Man Made Meteor Shower To Rain Down For Tokyo Olympics

While people go hungry and homeless, resources go elsewhere.

Every see the big shot lighting his cigar with a hundred dollar bill?

 A startup called Star-ALE wants to create a man-made meteor shower over the city of Tokyo for the 2020 Olympics opening ceremonies.

 The pyrotechnics show, Star-ALE says, will be visible from an area 200km across Japan, and the pyrotechnics will actually shower from space.

 Starting next year, Star-ALE will begin sending a fleet of microsatellites carrying 500 to 1000 specially-developed pellets that ignite and intensely glow as they re-enter the earth's atmosphere.

 ScienceAlert reports:

But wonderment comes at a cost, and in this case, that cost isn't cheap.

 Each combustible pellet comes in at about $8,100 to produce, and that's not including the costs involved in actually launching the Sky Canvas satellite. 

The company has tested its source particles in the lab, using a vacuum chamber and hot gases to simulate the conditions the pellets would encounter upon re-entering Earth's atmosphere.

 In its testing, the particles burn with an apparent magnitude of -1, which should ensure they're clearly visible in the night sky, 

Poof!

Let's see, 500 to 1000 pellets at a cost of $8,100 each would be 4.05 million US$ for 500 pellets and 8.1 million US$ for a thousand.

That is some cigar lighting!