Planetary Resources Crowdfunds A Space Telescope
Planetary Resources Embarks on First Crowdfunded Space Telescope, Planetary Resources
“Planetary Resources, Inc., the asteroid mining company, has launched a campaign for the world’s first crowdfunded space telescope to provide unprecedented public access to space and place the most advanced exploration technology into the hands of students, scientists and a new generation of citizen explorers.”
Planetary Resources Falls Back on Kickstarter For Funding, earlier post (2012)
“At the ISDC conference just a few weeks ago Eric Anderson from Planetary Resources was positively bragging about how much money they had.”
Keith’s note: It seems a little odd for a company like Planetary Resources to brag in public about its financial resources, list its billionaire investors at every given opportunity – and then hype a big announcement which was, in essence, “send us your money”. Well, people have responded – in an impressive fashion. Thus far the current tally for a few hours’ work is just under $150,000 – over $190,000 $235,000 $321,000 – that’s more than 10% nearly 20% 25% 33% of their goal of $1,000,000.
Not bad at all – indeed its rather impressive – especially when you consider that the Golden Spike Company took 70 days to raise only $19,450 out of a planned $240,000. Planetary Resources has raised the entire sum Golden Spike originally sought – and they did so in less than 12 hours. They have 32 days left to reach their goal.
Having helped with the successful Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project and the AIA “We Are the Explorers” crowdfunding campaigns, I can suggest that the answer is simple: fire up people’s imagination. Then tell them what you want to do, why it is important, explain how their contribution can help – and offer them something of value in addition to just thanking them for their money. When you get that balanced right, people will respond. However when you don’t explain yourself, people won’t give you much of anything. Not much of mystery there.
Oh yes – the Planetary Resources people really need to work on their media relations skills. At their first event last year they charged all invitees for their meal – all while promoting the billionaire backing they had. At today’s event their webcast had no offsite media interaction (i.e. few questions) and the webcast backfired such that when there actually was a webcast the participants looked like they were doing Max Headroom impressions and sounded like they were stuttering underwater. Its not hard to do this stuff. I did it every day for several weeks from Everest Base Camp.
Good to hear. The only downside is that it’s not enough to pay for the telescope and the launch – you also need money to pay for operations and ground support, which is hopefully included in the $1 million figure.
Why does an organization backed by a half dozen billionaires need to crowdfund this project?
You expect them to completely foot the bill for something that is explicitly not for their own use? If you actually read the information, they are essentially spending $10+ million and asking the public to fund the operation of it to take photos of what the public wants. That seems rather nice of a startup.
Nobody complains when Pepsi or some other company sponsors some charity event, saying, “Why am I here to donate money? They could just foot the bill themselves!” Yeah, that’d be good custodial use of investor cash.
You expect they would just give away tens of millions of dollars worth of design and equipment just out of their big ole heart? That wouldn’t be very good stewardship of investor money.
The goal here is involve the public and get schools and researchers equipment that they themselves are funding with investor money. I don’t see why that’s so bizarre.
Only a douche complains when a company sponsors a charity event, saying, “well screw them, they have the money to pay for the whole thing themselves.”
They’re not giving away anything. This is a test platform for technologies which they will deploy on their production model, 100% for-profit platforms later. As others have remarked, this is at best a smart PR move. It advertises their company’s name for free and shaves a bit off their expenses, because launching and testing these technologies would have been required regardless.
If, as you assert, the goal was to involve schools and researchers, then I have a hard time finding an explanation why the involvement would need to be paid for. The best way to reach out to schools and researchers is to donate, charitably, the equiment to organizations that wouldn’t otherwise ever have access to such resources. And since you’re also asserting that “giving away” investor money would’ve been irresponsible, then clearly the goal is in fact not to involve schools and researchers, but to maximize returns. That means this crowdfunding campaign is a marketing expense similar to buying billboards, not an egalitarian endeavor.
That’s a good point. I was with the charity analogy, but that doesn’t really hold up as I think about it more. With charity, you spend your money, not other people’s.
The only catch I see is that the nature of the stuff is such that you can’t really just “donate charitably, the equipment” because the equipment involved is (I’m assuming) neither simple nor self-explanatory to the average person. Rather it requires presentation, training and support, which means man-hours plus expenses committed to the PR cause. I’m wondering if this Crowdfunding is solely for the purpose of paying for this PR work (it’s a good move doing the outreach PR but it may not have been considered and therefore not costed in the original, more technical plans). I’m just guessing, of course.
True, I should’ve framed it more as donating the air time and technician(s) to do the actual operating of the equiment for you. This isn’t an unusual model, one could argue that Angel Flights works the same way; they don’t donate a plane, they donate use of the plane, including a pilot and fuel.
