There's no disturbing lack of faith among Kickstarter supporters.
After all, a crowdfunded project to construct the Death Star that was launched less than a week ago already has nearly 1,500 backers and an astonishing $364,772 in pledges.
Well, the Rebels aren't taking that threat sitting down. A rival Kickstarter campaign to build X-wing fighters has just taken off. Its goal is to build one of the famous spaceships from "Star Wars" and then more.
"If George Lucas produced 'Star Wars IV, A New Hope,' for $11,000,000 we figure we can finance a prototype of an X-Wing and train a pilot," organizer Simon Kwan, a product designer in Shanghai, writes on the campaign page.
"One update we'd like to include for our updated X-Wing is iPhone and Siri integration."
The stretch goal is to build a squadron of X-wings for $4,485,672,683, the worldwide box office take of all the films in the franchise, according to The Numbers, a film sales tracking site.
A further goal is "13 million Galactic Standard Credits: A Class YT-1300 Freighter (heavily modified) and a crew consisting of a Corellian smuggler and a Wookie co-pilot."
Tech Crunch, however, politely points out that such credits have been estimated at only 62 cents, making the Falcon cost only $8 million, which is of course less than the campaign's basic goal.
Details, details. What matters is we get an X-wing built, stat!
At least then we'll have a chance of countering a real threat to our planet: asteroids.
Sci-Fi fans pushing for the creation of a Star Wars inspired “Death Star” have raised almost US$400,000 on a fundraising site to make it happen. It comes after Washington turned down a petition for its construction, citing astronomical costs.
Undeterred by Washington’s lack of enthusiasm, supporters of the proposed Death Star have generated an account on Kickstarter – a funding platform for creative projects, which asks for direct financial support from others in order to bring an idea to life.
The open source Death Star page is initially aiming to raise 20,000,000 pounds ($31.5 million). The money would be used to design more “detailed plans and enough chicken wire to protect reactor exhaust ports.”
It may seem like a lot of money, but it’s just a drop in the bucket compared to the Death Star’s estimated construction cost of 543 quadrillion pounds ($850 quadrillion), which was quoted by the US government.
Backers of Kickstarter projects usually receive a reward for pledging their money – and the Death Star project is offering its own set of incentives.
The prize is rather modest for those who pledge 1 pound ($1.58) or more. According to the Kickstarter page, they receive only “our thanks and the knowledge that we’re one step closer to a safer planet.”
However, more generous spenders receive a more impressive reward. Those who pledge 10 pounds or more are promised to have their name “etched onto the underneath of one of the MSE-6-series repair droids used on the finished station.”
With 49 days to go, the project currently has 1,473 backers – 968 of whom are in line to have their name etched into Death Star history. Thus far, the project has raised 240,816 pounds ($380,392) of its first goal.
It’s a low-risk situation for supporters, because unless the entire goal amount is reached backers don’t have to pay a penny.
And if the idea seems a little too ‘out there’ to be taken seriously, that’s because it is.
“The main challenge is assuring Kickstarter that this is a joke and not a serious project. As proof, the goal has been set high enough to make successful funding almost impossible,” the page reads underneath the project’s ‘Risks and Challenges’ section.
The Kickstarter project comes after the US government rejected a petition to create the Death Star, giving three reasons why the project wasn’t viable:
• The construction of the Death Star has been estimated to cost more than $850 quadrillion.
• 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?
The response was authored by Paul Shawcross, who oversees the science and space departments at the White House, and was titled, 'This Isn’t the Petition Response You’re Looking For.'
Washington had to respond to the petition, which was posted on the White House’s ‘We the People’ website. The US previously vowed to give an official response to any petition generating 25,000 signatures or more – including those lobbying for Death Star construction. The petition received 34,435 signatures. The signature threshold for petitions has since been raised to 100,000, making it more difficult to receive a response from the administration.
Open-source Death Star project launched on Kickstarter
Now that the U.S. government has wimped out on building a Death Star, a Kickstarter project has emerged to raise funds to construct the deadly spaceship using open-source hardware and software.
The Angry Birds Death Star is a lot easier to get ahold of.
(Credit: Rovio)
"Star Wars" fans don't like taking "no" for an answer. The White House may have denied a petition to build a Death Star, but that hasn't stopped Dark Side wannabes from taking matters into their own hands. There's now a Kickstarter project gathering funds to build an open-source Death Star.
