Dustin’s point, as I understand it, is not that you overestimated or that you underestimated, nor that you didn’t give a detailed accounting of all the facilities involved, it’s that you’re confusing two completely different questions. (1) How much did the EHT project cost? (2) How much did the telescopes used by the EHT project cost to build and run? You made a claim about #1 and when challenged on it offered some numbers relating to #2.
You do say one thing that purports to link them: ”… if EHT kept the telescopes in operation when they would’ve otherwise lost funding …”. But that’s one heck of a big if and I know of no reason to think that EHT kept any telescopes in operation that would otherwise have lost funding. And even if it did, that wouldn’t justify including the cost of building the telescopes in your estimate of the cost of EHT, unless the telescopes in question were never used for anything other than EHT.
(One journalistic outlet has given a concrete estimate for the cost of the EHT project. They say 50 to 60 million dollars. I don’t know where they got that estimate or how much to trust it, but it sounds much much more believable to me than your “billions of dollars”.)
Dustin’s point, as I understand it, is not that you overestimated or that you underestimated, nor that you didn’t give a detailed accounting of all the facilities involved, it’s that you’re confusing two completely different questions. (1) How much did the EHT project cost? (2) How much did the telescopes used by the EHT project cost to build and run? You made a claim about #1 and when challenged on it offered some numbers relating to #2.
You do say one thing that purports to link them: ”… if EHT kept the telescopes in operation when they would’ve otherwise lost funding …”. But that’s one heck of a big if and I know of no reason to think that EHT kept any telescopes in operation that would otherwise have lost funding. And even if it did, that wouldn’t justify including the cost of building the telescopes in your estimate of the cost of EHT, unless the telescopes in question were never used for anything other than EHT.
(One journalistic outlet has given a concrete estimate for the cost of the EHT project. They say 50 to 60 million dollars. I don’t know where they got that estimate or how much to trust it, but it sounds much much more believable to me than your “billions of dollars”.)