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Satellites on the Cheap

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the now-thats-cool dept.

An anonymous reader writes "At a cost of just $50,000 - including plane tickets to the Alaska launch site - it was constructed using off-the-shelf parts not designed to withstand the rigors of space. Its life span was only expected to be a few months. Six students put together the satellite last year after a three-year research and design project made possible with a grant from Boeing Co. The Department of Defense (news - web sites) Space Test Program approved the project and put it on a launch list"" Beats doing the egg drop.

32 of 103 comments (clear)

  1. The $50,000 is a misnomer by PoiBoy · · Score: 5, Informative
    This $50,000 price tag was just for the parts to actually build the satellite. It does not include the value of the grant from Boeing for three years of development time, nor does it reflect the salaries of engineers to do it. Moreover, the article did not give details about how the satellite was in orbit; and I would bet that if a person wanted to shoot his own satellite into space, the price would be prohibitive.

    Sure, a bunch of amateurs being able to develop a satellite on a shoestring budget makes for an interesting story, but to suggest that there will soon be a supply of reliable, ultra-cheap satellites is a stretch.

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    1. Re:The $50,000 is a misnomer by WolfWithoutAClause · · Score: 5, Informative

      Actually they went to Boeing, and said- hey we need $50,000; Boeing looked at the plan, it looked good, so they patted them on the head, and gave them $250,000, figuring they would need it- and then the students came in on their original budget...

      So, the university now has funding for the next 4 years.

      There were no salaries- this satellite was built using student labour.

      The satellite was launched for free of course, there was space on one of the launchers for it, and they weren't charged AFAIK.

      Incidentally, radio hams have put their own satellite up... so its not totally out of the question for privately funded groups.

      --

      -WolfWithoutAClause

      "Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"
    2. Re:The $50,000 is a misnomer by Rogerborg · · Score: 2
      • This $50,000 price tag was just for the parts to actually build the satellite

      Shut up! Everyone knows that engineers work on space stuff for free because it's so cool, and NASA shoots stuff up out of the goodness of its publically funded heart for the same reason. Limitless cheap space exploitatation is coming Real Soon Now, just as it has been for the past 10/20/30/40/50/60/70/80/90/100 (insert your own number) years.

      Seriously, you're quite right. Much of the cost of a satellite goes into testing and redundancy to make sure that once you've added to the massive expense of shooting the thing up there, it damn well works. You can lose the entire cost of a project based on using a ten cent diode rather than a fifty cent diode. Cutting corners is rarely a good gamble.

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    3. Re:The $50,000 is a misnomer by DocDavid · · Score: 3, Informative

      Incidentallly hams have put up over 30 satellites over the years. Most of them have been launched vy AMSAT, a privately funded organization of hams that work to put up satellites for the ham radio community. Also most of the newer satellite technology has come from the success and failures of hams.

      Dave
      KA3TNY

    4. Re:The $50,000 is a misnomer by Mr.+Eradicator · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Sure, it took lots of time to develop this satellite. That's just part of the deal. It's rather ironic that these students actually _paid_ to work on this satellite, if you consider their tuition costs.

      The thing to remember here is that the goal of these satellites is not to produce _one_ lasting satellite. Because these sats are so cheap to build, several universities can design and build them. In some cases, a successful project could be used later on by the government in a larger scale.

      Consider this ... what if some university designed a sturdy, yet cheap high-atmosphere/LEO weather satellite? Their design could be used to create a "Twister-esque" system of satellites. So, rather than sending up one extremely expensive satellite, we could send up thousands of smaller satellites to do the same task, but covering much more area. While these satellites only have lives of a few months to a year, they are so cheap that replacements are "petty change".

      In the end, the cost of the development for this design wasn't nearly as much as it would have been for the single, much-larger satellite. You even get the bonus of giving some college students some very effective experience.

