> That's an absolutely enormous expense, that, needless to say, wouldn't be funded by those scientists but by society as a whole.
Looks like you forgot to read the article before commenting.
What enormous expense? They're talking about a cost of $200 million. That is chump change for the _individual billionaire philanthropist_ funding it out of his own pocket, not "society as a whole". This is his play money. Some billionaires own super yachts and other toys that cost multiple times that amount. The Eclipse superyacht cost $1.5 billion, owned by a Russian oligarch. That's 7.5 times the cost of this moon telescope, for one stupid yacht, that itself is a drop in the ocean of expensive toys in the world.
Looks like you forgot to read the article before commenting.
What enormous expense? They're talking about a cost of $200 million. That is chump change for the _individual billionaire philanthropist_ funding it out of his own pocket, not "society as a whole". This is his play money. Some billionaires own super yachts and other toys that cost multiple times that amount. The Eclipse superyacht cost $1.5 billion, owned by a Russian oligarch. That's 7.5 times the cost of this moon telescope, for one stupid yacht, that itself is a drop in the ocean of expensive toys in the world.