Spacebids?

[SpaceGeek123]

For those of you who are not aware of the organization Quibids and the concept of penny auctioning basically its the idea of buying bids for auctioning. The bids cost about 60 cents each. Then you bid for the product starting at nothing. Each time you bid the price goes up by 1 cent.
The result is the price of the product is extremely low (99% off). The organization still makes money because of all the people who lose the bid war and spend there bids they purchase.

What if this method of penny auctioning was applied with Space Travel. You use the same method of penny auctioning to sell Launch space at extremely low prices (at 99% off your talking about 50$ per kg). At the current cost to orbit for tourists at $20 million per person the 99% discount could offer a ticket price of $200,000. Its pretty radical and out of the box but could it work? It would cost the tax payers nothing, could be done with current tech, and you would not require NASA.

[QuantumG]

Aka, people who fail at math think this is an efficient way to buy things.

[SpaceGeek123]

Aka, people who fail at math think this is an efficient way to buy things.

Oh wait I forgot. If you lose the bid the and spend 30 bids or 18$ then you can deduct the 18$ from the retail and press the buy it know price. So there's a chance you get a good deal and if you don't you won't lose a bunch of money. I think it could work for space

[QuantumG]

Haha.. this is comical. Do you not see the point of this system? It's a lottery (and all that implies) designed to build psychological demand for the product by capitalizing on your confirmation bias (with a cherry on top - namely, the sunk cost fallacy). 

Ya know how those late night sales ads say "how much would you expect to pay for these sharp sharp knives? $300? $500? No! Call now and only pay $100!" Now all you're thinking about is knives and how much you "expect" to pay for knives.. instead of the correct way to think about any purchase: do I even want knives? What else could I spend $100 on?

[neilh]

These types of auctions are somewhat unethical and of questionable legality -- making them space-centric doesn't make them any better.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bidding_fee_auction#Criticism

[JohnFornaro]

Oh wait I forgot. If you lose the bid the and spend 30 bids or 18$ then you can deduct the 18$ from the retail and press the buy it know price. So there's a chance you get a good deal and if you don't you won't lose a bunch of money. I think it could work for space.

It certainly would, if tickets were in the $18 range.