DARPA's ALASA Could Pave Way For Cheaper, Faster Satellite Launches 91
hypnosec writes DARPA is all set to take its Airborne Launch Assist Space Access module (ALASA) program to the next level after the program has shown promising results toward its mission of sending 100-pound satellites into low Earth orbit (LEO) for just $1 million per launch."
ALASA is a new program that seeks to streamline production and encourage re-usability and interchangeability in satellite systems.
Re:SpaceX and India? (Score:5, Informative)
This doesn't make a dent in cost effectiveness of Falcon 9 or PSLV.
Let us calculate per pound LEO costs for these vehicles:
ALASA: $1M / 100 lb = $10,000 / lb
Falcon 9: $61.2M / 28,991 lb = $2,111 / lb
PSLV: $20M / 7170 lb = $2,789 / lb
Tiny satellites at 100lb can easily tag along with bigger launches on these vehicles. Costs may be even cheaper for such secondary payloads or may even free in some cases. If SpaceX succeeds in first stage reuse, or ISRO per chance succeeds in RLV-TD plans, costs may come further down.
So ALASA sounds like a costly option for small satellites today and in future. But the technology as such may have potential if handled by a better managed private company that works on it as a commercial venture.
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Setting alarm for 4:30 AM India time...
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Well, partially resusable anyway, and I don't know about a few months - I suspect they'll end up having to successfully land the first stage at least a couple times before they sort out whatever reusability issues are as yet undiscovered. Not to mention the challenge of getting a rocket from a barge in the ocean back to the launch facility without inflicting crippling structural or salt-water related damage - that alone may prove enough of a challenge that actual reusability has to wait until they can get
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They eventually plan for the Falcon 9 to refuel on the barge and then fly back to the launch pad. Have rocket, will fly it.
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Cool, I hadn't heard that. You're still going to run into regulatory hurdles though - traditionally a far larger challenge than those imposed by physics.
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SpaceX needs to demonstrate a handful of landings on the barge before it can land in terra firma. The primary concern isn't that the stage doesn't crash land, but that it's able to navigate with high precision to the landing spot.
Some launches have large performance margins such that the first stage will perform a boostback burn and land directly at the landing spot (near the launchpad). But in many missions the barge will be needed. The generic number is boostback = 30% performance loss, landing at the bar
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Of course this isn't a cost-saving approach, it's real goal is maximum convenience and flexibility. Let's say I want "eyes" on a particular location ASAP, but I don't have any "birds" on a good trajectory for several hours to come. This would allow me to put a satellite precisely on target in under an hour.
And if they can add a miniature projectile launcher into the same 100lb package, they've basically got a global "kill switch" for a limited range of targets. You wouldn't need more than a few pounds of
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And if they can add a miniature projectile launcher into the same 100lb package, they've basically got a global "kill switch" for a limited range of targets. You wouldn't need more than a few pounds of depleted uranium, shaped into a steerable "bolt" and packed with some high explosive, and the necessary thrust could probably be provided by a simple spring mechanism, just like a crossbow.
That's not how orbital mechanics work. If you push the "bolt" away, it will just end up in a different orbit, intersecting the original orbit at the point where it was pushed away. To actually deorbit the bolt, you'd need to push it hard enough that the new orbit intersects the Earth's atmosphere. That's a huge push. But even then you have the problem that it's going to hit the atmosphere, and burn up, or in the best case, just tumble erratically through the atmosphere, hopefully hitting the continent you w
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It all depends on how much delta-V you can impart to your projectile, and by what means (and on what vector). Yes, it's a big push, but you've got 80lbs of reaction mass to work with (at least). It's not hard to imagine making this work with a very simple mechanical device. In particular, if you launch a spotter/sniper pair of satellites, they can both be optimized for their particular jobs.
For example, the spotter-sat could eject a small "hummingbird" reentry vehicle shortly after reaching orbit, in order
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We're not talking about thrust that could be provided by a spring loaded system. You'll need a rocket. And depending on much how thrust you have, you may be waiting another half hour before the projectile starts to be slowed down by the atmosphere. This can be shorter, but then you'll need a bigger push. The next phase will be your few pounds of depleted uranium screaming through the atmosphere at double digit Mach numbers, and burning up in a few seconds. If you do it at night, maybe you can make a nice li
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If you've actually run the numbers, I'm happy to concede the point. but I think it's still an open possibility. And I think the larger point stands: This is all about convenience and flexibility, the ability to get eyes and/or ordnance onto any specific target on the globe in under an hour. If you have a different explanation, please share.
