Month: April 2011

Over the last year I did some writing about propping up your finances. Now, I’m not really a finance guru and my idea was only to write about my own experiences. Specifically about how to save money enough to last a lifetime, because if I want to witness that marvellous “space future” I’m in for a long trip. Also, I actually might become a hundred years old. I better have a nest egg, for whatever reason.

Saving and investing won’t get you very far, though. The most obvious advice is to increase your income, for instance by asking for a raise with your boss. In Holland? Fat chance. It is much better to do something on the side. Try to sell something, preferably with a profit. Or create a service and sell your “time”. Make money.

My first step is to try to sell stuff by means of websites like Zazzle and Cafepress. Here I can put my own design on shirt, mugs and the sort. It’s an easy way to make a buck. Since I want to increase my artistic capabilities anyway, a web-shop like Zazzle is a good start. By the way, I want to be a little bit more artistic because I don’t want to depend solely on my IT-skills. Why? That’s a subject for another post. Firstly, my newest addition to the shop. Come on, click on the image.

So I was logged into Facebook and looked what Arno Wielders had posted recently. He always knows to find some gems. This time a Youtube video of a Ted talk made by the one of the founders of Xcor, Jeff Greason. It’s about why NASA isn’t the future and why those space 2.0 startups are. Welcome to the new frontier.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8PlzDgFQMM[/youtube]

I hope his business model will work. A great talk, about why it’s hard and why NASA is making it harder. There was one obstacle I missed and that’s the government. Rockets and rocket propelled planes are high energy objects and those things make any government jumpy. How much free market and liberty you might crave for your space business, government will enforce its regulation.

In the end it will be a tug-o-war between government and the space companies on how much those companies are allowed to do. For instance to the new frontier.