[mikecane]

Hmph. Ten years after it occurred to me, someone else has this idea in their head. At the time, Microsoft was dominant and branching into everything. I figured they'd deploy microrobots on the Moon that people could drive around for a fee. I called it Microsoft Moon. http://mikecane.wordpress.com/2007/09/13/so-no-microsoft-moo...

[Sudarshan]

SpaceX has brought down the cost of space travel by an order of magnitude. If Ad Astra succeeds in their VASIMR effort, they will bring it down further. Many things you could only dream about in the past will soon be economically viable.

Just because something is possible does not mean we need to do it. And that is something I figured today!!!

[code_duck]

Microsoft? Why would you have (even in jest!) thought Microsoft might do anything of the sort? Someone else would have to do it successfully first, then they'd copy their business model.

[mikecane]

This was before Google even existed. It really was a vastly different world when Microsoft seemed like a juggernaut getting into everything. And I think right around then they had created the precursor to what everyone now thinks of as just Google Earth. MS had something like it first -- I forget its name, though.

[code_duck]

Sure, I remember that too. I guess MS did seemed to headed in a stellar direction circa 1996 or 97. To me, they lost their shine as the internet picked up steam... I'd say 92-96 was the end of the golden age of the desktop computer as envisioned in the 80s. Just three years later, everything was dramatically different in a way only the savviest people would have expected in 1990.

[Sudarshan]

Bill Gates tried teledesic... it went nowhere though...