Korean Artist's Intentionally Useless Satellite To Launch This December

An anonymous reader quotes the introduction to Inhabit's article on the upcoming launch of an art project cum satellite intended to be as different as possible from conventional space hardware: "South Korean artist Song Hojun has created his own DIY satellite from scratch – and he's planning to launch it into space this coming December. Song created the satellite from assorted junk he found in back-alley electronics stores in his home town of Seoul, and over the course of six years he has finally managed to complete his space-bound project. Song's satellite cost just over $400 to make, however the cost of launching it to space is going to be a lot, lot more – over $100,000."

Comments

Can the U.S. military target it immediately?

[BMOC]

Seriously, we don't need more space junk. This "artist" is a griefer.

Re:Can the U.S. military target it immediately?

[yourexhalekiss]

Oh come on. I can't imagine that this $400 "satellite" has a propulsion system of any kind. It will deorbit in months if not weeks, and burn up on reentry in to the atmosphere. This satellite isn't going to be space junk.

Re:Can the U.S. military target it immediately?

[kav2k]

Target and do what? Blast into thousands of less trackable but no less dangerous fragments?

Re:Can the U.S. military target it immediately?

[DerekLyons]

Oh come on. I can't imagine that this $400 "satellite" has a propulsion system of any kind. It will deorbit in months if not weeks, and burn up on reentry in to the atmosphere.

It doesn't need a propulsion system to avoid deorbiting in weeks or months - it just needs to be put in a high enough orbit that atmospheric drag is minimized. Out beyond a couple of hundred miles, you're into a lifetime of years if not decades. Out a couple of thousand and you start getting into the centuries if not millenia range.
 
Not to mention, there's a huge range between a few hundred miles and geosynchronous that's all-but-empty because the orbits aren't all that useful.

Re:Can the U.S. military target it immediately?

[Hatta]

I can't imagine that this $400 "satellite" has a propulsion system of any kind. It will deorbit in months if not weeks

If you need a propulsion system to stay in orbit, you're not really in orbit.

Art?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't this the equivalent of putting together a non-running car out of scrap and then pushing it into the middle of the interstate and calling it 'art'?

Re:Art?

[CaptainLard]

No, its the equivalent of building a RUNNING car from scrap, driving it on the interstate, and letting anyone control the lights from the internet. Sounds lame until you replace "driving it on the interstate" with "launching into earth orbit".

Litterbug

[Anonymous Coward]

Littering near earth orbit as a side effect of doing something useful is problematic. Littering near earth orbit intentionally and for no purpose is pretty antisocial.

what it does

[PTBarnum]

Apparently people will be able to upload messages to be flashed in Morse code by LEDs on the satellite. So it actually does do something. I'm skeptical about how easy it will be to see the LEDs from Earth, though.

I get it! It's waste of space AND it's space junk!

[denzacar]

I am really, really trying to find some kind of justification for this "art" project and I'm coming up with bupkis.
OK... It does nothing scientific. But it does nothing artistic either.
It's about as artistic as painting a rock and dumping in the Marianas Trench.
For something to be considered art, it has to be able to communicate to other humans a message beyond just its own physical existence.

This satellite is supposed to send messages transmitted to it by blinking its LEDs and "People will be able to see the blinking lights with the naked eye or through a telescope".
Visible from the Earth's surface. With naked eye. LEDs. A 10x10x10 cm cube. Hanging in low Earth orbit. 600-2000 km from the surface. Right.

I can't really be bothered to look it up, but something tells me that you can't really see a 10 cm cube, 600-2000 km away, with an amateur telescope.
Besides, shouldn't Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee (IADC) "ground" this project?

Also, WTF is "Science is Fantasy" supposed to mean?
That science is unattainable and/or imaginary? Not real? With no real function or application?
Just dumping that "is" and it would make SOME sense. Or reversing the order of words in the sentence.
This... this is just half-thought through crap.

All I see here is rich, privileged parents, buying their rich, privileged, spoiled kid his 15 minutes of fame since he can't get there with his own effort and talent.