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Make Your Own Sputnik
An anonymous reader writes "What better way of celebrating the 50th anniversary of Sputnik than by making one of your own. The BBC says that you can build your own Sputnik satellite from stuff lying around the house. The BBC quotes an electronics hobbyist: "Technology now is way ahead of what was available in 1957, and making your own fully functional Sputnik would now be very simple indeed. I wouldn't be surprised if you could build one in a container smaller than a matchbox, weighing about as much as a wristwatch. The components, including a transmitter, battery and the sensors you'd need would probably cost less than 50 pounds [about 100 US dollars]. It really shouldn't be a problem to build and program the whole thing in under a day." Unfortunately, the BBC article doesn't go into technical details." And of course, actually getting it up into orbit might take a little more work.
I misread the word 'Sputnik' and sat here thinking "But I already do that every night"...
So, do I make my own Helicopter or my own Sputnik? Hmm...
I say Helicopter. Cooler and Deadlier.
"And of course, actually getting it up into orbit might take a little more work. "
I know a guy that makes home-made helos' that has the first 7 feet covered - after that...two words: space elevator.
Wouldn't it be cooler to build it with authentic to the era parts and pieces? It would be like a scavenger hunt meets science class. Sadly, it's beyond me and my capabilites.
I do have a line on a bunch of old vaccum tubes that have been in storage for years....
WTF? Over?
This reminds me of the heady days of Sputnik and Yuri Gegarin...
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
...back in the last Sputnik story that the entire idea of a real science probe was pretty much scrapped due to time pressure, and that they launched pretty much only a radio transmitter? Building that primitive beacon wasn't the impressive thing at all, putting it into orbit was.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
...is there really any possibility to launch it to the orbit from my backyard?
Can I do it with, say, $10,000 and without getting caught?
Perhaps they should be encouraging someone to create a powerful electro-magnet satellite sweeper to surf the orbital zone and "pick up" the junk that is whistling around out there, rather than encouraging Joe Average to add his own litter to the fray.
DISCLAIMER:
No, I have not thought this through.
But, it would be interesting to see -something- done about the problem before the garbage makes extra-terrestrial travel even more dangerous than it already is...
(rolls eyes)
Anybody with a public school education can outclass Werner Von Braun or Sergei Korolev with chewing gum and duct tape!
Please.
I, for one, welcome our new orbital overlords (constructed on the cheap).
Amateur radio operators have been doing this kind of thing for years... and our satellites actually MAKE it to orbit. Re the OSCAR program.
I'm waiting for a "-1 somepeoplejustshouldn'tgetmodprivileges" meta-moderation.
thank you, I have milk coming out of my nose now from laughing so hard...
...may be expensive but if you can fit the electronics inside of a ping pong ball you can at least get it close for free.
Looks like Pee Wee finally found a new gig, after that sex scandle and all...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Good luck getting the fan to do any "cooling" in space. And with today's instrumentation efficiency, there's probably not a whole lotta need to worry about cooling.. I'd be more worried about keeping things heated above -40 deg C to maintain operating temperature.
The article is not remotely about building a sputnik, but it is about how technology in sputnik served similar purposes to things used in the home. Using a baby monitor as a transmitter? a domestic thermostat? a balloon? a mercury thermometer? "4x large batteries"? come on. This sounds like the losing science fair project of a seven year old.
~Phil
You may want to update your sig to reflect the other DRM-free stores sprouting up (Amazon, Wal-Mart, Zune Marketplace soon) and Universal selling DRM-free music on Amazon as well. Not to mention places like eMusic and Magnatune
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
Make your own Internet! You will need 100 feet of twine, 4 dixie cups, and some duct tape.
"And of course, actually getting it up into orbit might take a little more work. "
Actually, it is probably a crime in most jurisdictions.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
YAY! I wasn't sure if tagging was working with my account - thanks :)
...don't send the strap of the equivalent wristwatch
Internet Related Technologies - http://www.irt.org
You could easily build this into something the size of a 1p coin (US penny) or smaller if you have a manufacturing lab.
You literally only need 2 or 3 SMT IC's and a couple other SMT components.
> And of course, actually getting it up into orbit might take a little more work.
:)
I'd be careful about saying that. While nerds may be in a minority everywhere they are found, in aggregate they are still a numerous and clever breed prone to accepting challenges like that. DJGPP came about because Stallman said it wasn't possible to run gcc under DOS. The thought of hundreds of thousands of sputniks in low earth orbit is scarey.
Home-made Sputnik, I Laika!
And have it play "Orange Crush" by REM... It would drive the RIAA totally insane if there is a pirate signal from space they can't find to take down... Heck, some solar panels expanding from the altoids tin, and an ipod shuffle, it could really be an achievment...
