Planetary Resources

[go4mars]

Great. We advance the needle in space development by sucking up private capital to build a small fleet of satellites to find planets around other stars.

Among other things.  There are lots of applications.  NEO's, better earth monitoring/military/google earth type applications, mapping solar system and beyond, etc. 

To do optical interferometry, they need huge data transfer rates, and to do that they essentially need laser communication over long distances, and to do that they need extreme stability, positioning, and timing.  Those are in the realm of exponential technologies (according to his book), and if they can make good enough progress in those areas that they can do optical interferometry, then several new markets and applications open to them!

[douglas100]

Already got an SBIR grant (~$125K) for 0.1 arcsecond pointing capability.

http://nextbigfuture.com/2012/05/planetary-resources-getting-sbir.html

Yes, they would need something like that to point accurately for both observing and transmitting data optically. Judging by the size of the model, I would guess that the actual resolving power of one of their telescopes would be about 0.3 arcseconds.

[as58]

To do optical interferometry, they need huge data transfer rates

Not really that huge, unless you mean intensity interferometry or something else exotic.

[BrightLight]

To do optical interferometry, they need huge data transfer rates

Not really that huge, unless you mean intensity interferometry or something else exotic.

This thread is getting out-of-hand, I will address this last point and stop.
An interferometer using multiple sensors requires that the information content of each sensor "frame" - the acquired data- MUST be combined in some fashion - you can compress the data such as with a 2d Fourier or some other method but ALL the information from each sensor must be combined to build the interferogram. This data can be huge, as in multi megabytes for each sensor. if all the meta data is available on each data frame, then you could slowly build up the data set and produce a interferogram - all the metadata means orientation, time, image variables etc. Its real hard to do this on the ground - I would be really excited to see this in orbit - some people at some organizations have looked at this for many years AND FAILED, maybe PR has a new method.

[cro-magnon gramps]

In general yes.  You guys really need to read Diamandis's book to frame your perspectives on PR. 

Ties back to the undertakings of singularity university (such as 3d printing) and exponential technologies in general.  Reading his book is why I think PR is aimed at optical interferometry. 

http://www.abundancethebook.com/sneak-preview/

Go there, and sign in, to download "FREE" Chpt 1 of the book Abundance; while it does read a bit like a late night "Info-Commercial" it does have quite a bit more basis in fact and philosophy; will the rest of the book live up to the introduction, well, only go4mars knows for sure but taken from my own historical perspective, which I have preached here for 3 years, they are hitting the right points; as for instance, two days ago I was reading, at random as I usually do, a report about a new method of taking sugar and cholesterol levels using saliva in a doctors office rather than going to a lab for blood work (we ALL have experienced That) and they are working on other aspects of saliva that can be tested for disease and bodily imbalance; this is just one aspect of the near future that will be in place in less than 5 years; not sci-fi like the tri-corder, but real medicine brought down from the white coated lab to the doctors office; what else will be around the corner; and this is what the idea of Abundance is all about; what divides us from the previous generations advances;

it isn't about sending swarms of small telescopes into space to ID the next asteroid or exo-planet; it is about advancing technologies and methodologies to remove scarcity; that is the philosophy behind Abundance; but at the same time it removes scarcity, it enables technological advances in areas that are removed from that stream of thinking, to areas of exploration like Space, Physics, the Humanities and Earth Sciences;

unless you lived through the last 50-60 yrs, you can only have a general idea of the immense changes that have taken place in Society, Technology and how they interrelate; and as I have pointed out before, this is more like the late 1700s and early 1800s, which led to the expansion of America westward and England to become the British Empire;

In the 70's I bought a book (actually wore two out ) The Third Wave, by Alvin Toffler, it was about the same time that The Limits to Growth came out; in many respects they were at opposite ends of the line, as far as optimism vs pessimism about the future were concerned; 40 years later, a lot of what both said, has come to pass, but of the two, Toffler's book got most of it right; what neither could predict was the advance of computers and their "Children" and the effects that would have on society globally; the next wave is going to be even bigger than the last, and will change Society Globally even more; we are only now seeing the first ripples on the shore of time, from that wave; anyone under 40 years old will be seriously affected by it; you could be like my brother, living in the 1920s to 40s, on his computer, listening to music from that era, flying bi-planes and Lindburgh's Historic Flights; while moaning about how the world has changed;

[go4mars]

To do optical interferometry, they need huge data transfer rates

Not really that huge, unless you mean intensity interferometry or something else exotic.

Based on the fact that MRO and other interplanetary missions seem to be constrained by transmission rates, I assumed data between and from swarms of arkyd's would be too. 

I suspect that these units would need to optically communicate very frequently in order to calibrate their clocks and positions with supreme accuracy. 

[as58]

To do optical interferometry, they need huge data transfer rates

Not really that huge, unless you mean intensity interferometry or something else exotic.

