Author Topic: Planetary Resources (Read 380584 times)

Robotbeat · « **Reply #840 on:** 10/07/2017 06:31 pm »

Quote from: Lar on 10/07/2017 05:59 pm

Great preview ... how many years before we see this? were they trying to be launch vehicle agnostic?

Don't know, but we should know more details soon.

Robotbeat · « **Reply #841 on:** 10/07/2017 06:37 pm »

From the video's description:

Quote

Uploaded on Oct 1, 2017Planetary Resources’ Exploration Mission

Planetary Resources is embarking on the world’s first commercial deep space exploration mission. The purpose is to identify and unlock the critical water resources necessary for human expansion in space.

Sourcing water is the first step to creating a civilization in space. Water is used for life support functions and can also be refined into rocket propellant. The initial mission will identify the asteroids that contain the best source of water, and will simultaneously provide the vital information needed to build a commercial mine which will harvest water for use in space.

www.planetaryresources.com

Robotbeat · « **Reply #842 on:** 10/07/2017 06:45 pm »

From Twitter account of Planetary Resources executive:
https://mobile.twitter.com/joe_landon/status/914911853502914565

Quote

Joe Landon @joe_landon
Excited to share this sneak peak of our asteroid exploration mission. Launching 2020. youtube.com/watch?v=cctx9X__wQg @PlanetaryRsrcs

1:55 PM · Oct 2, 2017

Robotbeat · « **Reply #843 on:** 10/08/2017 01:47 am »

Specifically, he's the CFO of Planetary Resources.

This is a fascinating and ambitious looking mission. 4 probes cluster-launched. Hall Effect thrusters. Each probe contains multiple surface penetrating subprobes.

And a 2020 launch date!

savuporo · « **Reply #844 on:** 10/08/2017 01:57 am »

This is nice. But how is the Arkyd-6 launch coming along ?

meekGee · « **Reply #845 on:** 10/08/2017 02:51 am »

Quote from: Robotbeat on 10/08/2017 01:47 am

Specifically, he's the CFO of Planetary Resources.

This is a fascinating and ambitious looking mission. 4 probes cluster-launched. Hall Effect thrusters. Each probe contains multiple surface penetrating subprobes.

And a 2020 launch date!

Ambitious videos without any track record of execution - those show up every year on the fringes of space.

This is one HELL of a concept. Those penetration probes, on top of everything else - wow.

So - how do you back up the wow?

Does PR have enough money for something like this? I don't know of any in-house engineering organization there, so presumably they want to outsource this to various aerospace contractors.

The price tag will be hefty, and schedule wise - shouldn't they have already awarded contracts by now? 3 years is not that much for this. (or 5, for that matter).

Robotbeat · « **Reply #846 on:** 10/08/2017 03:24 am »

I think they do most of this stuff in-house.

savuporo · « **Reply #847 on:** 10/08/2017 03:54 am »

There is no way they will be doing electric propulsion and deep space navigation &tracking in house

Robotbeat · « **Reply #848 on:** 10/08/2017 10:50 am »

Quote from: savuporo on 10/08/2017 03:54 am

There is no way they will be doing electric propulsion and deep space navigation &tracking in house

Why not? SpaceX is doing their own electric propulsion, and universities sometimes develop thrusters. It's not THAT complicated.

LouScheffer · « **Reply #849 on:** 10/08/2017 12:29 pm »

Quote from: savuporo on 10/08/2017 03:54 am

There is no way they will be doing electric propulsion and deep space navigation &tracking in house

Deep space navigation could certainly be brought in house. It's straight Newtonian mechanics and numerical integration, with ephemerides publicly available from JPL. When the Pioneer anomaly was being investigated, people worried it was perhaps a bug in the deep space navigation code used. To guard against this, at least two individual contributors wrote their own code for this task. See Independent Confirmation of the Pioneer 10 Anomalous Acceleration or INDEPENDENT ANALYSIS OF THE ORBITS OF PIONEER 10 AND 11 .

For tracking, they could buy the spacecraft portion, the Smalll Deep-Space Transponder. This is compatible with the NASA and ESA deep space networks, where they could rent time.

Robotbeat · « **Reply #850 on:** 10/08/2017 01:07 pm »

Yeah, I suspect they would buy time on the Deep Space Network, at least as a kind of backup.

