Will people pay to learn about outer space in the same way they'll pay for House of Cards?

John Hendricks thinks so. The man who founded the company behind the Discovery Channel is launching a new venture, CuriosityStream, an online subscription video site that launched on Monday.

CuriosityStream is like a Netflix for documentaries: nothing but videos about the real world, for under $60 a year. CuriosityStream launches with a library of almost 1,000 titles that totals hundreds of hours of content, much of it short form. The site is also working on original videos by commissioning work from companies like the BBC. The ad-free service costs $2.99 per month for standard resolution, the same price point as Vessel, another recent online video subscription service. A subscription for high definition content runs $5.99 per month, and the company has plans to roll out ultra high definition 4K video later this year.

Among the originals at launch is Destination Pluto, an eight-part series that follows the work of a team that is preparing to survey the planet with a probe in July.

"I've always been convinced, and Discovery proved it, there's a big appetite for factual and informational content," Hendricks said in an interview with Mashable. "That's what CuriosityStream is designed to do."

He should know. In 1982, Hendricks founded the company behind the Discovery Channel, one of the first cable channels bringing non-fiction content into the homes of Americans. That company, Discovery Communications, is now valued at about $13.7 billion.

Hendricks retired as chairman of the board of Discovery Communications, which owns 14 cable television channels, in March 2014.

Hendricks said that he took cues from Netflix, which he said blazed a trail in streaming in the same that HBO did in cable. Now, he believes, the market is ready for other channels to emerge, opening an opportunity to make CuriosityStream the Discovery Channel of the web.

"I've been a big believer in this: As soon as digital technology would allow people to instantly watch what they wanted to watch, it would be a huge revolution in television," he said.

Hendricks is realistic about CuriosityStream's audience, but felt that people who want non-fiction content would be willing to pay for content.

"What I've discovered in my years is that about 25% of media viewers really enjoy content that satisfies their curiosity," he said. "And that's what we're after."

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