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Getaway to Club Mir
Willie_the_Wimp writes "A venture capitalist is turning Mir into a vacation getaway. I thought this story was really interesting. With all the Silicon Valley millionaires sprouting like poppies, I bet they will have a waiting list a mile long. I know the risks, but sign me up! "
I SEE THE FNORDS!
I SEE THE FNORDS!!
HAHAHAHHAhahahhahahahHAHHAHAHHhaaaaaaaaa
Almost worth the cost to finally find out what it's *REALLY* like ;-)
I saw something on TLC about Mir falling to earth in spring 2000.
Didn't some guys in Europe (I think somewhere in scandinavia) say they had antigravity a while ago? It was like objects on top of some superconductor were 2% less in weight. I had more hope for it at first because they didn't claim to be able to pedal that bike into orbit at first but nothing seems to have come out of this in terms of independent reproduction.
And a question about the Buckminsterfullerenes (anyone who doesn't know, they are molecules in teh shape of a Geodesic Dome. looks like an Old 3d wireframe of a sphere) - they are that strong to allow comparatively easy construction of a space elevator compared to normal materials? I imagine with normal materials it would cost more than the GNP and you'd have huge support cables stretching from various points on the tower to variouse points over half the continent...
Infinity
Hope you enjoyed the posts.
Trollmastah
If they get a honeymoon couple, maybe we'll finally find out the truth about that "Sex in Space" article that was mentioned a while back :)
someday in the distand future humanity will escape the earth and infect the rest of the galaxy. perhaps that is our destiny, to colonize the universe. if only we could figure out how to do it without fucking up the earth. maybe once technology reaches a certain level we can give up capitalism and still have a working system that doesn't stagnate.
Could someone explain all of this to me? The Fnord stuff, and all the stuff about Illuminati and Discordians?
Structurally, MIR is a death-trap. This death
trap is being run in a way that the pilots
get paid for depending on the amount of
succesful experiments they carry out.
You can imagine this leads to risky behavior.
One of our astronauts, while visiting MIR
looked out of the stations window in horror
as an out of control "junk-ship" carreened
by MIR faster than a slug fired from a 30/6
rifle.
Apparently the nav sensors failed on the
remote control ship but MIR's commander needed
to dock it to the station to meet his quota.
While everyone pleaded with him to abort the
foolish experiment, the commander doggedly tried
to "eyeball" the remote ship in from it's location
miles away. He got real close, within maybe a hundred feet or less but miscalculated the speed by..oh by a couple thousand miles per hour.
yeah, that's how it works so well in startrek (where they had to bring back quark the firengi to up the ratings). I love it when programmers try to do politics and economics, the results look just like what would happen if politicians and economists took up programming. Pie in the sky.
If the target audience really is wealthy geeks, maybe they're hoping the guests will do some repair work while they're there. They'll probably get better engineers on the project this way than by actually hiring them...
wtf? If the most significant thing you've done with your life is spend gobbs of money on a week-long space vacation (money, a fraction of which could benefit people in so many ways), then IMO, your life has been a tremendous waste.
Argh!
hi Trollmastah, I am the grits guy, the Pineapple, Syphilitic Pudding os guy, the guy who started the YAF...S posts, the guy who made the Proud Mary and School House Rock trolls and I couldn't agree with you more.
You and I, and the Natalie Portman guy always had an artistic flair to our "trolls". Sure we aggravated some people, but we gave some pure delight to others. We served a vital role in this web ecology. We counterbalanced some uptight people by poking fun at ourselves.
What we're seeing now is probably the beginning of the end. Troll hacks without any redeeming qualities. Chile Molesta, Frank Rizzo, this newly self-proclaimed "masta" are all signs that the glory days of slash trolling are over. It has become embarassing to share -1 real estate with these people.
As such, I too retire. Any future hot grits, Pineapple, Syphlitic Pudding, YAF.....S, School House Trolling posts are no longer from me.
It's been fun....thanks slashdot !!!!
very true. sad, but true. oh well, back to spanking my, er..., monkey.