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What you get from privatization is higher costs for all but the most profitable segment of the business, monopolism and eventual fraud, deceit and theft.
When there is no hound, the fox will have chicken dinner every night
Re:Why not the spaceplane already built ~15 yrs ag (Score:5, Insightful)
From your link:
Failures of the 21-meter wingspan, multi-lobe composite material fuel cells during pressure testing ultimately led to its cancellation as a federal program in 2001. Lockheed Martin has conducted unrelated testing, and has had a single success after a string of failures as recently as 2009 using a 2 meter scale model
A 2-meter scale model of a suborbital craft doesn't sound like we're close to SSTO at all.
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Developed by Lockheed Martin and Northrup Grunman who worked on it around the late 1990's-early 2000's? Called the X-33 [wikipedia.org]
The DC-X is a better example, since it doesn't require a runway, it could also be used as a lunar lander and return vehicle. The companies for both got eaten by Boeing.
The single biggest reason is can you see some rich person buying a used one, like John Travolta bought a used 707, and deciding to take a planeload of ceramic coated rebar to orbit and drop it on peoples heads at 22,000 MPH? Cheap access to orbit by private individuals is not in the best interests of those currently in power.
That said, it'd
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Your ceramic coated rebar wouldn't go anywhere close to 22000 MPH by the time it reaches the surface. It would probably go slower than a ground fired artillery shell, with less control over its trajectory.
Re:Why not the spaceplane already built ~15 yrs ag (Score:5, Informative)
The single biggest reason is can you see some rich person buying a used one, like John Travolta bought a used 707, and deciding to take a planeload of ceramic coated rebar to orbit and drop it on peoples heads at 22,000 MPH?
Someone could do a lot more damage just by crashing the 707. For that matter, a 1 meter length of #8 rebar is about 4 kilograms, so, at 22,000 MPH would have about 193 MJ of kinetic energy, if it actually reached the ground with the same amount of energy it had before de-orbiting (which would be ridiculous). That's about 8% more than the equivalent mass of gasoline (and, once again, by the time it reaches the surface, it would be a lot less). Of course, gasoline gets to cheat on the energy density factor by using oxygen. You could argue that it's only fair to compare it to something where the energy is entirely self-contained. That's not really valid since the final destination is inside the atmosphere, but we'll give you that one anyway. We'll consider methane, which requires twice its mass in oxygen to combust. That ends up giving it 38.26% of the theoretical maximum of your de-orbiting rebar pieces by mass.
In other words, someone could do a lot more damage just by dropping various sorts of conventional bombs from a 707. Or from a smaller plane for that matter. Or going on foot. Heck, probably just by running around and beating random people with a piece of rebar considering how unlikely it is for the orbitally delivered rebar to both retain significant energy and actually hit a target.
The "rods from god" concept (usually considered with a much larger projectile of the densest practical materials rather than relatively light projectiles prone to tremendous drag like pieces of rebar) is easily shown to be not worthwhile (if you're launching the projectiles from earth with chemical rockets anyway) compared to just about any method of blowing things up. Any physicist or decent engineer with a napkin and a ball point pen can demonstrate it pretty easily. For some reason, the idea keeps coming up.
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I laughed, then I imagined said person running around hitting people with rebar screaming "RODS FROM GOD! RODS FROM GOD!", and I laughed again.
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The single biggest reason is can you see some rich person buying a used one, like John Travolta bought a used 707, and deciding to take a planeload of ceramic coated rebar to orbit and drop it on peoples heads at 22,000 MPH?
Someone could do a lot more damage just by crashing the 707. For that matter, a 1 meter length of #8 rebar is about 4 kilograms, so, at 22,000 MPH would have about 193 MJ of kinetic energy, if it actually reached the ground with the same amount of energy it had before de-orbiting (which would be ridiculous).
I was being facetious about rebar. Yes, they would be more like shaped tungsten telephone poles with control fins. The numbers I've seen claimed 0.12kt of TNT.
For some reason, the idea keeps coming up.
It'd be quite useful as a "terror weapon or bunker buster".
But assume you're right, and they only drop 1 ton conventional bombs from orbit. Private individuals aren't going to necessarily obey national treaties voluntarily for fear of retribution.
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'Rods from God' becomes much more feasible when you imagine space mining enterprise. In the distant future with captured asteroids in earth orbit, obtaining mass already in space and re-purposing it for orbital weaponry is mostly just a math exercise.
