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Maybe because it's good marketing? If someone reads about it on the Washington Post, they're more apt to believe and contribute than someone who sees a random Kickstarter campaign with nothing but a Youtube video.

I think the above poster is talking about how everyone will forget about it in a week. Better to have it started now where everyone can just contribute to the campaign after they read the article.

I'm more curious why this needs to be crowdfunded at all? Seems like a venture where very few people would be able to understand the "Risks and Challenges".

New, unproven and expensive/risky technologies aren't a great candidate for crowdfunding.

Probably because their campaign is not directed at americans, this is a small italian company so they likely focus on advertising in italian.