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Location Selected For $1 Billion Ghost Town
Hugh Pickens writes "Although a fully operation city with no people sounds like the setup for a dystopian sci-fi novel, the Boston Globe reports that the Center for Innovation, Testing and Evaluation will develop a $1 billion scientific ghost town near Hobbs, New Mexico to help researchers test everything from intelligent traffic systems and next-generation wireless networks to automated washing machines and self-flushing toilets on existing infrastructure without interfering in everyday life. Bob Brumley, senior managing director of Pegasus Holdings, says the town will be modeled after the real city of Rock Hill, South Carolina, complete with highways, houses and commercial buildings, old and new. Unlike traditional cities, City Labs will start with its underground 'backbone' infrastructure that will allow the lab to monitor activity throughout the 17-mile site. Since nobody lives in the Center's buildings, computerized systems will mimic human behavior such as turning thermostats up and down, switching lights off and on, or flushing toilets. The Center's test facilities and supporting infrastructure may require as much as 20 square miles of open, unimproved land where the controlled environment will permit evaluation of the positive and negative impacts of smart grid applications and integration of renewable energies for residential, commercial and industrial sectors of the economy. 'It's an amusement park for the scientists,' adds Brumley."
Seriously, Facebook costs the same as 100 fully-automated and instrumented cities.
Economy is doing fine, indeed...
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Why don't they just lease downtown Detroit?
But then they would have to adapt to the local crime rate, and will probably end up with some kind of cyborg cops instead of automated power grids and traffic lights.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
...to all the traditional slash-dotters I know?!? Do you people not do your research? If you paid attention to who it was and did a little, few minute research, you would find out that this is a global private company. They can do whatever the frak they want with their money. Before you start to go off on the "gov't," do some research to find out.
"If confusion is the first step to knowledge, I must be a genius." ~Larry Leissner
This looks like some kind of scam or hoax. There's a web site for the project, but it's all clip art. "Pegasus Global Holdings" is suspicious. The "Pegasus Global Holdings" behind this project is here. But there's also Pegasus-Global Holdings, with a dash. The one with a dash seems to be real. The one without the dash, the one behind this project, not so much.
Their "head office" is supposedly at 1875 "I" Street, NW, Suite 500 Washington, DC 20006. Many other companies have the same address, including a small law firm and a PR firm. It seems to be a mail drop of some kind. Their address in Reston, VA is a small furnished space currently for lease. Their "London office" is a is a "virtual office" package: "Executive Offices Group can provide a Virtual Office business address at any of our 34 highly sought after locations. "
"Pegasus Global Holdings" isn't listed in the SEC's EDGAR system, so they're not publicly held or doing anything big financially. They previously announced a "commercial spaceport" project; nothing came of that.