This week marks a year since the death of Steve Jobs — a year that has changed my life in many ways with at least two of those ways yet to be announced. The anniversary seems to be an excuse for anyone with a byline who knew or even bumped into Steve to throw out a reminiscence or two and I’m not immune to that disease. So here’s the story of when I tried to get Steve and Apple to back my Moon Shot.
Longtime readers will remember that I’ve been trying since 2007 to mount a private unmanned mission to the Moon, though five years in it feels sometimes like I could have walked there by now. It turns out that the greatest challenge to reaching the moon isn’t technical but financial. Even though my Moon project is by far the cheapest one around, the trick is to raise money at a faster rate than the budget expansion that inevitably happens as you face realities along the way.
So I’ve had a lot of meetings, made a lot of presentations, and the project is far from dead. I keep thinking that it’s time to make an announcement, but we’re still about $1 million short and keep getting distracted by other space-related opportunities like launching small satellites for other people.
Among my many meetings looking for sponsors were several with both Apple and Microsoft, neither of which resulted in a financial commitment but the stories tell a lot about each company.
At Microsoft I came in at too low a level. The people who got excited about the project had neither the budget for it nor ready access to someone with such a budget. We got lost in the general corporate noise, but before we did it was clear that Redmond bought our technical argument and saw a myriad of strategic and marketing reasons why it might be a good thing to do. Think Windows Phone on the Moon and you’ll get the idea.
My experience at Apple was completely different. There I entered at the highest possible level — mano a mano with Steve. All the strategic and marketing arguments were dismissed in the first minute. Steve’s questions were: 1) is it doable?, and; 2) is it a significant enough adventure to be worth attaching the Apple name? ROI didn’t matter to Steve for something like this.
And yet it didn’t happen.
Here’s why. It wasn’t some unconquered technical hurdle. It wasn’t that we couldn’t do what we said we could do (understand that we in this case meant a lot of real rocket scientists far smarter than me). It was that our mission animation lacked a musical score.
“It needs music,” said Steve.
“In space nobody can hear you sing,” I replied.
“Come back with music,” he said, ending the conversation.
But when I came back with music (Robots on the Moon, written and performed just for this video by movie composer Dave Feinman) Steve was on one of his medical leaves and our opportunity left with him.
Here is the video Steve Jobs saw but never heard.
Cool!
Heh. I quickly muted the video because the music was annoying.
Quote: “Come back with music,” he said, ending the conversation.
More than just a little petty, and capricious to boot.
Fitting of a king to a servant, as in “take it awayyyyy”.
it’s a test.
if it can be significant at any level to anybody, a song can be written about it.
if the song is any good, it hits a DNA chord and it rings your bell.
if the song is a 9th grade “if only she’d see me” thing, bleah.
no song, no Jobs bell rung inside. I could see that coming a mile away.
Really? Do you think the iMac had an original song written about it for the proposal?
Have you thought about Kickstarter or similar? If you only need a couple of million (I know, only a couple), it might be possible for a lot of smaller donations from people who are interested to help fund this project, and actually get you going.
It’s a thought but maybe too complicated at this point. We’re either $5 or $6 million into this depending on how you count the money (cash, goods or services in lieu of cash, etc.) and while another $1 million would be enough, it might simultaneously topple the fragile legal structure we’ve built to get this far. I’m not saying it isn’t worth looking into, but some of the money that’s been pledged has to be kept quiet for now (their idea, not mine — I think the idea is they’ll just never mention it if we fail) and that hardly makes for transparency on a KickStarter page.
What is this transparency required for Kickstarter you are speaking of? No transparency is required. Stick up a project and if it can win the popularity contest you will be funded.
I often though about writing an automated Kickstarter project generator to test the intelligence of crowds. See http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/ for an example. I think there is a formal for successful Kickstarter projects that doesn’t require substance.
The transparency is not with Kickstarter, but with the other investors, if I read Bob correctly.
