Golden Spike announce Phase A for commercial lunar landing missions

[Garrett]

To raise their profile for other venture capital

Isn't the exposure here to VC that "Hey we didn't get VC so we ask the public" ?

Hardly. If they just wanted straight funding (from the public or whathaveyou), a kickstarter or indiegogo campaign with prizes and such is much more trouble than it's worth. This is for exposure.

What?
If you want exposure, you buy ads, go on talk shows and generally do this little thing called "public relations".
If you want money and can't get any investors, you do crowd funding.
This isn't for "exposure". This is straight up begging.

It's for exposure, it's for crowd funding and it is a form of begging 
Going on who's behind this project, we know they're not broke. But every dollar counts, and what would be the point in spending those dollars on buying ads? Who would those ads be aimed at?

I don't think there is anything cryptic about why they're going the crowd-funding route -  it's even written in their press release: they know that 1000's of people would like to get involved, so why not leverage that interest by turning it in to capital? Get those interested people to put their money where there mouths are. Any extra exposure (positive or negative) is a plus.

[Ben the Space Brit]

David Brabben used the cloud-funding method to both raise money for his upcoming "Elite 4" game and to assess in advance what kind of interest there was in the game.  The fact that he was able to reach his objective in pledges (and then some) told him that there was a market for the game that made it worth developing it.

In some ways, Golden Spike's move can be seen in the same light, although the sums in question are enormously higher and the number of pledgers would likely be much smaller.  The question from the start has been this: Are there sufficient people of the required means interested enough in this concept to put their money behind it? This exercise might go some way towards answering that question.

[R7]

In some ways, Golden Spike's move can be seen in the same light, although the sums in question are enormously higher and the number of pledgers would likely be much smaller.

..denoting that potential investors of any real meaning are unlikely to be indiegogo-users. GS customers are too unlikely to be found from indiegogo. So I have difficulties in understanding why said real investors would give a hoot about indiegogo-hoopla.

The indiething would make sense if this was Mars One because it's a joke in more challenging situation to find any real investors. edit: And M1's end users would be vast number of average people watching TV.

[e of pi]

This is more long term I believe. They want to pull more young people into the space industry.

I'm a young engineer trying to break into the space industry, so I wanted to chime in on this.

Personally, I tend to prefer projects I think actually have a chance of working and that have the money to do anything over ones that might or might not be technically feasible but have no funding so why does it matter? I was excited when this came out, but very skeptical about their financial foundations. Now, it looks like I was right to be, and they go in the same bin with Planetary Resources, Mars One, and Half Life 3 as total vaporware.

That whole bin worth of projects doesn't impress me or make me want to get into the business. The people responsible for that are the ones actually pushing the envelope for real, and having measurable (if occasionally mixed) results. SpaceX's Grasshopper and Dragon flights, ULA's amazing record with Atlas, or MSL's landing and ongoing operations. For the sake of my generation, I hope they're wrong to think that my fellow young engineers are shallow enough to be fooled by a Kickstarter and a flashy graphic.

[Robotbeat]

Planetary actually has something of value to offer kickstarter supporters and early customers. The end goal is pie in the sky but they have relatively realistic near-term goals.

[Warren Platts]

I don't think there is anything cryptic about why they're going the crowd-funding route -  it's even written in their press release: they know that 1000's of people would like to get involved, so why not leverage that interest by turning it in to capital? Get those interested people to put their money where there mouths are. Any extra exposure (positive or negative) is a plus.

Not necessarily. The real danger is that this thing fails miserably, like Bill Stone's Shackleton Energy Rockethub attempt to raise funds. I think the pledges he got were less than 1% of the targeted amount. That was the death blow for SE. No one ever talks about them now. It's like they never existed....

[QuantumG]

Going on who's behind this project, we know they're not broke.

Who are you talking about?

[dafixer]

As a soon-to-be-minted new engineer I can say that I am no longer impressed with Golden Spike. They had audacious plans, and that got my attention. Then, nothing. Now we get a news update and it's...wait for it... crowd funding? Really?

If I wanted to start my own company in my basement, yeah, I'd probably try crowd funding because I would have nothing to lose. But go to work for somebody with Indiegogo listed as a funding source? Probably not.

I think the best guess is that they're broke and GS will never be anything more than a couple of PowerPoint presentations.

[docmordrid]

Forbes: Top 10 Benefits of Crowdfunding....

[JohnFornaro]

So.. they're broke.

I know.. we knew that already, but now the rest of the world does too.

Kneejerk reaction?  Good call.

60 seconds of contemplation? At the same time, one could ask, are they trying to make a buck using other people's money?

Crowd-funding like this is a new thing, doesn't mean it's dumb.

Yeah, but doesn't mean it'll work either. If, as a JWST scientist observed, $1B doesn't buy you a lot, then how much could $240K buy you?

To raise their profile for other venture capital

Isn't the exposure here to VC that "Hey we didn't get VC so we ask the public" ?

Yes, so it would seem from this armchair.  To object that I don't have $240K would gloss over the fact that neither do they.

