Question: How much does the X-ray laser cost?

Sam Vinko answered on 12 Mar 2012:

The construction cost was around 500 million dollars. This was because parts where recycled, otherwise it would have been more. The operations costs (costs to keep it running, doing experiments and science, paying the staff) are around 100 million dollars each year.

A similar machine that is being built from scratch in Germany as we speak is costing in excess of 1 billion euro, paid by a collaboration of EU states, China and Russia.

This might sound like a lot of money, but this is a long term investment in science and technology which will make the money back several times during its lifetime. On the grand scale of things, these high one-off costs are still less then 2% of what the UK alone spends on its military each year!