First check with John Hutchison. Free energy is the way to go. Skip flight meals and do a purge; saves space and cost on personal facilities. Cash in life insurance. Won’t need, once in flight.
I’ve dusted off my binoculars and waiting.
Bob,
Your moon shot is quite a bold project. I wonder though, besides getting to the moon, what is the purpose of this? You’re not going to start a moon colony, are you?
No Moon colony. It’s a one-way trip. But all this scratching away at the problem for five years has generated some interesting new technology that in itself has been worth the effort. Now if only we could think of a way to qualify for the Google Lunar X-Prize…
Been there, done that?
money’s a hell of a drug.
Anyone remember seeing that ad campaign along the lines of “It’s better with music” ? I did a search and can’t seem to find it.
It featured a boring video ( like a turtle crawling ) – adding music made a huge difference.
Music is definitely a plus… but your video is far from boring ( despite featuring a flying ottoman ).
Lol “come back with the music.” a trivial request for a complex idea. But what Steve was really saying, “what’s the point?”. Looking at this video, I don’t see any value sending space junk and littering a celestial body with it. At least NASA are doing research. I ask to, what’s the point?
What’s the point? What did Hillary say when asked why he climbed Everest? “Because it’s there.” He said it and was a hero. I say it in this jaded age and apparently to you I am a litterbug.
Do you have any idea how difficult it is to build something that weighs 6.6 lbs and can fly all the way to the Moon on its own and land? Pick almost any moment in history before tomorrow and the answer would be, “It’s impossible.” Now try doing it on anywhere from a tenth to a twentieth the budget that most “experts” think it ought to take and a hundredth the budget NASA would need if they could even do it, which they can’t.
Taking an approach that says we won’t INVENT anything to make this work, because that’s too risky, we’ve had to ENGINEER the heck out of many things, advancing the state of the art in the process. Our rocket motors are simple, using monopropellant hydrazine for example, but they are also the smallest such rocket motors ever built by a factor of 10! Yet they fire every time and can be throttled beautifully — just the thing for space flight after Moore’s Law. NASA stuff is crude in comparison.
And while you may see little point to this people with small payloads to put in space are seeing great value in it, because we’re finding a way to put low-buck scientific payloads into space.
Ah yes the “climbing everest” analogy. I do believe Hilary did it off his own bat and at great personal risk. He didn’t go to coca cola and ask for sponsorship and promise to put up a coke banner on the summit. There has to be evidence of forging human endeavor. No doubt sending something to the moon is a challenge. But for what purpose of human endeavour ?
I can appreciate the prospect of developing ultra cheap payload delivery systems/frameworks and this is an engineering expedition, so then if that was your pitch, bravo. Based on what i have read I’m assuming there was no special endeavour, except “i can do it ’cause i can”. If not please correct me.
So, if the only way to do it is to get commercial sponsors rather philanthropists, then fair enough. I would imagine in the years to come, robust satellites the size of a briefcase will be a great advancement and become common place. Having said that, and without sounding like a bureaucrat, it would need to be carefully regulated because once it can be established you can launch your own inter planetary vehicle or satellite from your local park or worse, your backyard, disrupting the current crowded parking lot circling the earth could be catastrophic if we break something important like comms or weather satellites. So, this is like unleashing new technology which will be highly accessible to a larger group of people with good and potentially evil intentions. But that is a tangental issue to your venture.
But if this project is just a way to say “look at me, look at me” because your mother didnt hug you enough, and you litter the universe for the sake of vanity or a repressed oedipus complex, then you have deprecated the pursuit of space travel, like McDonalds has deprecated fine dining. (Sorry McDonalds). If its such a noble idea, why did Steve jobs ask for music? Because…mit wasn’t convincing on its merits. Is there some specific vision you have for this venture ? I hope you understand my point, these sort of unusual projects tend to gain attention with a humanistic endeavour spin to it. So perhaps your real challenge is not the technology and engineering, it’s vision.
