Kickstarter Open Source Death Star

[Pipcard]

Remember the White House petition? Now there's this.

 

[MaverickSawyer]

:facepalm: It's a joke, right?

 

[Alfastar]

I hate that people who believe Space must have Death stars. :dry:

Space must be a testbed of good technology, and brings people together. Not this dirty idea what destroying planets.

 

[Pipcard]

I hate that people who believe Space must have Death stars. :dry:

Space must be a testbed of good technology, and brings people together. Not this dirty idea what destroying planets.

Thankfully, it's obviously not serious.

 

[Athena]

And some of them are using the reason "But asteroids have a chance of hitting Earth every once in a while", but that doesn't mean we need to build a useless 160km station to destroy a rock that's what? 20m in diameter, there are other, less expensive and time consuming ideas to drive a comet off course and save our planet.

 

[Ghostrider]

Space must be a testbed of good technology, and brings people together. Not this dirty idea what destroying planets.

Well, think of all the spinoff technology: superlasers, gravity control, hyperdrives, energy sources, not to mention the advances in logistics and design.

 

[Urwumpe]

I should start a kickstarter for an OpenHardware X-Wing, just in case....

 

[Pablo49]

Thankfully, it's obviously not serious.

Silly Pipcard, that is what they want you to think. "lol look at me donating money that will never actually get spent, I'm so hip" Then BAM, goal reached, Chicken wire GET.

I like the idea of an open source Death Star blowing up fellow backers based on other backers' pledges. It is very Milo Minderbinder.

 

[jedidia]

While I appreciate the humor, I just don't feel comfortable about using serious, legally binding business platforms for jokes... Not such a problem for a one-off, but if this finds immitators it could harm kickstarters reputation.

 

[Urwumpe]

While I appreciate the humor, I just don't feel comfortable about using serious, legally binding business platforms for jokes... Not such a problem for a one-off, but if this finds immitators it could harm kickstarters reputation.

The problem is: Many great real inventions started actually as perceived joke. When an austrian engineer started developing the first propeller, people thought it was a joke. When the first prototype was afloat, people still thought it was a joke (Even though the muscle powered prototype was already faster than many steamboats). He died rather unknown after a lot of political errors, but still, his invention was a success.

Yes, the death star is obviously a joke. But how long will we be laughing, and when will one suddenly orbit us?

If I would start a kickstarter project for an "Shuttle-derived Asteroid defense vessel", how many people would only laugh and how many would actually read the concept?

 

[Spacethingy]

:rofl:

Ah, pure comedy. That's one of the funniest things I've read for ages...

Nothing has been ruled out at this point including the suggestion of using a beowulf cluster of Raspberry Pi devices.

I feel an XKCD What If... coming on.

 

[Izack]

:facepalm: It's a joke, right?

Don't underestimate the power of open source!!!

I feel an XKCD What If... coming on.

Already at least one question.

 

[Eccentrus]

I hate that people who believe Space must have Death stars. :dry:

Space must be a testbed of good technology, and brings people together. Not this dirty idea what destroying planets.

I disagree, and this only shows a great deal of naïvete for me, you see, we can't assume that when aliens come, they would come in peace, what if they consider us as only some ants sitting on a huge chunk of resources and the only thing that makes them regard us as "significant" is to have a military prowess? As Stephen Hawking said, based on the previous interactions between the more advanced and the less advanced civilizations, the prospect of us, meeting another much more advanced alien race and interact peacefully is worryingly slim.


I am more in Sagan's view that our exploration of space, rather than being of a higher "positive" purpose or whatnot, is actually should be based on the lowest and most primum of them all, basic survival.

 

[T.Neo]

Space must be a testbed of good technology, and brings people together. Not this dirty idea what destroying planets.

There is a ton of good technology in a death star, it's just used for destructive purposes. A death star could solve pretty much all of the problems facing our world, if we used it correctly. Consider this;

- The energy needed to destroy a planet is immense, calculated by some to be in the range of 2e32 joules (see http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Tech/Beam/DeathStar.html. Even if the Death Star's handwavium, er, "hypermatter" reactor can only produce a fraction of this in continuous operation, it'll still be able to power global civilisation several trillion times over. Even a single Star Destroyer would be overkill for suppling the global grid. Even low grade power generation technology used in Star Wars could provide us with abundant clean energy.

- Space travel in Star Wars is extremely casual. You've got a superpowerful spaceship, that carries a large number of smaller yet still extremely impressive spaceships; according to this page, over 3000 Imperial Shuttles. And looking at this page, we can see some of the vehicle's capabilities;

- 20 passengers or 80 metric tons cargo.

- 2 months consumables.

- 1400 G acceleration.

In other words, you can send a crew of astronauts and a sizable payload on a day trip to Pluto, and have them do science there for several weeks. And that isn't even considering the hyperdive; Star Wars FTL speeds are not quite well pinned down, but they can travel galactic distances in a matter of days or weeks. Not only could we greatly expand our knowledge of the solar system, but our knowledge of other, nearby solar systems as well. It would be an all-new age of discovery. And that isn't even considering the plethora of handwavium, er, advanced sensors that the Death Star and its subsidiary vessels would carry.

- The Death Star is so large that you could probably turn it into a space colony capable of supporting billions, with the right effort. In addition to being able to find and colonise other planets, and use immense power to terraform uninhabitable ones, a sizable portion of the global population may be able to emigrate to the Death Star itself.

- The technology of Star Wars would bring numerous advances in materials science and other fields (medicine, computation, propulsion, manufacturing, and soforth). Even if it is not immediately possible to replicate Imperial wonders such as Durasteel, the Death Star itself could be an adequate repository of material; at an average density of 500 kg/m^3, the battlestation would have a mass nearly twice that of Enceladus. A tenth of a percent of the Death Star's mass could supply the equivalent of the current global steel production for over a hundred million years.

