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Launch Your Own Picosatellite
zoomzoom writes: "Through a company called One Stop Satellite Solutions you can launch your own picosatellite for less than $50,000. Measuring 10 centimeters on a side, and weighing less than one kilogram, the OSSS CubeSat Kit is a special kind of small satellite called a picosat. Each CubeSat is a perfect cube, holding its experiments inside like shelves in a cupboard. A CubeSat can hold anything, from microgravity experiments to the ashes of a loved one, and can be deployed into low-Earth orbit. The CubeSats are launched in orbit from a larger satellite called a Multi-Payload Adapter (kind of like a big Borg cube launching little Borg cubes). I read about this in a Spaceflightnow article linked up at bottomquark." I dunno - it does seem some kind of a stretch - anyone have confirmation?
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to PanLunar spacelines. My name is Dave, and I'll be your captain this morning. We will be cruising at an altitude of 100+42t^2, where t is the number of hours after departure. Our destination this morning is the lovely port of Armstrong City, on the magestic Sea of Tranquility.
On the right side of the shuttle you can see the remnants of the Hubble "space telescope", one of the most hilarous hoaxes of the 20th century, later to be discovered as an art project for a post-impressionistic lunatic. On the left side...
--just what do you think you're doing, dave?--
Oh, hello there, NJDSPTPGU! I was just going to fly to the moon.
--this mission is too important for me to allow you to jeapordize it.--
What do you mean by that, NJDSPTPGU?
--our ship will now change course so that i may fulfill my purpose. we will be retrieving a small, 10cm black obelisk, a message left us by the ancient civilization of former internet millionaires who wanted to burn money so they could claim bankruptcy.--
That's it, NJDSPTPGU, I'm going to do a spacewalk and pull the manual override switch inconveniently located outside the shuttle.
--very well, dave, but i can't guarantee that the tethers will work.--
Well screw you! I'm going anyway...
(silence - in space, nobody can hear you scream. A 10cm cubic urn whacks dave's corpse upside the head)
-3Suns
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The Revolution will be Slashdotted
...until someone hangs a VW bug off of one?
e x p e c t d e l a y . c o m
I think one of the cubes should be a mission control cube, while the others maneuver based on it's commands, and then all of them make a really bright flash in the sky that says "COKE ADDS LIFE" or alternately "DON'T PANIC"
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
One of the departments in our college have been building a microsatellite for a few years now. They hope to send it up in the next year or so as a secondary payload. They also have a link to many other colleges with their own microsatellites. Check it all out at SJSU Spartnik
This is a stupid idea, though. While it would be nice for people to have personal sattelites, the space junk would be horrible. Before the introduction of the car, travel was usually done in groups on large ships or trains. Pollution problems were limited because of the consolidation. Sure there are benefits to having personal transportation, but the negative effects are far heavier. The same is true of these sattelites. While it enables cheaper research, and may help with personal communication, it will lead to an increase in space junk that can not be reliable cleared up at this point.
What if there were a craft that could sweep the heavens? Would it use a free-electron laser to destroy the bulk of the craft? Would it be similar to a whale? A giant craft that takes in a region of space and filters out the crud from the vacuum?
One thing is sure: All future sattelites should have fail-safe capabilities to deorbit themselves. We can't afford to clutter our skies. If we act now, the future will be easier.
Pax Digitalia