What surprises me the most is the cost. This is considered to be one of the most expensive endeavors in science… but the first stage costs just about a billion a year?
Jeff Bezos (or any other billionaire) could pay for the whole of it, and it would be like me going for a coffee.
The yearly cost is 1% of what DOGE allegedly saved, three Marvel movies, and less than the GDP of San Marino.
If one of the costliest ever scientific enterprises is this cheap, how many scientific advances are we leaving on the table? It makes me extremely sad.
*Disclaimer: I enjoy Marvel movies and don't particularly believe DOGE claims about saved money. But I wanted to give some scale of what a billion francs (now about 1.2 billion USD) are.
Jeff Bezos (or any other billionaire) could pay for the whole of it, and it would be like me going for a coffee. The yearly cost is 1% of what DOGE allegedly saved, three Marvel movies, and less than the GDP of San Marino.
If one of the costliest ever scientific enterprises is this cheap, how many scientific advances are we leaving on the table? It makes me extremely sad.
*Disclaimer: I enjoy Marvel movies and don't particularly believe DOGE claims about saved money. But I wanted to give some scale of what a billion francs (now about 1.2 billion USD) are.