      --

      That's Mr. Eradicator to you.

      trance-port
    5. Re:The $50,000 is a misnomer by WolfWithoutAClause · · Score: 2

      >If you think this didn't cost any real money, think again. I'll bet the launch space was "donated" and written off. Congratulations, the US
      >Government just paid (40% corp tax rate * 500,000 secondary payload lauch fee) for this $50,000 satellite.

      Actually, you have this backwards; the launch costs are the cheap bit! The cost of any satellite that gets within five times the launch costs is doing very well, this one is probably about one tenth of the launch costs. Boeing just saved a fist full of money, and it's entirely possible that the launch truly was free- rockets are rarely 100% occupied. The cost of the launch presumably was paid for by the other occupants.

      There's another secret here that few people realise- the main thing that is keeping the cost of launches high is the lack of demand. The reason there is little demand is that the costs are high. Anything, like this, that can reduce the overall costs is going to have a very positive effect on the launch market, price, volume and profit.

      --

      -WolfWithoutAClause

      "Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"
    6. Re:The $50,000 is a misnomer by david+duncan+scott · · Score: 2
      It's rather ironic that these students actually _paid_ to work on this satellite, if you consider their tuition costs.

      Nope, they're USNA and we paid them (although not much, especially given the pretty high caliber of student the service academies get).
      --

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  2. Off topic, but started on topic. by DoorFrame · · Score: 5, Informative

    I went to look up a few older stories on slashdot which, as I recalled, were the same story as this one. But I recall reading the other one's months ago. I was curious if this was merely a repeat so I scrolled to the bottom of the Slashdot main page and used the SEARCH option.

    Great, I thought, I'll just search for +Boeing +Student +Satelite or something of that sort.

    I tried this.

    And I was once again reminded, when I reviewed the results, that Slashdot, for some reason, doesn't have boolean searches. Now, for a site which champions Google "the home of the AND search" .com, I'm confused as to why this functionality would not have been added to slashdot by now. It makes it next to impossible to find older stories, because instead of stories about Boeing AND students AND satelites, I find stories about Boring OR students OR satelites.

    This, as you can imagine, is not terribly helpful. It turns out that there are an awful lot of stories about Boeing or students or satlelites.

    So, to recap, I'm pretty sure this story is a repeat (I'm sure someone else will go to the trouble of posting the exact references), but I'm damned positive that the Slashdot/Slash search feature is only marginally useful at its best, and outright useless at its worse.

    Begin the down-modding if you must.

    --

    --
    RumorsDaily
    1. Re:Off topic, but started on topic. by br0ck · · Score: 3, Informative

      I would also like to see more advanced search options, but in this case if you spell satellite correctly you'll find exactly what you wanted on the first two pages of results. Using your search terms, the Slashdot search results are actually more relavant than the Google AND search results.

  3. first satellite by mgblst · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I wonder how much the very first satellite, sputnik would have cost? Surely it wouldnt be
    that expensive to build the thing, just costs
    alot to get it up there?

    1. Re:first satellite by Cerrian · · Score: 3, Interesting

      In regards to sputnik, it was essentially only a simple reciever and transmitter, built with parts that we could probably obtain today at Radio Shack.

      Launching that sucker is a whole other financial issue. Materials alone for the rocket must have taken a nice gouge out of their alloted budget. Then you consider the years of R&D, Support and Logistics, and prior failed launches. At the time nobody really cared what the payload did once in space (except for military purposes) all they wanted to know was how high can we the bloody thing in the sky before it starts come crashing down (aka ballistic missile)

      Hell, lauching from a Pegasus rocket today still costs a handful of million of dollars and it's one of the cheaper rockets in terms of cost per mass.

  4. The article shows it... by nikolas · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...there`s no such thing as a free launch!

    Bruuuuhahahah...

