Time for yet another reality check.

The concept of establishing a base on the moon is typical political nonsense.  The United States, as a nation, does not have the present ability to send a human to the International Space Station, or return one from there - a distance about the same as a straight flight from Oahu to the Big island; just over 200 miles.

The cost of a US nuclear attack submarine, not a 'boomer', is ~2.5 BILLION dollars.  The greatest depth at which one can operate is classified, but less than 2,000 feet.  The longest sniper kill recorded was at a distance of 8,120 feet....twice.  For perspective, if you could drive your car straight down in the ocean at 55 mph, you'd pass 99% of all submarines within ten seconds and all of them a few seconds later.  Or you could drive from Aloha Gas in the Malama center to the new fire station in Pahoa. That's half a mile.

ONE B-2 'Spirit' aircraft, at an initial cost of $2.4B costs roughly the same as a nuclear attack submarine.  There are only 20 B-2s in existence and no more are planned.  The airframes are now aging and countermeasures to their stealth capabilities exist.  The B-1B, supposedly the Air Force's strategic backbone, has actually flown some combat sorties - but the Big Dog is still the B-52...from 1952.

Clocking in at half-a billion dollars each, after repairs to the airframes and other problems, are the 150 or so airworthy Generation 4 F-22 Raptors the US owns.  Unfortunately, Sukoi has a Gen 5 bird flying...the PAK FA, which renders the F-22 and the on-again/off-again F-35 strategically irrelevant.   http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-2010-01.html  

And at a quarter of a billion dollars each, are the new VH-71 Presidential helicopters, still in development.

This is just the warm-up.  I'll cover the cost of food, precious metals, stocks, the global economy, and try to find out where common sense went in subsequent posts.