3 ms·

Wait until you see how much it costs to build and run a single offshore drilling platform or prospecting well in the ocean. Then think how many there are.

• guraf 3y ago
  An offshore drilling platform costs about 250M to build and deploy. It is not funded by tax payers and it starts paying for itself after a few years (they extract $250,000 worth of oil per day on average, up to double that). I don't understand your comparison?
  • ornornor 3y ago
    Maybe parent was hinting at the astronomical numbers and the relative futility of spending this amount on this vs that.
  • jvanderbot 3y ago
    I was saying that in the scale of human enterprises, the cost of returning soil from another planet is a rounding error. 9 billion over a decade vs the operating cost of O&G industry as an example, isn't even close. Soil from Mars vs oil from earth. Both are an amazing scientific and technological accomplishment, but one is also historic.
  • Fezzik 3y ago
    Not directly funded by tax payers… the exceptional tax breaks that oil companies have received from our shat government are astronomical.