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Is Planetary Resources Using a NASA Report As a Business Plan?

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

Asteroid Mining Plans Revealed by Planetary Resources, Inc. (with video)
“Planetary Resources, Inc. announced today its plan to mine Near-Earth Asteroids (NEAs) for raw materials, ranging from water to precious metals. Through the development of cost-effective exploration technologies, the company is poised to initiate prospecting missions targeting resource-rich asteroids that are easily accessible.”

In Pursuit of Riches, and Travelers’ Supplies, in the Asteroid Belt. NY Times
“[Eric Anderson and Peter H. Diamandis] set up Planetary Resources a couple of years ago, but have kept quiet about it until now.”
Asteroid Venture Is About Politics, Not Just Mining, Wall Street Journal
“The company, backed by several billionaires, is working to recruit engineering and mission-planning expertise and allow private companies to bid to help it launch the spacecraft, said John S. Lewis, a University of Arizona planetary-science professor who said he is an adviser to Planetary.”
Asteroid Retrieval Feasibility Study (full document)
“The research described in this paper was sponsored by the Keck Institute for Space Studies (KISS) and was carried out in part at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.”
Participants
Chris Lewicki – Arkyd Astronautics
John Lewis – University of Arizona
Tom Jones – Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition”

Billionaire Investor Group Backs Audacious New Space Venture
– Charles Simonyi, Ph.D., Space Tourist, Planetary Resources, Inc. Investor
Eric Anderson, Co-Founder & Co-Chairman, Planetary Resources, Inc.
– Peter H. Diamandis, M.D., Co-Founder & Co-Chairman, Planetary Resources, Inc.
Chris Lewicki, President & Chief Engineer, Planetary Resources, Inc.
Tom Jones, Ph.D., Planetary Scientist, Veteran NASA Astronaut & Planetary Resources, Inc. Advisor

Billionaire-backed asteroid mining venture starts with space telescopes, MSNBC
“The first step to mining an asteroid is figuring out what’s out there. To that end, Planetary Resources’ first project is what’s known as the Arkyd-101 personal space telescope.”
Keith’s note: This NASA-funded report about retrieving an asteroid was formally issued on 2 April 2012. On 24 April 2012 a company (Planetary Resources) backed by billionaires who want to retrieve an asteroid holds a press conference. One of the committee members is President & Chief Engineer of Planetary Resources. Two other members are advisors to Planetary Resources. None of these individuals list their committee affiliation as Planetary Resources on the report. I guess they hired these guys in the past few weeks, after the report was released, right?
But wait: Chris Lewiki lists his Arkyd Astronautics affiliation on the report – and Eric Anderson is co-chairman and co-founder of Arkyd. According to Lewiki’s LinkedIn page he has worked for Planetary Resources since January 2010. So why didn’t he mention this obvious overlap with regard to his committee participation?
Keith’s update: The Wall Street Journal posted this correction: “An earlier version of this article incorrectly said part of the aim of Planetary Resources would be to convince governments that the technology exists to snare an asteroid and pursue space mining in the near future at a relatively low cost.” Moments ago Peter Diamandis said on CNN that Planetary Resources wants to “form a public/private partnership with NASA”. Someone is confused.

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

44 responses to “Is Planetary Resources Using a NASA Report As a Business Plan?”

  1. guest says:
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    (facepalm) really ?

  2. James Lundblad says:
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    I think they should have named it Weyland-Yutani Corp. 🙂

  3. CadetOne says:
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    I think the idea of trying to make a business case for space exploration is critical. NASA essentially has no vision (or funding) other than at best some vague flags and footprints missions. Obama has little interest in space, and Romney has belittled settlements on the moon.

    John Marburger, science advisor to George W. Bush, talked about bringing space into our “economic sphere of influence”. I think the space community needs to look at building business cases that extends beyond winning government contracts.

    Private capital needs to be brought into the picture. Maybe this isn’t it, but something needs to be done.