Didn't anyone see Contact Sheesh.
Thanks for the laughs.
Awwww. Now back to +1. No more fun at the bottom. Thanks fellas, We enjoyed the posts.
I hope you have ended your little experiment, IMO it was in very bad taste.
Trollmastah
I would hardly call Steve Case a "visionary internet tycoon"...he's just an executive, that's all. What were some of the concepts he pioneered?
Speaking of the Illuminatus trilogy... did anyone else notice that the tycoon's Bermuda based company is called "Gold & Appel"? As you may recall a "golden apple" was what Eris (at least in the Illuminatus trilogy) threw among the other gods to bring about chaos. Hmmm... Bermuda... Bermuda Triangle == 3... so where's the 5? ;-) --B9
I'm supprised that there hasn't been a single mention of Heinlein yet, and his future history.
He wrote quite a few stories about entrepeneurs taking the lead in the race to space. (I'm forgetting names, can someone remind us of what they were? )
I remember one of my favorite stories he did, a rather simple one at that, about what it was like growing up on the moon, the things people thought about, and what their recreation was like.
It was quite an extraordinary and interesting story, despise the mundaneness of the goings-on. [Sort of like a Takahashi.] Can anyone remember the name?
Take care, Lion Kimbro =^_^= [someday I'll get a Slashdot account again.]
give this a +5, funny and so true
I also enjoyed your trollish behaivor, although I never would have put the grits, Syphilitic Pudding and School house together. You've served us well young man. I am better for having trolled with you. Your grits stuff was great! I agree with you that it is embarrasing these days, especially when the trolls I put out just didn't have the chuckle value they used to. It's not worth it anymore. So on to Karma Whoring like the rest. I think I'll go and post under all of Sig 11's threads! Ha Ha.
I still really like Slashdot though and enjoy the content of the site. Like you said so simply to me a few days ago
:Relax, It's all good."
Thanks grits guy,
Trollmastah
http://www.isk.kth.se/~id96_kko/uranus2.htm You can even get a free mp3 from Prodigy there.
haiku man still here
rarely gets chance to post first
but is still around
:)
As I'm sure it will make may quite pleased, because my trollish rantings have slipped from comical at times to generally sucky most of the time, and with the thought of possibly being mistaken for this POS chile molesta, The
Trollmastah officially retires.
Thanks folks, its been a hoot.
This gives new meaning to "It's harder for rich man to get into heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle."
American, or maybe most of human race, are really behaving like dogs -- they run around the world, select some meaningful spot, and urinate to mark his presence, then go home. No wonder Russian sent a dog first into the space.
This story just shows that money doesn't make people smarter, it just amplifies the stupidity.
--- You make things foolproof, and they'll find you a damn fool.
with every ticket to Mir
All customers who buy their ticket's to Mir before the 31st of January will receive a space suit absolutely free !
Now is your chance to risk your life and limb to visit the hottest item on the space-junkyard, and get your own free Space Suit.
All this for just US$40 M return (inc spaceport tax) !!!
I mean, it's great that someone is putting up Real Money to get space tourism going, but this guy is naive in the extreme if he believes the money he puts up is going to be spent on rocket fuel, engineer salaries, and the like. I'd like to visit some of the country houses that get built by the government executives who receive the money, they'll probably be very nice.
For the full and detailed technical plans on how they could do it, go here. Includes costings and timescales, but replace 1999 with 2000 since this is an old plan. http://www.finds-space.org/Energia.html
Oh, I guess it'd be more than enough time.
anyone here able to say "metal fatigue"? the reason planes get retired after a certain time is metal fatigue. the reason satellites die is radiation. the two combined are a pretty deadly mix for structural integrity.
personally, i am not willing to risk my new $40m ipo cash on testing time to failure theory. oh, and my life too.
Actually, the bad part about this contest, IMHO, is that for about four or five of those forty-million-dollar tickets, one could fund development of a suborbital RLV (like TGV-Rocket's Michelle) or finish development of Rotary Rocket's Roton vehicle.
