The Death Star's Operational Costs Were Out of This World

A 'cost so high that the numbers sound as fake as Jar-Jar's accent'
By Michael Harthorne,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 3, 2016 3:33 PM CST
Here's How Much It Would Cost to Operate the Death Star
The Rebels may have saved the Empire from total economic collapse when they blew up that boondoggle Death Star.   (YouTube)

That's no moon—it's a wildly expensive, economy-sinking boondoggle of a battle station. British company Ovo Energy wanted to figure out how much it would cost per day to operate the Death Star, so it got a math professor at Dartmouth and an editor of Physics Central to look into it, Mental Floss reports. According to Ovo Energy, which has a nifty infographic explaining the methodology, its team got information on the Empire's super weapon, including number of employees, number of levels and sub-levels, and the physics of hyperspace jumps, from StarDestroyer.net and Wookieepedia.

Factoring in feeding and housing more than 2 million employees ("They're probably losing a couple hundred staffers daily to those deadly trash compactors," CNET quips), jumping to hyperspace, nearly 2 billion light bulbs to light 342 levels and sub-levels, recharging and using a planet-destroying laser (requiring an energy output "3 million times more powerful than the sun"), trash disposal, laundry, and more, Ovo figures it would cost $7.7 octillion per day to operate the Death Star. That's 30 trillion times all the money on Earth and a "cost so high that the numbers sound as fake as Jar-Jar's accent." Cinema Blend points out that even if the Rebels hadn't blown up the Death Star, "economic stress" may have done the job for them before long. (More Death Star stories.)

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