    • chriswilson68 says:
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      Unfortunately, business cases aren’t so much built as discovered.  You can only come up with a business plan if a market opportunity already exists.

      It may be that there just doesn’t exist a business plan for space exploration.  A good case can be made that a lot of basic physics research, for example, doesn’t have a business plan that would justify it.  It’s still a net win for society as a whole, just not for those who invested in it.  That’s why governments or private charitable organizations tend to fund a lot of the basic physics research that happens.  It’s a classic commons problem.

      Space exploration may be the same.  It may be that even though there are enormous long-term benefits to our civilization for space exploration the benefits accrue to all of us, not just to those who fund them, so there is no business case for them.

      Of course, just because the funds come from the government doesn’t mean they can’t be spent in a way that uses free market forces and competition to get the most efficient use of those funds.

      • CadetOne says:
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        I largely agree with your points, so the following is more for general discussion.

        One general benefit this approach is that we develop the technology, infrastructure, and knowledge to move asteroids from their current orbit. Should we one day find a large asteroid on a collision course with Earth, we could use this to nudge it off its orbit (societal benefit)

        Right now there seems to be some debate about the general direction for NASA exploration, both manned and unmanned. There have been some plans for asteroids — an unmanned mission to return a tiny sample, a manned mission in “kissing Orions” for a brief visit. Both would do very little. This could provide a unified vision.

        Bringing the asteroid into Lunar orbit and then mining/exploring the heck out of it would give us a lot more knowledge (scientific benefits) and some of the costs could be offset with proceeds from the mining operations.

        In the near term I don’t see this as being a profitable stand-alone operation. That is why they expect the government to be involved. “You (the government) bring us the asteroid, and we (the private sector) will figure out how to extract some money from it.”

  4. hamptonguy says:
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    Sounds pretty stupid from a financial point of view.  Assume a $200M cost to lasso this 500 ton of nickel and iron ore and get it back to earth or use in space in some manner.  Assuming it was all nickel at current price of $8/pound, that would yield 500 x 2000 or about 1 million pounds of nickel worth about $8M. Space exploration is great for advancement of science and knowledge but leave it to robots for now where the payoffs can be gotten for a fraction of the cost. Leave asteroid mining to the crazy billionaires and not on the backs of the taxpayers.

    • Tman66 says:
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      We are not robots, and if you want to capture the funding for these missions you must engage the fascination of the people, and with rare exception you can not do that with robots.  WE NEED humans in space doing exciting things that the rest of the people on earth say “I want my kids to be able to do that.”  Then there might actually be funding.  Until you get the general public excited about tomorrow, space exploration is going nowhere.

      • Hallie Wright says:
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        That’s pretty silly, and about as old-school as you can get. If you want to capture funding for these missions, you simply have to prove to people that it’s worth it to them. We need astronauts on an asteroid mining palladium with pickaxes and shovels? Really? I don’t want my kids doing that.

        WE NEED humans driving cars, so they can take us to our friends so we can talk to them. Wouldn’t want to have to use a telephone. WE NEED humans coming into our houses to entertain us. Wouldn’t want to have to flip on the television. Those telephones and television are like (tele)robots. They are electromechanical extensions of ourselves. As to engaging the fascination of the people, consider smart phones. I dare you to go ask a kid to give up their smart phone in exchange for a trip to space. To a contemporary kid, their smart phone provides vastly more worth to them than a jaunt to space. If a human space program doesn’t provide “worth” it has no business going anywhere.

        If the success of human space flight is going to be based wholly on “fascination of the people”, it’s toast.

        • hamptonguy says:
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          I know many people and aspiring engineers who are very fascinated by the Hubble Telescope, rovers on Mars, probes to other planets, etc.  Manned Space Flight, as of now, is a total waste of money because it costs far too much and yields essentially nothing.  People wan tot work on cool things and sending a few people off to planets for tens of billions to hundreds of billions of dollars is a yawner compared to dozens of cool missions with real science results for the same money and spread out over time.  This is not 1962 and we are not in some political driven race to beat the Russians or the Chinese.  Those days are over.  Space exploration has to make sense.

