 |
| This is a Hyabusa pic, not the kickstarter thing. |
The project is actually a time-share sensor kind of thing but man it's a satellite and that's one big step for kickstarting. Or one small step for crowd sourcing maybe. I essentially participated in the same kind of idea when I contributed (directly and indirectly through membership) to the Planetary Society's Solar Sail projects and although the first two of those didn't make it, I don't resent the money spent and hope they keep trying. Space exploration is expensive and risky. It's also totally worth every cent in my opinion because the eventual pay-offs are huge and unexpected. I don't know how these guys are getting around all the red tape of putting something in orbit - I would imagine that that costs more than the actual hardware. I know the Planetary Society had a lot of fun dealing with U.S. national security red tape. Anyway I only hope that these guys have success with their project. Maybe the Planetary Society should kickstart their next project - expand their crowd sourcing base as it were.
I remember the excited chatter on the Internet when Google did their Virgle April Fool's Day* spread. I wonder what would happen if someone tried to Kickstart something really big - like an asteroid exploration drone or a Europa ballistic test.
*or was it?!
No comments:
Post a Comment