Comment Re:Cringe-worthy (Score 1) 62
Read the TFA, if you have not yet.
"We are working on a cheap version which we hope to use to identify oil contamination in water and soil, as well as a range of other possible toxins."
It is in the first paragraph, right at the top of the page. I did not invent it. Also, they are trying to make an absorbance spectrometer. It has nothing to do with planets or astronomy.
I would not call their goals "lackluster" either. I wish I had something like that in my lab. Problem is, the execution is very poor. The guys behind this are really clueless, to the point of having visible light spectra on their Kickstarter page backwards.