Hey, you. Yes you! Do you have roughly $600K to spend and an insatiable desire to explore the cosmos? The PlaneWave CDK1000 Telescope System is precisely the premium product you’re looking for. WIRED Luxury Gear Editor Jeremy White visits Jackson Hole, Wyoming to explore and learn more about what went into creating this marvel of tech—and if it ultimately lives up to the eye-popping price tag.
Producer / Director: Dan Jackson
Directors of Photography: John Bujak; Mark Fisher
Editor: Matt Camlin
Host: Jeremy White
Guests: Richard Hedrick; Kevin Iott; Dan Roelker; Joe Zator
Line Producer: Joseph Buscemi
Associate Producer: Brandon White
Production Manager: Peter Brunette
Production Coordinator: Rhyan Lark
Camera Operator: Steve Broxterman; Scott Rogers
Sound Recordist: Amanda Robinson; Chris Anderson
Production Assistant: Brian Bennet; Kelsey Ripple
Post Production Supervisor: Christian Olguin
Post Production Coordinator: Rachel Kim
Supervising Editor: Doug Larsen; Christina Mankellow
Assistant Editor: Justin Symonds
Producer / Director: Dan Jackson
Directors of Photography: John Bujak; Mark Fisher
Editor: Matt Camlin
Host: Jeremy White
Guests: Richard Hedrick; Kevin Iott; Dan Roelker; Joe Zator
Line Producer: Joseph Buscemi
Associate Producer: Brandon White
Production Manager: Peter Brunette
Production Coordinator: Rhyan Lark
Camera Operator: Steve Broxterman; Scott Rogers
Sound Recordist: Amanda Robinson; Chris Anderson
Production Assistant: Brian Bennet; Kelsey Ripple
Post Production Supervisor: Christian Olguin
Post Production Coordinator: Rachel Kim
Supervising Editor: Doug Larsen; Christina Mankellow
Assistant Editor: Justin Symonds
Category
🤖
TechTranscript
00:00What do you get when you combine cutting-edge space optics technology
00:05with a price tag big enough to buy a house?
00:08The PlaneWave CDK-1000.
00:14Welcome to Snoking Mountain in Jackson Hole, Wyoming,
00:17a playground where billionaires go to ski.
00:24Today we're getting hands-on with this astronomical beast
00:26to uncover what makes it such a star among telescopes.
00:30By the end, we'll give it a desired rating to see if it lives up to the hype
00:34or if it's a stellar money...
00:37This is Desired.
00:41The telescope I'm about to see is worth an eye-watering $600,000,
00:45which is a pricey entry point for a hobby
00:48and significantly more than anything you'll find at your local scope store.
00:52However, astonishingly, this piece of kit claims to actually be good value for money,
00:57with the company that makes it, PlaneWave,
01:00able to deliver in around two months and install in a single day.
01:04Something never thought possible before.
01:07I'm heading up to meet Joe Zeta, director of the Snoking Observatory,
01:11to get a look at the cutting-edge facility.
01:13But before we get ahead of ourselves,
01:15I'm going to show you just what goes into making the CDK-1000,
01:18back where it's manufactured, in Adrian, Michigan.
01:23Hello, Rick. How you doing?
01:25Kevin, nice to meet you.
01:27Thanks so much for having us.
01:29So this is what we've come to see. This is the CDK-1000.
01:33Yes, so this is a one-metre telescope,
01:36and what that means is the main mirror that gathers all the light is one metre in diameter.
01:43So that's the 1000?
01:44That's the 1000, 1000 millimetres.
01:46The light comes in the front here, hits the main mirror down here,
01:50goes up, hits that mirror there called the secondary,
01:53comes down here, hits another mirror that's at a diagonal,
01:57and sends the light out this port here.
02:00You do your mirrors in-house. Could you not get them made elsewhere?
02:03We could not get them made elsewhere.
02:05We decided we had this design with this lightweight mirror,
02:08which means the whole telescope gets to be lighter weight, higher tat,
02:12and we get to use all the most modern technology and materials and everything.
02:16And we went to companies, and they just couldn't do it.
02:19They said, well, it's going to be a bunch of money,
02:21and it might take a year, two years to make one mirror.
02:26So we experimented in-house, and within about six months,
02:29we were able to make our own mirror.
02:32I noticed there's a USB port here. Can I charge my iPhone on that?
02:35You could.
02:36Yes.
02:37Absolutely.
02:39What can it do? How far can it see?
02:42How far something can see is always the first question,
02:45and we've had one of our customers take a 17-inch telescope,
02:49much smaller than this, and try and image a quasar
02:53that was 12.9 billion light-years away,
02:56which is almost to the edge of the observable universe.
02:59And we jokingly say, how far can you see these telescopes?
03:01They say, all the way.
03:02For people who don't know this field, how is this different?
