ARKYD: A Space Telescope for Everyone by Planetary Resources @ Kickstarter.

This was sent in by a reader, Chris – Thanks!

I don’t know if this qualifies as “Maker Business News” or not but because it does involve Kickstarter it should be of interest. Just some background.… An organization called Planetary Resources plan to launch a private space telescope for which ordinary people or educational institutions could purchase time. They were able to orbit a couple of test satellites on board some commercial launch vehicle from our company. But their ultimate goal of launching the many space telescope wasn’t going to make it. So what did they do? They refunded everybody 100% even if you had received some sort of perk like a patch for a T-shirt.

I had backed this project and selected the perk of an outer space “selfie”. On the final satellite there was supposed to be announced display screen and a camera pointing at it. You can upload a photo to be displayed on the screen and it would take a photo of your image with the earth as the background. I have an 11-year-old nephew who is an astronomy buff. I going to upload a photo of him and myself that had taken on Christmas.

Anyway I just thought this would make a good newsletter item under the title “the right way to fail at Kickstarter”

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