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Aerospike systems are heavier and have more demanding cooling requirements, due to the central plug surrounded on all sides by hot exhaust, with radiative cooling being largely ineffective, and the increase in plumbing to all the injectors. Their advantage is in being less optimized for a particular atmospheric pressure, increased complexity and weight are tradeoffs. This is mainly a large advantage if you're using the same engines for liftoff and for the burn to orbital velocity once outside the atmosphere
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I want to know how John Travolta took a 707 into orbit. Presumably this is a Scientology thing. I thought they used a DC-8 [wikipedia.org].
Re: Why not the spaceplane already built ~15 yrs a (Score:1)
Why is this coming from DARPA? (Score:2, Interesting)
And not, say, NASA? Somebody explain, please.
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NASA has no real interest in quick, cheap satellite launches. They've got plenty of time to plan ahead for satellite launches.
The military, on the other hand, occasionally finds itself in a position where they could really use a recon/spy sat Right Now! With no real requirement that the sat last 20 years, or even one.
Besides, they have the F-18's....
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Quick, not cheap - at least at this stage of development we're talking about 5x the payload cost as a Falcon 9 launch. It might be more cost effective if you want to put a satellite in an atypical orbit, but with Falcon reusability probably right around the corner that price gap is about to widen dramatically, so competition will be fierce.
On the other hand, launching from an aircraft would allow for much more discrete launches as well - I'm sure lots of military types would prefer nobody had an easy way t
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You're volunteering to be part of the first wave of reductions I assume?
One must aways remember that economies are artifacts created to serve the people, not the other way around. If the economy becomes counterproductive to the wellbeing of the people, then it should be replaced.
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The government needs to cut back on their military, and deal with the problems of homelessness, poverty, lack of basic health care for millions of Americans, and government corruption.
You are aware that mentally ill people and drug addicts are always going to spend whatever cash they are given, and remain homeless, right?
Ad you realize that poverty is defined as a certain percentage of the population at the bottom end of the bell curve, right? It's not like someone has fixed the problem by, say:
#define IMPOVERISHED_INCOME ((MINIMUM_WAGE * 40 * 52) -1)
so we can just throw money at it to make it go away, right?
And you're aware that basic health care is already fixed, and was before the AC
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You are aware that mentally ill people and drug addicts are always going to spend whatever cash they are given, and remain homeless, right?
Those are a small minority of poor people. Even regular drug users can manage their lives if the basic needs are fulfilled. If they can't deal with cash, don't give them cash but free housing, food and medication.
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Free housing and free food ? And all you have to do to qualify is become a regular drug user ? Sounds like an attractive prospect for a lot of people. And if they trash the house, they get a new one for free ?
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The problem being that you and those like you that want taxes to pay for free food and housing (& to continue to pay for more of the same when the first houses are trashed) do not pay enough taxes to pay for these programs.
So, you also want everybody else to pay for it.
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No, I don't want everybody else to pay for it. I want my taxes to be higher so my taxes will pay for it
So you only want to raise your taxes, but leave everybody else's the same ? If so, why don't you just give your money to a homeless person ?
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And why not? The economy exists to serve the people - if it is failing in it's purpose by disproportionately benefiting some while leaving others out in the cold, then it needs to be revised.
Besides, it's not *your* taxes that need to be raised - unless you have a seven-figure income you're one of the people being screwed over by the extreme income inequalities that have infected the US over the last several decades.
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> You are aware that mentally ill people and drug addicts are always going to spend whatever cash they are given
You have obviously no clue.
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Or, just possibly, some of us have seen friends and/or family members piss away all their money & the money their friends & family gave them to get their fix.
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> You are aware that mentally ill people and drug addicts are always going to spend whatever cash they are given
You have obviously no clue.
You obviously have not worked with chronically mentally ill people, nor gone out on an intervention outcall because someone was living in a dumpster because the metal was the only way to shield them, and their perfectly good room at the supported housing facility you had them in before they went off their meds is empty because they decided their room was bugged.
I've worked closely with mentally ill persons as a volunteer (my mother was a psychiatric social worker for a county mental health program, and her
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You are aware that mentally ill people and drug addicts are always going to spend whatever cash they are given, and remain homeless, right?
You are aware that you're both mischaracterizing what was said and that you're spouting nonsense, right? The GP didn't say "throw money at mentally ill and drug-addicted homeless people".
Ad you realize that poverty is defined as a certain percentage of the population at the bottom end of the bell curve, right?
Not legally it's not. Economics... life in general, in fact, isn't the kind of zero-sum game you seem to be implying it is. Poverty is defined by a number of guidelines. There are a number of factors. Whether the subject actually has adequate nutrition is an important one. Under those guidelines, 16% of Americans and 20% of
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You are aware that mentally ill people and drug addicts are always going to spend whatever cash they are given, and remain homeless, right?
