What would be your plans if you had a trillion dollars?

[Piatzin]

There's a catch, though, and that is that you cannot use the money in any way that influences you directly.

And by that I mean that you can't list things like '1) Buy mansion, 2) Yacht, 3) Roadster, etc.

You can list things or come up with something that will indirectly affect you though. So if you want to start an aerospace company, then that's entirely possible, with the one rule that any money you make can't be used for you personally, even if the advancement of space exploration affects you indirectly.

That sort of thing.

Spoiler

Personally, I would go all this:

The towers can cost anywhere from 25 to 100 million dollars to construct, depending on the structure itself and what additional security, scientists and personnel in general would be in it.

Basically, the idea would be to start a private company focused on agriculture and higher level education. The plan would be to set up vertical farms in very poor regions of Africa (e.g, Malawi) that are constantly getting hit with droughts and famine, and that will continue to suffer as climate change progresses. Most of these areas feature heavy deforestation as well, and the land is not always the most suitable for farming.

The private company would build the towers in the middle of these areas, and would staff them with a force of teachers, scientists, engineers, and, unfortunately, armed security, since, well.... Towers full of food may be prone to looting of a sort.

The people in the tower would all be payed 'employees,' chosen for having a certain, philanthropic attitude, and would help establish schools in the regions surrounding the tower. The tower would, in time, become a hub of education, where locals would be taught useful skills, educated in general, and eventually instructed on how to operate the vertical farms.

Eventually, the private employees would no longer be needed, and when withdrawn, they would (ideally) leave behind a more educated populace with consistent school funding and a rising generation of engineers and scientists - essentially, kids with opportunity. The vertical farm would provide food security, and the schools would provide the knowledge to keep the operation running.

Obviously, there's a crap ton of things that would have to be sorted out before embarking on an operation of this size (politics and economics, particularly), but somewhere out there in an ideal world, it's possible

The towers would solve the need for expansive farmland, and would help take some pressure off the constant deforestation. In my head, they would only be the 'boost' of sorts that would propel the local populations out of the situation they're in right now and into a better one that is easier to climb out of. (Such as in 'the boy who harnessed the wind').

The primary locations of the towers would be Africa, which is a tad problematic since there's quite a fair amount of violence and even 'small-scale' wars.....

And no, a trillion dollars is not that absurd a quantity of money. The US government spends almost 3/4's of that in a single year, just on the military. It's not an inordinate amount.

Kind of. Depends on how you look at it

.-.

Edited September 4, 2018 by Earthlinger

[Green Baron]

Before or after taxes ?

[Bill Phil]

Probably space stuff. Lots of space stuff. Maybe too much space stuff...

Oh, and probably a fusion research program.

[Geonovast]

I once saw a video of a guy doing some weird walk/dance thing down the streets of some large city (New York, maybe?).  He was handing out $5 bills to random people.

That would be me.  I'd be that guy.

[Randazzo]

Well, if I couldn't spend it any of it on myself...

I'd drop a quarter of it, in cash of small bills, from a plane, over each of the following: Chicago, Atlanta, New York, and Los Angeles.

No warning for the local authorities, just 250 million in fives and tens fluttering down from the sky. Should be fun to watch. 

 

[Kernel Kraken]

I would donate half, then I would start a percussion company with a fiftieth of it. The rest would probably just go to buying milling machines, drill presses, and a factory.

Or give it to the government in a bribe to make coal and oil illegal. That should work.

Edited September 4, 2018 by Kernel Kraken

[Deddly]

I would buy the rights to Kerbal Space Program, write a humerous EULA for it and fund the development of 100 different versions so everyone gets what they want

[Just Jim]

I would immediately initiate a hostile takeover of @Deddly, and buy KSP out from under him...  only because we have the same idea...

To own KSP!!!  

[Deddly]

Well, @Just Jim can have it, then, as long as he keeps the humerous EULA

[Just Jim]

Just now, Deddly said:

Well, @Just Jim can have it, then, as long as he keeps the humerous EULA

Absolutely!!!

You can be my senior vice-president in charge of Humorous EULA's... lmao

[Green Baron]

Education and in my own university were i'd just hang around as an eternal student and haunt the lectures and tease the lecturers. Incognito of course :-)

Remains to say that having plans for an unlikely situation is something very different from actually being that situation.

 

[kerbiloid]

I would buy a 40 TByte two 40 TByte HDD.

