A symbol of the Empire’s dominion over the Star Wars galaxy, the Death Star was a huge space station the size of a small moon capable of destroying an entire planet with a single blast.
From an engineering point of view however building something of this magnitude would be so complex and take so long that it is difficult to even imagine it. The logistics of the construction, coupled with the sheer quantity of material required, seem like insurmountable obstacles.
According to NASA engineer Brian Muirhead however, the Empire missed one obvious shortcut that could have made the Death Star’s construction a lot quicker and simpler.
Instead of creating the entire thing from scratch and bringing all the materials up from other worlds, Muirhead has proposed that the battle station could have simply been built on an asteroid.
“It could provide the metals,” he said. “You have organic compounds, you have water – all the building blocks you would need to build your family Death Star.”
Whether we will see this idea being put in practice in Episode VII however remains to be seen.