(currently testing something about signatures here)
I don't know who SkeptiNews are, but it sounds like they've joined the long list of news sites/print magazines to rip stuff from Need To Know:
http://www.ntk.net/
Subscribe to the email list, it's fab.
-- Yoz
In a case such as this, where the apparent facts seem contradictory, it may help to read the article. As was explained there, people will be put back up to Mir to determine its viability, it will be used again if it's determined viable, and it would be kept from burning up when they correct its orbit.
Common sense is what tells you the world is flat.
My bad, I think you're right.
----
lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
Although at 40 million dollars a pop it IS a wee bit steep.
Actually, it's $40 million for the first guy who goes up. Everyone after that only has to pay $25 million, so that should bring it a little closer to your price range.
The alien space stations are not built to handle humanoid life forms [humans and anything geneticly modifyed to be human like].
Also humans are not up to code for many alien worlds (the carbon dioxide? Biology was a long time ago... stuff we exhail.. poison to many.. also oxogen is banned as a controled substence on many worlds)
Anyway we are banned on nearly all alien worlds due to our "Ugly tourest" habbit of disrespecting cultures we visit...
The few worlds that havn't banned us... ummm... carbon based life forms are hard to find and very tasty...
I think the only place a human could visit with out being on the menu, killed by the environment or cause an environmental disaster would be Keltos.. and Keltos hospitality ranks up with Vogon poitry...
In the mean time the illegal oxogen trade is doing really well...
I don't actually exist.
The US has no launcher capable of launching the Service Module. It won't fit in the shuttle's payload bay. It might fit on a Titan IV, but those are terribly expensive and (lately) tend to blow up a lot. It's probably the least of all evils just to wait for Proton to be reapproved. I don't think the software for the US lab module is ready yet, anyway...
The question seems to be the cost of a Soyuz spacecraft. The Soyuz booster is around 15-20 million per launch. But I've heard $100 million for the spacecraft...so unless they can get them cheaper they're out of luck.
And, of couse, a Soyuz can only hold three people, one of which has to be a pilot.
The intent was always to send up a final Proton flight to de-orbit it somewhat
more safely over the Pacific.
Are you sure it's supposed to be a Proton? I thought it was just a reconfigured Progress (with fuel takes in place of the normal storage bay), and thus to launch on a much cheaper Soyuz...
They've done an amazing amount considdering their tiny budget. They've shown what can be done with a evolutionary development program, as opposed to NASA's revolutionary program (ie, throwing away Apollo hardware and starting over with the Shuttle).
The Soyuz rocket is used for launching freight or the Soyuz capsule. CNN describes leaving Mir in Soyuz.
Oh, no, this is a business trip. Those 40 carryon bags are mine, the ones with the "Iridium" logo...
Think of it, they can go up there and air-drop (airless-drop?) thousands of Linux discs!
They can spray paint their logo on the side of Mir, so whenever you go outside on a clear night, and see Mir shining up there, you'll see the TurboLinux logo!
Or they can just send up the first mated pair of space penguins, in the hopes that they will be fruitful and multiply, creating a meat-and-blubber industry to make space travel profitable.
Muahahaha! No, it is you who have gone mad!
I choked when i read that =:-) I was like AAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHH! He's illuminati, plus the things that a telecom guy could do on the side with a large orbiting lab in terms of signal intelligence, pirate broadcasting, etc... is virtually limitless.
---
Play Six Pack Man. I
no, you missed the point.
He's not Illuminati. Gold & Appel is a discordian front. that's what it's all about.
Gee! What a deal. I can be the first visitor to space to get to ride aboard a crippled, leaking, decomposing space station! This reminds me of an article posted a while ago about astronauts possibly having sex in space, on a long trip to Mars. Now, for $40 Million and $25 Million for your partner, you could get it on in space. I need to go check my checking account balance!
--Evan
Remember, for TV, visionary=rich.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Hmm, I suppose I haven't kept up enough with the Soviet space program. I do respect what they have done, and the fact that they seem to take it very seriously and put their best minds to work on it.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
*evil grin*, it's all part of the plan...