An unimagineable amount of things are done by humans for no reason other than it is fun, entertaining or because it’s better than doing something more mundane like things that have a point. You sound like a middle manager who’s motto is “this is x, and we’re not allowed to have any fun around here”. Keep your seriousness for your workplace. Bob’s moonshot is a hobby and hobbies need no explanation, just some funds to kick them along. Good column, Bob. Please continue to keep us informed.
Longtimereader (since 1987!), and still waiting to see a photo of Pammy, the girl who could make a police officer tear up a speeding ticket (on the way to Comdex or something).
Consider that if an article pops up about star trek and Bladerunner and asking how close we have come to the technologies in those stories then someone in the comments will mention having a powerful communications device in their pocket and five year missions and space colonies will be entirely overlooked. Hence why many people morned the passing of Jobs while Neil Armstrong’s death passed relatively quietly in comparison. All this talk about crazy people and dreamers was just flim flam.
George Mallory is the true author of that sentence (“because it’s there”), but he could not get to the top of the mountain (he died trying it).
Edmund Hillary is not the author of that sentence, but he got to the top of the mountain.
Well, if there need be a “point”, then maybe all one needs do is crank it up an order of magnitude and point the lander at Europa with a payload of extremeophile microbes from Lake Vostok.
Announce an intention to seed life on Europa, as a hedge against global destruction by super-asteroids or humanity’s-humanness, or as a first-step in mankind’s manifest-destiny towards galactic domination, or as a Svalbard-type genetic “seed vault” to preserve live samples of simple L-amino acid/D-sugar RNA/DNA-encoded life to survive Sol’s nova, etc. etc.
Wing-nuts will spin off their screws freaking about invasion of alien ecologies.
Talk about how Europa *probably* never had conditions to start life, therefore it’s mearly a test to see if Europa has sub-surface liquid water capable of sustaining life once introduced, such that if people are so concerned, then build a program to fly out and check for pre-existing alien-life.
When the debate lulls, kick it back up by saying a Russian team will be hired to execute the program with Russian boosters because it fits the budget, and because Russians won’t give a squirel’s-nuthole about invading alien ecologies, and because Russians will feel national-pride for seeding life from “their” Lake Vostok.
Ahh the controversy; the endless miles of bloggage; all of which can translate into either: 1) enough money to actually do it, or 2) motivation for someone in authority to allocate NASA a life-saving injection of funds to fly out with its deep-space probing experience to check for alien-life on Europa.
The point could be, the moon is the best place for earth to get its energy.
Set up solar cells and nuclear plants and beam the energy back to earth by a series of short wave satellites strung between earth and the moon.
Granted, this cost much more, but it offers and eventual return on investment which could permit some financers to chip in.
Energy could be to the moon what tobacco was to the Virginia colony – a cash crop for the mother planet that gets settlement started. Once there’s a big enough presence there, the secondary role kicks in: as a launch pad to other planets in the solar system — the moon is our space port, thank you mother nature.
So attempting to turn the moon into a giant energy farm seems to be the right problem to solve.
Hmm… why solar panels on the moon – with the added cost of beaming said energy back to earth – when you could plaster the American south-west with solar panels such that not only would energy be cheeper to collect than on the moon, if you stick the solar panels on pillars, the desert might become more liveble in the shade?
Perhaps a way to rationalize/justify the whole project would be to tell rich, regulation-despising miners that they can’t hurt earth’s environment by going wild on the moon, and as their public-service they can focus their godzilla-sized mineral-exploration robots on two dots and a semi-circle to make a smily-face.
My wife had an interesting thought about this. She supposes that, given the vast number of ideas that were probably submitted to Jobs for approval every day, what probably happened is that he streamlined the decision making process into certain “bullet points” that every idea must have before he’d actually devote any time to thinking about it. Maybe, for example, he came to the conclusion that if the pitch lacked polish, it must be lacking in some other area as well and therefore it wasn’t ready.
Her hypothesis made sense to me. After all, in a company of that size where so many people seemingly had access to the man at the top, he would have needed to figure out some ways to make decisions quickly or very little would have gotten done.
