[ExI] Wash post comment

BillK pharos at gmail.com
Tue May 8 12:29:20 UTC 2012


On Tue, May 8, 2012 at 1:07 PM, Mike Dougherty wrote:
> On Tue, May 8, 2012 at 12:38 AM, Keith Henson wrote:
>> My background is engineering, I can work out how it might be done and
>> how much it would cost, but raising the tens of billions needed for
>> the first propulsion laser is beyond me.
>
> Yeah, that's a lot of cupcakes at a bake sale.
>

The main problem I see is that it is a sink hole for money for many
years with no return until successful completion.

Even governments would be reluctant to fund that. It is quite likely
they would be voted out of power and the project cancelled by
political opponents claiming they were throwing money away. Also, in
todays climate of corporate fraud, it would be hard to get people to
believe that the project will eventually pay off and that it isn't
just another scheme for directors to scam millions, then surprisingly
go bankrupt.

You need a smaller project first with some payback which would prove
feasibility and help fund the full scale project.

As with all projects there may be unexpected consequences. Pollution
from hundreds of launches, disasters from misfiring rockets, more
space debris in orbit, (which might damage construction work), other
projects cancelled in order to fund this project, etc. These are just
a few possibilities after a few minutes thought.


BillK



More information about the extropy-chat mailing list