The document discusses the challenges of creating truly dependable systems that are also affordable. It summarizes research done at NICTA on developing the seL4 microkernel, which has undergone formal verification to prove functional correctness and isolation properties. This level of assurance was achieved at a relatively affordable cost of $400 per line of code. The research demonstrates that formal methods can be cost-effective for developing high-assurance systems if the trusted computing base is minimized and components are designed for verification. Ongoing work aims to further scale this approach to larger systems.