Yes commercially launched on a regular basis to a very low orbit is a
viable market and even 3 months with a very low constellation could
prove useful. If the cost to launch cubesats is low enough time on orbit
becomes less and less of an issue.
Imagine a constellation of 1U cubesats doing a survey in 3 months?
Imagine what kinds of surveys could be done? What would that cost?
Networked cubesats would be even more powerful. We don't really need big
satellites anymore to do really good work.
Smaller rockets and more of them is what we need.
We need to go small not large.
That would make space access more available to everyone.
We also need a viable tracking network.
So we can have small launcher business!
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [AR] Re: Cubesats orbital grenades ?
From: "John Dom" <johndom@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, December 10, 2017 6:45 am
To: <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Thank you. I forewarded your view email to our club members.
Relates to a member recently sent us e.g. following paper:
http://www.esero.be/_WP/wp-content/uploads/CanSat-directives-2017-2018.pdf
John
-----Original Message-----
From: arocket-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:arocket-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Henry Spencer
Sent: zaterdag 9 december 2017 18:29
To: Arocket List
Subject: [AR] Re: Cubesats orbital grenades ?
On Sat, 9 Dec 2017, John Dom wrote:
Alarmist or serious threat ?
No. :-)
Not an entirely trivial issue, but not as bad as the scare stories tend to
suggest.
For the educational and experimental cubesats, there is a simple answer:
supply them with rides to quite low orbits, where their orbital life will be
short -- a year is plenty for most of their missions -- and they'll be below
most of the operational satellites. That would suit most of their users
fine. The reason they sometimes end up in higher orbits is not that their
users are malicious or uncaring, but that there simply aren't that many
rides to quite low orbit. Fix that, and firmly encourage them to use such
rides, and they largely stop being a problem.
(Deploying them from ISS, or from ISS supply runs, is a reasonably good
approach. That's low enough for a short life, and it guarantees that
they're below ISS -- which is something like half of the entire collision
cross-section of everything in LEO, and much more than half of the political
sensitivity.)
For the bigger nanosats, and the microsats on up, which are more likely to
be operational satellites of long-term value, the immediate answer is firmer
deorbiting requirements, and better funding for R&D on deorbit methods.
(Probably the most popular current approach is deployable drag brakes, which
are *not* a great choice because they bring the thing down faster but don't
reduce the volume swept out on the way down.) In the longer term, unless
deorbiting can be made very reliable -- tricky given that the usual reason
for deorbiting the thing is that it's broken! -- restrictions on large
constellations may be needed.
Note, "deorbit methods" include non-on-board solutions like tugs. It's not
inconceivable that we'll eventually end up with a rule that you don't get to
launch a LEO constellation without showing a contract with a towing service,
committing you to pay for retrieval and disposal of any satellite that isn't
able to deorbit itself. (Longer term, this might apply to all LEO
satellites -- of any size -- not just constellations.) There is no deep
technological problem with providing towing services; it's just that
currently the costs are rather high and there's no market.
Henry