God knows we need some positivity here. naysayers are all to common.

The way I look at it, believe it or not, is that it's not about naysayers, it's about presenting a credible plan.

I did in fact just go give them a pittance.

Unfortunately, as banal as the quatrain goes, "No bux, no Buck Rogers".  A pittance will not do.

... "We're going to the moon without government assistance" is not a claim people without any funding should ever make. ...

I'm willing to give benefit of the doubt, but I agree about your assessment of their claim.

David Brabben used the cloud-funding method to both raise money for his upcoming "Elite 4" game and to assess in advance what kind of interest there was in the game.  The fact that he was able to reach his objective in pledges (and then some) told him that there was a market for the game that made it worth developing it.

In some ways, Golden Spike's move can be seen in the same light, although the sums in question are enormously higher and the number of pledgers would likely be much smaller.  The question from the start has been this: Are there sufficient people of the required means interested enough in this concept to put their money behind it? This exercise might go some way towards answering that question.

Ben's is the accurate assessment.  Sadly, the probable answer is that there are not "sufficient people of the required means" available to tap for capital.

From the Forbes article:L

Since launching our own crowdfunding platform, Rock The Post, in 2011, we have seen many small businesses and entrepreneurs flourish and benefit from the aid of this industry.

GS is not a small business.

[KelvinZero]

Im still seeing people bemoaning the fact that they apparently do not have a list of private citizens lining up for a 1.x billion dollar lunar weekend, or a list of investors willing to invest around 10b on the assumption that they will turn up.

To me it is really really obvious.

They dont need customers. There was only ever one possible anyway.
They dont need hardware, so they don't need 10b of investors either.
They don't even need credibility as a company, if reputable companies endorse the plan.
They don't even need to get to the moon.

All they need to do is produce a contract, endorsed by credible commercial companies,  which effectively says those companies would cooperate on an architecture that could put two astronauts on the moon every year, for only about a 0.25 of the current HSF budget, and they would do it cash on delivery, if a (nudge, wink) customer was found.

How many billions have we already spent on Constellation/SLS, and none of that actually on manned missions? They are proposing a bill of zero for development, and only to receive payment for missions performed. If they thought they could do it and the US government could commit to buy missions when they existed, then I expect these companies could find real investors.

Don't you guys agree that this would have tremendous power just as a piece of paper? It would be a declaration of war if these companies endorsed something like that. It will all about whether they take that highly political step.

Or am I just missing something and everybody was too polite to say?

[Patchouli]

Yeah, but doesn't mean it'll work either. If, as a JWST scientist observed, $1B doesn't buy you a lot, then how much could $240K buy you?

Not sure what $240K would buy but $1B buys you a lot.

Elon Musk created Tesla Motors,Solar City, and Spacex for a $1B investment.

To actually get something on the moon all they'd need is a bored Billionaire or a couple of Millionaires to fund it.

$240K might be enough to build a working prototype lunar propellant plant and some robots.
This could then attract bigger investors.

[HMXHMX]

Yeah, but doesn't mean it'll work either. If, as a JWST scientist observed, $1B doesn't buy you a lot, then how much could $240K buy you?

Not sure what $240K would buy but $1B buys you a lot.

Elon Musk created Tesla Motors,Solar City, and Spacex for a $1B investment.

To actually get something on the moon all they'd need is a bored Billionaire or a couple of Millionaires to fund it.

$240K might be enough to build a working prototype lunar propellant plant and some robots.
This could then attract bigger investors.

Uh, the taxpayer enabled Tesla with half a billion of DOE loan plus tax credit to buyers, SpaceX with a billion or more of funding (FALCON/COTS/CCEDV2/CCCAP), and SolarCity with tax credits.  Elon put a couple hundred million of his own money into all those enterprises together.  That's not to diminish his commitment which is laudable, but the vast majority of the funding didn't come from him or any investors, it came from the U.S. gov't.

[KelvinZero]

If they thought they could do it and the US government could commit to buy missions when they existed, then I expect these companies could find real investors.

A commitment from the NASA is worth diddly.

Doesn't necessarily matter, though apparently NASA can sign contracts commiting the next government to cancellation fees.

The reason it may not matter is that merely having the proposal on the table would make any politician still advocating the current direction look blatantly dishonest. At that point the politicians will probably stop pretending they care about getting to the moon or similar extravagant destination driven fairytales anyway.

If the moon is taken off the table entirely, the commercial companies still probably win because only the very large rocket needs the very large mission to survive. What ever we do end up doing, all launch business would still have gone to the commercial launchers.

[JohnFornaro]

Don't you guys agree that this would have tremendous power just as a piece of paper? It would be a declaration of war if these companies endorsed something like that. It will all about whether they take that highly political step.

That seems apparently true, at least on the paper that it might be written upon.

The physical difficulties are still out there, and awaiting solution, which does not negate the possibility that "war" might be conceptually being declared by a bunch of political outsiders.

@ Patchouli:  For $240K, I could design and build a working, true to scale model of the deployment mechanism of my PMP system, and have the engineering for the lunar model in hand.  Which is great, but which would be a small portion of that which would need to be designed and built.

