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#1
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Expensive stuff ... I mean really, REALLY expensive!
What is the single most expensive man made object in the world? The space shuttle? The new World Trade Center? I don't believe I'm thinking BIG enough. Help!
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#2
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Reported for forum change.
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#3
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F-35?
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#4
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International Space Station
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Last edited by snfaulkner; 04-27-2016 at 09:55 PM. |
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#5
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Something like the Golden Gate Bridge or Hoover Dam?
Maybe the Great Pyramid of Giza? I'm not sure how you'd put a price on it. |
#6
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ISS
Yeah but ... The international space station is not "in the world."
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#7
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Fair enough, but the space shuttle was mentioned in the OP, so I thought ISS would be fair game.
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#8
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True. The ISS would probably win if it counted. How about an aircraft carrier?
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#9
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Moved to GQ.
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#10
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According to the List of most expensive buildings in the world, the Hajj Mosque costed upwards of $100B...
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#11
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Program cost: $36.30 billion[1](FY15) Unit cost: $10.44B[1](FY15) |
#12
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Some items hit the 'priceless' level in the real sense so nobody can buy them. The Mona Lisa, Hope diamond and the Great Pyramid are among them so I am not sure if there is a single answer. Sure, France or Egypt may relent if something horrible happens and they need some indeterminate amount of money to keep their country going but some things are not currently for sale even at ISS level prices.
Do you want to include cost for research and development? How many single items can be included if they go together as a package or idea? What about something that exists and can be made to work again but not easily like a Saturn V rocket that can take people to the moon again? What about property like Yellowstone National park that is bigger than some countries? Last edited by Shagnasty; 04-27-2016 at 10:56 PM. |
#13
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Never mind; I didn't realize how many of them we've built (it's over 100, so the $1.5 trillion current project cost is a measly $10 billion or so apiece at this point).
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#14
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#15
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#16
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How about the first atomic bombs? I was just reading a site that said the Manhattan Project cost the equivalent of thirty billion dollars if you adjusted for inflation. We got two bombs out of it, so call it fifteen billion dollars for each. Not quite the International Space Station but that's a lot of money for something you only use once.
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#17
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If the Great Wall is considered a single object then why not the US highway system?
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#18
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#19
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Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways Quote:
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#20
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If you want to count "The U.S. Military" as one man-made thing:
For the 2011 fiscal year, the president's base budget for the Department of Defense and spending on "overseas contingency operations" combine to bring the sum to $664.84 billion.[2][3] That was just for one year of Militarying. |
#21
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How about the USA road network ? When you consider that its a network and not a bunch of seperate items. You would't call a brick house to not be a single object, so why would a road network be broken into constituent parts ? The federal road network shows that its even designed as a single network, to some extent, its just just a bunch of state highways that happen to cross paths. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._R...:US_20_map.png Last edited by Isilder; 04-28-2016 at 12:53 AM. |
#22
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True, once we look at a transnational road network we have something constructed by more than one party, but nothing in the OP limits the query to things constructed by just one party. In any event, different components of the US road network will have been constructed by different parties - different local, state and federal governmental agencies, and no doubt a few more entities besides. So if we are looking at road networks, the likely answer is going to be the largest connected road network on the planet which, I'm guessing, is the Eurasian-African road network. |
#23
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An interesting side question occurs to me: What's the most expensive thing a private individual can actually buy? I mean, aircraft carriers and space rockets aren't (to the best of my knowledge) available to anyone but governments. What could I buy if money was really no object?
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#24
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Obligatory Blackadder moment: Blackadder: Baldrick, I've always been meaning to ask: Do you have any ambitions in life apart from the acquisition of turnips? Baldrick: Er, no. Blackadder: So what would you do if I gave you a thousand pounds? Baldrick: I'd get a little turnip of my own. Blackadder: So what would you do if I gave you a million pounds? Baldrick: Oh, that's different. I'd get a great big turnip in the country. [Later, after Baldrick has been given £400,000 and Blackadder is trying to get it from him.] Baldrick: I spent it. Blackadder: You spent it? What could you possibly spend £400,000 on? [Blackadder notices the massive turnip on the table] Blackadder: Oh, no... oh God, don't tell me. Baldrick: My dream turnip. Blackadder: Baldrick, how did you manage to find a turnip that cost £400,000? Baldrick: Well, I had to haggle. |
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#25
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#26
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Apple Inc. is valued at $537 billion today but if you wanted to buy it, it would cost you a lot more. I'm not sure that's a single thing to the OP though.
