Kickstarter
Supporters of the Kickstarter campaign to build a fleet of X-wing fighters raised $721,036, while a competing campaign to design a Death Star battle station raised 328,613 British pounds, or just under $500,000. None of the supporters had to pay up, however, because the campaigns finished up far short of their funding goals.
By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News
Sorry, "Star Wars" fans: A real-life Death Star and the X-wing fighters to bring it down won't be built anytime soon. First the White House snubbed a petition calling on the government to build the Death Star. Now two Kickstarter projects aimed at building a fully operational battle station as well as an X-wing fleet have fallen far short of their multimillion-dollar funding goals.
That means nobody is out any money, which probably comes as a huge relief to those who pledged their backing to the joke projects.
Both the Galactic Empire and the Rebel Alliance have something to brag about: The Death Star project, associated with Nick Petkovich's Gnut.co.uk in Britain, won pledges from 2,388 backers amounting to ?328,613, or just under a half-million dollars. The X-wing fund-raiser, created by Simon Kwan in Shanghai, had fewer backers but raised more money ? $721,036, to be exact.
"While we didn't meet meet our funding goal, we soundly beat the amount raised by the Empire for their Death Star!" Kwan wrote. "Take THAT, Dark Side ;-P"
The final tallies when the campaigns concluded on April Fools' Day would send most Kickstarter project creators over the moon,?but the way Kickstarter's fund-raising system works, the creators can't cash in on those pledges unless the project goal is met. The goals were set high on purpose?? about $30 million for the Death Star, and $11 million for the X-wing fighter fleet?? so that backers could get in on the joke while staying off the hook for the money.
Even if they raised $30 million, that sum wouldn't even be enough to buy just the protective covers for a real-life Death Star's thermal exhaust ports, or a single sub-light propulsion thrust engine for an X-wing fighter. In the real world, the cost of building the comparatively puny, 450-ton International Space Station has been estimated at upwards of $100 billion. The estimated development cost for NASA's next-generation launch system is in the neighborhood of $35 billion. And for that price, you don't even get laser cannons.
A while back, college students calculated that it'd cost $852 quadrillion just to buy the steel for an armed and fully operational Death Star. Transterrestrial Musings' Rand Simberg says that estimate is grossly inflated???but in any case, Darth Vader would find the lack of Kickstarter funds disturbing.
More about futuristic spaceships:
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the?Cosmic Log?community by "liking" the log's?Facebook page, following?@b0yle on Twitter?and adding the?Cosmic Log page?to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space,?sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out?"The Case for Pluto,"?my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
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