03:05So when we came into the market, in the one-meter market,
03:09it could be $2 million, $1.8 million.
03:11Sometimes you can get $1.2 million.
03:14This telescope weighs 3,500 pounds.
03:16It weighed 9,000 pounds, 10,000 pounds.
03:19It would take you five years to get one.
03:21Yeah.
03:22Because they're custom-made, every single one.
03:24And how quickly can you build them?
03:25Really, we can deliver usually in about two months.
03:27We ship them to our customer, we go out and install them,
03:30and they're installed in one day.
03:31Now, whilst all that sounds very impressive,
03:34we're still talking huge amounts of money here.
03:37Rick assured me that their new CDK and Direct Drive technology
03:41justifies the cost.
03:42CDK stands for Corrected Dow Kirkham.
03:45Dow Kirkham is an older design,
03:47so we modified that design and added corrector lenses
03:51and made a much more high-functioning telescope.
03:54And since it's easier to make, it's also a lower price.
03:56Right, OK.
03:57This is a CCD chip.
03:59This is 52 millimetres on the diagonal.
04:02And you can see the star in the centre
04:04and the star at the edge are identical.
04:07And there's not many telescopes that can do that.
04:10But then the other part of that is the Direct Drive.
04:13This is probably like a bunch of five-minute images added together.
04:17So you're tracking the sky for five minutes,
04:20you're correcting for the fact that Earth is rotating,
04:22staying centred on the object,
04:24and any deviation will make these stars look elongated.
04:28So it's one thing to have an optical design that gives you points,
04:30but you've got to track well enough.
04:32Back at Snowking, Joe took me to the planetarium
04:35to see some rendered images from the CDK1000.
04:39Here we have the Orion Nebula, which is Messier Object 42.
04:43Wow.
04:45And that was taken with this telescope, the CDK1000,
04:48that you've got on the roof?
04:49Correct, yes.
04:50That's one of the things that I think is just so amazing
04:52about a telescope like this,
04:53is it's something that's available for the people in the general public,
04:56where you don't have to have three doctorates to be able to use it.
04:59It's allowing us not just to take people's breath away
05:02and allow them to see the beauty that's out there in the cosmos
05:05that we want to study,
05:06but it also can get those younger generations excited to say,
05:10oh wow, that's beautiful, but really, what's the physics behind that?
05:13What's going on there?
05:14And they may be interested in studying cosmology,
05:16interested in studying astrophysics,
05:18and really propel that next generation of humanity forward
05:22to bring us out to the stars and learn more about what we can,
05:25which also helps learn more about us, who we are.
05:28Over at PlaneWave, Rick was excited to introduce me to Dan Rolke,
05:32the co-founder and CEO of rSky,
05:34a platform that connects multiple telescopes from around the world,
05:37providing real-time observational data and analysis
05:40of objects and activities in space.
05:43Now, they're merging with PlaneWave
05:45to create a new company called Observable Space.
05:48This industry has really had kind of a gap
05:53between the hardware itself and the actual software
05:56that leverages the hardware and processes the data.
05:59So that's kind of where the idea of Observable Space came from,
06:02where combining PlaneWave and rSky for the software side
06:06to build that product that's really never been built before in this industry.
06:10This is live data, is it?
06:12Yeah, yeah.
06:13So it's tracking a satellite here?
06:14Yeah, this is just kind of a live view of some of the telescopes
06:18we have around the world that are tracking different satellites.
06:21What you're seeing here is all these different streaks in the image are stars.
06:25Because what's happening is the telescope is tracking a specific object in space.
06:30That object is basically the box right here with a dot.
06:33In order to understand where an object is in space
06:36when we're tracking it this way,
06:38you solve for the midpoint for each of the streaks on those stars.
06:41And once you have the midpoint of all of those streaks,
06:44you can then compare it against star maps that we have
06:47to understand where it's pointing.
06:49And then it can basically say,
06:50at this very kind of nanosecond precision of time,
06:53this is where this object was in space.
06:55And that is useful information because?
06:58It's useful information for anyone that needs to manoeuvre,
07:02plan manoeuvres or operate any spacecraft that's in orbit.
07:07You don't want to hit anything?
07:08You don't want to hit anything.
07:09And you also just want to know where things are at.
07:11Even though you might have an equation that says,
07:13you know, five minutes from now this object should be here,
07:16when there's a lot of uncertainty based in with like solar pressure,
07:20atmospheric conditions, things like that,
07:22it actually might not be where you thought it should be in five minutes.
07:25So you need to be able to track these objects
07:27to understand where that's at.
07:29These telescopes can perform laser communication, can't they?
07:33Yeah, so laser comm is really like the next gen for space communications.
07:36It's 10 to 100 times faster than RF frequencies.
07:39RF being?
07:40Yeah, radio frequencies.
07:42It's very low power for spacecraft.