Every CEO follows templates, I suppose, but Steve Jobs tended to welcome crazy ideas. Heck, he welcomed this one. But he demanded that it have style. So he sent me away to get music and I got music, not because I am an idiot but because it was just the sort of thing Steve would ask for. I fully expected a green light on my return, only by that time Steve was out of the picture. It was just bad timing. So while your wife might be right at any other company, I don’t think that;s exactly what was going on that day at Apple.
But I have to admit that Steve Jobs was constantly being asked to do things or approve things and my sense was that he hated it, so your wife is correct in that. He hated being asked. But he LOVED an adventure, which is why he needed to know it was possible and it was a big enough dream. Steve far preferred people wanting to do something WITH him than for him to just write a check and make it happen for them.
Perhaps he just didn’t like your idea and was just toying with you. If he had been available he would have said he didn’t like your song, come back with a better one. He was just cultivating the stories of his eccentricity, like how he insisted on a particular white for IPhone.
Somehow, I was thinking something more like this:
Rendezvous – The Murf
http://vimeo.com/25584378
Punchy, a good story, great justification for space travel, and awesome music.
Bob – I still love the idea and think about it often since you presented it 🙂
I’m the second subscriber at youtube.com/channel/UCKhC5kzq-6T_ML7XpPLziJg a.k.a. ‘Robert Cringely’.
“This channel has no videos.”
So the embedded video “msLander masterScored” above (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIDuiHGeL64) is ‘unlisted’.
When you launch, will that channel feature video captures (with music?) of the operational progress of Destination Luna?
The video was too big for me to host with my blog so I put it on YouTube. I have other videos there but for some reason they made me start a new account. I did make it unlisted so that people would have to get to it through this blog. What’s wrong with that?
What seems wrong is that I am subscribed to two of your channels “Cringely” and “Robert Cringely”. The first one says “no videos found” but the second has the video from this blog. So it appears you have only one video between the two channels, yet just searching for your name brings up a long list of videos. I’m sure that most of them were not uploaded by you but I’d be curious to see whether you uploaded other videos under different channel names.
I suppose that partly depends on whether YouTube refuse to take the video without requiring a new Channel again.
Bob,
What about approaching a company that aspires to be a technology leader that has the advertising/sponsorship budget to participate (publicly if successful – silently if a failure). I can think of a couple of companies that would love to throw $1M at something like this just to demonstrate that they are far more forward-looking and innovative than the images that their brand often conjures…
If you choose to go the crowdsourcing route, you may not need to have full financial disclosure of the other backers… You could potentially use that model to sell swag (t-shirts, stickers, buttons, etc.) of the project to leverage your many followers and fans to generate the necessary income to get you over the top.
Regards,
JM
I’m open to all ideas, but we’re a long way down the road on this, folks. There isn’t that much room to maneuver. Yes, it would be fabulous if a major sponsor stepped up right about now because that last million looks like it will take some pretty heavy slogging to achieve. But I don’t expect it at this point and there’s a chance we won’t need it as certain costs are coming down.
Why can’t you start crowd sourcing here? Announce your Kickstarter page on your blog with the minimal information you deem necessary. I thought you had a couple million readers. Then let the word spread to Slashdot, Engaget, Popular Science and Mechanics, ad infinitum.
I for one will pledge $50.00.
I believe in the Cringley!
Watched the video. Liked the music, enough… Exciting idea.
What’s the purpose of the “hop” at the end?
Depending on how much fuel is left after landing we can travel around some on the Moon, hence the hop. So the lander is also a rover. It carries a 720p video camera so we could, for example, fly into a crater and look in the shadows for ice.
I don’t even know the way I stopped up right here, but I assumed this post used to be great. I do not recognize who you are however certainly you’re going to a famous blogger in case you aren’t already. Cheers!
One of the things I’d do if I was filthy rich would be to pursue projects like this.
Unfortunately, I’m still working on the rich, never mind the “filthy” part.
