When the nation is formally established and citizenships granted, I will be happy to pay taxes to Asgardia. For now, Fixer put it well. A bond scheme could be an excellent way to raise the money for construction.

I'm still not overly clear on the operating principles... "Vacuum baloon"? a "baloon" of vacuum - nothing weighs less so should "float"... With regards to "space-tube" - to assume something along the lines of Musk's "hyperloop", but more "up", then there's all the "space elevator" issues in play with regards to wind, resonance, weight distribution etc and to hit "hard vacuum" it'd need to be 850km or so long - to maintain vaccum in the "tube" on anything shorter would require an airlock, and therefore stopping.

Um, whut? I assume that means use a baloon and once you make it into vacuum use thrusters? If so, then the baloon is likely to pop well before vacuum - well before you've left the mesosphere most likely. But that is just under ½ way to the Kármán line. This should make it "easier" to get the rest of the way, in theory. Something small from this point could have a reasonable power/wieght ratio and thusly travel the rest of the distance with relative ease, and reduced cost.

@MannyAstor Finally, someone in this forum that is actually on the same wavelength as I am. Also to add to this, the way things have been going lately, it's a good chance in our life time we will get to see the first launch of a nuclear war. Keep your eyes on North Korea. They will be the ones to start the fireworks.

I don't want to be a downer but this a lofty notion. As long as humans occupy any given space the potential for destructive conflict or unchecked consumption is present. We've got unprecedented access to global information and history like never before. Humanities mistakes and triumphs are at our finger tips and can fit in our pockets. We have entire museums dedicated to humanities glories and our self-inflicted traumas. We know what our ancestors did wrong and then we replicate those events anyway. Space expansion is not going to save us; it will simply move our problems elsewhere. Simply waiting things out "another 1000 years" until people are forced to cooperate and not destroy the environment because of lack of resources is a recipe for our extinction. We have everything* we need here on Earth. We should focus on tending to it and exploring more effective ways to ethically mitigate and temper human nature before we unleash or locusts-like culture on the cosmos and on ourselves as we travel off-planet. To be honest, I don't think there is much hope for the current generation. I highly doubt I or anyone on this forum will live in Asgardia, off the planet. That's OK. We can still set up our descendants for success through education and, of course, measures to at least stop the damage we're currently doing to the planet. Including conflict resolution lessons/practicums, emotional/mental resiliency, stress management, physical fitness, media literacy, and environmental care-taking/sustainability throughout each level of schooling at progressively challenging levels is a good start so that we normalize the types of behaviors and mindsets that would mitigate the tragedies we seen throughout our history and better prepare the first generations that actually live off-planet as a community for long-durations.

Considering the state of the world for the past several millennia it would be rather hard to convince humans to get off that pattern. As long as borders, money, dogma, greed, and war exists humanity would be entertained. Humans thrive on chaos. Harmony is only a moment of satisfaction. Like a drug to get a nice high, then they continue the momentum again. The only hope for the world would be if an outside influence came here, like extraterrestrials, but even then that just might give humans more a reason to keep the madness alive. As humans we give ourselves reasons to lose our minds so that we can 'keep' our minds at bay. True story. I'm a realist. It will take more than a nation to get humanity convinced. A catastrophe of global proportions might even jump start common sense for humans.

Hello James, Welcome to the Asgardia Forums! There are many discussions and projects happening currently and we welcome your ideas. Be sure to familiarize yourself with the terms if you haven’t already. Let us know if you have any questions. https://asgardia.space/en/forum/forum/forum-announcements-10/topic/asgardiaspace-posting-rules-82/ Make sure to keep up with Asgardia News and Announcements at https://asgardia.space/en/forum/forum/asgardia-news-9/

Kiinda hard to decide Twitch was/is surely the most favourised option out there - as it has a pretty similar minded community behind it, but then youtube gaming is way more accessible for new channels to grow - as the advertisement there is pretty different then on twitch | making overall the life of new streamer's easier and brings more self confidence to the newly started broadcaster {insert thinkface here} I'd prefer for myself, using restream.io as a main host & video decoder - where you can "relink" your stream, to pretty much any platform out there :) I'm not a payed user, so this shouldn't be any product advertisement <-- use it mainly as a stream decoder and also because their servers are more stable and not overused from hundreds of test streamers :P Picked, Twitch - this | next to Hitbox.tv are actually pretty common hosting options YT userbase is kinda b*chy, but then rly helps you getting the advertise you deserve (:

@Brown Bear We had a discussion on using both but we are trying to decide on one or the other to start with. We will eventually be using both in the future.