This thread is getting out-of-hand, I will address this last point and stop.
An interferometer using multiple sensors requires that the information content of each sensor "frame" - the acquired data- MUST be combined in some fashion - you can compress the data such as with a 2d Fourier or some other method but ALL the information from each sensor must be combined to build the interferogram. This data can be huge, as in multi megabytes for each sensor. if all the meta data is available on each data frame, then you could slowly build up the data set and produce a interferogram - all the metadata means orientation, time, image variables etc. Its real hard to do this on the ground - I would be really excited to see this in orbit - some people at some organizations have looked at this for many years AND FAILED, maybe PR has a new method.

I agree that this has nothing to do with PR, but I'll add one last point to this. At visible wavelengths interferometry is not done in the same way as at radio frequencies. Instead, the beams are combined optically, i.e., the beams are relayed to a combiner where they interfere before they are detected. This is how it's done in all ground base visible/NIR interferometers. I think you're assuming that every individual spacecraft would do heterodyne detection, digitise the data and downlink it. That would indeed require huge data rates and clock synchronisation, but heterodyne doesn't really work that well at optical/NIR wavelengths anyway. There's a MIR interferometer (~10 um) that uses heterodyne detection, though.

Another possibility that has been mentioned is the intensity interferometry (Hanbury Brown - Twiss). That also requires huge data rates, and it doesn't really need to be done in space anyway. There was a nice paper on astro-ph on using the CTA for intensity interferometry a few weeks ago.

[Robotbeat]

To do optical interferometry, they need huge data transfer rates

Not really that huge, unless you mean intensity interferometry or something else exotic.

Based on the fact that MRO and other interplanetary missions seem to be constrained by transmission rates, I assumed data between and from swarms of arkyd's would be too. 

I suspect that these units would need to optically communicate very frequently in order to calibrate their clocks and positions with supreme accuracy. 

MRO is a high-resolution mapping spacecraft. Sending high-resolution imaging data all the way from Mars is hard. But sending the same data very short distances is relatively easy. Consider 802.11n, which can send up to 600Mb/s over just 40MHz of bandwidth. If you are in deep space, you have access to a lot more bandwidth since you don't have to worry about cellphones, etc, so you can get even higher throughput. The draft spec 802.11ac (with its higher bandwidth and more spatial streams) can support up to ~3.5-7Gbit/s. Over short distances, you can get VERY high throughput with only relatively modest antennas and power. So you could have an array of these Arkyd spacecraft communicating with each other through radio over short distances (100 meters to 1km) to a central spacecraft which can combine the images and send the resultant constructed image to Earth over high-bandwidth optical communication (or optionally send the images as-is to the ground for reconstruction, though that might require a lot of bandwidth).

That's one possibility, at least.

It should be pointed out that it wasn't PR who thought of these ideas to use the Arkyd spacecraft for an interferometric array (intensity or full-phase). That was pointed out by people blogging about PR.

[simonbp]

This has been done for ground astronomical instruments like Keck or VLT.

Only with a great amount of pain. VLT is very rarely used in interferometric mode, and the Keck interferometer was just shut down last year. Even LBT, where the two mirrors are literally bolted together, the interferometer is really tricky to get working.

And the dirty little secret of all these systems is that they do not combine the beams digitally (like a radio interferometer would) because the computers and sensors simply aren't fast enough. This is done with massive beam-delay systems that are pretty impractical to launch into space. Look at the image of the Navy Optical Interferometer below; the long white structure coming out of the building with the dark rook is the delay tubes. Most of that building is also full of equipment for the beam combination.

Space-based interferometry is like a air-breathing SSTO; sounds great on paper, but a nightmare to actually build...

[Robotbeat]

This has been done for ground astronomical instruments like Keck or VLT.

Only with a great amount of pain. VLT is very rarely used in interferometric mode, and the Keck interferometer was just shut down last year. Even LBT, where the two mirrors are literally bolted together, the interferometer is really tricky to get working.

And the dirty little secret of all these systems is that they do not combine the beams digitally (like a radio interferometer would) because the computers and sensors simply aren't fast enough. This is done with massive beam-delay systems that are pretty impractical to launch into space. Look at the image of the Navy Optical Interferometer below; the long white structure coming out of the building with the dark rook is the delay tubes. Most of that building is also full of equipment for the beam combination.

Space-based interferometry is like a air-breathing SSTO; sounds great on paper, but a nightmare to actually build...

Indeed, which is why the concept of intensity correlation imaging is so interesting. http://planetimager.com/articles.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanbury_Brown_and_Twiss_effect
http://www.wpafb.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123097451

Also, in ground-based optical/infrared full-phase interferometry, so much light is lost after bouncing off countless mirrors that you're lucky if you're left with 1% of the original light at the image sensor. Therefore, it usually only works with bright sources.

But if you can reconstruct the phase information after the fact, then you have a lot more flexibility and you don't need such expensive optical equipment and such precise structures. Very, very interesting idea. A real game changer, if the technique can be fully developed.

[Danderman]

Businesses normally do not engage in such basic research, particularly in such a difficult manner with no obvious customers.

