Satellite auctioner: 'Let's further open up space'
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James Benson, founder of SpaceDev
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(CNN) -- Ever wanted to own a satellite? Not just a satellite dish, but a satellite orbiting the Earth at 17,500 mph? It is as simple as putting in a bid on eBay. Or, to skip the auction, it can be bought immediately for $9.5 million, which includes the launch.
Who would bid on such a thing? James Benson, founder of SpaceDev, a company based in Poway, California, posted the satellite on eBay. Benson spoke with CNN's Miles O'Brien about the sale.
BENSON: Well, Miles, as you may know, we launched our first microsatellite in January of this year. It's an Earth-orbiting NASA science mission. And it's the world's first orbiting note on the Internet, the first satellite that can be operated from a laptop computer anywhere in the world.
SpaceDev is lowering the cost of access to space. So we thought, let's further open up space to the public. Let's offer a satellite for sale over eBay and see what kind of fun we can have and maybe make some money while we're at it.
O'BRIEN: All right, the minimum bid, $250,000. The bidding opened up last night. So far, no takers.
BENSON: We have a minimum bid of $250,000, so that we can screen the serious bidders. If we wanted to have some fun, I guess we could open that up, but we really do want serious bidders. The wife of the guy who has everything, or the guy that wants to buy his wife the first-ever private space mission, or ... [a] university or government agency who would actually like to fly a serious payload.
O'BRIEN: All right, this would be great stuff at a cocktail party. But, besides that, what would be the point of having your own satellite?
BENSON: There are a lot of people, who, like [so-called "space tourist"] Dennis Tito, for example, who wanted to go to space and spend $20 million buying a ticket to go to the space station.
For people who have less money, but perhaps would like to own their own space mission, this is a possibility. And it's less expensive than the rigors of going through six months of training and spending $20 million to actually go to space. But, in a few months, SpaceDev, through its propulsion division, hopes to be sending people toward space on Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne. So we're trying to open space to the public on the propulsion side and on the satellite side.
O'BRIEN: Let's talk about SpaceShipOne. You're going to provide the rocket motor for this effort out of Mojave, California. Burt Rutan, who designed the aircraft Voyager, [which] flew around the world on one tank of gas ... will give folks a suborbital ride, if all goes well. And they'll pay, who knows, $100,000 or so. Is there really a business for all of these things, Jim?
BENSON: Miles, I think suborbital space tourism could be a multibillion-dollar project. I'm glad that SpaceShipOne is going to be powered by SpaceDev. I like to think of it as SpaceDev inside.
I made my modest fortune in the computer field, specifically microcomputers. So, when I founded SpaceDev a few years ago, I did it to bring the microcomputer way of thinking to space. I want to revolutionize space the way Apple revolutionized the computer industry. And we're already successful in launching the country's smallest high-performance, low-cost satellite. And we're trying to involve the public, get the youth excited about space again, and offer space missions to the public, whether they're suborbital space rides powered by SpaceDev or satellites built by SpaceDev.
O'BRIEN: All right, Jim Benson with SpaceDev; eBay is the location. Just put in SpaceDev there. You can go to the site and at least take a look. And if you've got a quarter of a million bucks sitting around there, why don't you join in the bidding?
