if the yankees built the death star it would inevitably blow up on it's own due to lack of maintenance

Nah, it'd be a huge contractor graft scheme where all the materials would be sourced by companies belonging to the golf buddies of Palpatine's fail-son-in-law with labor provided by his favorite pool cleaner contractor, its construction would run on forever and be at least an order of magnitude over budget, it would go on so long unfinished that he'd die of old age and the Republic would come back into power before it could be completed, and then the liberals of the Republic would buckle down and make sure that the Death Star actually got built with only half as much contractor graft, because they actually want to use it to terrorize periphery states with for the glory of the Republic.

They'd have to return it to a drydock for refurbishing after every shot of its main gun, and it would only have enough regular fuel and ammo to operate low-intensity engagements for a few weeks at a time before needing to spend months in a friendly port for rearming.