[ExI] Hawking urges Moon landing to 'elevate humanity'

[BillK]

On 24 June 2017 at 13:46, Dan TheBookMan  wrote:
> One major problem with this: real world markets ate forward-looking. The
> prices for the commodities would likely crash beforehand based on the
> expectation of such sales. If traders expected the project to work -- and
> it's hard to see how they wouldn't unless you somehow keep the whole thing
> secret or most traders expect failure right until contracts are signed.
>
> One way to mitigate this might be to set up futures or options contracts
> with the goal of profiting before things start to happen. But that puts you
> into a realm of very speculation trading that might not end up playing out
> as you believe.
>
> Another is to try to stimulate demand. If a very rare commodity's supply
> increases hugely and demand stays the same, prices typically crash, but if
> the demand can go up that might play out another way.
>


I see a few problems with the proposal to fling an asteroid in the
direction of Earth. :)

You have to be able to stop it when it gets near Earth. A fast trip
aiming to go into orbit would probably not be greeted with much
enthusiasm, as a slight miscalculation could be quite messy. A slow
trip would take many years and circumstances would have changed by the
time it arrives.

The theory sounds good, but the practice requires a bit more space
technology than we have at present.

BillK