.

Ah, yes. This movie. You troll me, wait for me to tell you to stuff it and then go cry to the mods. One more peep out of you, pretty, and I think I'll throw you under the mod bus instead. That's how the game here works, isn't it? Go away.

Don't tell Newt. Oh, what the heck, go ahead.

bunner


McNignog: bunner: In other news, the entire world is still parsing the make make believe physics, social and cultural implications of 35 year old movie aimed at 12 year old kids.

You said make, twice...

Crap, yeah I did. Just switched browsers and the editing features are dissimilar. Sorry.

bummer, I just thought you really like make

busy chillin':

bummer, I just thought you really like make



Sort of want.

This is what physicists like to call a Fermi problem, named after Enrico Fermi who estimated the energy output of the Trinity nuclear bomb test by sprinkling paper during the shockwave.

Link (new window)

Other examples of Fermi problems:

How long does it take a light bulb to turn off?
How many blades of grass are in your front yard?

etc...

Befuddled: It's at least a billion quatloos. I think that's roughly equivalent to one-hundred thousand bricks of gold-pressed latinum . Or whatever else you want to just make up as it's just a movie.

I only accept payment in ningies.

miss diminutive: simplicimus: And what would it cost to launch all that steel into space?

I think it would make more sense to just mine the iron from asteroids.

Or start with a large enough asteroid and hollow it out, add whatever you need to the inside.

dready zim: theorellior: The Pak looks on with vague amusement at such a piffling project.

the xeelee laugh at the pitiful tiny ephemeral things made by the pak in only one pass through time.

"Within the Xeelee Sequence, they are considered to be the most advanced of all Baryonic life-forms and possess technology and abilities far beyond other spacefaring civilization. They have demonstrated the ability to routinely construct Closed Timelike Curves and have exploited time travel to engineer their own evolution and history as far back as 13.5 billion years ago (within two hundred million years of the Big Bang). Their abilities in the series far exceed that of a Type III Civilization on the Kardashev scale."

The Xeelee constructed a huge light years wide torus of singularity matter just to fark with their own past because the universe didn`t last long enough for them to build the shiat they wanted to if you went through it linearly...

If they're so great how come they were beaten some lousy star-chickens?

This is the second stupid study this school has done. They also did the cost to send a kid to hogwartz study. I'm sure their parents are glad to send their kids to 45k a year school for this. Go leopards

thecpt: This is the second stupid study this school has done. They also did the cost to send a kid to hogwartz study. I'm sure their parents are glad to send their kids to 45k a year school for this. Go leopards

To me it sounds like a great exercise in critical thinking and problem solving. Much more useful than memorizing and regurgitating facts for a standardized exam, anyway.

thelordofcheese: Oh get real. You'd need to have marijuana to do this.

Lol, you can't do math when you're high :p


jack21221: thecpt: This is the second stupid study this school has done. They also did the cost to send a kid to hogwartz study. I'm sure their parents are glad to send their kids to 45k a year school for this. Go leopards

To me it sounds like a great exercise in critical thinking and problem solving. Much more useful than memorizing and regurgitating facts for a standardized exam, anyway.

This.
The most important part of school is to learn to find the answer to new problems or ones that haven't been solved,
not just to learn the answers to questions that have already been asked and answered a million times.