Is space exploration expensive?

In 1957 we launched the first satellite, four years later Gagarin circled the earth, and eight years later Armstrong walked across the moon. For 12 years, mankind has made a big step in space. But then the space programs were too expensive and we slowed down significantly in space exploration. And with the development of the Internet, our focus turned out to be completely shifted from exploring space to creating consumer products. Mankind wanted flying machines, and received 140 characters.

At Alconost Video, we thought about whether space really is expensive and compared the budgets of space programs and the profit / capitalization of modern IT giants. The result is in the video:


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For example, Twitter’s net profit for 2014 would be enough to send the Deep Space 1 probe to the asteroid Braille and comet Borelli. And Apple's annual income would be enough to dot Mars with fifteen (!) Curiosity type rovers.

More information - under the cut.

For the amount spent on the purchase of WhatsApp, six Rosetta probes could be sent to comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. And if someone decided to sell Instagram, that would be enough to launch fourteen Hubble telescopes into Earth's orbit.

And what kind of space exploration can we talk about if the annual NASA budget is only one-fifth of what Microsoft earns in a year?

And if Larry Ellison and Bill Gates combined their capital, you could finance the entire Apollo program, which includes six lunar landings. And the remaining money would be enough to launch a Cassini-Huygens probe to the rings of Saturn.

It turns out that space exploration is not so expensive? Hey, IT giants, what do you say?