50 'Nanosats' for Sputnik's 50th Anniversary 20
Roland Piquepaille writes "Europe will launch 50 ultra-small satellites in 2007 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Sputnik, the first artificial satellite of the Earth launched in October 1957. BBC News Online writes that each nanosatellite will weigh only about 1 kilogram and represent a single nation. Arianespace will launch all 50 of the nanosats in a single payload. The nanosats will stay in orbit for about 2 years and will perform experiments chosen and designed by each individual country. For the first time in history, 50 different countries will have the opportunity to do space research, and probably at little cost. In the future, similar clusters of nanosats could be launched for collaborative missions, acting as groups or swarms and having a single goal. Read more for selected excerpts and pointers to this future historic mission."
Shouldn't they split the payload up? (Score:3, Interesting)
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Re:Shouldn't they split the payload up? (Score:5, Informative)
Every rocket has certain balance and performance parameters that it has to meet. If a rocket can launch a payload of 25,000 pounds, but the payload slated for that rocket only weighs 20,000 pounds, they will fill out the remaining weight with ballast, typically water or other heavy material. Sometimes, instead of using ballast, other smaller payloads can hitch a ride on the rocket essentially "for free". Sometimes it's literally free, if the owners of the rocket are charitable. But "free" here means that there is no weight penalty to the rocket, because it would have been filled out with ballast anyway.
Re:Shouldn't they split the payload up? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Shouldn't they split the payload up? (Score:2)
What? Where did you hear this? The cost for every pound of payload weight is around $10,000+. As an example, the Pegasus saved several hundred thousand in costs by making the Delta wing stronger with lighter mounting. If the payload is lighter, they just vary the build of the grain (solid) of the rocket fuel or load less liquid fuel. This is part of the reason we use "staging", to drop weight as the missile gets higher, plus the fac
Re:Shouldn't they split the payload up? (Score:2)
Ballast is routinely used as payload substitutes on missle tests and maiden flights. Surely you knew that. Undoubtedly you did.
You probably also know that payloads and rockets can fall apart of they are subjected to G forces that are too high. You will be aware that if your payload is too light, and you remove propellant to adjust the target trajectory, your rocket gets even lighter. You can't throttle your rocket that much in practice, and the thing acceler
Roland P for Prez (Score:2)
50 more objects for existing satellites to... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:50 more objects for existing satellites to... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:50 more objects for existing satellites to... (Score:2)
I suspect it already is. The amateur radio satellites, for example, aren't too much bigger than these. Here's a picture [amsat.org] of the most recently launched one, `Echo'. Looks like it's only about 8x as big as the ones that are to be launched ...
Hopefully there will be at least one amateur radio satellite with the 50 they're going to launch -- this form factor would seem to be ideal.
Will/IS US among the 50 countries participating? (Score:2)
President Bush has announced... (Score:1, Funny)
Flame on! Defend America- Defeat Bush. And while your at it, defeat Kerry too. Nader for president!
for all their whining about social causes (Score:1, Flamebait)
(Go ahead, mark me a troll. I just had to get that off my chest.)
Re:for all their whining about social causes (Score:1)
Re:for all their whining about social causes (Score:2)
sigh (Score:1, Offtopic)
Yet, when we go in there to "clean it up", the UN et alia start jumping up and down "you can't do that, give inspections more time!" Bullshit.
As far as "typical american attitude", again, you're missing the point. It's the typical liberal attitude I was highlighting. But I guess your hatred of the Prez can't see past that.
Yes! (Score:1)