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Budget Satellite
codejunkie writes: "Check out this story from the Baltimore Sun. Apparently
the middies were laughed at when they proposed a budget satellite for 50K. Boeing said it couldn't be done and gave them 250K. Well now they can build five more because the smart minds on the bay have built one."
But will the quality be the same? Aren't the more expensive parts expensive just because they are designed for outer space use?
Oh great, the Yugo of sattelites. Parts are gonna break off and land on my house, now that I've said something.
Don't you wish people would give you 5 times the amount you asked for when doing projects like this?
...All I can say is that my life is pretty strange...
"And they were innovative - they discovered that the tape in a tape measure would flip into place on its own while in orbit."
We remember the last space venture battling metric versus auxiliary measurement systems.
(I'm sorry NASA. You guys do wonderful things. I just couldn't resist.)
jrbd
The MacGyver satellite
Anyone have any idea where the $25 panels can be purchased for $25 like the article says?
I want to build an array to power my house.... Or at least build an dc -> ac power outlet for my laptop in the desert... Anyone have any idea?
"Not my manner of thinking but the manner of thinking of others has been the source of my unhappiness." - M
Several students at my school, Leland High, decided that we should undertake a challenge unlike any other. A goal was set to be the first high school to launch a satellite into outer space and have it communicate back with earth, as vaguely mentioned in a Slashback. This particular program is called Cubesat, but only consisted exclusively of universities and private corporations/citizens until we came along.
Much like the engineers in this article, we are using off-the-shelf parts to build our satellite, albeit not from Radio Shack since Radio Shacks don't seem to carry much in San Jose. The antenna we are designing exemplifies the simplicity of the components. In theory, guitar string or the wire used in braces would do the job easily. Our power system is even more simple: d-sized lithium batteries (non-rechargable) linked together.
The parts for our Cubesat will cost less than $5,000, more likely less than $1,000. We are hoping that our prototype will function properly during a test launch on an amateur rocket. After that, designing the antenna configuration (for those who are knowledgable about radio, our cube-shaped satellite forms a poor ground plane and we are also confined to a difficult broadcast frequency) and internal layout (to ensure that our satellite has a perfect center of gravity).
You can reach the webpage for the Leland Cubesat team here. Be forewarned, some of the information is slightly out of date at the moment. I will do my best to fix that as soon as possible, but priorities lie elsewhere at the moment.
Yes, but, unless you are Slashdot personnel, or unless you post from the same IP and happen to have mod-points, there is no way you can read that stored IP address.
I remember seeing a schematic for an electronic circuit that explicitly specified a particular Radio Shack part for one of the semiconductor devices. The circuit would not work with commercial quality devices, only the Radio Shack part could be relied upon to have sufficient leakage current, which is normally a bad thing, for the circuit to work.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Hell, I wish them the best of luck. I hope the satellite lasts them 5 years instead of one. The idea here ISN'T making satellites out of cheap parts, its coming up with less expensive ways to accomplish the tasks needed to operate a saltellite. Sure using a tape measure for an antenna sounds hokey, but maybe it'll give the professionals some ideas for the future (gee antennas that unroll on their own instead of requriing some advanced deployment system that only gets used once) etc.
For as much as folks bitch about the gov't here, I think if a few students decide to show that a satellite CAN be constructed cheaply - more power to them. The information they gather will be very useful. Yes, sure, the launch costs aren't part of the $50K, but that wasn't part of the equation. Most satellites themselves WITHOUT launch costs are millions and millions of dollars. Nobody said they could launch it and build it for < $50K. So they hitch a ride on a rocket going up anyway. Remember, this thing is pretty small and it probably is tucked into the payload bay where a normal size satellite wouldn't fit.
But even if it isn't. I'd think geeks like us would be proud that some students got laughed at when applying for the grant and managed to pull it off through some everyday common sense and ingenuity. I say good luck and I hope everything works as planned!
Top Most Bizarre/Disturbing Error Messages
ducktape. Yes folks, the only thing that will survive the nuclear war besides coakroaches. Personally, I don't think there has been a project yet, that could have not been improved or fixed by ducktape. No need for those fancy bolts, plates, etc. The 50k$ satellite will use ducktape.
--- d'oh
UoSAT-1, if I remember correctly (details are sparse on the net) was build on a budget of 60,000 as a student project and piggybacked into orbit on an Ariane-4 comsat launch. A number of subsequent UoSATs are part of the OSCAR series of radio amateur satellites, and a commercial spin-off of the University, SSTL (Surrey Satellite Technology Limited) build and sell minisats in the 200-500Kg rangefor commercial purchasers; see, for example, this report of the launch of UoSAT-12 (from 1999).
OK, so you build one satallite for $50,000, that leaves you with $200,000.... how do you build five more $50,000 satallites with $200,000?
