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.
Category Archives: Business
Electronic Medical Records
So far, so bad. And Ezra Klein, to the surprise of no one intelligent, comes off as a fool.
A New Commercial Asteroid Company
I’ll be attending the press conference for this in Santa Monica this morning:
Commercial Asteroid Hunters announce plans for new Robotic Exploration Fleet
World’s First Fleet of Asteroid-Hunting Spacecraft Announced by Deep Space Industries.
Deep Space Industries announced today that it will send a fleet of asteroid-prospecting spacecraft out into the solar system to hunt for resources to accelerate space development to benefit Earth. These “FireFly” spacecraft utilize low-cost cubesat components and get discounted delivery to space by ride-sharing on the launch of larger communications satellites.
“This is the first commercial campaign to explore the small asteroids that pass by Earth,” said Deep Space Chairman Rick Tumlinson (who signed up the world’s first space tourist, led the team that took over the Mir space station, was a Founding Trustee of the X Prize, and Founded Orbital Outfitters, the world’s first commercial space suit company.) “Using low cost technologies, and combining the legacy of our space program with the innovation of today’s young high tech geniuses, we will do things that would have been impossible just a few years ago.”
FireFlies mass about 55 lbs. (25 kg) and will first be launched in 2015 on journeys of two to six months. Deep Space will be building a small fleet of the spacecraft using innovative miniature technologies, and working with NASA and other companies and groups to identify targets of opportunity.
“My smartphone has more computing power than they had on the Apollo moon missions,” said Tumlinson. “We can make amazing machines smaller, cheaper, and faster than ever before. Imagine a production line of FireFlies, cocked and loaded and ready to fly out to examine any object that gets near the Earth.”
Starting in 2016, Deep Space will begin launching 70-lb DragonFlies for round-trip visits that bring back samples. The DragonFly expeditions will take two to four years, depending on the target, and will return 60 to 150 lbs. Deep Space believes that combining science, prospecting and sponsorship will be a win/win for everyone, both lowering costs for exploration and enabling the public to join the adventure.
“The public will participate in FireFly and DragonFly missions via live feeds from Mission Control, online courses in asteroid mining sponsored by corporate marketers, and other innovative ways to open the doors wide,” said CEO David Gump. His earlier ventures include producing the first TV commercial shot on the International Space Station for RadioShack, co-founding Transformational Space Corp. (t/Space) and Astrobotic Technology Inc. “The Google Lunar X Prize, Unilever, and Red Bull each are spending tens of millions of dollars on space sponsorships, so the opportunity to sponsor a FireFly expedition into deep space will be enticing.”
Bringing back asteroid materials is only a step on the way to much bigger things for DSI. The company has a patent-pending technology called the MicroGravity Foundry to transform raw asteroid material into complex metal parts. The MicroGravity Foundry is a 3D printer that uses lasers to draw patterns in a nickel-charged gas medium, causing the nickel to be deposited in precise patterns.
“The MicroGravity Foundry is the first 3D printer that creates high-density high-strength metal components even in zero gravity,” said Stephen Covey, a co-Founder of DSI and inventor of the process. “Other metal 3D printers sinter powdered metal, which requires a gravity field and leaves a porous structure, or they use low-melting point metals with less strength.”
Senior leaders at NASA have been briefed on DSI’s technologies, which would make eventual crewed Mars expeditions less expensive through the use of asteroid-derived propellant. Missions would require fewer launches if the fuel to reach Mars were added in space from the volatiles in asteroids. Mars missions also would be safer with a MicroGravity Foundry on board to print replacements for broken parts, or to create brand new parts invented after the expedition was on its way to the Red Planet.
“Using resources harvested in space is the only way to afford permanent space development,” said Gump. “More than 900 new asteroids that pass near Earth are discovered every year. They can be like the Iron Range of Minnesota was for the Detroit car industry last century – a key resource located near where it was needed. In this case, metals and fuel from asteroids can expand the in-space industries of this century. That is our strategy.”
For example, a large market for DSI is producing fuel for communications satellites. Low-cost asteroid propellant delivered in orbit to commsats will extend their working lifetimes, with each extra month worth $5 million to $8 million per satellite. DSI has executed a non-disclosure agreement with an aerospace company to discuss collaboration on this opportunity.
