The Cost of SETI: Infographic

John at μcosmologist has created an interesting infographic depicting how much it would cost to run SETI from one year ($2.5 million) versus various other things we spend money on. In the graphic, each radio dish represents $2.5 million. Here’s a (small) piece of it:

[Click to enalienate.]

The whole thing is much larger, and you really need to see it. Especially the bit about how much people spend on Starbucks. Yegads.

John made this because of SETI having to mothball the Allen Telescope Array, and I strongly suspect because people were trying to say there are better things to spend money on. I’ll tell you, I think that argument is a crock. First off, it’s a false dichotomy; we can afford to do more than what we need to survive. And moreover, there is always something better to spend money on, yet we still seem to be able to justify (or rationalize) the way we spend the money we do.

In the United States alone we spend five times as much on tobacco products as we do on the entirety of NASA. How’s that for rationalization? And what we ...

Full story at http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/05/01/the-cost-of-seti-infographic/