The estimated costs were 13,000 times the world’s GDP just for raw materials (yes, even if they buy in bulk).
Doesn't usually stop them. :P
Im starting to wonder if members of the Hexus forums should start being paid for finding newstories for you guys when you are having slow days :p
I would love to know how much they paid someone to assess the cost of building it…….
Time for China to step up, uh oh.
Pop it on Kickstarter…raise the funds for that in no time!
What tickles me about this story is not that someone raised this petition, and got at least 33,999 other people to sign it, but USGov's response.
Note it isn't "building this isn't physically possible“ it's instead ”it's too expensive“. Maybe that old cliche about being able to do anything that doesn't violate natural laws if you have enough money is true.
As to the steel production issue - I'm sure there's some very clever folks at NASA/MIT/CMU/etc who could figure a way around that - mine other planets, the asteroid belt, etc. Although steel seems a little low tech - surely ”aluminum" (yes, US spelling) would be better.
The again these days the US doesn't do space shuttles, their own space station, lunar bases, etc, so the chances of doing building some space doobrie that's the size of a small moon was zero anyway.
i think americans are little bit off the axis…
Wasn't there a similar story with the Enterprise, that at least could be a global effort and probably a lot cheaper and useful?
I think a global effort for the Enterprise would be nice. Good to have a long term hobby for the whole planet to share. Then maybe try for a Dyson sphere (after all space is full of vacuum ho ho).