White House Must Answer Petition To 'Build Death Star'

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White House Must Answer Petition To 'Build Death Star'

Posted by Soulskill on Friday December 14, 2012 @10:57AM from the fully-operational-boondoggle dept.

EdIII writes "The White House petition to secure funding for building the Death Star has garnered over 25,000 signatures, which means the White House must officially respond. I can't wait to see it. My question to Slashdot readers: what modifications would you add to the proposed Death Star? Obviously, as one journalist put it, 'guardrails around any of the facility's seemingly endless number of bridges, spans, shafts and pits.' What other changes would you ask your representatives to make?"

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Remove the obvious structural weaknesses by DaemonDan · 2012-12-14 10:58 · Score: 5, Funny

No more shafts leading directly to the core, please.

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1. Re:Remove the obvious structural weaknesses by TFAFalcon · 2012-12-14 11:05 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  They already fixed that on the Endor variant (they just had a lousy slow contractor building it).
  My vote is that they add an exterminator or two to the crew. I hear the first Death Star had quite a pest problem in it's garbage compactors.
2. Re:Remove the obvious structural weaknesses by hectorh · 2012-12-14 11:10 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  For the same reason smoke stacks and ventilation ducts have the least number of turns and bends: any obstruction creates back-pressure ... and back pressure is something you don't want when you are trying to dissipate excess heat during a SCRAM.
  Then again ... whoever thought they could hit a 1.5 meter target while travelling at 250+ meters / second ....
3. Re:Remove the obvious structural weaknesses by bondsbw · 2012-12-14 11:11 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Such as the White House?
  
  --
  All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
4. Re:Remove the obvious structural weaknesses by tonywong · 2012-12-14 11:31 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  iFixit will give the new Death Star a repairability rating lower than the new iMac, then.
5. Re:Remove the obvious structural weaknesses by hawguy · 2012-12-14 11:41 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  For the same reason smoke stacks and ventilation ducts have the least number of turns and bends: any obstruction creates back-pressure ... and back pressure is something you don't want when you are trying to dissipate excess heat during a SCRAM.
  Then again ... whoever thought they could hit a 1.5 meter target while travelling at 250+ meters / second ....
  Childs play - I used to bullseye womp rats in my T-16 back home, they're not much bigger than two meters.
6. Re:Remove the obvious structural weaknesses by Savage-Rabbit · 2012-12-14 12:16 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  No more shafts leading directly to the core, please.
  They already fixed that on the Endor variant (they just had a lousy slow contractor building it).
  My vote is that they add an exterminator or two to the crew. I hear the first Death Star had quite a pest problem in it's garbage compactors.
  What none of you realise is that we are about to witness yet another round of trials and tests of the new death star concept demonstrator, the USS Apophis. They only made it look like an Asteroid to fool the Chinese. This has been common knowledge among UFOlogists for years now.
  
  --
  Only to idiots, are orders laws.
  -- Henning von Tresckow
7. Re:Remove the obvious structural weaknesses by pwizard2 · 2012-12-14 12:55 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Why even have a central core at all? A distributed power system (hundreds of smaller reactors throughout the structure instead of one big reactor at the core) would completely eliminate that vulnerability and improve power uptime through sheer redundancy. An attacking force would have to destroy the Death Star piece by piece instead of blowing up the main core all at once.
  
  --
  "It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
8. Re:Remove the obvious structural weaknesses by pwizard2 · 2012-12-14 13:33 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Something that always bothered me was the fact that they put the Emperor's Throne Room on top of a spindly little tower. IIRC that tower room used to be the command center before the emperor showed up! Sure it had a great view and lots of ambiance but such critical facilities should have been far deeper in the structure. If a pilot could hit a small exhaust port, then (if not for the shield) surely one of the Rebel capital ships could destroy that tower and get rid of the emperor AND the command center in one shot.
  
  Their entire line of defense was ONE shield (with no redundancy/backup) controlled from a poorly defended bunker staffed by incompetent soldiers. What could possibly go wrong?
  
  --
  "It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
9. Re:Remove the obvious structural weaknesses by ArsonSmith · 2012-12-14 15:28 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  You hurt small animals for fun as a kid? You must be some kind of psychopath.
  
  --
  Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
10. Re:Remove the obvious structural weaknesses by MacGyver2210 · 2012-12-14 15:42 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  I don't think logic plays a large role here. The Emperor could shoot friggin' lightning bolts from his hand, but couldn't save himself from falling down a shaft?
  Come on...consistency.
  
  --
  If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
11. Re:Remove the obvious structural weaknesses by yndrd1984 · 2012-12-14 16:38 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Childs play - I used to bullseye womp rats in my T-16 back home, they're not much bigger than two meters.
  You hurt small animals for fun as a kid? You must be some kind of psychopath.
  
