Dammit. Now Im out $4.5k.
Most people should not buy this.
I shot 200+ rolls last year, and specialize in rare / expired films. There are some people that will buy this and use it as a tool, and this is going to sell out. I can't wait to shoot on it.
Yep, It's layer cake of pain, for the joy of getting to orbit.
Agree, your approach makes sense to tackle the layer you are on now - which is just the "wiring"
I'm in the cUAS space currently with a missile startup (which has many similarities to small sats), with that said, I have some contacts in the Small sat / commercial new space industry that would be interested in this. I also do have a small sat concept I hope to get into orbit when I have the time to make a flat sat prototype to sanity check the payload. Feel free to shoot me an email scott@orcrist.com - would love to stay in touch on this project and see where I can help, and potentially be a customer
very cool! This was quite literally manually scraping manuals and spec sheets, and plugging into excel for me. Rather that be for Size, Weight, Power budget, or even interfaces.
I'd love to see a drag and drop tool the plops out an ICD, power budget, etc.
One observation I've had on my missions: compatability is often a mess of drivers and just getting components to talk to one another, and the details are behind NDAs and export laws, etc.
GRanted, even just solving the early phases of ICD and the general (does this mission fit in an 8U/12U, etc bus), would be a massive help. Very cool project that I could see becoming a paid tool
I've launched Cubesat missions commercially, and wasn't aware of this text (unclear when it was published). Many of the Space Mission txts are designed around larger (classical) satellite buses and aren't written for "how do you get a payload / mission to LEO for ~$1M"
The book is spot on that F' is where it's at for the future of Small Satellites OBFS, the flight computer section is also pretty remarkably helpful - as in this is very practical "how you get it done and here is the history" versus pie in the sky theory.
And per other comments, yes, it is rather US centric. Here is the reality, if you are putting a cibesat in orbit, 95% odds your best path is a SpaceX Falcon 9 Rideshare, which means you will be operating with a US FCC Launch license and coordinating with the FCC equivalent in your own country where you which to downlink to. That is the one area the book doesn't cover, Space law. You can get burned easily on "Space lawyers," charging ~$1500/hr to prepare an FCC license, helping you with ITAR (yes many components on a satellite are "arms" technology). If you get to the right person, there are a few small legal service shops in the US that will help you submit your launch license paperwork for a reaosnable fee. And lastly, integration and deployer. Believe it or not, there are foreign nation states (not the US) operating these deployer services that are adjacent to inteligence services that will do everything from spy on you to sabotage your mission if they don't like it (I've had it happen). All in, launching a small satellite is an amazing endeavor, and getting it to orbit and getting first downlink can be a very real challenge. It's an amazing time we live in that we can do such things
This is awesome.
Also, this quote feels relevant:
"Ludwig Boltzmann, who spent much of his life studying statistical mechanics, died in 1906, by his own hand. Paul Ehrenfest, carrying on the work, died similarly in 1933. Now it is our turn to study statistical mechanics." - David Goodstein's States of Matter, Introduction
I'm so glad I left California 6 years ago. They are going to regulate and tax their startups and innovators away to other states. This is supremely stupid.
Social Media, and specifically Facebook / Meta, will go down in history as one of the worst developments in technology in the 21st century. As Frances Haugen stated in her testimony, Mark Zuckberg needs to be removed from the helm at Meta.
It's unfortunate what happened to DB over the years. I last rode a DB fast train in 2018. We just stopped in the middle of a field for no announced reason for 70 minutes. I missed my international flight home as a result. I haven't rode the DB since, and hear it has only gotten worse.