Edited September 4, 2018 by kerbiloid

[Just Jim]

7 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

Education and in my own university were i'd just hang around as an eternal student and haunt the lectures and tease the lecturers. Incognito of course :-)

Remains to say that having plans for an unlikely situation is something very different from actually being that situation.

Actually, I really like the education idea. Owning KSP would be fun, but I like the idea of opening some sort of technical school... Pure science, none of that other crap...Just classes devoted to future astronauts and engineers and such... 

Just JIm's school for Advanced Science Geeks!!! hehehehe

[HansonKerman]

S'rsly??

Charity.

[Chel]

I would give 500 billion to charity, keep a *little bit* to myself, and use the rest to support the homeless living in the local park.

[adsii1970]

33 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

Education and in my own university were i'd just hang around as an eternal student and haunt the lectures and tease the lecturers. Incognito of course :-)

Remains to say that having plans for an unlikely situation is something very different from actually being that situation.

 

I actually joked about this a few weeks ago at work. If I won the Powerball, I would do a school which specialized in undergraduate seminar courses, such as foreign policy issues, domestic policy, and even STEM based seminars, just to encourage undergraduates to become better stewards of their education...

19 minutes ago, Just Jim said:

Actually, I really like the education idea. Owning KSP would be fun, but I like the idea of opening some sort of technical school... Pure science, none of that other crap...Just classes devoted to future astronauts and engineers and such... 

Just JIm's school for Advanced Science Geeks!!! hehehehe

Ha. I'll just assist you...

6 minutes ago, The_Cat_In_Space said:

I would give 500 billion to charity, keep a *little bit* to myself, and use the rest to support the homeless living in the local park.

That's easy. Create a non-profit charity and then get members on the board to give you a compensation package for your time involved in doing business for the charity. Politicians do this stuff all the time and it is actually legal...

[Cydonian Monk]

My actions with $1TT that I couldn't spend in a way that directly involved myself would almost certainly result in a war in Europe, so I should probably just abstain.

That type of wealth can also snowball, if one is a careful shepherd. And then you'd have real money, not that $1TT isn't already enough to put a serious dent in the universe. If you had real assets like that and the ability to defend them and use them, there's really not much you _couldn't_ do. Buy up all the newspapers, build roads, replace government institutions such as libraries and postal services, move whole cities, rework entire economic systems, redraw borders, sell Belgium to Spain, buy Hawai'i, etc.

Edited September 4, 2018 by Cydonian Monk

[Spaceception]

A trillion dollars? I suppose I'd have enough to start my own elaborate consp- see's rules Ah, space, yeah. Lot's of space. Education too.

Edited September 5, 2018 by Spaceception

[Bill Phil]

Maybe start a university. Or a foundation for unbiased scientific research, acting as a source for grant money for scientists that might otherwise not get grant money for their research. Of course, I could also set up a suitable method for increasing the total amount of money, so that I could keep doing all that without running out of money...

[LordFerret]

@Earthlinger

Vertical farming is not new. It does exist. As a matter of fact, it exists right here in New Jersey, and it's expanding.

http://boweryfarming.com/

[Vanamonde]

I would fund a study to discover why @Deddly is so fascinated with arm bones. 

[Gargamel]

Buy Squad.

Finish up and release 1.5

Make KSP 2.

Make it free to previous users and anybody with an .edu address. 

Use that popularity to expand Squad's library, and make them profitable.

 

Start a university that hands out free emails.

 

Buy whatever company is/was Firaxis and have them fix the Bugs in Sid Meiers RailRoads. 

 

Host Kerbal-Kon. 

 

 

Edited September 5, 2018 by Gargamel

[kerbiloid]

Is somebody going to buy SpaceX and gift it to Squad?

[Piatzin]

4 hours ago, LordFerret said:

Vertical farming is not new. It does exist. As a matter of fact, it exists right here in New Jersey, and it's expanding.

Yeah I know it's not new :)

There are various companies that are invested in the industry right now, but none of them are particularly large scale yet.

[Kerbinchaser]

Buy a WWII era Destroyer.

Host parties on a literal warship.

Travel the world as the richest man in the world on a freaking piece of history. 

Buy my parents a sailboat yacht. 

Give some to my family. 

Give it all to charity because @Earthlinger is mean. 

Edited September 5, 2018 by Lo Var Lachland