NASA’s Mars Sample Return has a new price tag–and it’s colossal

Re:NASA’s Mars Sample Return has a new price tag–and it’s co... by jvanderbot on Saturday June 24, 2023 @11:41AM (#36459615)

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.

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Re:NASA’s Mars Sample Return has a new price tag–and it’s co... by guraf on Saturday June 24, 2023 @12:18PM (#36459976)

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?

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Re:NASA’s Mars Sample Return has a new price tag–and it’s co... by ornornor on Saturday June 24, 2023 @12:46PM (#36460271)

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

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Re:NASA’s Mars Sample Return has a new price tag–and it’s co... by jvanderbot on Saturday June 24, 2023 @12:56PM (#36460396)

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.

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Re:NASA’s Mars Sample Return has a new price tag–and it’s co... by Fezzik on Saturday June 24, 2023 @01:21PM (#36460689)

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

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