Skip to main content

When can I buy the Millennium Falcon?

Obsession

I am obsessed with rocket ships. (Why? Because Trump might be the President of the US, and I don't want to be here at that point.)  My hero is Elon Musk (read about his latest adventures in the wait but why blog, by Tim Urban, another one of my heroes!)  Why am I obsessed with rocket ships? Because that's the only way to save your ass when the sh*t relay hits the fan. Some day, when we have an intergalactic civilization, it will be obvious when you have to leave a planet because crazy people are taking over, with a spaceship you can actually do it. Today, not so much.

How Much Can I Pay?

So, when can I buy the Millennium Falcon?  Okay, not me specifically, but someone in my situation. Let's assume you are in the top one percent of the US economy. And let's assume that the economy grows  at 3 percent per year (okay, aggessive but not unbelievable.)  So how much money am I making every year?  According to CNN I should be making $400,00 in 2010 to be in the top 1%.  So assume I want to buy an Recreational Vehicle (the Millennium Falcon is the coolest RV ever, but WTF, going for the win.)  $800,000 in the year 2040 and $1.6 Million in 2064.  A 3 % growth rate means it doubles every 24 years.

How Much Would it Cost?

So how much would the Millennium Falcon cost today?    The Apollo moon landing cost about $12 Billion per launch (in todays dollars) and took place in 1970.  A shuttle launch took about $450 Million in 2010. Today, just to get to low  earth orbit costs $70 million per launch, which is a lot. And Elon has promised to drop it to $500,000 in 2040 to get people to Mars.  If you average those numbers out, it's a fairly steady 12.3% improvement per year.  Not bad.  That means the cost comes done by half every 6 years.

Can I Afford it?

Now let's assume that I'm going to live in the Millenium Falcon, so I can afford to finance it like I do a house, over 30 years, using 25 % of my income (if you live in CA, this will sound familiar.)  So, at a 3 % interest rate I can finance about $5,000,000 in 2040 (10x the trip cost.)  So, it might not be the Millennium Falcon, but certainly you could finance some type of space station vehicle.  Space front property.  Not sure if we'll have faster than light travel (the Alcubierre warp drive might take a little longer to get the kinks out of it) but the ship will be able to take off and land.  Good enough for me. I declare a win.

And Where Can We Go?

And here's where the Millennium Falcon can take you: On the grand tour, and further.
But what we're really aiming for is to have Burning Man on Mars.
So that takes a little bit more effort, but 2040 seems like a great goal!

Photo

Thanks for reading.
 -Dr. Mike

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Declaration of Independence is the foundation of modern ethics

The Settlement of the War between Science and Religion . Why the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights are More Important than you realize. These two documents provide the foundation of the Grand Moral Compromise between Religion and Science that allowed the Industrial Revolution to progress by defining the morals and ethics of governments and their relationship with the people. The only moral and ethical form of government is declared to be a Lawful Democracy with Religious  Freedom . These two documents define why this is from first postulates and dictate the method to form a government. The Grand Moral Compromise was defined in the Declaration of Independence and codified in the Bill of Rights : it is the agreement that abolished the crime of heresy in return for freedom of all religions , including science , the harbinger of truth . Only about half [G] of the world has agreed to this  Grand Moral Compromise , the rest are still at war with themselv
Post a Comment
Read more

Ten Grand Technical Challenges of the 21st century: 1. Settle Space, Mars, moon, asteroids, the solar system.

Settle Space, Mars, moon, asteroids, the solar system. The first of the Ten Grand Technical Challenges of the 21st century TIme for some more blogging. One blog post on each of the TEN GRAND CHALLENGES of the 21st century. The things that make us proud to be a part of the human race. The things that we should be doing regardless of what else is true, the things that make life have meaning. Humanity will infect the galaxy; we already are. Humanity has a chance to make a real mark on the universe. If you look at what we've been throwing out into space for the last 50 years, it's obvious we have some innate need to expand into new environments. People have been in space almost continuously since 1971 (that'd be ~50 years) and I detailed the history of the technology in this post [1] about how technology changes things. We keep throwing robots out there as fast and as far as we can. They aren't yet killer robots (we keep those closer to ho
Post a Comment
Read more

Grand Vacations or Burning Man on Mars. It could happen.

Precursors No, it will happen. At least if the aliens don't get here first. But we'll talk about that in another blog post. What I want to talk about today is the mistaken idea that progress will end. There's a neat book by John Brockman , actually a series of books that I call 'blog fodder.' The one that drove me to write about Grand Vacations is: " This Idea Must Die: Scientific Theories that are Blocking Progress ." John has put together several books of this type where he asks scientists, economists and others to write something provocative on his chosen topic. These books are great fun to scan. Many of the articles are great fun, many are just crazy, some are so bad they aren't even wrong (as Wolfgang Pauli would say.) The article that started my train of thought that has led to this blog post was: "Economic Growth." Cesar Hidalgo , an Associate Professor at MIT claims the idea of economic growth must die. He makes two arg
Post a Comment
Read more