I originally started thinking about "how do we understand large numbers" when I saw the article as I think I had roughly the same emotional reaction as I would have done if the number was $70B. Most "big number" comparisons go to things like "dollar bills up to the moon" or "swimming pool full of X" which only gets across "this is a big number". I found comparing it to other enormous projects was hard even as if you take out the US contribution to the LHC you don't move the needle, so you need to then cover all countries costs, then the full project budget for all years and you're still left with almost the entire figure left.
This was the original article I saw when it was $700B: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/09/how-the-u...
More recent one, I thought it was $950B but this puts it at $760-935B. The potential savings are lower but still in the low hundreds of billions.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2752664
I originally started thinking about "how do we understand large numbers" when I saw the article as I think I had roughly the same emotional reaction as I would have done if the number was $70B. Most "big number" comparisons go to things like "dollar bills up to the moon" or "swimming pool full of X" which only gets across "this is a big number". I found comparing it to other enormous projects was hard even as if you take out the US contribution to the LHC you don't move the needle, so you need to then cover all countries costs, then the full project budget for all years and you're still left with almost the entire figure left.