[extropy-chat] Re: What to do with $100B? Mars, Nano or Life?

[Robert J. Bradbury]

Hi Yosé,

I will try to respond to a your questions as best I can.

> You pose a fundamental question. What to do with a hundred billion dollars?

I could have posed what to do with a trillion dollars but I was being
conservative... :-;  As I recall $100B is the number that was tossed
around as the cost of going to Mars under George H.W. Bush.  Its probably
more expensive now.  For example a quick Google finds that the Apollo
costs were $25B (probably in '60s or '70's dollars) and the cost of
a return to the moon in '99 dollars range from ~$40B to $300B [1,2].

> I would agree with you that it is a lot of money just to go to Mars, but
> also just for nanotechnology. With that amount of money, we could probably
> find the secrets of life extension and even immortality?

Yes, Aubrey's proposal for the IBG is only about $1B over 10 years.
Quite small compared with any significant space effort.  It doesn't
solve aging as a whole but does make a significant dent in some of
the major processes we are aware of at this time.

> Your message puts light in a fundamental economic concept: opportunity cost.
> And between Mars and immortality, I take the second without any doubts.

While I dislike the term immortality (as recent discussions on Mark's paper
have pointed out there may be terms that better capture the idea as we
currently understand it).

> And later I would go to Mars as well:-)

Of course -- current estimates if we eliminate aging would allow us on
average several thousand years of fatal accident free life -- plenty of
time to go to Mars.  But you may want to get your ticket early.  Once we
have the total power output of the sun at our disposal the dismantlement
time is only 12 hours.

Better get your ticket now because it may be gone before you can
get there :-;

Robert

1. Wikipedia: Apollo Program: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program
2. S.E.I. Lunar Excursions: http://www.abo.fi/~mlindroo/Station/Slides/sld049c.htm