You are aware that you're both mischaracterizing what was said and that you're spouting nonsense, right? The GP didn't say "throw money at mentally ill and drug-addicted homeless people".
No, he said throw money at poverty and homelessness.
You are, of course, free to argue with The National Coalition for the Homeless:
"According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 20 to 25% of the homeless population in the United States suffers from some form of severe mental illness."
http://www.nationalhomeless.or... [nationalhomeless.org]
"Although obtaining an accurate, recent count is difficult, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (2003) estimates, 38% of homeless people w
seems a bit shy... (Score:3)
I don't understand why the idea is being implemented in such a modest manner. The animation has the rocket stage carried aloft for ignition at high altitude by what looks like an F-18. While I don't doubt the performance of the Hornet's engines, wouldn't it make more sense to extend the payload capacity with a larger carrier craft? Say something on the order of the 747-based shuttle carriers? You would be able lift a proportionally larger rocket stage that is able to deliver a more massive payload into LEO or a proportional payload (planetary probe?) even further. It has always felt to me that an airborne launch of a space vehicle has so many more benefits. You are not restricted for being tied down to any one physical terrestrial location. Launches are additionally more versatile due to the more numerous varieties of orbits available at lower costs. Is there a good engineering reason why concepts such as the Soviet-era MAKS was not pursued?
Re:seems a bit shy... (Score:4, Insightful)
The F-18 has a big advantage because it can go a lot faster. Besides, it makes sense to first solve the problems on a smaller and cheaper platform.
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First, it is an F-15E, not a F-18. The primary reason for the choice is the fact that there are no modifications needed to be used in this role (not even software - the rocket will use the same protocols that the typically mounted weapons systems use). This means that the aircraft can continue to be used in their primary role instead of having to be specialized just for this role.
As for why this project is not looking a larger launch platform - the project is specifically trying to make it easier to get sma
Re:seems a bit shy... (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't understand why the idea is being implemented in such a modest manner. The animation has the rocket stage carried aloft for ignition at high altitude by what looks like an F-18. While I don't doubt the performance of the Hornet's engines, wouldn't it make more sense to extend the payload capacity with a larger carrier craft? Say something on the order of the 747-based shuttle carriers?
Absolute ceiling on a Boeing 747 is ~51,000 feet. That's about the service ceiling for most military jets, and their absolute ceiling is much hgher than that. The SR-71 Blackbird had a service ceiling of ~92,000 feet; its absolute ceiling remains classified.
That's 5,000 feet under the service ceiling of the F-14; A Mig-25 on a ballistic arc (after its air-breathing engines were no longer functioning, it was ballistic until it reentered the atmosphere) is recorded to have hit 123,000 feet in 1977. The ballistic arc on an F-18 should be substantially better than that, but I suspect if you want actual numbers, they are classified.
The point is that the first part of getting up there is the hardest, and military and military-grade airgraft are substantially better at getting up higher because they can reach a higher altitude, and can be going multiple Mach at the time they go ballistic (think "muzzle velocity").
So no, a commercial jet is a bad idea.
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Getting a satellite in orbit is mostly a problem of speed, not altitude.
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Which is why they can manage to only be 5x the cost per kg of a Falcon 9 launch, right? Perhaps 10x when SpaceX starts reusing first stages...
Aerodynamic drag losses are only important for the tiniest of rockets. For most launchers, it's only in the area of 100 m/s. Additionally, propellant is a fraction of a percent of launch costs, and the cost of rocket hardware is not simply proportional to its size.
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and military and military-grade airgraft are substantially better at getting up higher because they can reach a higher altitude, and can be going multiple Mach at the time they go ballistic (think "muzzle velocity")
Re:seems a bit shy... (Score:4, Interesting)
What exactly makes you think that a F18, designed to go 1.5 Mach, would be able to go higher than a Mach 3 Mig25, designed to counter the SR-71?
Much like for the pentagon's ASAT missile [wikipedia.org]from the 80's, the best available US platform would be an F15.
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You are describing the Pegasus [wikipedia.org] launch system. Pegasus has been flying a quarter century now.
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It was my impression that the pegasus system has a pretty lousy record. responsible for a lot of failures. have they improved much over the years?
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According to the Wiki at least the last 25 launches have been successful (last one in mid 2013), the first dozen or so launches though were pretty hit and miss. Pegasus though is a far different beast, it is launched on a modified commercial aircraft whereas this one appears to be intended for a military fighter jet. Pegasus launches payloads of around 1000 lbs whereas this one is only intended for 100 lb "satellites".
