Building the Death Star with today's tech

I found an interesting Wikipedia article, quoted in an answer here.

I'm looking into writing a story where someone has built a Death Star. The purpose of this craft is important to the story (and the world) because it's used to keep the populace of the planet in check (it's easy to get world leaders to agree to your "requests" when you can obliterate their country, easily....)

The questions are:

• Given current technology, how many man-years would it take to build? (assume you already have enough steel, see question below)
• How much metal is needed to build this ship?
• Would it really take 833,000 years to get the necessary steel (as quoted in WP article, above)?
• What would it cost? (anywhere near the White House's estimate of $850 quadrillion?)
• Any scientific reason (ignoring the superlaser) why this ship is scientifically impossible?

posted about 10 years ago

Shokhet‭

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