NASA Engineer Schools You on How to Build a Death Star

That's no moon.

By Michael Passalacqua

Maybe building the Death Star from scratch wasn't the best idea after all.

According to Brian Muirhead, chief engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a Death Star shouldn't be constructed with parts launched off of a planet like it was in the Star Wars universe. Instead, one should be built using an asteroid.

An already-existing asteroid would provide "all the building blocks you would need to build your family Death Star," says Muirhead, in a Wired video that you can watch below. These building blocks include metals, organic compounds, and water.

Muirhead is currently working on an asteroid redirect mission, which will land on an asteroid, pick up a bolder from its surface, and put it in orbit around our moon. NASA will then go visit the bolder on a crewed mission to collect and bring back samples. The landing is scheduled for 2023.

In the video, Muirhead also describes what NASA and Star Wars' spacecrafts have in common. The technology behind dodging asteroids is ion propulsion, a key component to spacecraft in the Star Wars series and one that the Millennium Falcon uses to its advantage. The asteroid redirect mission uses four ion engines, although the technology is still very low thrust.

"If you wanted to start going to the stars, you'd need much more advanced power," said Muirhead. "So that's where you start talking about fission and then fusion. That's really one of the power systems that Star Wars used."

Could the United States ever build a planet destroyer? Well, according to the White House, who was petitioned to build a Death Star in 2013, the answer is no. The Obama administration estimated the cost to be around $850,000,000,000,000,000. A total that's a bit too much of a burden to put on taxpayers.

Michael Passalacqua is a freelance writer for IGN. Chat with him about Fallout 4 and the New York Giants on Twitter @mikepass20

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://ift.tt/jcXqJW.