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Need opinions and guidance building a space elevator.

#441
mcglyph said:
To me, Kickstarter represents more than a bunch of people needing money. It is, a shining beacon of the capability of one person's ability added to another, equaling something amazing. It is population human, willfully supporting, by word of mouth, etc, avocations, attempts, and projects at which conventional financial minds often scoff.
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The same thing could be achieved by legally raising funding through a stock issue. I wonder why that approach wasn't taken? Perhaps Liftport prefers the lack of accountability and oversight that finding through kickstarter offers. As mentioned earlier a conventional stock issue isn't difficult.
 
#442
Marlat said:
The same thing could be achieved by legally raising funding through a stock issue. I wonder why that approach wasn't taken? Perhaps Liftport prefers the lack of accountability and oversight that finding through kickstarter offers. As mentioned earlier a conventional stock issue isn't difficult.
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Because the 110K he raised started out at 8K. That was the goal. On the kickstarter page, and in that first document I posted way, way back on page 1 of this thread, he states, the whole point of using kickstarter is the same reason I started this thread, i.e., to get the word out, to get people motivated, talking about, thinking about, a space elevator. Clearly a kickstarter campaign is not going to raise the money ULTIMATELY needed for a project of this scale. It will hopefully become a world effort, evidence of our ability as humans working together for something lasting, totally amazing, ten times more worthy than almost everything MOST will do in their entire lives.
 
#444
Marlat said:
The same thing could be achieved by legally raising funding through a stock issue. I wonder why that approach wasn't taken? Perhaps Liftport prefers the lack of accountability and oversight that finding through kickstarter offers. As mentioned earlier a conventional stock issue isn't difficult.
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As you mentioned, the guy has done all sorts of shonky things with money in the past, getting funding in the conventional fashion is probably quite difficult for him.

To me, the fact that he is still with liftport and still working on the same projects says that his reasons for doing some more unconventional things are more likely to do with his dedication to the project and if you like, his own personal goals and interests, than they are to do with him trying to rip people off.

It's the mark of a very driven person to go after something like this at all costs, and I get the impression from what I've seen, both elsewhere and in this thread, that he is the type to happily spend all this money and the next few years working on experiments turning no profit and bankrupting liftport and himself in the process, even if all they have to show for it at the end are a few more baby steps of progress. Nobody in their right mind would invest money in a project like this, the likelyhood of it making any money at all in the next couple of years, if ever, seems pretty slim.

Maybe he will just spend all the money on booze and hookers, or a new company car, who knows.
 
#449
Febs said:
No, it isn't and that is precisely the problem. I see plenty of claims on the liftport page, but very little support for those claims. Every page I look for information is either empty, or an invalid link.
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I've said this before, the page JUST came up, literally. They are still putting it together.

As far as the information, I found it all in about ten seconds.

http://www.tropicalcoder.com/LiftPortRebuttal.htm

You believe him or you don't, the information is out there, readily available.
 
#450
mcglyph said:
I've said this before, the page JUST came up, literally. They are still putting it together.

As far as the information, I found it all in about ten seconds.

http://www.tropicalcoder.com/LiftPortRebuttal.htm

You believe him or you don't, the information is out there, readily available.
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I've seen that. There is no meaningful financial information there.

Example:

Management of financial resources questioned
We managed to keep from going broke off $200,000 invested over 4 years, all the while working toward developing products and technology related to the space elevator. We promoted the space elevator concept in general to the benefit of the entire industry.

Questions about where all the money went
There wasn't all that much money...
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#451
Febs said:
I've seen that. There is no meaningful financial information there.

Example:
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The link was an example of easily found information which could indicate the project's relative risk. Clearly the information you seek isn't something I have, nor does it appear on line.
For me, if there was as much smoke as is being pointed out, there'd be more fire so to speak.
 
#452
Well, I've recalculated the coordinates of a space escalator by multiplying 3.14 times 4,000,000 and then I divided that by cube root of MC Hammer. This allows a space astronaut to bungee cord himself into space thus building a space escalator without the use of rockets.
 
#453
placedesjardins said:
Well, I've recalculated the coordinates of a space escalator by multiplying 3.14 times 4,000,000 and then I divided that by cube root of MC Hammer. This allows a space astronaut to bungee cord himself into space thus building a space escalator without the use of rockets.
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And on that note, /end thread :)
 
#454
mcglyph said:
I've said this before, the page JUST came up, literally. They are still putting it together.

As far as the information, I found it all in about ten seconds.

http://www.tropicalcoder.com/LiftPortRebuttal.htm

You believe him or you don't, the information is out there, readily available.
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If it were me, I sure as hell wouldn't ask people to fund me through something like kickstarter, or traditional stock options, before I had a website up and running detailing all the pertinent details of my business, and ESPECIALLY if it's something as audacious as a space elevator.

That's another red flag for me personally.
 
#456
placedesjardins said:
Well, I've recalculated the coordinates of a space escalator by multiplying 3.14 times 4,000,000 and then I divided that by cube root of MC Hammer. This allows a space astronaut to bungee cord himself into space thus building a space escalator without the use of rockets.
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If you are dividing by the cube root of MC Hammer then that makes the space elevator too legit, to legit to quit.
 
#459
sloasdaylight said:
If it were me, I sure as hell wouldn't ask people to fund me through something like kickstarter, or traditional stock options, before I had a website up and running detailing all the pertinent details of my business, and ESPECIALLY if it's something as audacious as a space elevator.

That's another red flag for me personally.
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See a red flag to you, not to the people who know him, who've worked for and with him. Not to me, though as previously stated I'm pretty much in none of the previously mentioned categories. There are 64 pages(at last count) of members! On a site which is as you proclaim, unfinished! These are not ignorant, uneducated, loons(maybe this is my category??), although I'm sure there are some statistically speaking.

He already has a guy who is projecting a six million dollar yearly budget for the company, if he meets his goal by next year.
 
#460
mcglyph said:
See a red flag to you, not to the people who know him, who've worked for and with him. Not to me, though as previously stated I'm pretty much in none of the previously mentioned categories. There are 64 pages(at last count) of members! On a site which is as you proclaim, unfinished! These are not ignorant, uneducated, loons(maybe this is my category??), although I'm sure there are some statistically speaking.

He already has a guy who is projecting a six million dollar yearly budget for the company, if he meets his goal by next year.
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I really don't care about how many members a particular organization has, it plays really about 0% into my decision making. It also has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not an organization has pertinent information up on its website detailing what exactly they're going to do with MY money, or whether the website is finished. I build websites for a living, and you're out of your mind if you think I would think it would be a good professional decision for any company that wants to raise money to not have a completely finished website. This project has been in the works for years you say, and yet they still can't put up the information saying how they are going to use MY money.

I don't know this Laine guy. The only information I have about him is what is posted on his website, as well as other things about his past on the internet found elsewhere. Very little of that has me wanting to give him 1 of the 2 nickels I've got to rub together.
 

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