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Commercialization

Planetary Resources Falls Back on Kickstarter For Funding

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
June 21, 2012
Filed under ,

Back Us On Kickstarter, Planetary Resources
“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 of our orbiting spacecraft – or – if there’s enough demand, actually build you an additional Space Telescope for your own use. We’d probably do this thru a Kickstarter campaign, but we ONLY if there’s enough interest…”
Keith’s note: This is bizzare. At the ISDC conference just a few weeks ago Eric Anderson from Planetary Resources was positively bragging about how much money they had. A room full of people heard him say this. Now they are asking for people to fund their ultra low cost telescopes on Kickstarter? What happened? Where did all those billionaires (and their money) go? Given that there is no hardware yet (just press releases), will the Kickstarter funds be used to fund hardware development or just to buy copies?
Keith’s update: Clarification: I’m all for crowdfunding and crowdsourcing (I’m actually a big fan) but it is a little strange that this company announces itself with immense fanfare as being well-funded by ultra-rich people and then, before anything is event built or launched, they decide to use crowdfunding. It seems that their business model is a bit confused and is still evolving.
Mystery Billionaire-backed Space Company To Be Announced, earlier post
Keith’s note: What’s really ridiculous is how these billionaires are charging attendees at their press event $25 each. You have to wonder how much they are putting into this if they charge admission to press conferences …
Earlier posts

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

17 responses to “Planetary Resources Falls Back on Kickstarter For Funding”

  1. Johnathan A says:
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    Perhaps I’m wrong, but it sounds from their description like they would use the kickstarter thing to build ADDITIONAL spacecraft (above and beyond what they need for their primary asteroid mining purpose) for use by the general public.

    So it doesn’t seem that bizarre to me. If they can leverage the power of crowdsourcing and add another 1 or 2 spacecraft to their assembly line (and further amortize their fixed costs) and give something for the public to be interested in/get excited about, I don’t see the problem.

    • kcowing says:
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      I think Kickstarter is great. But why do they need to use Kickstarter when they are rolling in money?  Why not just set a price and let potential customers figure out their own way to buy a spacecraft? 

      • Johnathan A says:
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         My guess would be that they are doing it as a way to get more of the public involved in their company. They’ll probably get more publicity and reach a wider audience with a kickstarter (since that seems to be the hip way to do things these days) than just another press conference or website announcement.

        I would also be surprised if it’s a significant part of their business model, but time will tell, I suppose.

        And the other reason I can think of is that though they may be rolling in money, why spend it if you can kickstarter?

  2. npng says:
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    “Keith’s note: What’s really ridiculous is how these billionaires are charging attendees at their press event $25 each. You have to wonder how much they are putting into this if they charge admission to press conferences …

    Come on now Keith, you know the rules: 

    Most billionaires became billionaires because they cracked the code on how to make money by always drawing in, leveraging and using Other People’s Money.  Charging event admission and getting Kickstarter donations is the tip of their tactical iceberg.  Next steps are declaring their activity a religion to secure funds and then tossing in federal grants.  Perhaps Space-Aid, Planet-Aid and Cool-Aid woodstock-ish festivals after that.

    Kickstarter has a value aside from whatever money it raises.  It is an interesting societal test, a consumer or citizen test, a go, no-go test – that helps to reveal what is viewed as valuable and what is not valuable, to people.

    Imagine attempting a Kickstarter project to fund raise for a Moon, Mars, L2, or Asteroid mission or any variety of smaller missions.   Would any of those missions be able to raise a dollar?  Would they raise $10M dollars?   The level of either social or special interest groups real commitment (willingness to put their money where their mouth is) can be revealed by the donation activity. 

    We’re in the internet era of instantaneity.  Get wild.  Imagine government funding allocations being run (voted-in) in a Kickstarter mode.  Do the citizens want national healthcare?  Kickstarter it.  How about more roads?  Better weather service reports?  Fund better space weather prediction?  Kickstarter it. 

    • kcowing says:
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      I think they are still a little confused as to what their business model is.

    • DTARS says:
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      They are a religion???

      But i’m already a Mars-One member. I’m not changing faiths so fast. 🙂

      What if musk wants to build a recycler to go to Mars wouldn’t the recycler project be one of their first customers? Couldn’t you build Aldrins recycler out of space masonry of one form or another??

    • Robert van de Walle says:
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      HAHAha! When Planetary first revealed their plan, I thought, “How about a crowd sourced Moon base?

  3. fartrader21 says:
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    I think the bigger problem here is that they claim that the contributors can decide to either observe the Earth (at 1-2m resolution) or a celestial object (planets, asteroids). As far as I know there are no detectors that allow you to both observe the freakisly bright earth and also the low background of the celestial sky. This reveals to me that they might not really understand how to build a space telescope in the first place.

    • KeCo says:
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       Well, its not impossible…no Hubble can’t do that but it was specifically designed for astronomy not remote sensing. It’s not unreasonable to assume that you could build a scope that has the ability to use multiple instruments (as does Hubble) and one of those instruments be specifically designed for ‘Earth-ward’ gazing.

      (Perhaps as proof of that – take a look at the two ‘space telescopes’ the National Reconnaissance Office is donating to NASA. These ex-spy sats are similar to Hubble’s design)

      • fartrader21 says:
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        The problem is that Arkyd-100 line are small telescopes, only capable of holding a 9 inch mirror. I don’t see how their design will hold multiple instruments within their current restrictions on weight and volume (and for that matter prize). I think the more logical conclusion is that they haven’t really thought the kickstarter kick-backs through. 

        • Johnathan A says:
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           Well, my DSLR can take pictures just fine on a bright summer day and then later that night, take an hour long guided exposure of a nebula through my telescope. So I don’t think it’s impossible to point a telescope at both the earth and astronomical targets with a single instrument; just control the exposure time.

  4. Dr. Brian Chip Birge says:
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    Could be a proposal from down the chain that they wanted to run up the flagpole. In that context it makes sense, get the employees some buy in for their idea. But if it’s a top down initiative I don’t see the point.

  5. Marc Boucher says:
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    Hmm my comment form earlier this morning disappeared. How’s that possible? Disqus issues perhaps. Anyone else have a comment go astray?

  6. Joseph Cooper says:
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    Kickstarter’s been all over the news in some circles. I think it’s just PR; it’s a fun way to engage the public. Donors get to say “I helped fund a spaceship today … Yeah they’re mining asteroids … Of course that’s possible, here read this” and so forth.

  7. Stephen Richard Duarte says:
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    look like the kickstarter became a reality;

    http://lky.me/1HHX

    only a year late, some serious public interest though.