Crowdfund a Moon Monolith Mission? 199
Jamie found a somewhat amusing little essay on putting together a crowd-sourced mission to
put a monolith on the moon. The author estimates it would cost half a billion dollars, which is a sum he thinks could be raised. Although personally, I think a half a billion dollars could be put to better use, it's a fun thought exercise.
Better Use? (Score:4, Insightful)
Although personally, I think a half a billion dollars could be put to better use
You can play that game forever though. Did you east breakfast this morning? That food could have been put to better use, as could the water from your shower, or the resources it took to make the shoes you put on your feet.
In fact I can think of no better use for a tiny drop in the total sum of money floating around the planet, than a mass exercise in artistic expression. It's kind of the ultimate way of saying, here we are.
Re:Dear lord!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, but you only have to buy this monolith once. The hungry will just be hungry again tomorrow... Unless you stop feeding them, then it eventually solves itself.
"$500M could be put to better use" (Score:4, Insightful)
Then get out there, raise it, and put it to that "better use".
Re:Useless Piece of Crap (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Useless Piece of Crap (Score:3, Insightful)
I take it that essentially every moment of your time is devoted to preventing people from dying, since the $1.66 that this would represent if you spread the expense over every person in ths U.S. (neglecting the other 6.6 billion people in the world) is less than a half hour of a net minimum wage.
While we're at it, let's get rid of those pesky cultural arts, since that's virtually all "masturbation" as well.
Re:Useless Piece of Crap (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's waste half a billion. Why not crowdfund for something meaningful and useful to the world? There are people dying and these jerks, anyone who supports this with effort or funding, are masturbating.
This sort of project would provide a fair number of jobs and is voluntarily financed, what's non-meaningful and useless about that? The government isn't confiscating the money from you so why are you complaining? Start your own crowd sourced project to halt death or whatever it is you think is more meaningful and useful.
what this really means (as a skeptic) (Score:2, Insightful)
As a skeptic, what this really means to me is: this guy is looking for a way to fund his retirement.
Half a billion? That's 500 million. Sure, it might cost that much to perform the actual operation, but consider: management and administration costs. Surely there will be a significant portion of that set aside, particularly for the fund management. Say, as a non-profit, it's a 'relatively modest' $175k/year for such a position (if he's fitting in with current gov't standards, at least), and surely that sum would be allocated to him to manage it.
Let's say the project lasts 5 years; he just netted 2/3 or so of a million in income. At that point, the project has gone bankrupt due to lack of interest.