- Of course, all that armament would be handy for dispensing with the next Chelyabinsk object... or the next Chicxulub object...

Once you look past the "wizards and knights in space with lazors" thing and look at the (extremely geeky speculation on) the technological capabilities, the Star Wars galaxy shows its true nature as an extremely powerful Kardashev scale III civilisation.

If I would start a kickstarter project for an "Shuttle-derived Asteroid defense vessel", how many people would only laugh and how many would actually read the concept?

I think part of the problem is that jokes like this reduce the legitimacy, in the eyes of the community, of realistic, if ambitious, projects.

As Stephen Hawking said, based on the previous interactions between the more advanced and the less advanced civilizations, the prospect of us, meeting another much more advanced alien race and interact peacefully is worryingly slim.

That's an overly cliche view, though. Consider India; it has over a million people in its military, a military with modern equipment, aircraft carriers and nuclear weapons. India has a claim on North Sentinel Island, which is populated by the Sentinelese people; a population of perhaps 300, who reject contact with outsiders and are one of the last remaining uncontacted people on Earth. Their technology is stone-age.

India could roll over those islands with impunity, and conquer them without losing a single person. They could destroy every living thing there and reduce the landscape to rubble, but they don't. The idea that a technologically advanced party in a contact scenario would invariably act like conquistadores is, ultimately, absurd.

 

[MaverickSawyer]

-snip-
The idea that a technologically advanced party in a contact scenario would invariably act like conquistadores is, ultimately, absurd.

At the risk of sounding Basement-ish, we have no empirical evidence as of yet. Until such time as first contact, all this is conjecture.

 

[Urwumpe]

At the risk of sounding Basement-ish, we have no empirical evidence as of yet. Until such time as first contact, all this is conjecture.

Yes, but lets describe it so:

Unless some strange irrational drive makes them our best friends and really benevolent teachers, it would have to be expected, that such alien visitors will take by force what they want, unless the price of using force is higher than the price of trading and diplomacy.

Honestly: I wouldn't be nice and patient, if I would know that just by killing you and taking all your property, I could also get what I want and some nice extras. It would be no rational decision to invest further effort into peaceful dealings.

So, it is not stupid to work on increasing our own price. If we are just harmless primitives in their eyes, they will treat us like that. If we are a threat, they will treat us like that. If we are too powerful to be turned into a threat, they will try to be our friends, unless some irrational drive forces them to attack us despite this being suicide. :rofl:

 

[paddy2]

we have no empirical evidence as of yet

Sorry to say it but as far as I know its native populations nil, others lots.

But there again I have still not forgiven the Normans.... 1066 huuuhhh surely they men five past eleven

 

[jedidia]

The idea that a technologically advanced party in a contact scenario would invariably act like conquistadores is, ultimately, absurd.

Well, it would depend on several factors:

a) is conquering the less developed civilisation worth anything? I.E. even if India could take the sentinel islands, maybe even without loss of life, they can't take them without financial expenses. So as long as there isn't anything to be gained, expending anything is a loss. I'm sure if there were rich oil resources around those islands, not only would India try to march in, but their claim would be contested by several nations, and probably several nations would try to strike a deal with its population by bargaining or intimidation.
Which brings us to the second point:

b) is there any equivalent of the international community in the galaxy, and is conquering a less developed civilisation frowned upon by that community? This would further decrease the possible gain from a conquest by political problems and pressure. In other words, if the international community really wouldn't care whether or not India takes those islands, they might still do it one day or another just for the hell of it (though probably in an economically more favourable climate than currently).

c) There's still the possibility that some deranged soul flies an A-Wing into the bridge of a multi-billion super star destroyer with several thousand crewmembers, whereupon the alien civilsation might declare war on those pesky earthling fundamentalists...

Of course, all of this assumes that the alien psychology would be anywhere remotely similar to human psychology. Some starfish aliens might be sincerely thankful to anyone showing them their design flaw by blowing up their death star with a ridiculous space plane...

So, it is not stupid to work on increasing our own price. If we are just harmless primitives in their eyes, they will treat us like that. If we are a threat, they will treat us like that. If we are too powerful to be turned into a threat, they will try to be our friends, unless some irrational drive forces them to attack us despite this being suicide.

*goes off to start a kickstarter project seeking funds to start a real world X-Com*

 

[T.Neo]

At the risk of sounding Basement-ish, we have no empirical evidence as of yet. Until such time as first contact, all this is conjecture.

That is precisely why assuming that the actions of aliens upon contact with humanity will invariably resemble those of conquistadores is unreasonable. Perhaps not more so than assuming that the actions of said people will invariably be peaceful or helpful, though it still doesn't make much sense to base such an assumption on the belief that advanced societies invariably conquer primitive ones, when this is not necessarily the case.

Interactions between societies are determined by circumstance, and for that reason one cannot expect all interactions between all societies to go down the same path as a specific interaction between specific societies. For example, in human history interactions between societies have frequently involved an intention to utilise resources. Since most of the elements and compounds found on Earth are found elsewhere in space (in many cases in more attractive locations, with lesser gravity wells or greater concentrations of elements due to a lack of differentiation), and the sophistication necessary for interstellar flight would likely be associated with the sophistication needed to synthesise many other compounds, it would seem unlikely that people would come here specifically to exploit our resources.

All we have that is absent in most of the universe is cultural and biological information, neither of which is a particularly good reason to invade over as they are most easily utilised in a generally non-destructive manner.