{"id":28793,"date":"2014-11-21T07:33:17","date_gmt":"2014-11-21T12:33:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=28793"},"modified":"2014-11-21T07:33:17","modified_gmt":"2014-11-21T12:33:17","slug":"paging-delos-d-harriman-come-to-the-kickstarter-courtesy-phone-please","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/11\/21\/paging-delos-d-harriman-come-to-the-kickstarter-courtesy-phone-please\/","title":{"rendered":"Paging Delos D. Harriman – come to the Kickstarter courtesy phone, please"},"content":{"rendered":"

This<\/a> is a use of crowdfunding I didn’t expect to see:<\/p>\n

A group of British scientists have taken to Kickstarter in order to get the first set of funds to attempt a landing on the Moon. All ex-teenage (very much ex-teenage, sadly) sci-fi addicts like myself will obviously be cheering them on (and recalling Heinlein\u2019s The Man Who Sold The Moon<\/em> no doubt) and possibly even subscribing. They\u2019re looking for \u00a3 600,000 or so for the planning phase and will need \u00a3 3 billion to actually carry out the mission. That\u2019s probably rather more, that second number, than they can raise at Kickstarter.<\/p>\n

However, over and above the simple joy of seeing boffins doing their boffinry there\u2019s a further joy in the manner in which such projects disintermediate around the political classes. That is, we\u2019ve not got to wait for the politicians to think this is a good idea, we\u2019ve not even got to try and convince any of them that it is. We can (and seemingly are) just getting on with doing it ourselves.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what they\u2019re proposing<\/a>:<\/p>\n