Breaking News: Nuclear fusion- the way to conquer Sol.

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QUICK EDIT: Let's throw some numbers with dollar signs in there as well. An inflation-adjusted cost for a Saturn V rocket to lift a 100,000 pound (45,000 kg) payload into a translunar injection orbit (translation: you will go to the moon today) is $1,160,000,000 USD. If anyone can find estimates on global annual spending on electricity generation, those numbers would be awesome.

Found some! According to the IEA, the annual global subsidies on fossil energy was $523 billion (523,000,000,000) USD in 2011, which was six times more than the subsidies on renewables, so the total global government expenditures on power generation was (very) approximately $610 billion (610,000,000,000) USD back then.

Sounds like the bargain of the century to me!

...Well, except for it being a tiny little bit more complicated than that, of course. Those $1.16 billion dollars are just for the rocket itself, and does not include the cost of the payload, the actual mining and processing work (which we don't do yet) nor the fusion power plants (which we also don't/can't do yet) and a heap of other (important) details. Such as actually getting the ³He you've mined back again. But still. Any method of power generation which involves fusion power, huge rockets and lunar mining is going to be a whole lot cooler than fossil fuels any day. Pun unintended.

EDIT: Added a picture of a coal power plant and a video of a Saturn V launch, for comparative purposes.

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