  5. Ohboyohboyohboy, I love Karma by rbeattie · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You can find a picture of the satelite and a bunch of info about the project here. http://www.ew.usna.edu/~bruninga/pcsat.html

    -Russ

    --
    Me
  6. Don't we have enough junk in space? by swagr · · Score: 4, Funny

    Somewhere (maybe here) scientists predicted that with the vast ammount of crap zipping about up there, the right type of collision (say bewteen a chunk of solar panel and a sattelite) could cause a chain reaction that would destroy every sattelite in orbit, and make it impossible to launch more.

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    -... --- .-. . -.. ..--..
  7. Re:Uncle by GigsVT · · Score: 2

    http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/11/08/232920 7

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  8. life span by Alien54 · · Score: 3, Funny
    ``If we get lucky with radiation, it could last three years,'' said Darrell Boden, a professor in the aerospace engineering department.

    Watch, it will be up there still working ten or twenty years from now when it finally falls into the atmosphere.

    --
    "It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
  9. cost fo getting it into geo-stationary orbit by the+cleaner · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I wolud just love to sell my wifes car to get myself a sattelite of my own. I could even convince my buddies to sell their wifes/girlfriends cars to get that system built. :)

    The big question is: How much higher is the price to get that thing up into an orbit where we constantly have access to it. I reccon, this might be a lot more expensive, but I would just love to have a communications-channel on my own...

    Dont wake me up, please...

    --
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    1. Re:cost fo getting it into geo-stationary orbit by Arimus · · Score: 2, Funny

      (At this risk of losing most of my karma)
      Given the time this task would consume we'd probably need to keep the cars and sell the wives/girlfriends.

      --
      --- Users are like bacteria -> Each one causing a thousand tiny crises until the host finally gives up and dies.
  10. Light on info by dohcvtec · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Neither this article, nor the previous one posted on /. mention what the USNA plans to do with the satellite. Many of us geeks would like to do something like this just to do it, but surely they must be doing something interesting with the satellite now that it is in orbit. What exactly is the fruit of $50,000 + 3 yrs. work + Boeing's grant?

    --
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    1. Re:Light on info by InitZero · · Score: 5, Informative

      Neither this article, nor the previous one posted on /. mention what the USNA plans to do with the satellite.

      Ham radio operators all over the world (please view with Netscape; it doesn't load right with IE) use a nifty packet application, APRS through PCSat.

      APRS is short for Automatic Position Reporting System. Basically, the satellite allows hams to send GPS reports (such as mine), short text messages, weather reports, etc. to a large number of users. The satellite acts as a 'digital repeater'. Any packet it hears, it send back to earth.

      To hit the satellite, all you need is a hand held radio running less than five watts of power into the stock 'rubber duck' antenna. If you're a boater, hiker or whatnot that isn't in range of land communications, you can easily send your data through the satellite and have it relayed to a huge earthly footprint.

      Over much of the populated world, there are land based digital repeaters that will relay these packets for hams. Many even gate the information to the internet where it can be viewed by anyone.

      If you're the least bit technically and electronically minded, you can probably get the base level ham license (Technician) without any difficulty. It doesn't require a knowledge of Morse Code (CW) anymore. You can take the sample Tech test online. The sample test uses real questions right off the FCC exam. The test costs under $10 in most areas.

      Using more than a dozen ham radio satellites for free isn't the only reason to get your ham license, of course. There's also that you can modify those 2.4 gHz network cards to run up to 1,500 watts of power legally instead of under half a watt as sold. Think what kind of distance you could extend your network! (And how many birds flying nearby will be microwaved!)

      If nothing else, a ham radio license will get you another punch in your 'biggest geek' card. Who doesn't want that?

      Matt (k4mls)

  11. Re:Uncle by Enigma2175 · · Score: 2

    And:
    http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/08/24/165823 8

    --

    Enigma

  12. Why launch in Alaska? by redelm · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Launching a satellite from Alaska? Why? There's free delta-V available from the Earth's rotation if you launch from further south. You don't need to be on the equator.


    Is it on some really wierd polar orbit where you don't want eastward velocity? They'd better really map out the space junk then, because most of it will be coming at them fast.