In a decade, Deep Space will be harvesting asteroids for metals and other building materials, to construct large communications platforms to replace communications satellites, and later solar power stations to beam carbon-free energy to consumers on Earth. As DSI refines asteroids for in-space markets, it also will harvest platinum group metals for terrestrial uses, such as pollution control devices.
“Mining asteroids for rare metals alone isn’t economical, but makes senses if you already are processing them for volatiles and bulk metals for in-space uses,” said Mark Sonter, a member of the DSI Board of Directors. Mr. Sonter combines experience in planning, permitting, and management of large and complex terrestrial mining projects with funded research into the development of asteroid resources. “Turning asteroids into propellant and building materials damages no ecospheres since they are lifeless rocks left over from the formation of the solar system. Several hundred thousand that cross near Earth are available.”
Asteroids that fall to Earth are meteorites, and the Deep Space team includes Geoffrey Notkin, star of the international hit television series Meteorite Men about hunting for them. Notkin has unparalleled expertise in the diversity and market value of these elusive rocks, which are transformed by intense heat during their plunge to the surface. By contrast, the initial asteroid samples to be brought back by Deep Space will have their original in-space composition and structure preserved, creating exceedingly rare specimens for sale to the research and collectors markets.
Deep Space is looking for customers and sponsors who want to be a part of creating this new space economy. The company believes that taking the long view, while creating value, opportunities and products in the near term will allow it to become one of the economic engines that opens space to humanity. By getting under way and taking calculated risks, while developing basic industrial technologies, DSI will be well positioned over time to supply the basic needs of life in space. Taking the idea of socially minded companies to a new level, DSI is literally reaching for the stars.
“We will only be visitors in space until we learn how to live off the land there,” concluded Tumlinson. “This is the Deep Space mission – to find, harvest and process the resources of space to help save our civilization and support the expansion of humanity beyond the Earth – and doing so in a step by step manner that leverages off our space legacy to create an amazing and hopeful future for humanity. We are squarely focused on giving new generations the opportunity to change not only this world, but all the worlds of tomorrow. Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?”
Media contact: Nancy Ostertag, 855-855-7755 x515; media@deepspaceindustries.com
Rick gave me a heads up on this last week. I’ll be curious to see who else is involved, and what their funding situation is.
[Update a few minutes later]
More over at NewSpace Watch.
Aaron’s Law
A bipartisan effort to rein in out-of-control federal prosecutors? As Lessig says, it would be a small step, but an important one.
Post-Bankruptcy San Bernardino
It’s not a pretty picture:
…as part of a plan to reduce the state prison population, nearly 4,000 criminals who would once have been sent to state prison have been put in the custody of San Bernardino County law enforcement authorities. Some have been released, putting more low-level criminals back on the streets of San Bernardino, Chief Hardy said, and adding to the challenges already faced by the police.
“All of our crime is up, and the city has a very high crime rate per capita anyway,” Chief Handy said. “I can’t police the city with much less than this. We’re dangerously close as it is.”
As lawyers wrangle in court over San Bernardino’s plan to cut $26 million from its budget and defer some of its pension payments, city officials say there is little more they can do to turn back the rising tide of violence.
No, but there is something that Sacramento could do, but won’t. It could roll back California’s draconian gun laws that have made places like San Berdoo (and Watts and Willowbrook, and other places) into the Wild West, except that no one is armed except the criminals.
A New Nanotech Fiber Breakthrough
This is going to really revolutionize things, including spacecraft.
[Via Geek Press]
The President’s “Default”
There’s no reason to default, even without an increase in the debt ceiling:
Failing to cut Social Security checks does not constitute “default.” Neither does withholding checks intended for bureaucrats, veterans, or contractors. In the context of the federal government, “default” means a failure to make good on your debt-service payments. Our interest payments run about $30 billion a month, easily paid out of the roughly $3 trillion (or $250 billion a month) in revenue the federal government is expected to collect this year. You can do rather a lot with $3 trillion a year, but not as much as you can do with $3 trillion a year and a limitless line of credit. There certainly is no reason to default on $360 billion in interest payments when you have $3 trillion in revenue.
