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A comment on Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and chef Jose Andres. Parent comment

Re:Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and... by monocasa on Wednesday July 21, 2021 @04:57PM (#27912080)
The Apollo program was about $120B in today's money all said and done. And that's with 1960's manufacturing processes. The complete Gemini program was about $10B.

Blue Origin is up to ~$10B already and hasn't even gone orbital yet.

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Re:Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and... by WalterBright on Wednesday July 21, 2021 @05:08PM (#27912201)
I googled "cost of Apollo program" and it comes to $257 billion in today's dollars.

Also, the economy was considerably smaller in those days, and so the Apollo program took up a much larger share of it.

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Re:Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and... by aylmao on Wednesday July 21, 2021 @07:53PM (#27913648)
> Also, the economy was considerably smaller in those days, and so the Apollo program took up a much larger share of it.

Isn't that what adjusting to today's dollars essentially does? Those $28 billion were back then what $257 billion are in today's economy.

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Re:Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and... by WalterBright on Wednesday July 21, 2021 @10:15PM (#27914534)
> Isn't that what adjusting to today's dollars essentially does?

To make it more obvious, a town council spending $1 million on a project is a much bigger undertaking (for them) than a country spending $1 million. It has nothing to do with inflation. I.e. consider it as percentage of GDP.

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Re:Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and... by dboreham on Wednesday July 21, 2021 @10:10PM (#27914511)
No. I think parent means that the economy was smaller in real terms. E.g. the population was lower.
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Re:Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and... by WalterBright on Wednesday July 21, 2021 @10:15PM (#27914538)
I read somewhere that 400,000 people worked on the Apollo program.
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Re:Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and... by gameman144 on Wednesday July 21, 2021 @10:14PM (#27914531)
Not quite:

The purchasing power of a dollar has grown ~8.5x over the past 60 years.

The US GDP has grown about 38x in that same time.

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Re:Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and... by monocasa on Wednesday July 21, 2021 @05:14PM (#27912286)
I've seen a lot of numbers, how about we go with Wiki's $156 and cut the difference?

And it doesn't matter what the rest of the economy was doing if we've converted it to today's numbers. The argument you were making was that government was intrinsically bloated, but from my view these private orgs are barely keeping up with 1960s .gov.

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Re:Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and... by WalterBright on Wednesday July 21, 2021 @06:13PM (#27912853)
Since you're leaving off half the cost, it does make the government bloat look slimmer :-)
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Re:Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and... by TigeriusKirk on Wednesday July 21, 2021 @05:26PM (#27912434)
Why did the Apollo program stop?
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Re:Bezos donates $100M each to CNN contributor Van Jones and... by dboreham on Wednesday July 21, 2021 @10:10PM (#27914512)
Too expensive; had achieved goal.
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