          • Hallie Wright says:
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            Amen. But the worth that these things bring people is the sense of excitement and seeing things we’ve never seen before. We can do that with electromechanical devices. Call them “robots” if you want. That sense of excitement comes from doing new things, and doing new things with human space flight is enormously hard. Why? Because humans are always the same. They don’t get any better. The electromechanical devices we launch get dramatically better. Telerobotically, our senses and capabilities get dramatically better as they improve.

            Human space flight is more adventure than exploration. It’s adventure for a select few. Now adventure is important, but I’m not sure if I want to pay for some one else’s adventure.

            There is some pathos in this. Human space flight has led us to the point that it’s just gotta be exploration. It’s just gotta be exciting and fascinating. But increasingly it isn’t.

          • Tman66 says:
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            The ONLY reason Hubble was serviced is because the PUBLIC demanded it.  My point is that until you capture the average persons fascination with space, NONE of these missions will ever get adequate funding.  We can KNOW that it is economically worth the expense, but We are living in a bubble.  We are not the majority, and in fact are a tiny minority.

            Telephones, Television, Cars are all tools that make the average persons life better.  You will not find an average american that thinks probes to other planets make their life better. 

            And if you know “many people and aspiring engineers who are very fascinated by the Hubble Telescope, rovers on Mars, probes to other planets, etc.” why are we experiencing massive declines in enrollment for the STEM fields?  And the many that do enroll are from foreign countries and take their knowledge back with them upon graduation.  

            America’s leadership is in jeopardy, and until we get the masses excited (i.e. willing to spend money) about exploration, it is not going to change.  Hubble pictures have done it, rovers on mars have done it, but James Webb is doing the opposite.  

      • Paul451 says:
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        From below:
        “The ONLY reason Hubble was serviced is because the PUBLIC demanded it.”

        Que? The Hubble was designed to be serviced and upgraded. That was its whole thing.

        • Tman66 says:
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          The 5th and final servicing mission was suppose to be in Late 2005 or early 2006, and it was cancelled by Sean O’Keefe on January 16, 2004.  There was enough of an uprising that included everyone from elementary school kids to the top scientists that the congress took interest and pressure was on.  Eventually the replacement administrator, Michael Griffin, reinstated the mission and it launched on May 11, 2009.

          My point being it took a groundswell of public opinion for something to happen.  

  5. Christopher Larkins says:
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    Bigelow Aerospace is probably thanking their lucky stars right now as this would be a perfect opportunity to test one of it’s stations which they say can be fitted onto an Asteroid.

  6. Ian1102 says:
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    Excellent. Nice to see private capital being attracted to space development projects on the basis of some ground-level studies by NASA. Hope this is the start of a trend of more of this for other sectors of activity.

  7. Paul451 says:
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    How does He3 make sense?

  8. chriswilson68 says:
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    It sounds like they don’t so much have a business plan as a plan to look for a business plan.

    As South Park would put their plan:

    Step 1: Send a telescope up to look for Near-Earth Asteroids and try to figure out a way to use them.  Water for other space travelers?  Propellant for other space travelers?  Iron and nickel to build space settlements for other travelers?  Platinum for Earth?  We don’t yet know how to make a business of any of those, so let’s just mention them all to the NY Times reporter.

    Step 3: Profit!

    • Paul451 says:
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      Actually, I’m realising that Planetary Resources’ business plan isn’t really to mine asteroids. It’s to equip those who want to mine asteroids. That old trope about gold rushes: it’s the people selling picks and shovels that make money.

      Planetary Resources will sell cheap space-telescopes to anyone who wants them, mostly for Earth observation, but, hey everyone, asteroid mining, hint hint. Then they’ll develop probes based on their space telescopes, mostly for science, but hey everyone, asteroid mining, hint hint. Then they’ll sell surface-assaying probes, hey everyone, asteroid mining, hint hint. And so on.

