SortStack #2278 — 2032-09-03

By price · Order from cheapest to most expensive.

1. A plain slice of pizza in New York City $3.00

   The 'Pizza Principle' holds that a NYC slice and a subway ride have cost roughly the same for decades — when one rises, the other tends to follow.

2. A new hot-air balloon with basket and burner $40K

   The envelope fabric slowly degrades with UV exposure — most balloons retire after a few hundred flight hours, making cost per flight surprisingly high.

3. The Pink Star diamond, sold at auction in Hong Kong $71.2M

   A previous buyer defaulted after bidding $83 million, forcing a re-auction — the 59.6 carat stone took two years just to cut and polish.

4. Constructing the Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building $1.5B

   It was renamed at the last minute for the president of Abu Dhabi, whose emirate bailed out Dubai during the 2009 debt crisis — it was to be called Burj Dubai.

5. Pixar, when Disney bought it $7.4B

   The 2006 deal made Steve Jobs Disney's largest individual shareholder — he had bought Pixar from George Lucas two decades earlier for about $10 million.

6. The entire Apollo Moon program, in the dollars of its day $25.4B

   At its peak, Apollo employed about 400,000 people and consumed more than 4% of the US federal budget — per landing, each Moon mission cost less than a modern aircraft carrier.

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