# Expensive stuff ... I mean really, REALLY expensive!
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-stuff-i-mean-really-really-expensive/753307
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [April 28, 2016, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-stuff-i-mean-really-really-expensive/753307 "2016-04-28T02:41:32Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@Isilder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isilder)
#### Post date: [April 28, 2016, 5:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-stuff-i-mean-really-really-expensive/753307/21 "2016-04-28T05:50:17Z")
> [@Rotola](#):
>
> 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!
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.
> **[U.S. Route 20](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Route_20#/media/File:US_20_map.png)**
>
> U.S. Route 20 or U.S. Highway 20 (US 20) is an east–west United States Numbered Highway that stretches from the Pacific Northwest east to New England. The "0" in its route number indicates that US 20 is a major coast-to-coast route. Spanning 3,365 miles (5,415 km), it is the longest road in the United States, and, in the east, the route is roughly parallel to Interstate 90 (I-90), which is the longest Interstate Highway in the U.S. There is a discontinuity in the official designation of US 20
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### Author:  [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)
#### Post date: [April 28, 2016, 6:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-stuff-i-mean-really-really-expensive/753307/22 "2016-04-28T06:39:41Z")
> [@Isilder](#):
>
> 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.
>
> [U.S. Route 20 - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Route_20#/media/File:US_20_map.png)
Well, why limit it to the USA road network? It’s not as though all US roads stop at the borders.
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.
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### Author:  [@Shakester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shakester)
#### Post date: [April 28, 2016, 8:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-stuff-i-mean-really-really-expensive/753307/23 "2016-04-28T08:01:00Z")
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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### Author:  [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)
#### Post date: [April 28, 2016, 8:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-stuff-i-mean-really-really-expensive/753307/24 "2016-04-28T08:29:01Z")
> [@Shakester](#):
>
> 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?
The only limit is the amount of money that a private individual has to spend.
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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### Author:  [@Telperion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telperion)
#### Post date: [April 28, 2016, 9:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-stuff-i-mean-really-really-expensive/753307/25 "2016-04-28T09:03:36Z")
> [@Shakester](#):
>
> 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?
I would imagine something like a soccer team. Real Madrid is valued at $3.26 billion.
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### Author:  [@Tired\_and\_Cranky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tired_and_Cranky)
#### Post date: [April 28, 2016, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-stuff-i-mean-really-really-expensive/753307/26 "2016-04-28T13:41:54Z")
> [@Telperion](#):
>
> I would imagine something like a soccer team. Real Madrid is valued at $3.26 billion.
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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### Author:  [@Tired\_and\_Cranky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tired_and_Cranky)
#### Post date: [April 28, 2016, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-stuff-i-mean-really-really-expensive/753307/27 "2016-04-28T13:45:05Z")
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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### Author:  [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)
#### Post date: [April 28, 2016, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-stuff-i-mean-really-really-expensive/753307/28 "2016-04-28T14:08:31Z")
Postage stamps?
[QUOTE=Travis McGee]
“It is the most valuable stuff, Mr. McGee, on a size and weight basis, the world has ever known. Some years ago Ray Weil and his brother Roger, bought a Hawaiian stamp at auction for forty thousand. Very thin paper. Some newspaper guy in New Orleans, I think it was, figured out that it came to one and a half billion dollars a pound.”
[/QUOTE]
The novel this quote came from (The Scarlett Ruse) was published in 1972. Prices have surely risen since then.
(Another candidate would be the trans-uranic elements, with billions spent to produce a few molecules.)
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### Author:  [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)
#### Post date: [April 28, 2016, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-stuff-i-mean-really-really-expensive/753307/29 "2016-04-28T15:24:29Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#):
>
> 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.
Even there, I suspect that you could legitimately argue that you could spread a lot of the costs of the bedrock scientific research into fission across all subsequent nuclear weapon programs AND any government funded research into civilian nuclear applications.
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**.
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### Author:  [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)
#### Post date: [April 28, 2016, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-stuff-i-mean-really-really-expensive/753307/30 "2016-04-28T15:26:12Z")
> [@Shakester](#):
>
> 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?