The project has a modest initial goal of just $30 million. That will fund initial plans and the massive amount of chicken wire needed to protect the reactor exhaust ports. The first stretch goal is where things get more serious. If the project raises $850,000,000,000,000,000, then work will begin on the actual construction. OK, that's a mighty big "if," but a geek can dream, right?
In a bid to keep costs down, the Death Star will be constructed with only open-source hardware and software. That means the plans would be available to anyone who wants to build a Death Star of their very own. I'm pretty sure there's an alternate universe somewhere where every person has their own open-source Death Star. It's probably the same universe where Spock has a goatee.
Death Star - visionary project rejected by the Obama administration.
The office of the US President has rejected a popular public petition to construct a Death Star due to a high construction cost of $850 quadrillion, a major design flaw and the fact that “the Administration does not support blowing up planets.”
The proposal to construct the Star Wars-inspired space station-cum-death ray was lodged in November last year through We the People, a recently-implemented system that allows ordinary Americans to petition the government with any request, providing it gets enough popular support.
The authors promised that building the Death Star would “spur job creation in the fields of construction, engineering, space exploration, and more, and strengthen our national defense.”
The petition has collected 34,435 signatures, well above the 25,000 threshold that necessitates a response from the White House.
But despite endorsement from the public, the government has been reluctant to make the necessary investment in the pioneering space platform.
Titled ‘This Isn't the Petition Response You're Looking For’ and authored by Paul Shawcross, who oversees science and space departments at the White House, the official response gives three reasons for why the project isn’t viable:
• 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?
Instead, Shawcross calls for Americans to revel in the existence of the rather more modest International Space Station, which although impressive, does not possess a death ray, or in fact weapons of any sort.
This is not the only time We the People has been used to push forward unlikely proposals. Recent petitions have called for British TV interviewer Piers Morgan to be deported for his gun control stance (more than 100,000 signatures) for Texas to secede (more than 120,000 signatories) and to recount the presidential election, which 68,000 petitioners claim Barack Obama won through a combination of fraud and administrative error.
CAIRO — Supporters of former Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak and the human rights advocates who dedicated themselves to toppling the longtime autocrat never dreamed they would find themselves chanting the same slogans.
But with Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi’s decision on Thursday to assume near-absolute power over his country, at least for now, secularists of all stripes have mobilized in ways unimaginable just a week ago. With Islamists largely backing Morsi, a battle is quickly taking shape over the degree to which religion will play a role in post-revolutionary Egypt’s government.
On Sunday, despite a nascent rebellion among the judiciary, Morsi’s office said he would hold firm to his decisions. He also flexed his newly expanded powers for the first time, changing several labor laws by fiat. In a sign of fear about instability to come, Egypt’s main stock index plunged by almost 10 percent on the first trading day since Morsi’s announcement. It was the steepest drop since the turbulent days immediately after the revolution.
But Morsi also announced he would meet with the Egypt’s judges group on Monday, laying the possibility for concessions.
Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood allies and his opposition plan to hold dueling demonstrations across the country on Tuesday in a bid to rally support, pro and con, in the biggest test yet of the power of each side to mobilize. With a new constitution set to be approved in the coming months, Tahrir Square — the heart of the revolution that toppled Mubarak — has in recent days become a rallying place for both liberal secularists and those who have scorned them as naive.
Members of the long-suppressed Muslim Brotherhood, meanwhile, have been marshalling themselves in front of the very institutions once used against them. With many judges and prosecutors threatening a strike, Egypt has quickly been embroiled in a crisis that may threaten the democratic ideals of the revolution more than any other development in the tumultuous 21 months since Mubarak was deposed.
CAIRO, Nov 26 (Reuters) - Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi will meet senior judges on Monday to try to ease a crisis over his seizure of new powers which has set off violent protests reminiscent of last year's revolution which brought him to power.
Egypt's stock market plunged on Sunday in its first day open since Mursi issued a decree late on Thursday temporarily widening his powers and shielding his decisions from judicial review, drawing accusations he was behaving like a new dictator.
More than 500 people have been injured in clashes between police and protesters worried Mursi's Muslim Brotherhood aims to dominate the post-Hosni Mubarak era after winning Egypt's first democratic parliamentary and presidential elections this year.