What can you do with $3 trillion a year? You can have Social Security ($880 billion), Medicare/Medicaid/HHS ($940 billion), Department of Defense and additional war spending ($672 billion), Veterans’ Affairs ($140 billion), NASA ($18 billion), Homeland Security ($55 billion), Transportation ($99 billion), Commerce ($9 billion), the Army Corps of Engineers Civil Works ($8 billion), Interior ($13 billion), State and international aid ($59 billion), Justice ($36 billion), the Small Business Administration ($1.4 billion), the EPA ($9 billion), the National Science Foundation ($7.5 billion), the Department of Energy ($33 billion), and the FDA ($4.5 billion) — and still have enough money to triple the budget at the National Park Service, because people love Yogi Bear and Booboo. Yeah, you’d have to close down the Department of Education, which does not one useful thing, and downsize the Treasury Department, perhaps even to the radical extent of shutting down its Healthy Food Financing Initiative (my apologies to the first lady), sell off the housing projects and close down HUD, and a few other things. I know, I know: radical austerity.
Rather, you could do all of that on $3 trillion — if you didn’t have $360 billion in payments on interest from past spending weighing down the budget. But since you do, take away the State Department and international relations, Homeland Security, Energy, Justice, NASA, DOT, Interior, Commerce, Civil Works, EPA, NSF, and SBA, say goodbye to the national parks and the guys who maintain our nuclear arsenal — all to finance past spending excesses.
Put another way, $3 trillion a year in revenue gets you federal spending at 2008 levels plus a small surplus. Not savage austerity, not the Hobbesian state of nature, not Somalia. That is what we are talking about in the debt-ceiling debate. Republicans are being criticized because they are demanding some modest spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling. But refusing to raise it at all would simply necessitate balancing the budget at pre-Obama levels of spending. Of course, the deficits we have run since then mean that about $100 billion more of that spending will have to go toward debt service in 2013 than in 2008. We are spending on spending.
And as the president used to claim to believe, before he doubled down on the spending, it’s “unpatriotic.”
Selling Out To Our Enemies
When it comes to hypocritically enriching himself to benefit those who would wish to do our nation harm, it’s like father, like son, though Al Gore Jr. has outdone his pater.
Universities Must Stop Charging So Much
…for delivering so little and sending students into a lifetime of debt.
The Occumorons were protesting in the wrong places.
Too Little, Too Late
Wayne Hale continues to recall the events of a decade ago, when Columbia was lost, here, and here. And as I suspected at the time, they took the attitude that Gene Kranz did in the movie:
Jon Harpold was the Director of Mission Operations, my supreme boss as a Flight Director. He had spent his early career in shuttle entry analysis. He knew more about shuttle entry than anybody; the guidance, the navigation, the flight control, the thermal environments and how to control them. After one of the MMTs when possible damage to the orbiter was discussed, he gave me his opinion: “You know, there is nothing we can do about damage to the TPS. If it has been damaged it’s probably better not to know. I think the crew would rather not know. Don’t you think it would be better for them to have a happy successful flight and die unexpectedly during entry than to stay on orbit, knowing that there was nothing to be done, until the air ran out?”
I was hard pressed to disagree. That mindset was widespread. Astronauts agreed. So don’t blame an individual; looks for the organizational factors that lead to that kind of a mindset. Don’t let them in your organization.
As I wrote:
…you’re asked to make an assessment, in the absence of any data except a launch video showing some insulation hitting the vehicle, as to whether or not the damage could be catastrophic. Others around you, whom you respect, are saying that it won’t be. You have a bad feeling, but you can’t prove anything with the available data.
What do you do? What’s the benefit, given that there’s no action that can be taken to alleviate the problem, in fighting to get people to recognize that we may have a serious problem?
Moreover, suppose that we do believe that there’s a problem.
Do we tell the crew? What can they do, other than make peace with their God and say goodbye to their families?
Add to that the fact that it would disrupt the mission, perhaps for nothing, and sadly, deliberate ignorance looks appealing.