How To Build A Death Star — NASA Engineer

They are not trying to create a death star, but to land a probe on an asteroid, lift a boulder and put it in orbit around earth’s natural satellite.

The engineer says that the asteroid would have metals and other organic compounds you would need, and maybe even water.

“If one wanted to build a Death Star, you didn’t build it by launching a bunch of stuff off a planet”.

Dawn, which is now in space, uses three ion propulsion engines, though they have far less thrust than what you’ve seen in “Star Wars”. According to NASA, however, Emperor Palpatine and pals would be wise to build their next one from an asteroid. “You went and got yourself an asteroid and built it from that”, said Muirhead to Wired.

Muirhead is working on a Asteroid Redirect Mission for NASA.

Muirhead also touches upon a scene from Star Wars where Princess Leia, Han Solo and friends fly through an asteroid field to escape Empire spacecraft that’s chasing them. Then you’re going to need an asteroid.

Muirhead explains that this is what NASA’s Dawn spacecraft is doing now, by slowly flying through the main asteroid belt. A crewed mission will then go retrieve samples from that chunk while it’s in orbit.