Our Astronomical National Debt

When I applied for a software job at a well-known communications company, I wrote a little program that calculated the national debt. It was rather whimsical, a drawing of a billboard sign with the national debt racing ahead in real time. It worked, and I got the gig. Absorbed in my new job, my interest in the debt dissipated, and I lost track of its progress.

Around 2009, I remembered this interview and wondered: what was the debt up to lately? Of course, I was aware it was getting bigger and bigger, faster and faster, but I wanted to put it into some sort of perspective. My thought was to, as other commentators have done, imagine the debt expressed in dollar bills and to put them end-to-end to see how far they would go. (Not in stacks; I’m going for maximum pathos here.)

As I soon found out, the string of dollar bills reached deep into the solar system, literally an astronomical sum. All I remember from that calculation years ago was that it took 100 minutes for light to travel the dollar chain, roughly the time it takes to watch the movie Glengarry Glen Ross. “Surely,” I thought, “the end is near; this can’t go on forever. Why, if this keeps up, that chain of dollar bills will reach Pluto! No way that’s gonna happen!”

And that brings us up to today.

As you have most likely guessed, dear reader, the dollar chain has already passed Pluto’s distance from Earth’s orbit. All that is left is the Kuiper Belt, and that is a pale substitute for the drama of bypassing a planet. Perhaps this chart, a journey down memory lane, will take the sting out of having no more planets to pass:

*Calculated using the average gap between planetary orbital paths.

 So now that we are out of planets to bypass, what’s next? How do we continue to visualize the ever-growing national debt?

How about velocity?

Let’s start with a thought experiment. Imagine you have 150 dollar bills and you would like to lay them end-to-end. It takes you 4 seconds to grab a bill and place it at the end of the growing chain. If you did this for ten minutes, the speed of the moving edge of the dollar chain would be approximately 0.087 mph.

Obviously, the National Debt grows just a bit more than $900 dollars per hour. Let’s go back to 1980 and scale up the experiment. To visualize this, one might imagine a trip to the Bonneville Salt Flats of Utah (the traditional home of land-speed records) where the vast expanse provides the necessary room for this grand experiment. The task is to lay end-to-end all the dollar bills representing the actual debt accrued in just one single hour in 1980. Looking back at the starting line, there are the bills to be used: 9,241,803 of them neatly stacked at a height of 3,312 feet, more than two-and-a-half times the height of the Empire State Building.

Clearly, we have very quickly exhausted any human agency here. What would be needed is a hyper-advanced machine traveling about 896 mph, shattering the land-speed record and breaking the sound barrier, with the ability to meticulously line up the dollar bills in a straight line. And that was then!

So what about later? Check out this table detailing the inexorable, sometimes violently surging acceleration of debt as it tears through the fabric of space and time:

 Yep, our currency comet is now a spaceship, creating a slipstream consuming our prosperity, boldly going where no taxpayer has gone before. Notice how during the pandemic in 2020, it temporarily achieved deep-space velocities before stabilizing back down to mere "Escape Velocity," only to throttle back up today. If it passed an observer, it would look like an instantly materializing infinite strip of green. But even a hypersonic blur powered by the relentless engine of compound growth can be measured and steered toward a very specific destination: Voyager 1.

Will the green stream overtake Voyager 1? While the spacecraft moves at a steady linear speed, the national debt has historically followed an exponential curve, doubling roughly every 8 to 10 years. So, in other words, no problem: by August 2052, 23.9 billion miles away and beyond the heliopause, the national debt will reach $246.6 trillion cruising at a respectable 236,000 mph.

Granted, theoretically this is possible, but is the national debt really going to continue growing like this? Surely the end is near; this can’t go on forever. How can the currency comet possibly reach Voyager? No way that’s going to happen.

If you are suspicious of my claims and you like math (I mean really like math!), then the following audit is for you:

🔬 The Skeptic's Math Audit

To prove these numbers, a skeptic only needs to accept two physical constants and the actual U.S. Treasury historical debt data:

1. Length of a Bill: A U.S. dollar bill is 6.14 inches long.
2. Bills per Mile: There are 63,360 inches in a mile. 63,360 ÷ 6.14 = 10,319.22 dollar bills per mile.

(1) Distance Calculations

Using the 10,319.22 bills/mile constant, the thought experiments are accurate:

• The 2009 Light-Speed Check: Light travels 186,282 miles per second. In 100 minutes (6,000 seconds), it travels 1.117 billion miles. Multiply that by 10,319.22 bills, and you get $11.53 Trillion. The U.S. National Debt crossed $11.53 Trillion in exactly the summer of 2009.
• The 10-Minute Thought Experiment: 150 bills laid in 10 minutes equals 900 bills per hour. 900 bills × 6.14 inches = 5,526 inches per hour. Divided by 63,360 = 0.087 mph.

