I attended their press conference this morning in Santa Monica. Clark Lindsey has notes from the webcast. I was the person who asked the question about their role versus that of Planetary Resources, and whether they viewed them as complementary, or competition.
Rick Tumlinson has a “thing” about Peter Diamandis.
When Peter was doing the X-Prize, Rick started the CATS Prize to “show everyone how prizes should be done.”
When Peter started an asteroid mining company, I predicted that Rick would start one, too.
Something about there plan doesn’t add up.
The Firefly concept they showed is clearly a 6U CubeSat. According to the CubeSat spec, it should weigh no more than 6 kg.
Developers don’t always follow the spec. Rob Staehle’s 6U interplanetary CubeSat design is 10 kg, but DSI says Firefly will be 25 kg. That’s heavier than a solid block of granite. How come?
The propulsion system is powered by a illudium Q-36 Space Modulator….
Dennis, it is Pew-36. Now, where is my Earth-shattering Kaboom?
The weakness is that the state of the art is telebotics is up to doing NEOs yet, just look at the Japanese sample return mission. The other will be finding sustainable commercial markets, true commercial markets, not NASA pretending to be a commercial market as in COTS/CCP/Commercial Crew.