From: Robin Hanson (rhanson@gmu.edu)
Date: Sun Mar 26 2000 - 17:45:49 MST
hal@finney.org wrote:
> > Someday space really will be ready to make a profit on. When
> > people like us approach funders (private and public) to suggest
> > projects, will they reply "that's what you science fiction sorts
> > have been saying for over X decades; you've been dead wrong
> > so far, so why should we believe you now"? Fooling funders into
> > paying for profitless things now may cost us real big later,
> > when it really counts.
>
> I recall you have an article that suggests that to some extent this
> phenomenon is inevitable. The lure of potential tremendous riches
> from space (or nanotech, or any other far out technology) will induce
> investors to put money into it even if the chances of success are
> rather modest, because the potential payoff is so big. The net result
> is that investors don't make any more money off of space than from more
> conventional investments. And a huge amount of money is "wasted" in those
> early days, the gigantic reward leading to equally gigantic expenditures.
Yes, there can be waste via too early entry into new frontiers. So
perhaps all this "crying wolf" might be a good thing, if it delays
entry into the space frontier past the earliest possible moment
someone might make a profit from it. Suggests an interesting research
project, actually.
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