"Want to Build a Death Star? NASA Says Use an Asteroid" Topic

"Turns out, the Empire's blueprints were crap. To make Death Stars they always built them—literally—out of thin air. What they should've done was use something that was already up there.

The best way to build a Death Star is to construct one out of an already-existing asteroid, says Brian Muirhead, chief engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "It could provide the metals," he says. "You have organic compounds, you have water—all the building blocks you would need to build your family Death Star."

And Muirhead knows a thing or two about asteroids. He's actually working on NASA's Asteroid Redirect Mission, which will land on an asteroid, collect a piece, and then place it in orbit around the moon. A crewed mission will then go collect samples from that chunk while it's in orbit. (OK, so it's not quite building a Death Star, but it's still pretty cool.)

Watch the video above to learn more about asteroids, Death-Star-building, and what NASA spacecraft have common with Star Wars ships…"
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Amicalement
Armand

Travelled did it first. Check out Fighting Ships of the Imperium. Supplement 9, I think.

Or just throw 2-3 of them at a planet.

I've always liked Powered Buffered Planetoid Base Ships. Makes a lot of sense whether you use Jump Drive or Keyhole/Gate Or Warp links.

Great for Commerce Raiding bases, iffy R&D facilities, Prisons, luxury 'Death-Dacha', Master Villain HQ's, Mobile Shopping Mall, Cheaper than Babylon 5, a Las Vegas resort et cetera.

What's in your asteroid?

When it comes to space pirate bases, nothing beats an asteroid.

For something like a Death Star, I probably would not go for an asteroid. I could see it stress fracturing in the middle of a hyperspace jump and them no more Death Star.

*cough* Star Fist *cough*

Man, is this an old idea.

How do we know they were not made around an asteroid and then specialized armor added?

Actually weren't mobile planetoids used as a battlestation first the in the Lensman series?

Sargonarhes: Not only did Lensman have asteroid ships, they used directed planets as a nutcracker to wipe out an enemy world: creative use of inertialess drive

Then came the Nth space planet which I can only guess was the equivalent of slamming a directed anti-matter planet like the nutcracker which took out whole regions of enemy space.

I guess very few things can match Lensman for destruction.