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Space Scientists Looking To Crowd-Fund Planetary Exploration
The Bad Astronomer writes "The White House budget for NASA in 2013 is bleak, with big cuts in many areas. None is worse hit than planetary exploration, which got slammed with a 20% reduction. Several top-notch space scientists have taken matters into their own hands, looking to create a privately-funded alternative for space exploration. Called Uwingu — Swahili for 'sky' — they're hoping to get seed money to create a program which can generate millions in donations to explore our solar system. Astronomer Pamela Gay has more info at her blog, Star Stryder."
Considering that SETI couldn't even raise $2 million a year, I'm thinking we need to offer more incentives on this one. A $1 billion donation gets you a nice tote bag. $2 billion gets you the mug.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Only if I recieve a souvenir from another planet.
But then again, if everyone was to demand a souvenir in return, it might be easier if NASA became a business that sold space souvenirs.
Private capital is rarely transparent and often has more strings attached than most people realize. Also, the ROI on space exploration projects is so low and spread over such a long time period that no private capital group in their right mind would ever fund it, let alone convince other investors.
So what do I get for contributing to their Kickstarter?
Planetory exploration, our eyes where we can't reach yet, here's a great piece on the rover Opportunity, who's still collecting valuable data that is no doubt shaping the future of planetory exploration as we know it. http://www.frequency.com/video/sciencecasts-first-extraterrestrial/53770551/-/4-196655 Little guy still chugging away. :)
I feel the returns on these explorations will pay out big dividends years down the road, but not if they don't get the funding. I think privatization will be a great way to get the money needed as the commercial potential of these future space businesses could be an enormous jackpot, with the right technology and the right deal. I'm not sure how governments don't see that potential.
Find a better and more memorable name. Seriously, names are important. They need to be memorable, easy to spell and hopefully represent what you do. This name, I've already forgotten and have no clue how to spell had I simply heard it. You can't go to the moon (or stars) on a rocketship that nobody can spell let alone fund.
You're assuming its an investment, not a donation. A decent planetary science mission will cost $500M in NASA dollars. Take out federal procurement and the endemic requirement growth and you can imagine a worthwhile mission for $300M.
As Ed Lu (B612 Foundation CEO who is launching the Sentinel mission) pointed out in a recent talk, this is an equivalent amount to a new wing in an art museum -- not insignificant, but not impossible. The conversation he had with a fundraiser went like this:
Fundraiser: "So you can really launch something into an orbit around the sun???"
Ed Lu: "Of course. You can really raise $300M in donations???"
A science mission won't return a monetary investment, and no one should expect it to. This doesn't mean that you can't fund it as you would other public works projects.
So if every drinker in these two countries countries were to donate a single days spending on spirits to this program they would raise almost $330 million dollars.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Private capital is rarely transparent and often has more strings attached than most people realize.
The same can be said of public capital. The difference is that the owner of the private capital chose to make the gift. While the owners of the public capital had pretty unaccountable people making that decision.
Also, the ROI on space exploration projects is so low and spread over such a long time period that no private capital group in their right mind would ever fund it, let alone convince other investors.
Again, no more reason for public funding either. It's only in the twisted, pollyannish world of politics that lack of usefulness is a reason to fund projects.
Just curious. If someone at NASA put out some requirements for a small subsystem how many people here would work on helping develop it in their spare time? I've tried to make this point. There are some things that can be crowd sourced. I think the public could get involved if the ITAR stuff could be avoided.
For example let's say a bracket was needed to hold a sensor. NASA could post the mass, size and Interface for the sensor and list the shock and vib requirements. Then let whoever wants to submit a design with analysis. Then the responsible engineer could review them and pick a design.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
A science mission won't return a monetary investment, and no one should expect it to. This doesn't mean that you can't fund it as you would other public works projects.
But there should be some form of return for such form of sponsorship direct from the public. For example, use and prominent display of public domain tools, like GNU-Linux, etc. Advocacy for the public domain nature of the Web and advocacy for net-neutrality. Get to work with Tim Berners-Lee, who launched the Web while at CERN (a public institution) and other prominent scientists and advocates of the public domain like Lawrence Lessig.
Get it right and that in itself will help funding and do good for all of us, on top of the science!
In NZ, we've got the rescue helicopter, funded by a local bank (and painted in their colours, with their name on the side, and always referred to as the rescue helicopter. The bank recently asked for funds, saying that even $20 would get them a clutter-pin, or some such. I suspect the thing will be the same colour, same name though.
