Seven earth-sized planets discovered circling a star 39 light years from Earth

Re:Seven earth-sized planets discovered circling a star 39 l... by sbierwagen on Wednesday February 22, 2017 @05:32PM (#13709865)

EDIT: My math was totally wrong. 10 trillion dollars, 0.1x world GDP. (Still a lot of money though) Leaving the old text below so the replies make sense.

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To move 6,000,000 megatons of fuel into low earth orbit would take 111,111 Falcon Heavy launches, at a total cost of $10,000,000,000,000 dollars. (10 quadrillion dollars, 93x world GDP)

Something that takes the total global economic output of the planet a century just to lift the fuel into orbit doesn't read as plausible in the next 50 years to me.

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Re:Seven earth-sized planets discovered circling a star 39 l... by mozumder on Wednesday February 22, 2017 @05:41PM (#13709944)

You wouldn't gather that fuel from earth.. you'd gather it from an icy asteroid or comet or moon (Europa).

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Re:Seven earth-sized planets discovered circling a star 39 l... by TurplePurtle on Wednesday February 22, 2017 @06:16PM (#13710185)

I'm not sure if your error is in the number or in the words, but the number you wrote down is 10 trillion dollars.

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Re:Seven earth-sized planets discovered circling a star 39 l... by DenisM on Wednesday February 22, 2017 @06:20PM (#13710208)

Note to mention that Falcon Launches would get significantly cheaper if we have to do 100,000 of them.

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Re:Seven earth-sized planets discovered circling a star 39 l... by sbierwagen on Wednesday February 22, 2017 @06:26PM (#13710246)

Oops.

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