Hey, I don't know about you, but if I were worth a billion from a recent IPO, I'd think $40M a small price to pay to paint a black flag with a 23K (yes, it'd have to be 23-karat, not 24 :-) golden apple logo on the side of a space station.
To anyone who thinks the money could be "better spent elsewhere" - however bad Mir's present condition, until we get cost-per-pound-to-orbit down to under $100, the cost of keeping Mir alive is cheap compared to the cost of deorbiting it and sending up another station 10 years down the road. Given NASA's track record with the Shuttle, my money's on a privately-owned, run-for-profit Mir over ISS any day. Is flying there risky? Sure. But what's life without risk? If Oracle execs can go deep-water yacht-racing, and Virgin execs can try to fly balloons around the world, why shouldn't some billionaire strap himself into a Proton, cross his fingers, and go for the ride of his life?
I love the shuttle, but it sucks technically.
Yeah, it is/was a great achievement, but they made too many design tradeoffs..
Is it a payload vehicle?
Or is it supposed to put people into space?
As a result, it does neither cost-effectively.
(There is a whole history here, fascinating reading.)
No kidding. Besides, these millionaires want bragging rights. This company is obviously targetting the get rich, play hard crowd.
I can see it now, The A-Team - The Next Generation
:)
"I aint getting in no spaceship fool!" Thionk!
They'd probably give folks a sedative or something, the passengers won't be doing anything crucial anyway, so it doesn't really matter.
To err is human,
To really screw up, you need a computer!
To err is human,
To really screw up, you need a computer!
I agree with you totally.
Mir makes a great starting point in orbit especially in light of the delays in getting the ISS anywhere near space.
If somebody is ready to pony up the money to keep Mir going round and round then that's a great thing! Who knows where the future occupants of the ISS might need a home away from home?
Zero-G porn has already been done. Find "The Uranus Experiment" somewhere. They filmed it in a Vomit Comet.
--
"I was a fool to think I could dream as a normal man."
I just finished reading illuminatus! and seeing this made my head explode!
I sent the url of the cnn article to an address I believe belongs to Robert Wilson, hopefully he will see it!
On a related Illuminati note, did anyone notice that Mr. Gates retired on 1-13 ... adds up to 5 and 1+1 =2 23!
Not to mention the $20mil for the space ride.
NASA has been looking for a cheap way to get into space, and has created a contest among the various aerospace companies to produce such a plane.
Actually, the contest is being put on by the X Prize foundation (the new Spirit of St. Louis). It's a private organization that is offering a $10M prize for the first one that can launch a re-entry vehicle for under $10M.
Check it out at xprize.org
-rt-
** Evil Canadians are taking over the world. Learn about the conspiracy
That's exactly what I was thinking. How do we know It isn't gonna fall apart as soon as they get up there? The only good thought about that is: Maybe Bill Gates will join them when it falls apart? Hey, I can be hopeful...
"As many of you know, I was very instrumental in the founding of the Internet" --Al Gore to Katie Couric 3/99
Actually, to bring the party down, we could land on the moon, we are preparing for a 2 year mission right now. Only problem is the mere mortals can't handle the seclusion... I just had to say that. Sorry. I did chuckle at it though.
"As many of you know, I was very instrumental in the founding of the Internet" --Al Gore to Katie Couric 3/99
I'm not sure what you mean by "go straight into the atmosphere". Someone below thought that you might have meant a single stage to orbit (SSTO) type of vehicle.
While a great idea, we have yet to actually BUILD an SSTO vehicle. And while I believe it is possible, it will not be inexpensive since doing it will require using cutting edge materials to overcome the problems involved (the mass of the craft and how much fuel it can carry, etc..).
Actually, if we're going to work of some magical technology, lets first develop anti-gravity. With that you could pedal a bike into orbit.
And on a less magical and slightly more realistic note, why not aggressively develop the ability to manufacture huge quantities of Buckminister Fullerenes and build a space elevator to get into orbit? That would be the next best thing to anti-gravity.
Ignore Alien Orders
I heard from the Discovery Channel that Mir should fall to the earth this spring.
