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Planetary Resources
The Arkyd-101 space telescope, shown in this artist's conception, represents the first spacecraft to be developed by Planetary Resources as part of an asteroid scouting and mining venture.
Planetary Resources, the billionaire-backed private venture that's aiming to hunt down and mine near-Earth asteroids, is looking for suggestions about projects that could attract extra funding through Kickstarter-style campaigns.
In a Web posting, co-founder Peter Diamandis says that in the month and a half since the asteroid-mining project was unveiled, he and his colleagues "have been overwhelmed at the response from people begging to know how they can get involved." In an associated email blast, Diamandis and the company's other co-founder, Eric Anderson, say they've gotten hundreds of emails asking about the project.
The company — which counts Google billionaires Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, space billionaire Charles Simonyi and Texas billionaire Ross Perot Jr. among its investors — has said it plans to launch its first asteroid-hunting space telescope, the Arkyd-100, within two years. But what Diamandis and Anderson really want to do is launch 10 to 15 of the 44-pound (20-kilogram) telescopes in the next three years.
"To offer you a chance to actually get involved, we’ve been tossing around the idea of adding additional capacity in our production run, and either offering you access to a portion of our orbiting spacecraft — or — if there’s enough demand, actually build you an additional Space Telescope for your own use," Diamandis wrote. "We'd probably do this through a Kickstarter campaign, but ONLY if there's enough interest."
Among the ideas that Diamandis is floating:
- $100 for a chance to direct the Arkyd-100 and take a high-resolution photograph of anyplace on Earth, or a celestial body.
- A desktop-scale model of the Arkyd-100.
- A half-day at the controls of a satellite, allowing you to take up to 50 photos from space.
- Invitations to the Planetary Resources launch party.
The suggestion box (which also serves as a ballot box for the suggestions) takes the form of a Facebook-style comment section on Diamandis' Web posting. Thirty comments, plus comments on the comments, piled up in the first hour since Diamandis issued his invitation.
Planetary Resources co-founder Peter Diamandis invites private citizens to submit suggestions for potential Kickstarter space-telescope projects.
Planetary Resources isn't the only venture trying to take advantage of the crowdfunding model. Last week I wrote about the ArduSat project, which involves another guy named Peter (high-energy physicist and former Wall Street investment manager Peter Platzer). ArduSat's organizers are seeking $35,000 in Kickstarter pledges for the development of a sensor-laden nanosatellite that could be run as an orbital time-share. As of this writing, the pledge amount is at $31,631 with 24 days to go — which means it's virtually certain ArduSat will hit its funding target.
I also mentioned the DreamUp project, which is offering space on the International Space Station's experimental racks for student-built experiments at rates as low as $15,500. DreamUp is a partnership involving NanoRacks and the Conrad Foundation, and has the added twist that American Express Membership Rewards points can be redeemed to cover the cost of flying an experiment.
Meanwhile, the nonprofit B612 Foundation says it's getting ready to unveil a privately funded, multimillion-dollar space telescope project to monitor the inner solar system for potentially threatening asteroids.
Am I crazy, or is there some sort of snowball effect kicking in? Let me know what you think by leaving a comment below.
More about unconventional space projects:
- Reality check for asteroid miners
- Donations revive the search for aliens
- Crowdfunding sought for $10,000 spacesuit
- Kickstarter project sends Trek dolls to stratosphere
- Kinect-controlled satellites heading to space
Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
Leave a Comment:
you would think billionaires would have enough funding without having to have others chip in.
How do you think billionaires got their billions?
Do you think this is the only project some of them have going?
How about some funding for how to stop the damn things from hitting the planet?
If you can mine it, you can by definition get heavy equipment right up next to or on it. Moving it becomes relatively trivial, at least assuming you see it coming a bit a head of time.
By mining it, you in essence move it because once you land that heavy equipment on it, you change it's path. Even being near it nudges it. Also, if you are removing material from an object, and sending it back to earth you are again changing it's path.
So funding a mining operation is also a good way to fund moving near earth objects out of the way.
These are the people I want to work for!
With enough will, humanity can accomplish virtually anything.
It would be amazing if they succeeded, and if their estimates of the possible value of asteroids were accurate.
It's hard to imagine resources gained from asteroids will recoup the staggering expenses involved in lauching equipment into space, doing the work, and getting the material back, but it would still be an enormous leap forward technologically. And it would be nice to get a few thousand tons of metal without having to worry about pollution or land rights or any of the other modern complications of exploiting the planet.
And of course, there's always the hope that we find super-metals that only exist in space that we can use to build our giant robots (crosses fingers).
Voltron?
I think your onto something Alan with that "snowball effect kicking in" ....
It appears that some of the wealthy individuals in the world , now feel free to jump into space type ventures ....
