Hacker News Reader

Comment by anonymouz | Hacker News Reader

Contrary to the claim of the article, $1 billion to get samples from the Earth's mantle does not sound particularly expensive.

Especially if compared to all the other things that we nowadays spend billions on, and where the long-term benefit is much less clear.

View on HN

Considering that the unit cost for a B2 bomber was $737M (a little over $1B with inflation), I'd say that this is a steal. Just think of things in recent days that have reached the $1B level. For this kind of science? I'd say we'd be stupid NOT to pay for it.

They only built 21 of them so a lot of R&D is included in that figure. Still, we have actually gotten a lot of use out of each of those B2's. If they had built 22 of them the 22nd would have not cost nearly as much.

While it's true B-52's do most of the actual bombing it's only after stealth aircraft like B2's take out air defenses that you can swap to using B-52 safely. Not to mention aircraft are just expensive for comparison a 747-8F: costs US$352 million. Where a B-52H: was only US$53.4 million in 1998 dollars.

PS: In theory long range missiles can take out air defenses there bloody expensive at US$569,000 to 1.4 million a pop vs. equally accurate smart bombs are a small fraction of that.

The last B-52's were built in 1962 at a cost of $9m. The $53m figure was in 1998 dollars. That's about $70m in 2012 dollars. Still a pretty good deal.

Yea, I have been editing that post to be a little more clear. But, I should add that while B-52's are still in service they have been extensively retrofired to the point where little more than the original Airframe remains and the practical replacement cost is significantly higher than 70 million.

$737M was the unit cost for them, not including procurement and R&D. Including those it's just over $2B.

Your miss reading those numbers.

Designed and manufactured by Northrop Grumman with assistance from Boeing, the cost of each aircraft averaged US$737 million (in 1997 dollars).

Total procurement costs averaged $929 million per aircraft, which includes spare parts, equipment, retrofitting, and software support.[3] The total program cost including development, engineering and testing, averaged $2.1 billion per aircraft in 1997.[3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_B-2_Spirit

Think of it like this, the cost of designing and creating molds to create parts and assemble them is included in the 737 million. But, that just get's you an aircraft. The cost of spare parts and maintenance facility's is included in the 929 million. And the cost of initial flight tests and the ability to actually use them in a war is included in the 2B figure. The 2B figure also includes costs before Northrop Grumman got the contract to design and build them.

PS: It's often hard to decide where to draw the line with R&D costs. If another aircraft uses the paint designed for the B2 where to you put the 'paint' R&D costs.

Agreed. Learning how to drill to effectively unlimited geothermal power reservoirs can't be a bad thing.

Famous last words.

We don't fail to drill more geothermals because we are incapable of it, we don't do it because the cost/benefit ratio isn't favorable in most places. Since this isn't about advancing technology, but applying what we already have to this task, this project isn't going to change that.

There's all kinds of things that are possible, but not profitable. And especially when it comes to energy, "profitable" isn't just about money; putting in 2 Joules to create the ability to generate 1 isn't economically practical any more than a company that burns 2 dollars to make 1 is.

We already know how to drill them. It's how to keep producing heat out of them that's the problem. You need to circulate fluid _through_ a large volume of the rock, not just down the borehole. That means you need to create permeability (i.e. fracking. See "enhanced geothermal".) or find permeability at the depths required (i.e. find a reservoir). There are other problems, but the oil industry already developed most of the technology for other things. They've just decided that geothermal is a poor return on investment (in most cases) compared with producing and selling hydrocarbons. On the other hand, the world's largest geothermal energy producer is an oil company.

We should have mandates that deep drilling for oil should carry a requirement to assist in some of this research.

"Want mining/mineral rights? Then you must provide this [data] as a part of allowance for access"

To be fair, they (the oil industry) already developed pretty much _all_ of the technology in question. Scientific drilling just applies the oil industry's methods to academic projects. (There are a few exceptions, particularly with regards to coring.) Furthermore, the companies that provide the expertise in question are the service companies (e.g. Schlumberger, Halliburton, etc), not the companies that are directly in search of oil.

We are in agreement and I understand, my point;

I am tired of the outright corruption in all industries and the massive profit and exploitation of the oil companies.

I as a citizen demand that the representatives in government require a "benficial tax" on all commercial endeavors: the big corporations are not paying financial taxes, then they must begin to pay a beneficial tax to society.

This is a tax on research requirements, innovation, infrastructure and other methods of physical payment that are immune to loopholes.

You know that most oil is now produced by government owned companies? Look at China Norway Venezuela Russia Saudi Arabia etc...

I don't live in any of those countries. I live in the US where oil barons become presidents, oil companies can ruin vast seas and dump billions of gallons of oil into the oceans for months without hardly any repercussions, and lobbiests have more voice than sanity.

I live in a country where for the last 10 years I have watch oil defense and banking interests have trumped all else and destroyed any and all faith I once held in my government.

I believe you're lost. This is HN, not ThinkProgress.

Ill choose to rage on whichever form page happens to be an open tab at the time.

Agreed. Although how many of these projects actually get done for the amount allotted? Maybe it'll end up costing 100B or not get done at all after spending 10B. Whenever anything costs more than like 1M, we get scope insensitivity and have no idea what we are paying for or what it's costing.

Yeah, its just like one instagram.

Especially if compared to all the other things that we nowadays spend billions on

According to Apple, putting rounded corners on things with touch-screens will cost you a billion. So yeah.

Do we know where the funding is coming from?

I'm guessing much of the funding comes from the Japanese government. They funded the Chikyu project which resulted in a deep drilling robot they plan to reuse.

The Chikyu is a (very large) riser drilling ship, not a robot. Other than that, dead on. The Chikyu was more or less built to drill the "mohole", and the Japenese government has been fairly set on it. However, it would almost definitely be a part of IODP (the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program), so the US would play a role in funding it, as well.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com