Can anyone back this up from another source?
2 years and no mod points. Join reddit. Because openness is good.
Show me where Stalin is buried and I'll show you a communist plot.
-- Religion is a major weapon in the war against reality.
In light of this recent announcement, I'd like to announce my new company, LinuxTwo!
We will be revolutionizing the industry with our own distribution of the popular "Hello World" application.
We intend to set a new standard with our advances in 'hello' and ground breaking 'world' technology.
We will be IPO'ing next week under the stock symbol L1NX.
NH
Hey, if that linuxone guy can do it, why can't I? I just wanna go into space! =]
I'll bet someone a new vacation on my new getaway location (description below) that noone will take up the offer to go on this "vacation"
Description of my vacation system:
I've built a really large slingshot in my backyard.
I've also built a really large tower in my backyard with noway up.
We here at "Fling vacations" willfling you up onto the tower, for the peace and quiet that you've always wanted....there's no luxuries, like television, or running water, or even a roof, but it'll be a good vacation..and only for 49.95 for three months...
We are hard at work, and our next innovation will be a way to get you down after your time is up...
Cynical? what, me? noway!
>> If Oracle execs can go deep-water yacht-racing, I'm sure if this commercial Mir thing is actually successful, our beloved Larry (Ellison, Oracle CEO) will be one of the first ones to go there:)
They wrote about it in Wired about 6 months ago. I'm too lazy to look it up right now tho, so you'll have to make the trek to the library and look thro the indexes.
I think they spoke with the guy who is working on it, and they couldn't say for sure if it was for real or not.
You mentioned the Titanic, but the Hindenberg is probably more appropriate as a comparison, since we're probably talking flameball rather than iceberg bait.
We need a good civilian casualty in space so that we can all have a national debate about 'what is a hero' (a la Christa McAuliffe) although it should be a lot funnier when the casualties are silicon valley zillionaires instead of saintly kindergarten teachers.
Because the snark was a...
Of course people would pay 40 million to risk loosing life and limb. People have been doing the small-scale equivelent for years. Safari's into Lion country, Deep Sea Diving with sharks, Sky diving, and snorting cocaine are all expencive endevours that people willingly and gladly go into. Some of them are more expensive than others, some of them are more dangerous than others. But there are fanitics who would pay any price to continue doing any of them. Considering the potential gratification of space travel, which many would find greater than all my mentioned activities put together, it would be more surprising if people DIDN'T want to spend all they had to do it than if they did.
PS Rumor has it that someone is constructing a cruise ship from Titanic's blueprints. I expect that if they do there will be a flood of people wanting to ride...
Little Brother, watching the watchers
Actually - why is this so bad. Obviously governments don't want to pay enormous sums of money to continue serious space exploration. If commercial operations can come up with new technologies in their attempts to make Space travel profitable perhaps this will translate to cheaper costs for govrnment organizations to do real exploration. If this guy could actually make it work or even develop a few new technologies in the process I think its great. Its advancement of space research without more taxpayer dollars being spent. It also keeps Russian scientists employed.
I seem to recall that a foriegn space agency entertained the idea of civilians paying to get into space. John Denver was on a short list, I think the cost was 5M for something similar. They never finally approved it.
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
Industry already is. The problem is that it's being fueld with our tax dollars and we rightfully sream for lower taxes. Vicious cycle 'eh.
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
Wasn't that thing falling apart not too long ago? And now people will be paying to stay on it...Titanic what?
-You're wearing...A bag? I have misplaced my pants.
IS this not a disater waiting to happen..Haven't sci-fi books and movies taught us enough.
If you want to go into space, become a buttler. Those billionaires will need someone to serve their drinks. Maybe in the future there will be Soyuz launches filled with caviar and champagne.
The X-33 will be flying this year.
Actually, the X-33 may not fly this year, after one of the graphite-epoxy fuel tanks failed in a test. They may have to build new aluminum tanks for it to fly, postponing the first flight till early 2002.
