OK, so here's a mission that NASA could sink its teeth into one that should recoup every last dollar spent, and also pay a boatload more.
We've discovered a planet made of diamond! OK, so I wasn't part of that we, but you get the idea. We as a species have found evidence of this heavenly body the composition of which is a heavenly substance: diamond.
Why? Well, it has to do with the star that the planet orbits. That star is a super-fast pulsar, a neutron star that, every so often, sends out cosmically gigantic blasts of energy that have, over time, worn down the poor planet's defense to the point where the carbon within has been ground down into diamond.
Weirdly, the planet is larger than the star it orbits. The planet's diameter is 37,300 miles, which is roughly five times that of our planet (so that's a lot of diamond). The pulsar, on the other hand, is 3,000 times smaller than the diamond planet. The planet is itself the remains of a star, which partly explains the size discrepancy.
And now, all that's left is diamond. So, fire up the rocket engines and let's get going! An entire planet made of diamond is worth, according to the best estimates available, a trillion trillion dollars. (And no, that's not a typo.)
All we need to do is to go there, scoop up a whole lot of the planet, and bring it back. No problem, right? Then we have diamonds galore for people to buy, sell, appreciate, and … fight over. Oh, wait, maybe it's not such a good idea after all. We'd need to sort the distribution schedule well beforehand.
Actually, we probably have time to do that, even to the extent of going through all the proper channels the U.N. and consulting representatives of every country on the planet and such because the star is 4,000 light-years away and it will take a hell of a long time to get there and get back. By the time the load of diamonds returns, we surely would have sorted out our differences, one way or the other.
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