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OftenBen · 1100 days ago · link · · parent · post: SpinLaunch conducts first test of suborbital accelerator at Spaceport America
I wonder what kind of orbital station or lunar station we could have constructed with this kind of money instead.
For $110 million (just took the first value, don't exactly care myself)? It's about 0.1% of what ISS cost or around 1% of SkyLab (adjusted for inflation) with MIR fraction somewhere in-between those two, so not much. Don't get me wrong, I'm currently torn between continuing to laugh at it or rallying folks here to salvage it as an exercise, so my opinion is a few notches above "burning money," but let's not overstate the cost. Now, if you asked how many people could it free from medical or inherited debt, that'd no doubt be more impactful. EDIT: I originally made an error by an order of magnitude, holy shit I'm tired.
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