The first one was a prototype, maybe it cost then $10,000 working out how to put it together right. So the next lot would only cost around $40,000.
The point is that Boeing thought that $250,000 was a minimal kind of figure.
Lots of opportunities for free launch like this exist, most satellites launch with concrete ballast to bring the payload up to a set weight, importantant for a predictible trajectory.
How much concrete, there could be scope for quite a lot of "hitchhiking"...
Also is this regular concrete or a special (expensive) kind?
It has a light side, a dark side and holds the universe together.
Fixes bloody well everything!
Launching a satellite costs something like $50,000 per kilogram. So as long as their satellite weighs less than 4 kilograms, they'll use the whole $250,000 to put the thing into space.
Launch vehicles frequently contain "ballast". The reasoning being that it is easier to make payload mass up to a known value than throttling the engines. Which would require more complex (and expensive) engines and flight control systems.
The only difficulty is if the "hitchhiking" satellite has a much lower density than ballast materials. Since either it wouldn't fit or the rest of the ballast needs to be something extra dense. Since typically concrete is used density can be adjusted by proportion/type of agregate.
Antennas can be very lightweight (a dipole with a mesh reflector works very well) and a 1.375"x4.5" flexible solar panel that outputs 50mA at 3VDC (think an array of these) will set you back 8$ a pop from RS
Depends how much power you need. If you need large solar arrays then a mechanism to unfold them could be the expensive bit as well as batteries.
Also I wasn't aware that RS sold pnmantic parts or does this satellite have no kind of attitude control...
Why are they launching the rocket from the Kodiak islands?
Don't you need a more powerful rocket the farther away you get from the equator? I heard that was why the Russians built such powerful rockets because they launched them from Siberia.
Florida makes a lot more sense.
There is that one company the launch's rockets from a ship so that they can do it at the equator and avoid the here-today-gone-tomorrow governments that are on the equator.
Build a satellite for $50K, that is.
The article clearly stated that they ignored the cost of a significant amount of labor, as it was provided by individual grants.
Not to diminish the main point that there are sometimes unorthodox inexpensive solutions, it's hardly fair to use these cost comparisons to pick on aerospace firms who don't have labor forces that are willing to work for free.
We hate to cut your educations short, but you're needed in the DOD procurement office right now. Here are your comissions. Get to work!
And since the design is done, they could probably pump out copies of this one for a dime a dozen. But they're letting other teams use the money on new designs, which is good too.
Dyolf Knip
The millitary would benifit greatly from the advanced communication they could setup in the field using portable temporary satelites. You don't think they had an alterior motive, do you?
Spring is here. Don't believe me, look outside!
My main concern, though, is the reliability of the tape measure in question. I know I've had several tape measures that would never regain their rigidness once bent out of shape. This has happenes with even the reliable brands that don't typically have such problems.
:-) Well, that and if you cut a piece off to use as an antenna...
Actually, contractor-grade tape measures are quite durable. They're wider and a bit thicker than the ones you get in regular hardware stores, and usually come with extended guarantees. But said guarantees are likely void off the planet Earth
I'm not an efficiency expert, but shouldn't the first satellite cost far more than its successors? R&D, and all that, doens't apply to duplicates, right?
--hongpong.com
It's nice to see students getting a chance to do this. If the effective government monopoly on space launch could be pried loose the price might come down to where more colleges could afford this (as it is their getting a "free" launch).
Oh, and re:
"And they were innovative - they discovered that the tape in a tape measure would flip into place on its own while in orbit. A more expensive antenna system would have depended on electronics to do the same thing."
This must be the Microsoft definition of "innovative" -- the steel tape measure technique for satellite antennas has been around since the 1960's.
For that matter, motorized antennas are pretty cheap (think automobile scrap), just ridiculously heavy for that application.
-- Alastair
David Brown
USNA, Class of 1987
144l. ph34r my 133t l3g4l 5k1lz!
Check out this text about the cooling experiment, referenced off the main PCsat page:
So we put 80 RED LEDS on the bottom of PC sat as a 3W thermal radiator for this test. And just for fun, at night we can also turn them on as
power permits as a visual experiment. Calculations suggest a magnitude of about 6 if it is pointing straight down. Eight, if it is off to one side or the other. Magnitude 8 is visible with binoculars.
So...
Which middie will be the first geek to cobble together a scrolling LED sign seen from space?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
I don't think they've launched it yet, and in any event, do you honestly think a satellite like this would survive re-entry as anything more than tape measurer ashes and vaporized solar panels? De-orbiting objects ride in well into the double-digit Mach range, and I seriously doubt there's any components available at Radio Shanty ("You've got questions, we've got blank stares!")that could deal with those speeds in an atmosphere.
Dyolf Knip
Well, they're still overpriced. Likely due to the low demand for space-capable solar panels.
Dyolf Knip