An engineering professor at Washington University in St. Louis has calculated that rebuilding the Death Star after the Battle of Endor would mean financial ruin for the Star Wars galaxy.
Zachary Feinstein published a paper on Tuesday calculating the cost of rebuilding the Death Star and explaining how a bailout would be necessary to fund it. He modeled the economic system of the Empire before it collapsed, then calculated the cost of a an immediate bailout to keep the economy functioning the way it was under Palpatine’s rule.
“To bail out the system and keep the economy from completely collapsing it would require a bailout on the order of 15 -20 percent of the entire galactic economy,” he explained in a video describing the project.
Without those funds immediately available, however, it is likely that the galactic economy would enter into an epic economic depression, Feinstein concluded. Thus the consequences of killing Emperor Palpatine are likely to be economically catastrophic for the galaxy.
Whether his predictions are accurate will be answered in the upcoming film, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” which picks up after rebel forces defeat the Imperial government.