Have you approached Woz? He’s the type who would seem amenable to something like this. Or maybe he learned his lesson from the Us Festivals.
My thought exactly. If Woz has any AAPL stock left, he’d be the one I would be wanting to talk to.
Is there any consideration that Steve wasn’t literally talking about adding music to the video…but that the concept, and adventure, metaphorically needed more ‘music’? Since we have already technically gone to the moon, this modern day moon shot needed to appeal to something bigger than the moon…something personal; something universal. Like the thing that you reconnect with when you experience a fantastic piece of music. You feel more alive, dimensional, and human. You feel hope. The hope and realization, that we are capable of creating beauty anew. I didn’t know Steve, but this is what he expressed to me from afar. Maybe it’s just what I’m trying to connect with myself.
I was thinking the exact same thing.
Ditto.
No, he was quite specific. He meant a musical score to go wit the video, which he quite liked.
“The Brave Little Toaster goes to the moon.” A six-slice toaster to boot.
Peter
This looks a tad more complicated than the Estes rockets I used to point at the moon and fire away. I never did find those rockets so I assume they’re still up there. When you get to the moon can you look for them? I’d like to have them back.
Give Dean Kamen a call, tell him I sent you.
romzburg
I love this story about Steve. (And i’m glad to hear you are still working on your moon project.)
I just gotta think that, had you be able to get back with Steve, he would wanted to you change the look of the space craft. Maybe had you get with Jonny Ive to redesign it! 🙂
A small redesign and you would have a Tardis … maybe a tiny BBC logo and a whole world of finance and fandom could open up : )
Next he would have insisted you put the IPhone with titanium case there, and drilled an Apple logo into the moon Tick style.
Jobs was right. In my opinion, the key deliverable of the recent Mars curiosity mission was not the lander (and certainly not the science); it was the “seven minutes of terror” video:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=h2I8AoB1xgU
I think what Jobs might have been trying to convey was his surprise that you were tanking such a cool project by “selling” it with such a shitty video. In 2012, there’s simply no excuse for a video that bad – even with the added music. It’s just lazy, Bob. If you had a competent video, your money problems would be over immediately.
Why ARE you using such a shitty video, Bob? Ways that video sucks:
– It’s completely confusing. No mortal can tell what’s actually happening.
– There are bizarre long stretches when nothing happens.
– There are no people explaining what’s going on, why it’s hard, and why we should give a shit.
– The animation looks like it was done on a Commodore. You need something photorealistic, and there needs to be movement on all three axes, plus the “camera” needs to be moving with the spacecraft.
– The coolest thing in the video is the hopping — and you only do it once, and you don’t convey why it’s useful.
– There’s no climax. The hopping would be perfect, but you wasted it. If you’re going to look for ice, and you think it might actually be there, why not show the thing finding ice? At the very least, you can get a good laugh by showing the thing hopping over the lunar lander and the flag that was left on the moon. (I can’t think of anything that would better make the point of how far things have come and how cheap things can get.)
– There’s not a single human or emotional moment
– The current score is crap. It sounds cheap and tacky. It needs to be orchestral and heroic. You can do way better for ten bucks at audiojungle.
– The spacecraft is too small, and too obscured by grids and stupid readouts of orbital jargon. No one with money gives a fuck what the current perigee is
– There are no sound effects when the rockets fire or the spacecraft speeds by. There needs to be. Yes, I know there’s no sound in space. But Nasa’s video has SFX. You ought to check out NASA’s video if you’re so sure that your technology is better than theirs. Because their marketing technology kicks your ass around the block.
– At one point, when the spacecraft roars past camera, you should animate two or three different corporate logos on the side of the spacecraft as a way of showing the branding rights that they could get.
By the way, the project is cool enough that you could get that video made for free, just so somebody could add it to their reel.
So to why don’t you? You’ll be on your way to the moon in no time.
Indelicate if not inaccurate.
