Biggest Phallus evar?!?

[apexSEORM]

So I was poking around kickstarter and stumbled upon this little gem:

Space Elevator Science - Climb to the Sky - A Tethered Tower by Michael Laine — Kickstarter

Yeah. Company seeks to rock a lunar space elevator and eventually an earth elevator. But it gets better. I know the guy behind the company. Super cool and very serious about his biz guy. Anyway I plunked down some cash and thought I'd see if there was any other space/science nerds around here that wanted to do the same.

 

[lukep]

FUCK ME I'M THERE DUDE!

Too bad they're already 240% funded! D'oh!

Note to all socialists: SEE... YOU FUCKING SEE THIS???

MORE THAN Fully-funded Space Programs with 0% government involvement.

FUCK NASA.

 

[johnmatrix]

Note to all socialists: SEE... YOU FUCKING SEE THIS???

My god, an electric motor climbing a rope suspended by a balloon!

Imagine if there was a similar kickstarter project in the 1960's to land a man on the moon, it would consist of a GI Joe action figure strapped to a bottle rocket powered by Coca Cola and Mentos.

Haters gonna hate.

 

[lukep]

Lol, funny, but it doesn't disprove my point at all that the PUBLIC WILL FUND LARGE SPACE PROJECTS. You can't possibly make that argument anymore now.

If you simply need proof that Commerical Space ventures can work without government control, I have no further than Space X, Virgin Galactic, or even the new Planetary Resources asteroid mining businesses to point you to.

Whenever we talked about those on here in the past some Socialist would hop up and shout about how we could never have gotten into orbit without tax money paying for it because of the cost-to-entry barrier before proof for any business.

Now you see proof otherwise. Projects can be crowdsource-funded without sticking guns at anyone first, and the funders will throw 240% of the capital needed at them if the idea is a good one!

ANARCHISTS WOULD HAVE GONE TO THE MOON BUT NOT STOPPED 40 YEAR AGO.

 

[Suddenly_Ass]

If you build it, they will cum.

 

[lukep]

If you build it, they will cum.

WTF? Did you sneak into my Harem and get pics without stopping by to say hi??

 

[lukep]

Anyway, Back on the Original Topic... This is some awesome news.

Since this Liftport is only ready for Lunar use so far, it clearly would need a lunar colony to be put to good use. That immediately made me think of Planetary Resources:

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXtl535po48]Planetary Resources Plans Asteroid Mining Mission - YouTube[/ame]

They could capture their little rocks, throw them at the moon, (Or just mine the moon itself) Smelt all the good stuff there at a plant on lunar surface, and then use Liftport to get the precious metals back up to orbit for a push over to earth.

...Getting it down from earth orbit may be fun though... I'm guessing wrap heat-sheilds around the bricks and drop them at the ocean?

Anyway, this is some very valuable tech and I bet Planetary Resources is going to buy him out.

 

[Kiopa_Matt]

the PUBLIC WILL FUND LARGE SPACE PROJECTS. You can't possibly make that argument anymore now.

Sure I can. Watch... are you ready???





























It's 20k. Not exactly going to conquer intergalatic travel with that one.

If you simply need proof that Commerical Space ventures can work without government control, I have no further than Space X, Virgin Galactic, or even the new Planetary Resources asteroid mining businesses to point you to.

And those companies would have probably never come to being without the technology invented by NASA.

 

[johnmatrix]

Anyway, this is some very valuable tech and I bet Planetary Resources is going to buy him out.

What is so valuable about it? Helium balloons on a rope? Groundbreaking technology there. This is something Mythbusters would have put together in a day. You're so delusional it's not even a joke anymore.

Check out the International Space Elevator Conference

 

[lukep]

It's 20k. Not exactly going to conquer intergalatic travel with that one.

Jesus I can't believe I have to do your basic arithmetic for you...

5 days ago, he placed a kickstarter for $8k. 623 ppl have already funded this thing 240%.

623/$20,803 = $33.39 per person. (In 5 days!)

Now how many ppl do you think saw that kickstarter page? I don't have a solid number but I'd guess a couple or four thousand. Let's say 5 thousand just to give it some breathing room.

623/5,000 = 8.02% of those who see it, choose to voluntarily fund it.

How about the Apollo program?

American population in 1969 = ~185 Million Taxpayers (Rounded down to exclude tax exempt)

The final cost of the whole Apollo project was reported to Congress as $25.4 billion in 1973.

185 M / $25,400 M = $137 per american taxpayer

At 8.02% of the 1969 population of 185 M people, they could have raised instead:

14,837,000 ppl x $33.39 = $495 Million.

