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HughPickens.com [hughpickens.com] writes:

Ed Davey has an interesting story at BBC about the proposed nuclear plant at Hinkley Point in Somerset , UK which at $35 billion will be the most expensive object ever put together on Earth [bbc.com]. For that sum you could build a small forest of Burj Khalifas [wikipedia.org] - the world's tallest building, in Dubai, which each cost $1.5bn, you could build almost six Large Hadron Colliders [wikipedia.org], built under the border between France and Switzerland to unlock the secrets of the universe, and at a cost a mere $5.8bn, or you could build five Oakland Bay Bridges in San Francisco [wikipedia.org], designed to withstand the strongest earthquake seismologists would expect within the next 1,500 years at a cost of $6.5bn. "Nuclear power plants are the most complicated piece of equipment we make," says Steve Thomas. "Cost of nuclear power plants has tended to go up throughout history as accidents happen and we design measures to deal with the risk."

But what about historical buildings like the the pyramids [wikipedia.org]. Although working out the cost of something built more than 4,500 years ago presents numerous challenges, in 2012 the Turner Construction Company estimated it could build the Great Pyramid of Giza for $5.0bn [livescience.com]. That includes about $730m for stone and $58m for 12 cranes. Labor is a minor cost as it is projected that a mere 600 staff would be necessary. In contrast, it took 20,000 people to build the original pyramid with a total of 77.6 million days' labor. Using the current Egyptian minimum wage of $5.73 a day, that gives a labor cost of $445m. But whatever the most expensive object on Earth is, up in the sky is something that eclipses all of these things. The International Space Station. Price tag: $110bn [science20.com].

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