Planetary Resources, the Bellevue-based company that plans to launch robotic spacecraft to mine near-Earth asteroids, doesn’t need extra money, backed by investors including Google’s Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, and Ross Perot Jr.
But the company is considering a Kickstarter campaign to get the public more involved in its effort — offering donors benefits including the ability to control the space telescopes that will search for the asteroids.
Peter Diamandis, one of the co-founders of the company, outlined the idea in a message and video posted online tonight.
He writes, “To offer you a chance to actually get involved, we’ve been tossing around the idea of adding additional capacity in our production run, and either offering you access to a portion of our of our orbiting spacecraft – or – if there’s enough demand, actually build you an additional Space Telescope for your own use,” he writes.
He continues, “We’d probably do this thru a Kickstarter campaign, but we ONLY if there’s enough interest…”
Options they’re considering for different pledge levels include a chance to direct the Arkyd-100 Space Telescope to take high-resolution picture of a specific spot on Earth; getting a desktop model of the Arkyd telescope; a half-day at the controls of the telescope (for a much larger pledge, presumably); and a chance to attend the Planetary Resources launch party.
The company is offering a chance to vote on those ideas and offer others in this blog post.