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Comment by lloydatkinson | Hacker News Reader

So let me get this straight, for the (relatively) low cost of only 9 billion they could return materials from Mars?

That’s a steal. The entire US Department of Defence spends 800 billion.

The fact some of that can’t be shared for a one off project is deeply frustrating.

Interestingly we spend much more on military. Most people only quote the discretionary spend as the military budget ($751b in 2022), but if you look at the mandatory spend there's another ~ $250b in 2022. Things like survivor's benefits, VA, and foreign base leases/costs end up in the mandatory budget, which has the effect of both making US social programs seem more expensive, and our military complex cheaper.

https://www.cbo.gov/publication/58890

https://www.cbo.gov/publication/58889

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.

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?

Maybe parent was hinting at the astronomical numbers and the relative futility of spending this amount on this vs that.

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.

Not directly funded by tax payers… the exceptional tax breaks that oil companies have received from our shat government are astronomical.

Also that's 9 billion over the course of ... A decade of development? Maybe half a decade? DoD spends that per year.

Never mind too how big a savings this is from sending a manned mission to Mars (to also return samples).

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