Amy Shira Teitel has a great blog post up over at Vintage Science, about how much NASA's Mars rover Curiosity actually cost us. We throw the $2.5 Billion figure around a lot, but here are a few realistic comparisons, from Teitel's piece:
- Curiosity’s landing coincided with this year’s summer Olympics held in London, which had a $14.5 billion (in US dollars) price tag.
- According to the National Retail Federation, Americans spent upwards of $17.6 billion celebrating the holiday in 2012 – that’s enough, in one year, for seven Curiosity-type missions.
- Curiosity, over the full 9 years, cost every American just $8.
- In 2007, $3 billion of that amount was spent on homeopathy. That’s right: in one year Americans spent more on homeopathy than Curiosity cost over nine years.
- In 2011, the US spent $878.5 billion on defense; NASA got less than $19.3 billion.
- The total costs of both wars allocated by Congress in the last ten years is $1.38 trillion; $807.4 billion in Iraq and $570.9 billion in Afghanistan.
Read Teitel's piece here. Here's the latest Curiosity news:
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Mars Was Once Covered In Hip-Deep Flowing Water >
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An Alien Moon Photographed From The Surface Of An Alien Planet >
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Curiosity Finished Up Her Rock Touching And Has Hit The Road Again >