[extropy-chat] SPACE: Microsats launching

Neil H. neuronexmachina at gmail.com
Wed Oct 5 04:21:21 UTC 2005


On 10/3/05, Mike Lorrey <mlorrey at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> What sort of data collection could be done in low earth orbit which
> could be priced to pay for the satellite, plus operating costs and
> profit, that is of sufficient value for this sort of investment and is
> either ignored by the big sat operators, or undercuts them?


Instead of data collection, what about directed data transmission? There may
be various circumstances in which it would be useful to have a signal
directly beamed to a particular location.

Or, perhaps an adjustable reflector dish in orbit (unfolded origami-style)
might be useful for various things... (bouncing signals?)

Or, scale things up a somewhat, and perhaps one could even have a personal
net-connected spy satellite.

Building on the "Beowulf Cluster" joke, could it perhaps be feasible to have
several specialized cubesats which network with each other using short-range
low-power signals (no atmosphere to worry about)? For example, one could
have cubesats specialized for receiving signals from earth, sending to
earth, cameras, experiments, tugging other CubeSats around, and so forth. A
side-benefit is that in order to expand capabilities, you would only need to
send up a satellite specialized for that capability.

-- Neil (who admittedly knows nothing about satellites)
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