    1. Re:Why launch in Alaska? by egdull · · Score: 2, Insightful

      They were most likely borrowing space on someone else's booster.

      If a commercial communications sat was launching into a polar low earth orbit from a pad in Alaska, and had room, a free ride is the right price for this project. :-).

    2. Re:Why launch in Alaska? by spaceyhackerlady · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Polar orbit launches don't get much help from Earth's rotation, but they still have range safety issues: if the rocket blows up, will the wreckage land on anybody?

      The U.S. launches almost all of its polar orbit satellites from Vandenberg AFB in California. By launching to the south there are no people for a very long way, should anything go wrong. The situation is similar for Alaska.

      ...laura

  13. web page with pictures by kaas · · Score: 2, Redundant

    http://www.ew.usna.edu/~bruninga/pcsat.html

  14. In a related story.... by technopinion · · Score: 5, Funny

    A team of 4 students from Devry Technical Institute cobbled together a nuclear submarine using parts scavenged from the set of Junkyard Wars, and a $300 grant from Kmart. Said the leader of the project, "We expected this thing to immediately sink to the bottom and begin its cycle of ocean-killing, but amazingly enough, it went down at a 30-degree angle, taking almost 3 times longer to sink, and it looks like it might pollute the ocean for many more years than we expected. It's quite incredible!"

    This truly is a great day for amateur scientists.

  15. Sheesh...another repeat of OLD news by HardCase · · Score: 3, Informative
    Zowie, we read about this last November!


    Oh, and how about in August?

  16. Lots of similar projects by Mr.+Eradicator · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I spent some time working on a similar project at the University of Washington in the Aero-Astro department. It was part of a group of nanosats funded by the AFOSR and DARPA.

    These small satellite projects are good for design classes because they are small enough that one year's class can complete the design and the simplicity of the satellites makes for cheap overall costs. Thus, the university can usually afford to fund the construction of the satellite. Actually seeing your hard work being launched on a mission is quite fullfilling.

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    trance-port
  17. No risk to GEOsats by isdnip · · Score: 3, Informative

    There's no risk at all to broadcast sats. The TV stations use geostationary (GEO) satellites, in orbit 23k miles above the equator. They all orbit the earth synchronously, so there are no collisions in that belt.

    This and the other amateur (OSCAR) sats are in low earth orbit (LEO), 200-300 miles up. They fly around for a few years and eventually fall back and burn up. They don't come within >22,000 miles of your precious TV broadcast relay.

  18. Everything that goes up comes down? by HerbieStone · · Score: 2, Interesting

    As stated in the article, the satilite will work for 3 years if they are lucky. What I'd like to known is what happens after the thing stops working.
    Will it end as some more orbiting trash or is there a way to bring the satilite down again?

    1. Re:Everything that goes up comes down? by Mr.+Eradicator · · Score: 2

      Very rarely to engineers plan to leave a non-operative satellite in precious orbit space. With these small satellites, they are usually in low orbits to begin with and after a few months to a year, the orbit continually decays until a critical point at which the satellite begins its fiery re-entry. This is just the passive way of ending a mission.

      With larger sats, engineers will have some sort of end-of-life system onboard which puts it into a de-orbit trajectory.

      I'm not sure what the threshold is for how large a satellite can be (and of what materials it is made) before it will not completely burn up before "hitting some poor soul". I imagine few satellites are this large, and if they are they probably make special arrangements for their end-of-life.

      --

      That's Mr. Eradicator to you.

      trance-port
  19. My grandmother could build a better satellite.... by supernova87a · · Score: 3, Interesting
    This is great, just what we need -- more space junk floating up there. It would be nice if people thought as hard about how to get junk out of space as they do about putting junk into space. It's really getting pretty crowded up there. We have a whole Air Force division dedicated to tracking space junk:
    • http://www.vandenberg.af.mil/associate_units/14a f/ links/mission.htm


    What's next, Cletus and friends sending the dishwasher from the front yard into space?