KickTraq

Sorry, "Star Wars" fans: A real-life Death Star and the X-wing fighters to bring it down won't be built anytime soon. First the White House snubbed a petition calling on the government to build the Death Star. Now two Kickstarter projects aimed at building a fully operational battle station as well as an X-wing fleet have fallen far short of their multimillion-dollar funding goals. (Read More)

Thank you everyone! You guys are awesome.  (Read More)

Yes, we are talking Star Wars, and yes these are actual real-world crowdfunding efforts currently underway, though both are tens of millions short of being funded at present. But the existence of these projects brings up an interesting question. (Read More)

Coming off as something that belongs on the web’s go-to source for tongue-and-cheek humor, The Onion, the Death Star project was posted at the beginning of February with a pledge goal of £20 million British pounds for open source plans for the monstrous battle station. Four days later, another crowdsource project was posted on the site, this time saying, “We must defend ourselves against the Empire’s Death Star! Join the Rebel Alliance!” and asked for $11 million from backers. (Read More)

Fear not, sons and daughters of the rebellion! A new Kickstarter project promises to raise enough money to build a squadron of “proton torpedo armed X-Wing fighters” to ward off the impending construction of a crowdfunded Deathstar! At the $10,000 backer level, you’ll even get training by Yoda himself—a steal. (Read More)

Thursday I wrote about a Kickstarter campaign that was trying to raise money for Death Star research, and I called it the crowdfunding site's jump-the-shark moment. My concern was that if Kickstarter starts letting stuff like that through, it would soon be overrun with nothing but joke campaigns. Now there's a campaign to fund an X-Wing squadron to stop the Death Star campaign. This is exactly the kind of thing I was talking about. (Read More)

Jumping the shark (per Wikipedia): Jumping the shark is an idiom created by Jon Hein that is used to describe the moment in the evolution of a television show when it begins a decline in quality that is beyond recovery. The phrase is also used to refer to a particular scene, episode, or aspect of a show in which the writers use some type of “gimmick” in a desperate attempt to keep viewers’ interest. (Read More)

Fifty years from now, when we all look back at what once was, and we fondly remember how Kickstarter used to be a great way for artists and inventors to fund projects that might not otherwise be possible, we could very well remember this campaign as Kickstarter's jump-the-shark moment. After the White House refused to build a Death Star, someone started a joke Kickstarter campaign to build one anyway, and it already has more than 1,000 supporters. (Read More)

Since its launch two days ago, the idea has picked up quite a bit of steam, with 1,003 backers pledging £190,747 in funding so far, with 52 days left to go. (Read More)

Exorbitant cost notwithstanding, the Obama Administration apparently has a policy of not blowing up other planets. But while that may have been the end of the matter a few years ago, this is the era of empowered consumers, and that means it's time to do some crowdfunding! (Read More)

The White House may have turned down the idea of building a real-life Death Star, but now it's the open-source community's turn. A Kickstarter crowd-funding project calls for $31 million. Guess the funding deadline! Go ahead! Guess! April Fool's Day. (Read More)

I’ve yet to back a single thing on Kickstarter, but this project may ‘force’ me to pop my cherry. It’s an open source Death Star. “In November 2012 the people asked for a death star,” begins the intro. “The government said NO! (Read More)

Oh yes, I think this is glorious. There’s a Kickstarter project looking to build the Death Star. Given the White House’s refusal to start the project despite the petition asking that they do it has fallen to an Englishman to attempt to get the project rolling. In the very best traditions of make do and bodging that the country is known for. (Read More)

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. (Read More)

Barack Obama's deluded decision to deny a petition asking the USA to build a Death Star has been challenged by the wisdom of the crowd, in the form of a Kickstarter project seeking £543 quadrillion ($US850qn) to design and build the planet-destroying artificial moonlet. (Read More)

The Death Star is undoubtedly a worthwhile undertaking. Sure, in the Star Wars films it’s generally depicted as an offensive weapon but it could have terrific value as a defensive platform, too. The government recently responded to requests from the general public that it look into constructing the massive, moon-sized space station, shutting down the idea because of a short-sighted “we don’t blow up planets” political stance and an unwillingness to dip into the treasury. (Read More)