      1) Identify (and hype) a future gold rush.
      2) Identify each step needed to get to the gold.
      3) Create business to supply tools to the gold-fever ’49ers.
      4) Profit! (Regardless of how many of the ’49ers go bust.)

      • chriswilson68 says:
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        That only works if there are 49ers out there buying those (very expensive) picks and shovels.  In the 1849 gold rush, there were lots of prospectors out there only after a few people had struck gold and were already wealthy.

  9. chriswilson68 says:
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    The New York Times article has quotes from the two co-founders of the company pitching it.  So I think it’s safe to say there won’t be anything fundamentally new in the event tomorrow that isn’t already in the NY Times article.

    Unfortunately, all the multiple potential business plans the company pitches in the article fall into one of two categories: (1) resources for use by other space travelers; and (2) platinum to be returned to Earth.

    The first category is a perfectly good business opportunity, but only if there are enough other space travelers to buy enough resources to cover the costs of getting them from asteroids.  Unfortunately, there’s no sign any government is going to be sending anywhere near the number of people into space it would take to make a business supplying them from asteroids viable.  And there’s even less indication that private individuals or organizations are going to send those people into space to buy those resources from the asteroid miners.

    That only leaves platinum to be returned to Earth.  The NY Times article quotes a concentration of platinum of at most a few hundred parts per million even in the most platinum-rich asteroids.  The article indicates the company principals envision processing it in space and returning pure, or at least highly enriched, platinum to the surface of the Earth.  That’s a very daunting technical challenge.  We are very far away from being able to develop completely automated machinery that could process, in the vacuum and radiation of space, huge amounts of material to extract a few hundred parts per million of platinum.  On Earth, to pull platinum out of an ore requires many steps with large quantities of other chemicals (including water), high temperatures for some steps, a lot of energy, and 1G of gravity (to separate chemicals of different densities in fluids).  You could replace the gravity with centrifuges, but that’s a lot of moving parts that need maintenance and occasional replacement.  I think we’ll figure out how to do a lot of other interesting things in space long before we can recover platinum in reasonable quantities from asteroids.

    If the investors in this company really want to help make asteroid mining a reality sooner, the best thing they could do would be to invest in SpaceX.  Lowering the cost of transport from the Earth’s surface to orbit is the linchpin.  It’s the enabling technology that makes everything else in space feasible.

    • npng says:
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      An extraordinary find of high grade Platinum was made some years ago.  It was so large, the industry and market knew that its insertion in to the marketplace would dramatically depress the metal’s pricing.  Its been kept hidden and is being very slowly inserted in to the market over several decades.    Currently Silver may be a better choice, although if a large mass of high grade Silver was brought back to Earth, it too would deflect prices as a function of supply and demand.

  10. chriswilson68 says:
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    Unfortunately, mining helium 3 doesn’t make sense either.

    The first problem is that we haven’t yet developed the reactor technology to even be able to use helium 3.

    The second problem is that even if we suddenly had a breakthrough in fusion research and actually had a use for helium 3, it’s easy enough to produce helium 3 in a breeder reactor — much easier than mining the minute concentrations on the moon or asteroids.

    • Doug Mohney says:
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       He-3 is as much a cult as anything.

      There are several alternative approaches to break-even fusion that don’t require He-3 as a fuel stock. And they are getting privately funded to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars today.

  11. TMA2050 says:
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    I don’t see how space mining is even remotely feasible right now. And am I correct that chemical rockets are always going to be too expensive? Could a rail gun make access to space cheap? Is a space elevator possible by 2050? I think we’re stuck in LEO for a long, long time. 

  12. Hallie Wright says:
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    What I’ve never found very reassuring about this business case is the prospecting part. Before you start digging, you figure out where you should dig. We have precious little information about the alleged material riches in asteroids, and even less information about which ones are the ones that have ore deposits that might be considered profitable. Asteroids are remarkably diverse objects, so the one that is most dynamically accessible may well not be one worth accessing.

