Ergen has offered all the money and more that Clearwire needs to complete its build out, to buy 25% of the company or all of it or to partner with it.

FORBES: Clearwire's Q4 Conference Call Was A Very Bad Joke

The generals can then move in with their private companies to build the money-spinning lodges, camps and restaurants to accommodate all those tourists they hope to attract.

ECONOMIST: Wildlife conservation

An analogy would be the contractor hired by the city to build a road who requires all the subcontractors to kick back city money to him.

FORBES: Expert View

The most important members of the team, then, may not be the entrepreneurs and venture capitalists who put up the drive and the money, nor the engineers who build the hardware that makes it all possible, but the economists who try to work out the effect on the price of platinum when a mountain of the stuff arrives from outer space.

ECONOMIST: Mining asteroids: Going platinum | The