It is well-known that the White House has a website for submitting petitions. Any petition that gets enough signatures gets an official response.
Someone submitted a petition that called for the government to “Secure resources and funding, and begin construction of a Death Star by 2016.” But they probably didn’t expect this awesome nerd response:
This Isn’t the Petition Response You’re Looking For
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?
There’s a lot more to the response that is worth reading.
7 Comments
Hmm, makes sense, this president does.
Most people, probably including most of the signers, see this as a joke/something funny, but really this isn’t that far off. The day will come when some country uses the lagrangian points to create a landing base for ships traveling to other countries and of course where humans go military tech follows, so another point could be used to protect assets
The lagrangian points are quite distant and require a lot of energy to achieve. Most are semi-stable at best. A military platform in low earth orbit is much more threatening and closer in technology.
Wow! A virtual nerd magnet if I may say so. đŸ™‚
Lagrangian points. Talk about nerds.
Of course, I’m one to talk — I’m a nerd and I’m proud!
A military base in LEO would have to have all it’s materials (and weapons) supplied from Earth. Better to build it on the Moon, with a solar powered linear accelerator and an unlimited supply of rocks, you have all the threat factor you need.
Never try to fight nerds, they have too many ways to get back at you đŸ™‚
A base in LEO can be expendable. I was thinking in terms of a weapons platform. That can be done with current technology. A linear accelerator would be efficient, but aiming would be strongly limited to planetary dynamics and inherently slow. You also have to deal with Earth’s atmosphere, as hundreds of asteroids do every day without causing problems.