[extropy-chat] Crazy Wealthy Space Enthusiasts?

[Amara Graps]

>Jeff Bezos and Mark Shuttleworth are two.  Then there is the  hotel
>guy in Vegas (and now Houston I think).  There are at least 3, maybe
>4 companies working on cheap access to space.
[...]
>One place to start would be the Forbes lists of the richest people
>in the U.S. and the World (they are two distinct lists).  They
>publish the reshuffled lists every year I think.

>Obviously a company could get some great press by launching a
>satellite that "NASA left behind..."


Thanks Robert for your information.

This news item from a friend on the wta list is helpful too:

Geeks in space
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9584_22-5399507.html

Potentially useful info above in that  Jim Benson, (founding chairman and
chief executive of SpaceDev) really wants to send a small space
miner that can land onto the surface of (water/ice-rich) asteroids
and drill a meter into the surface to extract the ice reserves.

The planetary scientists would be horrified to think of their
beloved Ceres with its potential subsurface ocean/life to be treated
roughly, but perhaps an agreement could be made to take good care of
'her'.  Moreover, Benson successfully knows how to encourage investors.

So if he really wants to go to the asteroid belt to find water, there
exists an almost-built spacecraft exactly designed to go there,
and, moreover, to a water-rich asteroid, all for the sum of 40 million
dollars. What more could one want ? :-)

Amara
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Amara Graps, PhD          email: amara at amara.com
Computational Physics     vita:  ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt
Multiplex Answers         URL:   http://www.amara.com/
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"For a girl, she's remarkably perceptive." --Calvin