Slashdot Mirror
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! "
"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!)