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
Sorry to reply to my own post, but...
I am at the University of Cambridge, where outreach activities are quite valued among academics. The Raspberry Pi originates from here, among other educational interesting ideas. I could suggest of few names to help form a committee. Contact me.
"Uwingu" sounds like the ookings of a gorilla resting on his haunches and chewing on a grub in the midst of third-world filth. It evokes action of a primate Uwinging / from tree to tree / but only in between / poo flinging
You are a disgusting, disgraceful, half-educated racist motherfucker. Just thought you should know.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
The whole thing was fine until the "Uwingu" name, and its Swahili origin
It's getting tiresome to read so many things in the same foreign language - as if Swahili is the only legitimate foreign language in this world
How about the Persian language? How about the Vietnamese language? How about the Tahitian language?
To me, the use of yet-another-Swahili-word shows the lack of imagination, and/or the laziness therewith, of those 'scientists' in charge
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Private capital has some big weaknesses. It isn't available for anything but the most immediate and sure returns. And it isn't enough for big projects.
As an example, you would have thought a transcontinental railroad was a no brainer. Took about 7 years to build and start earning a return. But that's too long and too much risk for the market. The companies could not find buyers for their stock. They had to rely on huge government land grants for the bulk of their costs, and that still wasn't enough. They resorted to financial trickery (which goes a long way in explaining the market's reluctance to invest in them), ludicrous levels of optimism, and plain old stiffing of creditors. Even on those matters in which they were dealing squarely, they had to fend off constant accusations that the whole thing was just a gigantic scam, that they meant to build only the easy part of the railroad, take their government loans and run. Didn't help that one of the builders thought the best way to make a profit was to build the track as long as possible in order to secure more government loans. The railroad was absolutely worth building, and as fast as possible even though that greatly increased costs, but it was a messy affair, with one of the companies, the UP, going bankrupt a few years after the rail was completed. Private enterprise was simply not up to the job, not by itself.
We have many very practical things we could do. For instance, the US could really use some high speed passenger rail lines. Yet we seem unable to build them. A bigger project is a tunnel under the Bering Strait, and rail connections to both ends. It stretches our capabilities, but we could do it if we had the will. It would be very valuable. Then there's projects like the space elevator. We do not know how to build that, assuming it can be done at all. It will take much research, an area in which private enterprise is weak.
There are many things for which private capital is unsuited.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
The specific goals I'd like funded are orbiters to Uranus and Neptune. Those seem far and away the most obvious, valuable, and doable projects no one has yet tried.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Private capital has some big weaknesses. It isn't available for anything but the most immediate and sure returns. And it isn't enough for big projects.
Neither of those is a weakness of private capital. There are plenty of examples of long term thinking with private capital even in the areas of science. A lot of current universities (most by number of colleges though probably not by number of students these days) in the US were created through private funds. Some modern research is being funded by private means as well.
Frankly, I think it's great news that even space-based research is starting to consider private funding.
As to your continental railroad, so what if it took a few more years to build a railroad with purely private funds rather than public? As you note, the use of public funds ended being an opportunity to scam.
We have many very practical things we could do. For instance, the US could really use some high speed passenger rail lines.
I thought you were going to speak of "practical" things. The US already has a form of high speed passenger rail. We call them "airplanes".
My impression besides is that one needs gullible European taxpayers to run a proper high speed rail. The US is sadly deficient in that resource.
Then there's projects like the space elevator. We do not know how to build that, assuming it can be done at all. It will take much research, an area in which private enterprise is weak.
I'm not getting a sense of what practicality your things are supposed to have. It seems to me a better approach just to let the current space launch market prove or as the case may be, not prove its effectiveness. Then one can build better infrastructure possibly including space elevators at some point. Or we can squander vast amounts of public funds on things like space elevators and hope that works better than fusion.
As to "research", claiming that private enterprise is "weak" at research implies someone is "strong" at research. Who would that be?
Obviously, the prime candidate is publicly funded research. The problem is that despite the vast sums that are thrown at it, it really doesn't do that much. Probably it's most notable use is to socialize research risk from businesses (to be honest, socialization of risk is a task at which government and public funding excels).
But that doesn't seem particularly useful to me. It just seems to me that we spend a lot more for the outcome we get than in the old days when private sources funded a far greater share of such research.
