Google Founder Offer $33M For Use of NASA Airship Hangar 86
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by
samzenpus
from the picking-up-the-check dept.
from the picking-up-the-check dept.
theodp writes "The Mercury News reports that NASA is considering an offer from Google's billionaire founders to provide '100 percent' funding to save Hangar One. Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt have, through a company they control, proposed paying the full $33 million cost of revamping Hangar One, once home to the Navy's giant airships at Moffett Field, in return for use up to two-thirds of the floor space of the hangar to house their fleet of eight private jets. In October, the Googlers struck an agreement with NASA Ames calling for the use of their 'co-located' Alpha fighter jet to, among other things, help NASA mitigate wildfires and study global warming."
Who will pay for maintenance after the retrofit? (Score:3, Insightful)
Will this end up being another government subsidy for people who don't need it or will there be a real lease involved?
Re:wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
I love how dropping $33M can be read as tax evasion by you.
(Or do you really think the airport use fees at SJC will tally up to $33M? That's a LOT of flights at $40 a pop.)
Re:wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a difference between loopholing your way out of taxes and (practically) buying your own airfield. This is pretty clean cut IMO. There's fees at a local airport but not a private one, and therefore some rich dudes buy a hangar at the private airport. I don't really see that as "evasion" per se. It'd be like owning a garage and someone calls you out for "stealing" revenue from the city's parking meters by not using them.
Re:what about their fair share of taxes and fees? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hehe. The funny thing is that most 4channers and Slashdotters will probably be in the top 5% or so when you take the world population into account..
The US median household income is about $48K. According to http://www.globalrichlist.com/ [globalrichlist.com], someone making $48K annually is in the top 0.99% worldwide. So half of Americans are "one-percenters". I think the average well-established (10+ years experience, good track record) software engineer makes over $100K, which puts them in the top 0.66% worldwide.
To make the top 1% in the US (in terms of household income, which isn't the same as wealth), you have to have an annual income in excess of $300K, which puts you on the top 0.001% worldwide.
To be in the top 5% worldwide you need an annual household income of $33,700 or higher. I suspect that very, very few slashdotters who have full-time employment fall below that level.