About That New Orion Span Space Station …
Went to the @OrionSpan link posted by @FrankBunger. It says It says "we have approximately $998.86 in cash on hand as of 9/30/2018". No launcher identified. No design. No staff. And then there's this, Caveat emptor pic.twitter.com/nEIoXIXt9Q
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) December 10, 2018
Are you sure that company isn’t “Orion Spam”? It sounds like they have less cash in the bank than I, personally, do. Their $998.86 wouldn’t even buy a decent 3U CubeSat. That makes their investment opportunity about on par with offers about swampland in Florida or the Brooklyn Bridge.
Compared to the space station that cannot be named, this project will accomplish the same goals and save billions.
Well, this offering has supposedly raised $160k. But if you like, you can purchase $5000 in the company and get a T-shirt. And a free voucher for online astronaut training…..
But if you have extra cash laying around, you can invest in my gasoline and match factory…..
Or just pay a slender fraction of that $5000 and print your own cool space t-shirt.
It looks like they’ve spent virtually all of the early deposit money they got from people over the year. I’d probably agree with the “Orion Spam” bit, except that space really does seem to attract a lot of super-idealistic startup founders with little money, little tech, and big dreams (see Mars One). This guy might be one of those.
My hard-and-fast rule with companies like these is “Are you funded through your first prototype and/or mission?”. If they’re not, I just can’t take them seriously. There’s just been so many of them that amounted to nothing.
That’s one downside to capitalism. Lots of people putting money into space start-up companies that have nearly zero chance of being successful. Couple that with (technologically) clueless investors, and you have a recipe for lots of small companies that burn through money and go bankrupt. In this case, we’ve got a start-up talking about building luxury space stations (like that’s easy). Why not just go to Bigelow Aerospace and buy one of their stations? They’re much further along than this start-up that seems to have little more than pretty renderings (dime a dozen).
Obviously lots of start-ups do have great people that are working on tech that’s badly needed (e.g. small uncrewed lunar landers, robotic satellite servicing, LEO fuel depots, and etc.). If I had a few million to invest, that’s where I’d place my bet.
“Why not just go to Bigelow Aerospace and buy one of their stations?”
They address that in their offering as to why their technology is different…..and I quote: “Aurora Station reaches orbit and will go into service immediately, no assembly or inflation.”
So I guess that answers that question…. (end sarcasm)
It doesn’t sound like anyone is investing much money into this company.
Another “Fake It Till You Make It” company with no money, hoping to use the hype of a press release and social media to somehow get the enormous amount of capital investment they’d need just to produce a viable prototype. Pass.
We really need to come up with a shorthand moniker for startups like that, since there have been so many of them. I’ve never heard of any of them ever paying off – the only successful New Space startups that I’ve heard of have been those where the founder actually had enough cash to pay for prototypes, and eventually got NASA contracts.
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