The $1B dig was at the greedy testimony of a JWST team supporter.  Unfortunately, the rest of your analysis is shallow.

...apparently NASA can sign contracts commiting the next government to cancellation fees.

Harsh, but apparently true.  You mentioned that "any politician still advocating the current direction [will] look blatantly dishonest". QG observed that that hasn't mattered for the last couple hundred times that "song" has been played.

[A_M_Swallow]

Not sure what $240K would buy but $1B buys you a lot.

Elon Musk created Tesla Motors,Solar City, and Spacex for a $1B investment.

To actually get something on the moon all they'd need is a bored Billionaire or a couple of Millionaires to fund it.

$240K might be enough to build a working prototype lunar propellant plant and some robots.
This could then attract bigger investors.

You then go along to Armadillo or Masten and take a $1000 option on a lander in 10-15 years time.  This is less than a contract, so if you cannot raise the money you just allow it to time out, but gives them something they can put on their website.

The next option is on a Falcon or Atlas V launch vehicle able to take the lander to trans-lunar injection.  Following that you sell an option for fuel and/or LOX on the Moon.

You have now got paperwork for a method of building your initial lunar propellant plant and a customer.  Time to raise the rest of the venture capital.

[A_M_Swallow]

You then go along to Armadillo or Masten and take a $1000 option on a lander in 10-15 years time.

C'mon.  Why not go to the propellantless drive people and take out a 15 year $1K option on their product?  Business doesn't work that way.

I did not invent options, just suggested applying them to the space business.  The supplier does not have to build anything until a contract is signed.

[KelvinZero]

Don't you guys agree that this would have tremendous power just as a piece of paper? It would be a declaration of war if these companies endorsed something like that. It will all about whether they take that highly political step.

That seems apparently true, at least on the paper that it might be written upon.

The physical difficulties are still out there, and awaiting solution, which does not negate the possibility that "war" might be conceptually being declared by a bunch of political outsiders.

...apparently NASA can sign contracts commiting the next government to cancellation fees.

Harsh, but apparently true.  You mentioned that "any politician still advocating the current direction [will] look blatantly dishonest". QG observed that that hasn't mattered for the last couple hundred times that "song" has been played.

To the first part:
The main thing is that paper has a certain meaning well beyond just another powerpoint since it would be a statement of a willingness to engage in a payment on delivery scheme and absorb development risks themselves by credible companies. The credibility of GS doesnt really matter.

To the second part, that think big schemes have failed a couple of hundred times before:

(1) Firstly, I dont think it really is a think big scheme but a mechanism in the process of our inevitable (but painful) move from government to commercial launchers, including for the big stuff. If they were asking for ten billion I wouldnt give them a dollar. What is much more important is if we move to a paradigm where commercial companies absorb the risk of development, and only because they know they can do it.

(2) I think those big schemes that fail are a symptom of the institution that has dominated since Apollo and I think it is finally failing. The government launcher has to pursue gigantism in order to not compete with commercial launchers. I think we have just reached the point where starting an extravagant mission and cancelling it in a couple of terms can no longer work. We are at the tipping point where no one is actually daring to table a proposal of suitable size to make the current direction make sense because it would be rejected immediately, not in a following term. The only strategy they are left with is to rail at the president for not providing direction.
In addition to that, commercial operators are now up and running, and doing more interesting things than the government launcher. There is a genuine change going on.

[QuantumG]

I think we have just reached the point where starting an extravagant mission and cancelling it in a couple of terms can no longer work.

We know you believe that, the question is: why?

We're at iteration n of this cycle, what makes you think it'll stop now?

People have been rolling their eyes at the politicians every time through, and we're still here. There has been powerpoint from unfunded experts showing that "better" ways exist every time through, and we're still here.

[KelvinZero]

I think we have just reached the point where starting an extravagant mission and cancelling it in a couple of terms can no longer work.

We know you believe that, the question is: why?

We're at iteration n of this cycle, what makes you think it'll stop now?

People have been rolling their eyes at the politicians every time through, and we're still here. There has been powerpoint from unfunded experts showing that "better" ways exist every time through, and we're still here.

I probably wasnt clear.
When I said "The government launcher has to pursue gigantism in order to not compete with commercial launchers" what I meant was it is not that we have become more sensible, it is that the proposals must now be even more extravagant before. This is because capabilities of commercial launchers have increased or are clearly going to. Therefore missions to justify non-commercial missions have to be even larger than a decade ago. This is how n differs from n-1.

Clearly at some point we hit a credibility threshold where something would be rejected immediately, not in a follow up term. I think it is now, because no one is any longer daring to table a plan sufficient to justify the current launch architecture. It would be immediately torn apart IMO.

(edit-- I didnt really want to rehash all that, its getting too far off GS. My real point is that I think that commercial is bubbling up to a level where a GS-style approach is plausible. The only detail I'm focusing is the pay on delivery aspect. zero development fee is a very different deal. This is probably even obvious to the disinterested layman so you can't compare it to technologies that need some explaining)