White House Responds To Death Star Petition
As I noted several weeks ago, a petition on the White House website calling for the construction of a Death Star had received tens of thousands of signatures, far more than the 25,000 typically needed to prompt some kind of response from the White House. Well, the White House has responded in a post cleverly titled “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?
However, look carefully (here’s how) and you’ll notice something already floating in the sky — that’s no Moon, it’s a Space Station! Yes, we already have a giant, football field-sized International Space Station in orbit around the Earth that’s helping us learn how humans can live and thrive in space for long durations. The Space Station has six astronauts — American, Russian, and Canadian — living in it right now, conducting research, learning how to live and work in space over long periods of time, routinely welcoming visiting spacecraft and repairing onboard garbage mashers, etc. We’ve also got two robot science labs – one wielding a laser – roving around Mars, looking at whether life ever existed on the Red Planet.
Keep in mind, space is no longer just government-only. Private American companies, through NASA’s Commercial Crew and Cargo Program Office (C3PO), are ferrying cargo — and soon, crew — to space for NASA, and are pursuing human missions to the Moon this decade.
Even though the United States doesn’t have anything that can do the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs, we’ve got two spacecraft leaving the Solar System and we’re building a probe that will fly to the exterior layers of the Sun. We are discovering hundreds of new planets in other star systems and building a much more powerful successor to the Hubble Space Telescope that will see back to the early days of the universe.
We don’t have a Death Star, but we do have floating robot assistants on the Space Station, a President who knows his way around a light saber and advanced (marshmallow) cannon, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is supporting research on building Luke’s arm, floating droids, and quadruped walkers.
Nicely played gentleman. Nicely played.
He definitely wins the nerd vote.
Maybe the “international space station” is really a death star. It goes along with a Kenyan president; etc. And when did the liberal media make it official United States policy to not blow up planets.
I’m salivating at the design fees…even low-balling it at 5%…oh my.
I’m salivating at the design fees
Not only is the Empire, er, Administration likely to alter your bargain, you’ll be praying they don’t alter it any further.
I tell you what, at least McCain would have built that danged Death Star, and double-quick.
And then, when the design proved faulty as a result of insider favoritism awarding the bid to a low-ballling Palin crony and it exploded, killing millions, he would have built a replacement also, too.
@Stonetools: Rick Santorum says so himself.
All is proceeding as I have foreseen. (#16 in particular) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine%27s_laws
After having seen Washington hand over hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars to Wall Street bankers, saying it was needed in order to stimulate the economy, some people had thought that there was no limit to how ridiculous expenditures could be and still be funded by Congress.
Finally, an upper limit has been definitively established. The current administration will not rationalize any absurdity of expenditure, but will stop somewhere before 850 quadrillion dollars.
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