Lucasfilm

After months of calls for secession, Judge Dredd-style legal systems, Piers Morgan’s deportation and other silly requests, the White House finally started responding to the latest round of “We the People” petitions that cleared the required 25,000 signatures that guarantee an official response.

And, woo boy, is this White House employing some first-class nerds. The official response to the petition calling on the federal government to “secure resources and funding, and begin construction of a Death Star by 2016” came on line last night, and it’s just might burst readers in more pieces than the people of Alderaan. (Too soon?)

In short, the White House determined that the financial, political and strategic implications of constructing a supermassive orbital space station with the ability to destroy unsuspecting planets is not in the United States’ best interest. Rather than parse Star Wars and government spending any further, just read what Paul Shawcross, the head of the White House Office of Management and Budget’s science and space branch, has to say:

The Administration shares your desire for job creation and a strong national defense, but a Death Star isn’t on the horizon. Here are a few reasons:

• The construction of the Death Star has been estimated to cost more than $850,000,000,000,000,000. We’re working hard to reduce the deficit, not expand it.
• The Administration does not support blowing up planets.
• Why would we spend countless taxpayer dollars on a Death Star with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship?

However, look carefully (here’s how) and you’ll notice something already floating in the sky—that’s no Moon, it’s a Space Station! Yes, we already have a giant, football field-sized International Space Station in orbit around the Earth that’s helping us learn how humans can live and thrive in space for long durations. The Space Station has six astronauts—American, Russian, and Canadian—living in it right now, conducting research, learning how to live and work in space over long periods of time, routinely welcoming visiting spacecraft and repairing onboard garbage mashers, etc. We’ve also got two robot science labs—one wielding a laser—roving around Mars, looking at whether life ever existed on the Red Planet.

Keep in mind, space is no longer just government-only. Private American companies, through NASA’s Commercial Crew and Cargo Program Office (C3PO), are ferrying cargo—and soon, crew—to space for NASA, and are pursuing human missions to the Moon this decade.

Even though the United States doesn’t have anything that can do the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs, we’ve got two spacecraft leaving the Solar System and we’re building a probe that will fly to the exterior layers of the Sun. We are discovering hundreds of new planets in other star systems and building a much more powerful successor to the Hubble Space Telescope that will see back to the early days of the universe.

We don’t have a Death Star, but we do have floating robot assistants on the Space Station, a President who knows his way around a light saber and advanced (marshmallow) cannon, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is supporting research on building Luke’s arm, floating droids, and quadruped walkers.

We are living in the future! Enjoy it. Or better yet, help build it by pursuing a career in a science, technology, engineering or math-related field. The President has held the first-ever White House science fairs and Astronomy Night on the South Lawn because he knows these domains are critical to our country’s future, and to ensuring the United States continues leading the world in doing big things.

If you do pursue a career in a science, technology, engineering or math-related field, the Force will be with us! Remember, the Death Star’s power to destroy a planet, or even a whole star system, is insignificant next to the power of the Force.

Wow. That’s super-dorky, even for the Internet. One presumes that Shawcross attends budget meetings wearing a Boba Fett-patterned necktie and an Ewok lapel pin.

Anyway, well done, White House. Now, if only that petition to construct the far-more-realistic USS Enterprise would get to the 25,000-signature threshold, then the Obama administration could truly satisfy fans of all spacefaring epics.