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Ask HN: What would you do with $700 Billion?

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Re: Ask HN: What would you do with $700 Billion?

#161

Post by ivankirigin »

njharman wrote: post #159
ivankirigin wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mentioned Apollo, others mentioned the space shuttle. NASA is a horrible organization to actually get things done. I wouldn't emulate them. Burt Rutan is a hero.

Yeah, cause every other space agency actually got off their asses and put men on the moon, deployed and operated a space lab, deployed and operated a largely reuseable launch vehicle that hardly ever blows up, drove rc cars around mars for months, etc.

Going to the moon was a horrible idea. It was a very poor use of resources. That's why we haven't been back in 40 years.

The Mars rovers are the exception the proves the rule. Operational for years after a few hundred million dollars spent, while each shuttle mission eats over $1B.

Any reasonable manager would have scrapped the shuttle long ago.

The reason NASA does more is that we have more money than others, not because they are better.

The goal after all is long term benefit to the human race (or profit). Nasa hasn't done all that much towards that end. If anything, they were a good excuse to design ICBMs.

Re: Ask HN: What would you do with $700 Billion?

#162

Post by ivankirigin »

william42 wrote: post #157
ivankirigin wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mentioned Apollo, others mentioned the space shuttle. NASA is a horrible organization to actually get things done. I wouldn't emulate them. Burt Rutan is a hero.

A hero that has not even reached orbit yet.

Given the $1B spent on each shuttle launch, I'm sure he could make it.

Re: Ask HN: What would you do with $700 Billion?

#164

Post by dhotson »

yters wrote: post #141
run4yourlives wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then what?

A person can do a lot for the world with 10 trillion.

Could you give an example? :)

I think it would actually be pretty hard to find ways to spend that much money. 10 trillion is an awful lot.

Re: Ask HN: What would you do with $700 Billion?

#167

Post by zitterbewegung »

schtog wrote: post #29

surfing-equipment + house on hawaii ~ 6million$ baller-life-style-money: 10$million. my own scientific/tech projects, 1billion. rest i would donate to various scientifc rpoject sand charity.

Maybe you should also invest in a spell checker...

Re: Ask HN: What would you do with $700 Billion?

#168

Post by gambling8nt »

ivankirigin wrote: post #154
gambling8nt wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$700 b is not nearly enough to make a space elevator with existing technology; you're off by about a factor of 1000. Of course, if you're willing to wait ten years for the cost to produce carbon nanotubes to drop...

Actually my brother and a good friend recently attended a conference on the subject, and I'm not pulling numbers out of the air. Clearly there is room for dispute, but between 10B and 1000B is a most reasonable range. I also disagree in principle that anything could cost $700T dollars. Are you telling me that the whole of the US working for 50 years couldn't build it? Because US GDP is ~$14T. Also, you don't launch a…

In spring of 2005 I did a back of the envelope calculation on the total cost to produce the mass of carbon nanotubes needed for an elevator with cross-section of 1 cm^2 using the methods available then and got a result of about 1.25 quadrillion dollars--a sum truly large enough to be meaningless. It appears there have been several significant advances since then, including the revision of the intended cross-sectional area downward, and improvements in the production costs.

And my estimate on costs was precisely in the vein of "next year make an elevator"--I do not doubt that there will be a space elevator long before the next 50 years pass, I merely doubt that $700b is sufficient that a feasible short term effort could be made.

A lunar elevator, while a nice proof of concept for a terrestrial space elevator, has two major problems: (1) There isn't really a point; the moon's gravity well is too weak for it to be worth it to construct an elevator any time soon. (2) Getting the material there without an existing terrestrial space elevator (and possibly even with one) is a prohibitively expensive exercise.

Research into the construction of a space elevator is a worthwhile pursuit likely to result in many useful technological advances. But $700b is not enough to construct one in the short term from existing technology, and is too much to be usefully applied to further research.

Re: Ask HN: What would you do with $700 Billion?

#170

Post by ivankirigin »

gambling8nt wrote: post #168
ivankirigin wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually my brother and a good friend recently attended a conference on the subject, and I'm not pulling numbers out of the air. Clearly there is room for dispute, but between 10B and 1000B is a most reasonable range. I also disagree in principle that anything could cost $700T dollars. Are you telling me that the whole of the US working for 50 years couldn't build it? Because US GDP is ~$14T. Also, you don't launch a…

In spring of 2005 I did a back of the envelope calculation on the total cost to produce the mass of carbon nanotubes needed for an elevator with cross-section of 1 cm^2 using the methods available then and got a result of about 1.25 quadrillion dollars--a sum truly large enough to be meaningless. It appears there have been several significant advances since then, including the revision of the intended cross-sectional…

I think you're thinking like NASA. I'm thinking like a startup founder.

  construction of a space elevator is a worthwhile pursuit likely to result in many useful technological advance
Exactly! Monetize that shit, and feed it back into the pool. I think we're on the same page that getting it out in a year is ridiculous.

Also, a lunar elevator might not be the best choice. Perhaps a mass driver or sky hook on the moon would be better. I would still start on the moon before constructing the first inch of tether around earth.

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