The Public Investment Fund (PIF) of Saudi Arabia and Virgin Group (Virgin), have signed a non-binding Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for a partnership under which PIF intends to invest approximately $1 billion into Virgin Galactic, The Spaceship Company and Virgin Orbit, with an option for $480 million of future additional investment in space services.
This big space investment for Saudi Arabia follows plans for a $500 billion high tech megacity and investment of about $40 billion into Softbanks Singularity Technology fund.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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Hey Scaryjello, who is that ugly ahole on you avatar?
Uneducated AyyRab country buys into Lord Branson’s folly (the losing team in the privatised space race). No class. Backwards nuveau riche tablecloth wearing sweatbags study Islam instead of thermodynamics and fluid dynamics.
This is exactly what Bannon has pointed out – the Muslims are bypassing the need for social reform and enlightenment by simply buying their way into the technological era. They buy the machine guns, the RPGs, the explosives, the ball-bearings, the 2-way radios, and all the other things they need to do jihad, without even developing the brains to make them on their own. Consumerization of technology is a fundamental enabler of this.
MASTEN and XCOR needed that money–and deserved it more
I guess this means female pilots for VG are now verboten.
That’s the problem with swimming in money and not having technical chops. You don’t necessarily know what’s a smart investment.
Totally agree. This is money lost. How is Virgin progressing to LEO? As far as I can tell they aren’t doing a thing. Money wasted.
My dad always used to joke that the Arabs gave us oil and we gave them green paper. It’s so funny if they buy a McLaren Supercar they get to drive it on a barren road in the desert. There is no destination. What a waste land environmentally and culturally.
And then they used all that green paper to buy our politicians, fund the world-wide spread of a particularly nasty strain of Islam, and give us terrorism in return. Quite the joke, but it wasn’t on them.
And the happiest backers of Saudi Arabia are the Republican Party and Fox News.
Did you know that Fox News is partly owned by the Saudis?
If SpaceX or Blue Origin were OEMs like Boeing or Airbus, the petro-sheikhs might be placing orders for launch vehicles to add to their royal stables/fleets. But since that’s off-limits to them, they’re looking to buy in wherever they can. I gotta wonder – since the Crescent Moon is an Islamic symbol, would setting foot on the Moon be considered blasphemy?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMPueyzVjWE