For the price of the Iraq war, we could've bought enough Pabst Blue Ribbon to cover Phobos, Mars' biggest moon, knee-deep in a sea of beer.
Phobos is the largest moon of the planet Mars. It has a surface area of 6100 square kilometers. If we estimate the height of a knee at 50 cm -- roughly the height to the top of my knee -- it would take 3.05 billion cubic meters of beer to cover Phobos knee-deep on average (craters would be deeper, while elevated portions of the moon might stick out as islands). This would require 50.4 billion kegs of beer. Pabst Blue Ribbon can be bought for $51 per keg. At this price, we could cover Phobos knee-deep in beer for $2.57 trillion, which is less than Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes' estimate of $3 trillion for the cost of the Iraq War.
Image used under a Creative Commons License from lodri.
Image used under a Creative Commons License from lodri.
