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by typpo 4772 days ago
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.
1 comments
mariusz79 4772 days ago
Did you hear about b612 foundation? they also want to discover NEOs with a space telescope, and they don't want to do it for business purposes. last time I've checked they said it's going to cost about $450m to do it. There is no chance that PR will be able to do it much cheaper. They may be able to launch their toy and snap some pictures but I don't think they will be able to do much more with it.
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typpo 4772 days ago
B612 wants to make a big telescope and put it in an orbit very far from Earth. PR's approach is different - make many small, cheap Arkyd telescopes and take advantage of economies of scale. They don't want to concentrate resources and risk in a single large object.

Building a small satellite is quite affordable, but commercial launch costs are a problem. There are several funded kickstarter projects whose goal is to deploy one or more satellites in orbit for much cheaper than what PR is trying to raise.

People also overestimate the difficulty of finding asteroids. Asteroids are still being discovered by amateur astronomers on Earth. It's estimated that there are millions of undiscovered objects. A big space telescope is an advantage but not a requirement.

other kickstarter projects:

  http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/880837561/skycube-the-first-satellite-launched-by-you

  http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/575960623/ardusat-your-arduino-experiment-in-space

  http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zacinaction/kicksat-your-personal-spacecraft-in-space
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