Star Woes

White House Won’t Build Death Star

Responds to official petition.

The White House would like to be clear: it does “not support blowing up planets.” That was one of the official statements released Friday in response to a “We the People” petition calling on the federal government to build a Death Star–like battle space station modeled after the one in Star Wars. The more than 25,000 people who signed the petition argued that the project would spur job creation and strengthen national defense capabilities. The White House sited the prohibitive $850,000,000,000,000,000 cost and its anti-planet destruction policies as the idea’s fundamental flaw: it “can be exploited by a one-man starship,” the statement read.