3 degrees of separation from Vladimir Putin
Some MIT hackers did just that. It's beeping instead of transmitting, but ya know =)
http://hacks.mit.edu/Hacks/by_year/2007/sputnik/
Entirely feasible, the Sputnik was basically a low power (QRP) transmitter. AFAIK it had no other payload. Ham radio operators have been making these for years:
http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/qrpprojs.html
It did beep faster/slower as temperatures rose/fell, I think, which you could basically implement using normal temperature variations in off the shelf resistors and capacitors.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Wasn't there a Dutch dude who got his amateur transponder launched as a secondary payload on an Indian PSLV rocket. Quite possibly there are more rockets with spare lifting capacity that might launch your homebrewed Sputnik. Might be worth the good publicity for them.
make your own DIY sputnik? Maybe.....
but I'd rather make my own DIY "rocket that launched it". Now thats got all the ingredients that makes any self respecting geeks eyes light up!!
If you work with Amsat you can have your work shot into orbit. There are about 18 currently in operation, with launches starting in the 60's. Amsat is an international organization.
The filk song "You can build a spaceship from the things you find at home" comes to mind.
http://www.khaosworks.org/filk/spaceship.html
Now next on my agenda was to find a rocket drive
Strong enough to launch the ship and still keep me alive
I found the right propellant when I scouted out the bars
Six kegs of Old Peculier that will shoot me to the shtars! *hic*
(chorus) Lockheed, Bell and Boeing, MDC and Grumman too
Pratt and Whitney, BAE, they'll keep it all from you
They make big bucks off NASA so they never want it known
That you can build a spaceship from the things you find at home!
Yes, getting any object to orbit is the hardest part. You can make anything from nanosatillites (this object would qualify) to geosync communications satellites and send it to orbit if you have the money. Russia, China and several other countries will send your satellite to orbit or any other place in space. Amateurs have launched suborbital rockets in 2004 but getting to orbit is a a lot harder. Here is the /. article about the amateur suborbital rocket:
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/05/18/0133223&mode=thread&tid=134&tid=137&tid=160&tid=193
Here is the industry article about some history and pricing for launching objects into space:
http://www.aiaa.org/aerospace/Article.cfm?issuetocid=54&ArchiveIssueID=10
*Dodge*
In Soviet Russia... Sputnik builds YOU!
As it turns out, any computer that any of us has is ~50 years more advanced than sputnik also. As for launching into space yourself, that's a bit expensive, something like $700-$1000/kg with 1000 kg payload...plus the 30 million in r&d for the launch vehicle and related reconnaissance. (source: http://www.thespacereview.com/article/395/1)
stuff |
Oh, that old meme.
Trivia: What is the probability that off-the-shelf microelectronics (like wireless routers) will work in space? Answer: Roughly zero.
Why? Look at the information starting at page 23 on this document: Spacecraft Charging and Hazards to Electronics in Space:
3. Radiation Effects on Spacecraft ElectronicsThe radiation sources discussed are hazardous to electronics since energetic particles can deposit energy inside microelectronic circuitry and disrupt their proper operation. Energy deposition in electronics is measured in rads(M) where M is a specific material being considered (1 rad = 100 ergs/gm). Energy deposition can be in the form of ionization or atomic displacements, which can permanently damage electronics, or it can be in the form of single events, which can cause transient or permanent damages depending on the severity of the event.
NASA doesn't ship Xeon processors into space, not because of budget cuts, but because they don't work reliably (if at all) in space.
http://outcampaign.org/
That's why you build your Sputnik's outer casing out of two stainless steel pet bowls soldered together. A millimeter or so of steel will knock the incoming radiation way down, and will incidentally shield the insides from electromagnetic fields and solar wind.
It's not like you'd just be duct-taping the componbents together and shooting it into space - that'd be silly.
I've been looking for a project to use one of these for. I probably wouldn't be able to get it down to aspirin tablet size because of the battery, but I bet that all of the required circuitry would fit on the target board, which is about the size of a penny.
The development kit only costs $20. The microcontrollers themselves are only about $1-$2 each, in quantity. Probably wouldn't be "home-brew" enough for the folks at the BBC, though.
Not much debris would be attracted to the magnets. Because of the astronomical cost of orbiting each gram of material, iron and steel are unpopular choices for space craft construction.
After I posted I got to thinking about this very point. Ceramics and magnets aren't a good match - :P
However, I did get to thinking about this...
What if we put a large vessel into space for the sole purpose of collecting all of the crap - complete with Canada arm and lots of o2 for course corrections. Eventually we get a large orbitting clump of material that we could potentially move somewhere else and re-use. I'm not saying that we could do this today, but one of the gripes that we constantly hear about is the high cost of getting things into space.
Futuristic Blither to follow...
Once a suitable location has been determined (moon? Mars? Vulcan?), we add enable the thrusters on the collector vehicle, a couple of trips around ol' terra firma to pick up speed, and away it goes. Then, when we arrive to build our little colony on that hunk-o-rock, this material will be there waiting for us to recylce in some fashion or another.
Another lost art, like the secret of hose gartering that doesn't unravel, I suppose.
If they didn't do it on purpose, I guess it's questionable whether it can be called "programming". But if it was done knowingly, I'd say it's just as much a program as the ROM BIOSes were on the early IBM PCs... the old boot ROMs were fixed components that behaved in certain known ways under certain conditions, just like the thermally variable resistors in Sputnik did.