This is the key imo, they are able to lower the cost to launch these into orbit because they are so small allowing them to be secondary or tertiary payloads on a rocket going up already.
Re:Planetary Resources shows off Arkyd-100
by learc83 on Tuesday January 22, 2013 @12:01AM
(#5095626)
>It seems much more likely that PR's advantage, if they have one, is in miniaturization technology
Part of the miniaturization could be from not including multiple redundant, hardened systems.
If you have 3 smaller satellites that are 90% reliable (for a given time frame), that vastly trumps 1 larger satellite that is 99% reliable (assuming similar capabilities and overall weight).
Re:Planetary Resources shows off Arkyd-100
by jessriedel on Tuesday January 22, 2013 @12:24AM
(#5095690)
The trade-off between weight and reliability through redundancy is well-known to the multi-billion dollar, half-century-old space industry. This is not some new advance or insight made by PR. The only interesting thing is if PR has developed some new piece of technology which, incidentally, shifts the optimal point along the redundancy-weight curve.
> Who cares about reliability, it's just a robot and there are many more where it came from...
Well, the whole reason governments and corporations spend so much to ensure reliability is that the cost per kg to get to LEO is exorbitant. It doesn't make any sense for you to say that PR's major insight is moving in what has always been a non-optimal direction along the production possibility frontier unless you also include what advancement has made that direction now a good place to go.
It seems much more likely that PR's advantage, if they have one, is in miniaturization technology (to pack more in per kg, as they claim) or some sort of launch economy of scale.