Wash U Professor: Death Star Would Have Sunk the Star Wars Economy

[Guardsman Bass]

I could see the first version of the Death Star taking a long time to build. Starships of that size seem to be virtually unknown in the setting (or even space stations, considering Han's remark in ANH), and on top of that you've got the complexity of an unprecedented primary weapon system. Not to mention the whole thing needed to be built in secret.

[Zixinus]

When it comes to projects like that most of the cost is in the R&D anyway. Compare the cost of manufacturing an atomic bomb to the Manhattan Project.

You don't know that and have no evidence that this is true for this case.

The Death Star is not a Manhattan Project. There is no hint of it being a Manhattan Project in any way, as far as I know.

In the Rebels continuity they had a prototype B-wing use superlaser technology. It can easily be that all the technology necessary has been worked out centuries ago and it's just nobody seriously tried to make a moon-sized battlestation housing a superweapon with it.

And the thing is, no matter how you cut it, gathering enough refined material to just make the framework of a moon-sized object has to be tremendous even if it's mostly hollow. This is not even talking about all the other stuff necessary to make it a battlestation. The sheer amount of material and logistics is mind-bongling.

[Galvatron]

In the Rebels continuity they had a prototype B-wing use superlaser technology. It can easily be that all the technology necessary has been worked out centuries ago and it's just nobody seriously tried to make a moon-sized battlestation housing a superweapon with it.

Hell, they had it even before SWR, way back in AOTC. Deja Vu.

What is "superlaser tech?" That sounds like EU gibberish. Are you talking about those composite-beam cannons on the LAATs in AOTC? Is there something about the superlaser that makes it different than a turbolaser? Is there some reason why a sufficiently scaled-up turbolaser wouldn't achieve the same result as a scaled-up superlaser?

[Paolo]

Pretty neat.
Gizmodo summary
There's an ArXiv paper
It's a Trap: Emperor Palpatine's Poison Pill

Although others have worked out the cost of building a Death Star before, Feinstein decided to start from scratch, estimating the amount of steel and other raw materials required to build the planet-destroying weapon. After factoring in research and development, he arrived at a total cost of $419 quintillion dollars for both Galactic war machines.

That figure may sound mind-boggling, but we should remember that Emperor Palpatine had an entire Galactic Empire’s worth of assets at his disposal. Feinstein, for his part, was more interested in learning how the Imperial banking system would respond if the largest construction project in the Galaxy was suddenly destroyed. Popular Science explains his findings:

Following logic stitched together from prequels and Wookiepedia, we get a galactic banking sector with assets that are 60 percent of the gross galactic domestic product.
[Feinstein calculates the Galactic GDP to be roughly $4.6 sextillion per year.]
Since these banks are likely heavily invested in the Empire itself and the Death Star specifically, the destruction of one Death Star by intergalactic terrorists and the collapse of the Empire following the destruction of the second, would devastate the galactic markets, and create a financial crisis on a truly massive scale.

Actually, it's $4.6 sextillion over 20 years. Feinstein puts GGP at $193 quintillion.

Makes for a pretty poor galaxy. Don't know how many folks there are in the new continuity, but in 2009 the Star Wars Essential Atlas pegged the galactic population at 100 quadrillion. That works out to a GGP per capita of $482. Gross global product per capita today is something like $10,000.

But like others have said, even a first order approximation of a galactic economy is dicey given the sheer difference in scale. Earth's economy today takes place almost entirely within a sphere that receives just a bit over 0.4 billionths of total solar output. The Emperor rules over hundreds of billions of stars and can deliver a million suns' worth of power on target.

[Paolo]

The Death Star is not a Manhattan Project. There is no hint of it being a Manhattan Project in any way, as far as I know.

Maybe it's the Big Dig.