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> We could probably send a probe to Centauri for the price of one Iraq war. Pricing planet-sized stuff like this in monetary value is problematic. Taking figu
by avian 6y ago
> We could probably send a probe to Centauri for the price of one Iraq war.
Pricing planet-sized stuff like this in monetary value is problematic.
Taking figures from a quick Wikipedia search, "one Iraq war" buys you 10 years of world copper production at current rates. That is a non-trivial portion of planetary minable reserves, estimated at "from 25 to 60 years"
- api 6y agoThat is true. Money gets weird at huge scales. For something like an interstellar mission a more significant limiting factor may be the number of engineers and skilled workers with the right skills to work on such a thing and the rate at which they can be mobilized and managed. Most such people are currently employed, so they would basically have to be poached at huge scale. It takes a long time to train people like that, so the supply is inelastic on short time scales.