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Orbit Your Own Satellite For $8,000
RobGoldsmith sends word of Interorbital's TubeSat Personal Satellite Kit, which allows anyone to send a half-pound payload to low-earth orbit for $8,000. Your satellite will fly to orbit from Tonga atop an Interorbital Systems NEPTUNE 30 rocket along with 31 other TubeSats. It will function for several weeks, then its orbit will decay and it will burn up in the atmosphere. Interorbital plans to send up a load of 32 TubeSats every month. If you pay in full in advance, you get slotted onto a particular scheduled launch. Here are Interorbital's product page and brochure (PDF).
A big new trend for "burials in space".
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Low earth orbit is above the law, literally, isn't it? Send up a few gigabytes of flash memory and a transmitter. Torrents from space!
The sign that a technology has really matured enough to be taken seriously is when it starts to have commercial applications. Moreover, the presence of businesses like this will help provide further incentive for the improvement of space related technologies.
However, it isn't clear to me who would use a half-pound satellite that can only last a few weeks. TFA lists the following possible applications:
Earth-from-space video imaging. Earth magnetic field measurement. Satellite orientation detection (horizon sensor, gyros, accelerometers, etc.). Orbital environment measurements (temperature, pressure, radiation, etc.). On-orbit hardware and software component testing (microprocessors, etc.). Tracking migratory animals from orbit. Testing satellite stabilization methods. Biological experiments. On-orbit advertising. Private e-mail
Honestly, I don't see much use of most of those as a general use. Certainly scientists will benefit from this sort of technology but I doubt anyone would try to use this for private e-mail systems. You would just use the internet and encrypt your stuff. The idea of using this sort of thing for low cost climate and weather data gathering is interesting. I suspect that as with many technologies, new uses will be developed that we cannot easily anticipate now that the technology is still young.
Half pound chunks that burn up on reentry aren't going to hurt anything.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
A couple of rockets is piss compared to the millions of cars, factories, and volcanoes in the world. "Straw that breaks the camel's back" is just a strawman (pun not intended :/) argument used by ludites that have something against cool technologies for some reason.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
/me hides half-pound ball of nickel-cobalt cement reinforced with titantium carbide behind his back
What was that?
I think there are people who can get you that high for even less per gram. Well, for your first hit anyway.
32 satellites at $8K each is only $256,000. Subtract the cost of the materials used to build the satellites. (I'm assuming they're not using class S parts, but solar panels, etc still ain't cheap.) They're seriously planning to deploy a working delivery system to space for that kind of money?
Not really. Our best plan for artificial weaponized meteors is telephone-pole-to-crowbar sized rods of tungsten. Somehow I doubt that much tungsten weighs less than 0.5 pounds.
Hmm... I think there's some cheaper "memorable" options out there.
Option 1 (Daddy is Forever)
~1000USD to be cremated and then ~8,000USD** to be pressed into a half-carat loose diamond.
Option 2 (Daddy was an Astronaut-Burnt-Up-on-Reentry)
~1000USD to be cremated and then ~8000USD to be shot into space.
**ashes to diamonds
greed@All_Evils:~#
...get to chose where it comes down? I really don't know, but I wonder if one could design a .5 pound satellite with the express intention of surviving re-entry, like a 1/2 pound slug of lead in the shape of a dart or a sphere.
That's one heck of a way to commit suicide.
greed@All_Evils:~#
Seriously, no. 2.9kJ is nothing. It's less than the biochemical energy in 0.1g of fat, only enough energy to lift 1kg 300m against gravity.
2.9kJ is certainly not sufficient for accelerating 1kg from 8km/s (LEO orbit) to 11km/s (escape velocity) or even just about 10km/s (geostationary transfer orbit perigee).
1J=1Nm=(1kg*m/s^2)*1m=1kg*(m/s)^2
Kinetic energy of 1kg at 8km/s: 0.5*1kg*(8000m/s)^2=32MJ
Kinetic energy of 1kg at 10km/s:
0.5*1kg*(10000m/s)^2=50MJ
That's a difference of 18MJ to get 1kg from LEO to a geostationary transfer orbit (and some more to turn that into a geostationary orbit).