Features
Space Vs. Stadium
While most people cheered the New Horizons space probe that flew by Pluto July 15, some questioned its cost.
The new home of the NFL’s Minnesota Vikings, shown in an artists rendering, is getting a $19.7 million cash infusion from the team to ensure it gets the features they want after construction estimates went up.
In an effort to put things in perspective, WCCO-TV in Minneapolis compared it to the under-construction NFL stadium in that city.
The stadium will cost more – much more. The taxpayers’ tab for the voyage of New Horizons rang up an estimated $720 million. The Minnesota Vikings stadium price tag to date is $1 billion, according to the station. Once the space probe is done sending back data from the edge of the solar system, it will head out into the great beyond, likely never to be heard from again.
The stadium should have a shelf life a bit longer than the 10 years the New Horizon project will encompass.
“People are talking about why are you going to spend money in space? Well actually, we’re not spending it in space. It’s all spent down here,” NASA “ambassador” Ron Schmidt told WCCO. “Jobs, people, building the probes. People designing them, that’s all in our economy just like anything else.”