Richard Branson has been great in promoting a money making space craft for many to enjoy ....
Now small scale cubical experiment containers for anyone to use in space at a somewhat low cost ....
Now this , with an interest in getting the public involved ....
It sure seems like that snow ball is getting larger ....
You're going to be staying busy I'm afraid Alan .... "LOL"
Thanks for the article ....
I didn't add the "MONEY" word for someone to turn into advertising ....
What's that all about .... ??
Another unconventional space project that could have enormous implications is research on antigravity. To some people this is still a joke (like a dollar per pound to Low Earth Orbit). But at one time, it was taken very seriously by very influential people. See "United States gravity control propulsion research", en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_gravity_control_propulsion_initiative and "Conquest of Gravity Aim of Top Scientists in U.S.", New York Herald-Tribune, Sunday, November 20, 1955, www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/secret_projects/project048.htm .
What is needed currently, is not necessarily funding, but simple scientific curiosity about several unexplained effects noted by various researchers over several decades that have a bearing on this topic. Many of these can be investigated by hobbyists.
Links for those with the right stuff:
scripturalphysics.org/4v4a/ADVPROP.html#MotionCancellers
scripturalphysics.org/4v4a/ADVPROP.html#Biefeld-BrownEffect
scripturalphysics.org/4v4a/ADVPROP.html#GeometrySpaceTimeMotion
scripturalphysics.org/4v4a/CapacitorTests/CapacitorTests.html (see links)
I say let them dig {prospecting}. give them a piece of the pie.
I'll get back to you about the funding... have a deal with a Nigerian prince in the works.
The only real reason for a Kickstarter type campaign is this: get the people involved, while many are too involved now...with themselves, this gives those who want to be involved in something big and important a way in. 50 years ago, this wouldn't have been possible but today, heck we dont even need congressmen and senators, with computers in nearly every pocket, WE could vote ourselves on new laws and run our government that way. Oops, I better not say that, theres a big black helicopter circling my house...lol.
That sounds awesome, but it's probably not. Living in California all my life, I've seen what too much direct democracy can lead to when voters right up and vote on their own laws. Politicians, scummy and greedy as they are, do have a role in filtering out unworkable ideas and matching income to expenses (most states don't allow deficits, so this is a necessity for state politicians).
Direct democracies always rapidly devolve into tyranny.
I think this kickstarter is more about changing the public attitude than raising cash. I only wish it had happened 30 years ago so I could participate.
So, you don't think you can afford a space telescope of your own? No worries! Now YOU can own a piece of an orbiting telescope! For just a small investment (and annual dues, taxes and franchise fees) you can own a Timeshare Space Telescope! Now you can imagine vacationing on Mars, the Moons of Saturn or near Betelgeuse with vivid high def pictures taken by YOU (3-D extra).
Join now! Space is limited! *marketing pun intended*
Better than being sent on the critically understaffed asteroid-mining ships.
According to official X-box statistics, approximately 80% of all space mining ventures ends in the crew being dismembered by aliens.
Does that mean there is only a crew of 5 on asteroid mining ships? Every one I've seen, there is only one survivor, the one that kicks the alien a$$. The rest of the crew is alien toast, or maybe reproductive material.
I'd like to see their proposed revenue models... if there were stacks of gold bars on the moon, it would be too expensive to go there and bring them back. I don't see how it would be possible to make a profit on capturing an asteroid to mine it for simple elements.
It's probably not profitable. It's still a good idea, because resources mined in space have zero impact on Earth (other than providing all those tasty metals), meaning no pollution, no conflicts about land rights, and no resource depletion, but it won't turn a profit unless we make a mind-boggling advance in aeronautics or astrophysics that makes space travel much, much cheaper.
It costs $10,000 a pound to heave something from Earth's surface to orbit. It isn't likely a rocket can ever be built to do it much cheaper. But moving something that's already in space to another location in space only costs a few dollars a ton (if you aren't in too big a hurry for delivery). So mining asteroids already in space for materials to be used in space makes a great deal of economic sense.
Once you get up out of the bottom of the gravity well of a planet, moving about the solar system becomes easy and cheap. So once you get out, you don't want to dive back in. That's fiscally and energetically insane. Space is the destination. It offers plenty of energy and plenty of raw materials for the taking, and the using in space.
If there were gold bars on the Moon, that would be a good place to keep them, safer from most Earth criminals (including Congress) than Fort Knox. It would be the ultimate off shore account. Corporations may find it a better place to incorporate than Delaware, or Lichtenstein, or Bimini. Free from Earth governments, and their taxes.
I think this is fabulous! The idea of using Kickstarer or offering
the space telescope pictures to anyone with $100 is not strictly about raising
money. It is also about getting average people to imagine a 21st
century economy based on asteroid mining and space tourism. Economic recovery
will not start with rebuilding infrastructure supporting dormant factories that
used 20th century industry to manufacture 19th century technologies.
