Ideas about business and a request for feedback...

The world is changing, the internet is providing a level playing field that spans the world. Hacker spaces, distributed group projects, crowd sourcing, crowd funding, social media, internet based print and media publishing etc... Like minded people can group together and accomplish wondrous things.

For awhile I've been thinking that this energy could be harnessed to create a space/rocket project. I recently read that Copenhagen suborbital has a a subscription model. Kickstarter recently had its first $1M project. Armadillo aerospace started as a volunteer group. (with serious outside funding from John's video game success. ) Reality TV shows like orange coast choppers or junk yard wars show the media value of people tinkering with interesting projects..


My goal is clearly to build a NANOSAT launcher class vehicle.

• What would a successful crowd sourced effort look like?
• I'd like to do this in as open and public way as is possible with out going to jail (ITAR).
• If I publish all the information along the way do I destroy the business case even if I'm 100% successful?
• How would one get more people involved in the project?
• How many people in the San Diego area would sign up for working one or two evenings every week and two Saturdays a month for a year(s)?
• Anyone volunteer to be video guru and/or webmaster for such a project?

My personal ethics code would find it very hard to take $$ from the environment without explicitly giving something back? I could start taking deposits for future flights and try to do funding that way, alas this makes me really queasy as there have been space efforts generating press releases and taking deposits where the underlying organization has not fired a rocket motor or built a flying vehicle in more than a decade. Some of the efforts cross the line where its either outright fraud or serious delusion. I hope to never fall into this category..
For those that are new to my blog and my efforts take a look at this video starting at the 8 Minute point


If I did a kick starter project what would would be good collateral to offer for different funding levels?

• Fly your business card to space?
• A discount on future Nanosat launches?
• Guest passes to watch launches?
• Shop tours?
• Weekly two way video chats?
• Access to live shop web cams?
• Early access to blog and video posts (1,2, 4 wk delay from post to public release?)
• Bits of hardware.. IE the actual GOPRO that took video from space with the origional SD card and unedited video.
• Access to data?

Any thoughts on a subscription supporter model?

• If I did this what value could I provide in return?
• Is information/ blog entertainment enough to give back?
• Any possibilities of doing some kind of reality TV program either web based or not?

I'd really like honest feedback from everyone on this. The most realistic response might be the observation that I'm completely certifiably nuts... My favorite recent joke is the one about the guy that goes to the hardware store and asks for "slightly neurotic glue" as he doesn't need full strength "crazy". For what I want to try to do I'll need full strength crazy and then some....