Planetary Resources

[Robotbeat]

Okay, that's pretty cool. Thanks!

[Danderman]

http://nextbigfuture.com/2013/10/first-planetary-resources-arkyd-100.html

" The A3 is the Arkyd 100’s technology demonstrator, and the mission will provide for early testing and serve to validate the spacecraft’s core technology and software in the development of the program.

Planetary Resources is under contract with NanoRacks, through its Space Act Agreement with NASA, to release the A3 from the International Space Station’s Kibo airlock."

Danderman, what is the advantage for Arkyd of deploying from Kibo?

To be clear, A3 will test Arkyd 100 technologies, but is not itself an Arkyrd 100.

[Skyrocket]

http://nextbigfuture.com/2013/10/first-planetary-resources-arkyd-100.html

" The A3 is the Arkyd 100’s technology demonstrator, and the mission will provide for early testing and serve to validate the spacecraft’s core technology and software in the development of the program.

Planetary Resources is under contract with NanoRacks, through its Space Act Agreement with NASA, to release the A3 from the International Space Station’s Kibo airlock."

Danderman, what is the advantage for Arkyd of deploying from Kibo?

To be clear, A3 will test Arkyd 100 technologies, but is not itself an Arkyrd 100.

Correct. A3 is a 3U-cubesat, which will test some systems, but will not feature a telescope

http://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/arkyd-3.htm

[QuantumG]

I was at a Kickstarter meet-and-greet last night.. they're launching in Australia next month, as they did in the UK this time last year.

Watching their presentation it was apparent that they still don't understand what their platform is about, and are just raging against their own statistics - which show that funding "art" projects are no longer what people predominately use the platform for, if it ever was.

To put it another way - if you want your project to be accepted quickly and embraced by Kickstarter, pretend it's an art project.

[ChefPat]

There is plenty of science that can be done with an Arykd-sized space telescope (and believe me, I know several organizations which are interested in buying one), but not optical interferometery. I'm not sure why people seem to fixate on that so much.

Oh, I don't know. Maybe the possibility of telescopes of unlimited size?

[JohnFornaro]

Had a good opportunity last week to get a "hot wash" on the Planetary Resources kickstarter from earlier this year. ... That whole "they've got billionaires but they're trying to raise money from Joe-schmoes" argument glosses over the non-obvious costs involved in running a campaign like this.

Not quite sure what you're getting at here.

If they have billionaire investors, it would seem that those investors would advise PRI about the "non-obvious" costs that they should be accounting for.

Again, why ask Joe Schmoe for ten dollars, when 1% of a billionaire's worth is at $10M/$1B?

[kkattula]

Had a good opportunity last week to get a "hot wash" on the Planetary Resources kickstarter from earlier this year. ... That whole "they've got billionaires but they're trying to raise money from Joe-schmoes" argument glosses over the non-obvious costs involved in running a campaign like this.

Not quite sure what you're getting at here.

If they have billionaire investors, it would seem that those investors would advise PRI about the "non-obvious" costs that they should be accounting for.

Again, why ask Joe Schmoe for ten dollars, when 1% of a billionaire's worth is at $10M/$1B?

Because at some point they're going to need the Government for permission, indemnity, support, &/or as a customer. Having significant public support could reduce the need for political donations, while also providing political cover for questionable actions.

If they only covered their costs, or even lost money, on the kickstarter campaign, it could still be a good insurance policy.

[JohnFornaro]

Thanks Kkattula:  I just don't see KS as a political machine.

[simonbp]

Had a good opportunity last week to get a "hot wash" on the Planetary Resources kickstarter from earlier this year. ... That whole "they've got billionaires but they're trying to raise money from Joe-schmoes" argument glosses over the non-obvious costs involved in running a campaign like this.

Not quite sure what you're getting at here.

If they have billionaire investors, it would seem that those investors would advise PRI about the "non-obvious" costs that they should be accounting for.

Again, why ask Joe Schmoe for ten dollars, when 1% of a billionaire's worth is at $10M/$1B?

Because they wanted some sort of public outreach and weren't sure how much interest there really was. From hearing them discuss it recently, if they got a good response from the kickstarter (which they did), it would motivate them to do more public outreach.

PR is a really small company (few tens of people) which is extremely focused on developing their flight hardware. They don't have some corporate PR department to use, nor is it really relevant to their current focus. But they did get enough from the kickstarter to put an LCD on one of the test vehicles to allow "space selfies", which they would not have thought to do otherwise.

