White House Must Answer Petition To 'Build Death Star' 384
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?"
Remove the obvious structural weaknesses (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Remove the obvious structural weaknesses (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.
Re:Remove the obvious structural weaknesses (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Remove the obvious structural weaknesses (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.
Re:Remove the obvious structural weaknesses (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 ....
Re:Remove the obvious structural weaknesses (Score:5, 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.
Re:Remove the obvious structural weaknesses (Score:5, Funny)
You hurt small animals for fun as a kid? You must be some kind of psychopath.
Re:Remove the obvious structural weaknesses (Score:5, Funny)
Sooo, how many meters long are the medium-sized animals on your planet? And about the large ones...
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You hurt small animals for fun as a kid? You must be some kind of psychopath.
There's two suns and no women. What the hell else am I supposed to do?!
Re: (Score:3)
Eight inches to two meters - about an order of magnitude...
Forget about the womp-rats, it's the womp-cats and womp-dogs you really have to worry about.
Especially if they start living together.
Re: (Score:3)
Oh come on, it isn't any harder than hitting a womp rat from a T-16. That should have been totally planned for.
Re:Remove the obvious structural weaknesses (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re:Remove the obvious structural weaknesses (Score:5, 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.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Still don't understand how that photon torpedo curved into the shaft.
That was my bad. I was a contractor on the original DeathStar, hired to do the wall vaacum systems. Kinda' misread the plans that day, little hung over... Hooked up the wrong pvc pipe, and, well... It was an honest mistake!
Posting AC cause "Mr. you know who" reads Slashdot.
Re:Remove the obvious structural weaknesses (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.
Re:Remove the obvious structural weaknesses (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Remove the obvious structural weaknesses (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Just don't manage them with a Windows Domain forest, please.
Re: (Score:2)
Unless you cause a chain reaction, which would look awesome in IMAX.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
The main reactor in the Death Star was a super efficient class of reactor only otherwise used (IIRC) on the Star Dreadnaughts. They needed a single huge reactor like that to power the main gun.
Given that the main gun seemed to be formed from multiple beams, it seems even more ridiculous than usual to imagine that you could not power it from multiple reactors.
In general, if you need a lot of power at once, you want a lot. A lot of cells, a lot of reactors, whatever. And for something that big, it actually might make sense to have multiple reactors spread out throughout, because something that large could be penetrated by an attack and not be destroyed.
Re:Remove the obvious structural weaknesses (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.
Re: (Score:3)
Except it isn't. Nuclear aircraft carriers have two reactors instead of one, specifically for redundancy. It pays. (Except for the Enterprise, which has a whopping 8 individual reactors, because they were just swapping out the original boilers with nuclear equivalents to avoid structural redesign time and cost.)
It's notable that the later carriers don't have the eight reactors, and that's because if a ship is damaged to the point that a reactor is disabled, it's most likely on its way to see Davy Jones. Having two reactors permits maintenance while under way, rather than attack survivability.
Re:Remove the obvious structural weaknesses (Score:5, Funny)
Such as the White House?
Re: (Score:3)
No more shafts leading directly to the core, please.
And while your at it, make the force field a bit more difficult for Jedi infiltrators to turn off.
Yeah no single points of failure and build a UPS directly into the machinery while you are at it.
Thermal Exhaust Ports (Score:2, Insightful)
Clearly, we should make sure there is adequate shielding around all thermal exhaust ports. They may only be 1.5m wide, but you never know when some womp-rat bulls-eyeing farm kid in a snub fighter will show up.
This (Score:2, Insightful)
is why we have the Electoral College.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:This (Score:5, 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.)
Re: (Score:3)
is why we have the Electoral College.
No, it is why we have a representative system which is balanced two ways (House - weighted by population / Senate - balanced by state). The Electoral College system can go.
Re: (Score:3)
Yes. We have an Electoral College system because a popular vote at the time would have dramatically favored non-slave-state voters. The Electoral College system weights the vote to include the 3/5 calculation for slaves. The Electoral College also overweights states with below-average populations (below average number, I mean). Both of those weightings helped the slave-states (as compared to the non-slave-states) in influencing who gets to be president.
Re:This (Score:5, Insightful)
"Must respond?" Hardly (Score:5, Informative)
Re:"Must respond?" Hardly (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.
Re:"Must respond?" Hardly (Score:5, 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 [whitehouse.gov] is their response.
Re: (Score:3)
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 [whitehouse.gov] is their response.
