A time not so long ago in a galaxy not so far away

Episode 1

Croissants

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It is a period of civil war on steemit. Senator NoNationNoBorder is after taking heavy casualties since the last engagement with the flat earth society, limited on supplies they retreat to the closest natural satellite “Luna”.
The STEM forces create a hidden base, forming mining operations to hollow out the moon. The new operations under the supervision of NoNationNoBorder will ensure the finest power source for the new battlestation. A telecommunications message leaked out with the blueprints of the ultimate weapon, a station with enough power to destroy the flat earth.
The society’s top mathematicians are still trying to figure out the 5th grade level mathematics and science behind this new contraption, but they still claim CGI on any happenings on the moon.

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That’s no moon!

[extreme minor star wars spoilers onwards, also do note all maths is done if at 100% efficiency]
In “Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope” the main plot device is a space station known as the “Death Star”. The Death Star is a moon sized station capable of annihilating planets, and is shown to be more than capable to destroy the earth-sized planet “Alderaan”. [2][3][4]

Introduction

So how much energy does it take to destroy a planet? Well a paper in 2011 asked the very same question. If we were to chuck piece by piece of the planet into escape velocity, it would become easier and easier to do so (planet has less mass). We can put this into math with some calculus, Getting us the equation of .
M and R being Mass and Radius of the planet in question respectively; U being the energy output (joules). [1] [5] [6]

The Math

Here is the calculations of joules needed to destroy the earth, a table with energy requirements for all other planets in our system will be provided.

Planet:	Energy Requirement:
Mercury	1.7886427*10^30 Joules
Venus	1.5677255*10^32 Joules
Earth	2.2393893*10^32 Joules
Mars	4.8554244*10^30 Joules
Jupiter	2.0182017*10^36 Joules
Saturn	2.1462105*10^35 Joules
Uranus	1.1807782*10^34 Joules
Neptune	1.6960242*10^34 Joules

[1][7][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]

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The Power Source

Since I was hungry and eating croissants for breakfast, I’m gonna be using croissants as the power source for my death star; since we had massive budget cuts for the hypermatter reactor. The croissants I will be using are approx 57 grams each for simplicity sakes. Giving us 1058.552 joules of energy, basically needing us to incinerate 2.115521310^29 croissants to charge up the batteries for the weapon (using earth for this).
Of course I am not done here we must talk about the flaws of powering my death star with croissants, taking 550 ml being the average volume for a 57 gram croissant (I used my own).


We must account for the size of the incinerator, we are using the moon’s shell as our limiting factor for the death star itself (opening crawl). The volume of the moon is 2.196810^25 cm^3, we of course need some of it for the living quarters so we are gonna use ¾ of it for the incinerator. Leaving us 1.647610^25 cm^3 for space to burn our croissants to get our lovely energy. The total volume of the croissants will be 1.163536710^32 cm^3, make us need at very least 7062010 shipments of croissants.


If we were to get the croissants there with our concurrent technology it would cost us 16,000$ to put a pound of croissants on the station, and in full 4.253495410^32 $. That is 4.25 followed by 32 zeros! Much of this is not account for launch failures and delays, one of the main problems may be is the lack of fuel and resources for the rockets themselves, though developments in reusability may be able to mitigate some of this.


The production of the croissants will be much cheaper just at 2.058402210^29 $. Overall this process would be extremely inefficient it as I am not accounting for added costs due to the inefficiency of the cabling and the extraction of energy from the croissants.


Just to go a little bit more on detail on how the incinerator would work, all math is accounted for no energy loss (100% efficiency). The material thrown in would heat water; which would turn into steam and drive a steam turbine which is connected to a generator, in turn creating power for the batteries.

[Source: Me]


Here is an alternative, if we were to use all the sun’s power output for our power; It would take at least 163.69 hours to power up our death star. Making it a much more effective way of powering a death star. Fortunately in the Star Wars universe they don’t have to deal with these limitations and get to use power sources and magnifiers that may not ever be possible. Nonetheless I have a question for the reading audience do you think there may be a better way of powering a death star with our concurrent limitations?
[16][17][18][19][20][22] [23][25]

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Personal Comments

Hopefully this will woo most of you to partake more in science and realize the sheer scale of these science fiction movies; quite a big fan of star wars myself just please don’t put any spoilers in the comment sections, especially for episode 8. For any people who are planning to watch star wars I’d recommend to watch it in the machete order :). I also must apologize for my bad drawings and inexperience with making nice diagrams online.

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Sources

1. A2_8 That’s No Moon David Boulderstone, Calum Meredith, Simon Clapton Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Leicester, Leicester, LE1 7RH. February 28, 2011
2. Star Wars Wookiepedia: Episode IV
3. Movie: Star Wars: A New Hope
4. Stars Wars Wookiepedia: Alderaan
5. Escape Velocity: Wikipedia
6. Orbital Mechanics: www.braeunig.us
7. Nasa: Earth fact sheet
8. Gravitational Constant: Wikipedia
9. Nasa: Mercury Fact Sheet
10. Nasa: Venus Fact Sheet
11. Nasa: Mars Fact Sheet
12. Nasa: Jupiter Fact Sheet
13. Nasa: Saturn Fact Sheet
14. Nasa: Uranus Fact Sheet
15. Nasa: Neptune Fact Sheet
16. Google Food Stats
17. Calories to Joules Conversion
18. Star Wars Wookiepedia: Death Star
19. Nasa: Moon Fact Sheet
20. Nasa’s Measurements for sol’s energy output
21. Dyson Sphere: Wikipedia
22. Nasa: How much it costs to put a pound of resources into LEO
23. Delta-V Budget
24 Tesco: Price of a croissant
25 Element Make Up of the Earth: Wikipedia
26 Incineration: Wikipedia