Obama's Death Star

La réponse d'Obama à la pétition qui demandait la construction de l'Etoile de la Mort du film Star wars.

Ici un article tiré de Mashable.com: http://mashable.com/2013/01/12/obama-star-wars-tribute/

Sometimes, you just have to use a little Force.

When a petition calling on the Obama Administration to begin building a Death Star by 2016 blasted past the 25,000 signatures necessary for an official response late last year, the White House could have gone any number of ways. It wasn't required to reply in a timely fashion; it could have stuck the whole thing in a drawer. The petition was obviously frivolous; it could have just said thanks, but no thanks.

But the President, a known sci-fi geek who once flashed a Vulcan salute with a Lieutenant from the Starship Enterprise, evidently opted for a third direction. The response would be written promptly, in full, with as many lovingly-chosen Star Wars references as possible pressed into the service of soaring scientific rhetoric.

Never mind giving George Lucas the National Medal of Technology, as George W. Bush did; Obama would go a step further in honoring the $4 billion franchise that won our hearts in 1977 (and was sold to Disney in 2012). He would, in effect, make sure its key phrases were read into the national record for all time.

The title of the online letter, written by Paul Shawcross at the White House Office of Management and Budget, is the first clue: "This Isn't the Petition Response You're Looking For." (Now repeat, in a dazed Stormtrooper voice: "this isn't the petition response I'm looking for. You can go about your business.")

After giving props to economics students from LeHigh University who calculated Death Star construction costs at some $850 quadrillion (13,000 times the Earth's GDP), the letter gives voice to a common-sense argument every moviegoer knows: "Why would we spend countless taxpayer dollars on a Death Star with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship?"

(After all, that thermal exhaust port's got to go somewhere — and there's always going to be some Rebel hotshot with his damn proton torpedoes.)

By linking to a set of instructions for viewing the ISS in the night sky, Shawcross is able to use the line "that's no moon, it's a Space Station!" He doesn't need to do anything with the NASA-private space industry partnership, the Commercial Crew and Cargo Program Office: its acronym is C3PO. That's a gimme.

The next paragraph laments that "the United States doesn't have anything that can do the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs." (Might a petition to build the Millennium Falcon meet with more success?) It also reminds us that the Voyager spacecraft are poised on the brink of interstellar space, that the galaxy is suddenly lousy with 17 billion Earth-size planets, that there's a robot on Mars wielding a laser (not to mention a scrubbing brush), and that in five short years a NASA probe will go investigate the surface of the Sun for the first time.

And if you're anywhere close to a true space nerd, this is the part that might give you a very Carl Sagan-like thrill. Hey, we really are starting to conquer the galaxy, aren't we?

Lest anyone doubt who signed off on this thing, the petition response points out that Obama is handy with a lightsaber (he used one to parry with the U.S. Olympic fencing team on the South Lawn, which is surely the geekiest thing any President has done). It also can't resist pointing out that he launched a marshmallow cannon at the first ever White House science fair.

But that's just setting the stage for a Jedi-like pivot to STEM, or Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, the four kinds of education the US desperately needs to compete in the 21st century global economy. The letter closes by effectively comparing STEM to the Force — just so it can end on this:

"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."

That's right. The President's administration just explained its top education policy with a Darth Vader quote.

Somewhere in Marin County, George Lucas — who gave billions of dollars from the Disney sale to his educational foundation — just cracked a shy little smile.