Oh well... gives me more time to accumulate sufficient funds to pay for a vacation in space. :-)
---
Felix qui potest rerum cognoscere causas
That module was only included in plans so that the american taxpayers would not kill thier congressman/woman. Just ask anybody at Boeing. That part of the Station will never exist. Politics suck.
What's next? The Rocky Horror Show In Space? "There's a light, Over at the Gorbachov Place" etc
The Well Known Fat Bloke
Very interesting. Is there any possibility for the price to drop? And is the ride safe for people who aren't trainded like astorauts and have a strong constitution? Probably such things will cause some poeple who can afford the trip to not want to. By the way, is it possible for slashdot to get pictures of the to-be tourist rocket ships?
NASA doesn't really like all these attempts to save Mir because they are concerned that Russia can't build enough rockets to satisfy their commitment to ISS as well as Mir. Although ISS can be supplied via the space shuttle, crews have to be launched on Soyuz rockets. This is because the shuttle can only stay in space for a couple of weeks and NASA won't leave astronauts on the space station with no way of getting down. The Soyuz capsules can stay in space for extended periods of time to provide an emergency exit for the station, so NASA decided to use them for ISS crews. I believe that the Soyuz is also necessary to reboost the station. NASA is developing a 7-person crew return vehicle, but they have to use Soyuz rockets until the new CRV is ready. See a NASA Watch/SpaceRef editorial on this here.
Just a coincidence this story was posted last month? Naaahh...
Sex in Space
So, now we know where all that Andover IPO money will be going...
Close. The last Mir crew departed several months ago, closing down systems and bringing back essential equipment. There have always been contradictory statements about whether any return flights would be financially feasible, but returning was always a technological option; Mir is still in a safe orbit for some time. Russia never intended to just let it "crash and burn"; it's far too large, and crosses too many populated areas, to risk that (remember Skylab?). The intent was always to send up a final Proton flight to de-orbit it somewhat more safely over the Pacific. NASA, as well, would prefer this.
----
lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
Walt Anderson isnt an anagram for Hagbar Celine is it?
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
This and the Hilton-space hotel will open up a new market. Not for space hotels, no, but for zero-g porn. sure, 40M is a bit over budget for most outfits, but think of the strength of the investment--the first, EVER, weightless porn flick. Anyone wanna join in a business venture??
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
Soyuz is probably a good deal safer then the shuttle...it has an escape system. Soyuz boosters have exploded before, but they've never killed their crews. The last Soyuz fatality was over 20 years ago.
What is the URL for SkeptiNews? Sounds like my kind of news ;)
--
GroundAndPound.com News and info for martial artists of all styles.
Still maybe if they can get 10 people a year they might be able to make the thing work financially.
I wonder what makes space travel so expensive? Is it the fuel (liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen I believe), the cost of the vehicle itself (the various booster stages and so on) or the maintenance costs(engineers, repairs and general upkeep).
Why haven't we developed cool spacecrafts like they had in Star Wars:TPM that can go straight into the atmosphere? It would seem to be more an economic issue as opposed to a technological issue. I guess they can't develop quite enough thrust to escape the Earth's gravity without using those huge rockets. Oh well
The only reason all cover-ups appear to fail is that you never hear about the ones that succeed.
I find this strange, as from what I know of Mir.. it is now a) Abandoned b) Never to be used again c) Going to crash and burn later this year?
Oh yay! I just can't wait to spend a week in the lovely run down Mir Space Station. Sure, its a fixer-upper, but thats what makes it fun!! Please bring your own toolkit to make minor repairs...
Next: Vacation to Mars!!! Cost $125 million, chance of actually landing on Mars: 0%!!!
Sign up now!!!
J
This is just great. Commercialism starts leaking
off the earth and begins to polute the solar
system.
Replace Steve Case with your .com or computer billionaire of choice and you'll see what I mean. I mean, I've always wondered if the Challenger explosion would've set back NASA's image as much as it did (I still think that MTV's abandonment of the moon flag logo was a sign of a downturn in NASA's pioneering image) if the member of the crew were all hardened soldier types and didn't include a perky school teacher. Not that we can afford to lose hardened soldiers, just that the public perception might have been different if these were professional soldiers who might just as easily have risked death in Somalia and the Persian Gulf.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
The money should be steered to shipping the Russian module for the ISS over here so we can launch it. Or the companies could finance a 'tourist' module on the ISS :)
BTW -- anyone can get into the act.