Vic Napier
www.JoblessEconomy.net
Id love to use their gear to take a few photos from space / of space
This reinforces that people are hungry to explore space. Sure I'd give a hundred bucks to advance a dream like that. I'ts miles ahead of any thing the doofus leading NASA could ever come up with.
They've got four billionaire investors and a fifth that used to be on that list. Their combined net worth is in excess of $29 BILLION. I'm a bit weary of them asking the public to help fund their venture via KickStarter. That should be for ventures without a massive amount of money already committed. I can see the rationale of getting involved and invested, but there are other ways.
Before any mining can happen, we need to be comfortable in space first. Tourism space station is a good idea, but how many people can afford it? How about build a therapeutic space station as well. I believe many medical conditions could benefit from some weightless treatment. For example, a weight loss camp for obesities in space would allow overweight people to do moves that they would never be able to do on the ground, and the insurance company can pay for such treatment. Also some obese people have no hope to loss weight, they should be allowed to live in space and their disability insurance & social security can pay for it.
When the human body is in a micro-gravity environment, all the fluids in the body redistribute from the feet and legs up into the head. Assuming that obese people would survive launch stress, they might find the redistribution of their fluids highly distressing. They could choke to death.
So, are you suggesting that our asteroid mining will be done by formerly obese people? Is that the plan?
See the new theoretical physics book 'I R Physics' for a wonderful change to classical physics with the most comprehensive study of clean free energy systems (even for catalyst free & polution free power), dark matter solved, and many other wonderful scientific quagmires better explained. Neweststudies.html
Tesla had it all figured out... do your research.
we want money for our ideas. make checks payble to CASH.
I see a profitable future in a space-trash cleanup venture for all the cheap, deprecated satellites that'll be strewn across every available near-Earth orbit.
Attempting to mine 'near earth' asteroids does not make any current sense economically or technologically. First of all...they aren't near! The biggy that whizzed by last week came as close as 6million miles. No NGO org has the capcity, engineering, or technology to reach a moving object anywhere near that far away. Also, these big chunks of the cosmos are moving at high velocities and in orbits that take them far out into the solar system, some, indeed, originate in the Oort cloud. They are only briefly 'near earth'. Catch one if you can! And there is no guarantee that any of them are so heavy w platinum, molybdenum, or gold, etc that the effort to mine them will be profitable. Spending billions to make millions? The effort would be more sensible focused on establishing an industrial colony on The Moon. You don't have to look for it, it isn't 6million miles away and there are already proven resources especially titanium, He3, thorium, uranium,etc. The billionaire entrepreneurs are now attempting to sell 'crowdshares' in asteroid mines that do not exist and may very well never exist!
The biggest thing we want to mine in space is water. We also want aluminum, iron, and silicon. Some of the rare elements might be useful too, but that's only a bonus, the quantities we'll need of those rare elements are small enough we can pay to boost them up out of Earth's gravity well. Remember, any material we can get in space, ANY material, is worth at least $10,000 a pound. That's what it would cost to boost it up out of Earth's gravity well. So if we need it in space, and we can get it from space for less than $10,000 a pound, we are profitable. The other thing to remember is that transport in space is a lot cheaper than transport to space. That's why getting our resources for space from space is so attractive a prospect.
Mining asteroids in space is only the beginning of an industrial revolution that will turn billionaires into trillionaires. A B2B economy can exist in space that dwarfs that on earth, using automation (factories) to make more factories using the vast amounts of raw material and energy easily available in space. How? A feedback loop will set in where energy and material are turned into factories that make factories (all automated), growing exponentially.
This explosion of wealth will make it possible to rain food down to earth from space, allow us to build a bridge/tether to the moon, and do things we can't even imagine. Its all about the ability to marshal huge amounts of energy and resources. We need some improvements in automation (computers/software/robotics) though.
What the common man like me should do is crowd-source their own venture, or failing that, invest in the space companies as early as possible. Helping crowd-source the billionaries venture is ok too for starters.
Thanks for the article, Alan. I think you may be right about the snowball effect. Companies like SpaceX have shown that small companies can be successful in the space business, which is a great encouragement to others interested in space travel.
SpaceX has shown that we can develop an orbital launcher in the $300 million cost range.
Could we "crowdfund" our own launcher? Say we made it 1/10th the payload capability of the Falcon 9, so at a 1,000 kg payload. Then perhaps it could be done for $30 million.
How many people would pay to have an investment in their own orbital launcher? An average of $1,000 for 30,000 people would do it. Or $100 for 300,000 people.
