THE Obama administration dashed the hopes of geeks across the galaxy by rejecting a petition signed by 34,435 people calling for the US government to build Darth Vader's Death Star, the planet-destroying space station featured in the Star Wars films.
"The administration shares your desire for job creation and a strong national defence, but a Death Star isn't on the horizon," wrote the head of the White House budget office's science and space branch.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
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Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
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