

Orbit Your Own Satellite For $8,000 - edw519
http://spacefellowship.com/2009/08/01/interorbital-syatems-tubesat-personal-satellite-kit/

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elasere
Guys, Interorbital has little credibility _to date_. They have been around for
quite a while without having much to show for. Maybe, just maybe, it is true
that they have everything lined up and ready to go and just need the funding,
but so claim pretty much any other crazy space startup. Some of these actually
have pretty sizable working rocket engines and have flown experimental
vehicles already, yet they make humbler claims. I'd just take the news with a
grain of salt. It's easy to talk.

Again, they may be for real. In any case I'd expect to see some of the new
companies succeed in creating a cheap nanosatellite launcher within 5 years.

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chancho
Orbit your own satellite? Isn't that a bit like eating your own mouth?

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tome
Maybe it's a bit like this:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_star#Use_in_astrophysics>

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anigbrowl
They really need to put the specs online and work on their presentation - I
love everything I see at their website, but the site itself looks extremely
amateurish...which is a pity, because their idea of fractional ownership of
rockets has some merit. Also: [http://www.interorbital.com/CubeSat%20BOOST-
UP%20Program%20R...](http://www.interorbital.com/CubeSat%20BOOST-
UP%20Program%20Release.htm) for a more detailed outline of their business
model.

Meantime, the engineering challenge is: what would you like to do, given a
power source, transceiver, ~200 gram payload (although apparently they're
stackable in groups of 2, 3, 4), and a few weeks' worth of low-earth orbit?

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Malus
It is probably only good for communications. A spinner with poor attitude
control (you do not really have a lot of room for good mechanical or optical
rate gyros, not to mention the lack of any means to perform orbital maneuvers)
and small payloads will probably not work well for imaging or radar.

However, there are a lot of companies and universities looking into small
satellites, since it is much, much cheaper than launching larger satellites
with expensive payloads. There is a lot of research in the area and a lot of
small sat conferences as well (e.g. <http://www.smallsat.org/>). If this pans
out, it could be the end of the US government's large satellite oligopoly,
which currently consists of only a few large companies like Lockheed Martin
(disclaimer: that is where I work) and Boeing.

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dan_the_welder
Get a double and put some attitude control on it. You should get almost a KG
of payload that way. CO2 jets.

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bemmu
This seems like it would make a really exciting group project. I can just
imagine all the hard work that would go into getting the software right, then
actually going to watch the launch together and impatiently waiting for first
contact with your very own satellite.

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EastSmith
Online maps in my area are not good (not enough details, and most detailed map
- maps.google.com is something like 5 years old). I saw on the website they
can take pictures - but I have no idea how detailed those picture might be?
Also what equipment is needed, prices, legal issues etc. Anyone have details
on that?

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vaksel
that's very cheap, but it doesn't seem cost effective, they plan to deploy 32
satellites per launch, I sincerely doubt that launching a rocket into space
costs less than $256,000 they'd generate per launch

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dan_the_welder
According to the wikipedia page, the Neptune 30 can carry 30 KG.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interorbital_Systems>

Their website is terrible. It looks like something from Geocities. I went to
Wikipedia to see if they were real or not.

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tome
I love the way there's a "discreet" LCD-style counter at the bottom of the
page. That's _very_ Geocities!

I would have thought that a company trying to do something so glamorous would
have made more effort with presentation on its website.

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dan_the_welder
Sigh, so close and yet so far...........

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sunge
Whatever the case I think (relatively) affordable space solutions will be
coming soon.

