Show HN: your own personal satellite? | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: your own personal satellite?

4 pointsAshDJ2 comments

Here's a bizarre and probably a stupid question. But perhaps a fun thought experiment.

If you had access to a small satellite, what would you do with it?

We've managed to drop the price-point and expertise overhead required for having/operating a 5kg-class satellite to a point where a "somewhat wealthy software engineer with a laptop" could have one (i.e. $250k all in, including launch).

This is not the market we're targeting by any means, but I've just realised the Venn diagram has crept in that direction. And I thought it might be worth thinking about … if just for fun.

Anything beyond hobbyist astronomy/photography, kudos, etc?

Example satellite: https://orbastro.com/satellites/orb-3/

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Not really sure what such satellites are capable of in terms of communication with ground stations or semi portable clients, but since they seem to offer only leo and sso orbits probably a dead drop for messages or other non real time communication. Wiki like collaboration would be interesting to tackle with low bandwidth and something like a once a week syncing.

A stationary orbit would be much more interesting as in that case you can have more fun with closer to real time communications. Mesh networks over a couple of groundstations and satellites. It would be even more interesting if the satellites could talk to each other and create mesh networks.

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Some more practical information would be great for people such as my self who don’t really speak space jargon.

What are the technical capabilities of these satellites? Ie. Area of coverage, bandwidth, what kind of hardware does it require to communicate with it, what are the hardware limitations of the cpu/mem/disk, what protocols does it speak, can we add off the shelf hardware to it (pi, fpgas, etc). That kind of stuff.

Top of my head..

1. Personal data center in space

2a. Crypto key server in space

2b. Secure communication relay / secret storage in space

3. Blockchain-esque "decider node" in space

4. 24x7 satellite view (geosynchronous?) of given lat/lon

5. Other signal related stuff (find precious metals? find underground tunnels? find meteorites?)

6. Space-related service biz (w/ larger payload) - manufacturing nuts and bolts, seals, other consumables, sell water or something precious needed in an emergency in long term space craft operations

7. Sentimental / stupidity-driven - your DNA in space, your ashes in space, your terrarium in space

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