What can $700 Billion Buy?

With all the talk about the government bailout in the news right now, I got to thinking about just how much money $700 billion dollars is. So here are some depressing numbers.

$700,000,000,000 =

1.25 Iraq Wars (based on the ~$558 billion cost shown at this site at 12:30 am EDT on Sept 29, 2008)

or

5 Apollo Programs (at ~$135 billion inflation-adjusted dollars for the entire program from conception to cancellation)

or

40 times NASA’s budget ($17.3 billion)

or

116 times the budget of the National Science Foundation (~$6 billion)

or

214 Cassini-Huygens missions (at ~$3.26 billion apiece)

or

538 space shuttle launches (averaging ~$1.3 billion per launch)

or

1,750 MER rovers (based on the ~$800 million cost to build, launch, and operate both rovers for 90 days)

or

$2,324.50 for every american

or

salaries for 1,104,148 new teachers (using the national median of $33,973)

or

42,795,133 college educations (using the average total cost for a 4-year public, in-state undergraduate program)

That is a lot of money.

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