  Sooo, how many meters long are the medium-sized animals on your planet? And about the large ones...
12. Re:Remove the obvious structural weaknesses by yndrd1984 · 2012-12-14 17:03 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Well, it's a "thermal exhaust port", possibly for plasma. In which case the shaft would have to be magnetized to keep the plasma from contacting the sides. And a "proton torpedo" sounds electrically charged, possibly so that just like like plasma they'll follow magnetic guides. Sort of like they're specifically made to be fired down plasma conduits...
13. Re:Remove the obvious structural weaknesses by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-14 18:27 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Still don't understand how that photon torpedo curved into the shaft.
  That port was used for anion exhaust (negatively charged), they used a proton torpedo (positively charged), and the magnetic attraction curved the trajectory of the torpedo.
14. Re:Remove the obvious structural weaknesses by aix+tom · 2012-12-14 21:59 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Don't remind me about Alderaan.
  Put your money in the Bank of Aldreaan, they said. Safest bank in the universe, they said. They'd have to to blow up the entire planet to get in there, they said.
"Must respond?" Hardly by Huntr · 2012-12-14 11:01 · Score: 4, Informative

They don't actually *have* to respond, just because there are the required number of signatures. They've ignored many of these petitions, most recently those petitions regarding state secession following the November elections.
1. Re:"Must respond?" Hardly by Mitreya · 2012-12-14 11:24 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  They don't actually *have* to respond, just because there are the required number of signatures. They've ignored many of these petitions, most recently those petitions regarding state secession following the November elections.
  Petition for "please dismantle TSA" got a response written by the director of the TSA. Surprisingly, he wrote how awesome and useful TSA is.
  I know!
  Let's start a petition asking to take our petitions seriously and not in the most condescending and patronizing manner possible.
2. Re:"Must respond?" Hardly by amicusNYCL · 2012-12-14 11:45 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Let's start a petition asking to take our petitions seriously and not in the most condescending and patronizing manner possible.
  There already is one, no duplicates allowed. Here is their response.
  
  --
  "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Done by Anonymous Coward · 2012-12-14 11:02 · Score: 4, Funny

We already have one. Where did you think all the money went?
-Obama
The White House should be all: by smittyoneeach · 2012-12-14 11:08 · Score: 5, Funny

"What, our Debt Star isn't enough? Don't try to out-greed us, peasants."

--
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Re:This by Xebikr · 2012-12-14 11:27 · Score: 5, Insightful

No. It just shows that Americans are taking Obama's online petitions just as seriously as he does.
Something just didn't sit right with me... by Onuma · 2012-12-14 11:30 · Score: 4, Funny

Randal: A construction job of that magnitude would require a helluva lot more manpower than the Imperial army had to offer. I'll bet there were independent contractors working on that thing: plumbers, aluminum siders, roofers.
Dante: Not just Imperials, is what you're getting at.
Randal: Exactly. In order to get it built quickly and quietly they'd hire anybody who could do the job. Do you think the average storm trooper knows how to install a toilet main? All they know is killing and white uniforms.
Dante: All right, so even if independent contractors are working on the Death Star, why are you uneasy with its destruction?
Randal: All those innocent contractors hired to do a job were killed- casualties of a war they had nothing to do with. (notices Dante's confusion) All right, look-you're a roofer, and some juicy government contract comes your way; you got the wife and kids and the two-story in suburbia-this is a government contract, which means all sorts of benefits. All of a sudden these left-wing militants blast you with lasers and wipe out everyone within a three-mile radius. You didn't ask for that. You have no personal politics. You're just trying to scrape out a living.

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What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
Re:Sad; by Hatta · 2012-12-14 11:32 · Score: 4, Insightful

The white house needs no help trivializing those petitions. The entire site provides nothing but an illusion of having a voice. They were completely ignoring petitions with 75,000 signatures long before the jokes began.

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Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
It's only a model. by Hotawa+Hawk-eye · 2012-12-14 12:12 · Score: 4, Interesting

My guess is that the White House is going to respond a little bit seriously and call out the Outer Space Treaty as a reason why we can't create a Death Star. Or maybe if they respond around Christmas they'll show several LEGO Death Star kits they've purchased and donated to charity and call the task completed. [Nothing in the petition asked for a FULL SIZED Death Star, after all.]
Re:Make sure... by EdIII · 2012-12-14 12:26 · Score: 4, Informative

Dude.... Seriously......
LOL.
It *IS* ADA compliant. Look at Darth Vader. Fucker lost two legs, one arm, and could not breathe very well anymore. He seemed to run the Death Star just fine....
Re:HALOPERIDOL by zippthorne · 2012-12-14 13:25 · Score: 4, Funny

What would be the point of building a space station with a planet-destroying superlaser when all live on the same planet as all of our enemies?

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Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Re:HALOPERIDOL by jd2112 · 2012-12-14 14:28 · Score: 4, Funny

Exactly like my grand-grandmother, who died convinced that we never went to the moon because "that's just impossible".
That's no moon...

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Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
Re:This by Chuckstar · 2012-12-14 18:04 · Score: 4, Informative

Julius Caesar was never emperor of Rome.
The senate declared him "dictator in perpetuity", but that's not quite the same thing. Augustus is considered the first emperor, having real imperial power as we'd mean it today, even though he eschewed any title which would seem to give him monarchical status. He did use the title Imperator, from which the English word Emperor derives, but it did not really have the same meaning at the time. He also used the title Princeps, meaning first citizen, but that also was not a title similar to Emperor. Effectively, Augustus had absolute power, but did not have a title recognizing that power.
Later Roman Emperors held various titles, but even those varied over time.
I find it interesting, furthermore, that the term "Caesar" became associated with the imperial position in Rome. It did not start out as anything more than the cognomen for Gaius Julius. Roman Emperors started adding it to their names to try to link themselves to the famous (and popular) Gaius Julius Caesar. Eventually, it became such a standard part of the title that it eventually came to mean "emperor" or "king" for various European cultures.
(Your comment was not really wrong, btw, considering the context. I just thought you or orther readers might be interested in additional detail about the term Emperor of Rome.)