If building the telescope and explicitly giving the remainder of the non-rewards time to a museum or science center for public use, for a tenth the cost (not counting the man hours to run it) doesn’t qualify as charitable…haters gonna hate I guess.
A PR stunt? Gee, you’re quite clever uncovering that secret. I’m sure the unthinking masses couldn’t tell that a company doing a crowdfunding campaign means they want to get their name out there. And to think, for that money they’ll actually get something they desire out of it. Just terrible I tell ya!
The good news? Once this is funded and successfully implemented, the government will move in and regulate, tax then seize control of it.
It’s rare to see on the Internet a comment and a username go so well together.
You’re watching too much TV. This is one of the reasons why companies pay lawyers.
Good PR move as it involves the public and gets the company name out there.
billionaire investors asking for $1M brilliant marketing strategy that costs them no equity in their potentially Trillion dollar company.
The “billionaire investors” aren’t doing this. Planetary Resources is. Two completely separate entities.
Billionaire backers and they are crowd sourcing? $1M is not close to what they need to build and launch. Planetary Resources has some excellent ex-JPLers to build their SC. This is silly MacDonald’s Happy Meal BS. Get with your program and their backers put up otherwise go home and just rent Space Odyssey.
This is just PR, to make the average citizen think they have a stake in it, which they do not. Lets just say a very very modest stake. No, let me retract. This is just PR. They just want to see if they can do it, crowd source a million bucks. B612, in contrast has stayed clear of this approach (what Ed Lu has stated in presentation Q&A), choosing to find the big backers that will make their mission fly.
There are a lot more aspects and alternatives involved in running and funding a business than you appear to be aware of. Even a single program has multiple components, departments, milestones, risks, etc., and the old-school way of financing them all from a single source, or source type, is an unnecessary and insupportable risk, putting all your eggs in one basket. Also, things inevitably change and grow with time, therefore requiring additional sources of investment or income. You can’t keep going back to your original big investors with a new dollar figure. Everything considered, going the Crowdfunding route shows initiative on the part of Planetary Resources.
You begin your counter point with Argumentum ad Hominem. This weakens your statement. Don’t do it. You attempt to paint the present circumstances as bigger therefore more to it . It is not. I am aware of the complexity of NASA missions. This is a startup with big backers, hopefully not just window dressing. Only one year has transpired. If they must go beyond those investors already, using crowd funding, then they are in trouble. “Change and grow with time” – not at this point. This is PR from a for-profit enterprise. This funding is being used to pay for PR and give away not so “free” pictures of you and your dog spot “in space”.
Keith says, “I can suggest that the answer is simple: fire up people’s imagination.
Then tell them what you want to do, why it is important, explain how
their contribution can help – and offer them something of value in
addition to just thanking them for their money. When you get that
balanced right, people will respond. However when you don’t explain
yourself, people won’t give you much of anything. Not much of mystery
there.”
There is a lot of good advice there for NASA Public Affairs as well as Planetary Resources.
I’m not sure why some people are missing one basic fact — Planetary Resources may have attracted “billion-dollar” investors, but they themselves are not the “billion-dollar” investors. It makes a big difference.
Presumably there are contracts with each of the big investors spelling out what their contributions will support (anyone who didn’t require a contract would never have got rich). Any new, additional, or expanded activities undertaken by Planetary Resources which are not included in any of the investor contracts would need new financing sources. And there’s no reason to assume that everything Planetary Resources is doing is in the billion-dollar cost range.
The telescope that this KickStart crowdfunding is said to be for doesn’t seem to be a necessary component of Planetary Resources’ asteroid activities, but rather is an interface for anyone, including the general public, to make telescopic space sightings superior to what people can make with affordable equipment in their own back yards. So this is a new program, presumably not covered in the asteroid program, the only Planetary Resources program we’ve heard of before this. (see: ARKYD telecope.)
I don’t care who it is, company operations costs and program costs only ever go up, which means more funding. In technology industries, companies have to constantly grow just to survive, which means more funding. In the early stages when there are no revenues, let alone profits, to use for this additional funding, what are the options? Instead of going hat in hand to new potential investors, or the same investors again, I think Planetary Resources has shown initiative in going the Crowdfunded route for an amount in this range. I think it was a smart move, and also serves as a test case should they need to scrape up an extra million at some critical time down the road.
Additionally, perhaps the public/crowdfund response to this move can be used as an indicator of how the public, on average, feels about the issues of asteroid missions and off-Earth resources, or at least how they feel about spending time looking through a good space telescope. Looking in the other direction, this activity might just supply the public with a little more space-utilization education and outreach, at a time when education and outreach are in danger of being thoroughly lobotomized by federal government-mandated funding changes.
For whatever it’s worth, that’s how I see this move — a new program, to be funded by a different source, and involving the public right from the first steps. A smart move. And if this sort of thing catches on, it may well provide a much better job of Representation By Population than any governments are doing these days.