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ARKYD: A Space Telescope for Everyone

kickstarter.com

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Re: ARKYD: A Space Telescope for Everyone

#21

Post by lutorm »

nattybumppo wrote: post #15
lutorm wrote: post #6

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.

I asked an astronomer friend of mine to look at the specs and got a small list of advantages: -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.

Actually, not infrared but UV. They seem to have filters in the vacuum-UV which can't be observed from the ground. The near-IR out to 1.1um that they are going out to is not really a problem from the ground.

Re: ARKYD: A Space Telescope for Everyone

#22

Post by omegant »

VLM wrote: post #20

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.

Honest question: Could you explain a bit more this topic? I don´t even know how to google it beyond geosync satellite.

Re: ARKYD: A Space Telescope for Everyone

#23

Post by typpo »

lutorm wrote: post #6

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.

Re: ARKYD: A Space Telescope for Everyone

#24

Post by mariusz79 »

typpo wrote: post #23
lutorm wrote: post #6

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 Planet…

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.

Re: ARKYD: A Space Telescope for Everyone

#25

Post by danielweber »

mariusz79 wrote: post #18
simondlr wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm unreasonably excited about it. For $25 I get to have a picture of my choosing taken in space!

At $25 per picture there must be 40 000 people as excited as you for this project to get funded. I just don't see how is that going to be even remotely possible.

There are a lot more rewards than that.

Re: ARKYD: A Space Telescope for Everyone

#26

Post by danielweber »

ramidarigaz wrote: post #2

Probably the most awesome Kickstarter I've ever backed. I'm so excited!!! Planetary Resources is a really cool company.

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.

Re: ARKYD: A Space Telescope for Everyone

#27

Post by danielweber »

zacharycohn wrote: post #4
mariusz79 wrote: post #3

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…

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…

Can you give us a rough sense of scale of how the $1 million from the KickStarter compares to the other costs required to bring to completion 1) everything promised in the KickStarter, and 2) their first satellite in space capable of scoping out NEOs?

Re: ARKYD: A Space Telescope for Everyone

#29

Post by davidcuddeback »

omegant wrote: post #22
VLM wrote: post #20

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.

Honest question: Could you explain a bit more this topic? I don´t even know how to google it beyond geosync satellite.

AmSat [1] is an organization of ham radio enthusiasts that are also very interested in space and satellites. They've launched a bunch of their own satellites into space that are available for anyone with a ham license to use to communicate. These satellites are usually named /^AO-\d+$/. That's what the AO-40 reference is to.

I don't know anything about the geosync or Mars sats that the GP is referencing. I'm assuming those were proposed AmSat projects that have never been launched.

Edited to add: A ham license is easy (and cheap) to get. I studied for a few hours and paid about $10 at a local testing facility to get my license (KI6BJU). The equipment is a bit more expensive, but I'm not sure how much it costs for a decent setup because I worked in a lab that already had the equipment.

Once you have a license and equipment, you can talk to other people over the AO-sats and download pictures from scientific satellites. I got my license when I worked in a satellite lab, and we used the equipment to download weather photos from NOAA satellites and helped gather data from other scientific satellites like NASA and various aerospace companies and universities. A lot of satellites have some sort of beacon with a public data format that you can decode.

[1] http://ww2.amsat.org/

Re: ARKYD: A Space Telescope for Everyone

#30

Post by incision »

mariusz79 wrote: post #18
simondlr wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm unreasonably excited about it. For $25 I get to have a picture of my choosing taken in space!

At $25 per picture there must be 40 000 people as excited as you for this project to get funded. I just don't see how is that going to be even remotely possible.

>At $25 per picture there must be 40 000 people as excited as you for this project to get funded.

Not really.

Take away all the backers over $1000 (because I notice you complaining about that in another post), scale up the number of backers for every <$1000 level proportionally to reach $1M and it would only take 16,500 people.

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