[time-nuts] OT - but of interest?

[Chris Albertson]

No one was talking about literally placing a cell phone in orbit.
The idea was to design a tiny satellite with about the same cost, size
and level of sophistication as a cell phone.  For example it would be
silly to have an LCD screen and a microphone.    The reason for this
was not to save money.  The goal was a communications system that
could not be shot down or jammed.  And also that could be launched on
a few hours notice from a set of small mobile launchers.   I liked the
idea of a self organized switching network

But no one has seriously done any work on this and it will not get built.

On Sat, Apr 27, 2013 at 10:09 PM, Daniel Schultz <n8fgv at usa.net> wrote:
> Jim Lux wrote:
>
>>It's been challenging to find out information like Center of Mass position,
>>where the other GPS receivers are, etc. (complicated in part because half
>>of station is measured in inches/feet, and the other half in meters)
>
> This reminds me of a story I heard about while building the packet module
> power supply for the Russian module of the ISS. Apparently when the Russians
> copied the type-N connector blueprints from the west, they used an incorrect
> english to metric conversion factor, such that Russian-made type-N connectors
> will not mate correctly with US type-N connectors (unless you use force). I
> have not personally verified this story, just passing it along for your
> consideration.
>
> On the subject of cell phones in space, since the cost of placing anything in
> orbit is approximately equal to the value of an equivalent mass of pure gold,
> efforts to do extreme cost reduction at the expense of reliability seem
> misplaced. A $100K Cubesat costs about the same amount to place into orbit.
> Getting the cost of the satellite down to a thousand dollars makes little
> sense when it still costs $100K to put that satellite into orbit. If the
> satellite dies early from radiation exposure you wasted the money that you
> spent to launch it. And it is unnecessary to adapt terrestrial consumer
> products for satellites when there are other good options to obtain components
> engineered for the space environment at reasonable cost. AMSAT has decades of
> experience in this area.
>
> Cell phones are consumer devices, exquisitely engineered for mass production
> with reasonably high reliability (when used on Earth as intended) at minimum
> per unit cost. Consumer electronics is a highly specialized area of
> engineering, but so is space flight hardware. Using consumer electronic
> devices in a space flight environment is a misapplication of engineering
> principles and is destined to be a technological dead-end.
>
> Dan Schultz N8FGV
>
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-- 

Chris Albertson
Redondo Beach, California