    What I’m hearing here is that we’re gonna build the equivalent of bulldozers and trucks, and we’re going to build refineries too. Now we’ll just send those bulldozers and trucks to wherever we can dig a hole, and hope for the best.

    This is what I can only interpret as a lot of wishful thinking, and presumptions that asteroids are less random rocks hurtling though space, and more balls of rare metals. When did that metamorphosis take place?

    As to mining asteroids for regolith that one could use for shielding, sure, they’ll all offer that. But then the business case depends on who wants to buy it, and those buyers are no means conspicuous.

    • Anonymous says:
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       We have precious little information about the alleged material riches in asteroids, 

      this part is largely incorrect as we have an extensive database on meteorites and their compositions which are extended to the spectral identification of bodies out there.  

      I will agree that we don’t have “ground truth” of the exact composition of each body, but within some broad parameters we have a very good knowledge of at least the carbonaceous chondrites and the M class bodies.

      This is what I can only interpret as a lot of wishful thinking, and presumptions that asteroids are less random rocks hurtling though space, and more balls of rare metals. When did that metamorphosis take place?

      We actually do know that about 3 out of 100 rocks out there are M class bodies, that another 1% are Pallisites that are largely metal.  We also know the percentage of Carbonaceous chondrites as well.  Within those parameters we have a good knowledge of their composition.

      While one can quibble quite a bit about the details of what they want to do, there is a large point that they are making, which is that an Earth Centric viewpoint on resources is obsolete and that technology has advanced to the point, as well as our scientific knowledge, that the acquisition of these resources is now within the bounds of our engineering and scientific knowledge.

      • Hallie Wright says:
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        I think we’re in general agreement, except perhaps in what makes for a compelling business plan. If I walk out in my back yard and pick up a few rocks that seem to have an enhancement of palladium, that isn’t when I call in the bulldozers and trucks, and start signing up investors.

        As you say, only a small fraction of asteroids are even suggestive, from surface reflectance spectra, of precious metals. In fact, those precious metals don’t even have recognizable spectral features themselves. The remote sensing evidence for them is second hand.

        So with regard to responsible prospecting, one really has to do a careful survey to first identify the very small fraction of asteroids that might have commercial potential and then, among those, whose orbits can be harvested with some efficiency. That won’t leave you with many, I’m guessing. Once done, wouldn’t hurt to do sample return missions to verify that commercial merit.

        The obsolescence of the Earth Centric viewpoint is justifiable philosophizing, but that revision of that viewpoint doesn’t make for a business case.

        • Anonymous says:
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          The obsolescence of the Earth Centric viewpoint is justifiable philosophizing, but that revision of that viewpoint doesn’t make for a business case.

          Hallie, we are not far from agreement on this.  However, I would not underestimate the value of this shift in viewpoint, with the priviso that what is done actually moves the ball forward.  I am very concerned about this and am watching closely about how this unfolds.  

          I agree with the difficulties associated with the prospecting of the asteroids.  This is one of the things that pushed me toward the Moon.  As John Lewis is one of their advisors I see the asteroid focus as John never cared much for the Moon.

          We will just have to watch as this evolves.

  13. Doug Mohney says:
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    *Yawn* This is typical Space Adventures hype.  Anderson hasn’t booked a second seat on the Russian lunar fly-around and now he’s going to have another press conference.

    Go work out the timeline to build and launch the telescope just to find near-earth targets.  That’s probably 3 years unless they are already bending hardware and have a slot on a manifest.

    Add 18-24 months, more like 3 years to find a suitable NEO target. We’re already at 4.5 to 6 years.

    Assuming Planetary Resources is still in business by then, and assuming they started building hardware, they’re launching a mission at year 6 to .. do what exactly? Survey? Push to an L-point?

    Add 2-4 years to park an Asteroid at an L-point.  Assuming they aren’t lynched by the “We don’t want to join the dinosaurs” crowd before hand 🙂

    Then what?

