Joh, meet Bill Stone. Here's his bio.

Now, watch his talk at TED.

In that TED Talk he speaks of wanting to take a one way trip to the moon to mine hydrogen.

He sees a fueling station on the moon as being a launching pad to exploring space more fully.

Money quote:

The traditional approach to space exploration has been that you carry all the fuel you need to get everybody back in case of an emergency. If you try to do that for the moon you're going to burn a billion dollars in fuel alone sending a crew out there. But if you send a mining team there without the return propellant first. Did any of you guys hear the story of Cortez? This is not like that, I'm much more like Scotty. I like this equipment, you know, and I really value it, so we're not going to burn it. But, if you were truly bold you could get it there, manufacture it and it would be the most dramatic demonstration that you could do something worthwhile off this planet that has ever been done.

There's a myth that you can't do anything in space for less than a trillion dollars and twenty years. That's not true. In seven years we could pull off an industrial mission to Shackleton and demonstrate that you could provide commercial reality out of this in low-earth orbit.

We're living in one of the most exciting times in history. We're at a magical confluence where private wealth and imagination are driving the demand for access to space. The orbital refueling stations I've just described could create an entirely new industry and provide the final key for opening space to general exploration.

To bust the paradigm a radically different approach is needed. We can do it by jump-starting with an industrial Louis and Clark expedition to Shackleton Crater to mine the moon for resources and demonstrate they can form the basis for a profitable business on orbit.

Talk about space always seems to be hung on ambiguities of purpose and timing. I would like to close here by putting a stake in the sand at TED. I intend to lead that expedition.

Watch the talk and you may change your mind about whether qualified people are willing to take one way trips to space.

That's a bit of an extreme position to take. After all, how is that kid going to make money when his stuff is pirated too?

The question is, how profitable is intellectual property? Yes, I know, information wants to be free. But does that mean that folks who want to make a living by creating intellectual property are just going to have to suck it up and make due? It's not a clear cut good vs. bad situation.

It's understandable to feel like it's the People vs. the Borg when the RIAA is brought into the discussion but in a larger sense, the RIAA isn't the issue.

The issue is the same thing that was discussed way back in 1994 by John Perry Barlow (co-founder of the EFF) in Wired magazine in an article titled "The Economy of Ideas".

"Throughout the time I've been groping around cyberspace, an immense, unsolved conundrum has remained at the root of nearly every legal, ethical, governmental, and social vexation to be found in the Virtual World. I refer to the problem of digitized property. The enigma is this: If our property can be infinitely reproduced and instantaneously distributed all over the planet without cost, without our knowledge, without its even leaving our possession, how can we protect it? How are we going to get paid for the work we do with our minds? And, if we can't get paid, what will assure the continued creation and distribution of such work?"