I would suggest that this particular subject, interferometry, be sent over to the Advanced Concepts section, where you experts can dazzle us with your thoughts on how this should be done.

In  the meantime, this thread should be restricted to updates of actual information about Planetary Resources the company.

[neilh]

In general yes.  You guys really need to read Diamandis's book to frame your perspectives on PR. 

Ties back to the undertakings of singularity university (such as 3d printing) and exponential technologies in general.  Reading his book is why I think PR is aimed at optical interferometry. 

Great. We advance the needle in space development by sucking up private capital to build a small fleet of satellites to find planets around other stars.

Thankfully this isn't a zero-sum game.

[Danderman]

In general yes.  You guys really need to read Diamandis's book to frame your perspectives on PR. 

Ties back to the undertakings of singularity university (such as 3d printing) and exponential technologies in general.  Reading his book is why I think PR is aimed at optical interferometry. 

Great. We advance the needle in space development by sucking up private capital to build a small fleet of satellites to find planets around other stars.

Thankfully this isn't a zero-sum game.

Actually, it kind of is. There is a limited amount of capital that can be allocated to such endeavors. To the extent that capital goes into PR, less is available for other ventures.

Unless, of course, PR makes its investors a pile of cash in the relative near term, then all bets are off.

[Robotbeat]

Businesses normally do not engage in such basic research, particularly in such a difficult manner with no obvious customers.
...

On the contrary, they are already doing basic research for NASA under SBIRs related to optical communication. It's their only firm business right now.

(And the Air Force would be very interested in high resolution imagery of, for instance, objects in geostationary orbit.)

[go4mars]

Businesses normally do not engage in such basic research, particularly in such a difficult manner with no obvious customers.

This strikes to the heart of the discussion.  Philanthrocapitalist billionaires can do this, even without significant contracts.  Besides, there's all kinds of precedent for companies to do fairly hefty R&D for things they think have a commercial market. 
 
Also, how much do you think the recent publicity alone was worth to James Cameron for instance?  Hard to put a price on notoriety. 

In James Cameron's case, I see it as more likely to be a bet with variable outcomes.  Keep in mind that he's techno-freak about cameras and imaging technology.  Might be personal reasons there, but if PR gets optical interferometry working, then suddenly he has some seriously epic backdrops for this re-make of the movie "Titan" (or whatever).  If it doesn't work out, then at arkyd-200 phase, he can collect actual footage from a distance and have his computer guys add in digital ships/characters.  He's a maniac about accuracy (read up on the production detail he went to in Avatar).  Worst case scenario, he's got his own telescope in orbit which cost him a small percentage of his net wealth (I'd venture to guess that several members of this very forum have telescopes which cost a small percentage of net wealth).

this thread should be restricted to updates of actual information about Planetary Resources the company.

Feel free to start an updates only thread. 

[Danderman]

Businesses normally do not engage in such basic research, particularly in such a difficult manner with no obvious customers.
...

On the contrary, they are already doing basic research for NASA under SBIRs related to optical communication. It's their only firm business right now.

(And the Air Force would be very interested in high resolution imagery of, for instance, objects in geostationary orbit.)

Nope. They are not performing "basic research" under an SBIR. They are performing applied research.

Basic research in this field would be a study of optical properties of a laser. Applied research would be design of an operational laser communications system.

Businesses will back DDT&E, but not random basic research.

[Danderman]

Businesses normally do not engage in such basic research, particularly in such a difficult manner with no obvious customers.

This strikes to the heart of the discussion.  Philanthrocapitalist billionaires can do this, even without significant contracts.  Besides, there's all kinds of precedent for companies to do fairly hefty R&D for things they think have a commercial market. 
 

You are confusing the term "basic research" with "applied research".

[go4mars]

You are confusing the term "basic research" with "applied research".

Am I?  http://satcom.jp/English/e-70/conferencereport3e.pdf  Looks like a lot of the basic groundwork of the pricinples has been established (based on that paper).  Now a group is trying to optimize and commercialize it.       

Businesses normally do not engage in such basic research, particularly in such a difficult manner with no obvious customers.

Perhaps the assumption that it is "basic research" is debatable...

[Danderman]

You are confusing the term "basic research" with "applied research".

Am I?  http://satcom.jp/English/e-70/conferencereport3e.pdf  Looks like a lot of the basic groundwork of the pricinples has been established (based on that paper).  Now a group is trying to optimize and commercialize it.       

Businesses normally do not engage in such basic research, particularly in such a difficult manner with no obvious customers.

Perhaps the assumption that it is "basic research" is debatable...

My position is the opposite of yours, apparently.

Businesses do not invest in basic research, for the most part. They will invest in applied research. If your business plan requires significant investment in basic research, you are dead in the water.

Building small satellites for the purpose of prospecting is applied research.

[Robotbeat]

Interferometry is not basic research. The physics have been pretty well understood for a hundred years. Making one is applied research.