...which I was, tangentially, in another thread, I found this article in the L.A. Times very interesting. It describes the details of how Elon Musk has inspired two companies to work on the project. One has a lot of funding and several dozen employees. The other is using the kind of let's-put-on-a-show, this-is-going-to-be-cool kind of organization that one usually sees in web startups and other application oriented development, rather than nuts and bolts engineering. They have a lot of high experience, high knowledge people who have day jobs contributing their free time and thoughts/abilities in exchange for stock options which will only pay off if the thing succeeds not just technologically, but as a profitable business. In other words, they're volunteers with lottery tickets.

I find the whole idea of coming up with a massive idea and letting private sector competition sort it out very interesting. Musk has the clout and fortune to make things happen on the far end, once it's ready to be built (or, that is, one would hope that he will do once the very future time comes). Even more, however, I love the idea of getting able people working on it just because it's cool, with just enough reward incentive that they won't feel like someone else is getting all the gravy on their backs. If there's gravy, they'll get theirs. The model has already been tested on a less monumental scale, and works.

Any thoughts? Would you want to work on a crowd sourced project? Are you ready to change the world?