They are LYING, though
Getting back to the TSA example -- the response literally said "TSA is agile and awesome and by the way, here's our expansion plan for the next 10 years". They are not even pretending, since the response didn't even say "we hear you and we promise to address your concerns"
The situation has gotten so bad that they don't feel the need to even pay lip service and fake a response (notice I am not even talking about DOING something to address the petition).
Re: (Score:2)
Or they could just respond with "no".
Make sure... (Score:3, Funny)
...it is ADA compliant.
Re:Make sure... (Score:4, Funny)
...it is ADA compliant.
You mean coding it in all UPPERCASE?
Re:Make sure... (Score:5, 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: (Score:3)
It's actually not all that bad.
Why not use repulsorlift technology? The same reason main battle tanks don't fly. Too heavy. The armor is "too heavy for blasters" as Luke says, so it's not unreasonable that it's too heavy for repulsors. Why not use a large wheeled or tracked vehicle? An AT-AT would be much more effective in several situations. Their main guns and height mean they are essentially high ground artillery during an attack. That vantage point gives an advantage when assaulting a fortified p
Re: (Score:2)
Done (Score:4, Funny)
We already have one. Where did you think all the money went?
-Obama
Sad; (Score:3, Insightful)
It just helps the White House trivialize other petitions. We are fast becoming a nation of idiots, who don't value our rights. There are so many good petitions and then we have this. Should it even be on Slashdot? It should get a curt, "No Comment" from the White House. 25,000 idiots.
Re:Sad; (Score:4, Insightful)
Why shouldn't the people show the government what they think of them? If our government insists on treating the electorate like they were a bunch of morons, why bother asking questions that you know will just be answered by a bunch of political platitudes. At least in this case the answer might be funny.
Re:Sad; (Score:5, 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.
Re: (Score:3)
I thought the same way you did. Then I saw the patronizing bullshit they were responding with for the serious questions regarding our rights and government corruption.
The website is bullshit, the only sadness is that any citizen really thinks that it's nothing more than an expensive platitude to appease the slightly more informed masses.
As far as I am concerned, the next petition should be the serious funding for an advanced self cleaning pocket pussy that can holographically project HD porn in front of
Additions to make (Score:2)
Re:Additions to make (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's take these in order.
Access shafts smaller than 2 meters
Given that the average person is 2 meters tall (give or take), and adding the bulk of hard-vacuum capable work gear, making maintenance access shafts smaller than 2 meters would cause a lot more problems. I'd recommend, instead, putting a locking/securable cover or grate over entrances and exits of access shafts.
No straight runs on access shafts that are for core ventilation
I presume you're talking about the "Thermal exhaust port" here. Twists and turns in shafts like that can cause backpressure, causing problems and leading to overheating and thermal runaway (read: big explosion).
Tractor Beam generator disables requiring multi-person authorization
I'd say multi-person and multi-point authorization.
Cameras on the prison levels
Actually, there were multiple cameras on the detention level - they were the second thing shot (after the stormtroopers) when Han and co. arrived there. Hence, also, the "Weapons malfunction" call.
Better training of security staff
Unfortunately, they were stormtrooper clones with only a genetic imprint for education and no actual field experience.
A 5 fold increase in garbage compactor speed and no main airlock opening until the garbage has been vented into space.
The speed of the garbage compactor wasn't the issue, it was the ease with which the system could be disabled from a single point. The main access door was locked while the compactor was cycling, but the locks were lifted (and the door opened) when the compactor was overridden. This is an entirely sensible system to have in place - if something goes wrong with the compactor, you will need to get access to it, and having the only access door permanently sealed mid-cycle (which is where 99% of problems will occur) makes a maintenance access door like the one in the movie pointless.
Defense turrets around the power core
Given the rebels' ability to easily hack into and alter computer systems at will (with the cost of a only simple, easily replaceable astromech in the case of doing massive damage and causing an overload), would it really be a good idea to have computer-controlled autocannons around the power core? Then all the rebels would need to do is send in an rogue astromech, which would interface with the ship's computer and direct the "defense turrets" to open fire on the core. Oh, and given the history of accuracy of those turrets, would you really want them in a place where a miss would do the rebel's job for you?
Decentralized power generators
Yay! Lots of targets to hit! In lots of places, which makes it exceedingly difficult to guard and protect them all, and even with the system decentralized, you would still have the issue of a massive power surge from one generator (from, say, it's destruction) feeding back into another generator and causing a chain-reaction. And if you don't have the generators linked you still have the issue of maintenance and lack of redundancy. Oh, and that huge weapon that destroys planets requires a HUGE amount of power - chances are it's difficult (if not impossible) to co-ordinate that much power production with a group of parallel power plants, hence the huge single core.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: straight exaust port.
Agreed, a straight flu is the most efficient design. However, the inability to close down a section of the exhaust conduit, and reroute exhaust from the primary reactor to secondary (or tertiary) failsafe exhaust ports in the event of a serious malfunction (like an asteroid impact, or even just a power coupling explosion. We *are* talking billions of joules of energy being distributed to produce to coherent planet killer beam here. A malfunction will be spectacular!) Or even just f
Re: (Score:2)
iirc, first thing they did when they got into the prison control room was blast out all the cameras. You might want to watch that one again. Maybe make the cameras more blaster-proof. (or less obvious looking / hidden)
I don't think you want a turbo laser shootout going on around your power core in the first place. If they make it that far you're probably already toast. (even ships getting blown up in there is probably bad) Instead, how ab
Re: (Score:2)
I don't think a crooked ventilation shaft would have prevented the chain reaction caused by cauterizing the shaft itself at the outlet.
Those torpedoes didn't go all the way to the core, you know, they just had to get past the opening.
The White House should be all: (Score:5, Funny)
Just add more death (Score:3)
How about a better targeting system (Score:3, Interesting)
Those X-Wings weren't flying very fast and the targeting couldn't hit them with lasers! Lasers travel at the speed of light and you couldn't hit a target moving less than the speed of light? Definitely gov't contractors that built the targeting system.
While you're at it, some ID requirement and checkpoints into vital area like the shield and tractor beam controls. Maybe put at guard or an alarm whenever some vital system like the shield is disabled.
And DirecTV for UFC fights. When your entire company of troops gets distracted by a light saber fight, they're just saying they need better entertainment. A firing range would help the troops relax and maybe just maybe help them hit targets with their laser rifle.
Re: (Score:3)
Those X-Wings weren't flying very fast and the targeting couldn't hit them with lasers!
To be fair, all sides seemed to be using some special frequency of light whose photons only moved at a few hundred miles per hour (and could be seen from the side, and sounded like "pew! pew!" even across a vacuum).
Re: (Score:3)
They're not lasers. They're blasters. The Star Wars geek community has done an admirable job coming up with the explanation that blasters fire packets of plasma. I believe the popular explanation is that blaster bolts and light saber blades are made of the same type of plasma, where the blaster bolt has been separated from it's source and accelerated to what seems to me to be approximately bow-and-arrow speeds. ;-)
An override switch? (Score:2)
We need the ability to take control if the vessel is somehow taken over by terrorists. Or at least disable it.
How about an override switch [youtube.com]?
Disney funding (Score:2)
Holodeck (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Something just didn't sit right with me... (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
If that's not a real quote... you've got some skill there buddy. +5 funny.
Re: (Score:2)
nevermind, I am a dumbass and missed the joke
No Guard Rails (Score:2)
Do you have any idea the tons of additional weight guard rails would add to ship of that size? Even the death ray has to be in an unshielded corridor to save weight and cost. Look, when you do the math you can't even afford armored grills over exhaust ports.
Re: (Score:2)
No kidding, the sheer fucking mind-boggling amount of conduit required for the EMI segregation...
Oh by all the stars in the sky, the sheer paperwork involved. All the arisings during construction, everything.
True Democracy would be a disaster (Score:2, Insightful)
We would not have universal healthcare, we would have universal Lamborghini Aventadors.
Of course we would have no roads to drive them on since that funding would go towards universal ice cream.
Good thing corporations and rich people set our policies and not Occupy Wall Street dead beats.
Re: (Score:2)
My theory is for a hyperdemocracy with a representative government like we have. The representative government doesn't even have to listen to the hyperdemocracy crowd and go their own way, but they still need to get elected... If a
Re: (Score:2)
I am not so sure hyperdemocracy would fail.
I am a lot more skeptical than you are.
I assume our elected officials have a higher level of education than the average of the general voters.
I suspect that most elected officials are not even well informed on the issues they vote on despite their greater education and the fact that they get paid to legislate as a full time job.
I can only imagine how a voter base that is so easily swayed by advertising would vote on complex issues and legislation.
No matter their education level most will not have the
Re: (Score:3)
Just ask California how well their hyper democracy is working.
The Alderaan government refused to negotiate... (Score:2)
And so we must construct the Death Star as a purely defensive weapon to protect the good people of the USA. Given the expense of of this operation, in the next few days, I will sent to congress a proposal, raising the debt ceiling limit to 20 gazillion dollars and that we finance the construction of our American Death Star with the sale of the new "Homeland Security Bonds." Rest assured, all contracts will go to American defense contractors that employ American workers.
