U.S. Billionaire Heads to Space Station

TurnAround writes "According to an International Business Times article, a Russian rocket carrying the American billionaire who helped develop Microsoft Word roared into the night skies over Kazakhstan Saturday, sending Charles Simonyi and two cosmonauts soaring into orbit on a two-day journey to the international space station. Climbing on a column of smoke and fire into the clouds over the bleak steppes, the Soyuz TMA-10 capsule lifted off at 11:31 p.m. local time, casting an orange glow over the Baikonur cosmodrome and dozens of officials and well-wishers watching from about a mile away."

Re:It's a rich man's solar system

[haluness]

I think this is common in many areas. Whenever something is new, it is usually upto the rich to buy the thing and try it out.

As time goes by, these things will get cheaper and at one point will hopefully be cheap enough for the ordinary person to buy/try.

So if anything, you were born too early :)

Re:+5 Soviet Russia jokes?

[CompMD]

In Soviet Russia, Word launches YOU!

Re:Harsh

[Rei]

I think it's a bit fallacious to assume that all rewards must be linear. If you believe that, then take away the 1.5x and 2x overtime pay that non-exempt workers get.

You're not talking about 1.5x/2x; you're talking about 100,000x. If anything, when you get up to dollar values like that, I'd say that linear may be too kind. A person who makes 20k/year simply *cannot* be spending their money on luxury; almost all of it needs to go to necessities. On the other end of the spectrum, a person who makes 2M/year simply *cannot* be spending all their money on necessity; even a huge family wouldn't "need" that much. The only exception, in the latter case, is charitable contributions -- and we give deductions for that.

In short, my driving stance is quite simple: tax rates should reflect how much of a "luxury" money is being spent on, with pure necessity being untaxed, and pure luxury being taxed highly. Ideally, this would be done through sales taxes; however, that gets complicated pretty quickly (what's the tax rate for a canned button mushrooms? Fresh button mushrooms? Fresh oyster mushrooms? Fresh truffles?). Bracketted taxes with deductions for charitable contributions are a good way to approximate this. Augmented with sales taxes, it's a winning situation, in my book.