this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2026
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$200 billion is $50 billion more than the entire program cost of the International Space Station, which is claimed to be the most expensive single object ever constructed.
ISS delivers manned orbital habitation at a rate of $7.5 million per astronaut-day, which is less than half what Skylab cost.
$200B is more than double the cost of designing and implementing Australia's national broadband network, and that was after our conservative party fucked it up and more than doubled the cost. You could easily have had a modern publicly owned backbone telecommunications infrastructure for 200B USD
No they couldn't.
The US gave $200 billion in tax breaks to telcos in the 1990s for them to upgrade everyone to fibre. The telcos did not build the fibre.
$200 & $300 Billion Broadband Scandal – The IRREGULATORS | An Independent, Expert Telecom Team - https://irregulators.org/200-billion-broadband-scandal/
Yeah, that's not how you upgrade public infrastructure, that's how you give 200 billion to some investors .. Australia took a slightly different approach .. well at least we tried to until the LNP insisted on paying the telcos more money so NBNCo could build a shittier product that then had to be fixed. Even with those shenanigans we still got a public broadband infrastructure for less than half of the 200 billion hegseth wants to make fuel prices even higher ..
❌MTM - Multi Technology Mix
✅MTM - Malcolm Turnbull's Mess
Wait, how much did/does jwst cost? 10.8 billion? Dammit it's so fancy tho
Yep. All of the unmanned stuff is a real bargain.
I think Hubble was even cheaper too, but Hubble was a hand me down spy sat from NRO.