For the price of the Iraq War, we could've bought enough paint to paint the light side of the moon red.
The moon has a surface area of 14,645,750 square miles. It is in synchronous rotation with the Earth, meaning that the same half of it faces the Earth at all times. Since a square mile is 27,878,400 square feet (that's 5280 feet squared) the light side of the moon is 204 trillion square feet.
LTX Bright Red Enamel paint, by Valspar, covers 400 square feet per gallon. So we would need 510 billion gallons of it to cover the light side of the moon. At the current price of $5.49 per gallon, we could paint the light side of the moon for $2.80 trillion, which is less than Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes' estimate of $3 trillion for the cost of the Iraq War.
Image adapted under a Creative Commons License from jahdakinebrah.
Image adapted under a Creative Commons License from jahdakinebrah.
