That’s the cost with union labor. Without, it’s around $200,000.

This is actually old, old news, but it’s new to me and perfect for a slow Friday on which The One threw himself a little stimulus party in Ohio to mark the 10,000th construction project funded by the Recovery Act. So excited are Democrats by how the stimulus has worked out politically that they’re now scrambling to kill much smaller stimulus packages ahead of the midterms. A toast, then — to the greatest public works project of them all:

Here’s a quick summary:

• First, assume that 1/10 of the 17.16 quadrillion cubic meters of the Death Star is something other than empty space and 6/10 of the total volume is pressurized space.

• That will require 1.71 quadrillion cubic meters of steel, about 134 quadrillion tonnes. That’s $12.95 quintillion in current 2008 prices, and that’s without counting strange alloys and elements.

• Shipping that to space will cost $95 million per tonne: So add $12.79 septillion in transport.

• Now you need to add air, which will require 8.23 quintillion cubic meters of Nitrogen, and 1.65 quintillion cubic meters of oxygen, for a total delivery cost of $2.81 septillions and $212.46 quintillion.

The total: $15,602,022,489,829,821,422,840,226.94.

Yes, that’s a whooping 1.4 trillion times the current US Debt. Or a sightly more meaningful number: 124 trillion years of war in Iraq.

That figure’s based on early 2009 numbers; taking into account the increase in annual deficits since then, the total cost is now … what? Maybe twice the national debt? In any case, if you ever wondered why Lucas got bogged down in a tariff subplot in “The Phantom Menace,” wonder no longer.

Via JWF, a not-so-fun subplot to Obama’s photo op this morning.