One Muslim Brotherhood member was killed and 60 people were hurt on Sunday in an attack on the main office of the Brotherhood in the Egyptian Nile Delta town of Damanhour, the website of the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party said.
Egypt's highest judicial authority hinted at compromise to avert a further escalation, though Mursi's opponents want nothing less than the complete cancellation of a decree they see as a danger to democracy.
The Supreme Judicial Council said Mursi's decree should apply only to "sovereign matters", suggesting it did not reject the declaration outright, and called on judges and prosecutors, some of whom began a strike on Sunday, to return to work.
Mursi would meet the council on Monday, state media said.
Mursi's office repeated assurances that the measures would be temporary, and said he wanted dialogue with political groups to find "common ground" over what should go in Egypt's constitution, one of the issues at the heart of the crisis.
Hassan Nafaa, a professor of political science at Cairo University, saw an effort by the presidency and judiciary to resolve the crisis, but added their statements were "vague". "The situation is heading towards more trouble," he said.
Sunday's stock market fall of nearly 10 percent - halted only by automatic curbs - was the worst since the uprising that toppled Mubarak in February, 2011.
Images of protesters clashing with riot police and tear gas wafting through Cairo's Tahrir Square were an unsettling reminder of that uprising. Activists were camped in the square for a third day, blocking traffic with makeshift barricades. Nearby, riot police and protesters clashed intermittently.
"BACK TO SQUARE ONE"
Mursi's supporters and opponents plan big demonstrations on Tuesday that could be a trigger for more street violence.
"We are back to square one, politically, socially," said Mohamed Radwan of Pharos Securities, an Egyptian brokerage firm.
Mursi's decree marks an effort to consolidate his influence after he successfully sidelined Mubarak-era generals in August. It reflects his suspicions of a judiciary little reformed since the Mubarak era.
Issued just a day after Mursi received glowing tributes from Washington for his work brokering a deal to end eight days of violence between Israel and Hamas, the decree drew warnings from the West to uphold democracy. Washington has leverage because of billions of dollars it sends in annual military aid.
"The United States should be saying this is unacceptable," former presidential nominee John McCain, leading Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said on Fox News.
"We thank Mr. Mursi for his efforts in brokering the ceasefire with Hamas ... But this is not what the United States of America's taxpayers expect. Our dollars will be directly related to progress toward democracy."
The Mursi administration has defended his decree as an effort to speed up reforms that will complete Egypt's democratic transformation. Yet leftists, liberals, socialists and others say it has exposed the autocratic impulses of a man once jailed by Mubarak.
"There is no room for dialogue when a dictator imposes the most oppressive, abhorrent measures and then says 'let us split the difference'," prominent opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei said on Saturday.
WARNINGS FROM WEST
Investors had grown more confident in recent months that a legitimately elected government would help Egypt put its economic and political problems behind it. The stock market's main index had risen 35 percent since Mursi's victory. It closed on Sunday at its lowest level since July 31.
Political turmoil also raised the cost of government borrowing at a treasury bill auction on Sunday.
"Investors know that Mursi's decisions will not be accepted and that there will be clashes on the street," said Osama Mourad of Arab Financial Brokerage.
A senior Iranian commander says the victory of Palestinian resistance fighters in the eight-day war with Israel marks the second wave of Islamic awaking in the region.
Commander of Iran's volunteer Basij forces Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naqdi on Friday hailed the unity among Palestinian factions and the contribution of other Muslim nations to end the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip.
“Nations realized more than ever before that they need to come on to the stage and exhaust all their power and capacities,” Naqdi told a pro-Palestinian gathering in Tehran.
“The heroic nation of Lebanon and the Gaza Strip gallantly stood up and the people of Syria have well performed their obligation by their intelligence and maintaining the resistance front. Today it is the Egyptian people’s turn to complete the task, and they also have taken high steps,” he stated.
The commander said the ultimate defeat of the Israeli regime would depend on the alertness and further awakening in the West Bank and Jordan, urging the people there to play their “historical role” in the liberation of Palestine.
Terrorists destroyed part of an Egyptian base at Rafiah, challenging Cairo’s control over the Sinai after the ceasefire with Israel.
By Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
Rafiah crossing: Egyptian Troops stand guard
Flash 90
Islamic terrorists destroyed part of an Egyptian security building at Rafiah Saturday night, challenging Cairo’s control over the Sinai after the ceasefire with Israel. No one was injured in the explosion at the base, under construction on the Egyptians side of Rafiah, the smuggling capital of Gaza.
