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).

Re:Pirates in Space!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't work that well unless it's in geostationary orbit. The problem being that the satellite is only in view for a few minutes every time it passes over which doesn't give you much time to transfer data. I doubt geostationary orbit could be done this cheaply.

Amateur radio users have been doing it for many years using voice and data via packet radio. Very low bandwidth though.

Re:Will falling space debris be a problem?

[Tubal-Cain]

Not really. Our best plan for artificial weaponized meteors is telephone-pole-to-crowbar sized rods of tungsten [wikipedia.org]. Somehow I doubt that much tungsten weighs less than 0.5 pounds.

Re:Commercial applications

[TorKlingberg]

Satellite technology has had commercial applications for decades.

Re:I Call BS

[MarkRose]

If you figure it costs about $10,000/lb to launch stuff into space, launching 16 pounds would leave $96,000 for administration and profit. The numbers are plausible. And if they start launching from a Virgin space plane, then the launch costs could do down dramatically.

Re:What's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a wavelength, not a distance.

Re:I Call BS

[Hadlock]

You didn't RTFA. For $8,000 this comes with a turnkey satellite + satellite development software environment,
 

• Casing, Endplates, and Mounting Hardware
• A Transceiver
• A Battery Pack
• Solar Cells
• A Power Management Control System (PMCS)
• Microcomputer
• Software
• Antennas
• Safety Switches
• Complete Instructions

 
with equipment that's already gone through R&D, and warrantied against failure during the trip into space, with space for additional cargo of up to 0.2kg. I'm sure they'd sell you the empty casing plus space on the rocket for less than $8 large (maybe as low as 4K? judging from their pricing model, it looks like the 4K is for the actual propellant/overhead costs), but it's going to cost a business a whole lot more than 8K to develop space-worthy electronics + software to put in the canister.

Re: I Call BS

[abushga]

It's not BS. Last I checked you could put 1 KG into LEO for $25K. http://www.cubesatkit.com/ [cubesatkit.com]

Cubesats typically hitch a ride with larger projects for cost efficiency.

http://cubesat.ece.uiuc.edu/ [uiuc.edu]
http://mtech.dk/thomsen/space/cubesat.php [mtech.dk]
http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/satellites/cubesats.php [amsat.org]

Re:Weeks?

[caerwyn]

Doubtful in that mass budget. You couldn't just stick a thruster on it- you'd need a full attitude control system to make sure you were actually pointed in the right direction, and thruster(s), reaction wheels, etc would pretty rapidly use up all your mass.

Dutch Nano satellite company

[subroutine]

oke basically iam just to laze to type in my own story, but check this company. (www.isispace.nl) I copied the text from their website. so if you need to test out your space equipment(startrackers, gyoscopes or some doomsday device :) ) this is the place to do it kinda cheap :) *** Quote**** Vision Bringing space down to Earth. With miniaturization of electronics and breakthrough technologies from the IT-sector and consumer electronics, satellites and spacebased systems can be designed and developed in a different way. With faster, parallel development of standardized systems and system modules it is possible to perform space missions with very small satellites. By using swarms or constellations of these small spacecraft, operation and financial risk can be reduced. Based on these technological developments and combined with an increasing number of launch possibilities for these small satellites it is possible to make space systems and mission more accessible for a larger number of users. Mission * Develop miniaturized, modular satellite (sub)systems that meet customer requirements, * Develop, maintain and expand a strategic position in the field of small satellite (sub)systems, * Promoting and stimulation the development of small satellite missions. ***** end Quote***

Re:CO2 cartridges to break earth's orbit?

[Anonymous Coward]

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).

Please realize the scale of the atmosphere

[Anonymous Coward]

The atmosphere is huge. Let me repeat that, because people tend to forget scale when it comes to things like the Earth (I blame teachers trying to explain how big the universe is, but forgetting to explain exactly how small atoms and people are): The Atmosphere Is Huge. Something on the order of 2.2 * 10 ^ 44 atoms. Burning up a few hundred grams of plutonium wouldn't even be all that scary. If you burned up a mole of plutonium on one of these things, it'd be less than one part per trillion trillion in the atmosphere. You'd have to be a homeopathic doctor to claim those kinds of concentrations are scary.

There's not any material I'd be afraid to launch on one of these things. If you started talking about launching a thousand of these things carrying plutonium, you might start to scare the nuclear freaks (same people who were afraid of Cassini and the sky falling), but most people wouldn't even notice. You wouldn't even raise the background radiation of the planet. And let's be realistic, a few micrograms to a few grams of cobalt (lithium ion) or cadmium (NiCd batteries) is probably the worst you'd expect to see on one of these things.