"Pegasus Global Holdings, through its operating subsidiaries and special purpose vehicles, is an international technology development firm. We have demonstrated expertise in defense, security, telecommunications, and Intellectual Property capture through its ability to source globally “market-ready” IP from public and private innovators, enablers, and incubators."
Between that lovely back-of-the-Economist description and the CVs of their management team [1] (DoD, DoD, "aerospace", nuke industry, etc.) it's at least clear they're a Deep State affiliate.
Housing bubble speculative option purchase. If you can sell for a profit after holding for a decade, you win. Meanwhile you get at least some minmal return on investment via "research fees". Its not a really a neighbor of Hobbs NM, its an extreme ex-urb of Odessa/Midlands TX or an extreme ex-urb of Lubbock TX.
Its an interesting funding model for ultra extreme real estate speculation. This fits in well with real estate investors tending toward the ultra optimistic, it might not make financial sense, but the mantra of "housing only goes up" "they're not making any more land" will take care of that.
The article alludes to resource-rich environment, so possibly a distant branch of the same company is planning on opening a "xyz" mine or chemical plant or something in five years and they're trying to implement a company town policy and coincidentally there happens to be a town ready for purchase a couple miles from the anticipated mine. Also related to, you move in 35 kiloemployees, and that might help with public support against environmental regulation.
Getting grant money and government contracts is the real reason.
Edit: actually it seems like they plan to rent it out to people funded by grants money and government contracts: Pegasus plans to rent the facility out to parties interested in conducting large-scale tests, and they’re anticipating demand.
Of course they could have a research facility underground, and then call it "Raccoon City" :-) But that might give it away...
If they build it I suppose it might show up in some movies or TV shows, would make an ideal sort of place for anytown USA. And of course if you're building an urban surveillance system or a hunter killer manhack drone, well testing that in a "normal" city would cause too many questions to be raised now wouldn't it :-)
We used to build this sort of thing to blow it up. Now we use a supercomputer... I imagine the goal is much the same just less radioactive, a very realistic "city" where everything from self driving cars and better home insulation to heat seeking drones and urban warfare tools, can be put to the test for a price.
The plan sounds wildly implausible because of the immense expense involved. A modern house today costs crudely about 295K to build. To build housing for 35,000 would start at about 10 billion but would probably be several times that for the other amenities. Add to that the fact that, because this won't be a city, everything will be built by companies from out of town, further increasing the costs.
Just as much, unoccupied dwellings and infrastructure require maintenance, sometimes more maintenance than occupied areas since cars driving on streets is what stops grass (or tumble-weeds) from growing, etc.
Moreover, what would it be a model of? The lack of residents would also mean everything would be fairly different from an occupied city.
Testing autonomous vehicles sounds reasonable but it's hard to see that or other hypothetical uses needing an entire purposes built city. A "smart grid" test would require a working power grid. Would you have an unoccupied city with a continuously operating power-grid?
If nothing else, this implausible plans makes me think how interdependent and hard-to-simulate a real, working city is.
[+] [-] marze|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fiatmoney|10 years ago|reply
Between that lovely back-of-the-Economist description and the CVs of their management team [1] (DoD, DoD, "aerospace", nuke industry, etc.) it's at least clear they're a Deep State affiliate.
[1] http://www.pegasusglobalholdings.com/management.html
[+] [-] VLM|10 years ago|reply
Its an interesting funding model for ultra extreme real estate speculation. This fits in well with real estate investors tending toward the ultra optimistic, it might not make financial sense, but the mantra of "housing only goes up" "they're not making any more land" will take care of that.
The article alludes to resource-rich environment, so possibly a distant branch of the same company is planning on opening a "xyz" mine or chemical plant or something in five years and they're trying to implement a company town policy and coincidentally there happens to be a town ready for purchase a couple miles from the anticipated mine. Also related to, you move in 35 kiloemployees, and that might help with public support against environmental regulation.
[+] [-] formulaT|10 years ago|reply
Edit: actually it seems like they plan to rent it out to people funded by grants money and government contracts: Pegasus plans to rent the facility out to parties interested in conducting large-scale tests, and they’re anticipating demand.
[+] [-] skrebbel|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|10 years ago|reply
If they build it I suppose it might show up in some movies or TV shows, would make an ideal sort of place for anytown USA. And of course if you're building an urban surveillance system or a hunter killer manhack drone, well testing that in a "normal" city would cause too many questions to be raised now wouldn't it :-)
[+] [-] ndomin|10 years ago|reply
because we all know how big Bennington is.
[+] [-] brm|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] achille2|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] derefr|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] umanwizard|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thrownaway2424|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zem|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] techdragon|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jmount|10 years ago|reply
edit- I take that back. Los Gatos is 11 square miles and about 30,000 people. So it is in the ballpark.
[+] [-] tritium|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JoeAltmaier|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joe_the_user|10 years ago|reply
The plan sounds wildly implausible because of the immense expense involved. A modern house today costs crudely about 295K to build. To build housing for 35,000 would start at about 10 billion but would probably be several times that for the other amenities. Add to that the fact that, because this won't be a city, everything will be built by companies from out of town, further increasing the costs.
Just as much, unoccupied dwellings and infrastructure require maintenance, sometimes more maintenance than occupied areas since cars driving on streets is what stops grass (or tumble-weeds) from growing, etc.
Moreover, what would it be a model of? The lack of residents would also mean everything would be fairly different from an occupied city.
Testing autonomous vehicles sounds reasonable but it's hard to see that or other hypothetical uses needing an entire purposes built city. A "smart grid" test would require a working power grid. Would you have an unoccupied city with a continuously operating power-grid?
If nothing else, this implausible plans makes me think how interdependent and hard-to-simulate a real, working city is.
[1] http://www.fixr.com/costs/build-single-family-house
[+] [-] venomsnake|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] easturner|10 years ago|reply