[crote]

A quick look around the internet[0] gives 6" aluminium square bars at $1,473 for 144".

The monolith is about 141" long, and has sides of about 23.5", so 16 of those bars would neatly fill it.

So if it is solid aluminium, that's about $23,500 in material.

[0]: https://www.onlinemetals.com/en/buy/aluminum/6-aluminum-squa...

[sarajevo]

Good math... Aluminum comes in different alloys, this is likely 6061 (precipitation-hardened aluminium alloy, containing magnesium and silicon as its major alloying elements) - 6061 is about two bucks per pound [2]...

Using the weight calculator [1], and plugging in 23.5/23.5/141 (all in inches) I am getting about 7.7K lbs, or around $15K in material costs. Given it’s unusual shape, I’m assuming that normal is producing it. This would require additional costs for machining and processing Dash I’d probably say it would be several thousand dollars in additional costs. Overall this looks to me like a $25,000 piece of metal...

[1] https://www.bostoncenterless.com/tools/metal-weight-calculat...

[2] https://fastmetals.com/collections/aluminum-extruded-square-...

[TylerE]

That does t hold. Aluminum that big isn’t just something you’d buy from McMaster-Carr.

[dboreham]

Aliens may not know that. Since McMaster Carr is the web site with the best UX for materials supply, and has been so for 20 years, they would have not known any better, especially given the propagation time for their TCP packets.