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#27
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Trying to find a single expensive thing, I looked at the cost of the Large Hadron Collider. Only $9 billion -- for all the science we get out of it, it's a bargain compared to an aircraft carrier.
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#28
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Postage stamps?
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(Another candidate would be the trans-uranic elements, with billions spent to produce a few molecules.) |
#29
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That's the catch here; some of these programs are huge, but that's not really the cost of the items themselves. I suspect that absent the actual scientific development costs (i.e. figuring out how and if a fission bomb was feasible), the real costs to making the bombs themselves were in the uranium separation for Little Boy, and the plutonium generation for Fat Man/Trinity. Last edited by bump; 04-28-2016 at 10:25 AM. |
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#30
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My guess would be this. |
#31
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#32
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As a single "thing" or man-made object, the Three Gorges Dam in China comes in at $27.6 Billion US Dollars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Gorges_Dam |
#33
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Well, a while back John Oliver made an estimate that the Trump Wall would cost ~$25 billion...
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#34
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Antimatter
Nothing else come close really on a pound-for-pound basis.
A gram of antimatter costs around $25 billion to produce. Of course, there is nowhere near a gram of antimatter on earth so in real terms it costs less than other things listed here but in terms price/gram (or whatever weight measurement you want to use) nothing else comes remotely close. Not even the ISS. |
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#35
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His still hidden Iron Man suit might qualify.
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#36
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The electric power grid is basically a single huge, world-spanning machine. (Even if we only count synchronous interconnections as a single "machine", one of them is the size of Europe.) I don't know what you would say it "cost", but I expect it would probably take top honors if we could find out.
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#37
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#38
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#39
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#40
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#41
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But even if you do count all that strictly as Manhattan Project costs, it wasn't spread across only the 2 combat bombs and one test bomb (Trinity). The US military used the Fat Man design for another 5 years, until 1950, and built a grand total of 124 weapons of that type (Trinity, Fat Man, the 2 used in Operation Crossroads (Able and Baker) and 120 stockpiled ones). So in total, that cost would be split by 125 (124 Fat Man bombs and 1 Little Boy bomb). |
#42
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WWII cost the United States $4.1 trillion in 2011 dollars, and just for military operations, add the Marshall Plan in and the costs to all the other countries involved ... lives lost ... cultures destroyed ... and there's still unexploded bombs lurking, waiting to kill more peoples. {"Costs of Major U.S. Wars"}
Last edited by watchwolf49; 04-29-2016 at 10:05 AM. Reason: The return on investment was good, so there's that ... |
#43
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#44
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The prescription eyedrops for glaucoma my mom used to take had .00004 gm of active ingredient in a 1ml solution of something inert. The retail price was $158 and medicare paid $113 of this. At the retail price this works out to almost $4,000,000 /gm or $3million for medicare.
Surely this must be a candidate for the most expensive chemical on the planet. Isn't this about the cost of Plutonium? I'm not sure if the .00004 was gm or % but I'm willing to give the manufacturer the benefit of the doubt otherwise multiply by 100. |
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#45
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You forgot about printer ink.
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#46
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Years ago I was the high bidder on a leather bound bible signed by Jesus Christ on the frontispiece. eBay ended the auction, on the grounds of suspected chicanery. If they hadn't, my $25 bid would have gotten me a potentially priceless artifact.
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#47
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Sure, but it's useless if you're trying to go from point A to point B.
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#48
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For kicks, I just looked up one of the more expensive cancer biologics. I didn't do a very thorough search, but I did find a price of $2700 per 400 mg vial. To be honest that's a lot cheaper than I expected, working out to be only $6750 per gram (I wish I could buy monoclonal antibodies that cheap...) Another controversially expensive drug, Sovaldi, "only" costs $1000 per 400 mg pill, or $2500 per gram. |
#49
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Anti-hydrogen, an actual anti-element, is estimated to be $62 trillion per gram to make. Estimated because we've never had more than a few atoms of it at any one time, nowhere near a gram. |
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#50
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They also mention the Hinkley Point nuclear power station in England with a construction cost of 26 billion USD and the Hong Kong International Airport with a construction cost of 29 billion USD in today's money. Last edited by bibliophage; 04-29-2016 at 05:44 PM. |
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