[time-nuts] TubeSat Personal Satellite Kit

[Hal Murray]

> It used to be that you could make your payload as ballast for almost
> free (that's how the early Amateur radio sats were launched).  But
> now, the launch service providers know that folks are willing to pay.
> The ³small sat² business has been so successful that most amateur
> operations have been priced out of the market. A university with an
> aerospace engineering program could easily afford $100-200K for launch
> costs, which isn¹t much, spread across a couple dozen class members.
> (For context, an introductory molecular biology class could cost
> $6-10K just for reagents, gels, etc, to do simple gene splicing and
> sequencing) 

So what do areospace class projects actually do?  I assume they measure 
something.  What is left that is still interesting to measure?  What is the 
downlink like?  Is there an uplink?  (if nothing else, it would be handy to 
say "now" to the downlink.)

$100-200K over a "couple dozen class members" is still a big chunk of cash.  
Even at fancy text book prices that would buy a lot of books.   How much 
NSF/NASA/whatever funding is available?


-- 
These are my opinions, not necessarily my employer's.  I hate spam.