Death of the Death Star

The recent news item about the US rejecting an online petition asking for the government to construct a Death Star caught the attention of a lot of people. I found this on the Tumblr feed of Future Journalism Project:

The White House responds to the Death Star Petition
In response to a petition at We the People, Paul Shawcross, Chief of the Science and Space Branch at the White House Office of Management and Budget, writes:

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.

Besides, he adds, “The Administration does not support blowing up planets.”

Well played. Very well played.