
Kicksat burned up, including Sprites - jmpe
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zacinaction/kicksat-your-personal-spacecraft-in-space/posts/843807
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6581
Unfortunate turn of events - the on-board computer reset after launch
(probably due to radiation) and with it the timer for releasing the sprite
femtosatellites, and the radio receiver didn't work due to insufficient supply
voltage, so the sprites couldn't be released manually either.

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sigil
Were the components radiation-hardened, or did they just wing it?

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akiselev
Aerospace grade radiation hardened computers start in the hundreds of
thousands of dollars per CPU and with a cost equal to or greater (usually the
latter) than the launch cost, they just aren't worth it for CubeSats that
aren't carrying critical payloads (piggy back launches are $200-500k depending
on institution affiliation).

A little shielding is enough to protect the CPU from permanent damage for a
while and error correction circuits using 3-7 or more CPUs running in parallel
is way cheaper, even including engineering costs, than a single CPU.

Even with the troubles, one hell of a success for $70,000.

~~~
userbinator
_start in the hundreds of thousands of dollars per CPU_

Not really, depending on the performance you want:

[http://www.intersil.com/en/products/space-and-harsh-
environm...](http://www.intersil.com/en/products/space-and-harsh-
environment/harsh-environment/microprocessors-and-peripherals/CDP1802A.html)

It's a little over $100, which isn't all that much when you consider that this
is a CPU that has been used successfully in space before by NASA.

(I remember a short while ago on an electronics forum there was a discussion
about either this or a similar project - can't remember - where someone bet
that they were certainly going to fail because they weren't using rad-hard
parts. This data point certainly supports that.)

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akiselev
Yes, that chip was used on the Galileo satellite but the Silicon-on-Sapphire
version that NASA used for that mission is significantly more expensive. The
$100 version has error correction built in but it's only rad hardening is any
packaging and specs (low power + slow clock speed). A current generation rad
hardened CPU comparable to the SOS version in the Galileo would be the RAD750
[1]. Several Arduinos in a lead box would be roughly equivalent to the
consumer RCA 1802 chips.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAD750](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAD750)

~~~
rdl
I wonder how much of that is inherent manufacturing cost vs. low volumes
recovering R&D.

Also, any compliance issues around rad hard components (they're also used in
nuclear weapons, and fairly restricted as a result)

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akiselev
I don't have exact numbers but from my limited experience I would say about
30% of the price is the cost of setup and production (human labor, materials,
capital depreciation) and the rest of the price minus profit is
administrative, sales, and regulatory cost. Silicon design is getting cheaper,
especially with FPGAs, and the designs are relatively flexible while the sheer
amount of time required to set up a manufacturing line to produce even a
single processor is very expensive. Like the RCA 1802 linked above, a single
silicon design can be used for decades in mission critical applications as the
revenue piles up and the costs to tweak the design fall. When you're the only
one buying a setup for a rad hardened manufacturing process and producing only
a dozen chips for your client, slipping in several experimental revisions on
the mask can sometimes be almost free.

Most compliance issues are barriers to entry but are largely overblown. In
fields like aerospace and nuclear weapons the most critical requirement is
abundant reliability and lifetime data which is why, regulation or no, you
will never put something like an Intel 60nm or lower processor into a critical
$100 million satellite.

~~~
rdl
I'm mostly wondering if there could be a business case (or hobby project) to
make medium volumes of non custom rad hard chips for cost constrained
aerospace projects.

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steve19
One backer paid $10,000 to be the person who hit the big red button that would
launch all the 'sprites' into space... damn.

~~~
nkozyra
They can still hit a big red button, I guess.

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coldcode
It really is rocket science. Putting stuff into space is always hard.

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eps
Wait, wait ... So they were asking for 30K, got 70K and that let them hitch a
ride on a NASA rocket and have a satellite deployed. This seems oddly
affordable. What am I missing?

~~~
dm2
The KickSat was very small, about half the size of a desktop computer.

There are satellites that are bus-sized and have antennas as large as a
football field (5-6 tons and 350 foot antennas) floating around up there,
those are the billion dollar ones. Their computer components are hundreds and
thousands of times what consumer grade components cost, plus the satellites
sometimes have stealth technologies, boosters, and extremely expensive cameras
and other sensors.

The KickSat hardware was consumer grade, which was most of the reason for the
low cost, the lack of sufficiently radiation hardened components also was the
reason it malfunctioned according to their update.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CubeSat](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CubeSat)

[http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NROL-32b_ULA_21NOV201...](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NROL-32b_ULA_21NOV2010.jpg)
carrying one large satellite

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comrh
Awesome project. I think it is pretty imaginative. What about the idea that
sending a bunch of rocket payloads up there would add to the space debris
already up there though?

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pekk
"Up there" often doesn't mean a stable orbit.

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spiritplumber
Ooops. I'm happy PhoneSat worked.

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icantthinkofone
I've not followed this at all but the ARRL was launching satellites decades
ago when I was a ham. Whatever happened to all that? (Yeah, I guess I should
be Googling.)

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abruzzi
There are actually a bunch up there:

[http://oscar.dcarr.org](http://oscar.dcarr.org)