Even those who do become skilled at engaging the stock market are not good at investment these days, because they have become skilled at making earnings on a system of speculation.
Speculation is a form of investment and everyone who invests, engages in some degree of speculation (minimally, that what they invest in doesn't tank).
No they are distinct. Well it depends on which definition you are using of course, actual investments don't exist in the real world since nothing guarantees return of principal (governments go bust on occassion).
But the usual useful definition would be speculation is buying something because you expect it to be worth more in the future (or selling something because you think it will be worth less in the future). Whereas investment would be something that promises a interest payments or dividend payments over time without any expectation or price changes.
So given dividend levels in recent times, everyone in the stock market has been speculating.
I'm fine with the idea of private commercialization of space by companies that have start-up capital to do it, but do we really have to abandon NASA to the budget-cut wolves in favor of private companies that require crowd-funding? NASA is pretty ramped up already; why don't we just crowd-fund NASA?
Perhaps they meant "mbingu" which roughly translates to "heaven" or "wingu" which means "cloud". There is no direct Swahili translation for "sky" as far as I know. They should have done a quick check on any of the online Swahili dictionaries such as http://kamusi.org/ or http://www.kamusi.co.tz/ before erroneously naming their project.
No they are distinct. Well it depends on which definition you are using of course, actual investments don't exist in the real world since nothing guarantees return of principal (governments go bust on occassion).
Indeed. Hence, my argument that investment is speculation and vice versa.
But the usual useful definition would be speculation is buying something because you expect it to be worth more in the future (or selling something because you think it will be worth less in the future). Whereas investment would be something that promises a interest payments or dividend payments over time without any expectation or price changes.
And here we see the speculation of investment. The promise of interest or dividend payments is the expectation. You invest or speculate because you expect by the action to result in more wealth for you in the future.
Further, there is no neat division of the two ideas even along the lines you mention. For example, you might value a dividend paying stock higher because you speculate that its dividend payment will grow over time. That means you're making an investment by your definition, but paying a little premium for it due to speculation on your part.
The primary reason I post on speculation versus investment is that for some bizarre reason, speculation has a negative connotation to much of society, while investment does not. This usually extends to speculators doing bad things to a market while investors do good things.
For example, claims that oil is higher than it should be due to speculators. Those accusers are ignorant though of the fact that, if you really do perturb a market away from what it should be, then you lose money, possibly a vast amount of money, if the market is as big as oil. The symptom here is the cure. Those speculators are losing big, if the accusers are right.
But there's the rub, if those speculators are so wrong, then where are they coming up with the money to keep losing it? OTOH, if the speculators are right, then the price of oil should be higher. And the real problem is that the accusers want to deny a bit of reality. Either way, speculators are getting wronged by a lot of people who don't understand their role or what benefits they provide.
"we need 75.000 for an unspecified marketing campaign for an unspecified project" doesn't sound too inviting to me - how about "we need at least one million people to give us at least 100$ a year over the next ten years to accomplish these awesome goals (insert planned projects here)". "give us 1$ on kickstarter to set up the big money-collecting and to show your interest" (and for your 100$-1000$ / year you get your name on a plaque on the moon, beautiful HD-Video Footage of everyting and a share of the company (which you might exchange to a space-ticket in the future)
Their ideas are so elegant that I can’t believe they haven’t already been done, and because it would take about a week for someone with very modest venture capitol (that part they are missing) to implement the idea well This is where the campaign is asking for your trust and your donations to allow us to setup a new model for funding space, but we can’t give you the details, because if we do the idea is going to get built by someone else and the profit will go somewhere other than to researchers.
This is kind of asking us to take a lot on faith. "Send us your money so that we can do some secret thing that's going to be great. Oh, and I really need money to cover my staff's salary." You're not going to find a more passionate advocate for space exploration than me, but even I feel leery about contributing given the opacity of the enterprise.
My second thought is, if you do successfully create some quasi-third-option (not public, not private) enterprise to do actual planetary exploration, it is by definition competitive with NASA. Immediately, immediately, Ron Paul and all the strict constitutionalists and tea partiers and deficit hawks are going to point to Uwingu and say "Hey, we don't need a federal agency for that! Look, private enterprise is doing it!" It would be just another, better reason to kill NASA by budget cuts.
Rrrrrrrracist!!
Drill baby drill - on Mars