The attack came 48 hours after Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi granted himself extensive new powers, which were challenged by Cairo's judiciary.
A separate explosion injured three people further south in the Sinai, where Egypt is building a facility to help it protect the pipeline that ships natural gas to Israel and Jordan. Terrorists have bombed the pipeline more than a dozen times the past two years in an effort to scuttle the agreement to sell gas to Israel.
Saturdays night’s bombing underlined Egypt’s difficulty in re-asserting control over the Sinai, where Hamas terrorists from Gaza, along with Bedouin allies and Al Qaeda-linked terrorist cells, have carved out regions of authority. They have staged increasingly frequent terrorist attacks on Israel. Several Israelis have been killed in the attacks.
Maintaining peace and quiet in the Sinai is a primary task for Egypt, experts said; the new government needs to prove to the United States, Israel, and Hamas that it can carry out its promise to protect Israel from terrorists.
Attacks from the Sinai could undermine the truce, moving the field of battle into the Sinai and eventually spreading back into Gaza, even if Hamas abides by the ceasefire that ended the eight-day Pillar of Defense counterterrorist operation.
Egypt clashes escalate over President Morsi's power grab
CAIROSupporters and opponents of Egypt's president on Sunday grew more entrenched in their potentially destabilizing battle over the Islamist leader's move to assume near absolute powers, with neither side appearing willing to back down as the stock market plunged amid the fresh turmoil.
The standoff poses one of the hardest tests for the nation's liberal and secular opposition since Hosni Mubarak's ouster nearly two years ago. Failure to sustain protests and eventually force Mohammed Morsi to loosen control could consign it to long-term irrelevance.
Clashes between the two sides spilled onto the streets for a third day since the president issued edicts that make him immune to oversight of any kind, including that of the courts.
A teenager was killed and at least 60 people were wounded when a group of anti-Morsi protesters tried to storm the local offices of the political arm of the president's Muslim Brotherhood in the Nile Delta city of Damanhoor, according to security officials.
It was the first reported death from the street battles that erupted across much of the nation on Friday, the day after Morsi's decrees were announced. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media, identified the boy as 15-year-old Islam Hamdi Abdel-Maqsood.
The tensions also dealt a fresh blow to the economy, which has suffered due to the problems plaguing the Arab world's most populous nation since Mubarak's ouster.
Egypt's benchmark EGX30 stock index dropped 9.59 percentage points Sunday in the first trading session since Morsi issued his decrees. The losses were among the biggest since the turbulent days and weeks immediately after Mubarak's ouster in a popular uprising last year. The loss in the value of shares was estimated at close to $5 billion.
The judiciary, the main target of the edicts, has pushed back, calling the decrees a power grab and an "assault" on the branch's independence. Judges and prosecutors stayed away from many courts in Cairo and other cities on Sunday.
But the nation's highest judicial body, the Supreme Judiciary Council, watered down its opposition to the decrees on Sunday. It told judges and prosecutors to return to work and announced that its members would meet with Morsi on Monday to try to persuade him to restrict immunity to major state decisions like declaring war or martial law or breaking diplomatic relations with foreign nations.
Morsi supporters insist that the measures were necessary to prevent the courts, which already dissolved the elected lower house of parliament, from further holding up moves to stability by disbanding the assembly writing the new constitution, as judges were considering doing. Both the parliament and the constitutional assembly are dominated by Islamists. Morsi accuses Mubarak loyalists in the judiciary of seeking to thwart the revolution's goals and barred the judiciary from disbanding the constitutional assembly or parliament's upper house.
CBS Correspondent Holly Williams reports that Morsi said the new powers would only be temporary, and he'll relinquish them next year when Egyptians elect a new parliament and vote on a new constitution. Many Egyptians accept that.
Mitt Romney leads President Obama in national polls, and the president is approaching his all-time low in the RealClearPolitics average. Romney leads in some key swing states (e.g., Florida, Colorado and North Carolina) and has largely erased the deficit in others (Ohio, Virginia, Nevada). His approval rating (the likability rating so many liberals have obsessed about) is in positive territory; the gap between the two candidates’ approval ratings has all but disappeared.
