This Space for Rent

They’re not thinking big enough…

A financial question was posed in a comment thread @ Making Light:

...If you suddenly had $11,000,000,000 cash, what the hell would you do with it?

I dunno. US$11 billion just doesn't seem to be that much money, does it? I've seen estimates that a manned spaceflight to Mars would cost US$100 billion, so that's out. But even with (heh) only US$11 billion, that's enough money to toss half a billion aside from some bright fund managers to generate an endless stream of money to live on and be left with over US$10 billion to, oh,

Mind you, this is just me. The people who already have the US$11 billion don't really care about things like that; they're perfectly happy to buy more solid gold swimming pools so they can bathe in US$100 bills. Which is another thing you can do with US$11 billion, even if it's not something I'd want to do. But, anyway, there are plenty of things you can spend US$11 billion dollars on, if you just think about it.