I seem to remember that in the book it was the lunar citizens, acting independently of any nation on Earth, who were throwing rocks around secure in the knowledge that it would be difficult indeed to throw any back. From that point of view it might make a difference what the ideology of the lunar residents might be. Of course it would take a long time for moon-bases to be sufficiently independent to be able to do this without having to worry that their food supplies might be tampered with, or cut off completely. Any fear of the Chinese obtaining a moon-monopoly is probably based very much upon the traditional balance of power on Earth: will they have more resources than us; what if they discover super-chemical X, that type of thing. Ultimately it all boils down to us’ns and them’ns, and the sports team from my town being superior to the sports team from your town (they’ve just had some bad breaks this season). Frankly it’s all very silly because whoever is nominally in charge is going to be eating McMoon burgers and using Windows. Let’s just get some people up there and see what happens.

I just sent them $300…I’m kinda curious whether I’ve thrown it away, or funded my retirement :)

I was planning to invest more but I got spooked by ISR, which has 70 researchers working on elevator research, headed up by Dr. Edwards. They seem better positioned to get the grant money. But I like Liftport’s gonzo attitude, and didn’t want to count them out completely…

I can’t say I know ISR very well, but I very much doubt they have all their staff focused on space elevators – see here for a list of their current research projects. In any case, from Michael’s presentation, he and Dr. Edwards (they worked together on the previous company, “Highlift”, which received the NASA grants) will continue working together, but he’s focused on the business end of actually getting some of this accomplished, while Edwards is more interested in just continuing research. Liftport may actually have more people working directly on space elevators than ISR can afford – at least the current plan looks to be to keep about a dozen people busy for the next year (but business people, lawyers, and office staff, along with a few scientists).

If you’ve invested in their private stock offering, you’ve seen the growth plans – it doesn’t look terribly unrealistic to me, but it’s not something that they can accomplish just by relying on government grants!

Anyway, RickyJames is urging me to produce a bit more of a report on what we heard at ISDC; I’ll see what I can come up with. I have to say I came away very encouraged about the company – if only because Michael Laine himself seems extremely capable and dedicated to this project.

Another country doing it would put our own technological capabilties and future economic growth in question, which is I think what people really fear. Heinlein’s story might be a worry for a lunar base capable of real independence; I don’t think that’s likely to be an issue for a century or so at least…