Obama is below 60 on Intrade. Crowds for Romney and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) are swelling in battleground states like Ohio. The Associated Press reported:
The crowds tell the story. As Election Day nears, Mitt Romney is drawing large and excited throngs. Look to dusty Iowa cornfields, rain-soaked Virginia parks, the muddy fields of the Shelby County Fairgrounds, where a crowd of 9,500 — almost half of this western Ohio town — gathered among the barns and stables on a frigid October evening this week to glimpse the Republican presidential contender. . . . He drew an estimated 12,000 people to a central Florida rally last weekend, 1,200 to an Iowa town of just 1,000, and several hundred more to Newport News, Va., under heavy October rain.
“People wonder why it is I’m so confident we’re going to win. I’m confident because I see you here on a day like this. This is unbelievable,” Romney said, his wet hair stuck to the side of his face. Soaked supporters standing in muddy puddles cheered as he delivered an abridged version of his standard campaign speech. Some wore ponchos, while many others stood shivering and drenched, hands in pockets.
This is all the more remarkable since Romney was never the favorite of the right-wing base.
The New York Times grudgingly concedes that Romney continues to surge. His “bounce” from the Oct. 3 debate hasn’t faded. His state polling in swing states has followed his national surge.
All of this suggests that the presidential race changed in some fundamental way after the first debate. It can certainly change again, but it is silly to deny that the first debate has been more significant than any one event in the 2012 election.
What happened? For one thing the debate exposed what many Republicans suspected, namely that some of Obama’s support was shallow, rooted in habit or from failure to consider Romney might be a viable alternative. Even in the heady days after the Democratic National Convention Obama did not reach more than 50 percent in the RCP averages or even in any week of Gallup tracking polls.
Recall that virtually the entire Obama strategy was aimed to discredit and delegitimize Romney as a candidate. The avalanche of negative ads in the summer, however, failed (barely) to do so. With Romney’s extraordinary debate performance, it now becomes nearly impossible to vilify him. Unfortunately for Obama he’s got no Plan B. He never devised an impressive second-term agenda. He has either unpopular (Obamacare) or unhelpful (raise taxes) or small beans (hire 100,000 teachers) proposals. Romney has therefore been able to deploy his “we can’t afford four more years” argument quite effectively.
And finally, as many of us suspected, foreign policy has become a front-burner issue. The attack on the Benghazi Consulate has now resonated with mainstream media and has become a story about competence and credibility. This may not have contributed to Romney’s rise, but it will assist him in holding off Obama.
For this, Romney owes a debt of gratitude to Vice President Biden, who elevated the issue in the debate through blatant misstatements. And in pointing the finger at the intelligence community, Biden risks a backlash in the form of leaks and testimony from those who aren’t going to take the fall for politicians. James Risen of the New York Times picks up on just one story line that just weeks ago hadn’t garnered much attention, as he writes:
The large private security firms that have protected American diplomats in Iraq and Afghanistan sought State Department contracts in Libya, and at least one made a personal pitch to the ambassador, J. Christopher Stevens, who was killed in the militants’ attack in Benghazi on Sept. 11, according to a senior official at one firm.
But given the Libyan edict banning the contractors, the Obama administration was eager to reduce the American footprint there. After initially soliciting bids from major security companies for work in Libya, State Department officials never followed through.
“We went in to make a pitch, and nothing happened,” said the security firm official. He said the State Department could have found a way around the Libyans’ objections if it had wanted to.
Be prepared to see the drip-drip-drip of more revelations as whistleblowers get in line to tell their side of the story.
Romney has not won this race yet. A rotten debate performance could reset the race once more. Obama and his Chicago political hacks may have an October surprise or two up their collective sleeves. But now time and momentum are on Romney’s side. He appears to a plurality of voters to be not just an alternative to Obama but a good one. Unless that changes and changes fast (remember early voting is ongoing), Romney will win.
Addressing Attacks Against Mitt Romney Regarding Attempt to Improve Lyme Care in Virginia
As most people might guess, I have Lyme Disease. I’ve had it for 10 years now. I’m not here to defend Romney or endorse him. I’m here to explain how sad it is that few media outlets are focusing on the real issue. And that’s Lyme Disease, the epidemic.
At this point, I could care less what Mitt’s intent is for that Virginia mailer. We can speculate all we want, but why? We aren’t Romney or his team of brains that think up his campaign tactics. I do, however, think this is a good chance to view exactly how divided science, politics, the medical industry and patients are on this ONE topic.