    Easier to find and mine platinum on the moon and it’s easier to smelt with some gravity.

  14. Geoffrey A. Landis says:
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    Not highlighted in the report, unless you really drill down deep, is the fact that the COMPASS team at NASA Glenn did the asteroid-retrieval spacecraft design that is being discussed. A few of the news reports do mention us, like this one
    http://www.parabolicarc.com
    (although you have to scroll halfway down to find the one place that they mention us).  All of the CAD drawings are ours.
    It’s cool to see our work getting in the national news!

    • 2004MN4 says:
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      Well at least those of us involved in the KISS study know about the great work that the COMPASS team and others at GRC did on this study 🙂

  15. richard schumacher says:
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    Solar power satellites, at least for specialty applications, will be profitable before asteroid mining: the necessary technologies are in hand or nearly so, doubling the supply of the product does not cut its price by half, and once the capital is in place delivering the product to Earth does not cost $1000 per kilogram.

  16. mfwright says:
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    Reminds me of this 1979 report, and they anticipated getting one of these babies in back in the 90s.
    Retrieval of Asteroidal Materialshttp://ntrs.nasa.g… BRIAN O’LEARY, MICHAEL 1. GAFFEY, DAVID 1. ROSS, and ROBERT SALKELDEarlier scenarios for mass-driver retrieval of asteroidal materials have been tested and refined after new data were considered on mass-driver performance, favorable delta-V opportunities to Earth-approaching asteroids with gravity assists, designs for mining equipment, opportunities for processing volatiles and free metals at the asteroid, mission scenarios, and parametric studies of the most significant variables. We conclude that the asteroid-retrieval option is competitive with the retrieval of lunar materials for space manufacturing, while a carbonaceous object would provide a distinctive advantage over the Earth as a source of consumables and raw materials for biomass in space settlements during the 1990’s. We recommend immediate studies on asteroid-retrieval mission opportunities, an increased search and followup program, precursor missions, trade-offs with the Moon and Earth as sources of materials, and supporting technology.

  17. John Gardi says:
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    Folks:

    Boy, sounding good so far… (10:54 PST)

    I still think ‘The Little Prince Mining Co.’ is a better name than Planetary Resources Inc. 🙂

    tinker

    P.S. The full website is up at http://www.planetaryresources.com/

  18. John Gardi says:
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    Folks:

    Looks like these folks have something to sell long before they bring home a gram of asteroid… satellites that are a small fraction of the price of today’s hardware. In the news conference they already said that their satellite bus would be made on an assembly line, be robust enough to handle a non-clean room environment and be at least a couple of magnitudes cheaper to build. They also said that they would share their first satellite with other companies and universities. Why not just make more and sell them ‘off the shelf’. Let the end user work out the launch details; seek out a sponsor, apply for a grant, beg… whatever.

    What would the launch costs be for a little sat bus like they showed us? A hundred thousand dollars at the most? What would Planetary Resources Inc. sell their mini-sats for? The same? Every university, and some high schools, could afford their own bird at that price!

    I hope they IPO soon…

    tinker

    • DTARS says:
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      Sounds like you are on the mark again. My first thought was that they were looking for anyway to start us/earth doing anything useful in space having seen the potential new space providers are showing before it is snuffed out by THEM.

      I saw it on BBC News and flashed back to 69 star trek when they fought the planet destroyer. Giant Bigelow garage eats asteroid lol.

      I think the main point is others see the need to get us up there and it will happen sooner than many think.

    • DTARS says:
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      They are just investors that want to help build the Inner Solar System Railroad before it is to late!!!!!!

    • DTARS says:
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      Any chance their sat bus could be a dragon trunk??? No faring needed shared rides with other missions.

      Couldn’t a falcon carry 2 or 3 trunks and still get a dragon to ISS?

    • DTARS says:
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      All they need to do is call Spacex and help them with their dragon trunk lab program.