Yes, $495 Million couldn't have funded the whole decade-long Apollo mission, but we are comparing a decades' worth of funding to 5 days' worth of funding. Certainly it would have been FAR more than $495 million, given the stakes and long period of time.

So it's a just matter of exposure... Marketing. Getting the word out about the kickstarter project to the same number of people... Naturally if they start small and work their way up they'll be quite famous by the time they tackle a moon landing.

And those companies would have probably never come to being without the technology invented by NASA.

Um, hopefully you can see my point that if instead of the government, something like this had started the space program, then commercial ventures could have used that progress as their springboard instead.

I could easily envision a sputnik kickstarter then a weather satellite kickstarter all the way up to the point where a commercial venture runs with asteroid mining, couldn't you?

What is so valuable about it? Helium balloons on a rope? Groundbreaking technology there. This is something Mythbusters would have put together in a day. You're so delusional it's not even a joke anymore.

We're talking about funding, not technological progress, Moron.

The more you belittle the technology here, the more you prove my point that they are able to get funding easily without government involvement.

 

[mattseh]

The point of mining metals in space isn't to take them back to Earth, there's plenty of metal at reasonable prices on Earth. The point is to use those metals in space and not have to pay for metals to be launched from Earth, it's the getting stuff into orbit that's expensive. One you have production of stuff in space, you can keep bootstrapping from that.

 

[thehobbster]

Yeah, this isn't a new idea. You get a satellite that removes a lot of the stress off of the elevator by locking it into geostationary orbit and the centrifugal motion keeps weight off the elevator. About a decade ago they were proposing building these out of nested carbon nanotubes. The whole thing went under when they realized it was retarded.

Although, I agree that building and launching from outside of the atmosphere would save billions in fuel costs.

If they make ONE space elevator, then what they need to do is create a geostationary ring with elevators attached all around it. Let me find a pic of the concept....

Imagine this "ring" goes all the way around the earth, with many elevators dropping down. You could cover the outsides with solar panels. Shit is gangsta.

 

[johnmatrix]

We're talking about funding, not technological progress, Moron.

You just said "Anyway, this is some very valuable tech and I bet Planetary Resources is going to buy him out."

and I'm the moron? What is wrong with you?

I ask you again, what is this valuable tech you speak of?

 

[csnreyes]

inb4 2040 terrorist attacks on elevators

 

[greenleaves]

This is why we can't have nice things.


Science space elevator topic on WF = Long, uninformed and reality detached ramblings about politics.

 

[dreamache]

The more I learn, the more sad it is to me when people defend theft and murder in order to achieve a goal.

 

[Rexibit]

Umm, guys. What happens when we're riding that elevator to the colony and one of the balloons holding it up springs a leak?

 

[JakeStratham]

the PUBLIC WILL FUND LARGE SPACE PROJECTS.

Capital will flow toward projects that are deemed worthwhile by investors. Given that capital is constrained by savings - and in a state-controlled environment, by debt, taxes, etc. - it is limited. There's only so much that can be allocated among myriad projects.

The result is that some projects will attract more funding than others. So, a space elevator might attract $24K while a really cool watch might attract over $10 million.

The argument is not whether large space projects will be funded in an anarchist society. The argument is whether the investment would be deemed worthy enough to attract limited capital given competing projects.

On a side note: Luke, ya gotta learn to discriminate against those who are aggressively ignorant about economics and unable to build logical arguments. They are a time sink.

Along those lines, here's a nice quote from Rothbard:

It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a "dismal science." But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.

 

[thehobbster]

I ask you again, what is this valuable tech you speak of?

The ability to lift equipment and men to outside of the atmosphere, build rockets in space, and "lift off" there by lightly propelling themselves further into space, rather than starting on the ground. Saves billions in fuel expenditures?

 

[yoyomango]

$26K isn't going to get them shit, this is a "build a group of cash cows to milk whilst doing something that might allow us to get some real investors" exercise at best. Calling this a fully funded space program is like calling a paper aeroplane a supersonic jet. There is no money for manhours for a start and they want 3 million for a feasability study.

Capital will flow toward projects that are deemed worthwhile by investors

Whilst I agree with the rest of your post the people at kickstarter are not investors, they are funding this without having any stake or return from the outcome other than some minor goodies and a warm fuzzy feeling. This would make them donators towards private enterprise, giving away some of their limited capital with no expectation of return, which by economic standards is clearly not a rational decision. At least with goverment funded space programs the resulting technology and discoveries are owned by the public via the government not locked up in the intellectual property of private enterprise ala the recent apple vs samsung fight.