Death Star Petition Rejected As Obama's Administration Insists 'We Do Not Support Blowing Up Planets'

'We Do Not Support Blowing Up Planets': Death Star Petition Rejected

A petition calling on President Obama to build a working Death Star has been rejected by the White House.

The proposal to build an inter-stellar space station with unimaginable destructive power passed the needed 25,000 signatures last month.

Close but no Death Star

Yet on Friday in a somewhat sarcastic response, Paul Shawcross, chief of the Science and Space Branch of the Office of Management and Budget, pointed out: "The Administration does not support blowing up planets."

In the Star Wars film series, the Death Star was a space station about the size of a small moon that was equipped with laser weapons powerful enough to destroy planets.

Shawcross added: "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.

"Why would we spend countless taxpayer dollars on a Death Star with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship?"

Sad face for all those Star Wars fans then...

The official wording of the petition was:

"We petition the Obama administration to:

Secure resources and funding, and begin construction of a Death Star by 2016.

By focusing our defense resources into a space-superiority platform and weapon system such as a Death Star, the government can spur job creation in the fields of construction, engineering, space exploration, and more, and strengthen our national defense."

Several fictional characters added their signatures to the 34,000 long list, including a mysterious Mr Darth V, who listed his location as "Imperial Battlecruiser".

Earlier this year it was calculated that the Death Star would cost more than £541 trillion just for the raw materials - or 13,000 times the gross domestic product of the Earth.

While the very idea of the American government sanctioning the construction of such a thing may sound ridiculous, let's not forget the US once considered blowing up the Moon during the Cold War, hence nothing is off the table.

REBELS NEED A CAUSE

11 History Lessons From Star Wars

All images from "Star Wars and History," edited by Nancy R. Reagin and Janice Liedl, published by Wiley, November 2012

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