This is a bit fuzzy to define; you could technically buy a “$10 billion mansion,” or a billion acres of land, etc.
My guess would be [this](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2338877/Migaloo-115m-submarine-yacht-helipad-swimming-pool-moves-deck-submerged.html).
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [April 28, 2016, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-stuff-i-mean-really-really-expensive/753307/31 "2016-04-28T15:46:43Z")
> [@](#):
>
> Quoth **Shakester** :
>
> 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.
Tell that to Elon Musk.
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### Author:  [@Beauregard\_Porkypine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beauregard_Porkypine)
#### Post date: [April 28, 2016, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-stuff-i-mean-really-really-expensive/753307/32 "2016-04-28T18:10:47Z")
As a single “thing” or man-made object, the Three Gorges Dam in China comes in at $27.6 Billion US Dollars.
> **[Three Gorges Dam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Gorges_Dam)**
>
> The Three Gorges Dam is a hydroelectric gravity dam that spans the Yangtze River by the town of Sandouping, in Yiling District, Yichang, Hubei province, central China, downstream of the Three Gorges. The world's largest power station in terms of installed capacity (22,500 MW), the Three Gorges Dam generates an average 95±20 TWh of electricity per year, depending on the annual amount of precipitation in the river basin. After the extensive monsoon rainfalls of 2020, the dam's annual produ The ...
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### Author:  [@Marvin\_the\_Martian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marvin_the_Martian)
#### Post date: [April 28, 2016, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-stuff-i-mean-really-really-expensive/753307/33 "2016-04-28T19:13:32Z")
> [@Rotola](#):
>
> Yellowstone isn’t man made. I guess I wasn’t thinking research and development but merely the cost of the object. And in $2016. I wonder how much the Great Wall of China would cost now?
Well, a while back John Oliver made an estimate that the Trump Wall would cost ~$25 billion…
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### Author:  [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)
#### Post date: [April 28, 2016, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-stuff-i-mean-really-really-expensive/753307/34 "2016-04-28T21:06:33Z")
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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### Author:  [@drachillix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drachillix)
#### Post date: [April 28, 2016, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-stuff-i-mean-really-really-expensive/753307/35 "2016-04-28T21:23:40Z")
> [@Chronos](#):
>
> Tell that to Elon Musk.
His still hidden Iron Man suit might qualify.
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### Author:  [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)
#### Post date: [April 28, 2016, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-stuff-i-mean-really-really-expensive/753307/36 "2016-04-28T21:59:42Z")
The [electric power grid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_grid) is basically a single huge, world-spanning machine. (Even if we only count [synchronous interconnections](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_area_synchronous_grid) 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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### Author:  [@Cabin\_Fever\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cabin_Fever_1)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2016, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-stuff-i-mean-really-really-expensive/753307/37 "2016-04-29T00:25:31Z")
> [@DrCube](#):
>
> The [electric power grid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_grid) is basically a single huge, world-spanning machine. (Even if we only count [synchronous interconnections](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_area_synchronous_grid) 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.
Good point
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### Author:  [@Dervorin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dervorin)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2016, 10:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-stuff-i-mean-really-really-expensive/753307/38 "2016-04-29T10:16:55Z")
The BBC had an article on this today:
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-36160368](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-36160368)
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### Author:  [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2016, 12:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-stuff-i-mean-really-really-expensive/753307/39 "2016-04-29T12:13:58Z")
> [@Ethilrist](#):
>
> 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).
> [@Little\_Nemo](#):
>
> 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.
This gets into the whole subject of [marginal cost](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginal_cost): how much it costs to make one more of something after you’ve already covered the cost of being able to produce any at all. Typically, investment-heavy items benefit from economy of scale.
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### Author:  [@Flyer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flyer)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2016, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expensive-stuff-i-mean-really-really-expensive/753307/40 "2016-04-29T13:51:49Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#):
>
> 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.
. . . now kids, if you ever have a gram of antimatter, don’t light it while you’re holding it. It will blow your fingers clear off.
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