The investor money is (understandably) focused on the development relevant to their goal of mining asteroids. The first real returned sample will be a liter-or-so of asteroidal water (which is of great scientific interest), but that is going to take many years.

[jongoff]

Had a good opportunity last week to get a "hot wash" on the Planetary Resources kickstarter from earlier this year. ... That whole "they've got billionaires but they're trying to raise money from Joe-schmoes" argument glosses over the non-obvious costs involved in running a campaign like this.

Not quite sure what you're getting at here.

If they have billionaire investors, it would seem that those investors would advise PRI about the "non-obvious" costs that they should be accounting for.

Again, why ask Joe Schmoe for ten dollars, when 1% of a billionaire's worth is at $10M/$1B?

Because they weren't running the campaign to raise money to fund their company. They knew about the "non-obvious" costs and had one of their guys prepping for this campaign for a year. To me it's pretty clear that they were doing this to both demonstrate an initial market, and to raise awareness about their company and product. They knew that at best they'd make enough money for only a few months operating capital after paying for fulfillment, but this wasn't about the money they were raising. That's what so many people don't seem to be catching. This was a marketing effort that paid for itself (and a bit of profit above and beyond).

They're at least a decade away from making a dime of profit off of asteroidal material (probably longer than that). They've got nearer-term markets they're trying to develop along the way that can help offset some of their operating costs. This was just part of the marketing/PR effort to raise customer awareness about their whole effort to make space exploration more of a participator sport than just a purely spectator sport like it's been for most of the past 50 years.

Don't know if they'll make it, but I think their kickstarter was well planned, and delivered exactly what they wanted, which wasn't some alternative funding stream to their billionaire investors.

~Jon

[Vultur]

What flight is the Arkyd A3 testbed supposed to be launched to the Station on?

[QuantumG]

What flight is the Arkyd A3 testbed supposed to be launched to the Station on?

Target flight is SpaceX CRS #4, currently scheduled for April 2014

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1h47je/we_are_engineers_from_planetary_resources_we_quit/caqoqi6

[Tass]

Simple and overoptimistic video from PR, containing nothing new for anyone on this forum: http://www.planetaryresources.com/2013/11/heres-why-asteroid-mining-will-fuel-human-expansion-into-the-cosmos/

[QuantumG]

In a new SAA with NASA, Planetary Resources will design a crowd sourcing program to find and categorize asteroids.

Press release: http://www.planetaryresources.com/2013/11/planetary-resources-partners-with-nasa-to-crowdsource-asteroid-detection/

[Robotbeat]

Simple and overoptimistic video from PR, containing nothing new for anyone on this forum: http://www.planetaryresources.com/2013/11/heres-why-asteroid-mining-will-fuel-human-expansion-into-the-cosmos/

Maybe overoptimistic, but assuming that space colonization actually happens, it's basically correct. The market potential of space colonization is ultimately far, FAR greater than anything we've ever done here on Earth. The question, of course, is whether this can happen within our lifetimes. The video doesn't give a timetable.

[Robotbeat]

Consider in 1000 years... As long as you don't think we've somehow reached the end of all technological and economic growth in our generation, we're almost surely going to have an expansive off-Earth presence. Remember, space is already a $300 billion a year market and growing. It will likely be a trillion dollar market within our lifetimes, even without supposing some sort of explosion of growth from space mining or something like that. But what about in a century from now? Or a millenium? We simply don't know, but unless you're a pessimist about humanity and technological and economic growth in general, then expansion into space is inevitable and already occurring.

[Danderman]

Pretty please, let us have the broad philosophic issues discussed in a thread that is not devoted to discussions about the business operations of Planetary Resources.

[Robotbeat]

Pretty please, let us have the broad philosophic issues discussed in a thread that is not devoted to discussions about the business operations of Planetary Resources.

Sorry (and I mean that, I'm not being sarcastic...), but in my defense, it /is/ what the video is talking about.

[go4mars]

Pretty please, let us have the broad philosophic issues discussed in a thread that is not devoted to discussions about the business operations of Planetary Resources.

When the business plan includes dramatically changing the outlook and capacity of humanity, it's fair game and on topic. 


I plan to watch this "crowd-sourcing & competition" stuff closely. 

[Warren Platts]

Remember, space is already a $300 billion a year market and growing.

Yeah, which mostly consists of broadcasting reruns of Duck Dynasty...

A real feasibility study that clearly explains how to make even $10B/year from space mining has never been completed.