07:44And the further away from Earth you get,
07:46the more beneficial laser communication becomes.
07:48So it's kind of a holy grail, if you will,
07:50for kind of building out that next kind of level of communication
07:54for the space industry.
07:55NASA and JPL recently just did the longest optical link
07:59and laser communication with their Psyche spacecraft.
08:02What they ended up getting with when they closed that link,
08:04I think it was like six point some megabits per second.
08:07And it was about maybe 255 million miles from Earth
08:11or something like that.
08:13And generally, like when you have spacecraft that far from Earth,
08:16you're really looking at like bits per second.
08:19So with RF, it would be?
08:21Yeah, bits to maybe kilobits per second.
08:23Kilobits per second.
08:24But with laser comm, it was around like 6.5 megabits per second.
08:27Which is a lot sometimes.
08:28It's actually some people's home Wi-Fi.
08:30Yeah, totally.
08:31It might be a little bit faster.
08:32That was like the first test, right?
08:34So even like getting even greater speeds
08:37is definitely in the cards for the future.
08:39So just to be clear, then, everything you're talking about,
08:42the integration of software,
08:44but also this idea of the laser communication
08:48and everything else,
08:50that's all possible with the CDK-1000.
08:53Absolutely.
08:54It's definitely multifunctional.
08:56So they're not like just for one specific thing.
08:58So like if you wanted to do astrophotography
09:01and kind of explore the cosmos for a little bit with our flagship,
09:05like you can do it.
09:06And then the next like five minutes later,
09:08you could be receiving laser communications.
09:10From the sounds of it,
09:11Rick and Dan are trying to grow not only a better global system
09:14for studying space,
09:15but also drastically lower the entry point
09:18on who can access a cutting edge telescope like the CDK-1000.
09:22And I love the idea of democratising
09:24and sharing access to a worldwide network of telescopes
09:27like the one at Snow King.
09:29It feels like a genuinely positive step
09:31in encouraging a new generation of space explorers.
09:35As night fell on Snow King Mountain
09:37and with clouds ominously rolling in after clear skies all day,
09:41my time had finally come to see what all the fuss was about.
09:44This is Jupiter we're about to look at here.
09:46That's correct.
09:47And it's moons.
09:48You can see some of the cloud band patterns
09:50and the other bright spots around it are the Galilean moons.
09:53That's amazing.
09:54We've even seen some of the colours of it too.
09:56And some of those clouds are different ammonia compounds,
09:58different hydrogen compounds.
10:00God, it doesn't quite look real.
10:02You don't expect to see the colours,
10:04the cloud bands, everything like that.
10:06That's actually one of the comments we get from a lot of people,
10:09in particular with Saturn's rings when they're looking at that,
10:12they think, how can this be real?
10:14You guys are going to have a look at this while you're here.
10:20It is exciting.
10:22I think so too. It's amazing.
10:24In some ways, like you said, it makes you feel small
10:26and the immensity of the cosmos or even just our solar system.
10:29To me, a lot of times it also makes you feel very large
10:32and a part of the cosmos because we're looking out at another planet
10:35and you get that light reflecting off of it from the sun
10:39and coming back to your eyeball
10:41and it just kind of makes you think about
10:43what other things are out there to discover.
10:45Imagine having a really nice glass of whiskey
10:49going out onto your back porch
10:52where you've got your own little dome,
10:54you know, like that,
10:56and the CDK-1000 stuck out there going,
10:58I'm just going to go out, have a little drink,
11:01and I'm going to look at the planets for a bit.
11:04So we've come to the end of our voyage of discovery, really.
11:07This CDK-1000 by PlaneWave,
11:10I mean, what's impressive about it
11:12is that you can put it in your backyard
11:15if you've got one big enough,
11:17but you can also then contribute to genuine scientific research.
11:21And it's also democratising science in this field.
11:25You don't normally get to say that with superpowers.
11:29But you cannot get away from the fact
11:31that what we've discovered with this thing
11:33is that this used to cost millions and millions,
11:37and through innovation
11:39and through trying to use new technologies and new software,
11:43they've tried to make something here at PlaneWave
11:45that anyone can use,
11:47and it can do things that weren't possible
11:49only a few years ago.
11:51I love it.
11:52This gets a 9 out of 10.
11:54I wasn't prepared for how exciting it is
11:56to see something that's in our own solar system,
11:59so it's not really stretching the abilities
12:01of this telescope at all.
12:03Yet I'm still looking at something
12:05that's half a billion miles away,
12:07and I've never seen it like that before.
12:09With DESIRED, we've looked at things
12:11that are just for you.
12:13Super high-end speakers, driving simulators.
12:16This isn't that.
12:18This is something that's just for you.
12:21Driving simulators.
12:22This isn't that.
12:24This is for the greater good.
12:26This is for everybody,
12:28and that's what really makes it special.