The estimates for how much it would cost to actually build a real Death Star in modern times are staggering, but they're dwarfed by the daily operating costs.

In the case of Scarif, the Death Star might have arrived minutes earlier — just in time to prevent transmission of the plans that showed Galen Erso's deliberate flaw in the reactor shaft.

He and his team are able to find the Death Star plans on Scarif and transmit them to a ship in orbit. However, they’re killed when the newly completed station fires its superlaser on the planet.