Congratulations! You’ve not only successfully channeled Steve Jobs, you are in the unique position of going head-to-head with him in evaluating this video. Your criticism is far more scathing than anything Steve had to say. He LIKED it while you literally have nothing positive to say about it. Perhaps you should apply for a job at Apple.
“It turns out that the greatest challenge to reaching the moon isn’t technical but financial.”
You don’t say.
I’m guessing, just guessing here, that a lot of us could have told you this ahead of time. Could have told you this more than 40 years ahead of time, at this point.
I don’t usually get choked up by a Cringely column but for some reason reading “Steve was on one of his medical leaves and our opportunity left with him” gave me a little lump in my throat. Anybody else miss Steve Jobs?
🙂
This post is appears to be out of place but was actually a response to a funny response (apparently censored) to this one: “A different Scott says:
October 5, 2012 at 8:33 am…” about how Steve is missed. So the joke response was censored, but not my laughter.
“Our rocket motors are simple, using monopropellant hydrazine”
Didn’t you find that the exothermic reaction melted the motor’s steel? :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Qamecech9m4#t=241s
Did Bob say he built a prototype? Oops…back to the drawing board. 🙂
No motors have melted despite extensive testing both on the ground AND IN ORBIT. We actually know what we are doing.
great concept: big, ambitious, with whiff of lunacy. Regardless of Jobs’s cryptic sendoff and instructions, the video AND music missed the mark. I’m interested in project and can help. TC
If you are interested then they didn’t miss their mark. Call me.
I would dearly love to see NASA go titsup.com. NASA has retarded space exploration for a generation.
Independant exploration, such as this proposal, will be the vanguard of man ultimately making the solar system and the galaxy heel to his every command. Or something like that.
Klaatu barada nikto!
Be seeing you.
Fascinating story, and one I’d love to learn more about. But clearly, the right message here is that Cook & Co. should fund the effort as a tribute to Steve Jobs. What better way to memorialize him than to blast a bite out of our satellite in the shape of the Apple logo? Or was that not the plan from your photo up top?
On a more serious note, if you ever need volunteer analytical resources to help with something as fun sounding as this, let me know. I always want to use my consulting powers for good and science.
Thats great because this music is terrible
as is the idea
Bob,
The video is great and the music does add to it a lot. However, this suffers from the same problem that almost all presentations for space have – technically correct and stunningly boring to anyone not into rockets or tech.
That said, I think it is a heck of an idea and I might have a way for you toraise the million dollars you need without an investor. If you are interested and have about 20 grams of free space on that vehicle.
Well I applaud your endeavours Bob! Despite all the much more knowledgable gain-sayers above, who know bucket-loads more than I ever could!!
I might possibly know why Steve bought it …
“Here’s to the crazy ones…”
AND I’d really like to hear more about the other TWO changes going on that you mentioned but didn’t expand upon.
What I personally appreciate is that no matter what others say you have the courage to go out on a limb. Keep doing it!
🙂
What I didn’t get from the video was what makes this different from other moon attempts. What is different about this trajectory or this engineering approach that makes it more efficient, cheaper, or better than the “usual” approach? (And why have the thing sit in earth orbit for 100 days before the descent to the moon? Why not push the launch date back by 98 days so you’re not waiting as long?)
So, it looks interesting, but doesn’t tell the viewer too much beyond the cool animation. But I’m neither an astrophysicist nor rich, so perhaps I’m not the intended audience for this video.
Timing is everything in this project. Apollo went to the Moon in five days but our trip takes five MONTHS, but then we are doing it on less than a liter of hydrazine. The trajectory is based on an unpublished paper from the early 1990s that has been the basis of a couple very successful efforts to salvage communication satellites from bad orbits using only their maneuvering thrusters. It requires very carefully working with the lunar gravity well and only firing rockets when things are perfectly aligned. We could force that alignment as you suggest but then wouldn’t have any fuel left to brake and land. It might be easier, actually, to go to Mars because there at least we would have atmospheric braking.
A LOT of thought has gone into this project. This video, for example, was in large part generated by the orbital mechanics software we use, which is the same code that NASA uses. The difference is our guy is the software author and the guy who TEACHES NASA engineers.
