No, not untold. $300 million. About $1 from every American, over 30+ years. To figure out how the universe works. You would rather spend it on a bridge to nowhere? That would cost quite a bit more.
It takes a lot of hundred-million-dollar things to get anywhere near tens of trillions.
Hmmmmmm
Apparently you have drank some the government BS Kool-Aid.. Everyone knows a guvmint project will run over budget.......
Started out costing 185 million... Was up to 330 million in 2006... God only know what the true cost is today.
......
I hope you go back and correct your 300 million figure...
here is an article from 2006.
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NASA leaves jumbo-jet telescope on the runway
Mission managers on the SOFIA project to fly an infrared telescope aboard a 747 aircraft, are fighting to prevent the project's abandonment under NASA's budget cuts.
Despite SOFIA being behind schedule and over budget, they say it makes no sense to stop work on the mission now, so near completion.
SOFIA's telescope is already installed in the 747, says David Black, president of the Universities Space Research Association (USRA), which developed the project.
Checks of its wiring and structure are expected to take several more months, but "then it's ready to go to flight tests", Black told
New Scientist. "It is late and it's over the original budget," Black acknowledges. "But we're there now. After all this, it is a bit baffling as to why this particular decision was taken."
SOFIA (Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy) is a Boeing 747 aircraft fitted with a 23-tonne, 2.5-metre infrared telescope. The plane was designed to be flown at altitudes of 13 kilometres - above 99% of the water vapour in Earth's atmosphere, which absorbs infrared radiation.
Increased safety
The project began in 1996, when NASA selected the USRA, an international consortium of research institutes devoted to space exploration, to develop SOFIA. The project was meant to cost $185 million and fly in 2002.
But costs have now spiralled to $330 million -