Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's hard to imagine that newspapers were once that rich.
Is it? Being society's primary information nexus is pretty damn profitable; just ask Google.
Asteroid Mining Venture Backed by Google Execs, James Cameron Unveiled
131–140 of 221 posts
Re: Asteroid Mining Venture Backed by Google Execs, James Cameron Unveiled
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
"One possibility the company is considering is to nudge a small asteroid, perhaps one as long as a football field, into an orbit around Earth closer than the moon." I hope they're careful. :-)
This leads to scary thoughts on using this for military purposes
Back during the Space Race, the idea that the Russians could put something into orbit wasn't just a wound to the national pride, it was a technical demonstration of the fact that they could build ICBM's. If you have the rocket power necessary to lift something into orbit, you have the rocket power necessary to put a warhead on a ballistic trajectory to any point on the earth's surface. So if you can go into space and redirect asteroids, you can obviously launch an ICBM. And at this juncture, it's probably easier to develop the technology for nuclear weapons than the technology to capture asteroids and bombard the earth with them. The only way you could do more damage more cost-effectively with asteroids is if you had an extinction-level asteroid, but there's obviously no strategic value to that.
Bear in mind, I'm only talking about how scary it is, which isn't quite the same as discussing how militarily effective it is. By which I mean--obviously orbital bombardment can be worthwhile, but it would cause no more damage than nuclear weapons, and any magnitude of orbital bombardment that wouldn't trigger a MAD reaction would have to cause strictly less damage.
Re: Asteroid Mining Venture Backed by Google Execs, James Cameron Unveiled
#133Re: Asteroid Mining Venture Backed by Google Execs, James Cameron Unveiled
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
Larry Page doesn't really strike me as someone that needs to do a lot of PR stunts.
Time will tell, my money is on PR stunt.
Seriously, the chances of this being just a PR stunt are practically nil. If they did want to get some individual PR, there would be cheaper ways to do it - e.g. buying a popular TV network and broadcasting PageNews 24/7, while paying people to watch it.
Re: Asteroid Mining Venture Backed by Google Execs, James Cameron Unveiled
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
This leads to scary thoughts on using this for military purposes
If you're going to bombard something for military purposes, the most effective technique involves using a very large number of nuclear weapons, which is well within the capabilities of anyone who would try to bombard the earth from space. Back during the Space Race, the idea that the Russians could put something into orbit wasn't just a wound to the national pride, it was a technical demonstration of the fact that th…
Re: Asteroid Mining Venture Backed by Google Execs, James Cameron Unveiled
#136Don't get me wrong, I would love to have my own asteroid mining company. Just need a couple billion dollars first. But what happens once there are two or more competing corporations? Who has the power to say which part of space belongs to whom? Will there be space battles?
Re: Asteroid Mining Venture Backed by Google Execs, James Cameron Unveiled
#137This NY Times article has a lot more information: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/24/science/space/in-pursuit-o... . It's wonderful to see people spending huge amounts of money to expand the reach of humanity instead of our capacity for narcissism. Startups like these give me hope for the future.
"'The company is cash flow positive, already,' Mr. Anderson said." How is this possible?
A couple founders raising money and taking pre-orders can be cash flow positive. Then they will build out the team, it likely will be cashflow negative for a while (or else they wouldn't have raised money), and then hopefully it will be cashflow positive again.
Re: Asteroid Mining Venture Backed by Google Execs, James Cameron Unveiled
#138Re: Asteroid Mining Venture Backed by Google Execs, James Cameron Unveiled
#139Re: Asteroid Mining Venture Backed by Google Execs, James Cameron Unveiled
#140What will be the shovels of the future gold rush? Maybe it would be a good time to develop mining robots? Rockets are completely out of my reach...