With your help and support, YES WE CAN
Re: (Score:2)
Everyone knows Alderaan has weapons of mass destruction.
I can see it now. (Score:3)
The official response should look something like this, I imagine:
No.
The rules say that the White House has to respond, not that they have to do it.
Is this really true? (Score:2)
This has to be one of the most retarded excuses for a petition I've ever heard of, and yet, it received enough votes that someone in the white house has to waste time finding some way to give a serious answer? What... the... fuck... this is so incredibly dumb I don't even know what to say.
Which state will win the contracts to build it? (Score:4, Insightful)
That will be the real exciting fight to see in Congress. I propose that the Congress folks duke it out in a no-rules laser sword iron death cage rumble, to decide which state can add to their license plate, "The Death Star State!"
It's only a model. (Score:5, Interesting)
My guess is that the White House is going to respond a little bit seriously and call out the Outer Space Treaty [wikipedia.org] 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 [lego.com] 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: (Score:2)
My guess is that the White House is going to respond a little bit seriously and call out the Outer Space Treaty [wikipedia.org] as a reason why we can't create a Death Star.
This would be a great respose.
Re: (Score:3)
They could also point out that past DoD studies have shown that a single orbital platform is highly inefficient offensively, due to the limits of orbital mechanics and the horizon problem, and vulnerable defensively.
My guess is that the White House is going to respond a little bit seriously
No they won't. But they should. So much nerd humour is in taking a ridiculous idea seriously and pedantically debating its implications. [See the classic Dante/Randal roofers discussion quoted elsewhere.]
Captured blueprints (Score:2)
AT&T now fully operational (Score:2)
I feel a great disturbance in the fibre.
What a waste of time (Score:2)
Why doesn't someone start a petition that's actually useful, like, I dunno, repealing the stupid 2nd amendment or something?
Re:What a waste of time (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What a waste of time (Score:4, Interesting)
Encryption (Score:3)
How about strong encryption for the data network, so that it can't be hacked by a simple R2 unit?
Re: (Score:2)
so people finally realize that all the space fantasies they grew up with are simply not possible
People do realize that, idiot, it's just that most people aren't autistic like you and don't take this kind of thing seriously.
Re:HALOPERIDOL (Score:4, Insightful)
Right. People like Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk. They're just dummies that haven't thought about it enough, or maybe they're just not good with numbers or technology. Why would we even consider the possibility of leaving this rock if we can't manage more than a year or so off-planet right now? Obviously you're right, it's impossible, and everyone else is wrong.
Or just maybe petitioning for a Death Star has absolutely nothing to do with seriously considering the possibility of living somewhere other than earth, and it might be possible. If you listen to some people much smarter than you or me, possibly even in our lifetime.
Beyond that, why so angry about people having dreams of space? Take a deep breath.
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly like my grand-grandmother, who died convinced that we never went to the moon because "that's just impossible".
Re:HALOPERIDOL (Score:5, 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...
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Why don't you do us all a favor, and put your logic to your own computer.
200 years ago they were impossible, so that means right now you feel they are impossible. Just get rid of it. Get offline. None of this is real, you said so yourself.
Oh wait, you're just a hypocrite. How about you also ignore the parent poster, get even more angry, and just have a heart attack and die already. The world would be a better place.
Re: (Score:2)
the only possible future for the human race is in space.
Ok then. What possible future for the human race is there.
There is a short one for sure. Stay here until life can no longer be supported on this planet. After that it is either be many places of extinction.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, the short version of nanorobotics is that nanorobot power supplies are constrained by the laws of physics, like power supplies (ever notice how many bacteria thrive by eating metal and rocks for their primary energy source? yeah, me neither. i can't even get my laptop to last all day on one battery) or communications problems (how can a nanorobot know where it is relative to what it's building? deduced reckoning? how can it talk to its controller and accomplish its task without getting drowned out by tr
Re: (Score:3)
Life seems to do pretty much all the things you're concerned with well enough.
Re:HALOPERIDOL (Score:5, 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?
Re: (Score:2)
Gotta put safety kill-switches on the inside that don't actually get compacted or pressed by the compactors itself or any of the trash. Something that requires intervention by a human who accidentally finds himself trapped inside during compaction-time.
They already have covers on the chutes that lead to the trash compactors to prevent humans from entering. Presumably if the service door inside the compactor is open for legitimate maintenance, there's a lockout to prevent the compactors from activating. If criminals wouldn't blast open the covers to illicitly gain entry, then there wouldn't be humans caught in the compactors.
Safety switches inside aren't going to add much real safety, but will be a source of maintenance headaches.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)