The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 18 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Marshall: Large satellite constellations allow companies to tolerate higher unit failure risk
“Mainly it's about a risk approach, which is just assuming more risk per satellite. Okay, that one satellite has slightly more chance of having a dust on it, but we're going to put more satellites up than we need, and if a couple have that, it's not the end of …”
Marshall: SpaceX's reusable rockets drove a fourfold drop in launch costs
“The rockets have, in fact, got cheaper. Just the last five or so years, they've gone down about fourfold, and mainly because of SpaceX. SpaceX, with its reusable rockets, has brought the price down”
Marshall: Transparency regarding nations' military activities increases the likelihood of peace
“The more information different countries have about each other's activities, including military activities, the more it's likely to be peace.”
Marshall: Planet has repeatedly refused data requests to prevent civilian harm
“We have our own ethics committee. That reviews every case with the government and checks. Is, is there some way in which this might bring civilian harm? And we have many cases refused to give data where we think that would be the case.”
Marshall: Planet projects over 40% annual growth and profitability within two years
“So we have very clear line of sight now on a growth path, you know, going just over 40% a year for the next five years we project. And that gets us to profitability in the next couple of years.”
Marshall: Pre-Planet Earth imagery was only captured monthly or annually
“Typically before our mission, you could only get a new image of the Earth maybe once every month or sometimes every year, depending on the resolution you needed.”
Marshall: Planet applied Silicon Valley's agile software strategy to satellite hardware
“We wanted more like the Silicon Valley release early, release often software strategy than the requirements-driven, very careful science project of NASA.”
Marshall: Planet's Earth-observation satellites cost roughly $200,000 to $300,000 each to build
“It's about 300 K, or just slightly less than that, two or 300 K.”
Marshall: Traditional NASA satellites average approximately $1 billion in cost
“Most NASA satellites average, average about a billion.”
Marshall: Planet launched 460 satellites for less than one typical traditional satellite
“That is why we've launched all of the now 460 or something satellites that we've launched on 33 rockets for less than the cost of a typical satellite. A lot less, actually, still.”
Marshall: NASA's PhoneSat successfully operated commercial smartphone cameras and radios in orbit
“And the phones worked just fine in space, and we had amateur radio astronomers around the world get these little Yagi antennas, these little handheld antennas, to follow the satellite, the little pictures it had been taking with the Phone camera. And email the…”
Marshall: Apple and Google's consumer electronics R&D far outpaced NASA's electronics budget
“But now, the billions and billions of dollars that would be going on in the consumer electronics industry, like Apple and Samsung and Google and all these companies, was far outpacing what NASA could spend on the development of electronics.”
Marshall: Planet built its first satellite prototype using consumer electronics chips
“We built a test one at Rainbow this community house in the garage. We added a camera system, then we added all the other systems, radios and so on to make it a working satellite. Leveraging consumer electronics, not exactly a phone like we'd use in phone sat, …”
Marshall: Planet paid roughly $300,000 per launch for its first two satellites
“I think it was 300,000 dollars for the first one, and it was about that for the second one, and we decided it'd be best to put one satellite on each of two rockets to give a bit of redundancy.”
Marshall: Planet generated over $100 million in revenue last year
“We did just over a hundred million in revenue last year, and that's a mature business at some level.”
Marshall: Planet supplies satellite data to Google for Google Maps
“So we supply data to Google for their maps. They do huge numbers of requests to us.”
Marshall: Planet founders shared a communal house with Apple, Google, and Stanford peers
“Yeah, no, actually, but it wasn't just NASA people. We had Students who are at Stanford, people that worked at Apple, people that worked at Google, all these places, and that created a fervor of intellectual dizziness that was always fun for us. So it was a mi…”
Planet's first two satellites launched within 48 hours despite six-month plan
“We had planned them to be six months apart so that we could take the results from the first one, and if something went wrong, iterate the satellite and try and fix that before the second one, except because you can't control the launch date, and they ended up …”