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The failure rate of Pegasus has dropped a fair bit. The big problem is the extremely high cost (around $30 million for 400 kg to orbit these days) and the inflexibility and lack of scalability of air launch systems in general. The Stratolaunch system is building the largest aircraft by wingspan to ever fly to launch rockets with less payload than a Falcon 9...and they won't be able to attempt anything larger without building an even bigger aircraft, while SpaceX is already building the Falcon Heavy (with ab
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You gain 100% flexibility in orbital plain. No launch restrictions because your launch point is completely flexible. This is a common feature with SeaLaunch. It would actually be very cool if SpaceX used a similar mobile launch platform for Falcon 9 as an additional facility. Certainly, reliability would likely be much better than Zenit.
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You get the same with a couple geographically separated launch sites. SpaceX launches to equatorial orbits from Florida and polar orbits from California, and they do so far more cheaply than an air-launch system could, without having to make sacrifices in payload, adding risks due to loss of on-pad test fires and abort capabilities, etc.
Sea launch does look much better than air launch, but it still makes the logistics and operations more difficult. SpaceX doesn't even want to land rockets at sea when they c
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The F-15 is designed to
Faster than Light launches?! (Score:1)
That's great! Oh wait. This is about sending even more spy satellites into orbit cheaply isn't it.
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Probably not great for cheap spy satellites.
Cost is still $10,000 per pound to LEO. Some existing commercial launch systems already match that price. The 100 pound payload limit is a real problem though as effective recon sats will be considerably heavier in order to have big enough lenses for high res images as well as the transmitter, solar panels, etc. The best recon sats are expected to be roughly equivalent to the Hubble telescope. Note that the Hubble cannot take good images of the earth because it ca
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Considering that we've got folks putting up breadbox-sized surveillance satellites capable of taking almost Google Maps quality images, I imagine we could make extremely powerful 10lb surveillance sats:
https://www.ted.com/talks/will... [ted.com]
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It's all fine to launch such a tiny satellite, but how are they going to get all the information beamed down, and distributed to the whole world for a low cost ?
And free public daily images of the Earth already exists: https://earthdata.nasa.gov/dat... [nasa.gov]
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The lunchbox sats are not as capable as a recon sat desired by the NSA, etc. You may perhaps argue that 100 pound sats are all that the NSA needs, but they clearly want a lot more -- IIRC the NSA was getting push back against proposed billion dollar satellites.
I think it is very good assumption that the NSA already knows about the benefits of miniaturization and high-end sensors used in the small sats your referred to . But if a 4 kg or 40 kg sat could satisfy their desires, they would be using them
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Sure, but just because they have dozens of massive spy-eyes doesn't mean they wouldn't love them to have hundreds or thousands of smaller cousins. After all those spy-eyes can only look at what happens to be beneath them at the moment - I'm sure it would be very nice to have continuous wide-area surveillance at golf-ball resolution, even when the eyelash-counters are looking elsewhere.
Decaying orbits... (Score:3)
Use it to throw up satellites with a designated lifespan into very low earth orbit and maybe you can have the damn things fall back to earth rather than cluttering up our gravity well...
I wonder what portion of early spacefaring civilizations actually strand themselves on the planet by putting a mess of space junk in their planetary orbits. We're well on our way. There's even shit up there. No, literally--from the early days of the space program. Rumor in the space community is they found some of it by (messy) accident on a later mission.
For the general problem, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K... [wikipedia.org]
Recyclers anyone? (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously tough, I have to wonder if the Chinese, Russians and all the other minions (Iran, North Korea) are not thinking this is a brilliant disguise to be able to deploy an extensive Anti Satellite system.
Reinventing the wheel? (Score:3)
There are at least 3 current companies working on a similar concept (air launched small to medium rocket), why are they inventing another when they could buy one of theirs for much cheaper? I can only see two reasons, they want it as a quick response orbital weapons platform and the "small satellite launcher" concept is just an excuse. Number two they're hoping to extract some good old fashioned blank check defense contractor money from the DOD. If its the latter they could have at least put a little more effort into the animation, it looks like one of those bad Sy-Fi channel movie special effects and even the flight profile looks totally unrealistic.
What's old is new again (Score:1)
Satellite killers [wikipedia.org] were done this way back in the 1980s - tested, but not deployed. I don't know if the ASM-135 could achieve orbit, but it could certainly intercept something in orbit, and it's the same basic technique. The only thing that would change is the rocket.
Insurance (Score:1)