VERY SMALL SATELLITES, VERY BIG DEAL
the end is we want to have a service-level agreement that we can live up to and that our customers can expect. And so those two things, being agile and being reliable, are two values that we have in the com- pany. You can’t really have one without the other if you want to keep inventing new technology. But then you also want to anchor in that type [of] project in the world, in the market.
Tat same methodology fits all those in the company: We really wanted to be able to build satellites in a very different way and to iterate on the learnings of the technology and to pull into the satellite new chips and components when they just come out on the market. And know- ing specifics in space, you can take those chips and components and actually build
out a system that can then work well in space today.
We have a very, very robust, high- performing satellite in a 5-kilogram package. Part of the reason we wanted to go small, too, is so the launch costs are less per satellite. If the launch costs are less per satellite, then the total cost of the system is less. If the total cost of the sys- tem is less, then if you lose one or two or three [satellites], that’s part of doing busi- ness. But if you lose one or two or three, then that means that you’ll take a bigger step with the new technology that you develop. And so by taking a bigger step, that means that you actually are bring- ing the future forward even faster. You can see how that’s a positive feedback for accepting risk, and reasonable risk.
Tat being said, you know, when we launched 88 satellites, that’s kind of putting a lot of eggs in one basket. And so, of course, we accepted that risk but we hedge it by buying insurance. Tere are ways that you make sure that these things aren’t catastrophic for the organization.
I think that’s the main thing, is you don’t ever want to have an existential thing that’s out of your control actually impact the viability of an organization. And so in space, we always want to launch more than we need so that we can basically degrade [as satellites go offline].
Army AL&T: Is there anywhere you would draw the line in terms of working with the government?
Schingler: Planet is a commercial orga- nization. We see the federal market as the largest market in geospatial today. And so we definitely need to service that market by selling a commercial service to them. But that’s very different from going inside the government and being a systems integrator or being a contractor. Our reason for being is to bring global change to the enterprise and to bring geospatial into a workflow of business at the speed of business. Tat’s how we’ve chosen to focus, and it’s different from going inside to the government and being one custom solution for a very, very large, important problem. But the ecosystem is much larger than that. So we’re purpose- fully selling the same thing to the federal government that we would sell to an agri- culture company or to a financial data services company.
COVERAGE PLAN
Satellites in Planet’s constellation are spaced out in lines around Earth, to photograph the whole planet, every day. Each one orbits the poles every 90 minutes.
Army AL&T: You worked for the govern- ment, for NASA.
Schingler: Yeah, for 10 years.
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Army AL&T Magazine
January - March 2018
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