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Commercialization

Is Planetary Resources Already a NASA Contractor? (Yes)

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
April 24, 2012
Filed under ,

New venture aims to mine near-Earth asteroids, Washington Post
“This project aligns well with our national space policies and goals,” NASA spokesman David S. Weaver said in an e-mailed statement Tuesday, adding that as the space agency moves toward sending humans to an asteroid for the first time, “we will certainly look to take advantage of private-sector resources and data.”
Planetary Resources officially kicks off its asteroid mining venture, Venture Beat
“The company says it is cash-flow positive, but declined to go into much detail as to where the money is coming from other than saying it does currently have a contract with NASA. They went on to vaguely said the company already has several relationships with other companies and several customers already.”
Planetary Resources set to begin hunt for asteroids to mine in 18-24 months, Ars Technica
“NASA really has no involvement in what Planetary Resources is doing, no prior knowledge, and no hardware capable of matching the company’s.”
Asteroid Mining Venture Aims To Lay Foundation with Small, Cheap Space Telescopes, SpaceNews
“We were operating under the name of Arkyd Astronautics for the last two years quite honestly because it was not as obvious what we were up to,” Anderson told Space News. “If we had been called ‘Planetary Resources,’ it would have been obvious to people.”
Keith’s note: But wait, it looks like Arkyd er, I mean, Planetary Resources is already using NASA STTR money to develop its telescope spacecraft. 2011 money to be precise – a total of $124,000. This STTR contract is just starting, how much are the follow-on phases worth? Planetary Resources is claiming to make spacecraft in the “single digit millions”. Follow-on STTR money will likely be in the “single digit millions”. Why didn’t they bother to tell anyone about this today? First they do a switcheroo on their name and purpose – not telling the NASA/JPL asteroid study team what they were really up to. Now they are being less than forthcoming on their existing business relationship with NASA. What else are they not telling us?

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

18 responses to “Is Planetary Resources Already a NASA Contractor? (Yes)”

  1. Grant Henninger says:
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    Keith, they did say they had a contract with NASA during their press conference today. The penultimate question during the Q&A session was about any contracts with NASA or other companies. They said that they did have one contract with NASA related to optics. (At least according to the Gawker live-blog of the event: http://gizmodo.com/5904727/

    • kcowing says:
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      The audio on that webcast left a lot to be desired. That said, why didn’t they say what it was really about instead of “optics”?

      • guest says:
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        The particular SBIR award is about optics. What exactly is the problem ? In their FAQ they explicitly state that their only current partner that they are going to name is NASA. OMG, they had an award barely in 6 digits ?
        Indeed, what ELSE are they not telling us OMG ??

        • kcowing says:
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          They are claiming to make spacecraft in the “single digit millions”. Follow-on STTR money will likely be in the “single digit millions”.

          • Christopher Dreyer says:
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            It is an STTR Keith, the explicit goal of all STTRs is to commercialize technology.  They are attracting investors and building a business around STTR funding, which is exactly what they are suppose to do.  What is the problem? Why are you trying to manufacture a controversy around Planetary Resources? 
            I was listening to the Q&A session. Lewicki did say that NASA contract was for a system that is both a laser com and a telescope.  The $124,000 amount is typical of a phase I SBIR, for 6-9 months of work, and usually is a design study.  

        • kcowing says:
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          NASA is paying them to develop a test article for their first spacecraft. Didn’t hear them admit that.  Odd that all those billionaires couldn’t spring for this.

    • fencible says:
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      Hence the $25.00 charge for the tickets, contractors cannot pay for customers meals.

  2. John Thomas says:
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    $124,000 for a telescope spacecraft? I think not. For that price, it’s probably just for a study, not any significant hardware.

  3. Guy McArthur says:
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     A private company is going to use technology partly developed for NASA in it’s own products? Sounds like a win-win.

    • Geoffrey A. Landis says:
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      The explicit purpose of the SBIR/STTR program is to develop technology to be commercialized, so the fact that this company announced they are planning to commercialize the product being developed with NASA STTR funding is something that should be highlighted by the NASA small business development office as a success story!

      • kcowing says:
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        So why hasn’t/isn’t anyone – at NASA or Planetary Resources  – “highlighting” this?

  4. Michael Mahar says:
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    There’s something odd about this proposal.  I read the Keck report that outlines the technology and it sounds reasonable.  The thing that raised my eyebrows, however, is that the craft that is proposed to go fetch and asteroid is and electric Ion engine.  According to he report, they would use about 12,000 Kg of Xenon.  Current prices of Xenon are $12 per gram. That comes out to $144M in fuel costs alone.  More importantly, annual Xenon production is about 1,000Kg a year. So fueling up the ship will take 12 years of Xenon production.  You’d pretty much have to build your own Xenon plant.

    • John Gardi says:
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       Michael:

      Good point on the xenon. Unsustainable. But, if they go for water first then maybe they’d have a go at bootstrapping their operation economically.

      tinker

      • Rune says:
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        An ion engine can run on other stuff like, say, anything that can be ionized, preferably easily. Mercury has been tride, bismuth is being looked at, and if you go to the big (>100kw) electric drives working with plasma you would need in the long run, those work on ANYTHING (i.e. VASIMIR).
        But yeah, nice catch on the first mission pricetag. It’s actually greater than launch costs, if you use a cheap launcher unlike Atlas… Pick a half-as-efficient but dirt cheap fuel, stick the thing in a bigger Falcon Heavy with twice the payload, and you save money, go figure.

      • DTARS says:
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        I just compare whatever they are trying to do to SLS and Orion.
        Maybe they get eyes in the sky. The world is now safer. Their money helps new Space survive and they are up their for any spinoff benefits as they develop over time. What if we have a near earth scare soon. Who you going to call??

    • J Fincannon says:
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      I think your cost/gram is high and production rates too low. However, be that as it may, the nice thing is that we have a lot of atmosphere (the Earth’s) from which to extract Xenon, so it won’t run out any time soon (we have ~463,000,000,000 kg of Xenon in Earth’s atmosphere and 13 times that value of Krypton, another possible EP propulsion gas).
      Market forces will (hopefully) drive increased production, improve efficiencies, economies of scale, perhaps lowering cost in the process. 

      Maybe we can remove some greenhouse
      gases while we are at it with the same equipment! It just requires initiative.

  5. dbooker says:
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    What everyone seems to be missing is that the Keck report just lists the technology to create an automated satellite to capture and move a small asteroid.   What hasn’t been invented yet is the technology to mine AND process the raw materials in zero or low G.  So you have the technology to get it to a lunar orbit or an Lagrange point with current technology and you can do this in less than a decade.  Then what do you do with it?  Duh!