(2) The Planetary Distances: 

If a skeptic questions planetary distances, they are usually thinking of the closest or farthest points between two planets, which change constantly because planets move at different speeds in elliptical (oval) orbits.

However, the table specifies the "average gap between planetary orbital paths." In astrophysics, this is calculated by looking at a planet's semi-major axis (its average distance from the Sun) and finding the difference between it and Earth's orbit.

Astronomers measure this in Astronomical Units (AU).

• 1 AU is the exact average distance from the Earth to the Sun.
• In miles, 1 AU is universally accepted as 92,955,807 miles (we'll round to 92.96 million for the math).

The Official Source: The standard source for planetary measurements is the NASA Space Science Data Coordinated Archive (NSSDCA) Planetary Fact Sheet: nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/

The Formula: [Target Planet's AU] - [Earth's AU (1.000)] = The Orbital Gap in AU Then, multiply that Gap by 92.96 million miles.

The Breakdown for Each Planet:

• Mars:
  • NASA Semi-Major Axis: 1.524 AU
  • The Math: 1.524 AU - 1.000 AU = 0.524 AU gap.
  • In Miles: 0.524 × 92.96 million = 48.71 million miles (Matches your ~48.7M)
• Jupiter:
  • NASA Semi-Major Axis: 5.204 AU
  • The Math: 5.204 AU - 1.000 AU = 4.204 AU gap.
  • In Miles: 4.204 × 92.96 million = 390.80 million miles (Matches your ~390.7M)
• Saturn:
  • NASA Semi-Major Axis: 9.537 AU
  • The Math: 9.537 AU - 1.000 AU = 8.537 AU gap.
  • In Miles: 8.537 × 92.96 million = 793.60 million miles (Matches your ~793.6M perfectly)
• Uranus:
  • NASA Semi-Major Axis: 19.191 AU
  • The Math: 19.191 AU - 1.000 AU = 18.191 AU gap.
  • In Miles: 18.191 × 92.96 million = 1,690.9 million miles (Matches your ~1.69 Billion)
• Neptune:
  • NASA Semi-Major Axis: 30.070 AU
  • The Math: 30.070 AU - 1.000 AU = 29.070 AU gap.
  • In Miles: 29.070 × 92.96 million = 2,702.3 million miles (Matches your ~2.70 Billion)
• Pluto:
  • NASA Semi-Major Axis: 39.482 AU
  • The Math: 39.482 AU - 1.000 AU = 38.482 AU gap.
  • In Miles: 38.482 × 92.96 million = 3,577.2 million miles (Matches your ~3.58 Billion)

(3) 1980 Velocity Calculations

According to the U.S. Treasury, the total public debt actually grew by $81.18 Billion in Fiscal Year 1980 (from $826.5B to $907.7B).

• 1980 Bills/Hour: $81.18 Billion ÷ 8,784 hours (1980 was a leap year) = 9,241,803 bills per hour.
• 1980 Stack Height: 9,241,803 bills × 0.0043 inches (thickness of a bill) = 39,739 inches = 3,312 feet. (The Empire State Building is 1,250 feet to its roof. The stack is over 2.6 times taller!)
• 1980 Speed: 9,241,803 bills/hr ÷ 10,319.22 bills/mile = 896 mph (Mach 1.2 - Supersonic).

(4) The Velocity Chart

By applying actual U.S. Treasury fiscal year-over-year gross debt growth to the equation (Annual Increase / Hours in Year) / 10,319.22, the true historical speeds emerge:

• 2004: Grew by $595.82 Billion → 6,573 mph (Hypersonic).
• 2008: Grew by $1.017 Trillion → 11,220 mph (Sub-orbital re-entry).
• 2020: Due to pandemic stimulus, the debt grew by an astonishing $4.226 Trillion. This temporary hyper-drive spiked the velocity to an interstellar 46,622 mph. (Note: This means the debt briefly traveled faster than Voyager 1 before slowing back down!).
• 2023: Grew by $2.238 Trillion → 24,762 mph (Escape Velocity).
• 2026 (The "$1T per 100 days" baseline): $1 Trillion every 100 days translates to $3.65 Trillion a year, or $416.66 Million per hour. Divided by 10,319.22 = 40,378 mph.

(5) Tightening the Voyager 1 Meetup

We just need to align the numbers to a strict exponential calculus curve to make it bulletproof.

• Distance Match: 23.9 Billion miles × 10,319.22 bills = $246.6 Trillion (Adjusted from $247.5T).
• Speed Match: A skeptic calculating the derivative of your exponential curve will note that if a $246.6 Trillion debt doubles every 8 years, the continuous annual growth rate is ~8.66%. Applying an 8.66% rate to the principal in 2052 (a leap year) yields an annual increase of ~$21.36 Trillion. Run through our velocity equation, that equals roughly 236,000 mph.