I'm not trying to do self-promotion here, but I just happen to have learned a lot about this of late. The biggest problem with mining in space is going to be the cost of getting the resources and bringing them back home. If you assume that the price will start of high (they were quoting $50,000 from one company), but eventually stabilize at something a little lower as the process is refined. But even still, how much money can you make from bringing it back? Quite a lot, actually. If done in a controlled way, any company that owns the ability to bring ore back to Earth could theoretically hold a lot of industries hostage with their plentiful supplies.
The process eventually would need to involve a bunch of posts, minimizing fuel expenditures and making sure that any one vehicle serves only its one purpose... but the initial outlay of cash would eventually turn into a very very profitable business.
The question was originally whether it's worth doing this kind of thing given that the world has bigger problems to deal with, but when you look at it from a business perspective, it could be a very plausible (if not hideously expensive) venture unlike anything history has ever seen.
Following up to this kind of concept... there is already an informal coalition (getting more formal every day, it seems) of smaller media groups and citizens in Canada that are working on a smarter proposal, and we have some ins in Ottawa to make it happen.
In addition to writing to the gov't about this (which frankly does nothing...), please write to ncca@dustrunners.ca (temporary address...sorry) to get updates when we get our (for lack of a better term) open-source proposal writer online. We have to present a united front on this, so please help us make a good case!
Thanks!
We're trying out a new technique that doesn't even force you to leave the page you're viewing. It just gives you the option of visiting that site later if you like. Because most of the time you don't want to stop reading the article (or whatever), but there's not much of a choice (via either popups or simple transfers). It could be the best way to get people's attention and loyalty is to NOT annoy them.
A few things (beyond the animation, which can be summed up by saying "Please stop tilting your head from side to side because we KNOW you guys can animate hair!").
Firstly, the story wasn't quasi-religious. It was very religious, but not Western religious. I was pleasantly amused to hear the audience shudder and groan when they said "Gaia", because here that implies treehugging la-la googly eyed environmentalists. Really, it was an attempt to Americanize Shinto, and it suffered from bad translation.
Another thing that bugged me was that she was called "Aw-kee", when really the name is meant to be pronounced "Ah-kee". This movie will do bad things to my daughter's future school life in North America (same name). Oh well.
My company has been looking at the possibility of re-mastering our series for each of our audiences (Japanese, French, German etc.), but what we found is that even though it costs a little bit to record the voices, and it costs a little more to re-animate and render the layers with the lips moving, the flow of the episode gets disrupted by foreign languages.
If you've ever seen Macross II, you'll know what I mean. There are scenes where the mouths keep moving and the English voices have long since finished their lines. And to try and teach a director how to re-edit their work dependent on a language they don't understand is a real challenge.
It seems kind of silly, but the artistic vision is the element most hurt by that kind of thing.
Not to say that we're not trying to get around it...
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The process eventually would need to involve a bunch of posts, minimizing fuel expenditures and making sure that any one vehicle serves only its one purpose... but the initial outlay of cash would eventually turn into a very very profitable business.
The question was originally whether it's worth doing this kind of thing given that the world has bigger problems to deal with, but when you look at it from a business perspective, it could be a very plausible (if not hideously expensive) venture unlike anything history has ever seen.
In addition to writing to the gov't about this (which frankly does nothing...), please write to ncca@dustrunners.ca (temporary address...sorry) to get updates when we get our (for lack of a better term) open-source proposal writer online. We have to present a united front on this, so please help us make a good case! Thanks!
Who knows.
I guess we'll find out.
Firstly, the story wasn't quasi-religious. It was very religious, but not Western religious. I was pleasantly amused to hear the audience shudder and groan when they said "Gaia", because here that implies treehugging la-la googly eyed environmentalists. Really, it was an attempt to Americanize Shinto, and it suffered from bad translation.
Another thing that bugged me was that she was called "Aw-kee", when really the name is meant to be pronounced "Ah-kee". This movie will do bad things to my daughter's future school life in North America (same name). Oh well.
If you've ever seen Macross II, you'll know what I mean. There are scenes where the mouths keep moving and the English voices have long since finished their lines. And to try and teach a director how to re-edit their work dependent on a language they don't understand is a real challenge.
It seems kind of silly, but the artistic vision is the element most hurt by that kind of thing.
Not to say that we're not trying to get around it...