Quote:
Originally Posted by pmrid
It's all very well to have some empathy for our star-starved northern chums. But there is a large leap from there to taking upon themselves the right to inflict their vision of starry-starry night on the rest of the world. I called it hubris and don't retreat from it.
Peter
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Hi Peter,
Based on the press release, thankfully I don't think this company is
about to start deploying the artificial meteor shower globally willy-nilly.
Obviously deploying any payload into orbit is an expensive exercise
and as stated by them, the satellite only has a finite number of 'balls'
it can deploy.
Instead, the impression I get is that they will be deploying them
'on-demand' to paying customers as an entertainment.
They have not disclosed pricing but one gathers that a deployment would
not be cheap.
Beyond this first gig at Hiroshima, they may not find a paying
customer.
Just as cities such as the city of Sydney employ private companies to
put on public fireworks displays such as New Year's eve, I gather
they would be seeking similar paid-for commissions.
The City of Sydney paid some $5.78 million for 8.5 tonnes of
pyrotechnics with an estimated attendance of 1.6 million
and obviously many millions more watching on television.
So I would imagine that it is the type of entertainment market
this company is trying to muscle into.
Few families at Sydney Harbour would have questioned what the
chemical and metallic micro-particle make-up of the smoke
they would have been breathing in.
Some people would have chosen not to attend for a variety of reasons
or questioned whether it was rate payers money best spent.
But there is no denying these sorts of displays have been popular
since the 9th-century when the Chinese invented fireworks.
Corporate web site :-
http://star-ale.com/en/