This seems mostly to be a PR gimmick. While it seems like a cool thing to do "just because we can", there is no compelling advantage to putting a 200mm telescope in space. You don't get much sharper images by being in space with such a small aperture. And launching a space telescope for people to take pictures of themselves... I don't even know where to start.
The purpose of the Arkyd is to discover NEOs. Right now there are no low-cost, mass-produced telescopes in LEO, and asteroid discovery is driven by government-funded projects centered around universities. The compelling advantage of this telescope is that it circumvents the cost and bureaucracy necessary to discover asteroids.
Of course, the kickstarter/public relations aspect is not essential to all this, but Planetary Resources gets a ton of public interest and they want to capitalize on/engage with people who are interested in their mission to mine asteroids.
Honest question: Is it possible that they're not worried about sharper images of distant objects insomuch as being able to survey much larger portions of the sky with a large array of satellites?
I'm worried that they are doing any sort of crowd-funding.
The biggest risk of Planetary Resources is that it turns out to be a scam, either accidentally or on purpose.[1]
I think PR could have amazing results for humanity even if the company itself doesn't work out well, so I don't want to sound too negative here.
[1] An accidental scam, in my words, would be something that would never ever work, but they didn't worry too much about it because they were spending someone else's money.
I think they are just running a really cool scam.
First of all why do they care if public is interested in space? Aren't they after all, looking to run a successful and profitable business?
Second, don't they have investors that could sponsor this Arkyd Telescope and launch it without need for a Kickstarter. What if for some reason the kickstarter campaign doesn't work? What if they can't deliver? Are they willing to risk everything just to get 1mln$?
Unless they are already out of money.
Disclaimer: I'm at the launch event and helped put this project together.
They're not doing this for the Kickstarter money. Even though they're fundraising for the project, they're already putting in more than they could ever hope to raise on Kickstarter.
This project is adjacent to their core mission of Asteroid Mining, this is to prove interest that the public is interested in this sort of project, and to give the public access to the sort of thing that was, previously, impossibly expensive.
For $25 you can get a picture of yourself in space. That's pretty crazy.
It seems that they are using Kickstarter for preorders. They'll reach a lot more people through Kickstarter than their own site. As zacharycohn said, the money they'll get through Kickstarter is probably nothing compared to other methods.
> I think they are just running a really cool scam.
While I'm not going to dispute this, I do disagree with it.
> First of all why do they care if public is interested in space? Aren't they after all, looking to run a successful and profitable business?
These goals aren't distinct. What's hard for people to remember is that running a successful and profitable business is a means. It's a how; the real question is what the end goal is. For a painfully large number of businesses, the goal appears to be making the CEO rich. But some groups, some CEOs, some businesses have goals that a lot of us would consider better: actually advancing humanity forward or providing quality service or the like.
I could be talking out of my ass here, but with the amount of money that's been pumped into PR (> $1B USD IIRC) by its big-name founders, why do they need to do this? Satellites are cool and all, but everything I see out of them is just "YOU GET INVOLVED" and "SOCIAL" - and not much on "How do we capture and capitalize on mineral resources in space?"
If this works, the amsat.org people should kickstart a fundraiser to get the legendary geosync sat up there.
I'd be happy just with AO-40 redux, or a fleet of FM ez sats. Or maybe the mythical mars sat.
Optical band sensors are not fast and low-noise enough, by several orders of magnitude, to do the sort of digital interferometry available with radio telescopes. Optical interferometers so far require optical correlators. This geometric rather than data-analytical approach mandates knowing and controlling the delay distances between the beams of light down to the nanometer. Combined with adaptive optics, this is some of the highest resolution imagery we can produce; But it is extremely limited because of the practical difficulties of these hardware concerns, even in a situation where there is a massive underground lab connecting the telescopes like at the VLT. Satellites floating in free space on opposite sites of the Earth affected by differential atmospheric drag, geomagnetic and heliomagnetic effects, and even relativistic differences would present what appears to be an intractable problem for this technology.
In the optical wavelengths offline interferometry is currently not possible afaik.. so you have would to directly combine the signals, which I deem implausible to do in an non-lab setup, as you have to align the paths (from the individual telescopes to the interferometer) to a fraction of the wavelength.
[+] [-] lutorm|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] typpo|13 years ago|reply
Of course, the kickstarter/public relations aspect is not essential to all this, but Planetary Resources gets a ton of public interest and they want to capitalize on/engage with people who are interested in their mission to mine asteroids.
[+] [-] nattybumppo|13 years ago|reply
-No atmosphere. Seeing would still be a considerable factor; getting 1 arcsecond resolution on Earth is not easy.
-No clouds
-Ability to focus on the same object for an extended exposure
-Infrared
-Can look north and south
There are a lot of advantages to this, even with their aperture size.
[+] [-] trevoro|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zacharycohn|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ramidarigaz|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danielweber|13 years ago|reply
The biggest risk of Planetary Resources is that it turns out to be a scam, either accidentally or on purpose.[1]
I think PR could have amazing results for humanity even if the company itself doesn't work out well, so I don't want to sound too negative here.
[1] An accidental scam, in my words, would be something that would never ever work, but they didn't worry too much about it because they were spending someone else's money.
[+] [-] simondlr|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mariusz79|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zacharycohn|13 years ago|reply
They're not doing this for the Kickstarter money. Even though they're fundraising for the project, they're already putting in more than they could ever hope to raise on Kickstarter.
This project is adjacent to their core mission of Asteroid Mining, this is to prove interest that the public is interested in this sort of project, and to give the public access to the sort of thing that was, previously, impossibly expensive.
For $25 you can get a picture of yourself in space. That's pretty crazy.
[+] [-] madvoid|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] saraid216|13 years ago|reply
While I'm not going to dispute this, I do disagree with it.
> First of all why do they care if public is interested in space? Aren't they after all, looking to run a successful and profitable business?
These goals aren't distinct. What's hard for people to remember is that running a successful and profitable business is a means. It's a how; the real question is what the end goal is. For a painfully large number of businesses, the goal appears to be making the CEO rich. But some groups, some CEOs, some businesses have goals that a lot of us would consider better: actually advancing humanity forward or providing quality service or the like.
[+] [-] benzofuran|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] VLM|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] omegant|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] omegant|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mapt|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] welterde|13 years ago|reply