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Technology Stocks : SpaceDev: Mine Asteroids -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill J. Landis who wrote (28)	5/15/1998 2:50:00 PM
From: Ploni	Respond to of 65

Congratulations on bottom-ticking this one yesterday, though it again traded that low today. I don't have a position in the stock, but it's an exciting story. I think it's funny that first management said this was a private venture without any government support, but now they are happy to have clients apply for gov't grants to be able to participate in their launch. So it may be funded, at least indirectly, by the gov't. I think this could have commercial promise someday, but I believe that's a long way off. We may technologically be able to launch spaceships to mine asteroids and return minerals to earth or earth orbit, and perhaps we can move asteroids around (though that would be even harder technically), but these endeavors would be enormously expensive, and there's no push to pay for such things. I think it's more likely that such space business will develop very, very slowly, and perhaps will require the development of technologies that don't exist yet (to bring the costs down). For example, if we can perfect an electromagnetic rail gun for shooting unmanned spaceships into orbit, instead of continuing to rely on very expensive liquid fuel. While I thus doubt that this company will ever be financially successful at mining asteroids (unless it stays in business for 50 years), it may be successful at launching additional private missions, and selling the space to the gov't. This really is a funny business, though. The cost savings is that they'll cut corners that the gov't wouldn't cut: perhaps on tolerances, or checks, or by not redesigning it 100 times, or by not having a large number of deadwood employees lying around -- but in some way they'll cut corners. Will the gov't decide to use SpaceDev, without requiring it to meet all the governmental nonsense that will drive the cost back up to gov't standards? Anyway, companies don't need to be successful for their stocks to attract attention and soar to insane levels. If they actually start building their space probe, and launch it safely, and land it, I'd expect the stock to move up very sharply at each stage, though that may be followed by a quick correction. Good luck; maybe I'll buy a position some day, myself.