Ha. I've been working for years now on this, trying to position myself to
the point where I would have enough resources and capital to pursue this.
Eventually, I want to start the company that I actually intend to "go all
the way". This will be the biggest case of bootstrapping you ever saw,
seeing as how I started out 5 years ago with nothing. I am currently in the
planning stages of starting a software company that I intend to use to
generate my initial capital towards this goal. I have thus far been very
successful in the software industry and believe I can milk it for 10s of
millions of dollars.
At some point I will start pumping money directly into R&D for an attempt at
doing a "corporate takeover" of profitable space assets.
Most companies are simply too short-sighted. A company with serious space
assets could be turning profits in the $trillion$ within a few years. Bill
Gates will look like a beggar in contrast to the wealth this would create.
My estimated cost for building a decent space industry: USD 50-100 billion.
It is within the range of some of the very large multi-national
conglomerates. Since I don't have access to any multi-national
conglomerates, I am going to build my own.
I intend to be there in 20-30 years. You can bank on it.
-James Rogers
jamesr@best.com