To get that many people involved though you would need something more than just KickStarter. You would need national advertising. I looked up some prices for national TV ads and was surprised at how low they were, at least for an average 30-second ad, not for something like the Superbowl:
The Average Cost of a 30 Second Spot on National Tv? $104,051 ……and a Domain?
By Shane Cultra - August 2, 201
The intent of that article was to show how high national TV ads are, but I was surprised at how low they are at least for the cable channels. It looks like the cable networks would be the way to go. You would target networks like the SyFy channel and the science and nature channels.
You would still need to raise the $10 to $20 thousand per spot. Then this is where KickStarter and other crowd funding sites come in. Amounts in this range are well within the range you could raise on the crowd funding sites.
A crowd sourced, crowd funded rocket. How cool is that?
Bob Clark
There are a number of reasons to do this mining on the Moon right now, and NOT out in deep space, not the least of which is very serious danger of cosmic ray and solar wind bombardment. The large mass of the Moon will accommodate a safe underground colony which you only have to excavate and construct once. For now it will take too much fuel to go chasing asteroids down, using our primitive chemical rockets for propulsion. You can get over the gravitational hump between the Earth and the Moon with a translunar space transport for far less, by using linear accelerator propulsion systems which rely upon space trash for their throw mass. A hydrogen and oxygen fueled lunar orbital cannon on the Moon can put refined material into precision lunar orbit, for transport back here to Earth using this translunar space transport. The Moon is also the best place to refine this material you are mining, using the enormous solar energy resources at your disposal (lunar poles, where most of the water is, too?). I can see light railroad tracks stretching out around the Moon from the lunar poles, gradually expanding these mining operations around the Moon, while also transmitting electricity around the Moon for these mining operations. I also think you will find far more mineral resources on the Moon (including the asteroid remains in large craters on the Moon) than you are ever likely to find in near Earth deep space any time soon. - Rick Carter
Eventually, I fully expect there will be manufacturing plants built in Earth orbit, which can take these refined materials from the Moon and turn them into finished goods. This increase in space activity by humans will also create a lot of space trash, which can be vaporized and ionized (using solar powered lasers?) for use as throw mass in these solar powered linear accelerator propulsion systems which will power these future translunar space transports and orbital satellite repair/refueling ships in Earth orbital space. - RC
(Please also keep in mind that these projectiles of refined material from the Moon which this orbital cannon on the Moon is launching into lunar orbit do not need to be aerodynamically shaped since there is no atmosphere on the Moon. In fact, the cannon and the projectiles can even be polydimensional shaped, since projectile spin is not needed to stablize them either.) - RC
(You might not want to make these rail systems too light, because shielded vehicles will be needed to transport workers around the surface of the Moon. Either that, or use heavily shielded all terrain vehicles. But you see, neither of those transport solutions is any problem on the Moon, either, and remember the first rule of industry is safety ALWAYS comes first!) - RC
(I think a short duration daily 'spin up' inside an Earth G+ centrifuge should keep most people living in lunar (1/6th) gravity in very good shape. Mining activities should take care of most of the rest of the physical exercise which they need, but an occasional workout might still be in order.) - RC
Just establishing a significant presence in Earth orbit on an economical basis will be a significant challenge for any future space mining enterprise. This in turn will require a revolutionary new space launch system. I have long proposed a tri-rocket assembly sandwiched in between two reusable primary booster shuttles, which in turn will be powered by LOX augmented jet engines. This space launch system will probably lift off somewhere in southern Texas, and travel down range over the Gulf of Mexico. Initially, all three stages of this space launch system will be ignited upon liftoff, and the second and third stage conventional rockets which make up the tri-rocket assembly will then be throttled back once the launch vehicle has cleared the tower and is up to optimum air breathing speed. The two outside reusable primary booster shuttles will then use their LOX augmented engines to do the primary lifting into space. Once these reusable primary booster shuttles are almost expended, they will then separate to land in Florida, and the two outside second stage rockets on the tri-rocket assembly will then throttle up, and the vehicle will continue on down range across the tip of Florida and out over the Atlantic Ocean, where these two second stage rockets will eventually separate and parachute down to the surface of the Atlantic Ocean once they are expended, where they will rely upon the flotation of their empty tanks for their recovery and recycle as scrap metal. The middle third stage rocket on the tri-rocket assembly will then throttle up, and finish delivering the payload into orbit, where it will either be recycled in Earth orbit or else left to burn up in Earth's atmosphere. The use of air breathing engines on these first stage primary booster shuttles will enable them to drop a very large amount of oxidizer load and structural load at the same time, which should more than make up for any lower thrust from these LOX augmented jet engines which power these primary booster shuttles. - Rick Carter
(It is the recycling of third stage rockets in Earth orbit which will most likely initially fund space industries in Earth orbit. That, and the repair & refueling of Earth orbital satellites. And for that, the present ISS will be absolutely indispensible.) - RC