Seastead this.
I wonder how many people will be staying at a time. A launch is awfully damned expensive. IIRC it cost about $250 million to put a satellite in geosynchronous orbit. Obviously, boosting a relatively light payload into a low orbit is not quite so expensive. But suppose you're putting 4 people up at a time. At $20 million apiece, that's only $80 million for the trip. Does that do much more than cover costs, especially when you figure in the cost of renovating Mir?
Despite all the talk about "Silicon Valley millionaires", $20M is still a whole lot of money. There aren't going to be all that many folks who can just drop a wad of cash that size on a lark. This sounds really interesting, but I begin to doubt that it'll ever get off the ground.
And the brethren went away edified.
or, in my case, engineers, bongs and a welder... wouldn't it be worth the adventure? I mean, I don't think I'd be spending $25mil for a trip yet, but I've got myself a a bunch of friends with technical backgrounds, and I can weld... why not? would be a fun weekend project, I think. This all needs to get happening sometime, why not start now? First of all, where better to learn what we really need to do to build a reliable space station than in the environment itself? Yes, we can design and build great things here on earth, but this is not where they are going to be implemented. Why not work on the thing in /its/ working environment. Yeah, the mir will probably end up killing a few people, and it might not last very long, but it's the kind of grassroots thing we need to get a bigger, better, faster, whatever we want space thing sometime down the road. And the Mir is probably the best thing to start with. American sense of adventure, "We'll do anything, as long as we have a security rope." Russian sense of adventure, "We'll do anything, as long as there's vodka." Rock on russia.
-- Hi! I'm a
There are lots of independent companies and organizations who are salivating at the chance to get into space.
Some I know of(post any I miss, there are tons that I haven't saved the URLs for):
http://asi.org
http://www.rotaryrocket.com/(really cool)
http://www.space.com
http://www.marssociety.com/(with a petition)
http://www.space-frontier.org/
http://bigelowaerospace.com/
NASA doing development with X-33 and X-34. The X-33 will be flying this year. It's a test ship, so will not be reaching orbit.
"through his Bermuda-based holding company Gold & Appel,"
Anyone who's read the Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea should be rolling on the floor now in peals of giddy laughter. Given that Anderson is on the board of Roton, I'd say the Mir effort is probably serious, and I applaud him for the wonderful in-joke he's playing on fnord NASA and the rest of the "government fnord space bureaucracy" with his whimsical choice of names.
But then again, maybe that's just what the Illuminati fnord want you to believe.
The following was shamelessly stolen from SkeptiNews:
Just when you thought the continuiiiiing story of "Mir in Space" couldn't get any weirder, another Western business partner has emerged to save Mir and convert it into that anti-news stalwart "an orbiting space hotel for billionaires". This time, who should it be but Gold & Appel Transfers, of the Cayman Islands. Yup, "Gold & Appel Transfers": last observed in Shea and Wilson's ILLUMINATUS! trilogy as the front organisation for neophile outlaw Hagbard Celine and his Legion of Dynamic Discord. Terrifyingly for the few who still believe that book to be fiction, G&A is a real company with funds of over $300 million. President Walt Anderson made his money as co-founder of Esprit Telecom, and is now a major investor in the Space Frontier Foundation and the Roton, the orbital transfer system that looks like a beanie. G&A have already offered $21 million to the Russian govt to maintain Mir in a serviceable orbit, with more, they say, to come. It's unclear whether the group of investors can really rustle up the huge cash needed to maintain Mir; but wouldn't it be nice if, when the ISS finally boots in the 22nd century, NASA found that a bunch of Discordians had beaten them to it? http://mercurycenter.com/premium/front/docs/mir13. htm
(Fnords? What fnords? I don't see any fnords!)