Why not skip the moon, and use the lander to establish a physical claim on an asteroid? Depending on the payload available, you could spraypaint logos on the surface, and/or do a bit of actual material processing to establish active development of the property. You could sell shares in the ownership of the asteroid, which probably would have an actual legal justification as opposed to the lunarregistry.com claims. Collaborate with a top artist (Koons comes to mind, or Christo) to create or deploy artwork and sell ownership shares. That last million may come via arts grants.
[…] ce florilège par une petite histoire contée par le journaliste Mark Stephens, plus connu sous son nom de plume Robert X. Cringely. Travaillant […]
There are times when I think that Steve Jobs is as capricious as any third world dictator, and turning something like this down because of “no soundtrack” ranks right up there.
There are only three questions.
1. Can we do it?
2. Do we want to do it?
3. Can we work together?
Those that focus on money, the need for an economic reason to do it, have not noticed that greed for money kills innovation. Because to focus on money is to cultivate a life long habit of looking down.
To achieve great things requires the heart above all else
The answers to all 3 questions may include a consideration of available resources. If the project showed some likelihood of paying for itself it would help with the resource factor.
There’s quite an ecosystem already attached to this project. Lots of real work is being done and some people (not me, alas) are already making their living from it. That last million, in fact, is a bit of a canard: if we get to the point where we actually need it then success will already be assured and we’ll be drowning in money from people and organizations that want to be associated with a sure thing. But you have to have a budget and the budget has to show where the money will come from even if success isn’t assured, and so we keep digging.
I’ve said for decades that we need a more elegant way to get off this planet. Maybe another hundred years or so down the road we’ll get one.
I think Enrico Dini could use your help. Little 3d printer to use the lunar regolith to build parts.
http://phys.org/news190873132.html
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Have you tried Larry Ellison?
Yes, I do miss Steve Jobs. And I think Cringe’s moon project had a helluva better shot at getting funding from Apple than from Microsoft. Nobody ever said Jobs was supposed to be polite, diuplomatic, genteel or friendly. What was WAS was a visionary who was unequivocably dedicated to excellence in form, style and function, and improving the world thru his products. And he refused to deviate from that no matter what. And, for a time, he and his products DID make the world a better place, and their legacy lives onboth in and of themselves and in the thousands (if not tens of thousands) of people and proucts that have hitched onto the bandwagon that HE initiated.
Jobs may have been an uncompromising “pendejo,” but that’s a pretty good legacy to leave upon the world. And before anybody criticizes his foibles (which ALL great men /women have had), I would say if I could leave one hundredth the legacy he left upon the world, i would be pretty proud.
No doubt, you would raise trillions of dollars in record time if the goal was to send annoying pricks to the moon.
It sure would make this world a better place.
Crowdsourced project name: The Darwin Awards Grand Prix
E-Petition
We the undersigned nominate (listed undesirables) to be removed from this planet and taken to a place where they shall have zero influence on the rest of humanity for till the end of time.
Pledge Amount Moon-shot Nominee Name Address Signed
============================================================================
No doubt, you would raise trillions of dollars in record time if the goal was to send annoying pricks to the moon.
It sure would make this world a better place.
Crowdsourced project name: The Darwin Awards Grand Prix
E-Petition
We the undersigned nominate (listed undesirables) to be removed from this planet and taken to a place where they shall have zero influence on the rest of humanity till the end of time.
Pledge Amount Moon-shot Nominee Name Address Signed
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[…] vita di Jobs, uno dei tanti degli ultimi giorni, ma tra questi forse anche il più surreale, viene raccontato dal giornalista Mark Stephens, conosciuto da alcuni con il nome con il quale normalmente si firma, […]
What’s so exciting about doing something that was already done 40 years ago? It seems like sad old men trying to recapture their glory days. Drop this project and come up with something original. This is just pitiful. Like a remake of a classic movie. How about “Back to the Future 29: The Snooze”.