



An idea about how we could invest in SpaceX without buying shares! Our favorite 'new space' company, SpaceX, has been successful for many reasons:

SpaceX was founded and is still operated by Elon Musk, seemingly successful at every business that he has created or been a part of.



SpaceX designed their space bound hardware from a 'clean sheet', starting from scratch to take advantage of the advances in aerospace technology in a new century.

SpaceX is a 'vertically integrated' company, which simply means that they manufacture and assemble every component where that is economically feasible.

SpaceX is privately owned by a small number of investors. They have large stakes in the company and seem to have more than just profit as a goal, unlike shareholders of publicly traded companies. It's this last point that led me to come up with an idea that would allow us 'small fry' to invest in SpaceX without them becoming a publicly traded company. Our investment would give us something in return, but it isn't money! But firstly, the rational here is to provide SpaceX with a substantial amount of 'free' capital that they could then use to accelerate their research in creating the hardware needed to colonize Mars!



On Christmas day I tweeted Elon Musk with my proposal (140 characters was more than enough to do the job!).



Just A. Tinker @ John_Gardi ·

@ elonmusk Will you please fly a 2in strand of my hair to orbit & return it to me for a $500 fee. Oh, can I invite 999,999 folks to join in?

Here's how it would work:

Folks would pay SpaceX for the privilege of flying their strand of hair to orbit and returning it to them.

SpaceX would then email a form that the recipient would print out.

The form would have instructions and a place in the center that would be labeled 'tape a single strand of hair down here' using commonly available cellophane tape.

The 1/2 x 2 inch 'target area', where the strand of hair is taped down, would be printed with a unique bar code for each recipient to identify the hair with its owner.

The recipient would then mail the finished form with it's hair cargo (and backup hair) to SpaceX.

When SpaceX receives the form, they would then feed it into a machine that cuts out the 1/2 x 2 inch 'target area' with the hair and barcode. (envelope making technology would do nicely here).

The paper targets would then be stacked, packaged, loaded on a Dragon capsule and launched into orbit (total cargo mass is less than 300 pounds and could be distributed to fly on a number of flights).

Once the stands of hair are returned to Earth, the stacks of targets would be fed into another machine that would read the barcode, print the recipients name on a suitably classy certificate, affix the persons target with hair to it, then package and address the final result for mailing to the recipient.

The recipient would then receive in the mail a part of themselves that actually flew in space!

There you have it. As you can see, I've been thinking about this idea for a while. Unlike getting your name on a DVD flown in space or your ashes sent on a final journey, you'd have something uniquely you that had really been flown in space.



This investment in SpaceX would have no strings attached (just a two inch strand of hair). It would raise $500,000,000 for SpaceX (and only if they did this once!). That amount of money would be a substantial enough amount for SpaceX to advance their research by speeding things up.



So, do you like this idea? Do you think there's a million folks out there that would jump at this chance? I do!



If you would be willing to 'invest' $500.00 in SpaceX, have your own strand of hair (and therefore, your DNA) fly in space and returned to you for proud display, then promote this idea by whatever means are available to you. To be perfectly clear, this fund raising program would have to be operated by SpaceX themselves, not a third party. It can't be done any other way for it to work. What we really need is a groundswell of support that will get their attention more than anything else.



I think we'd get a good return on our investment! Not only would this be a hair raising experience for us but it would be a barn raising experience for SpaceX by helping them move forward on Mars colonization at a faster pace.



This may not get us astronaut wings, but maybe a single feather would be good enough to satisfy SpaceX fans... for now!



- tinker



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