James Cameron just wants to be that cool guy with a bunch of money throwing things around.
Cameron is nothing like that. He has made a small fortune from his movies like several other notable film makers, but the difference is instead of sitting around on his fat ass like George Lucas and growing another chin, he puts his money into scientific endeavors. And what is amazing about James Cameron is he is just not a very wealthy guy tossing money at a hobby and buying needless junk, he designs and builds a lot of the tech himself, how many other film makers do this? And don't for one second think that Cameron has not thought of every possible angle including cost, viability, potential profit, risk.
If you ask me James Cameron is a genius, if anyone can make this work, he can.
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Cameron is nothing like that. He has made a small fortune from his movies like several other notable film makers, but the difference is instead of sitting around on his fat ass like George Lucas and growing another chin, he puts his money into scientific endeavors. And what is amazing about James Cameron is he is just not a very wealthy guy tossing money at a hobby and buying needless junk, he designs and builds a lot of the tech himself, how many other film makers do this? And don't for one second think that Cameron has not thought of every possible angle including cost, viability, potential profit, risk.
If you ask me James Cameron is a genius, if anyone can make this work, he can.
Like I said, Howard Hughes! I agree, it's pretty neat, and if he keeps it up he could go down as one of the visionaries of our time.
I don't think Jim Cameron would have ever tried to build a spruce framed aircraft. But I have to say, the downside to Cameron getting involved in all his exploration projects is he won't be making another Terminator film anytime soon. Way back when there was talk of a T3 film from Cameron, but the expected costs were said to be so ridiculous ($500 million was a number tossed around) that the project never got off the ground. Plus there were usage rights issues.
There have been murmurs lately of another Terminator film project from Cameron but I don't think it will ever happen.
I don't think Jim Cameron would have ever tried to build a spruce framed aircraft. But I have to say, the downside to Cameron getting involved in all his exploration projects is he won't be making another Terminator film anytime soon. Way back when there was talk of a T3 film from Cameron, but the expected costs were said to be so ridiculous ($500 million was a number tossed around) that the project never got off the ground. Plus there were usage rights issues.
There have been murmurs lately of another Terminator film project from Cameron but I don't think it will ever happen.
Meh, I think that franchise has pretty much been ruined. Maybe they reboot it, but...
And as far as the Spruce Goose, you're looking at that from our modern knowledge. While even a strange project back then, there were lots of other things HH did that really advanced things. And many of those were called crazy too.
I like the Howard Hughes comparisons, but more along these lines:
The Hughes Glomar Explorer [HGE] was built in 1973 by Sun Shipbuilding and Drydock Co. for an intricate CIA undertaking. The mission of Glomar Explorer was to raise a Soviet nuclear submarine that had sunk in the Pacific, resting on the ocean floor nearly 17,000 ft. (5,200 m) down. The Soviet Golf-II Class ballistic missile submarine sank on April 11, 1968, approximately 750 miles northwest of Hawaii. Naval intelligence at Pearl Harbor had tracked the submarine and learned of its fate through underwater listening devices. After months of futile searching by Soviet vessels, it became apparent that only the US knew the location of the sunken submarine.
Oceanographers have long known that parts of the Pacific sea floor at depths between 14,000 ft. and 17,000 ft. are carpeted with so-called manganese nodules, potato-size chunks of manganese mixed with iron, nickel, cobalt and other useful metals. In the 1970s, Howard Hughes used the Deep Ocean Mining Project [DOMP] search for nodules as a cover for building the ship Glomar Explorer. Global Marine supervised construction of the Glomar Explorer , at a cost in excess of $200 million dollars, and operated it from 1973 to 1975 under contract to the US government. Glomar Explorer went to sea on June 20, 1974, found the sub, and began to bring a portion of it to the surface. The Soviets watched the "deep-sea mining" operation with interest, but did not attempt to thwart it. An accident during the lifting operation caused the fragile hulk to break apart, resulting in the loss of a critical portion of the submarine, its nuclear missiles and crypto codes. However, according to other accounts, material recovered included three nuclear missiles, two nuclear torpedoes, the ship's code machine, and various code books. http://www.fas.org/irp/program/collect/jennifer.htm
My prediction, this asteroid mining is a cover to put something more sinister into space.
Last edited by freedogger; 04-24-2012 at 04:39 PM.
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Helium! So if you get an ore of the right type of radioactive element, and you wait millions and millions (or even billions) of years, you make a giant underground store of helium!
So the good news is that these underground stores exist, so we have a supply of Helium for all of our scientific (and non-scientific) purposes. But the bad news? When we use it up, we'll have to wait million of years for it to build back up, or figure out some non-prohibitively expensive way to recover it from the atmosphere. (It's so expensive that many are thinking of mining the Moon when we're out of it on Earth!)
I'm all for environmentalism and conservation, but even if you aren't, running out of Helium poses a serious problem for the continuing advancement of science and technology. Helium on Earth is scarce. It took millions of years to make the stores we have now, and once they're gone, they'll be gone for thousands of generations.
So be careful with the precious things you have, and treat them like the precious things they are, even if others don't. Because some of them -- like Helium -- are truly irreplaceable.
Farnsworth: Yes, there's no safer occupation than mining. Especially when you're perched on a snowball whipping through space at a million miles an hour. [He mimes a snowball whipping through space at a million miles an hour.] Safe!
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Would HAVE, Could HAVE, Should HAVE = correct
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I have no problem with eccentric millionaires and billionaires funding the exploration of the ocean and space. Its better than the government having to spend money on it, and since they arent anyways, go for it.
I have no problem with eccentric millionaires and billionaires funding the exploration of the ocean and space. Its better than the government having to spend money on it, and since they arent anyways, go for it.
I'm a little choked. What just because you have billions, you get to go and get that asteroid and profit off of it? Doesn't it belong to the commons? Poor naive me, I should realize by now that this is always the way its been.
I read quite a lot about this and the companies and people behind it last night. This is for real. They will spend a fair bit of money on it.