Could be done for free in exchange for scientific data from the asteroids.

nacnud · « **Reply #851 on:** 10/08/2017 01:43 pm »

Why would planetary resources share it's science data? It'd be like asking a petroleum company to share results from test drill sites.

Robotbeat · « **Reply #852 on:** 10/08/2017 02:13 pm »

Quote from: nacnud on 10/08/2017 01:43 pm

Why would planetary resources share it's science data? It'd be like asking a petroleum company to share results from test drill sites.

Doesnt have to be data about water. And anyway, it's not going to be a big secret where they set up their mining site.

Dao Angkan · « **Reply #853 on:** 10/08/2017 03:53 pm »

Or they could use a private deep space network.

meekGee · « **Reply #854 on:** 10/08/2017 05:35 pm »

Quote from: Robotbeat on 10/08/2017 10:50 am

Quote from: savuporo on 10/08/2017 03:54 am
There is no way they will be doing electric propulsion and deep space navigation &tracking in house
Why not? SpaceX is doing their own electric propulsion, and universities sometimes develop thrusters. It's not THAT complicated.

SpaceX is an exception.

Most aspirational space companies put out a pretty video and never get far beyond that.

Do you have any evidence that PR has a reasonable engineering workforce? That telescope they were planning to launch - were they going to build it themselves or were they going to "outsource" it?

We go back to "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". That video is certainly an extraordinary claim.

Wiki says that some years ago they've built a cubesat, which disappeared after being deployed from the ISS, and that this seems to be the extent of it. The company was founded in 2010.

Pardon the skepticism.

Robotbeat · « **Reply #855 on:** 10/08/2017 05:48 pm »

Planetary Resources has their own in-house manufacturing capacity, which you would know if you had skimmed through this thread first (go up-thread and you'll see tours of their facility). They aren't just going to contract with Airbus or Boeing. (Although I wouldn't be TOO surprised if they buy a COTS thruster).

Skepticism is fine as long as you do a minimal amount of research first.

Planetary (heh) is one of the few firms with actual resources behind it.

(Doesn't mean they'll succeed, of course, but a Hall Effect thruster isn't /that/ complicated. It's within reach of universities, which is roughly what Planetary Resources' facilities look like.)

Darkseraph · « **Reply #856 on:** 10/08/2017 06:20 pm »

Quote from: Robotbeat on 10/08/2017 10:50 am

Quote from: savuporo on 10/08/2017 03:54 am
There is no way they will be doing electric propulsion and deep space navigation &tracking in house
Why not? SpaceX is doing their own electric propulsion, and universities sometimes develop thrusters. It's not THAT complicated.

SpaceX has considerable resources to hire experienced engineers and technicians in this field and there's not too many companies that even build commercial electric propulsion systems. There's very few startups working on electrical propulsion of any kind.I'd be willing to bet it really is THAT complicated.

Robotbeat · « **Reply #857 on:** 10/08/2017 06:21 pm »

None of those things address technical difficulty or lack thereof. You're just assuming it's hard and beyond a company of >60 people.

Musk doesn't think it's that hard:

Quote

Teaming with local propulsion companies? Not really. I don't think so. We're going to build our own propulsion unit. People in the space industry have a really difficult time manufacturing things. They're pretty good at designing them in the first place but they don't actually know how to make them in volume. It's possible we could license some technology or something but the main propulsion system we have in mind for the satellite is a Hall effect thruster which, not to trivialize it too much, is basically like a loud speaker, okay. It's like a magnetic field accelerating ions, it's pretty easy to make. I mean, there's degrees of Hall thruster, like how good it is, but at the end of the day it's not that hard. So it's not clear that it would make sense to outsource something that's not that hard.

http://shitelonsays.com/transcript/spacex-seattle-2015-2015-01-15

Dao Angkan · « **Reply #858 on:** 10/08/2017 06:33 pm »

Probably simpler to just buy something like this, at least initially.

http://www.sitael.com/space/advanced-propulsion/electric-propulsion/hall-effect-thrusters/

randomly · « **Reply #859 on:** 10/08/2017 06:42 pm »

I'm reminded of the people who said there was no way SpaceX would design their own turbo pumps because it was too specialized and too complicated.
At this point I doubt Spacex is intimidated by any technology.