Another good one: total money spent by the US on fusion research, ever: 37.6 billion (2005 dollars).
It really puts into perspective how many things commonly held to be incredibly difficult, or expensive, are in fact simply not a priority. Almost any pie-in-the-sky technological project or public works project you can think of utterly pales next to the money that is casually spent on dubious causes like propping up broken financial systems and destabilizing foreign countries.
Maybe we should stop using "Manhattan Project" or "moonshot" to refer to huge, ambitious practically unfundable government works, when they're so cheap in the scheme of things. Maybe we should speak of "bailouts" instead.
It really puts into perspective how many things commonly held to be incredibly difficult, or expensive, are in fact simply not a priority. Almost any pie-in-the-sky technological project or public works project you can think of utterly pales next to the money that is casually spent on dubious causes like propping up broken financial systems and destabilizing foreign countries.
Maybe we should stop using "Manhattan Project" or "moonshot" to refer to huge, ambitious practically unfundable government works, when they're so cheap in the scheme of things. Maybe we should speak of "bailouts" instead.