Whether citizens in any one of these populations of people care to admit or not (if they even have an inkling), this disease is currently the largestvector-borne diseasein America. Much likeHIVwas dubbed the “gay man’s disease” in the 80′s,Chronic Lyme Diseaseis getting ridiculed, overlooked, and dismissed without much attempt at furtherscientific research, aside from privately funded studies.
Why is this a political disease? Ask the politicians. Between Dearborn, OSP A and Plum Island, I’d say there is a whole lot of room for investigation. Of course, mainstream readers aren’t going to be reading about those topics, because the media has presented a neat and tidy scenario that makes Lyme activists, much like myself, “conspiracy theorists”.
I could care less about the criminals involved with creating this controversy. They will receive their Karma when they are ready to learn about the receiving end of disease. Whether they learn in this lifetime or the next is not up to me, but them, if you believe in that sort of thing. That’s really not my concern. Right now, Lyme patients need help. We need science. We need better (more sensitive) testing, we need treatments that WORK. Government has done nothing to support scientific research in chronic lyme disease.
Online “science” and news blogs are directing their attention on the WRONG thing. Forget about Romney for a second. Forget about what you think you know about this disease. Ask George W. Bush if he went to an IDSA trained doctor for his Lyme disease. Ask Bush how long he treated his infection. ANSWER: longer than 4 weeks, which is the max amount of time given to non-presidential Lyme patients with a newly diagnosed case only. Anything longer than that, you’re on your own.
What is being attempted by Romney is beyond description.LymeDisease.org explains it best in their blog post.
In there they discuss how Durland Fish, one of the IDSA authors, firmly believes Chronic Lyme Disease doesn’t exist. Where is the scientific evidence that it doesn’t exist? Where are the scientific studies the proves 4 weeks of doxycycline cures Lyme Disease? THAT is what doesn’t exist, because it’s never been done. What Mr. Fish IS good at is yelling at peaceful IDSA Guideline protesters, claiming they are “all crazy” and “you don’t know what you’re talking about,” while he flailed his arms about in a demeaning manner. What was he so upset about, if he has science backing his (flawed) guidelines up?
Unfortunately, mass media is going to support what the “authorities” say and label it as truth, while grouping Romney with the rest of the “quacks” in support of Lyme Disease awareness, prevention and proper treatment. Epidemic monsters like Lyme Disease cannot be kept in the closet forever. The US government knows this. The IDSA knows this. It’s a matter of what will they do to make themselves look like the heroes when they have no choice but to address these very real concerns.
If you want to understand the Lyme epidemic and the issues within the divided medical community, read “Cure Unknown” by Pamela Weintraub. She’s a talented and objective medical science journalist who happened to have Lyme after moving to upstate New York, along with her husband and children. The disease is devastatingly real. Some of these “writers” on these “science” and political news blogs (see links below) could really benefit by learning how to become self-thinking humans. It’s really not entirely difficult. All you need is a spine, a brain, and some balls.
(Credit: Lucasfilm)
There's no disturbing lack of faith among Kickstarter supporters.
After all, a crowdfunded project to construct the Death Star that was launched less than a week ago already has nearly 1,500 backers and an astonishing $364,772 in pledges.
Well, the Rebels aren't taking that threat sitting down. A rival Kickstarter campaign to build X-wing fighters has just taken off. Its goal is to build one of the famous spaceships from "Star Wars" and then more.
"If George Lucas produced 'Star Wars IV, A New Hope,' for $11,000,000 we figure we can finance a prototype of an X-Wing and train a pilot," organizer Simon Kwan, a product designer in Shanghai, writes on the campaign page.
"One update we'd like to include for our updated X-Wing is iPhone and Siri integration."
The stretch goal is to build a squadron of X-wings for $4,485,672,683, the worldwide box office take of all the films in the franchise, according to The Numbers, a film sales tracking site.
A further goal is "13 million Galactic Standard Credits: A Class YT-1300 Freighter (heavily modified) and a crew consisting of a Corellian smuggler and a Wookie co-pilot."
Tech Crunch, however, politely points out that such credits have been estimated at only 62 cents, making the Falcon cost only $8 million, which is of course less than the campaign's basic goal.
Details, details. What matters is we get an X-wing built, stat!
At least then we'll have a chance of countering a real threat to our planet: asteroids.
Source: CT
