The Death Star would cost £6.2 Octillion to operate every day

Everyone knows about the Death Star from Star Wars, right? But do you know how much it cost to operate a weapon of that magnitude on a daily basis? Well, wonder no more! Before we get to the daily operational cost, it’s worth noting that according to one estimate, the space station/galactic super-weapon would have taken 800,000 years and cost $852 quadrillion to construct. Holy smokes.

Now, to figure out the cost of daily operation, Alexander Barnett, a math professor at Dartmouth University, and Stephen Skolnick, editor of Physics Central, crunched the numbers to find out the ship’s daily cost of use. Here’s what they found (these figures are in British Pounds):

After accounting for factors including the number of people aboard (2,068,937), the approximate cost of their meals (£237,531.31), and the energy needed to power the ship, Barnett and Skolnick arrived at a final answer: more than £6 octillion. Learn how they came up with this staggering sum by checking out the infographic below.

(h/t Mental Floss.)