[time-nuts] OT - but of interest?

[J. Forster]

Putting 100,000 items in space is a non-starter. The existing space trash
is already a big concern, and there have been seriuous proposals for
missions to clean it up. An iPhone, travelling at orbital velocity, has a
lot of kinetic energy!

There was an uproar years ago when the Westford Needles experiment was
launched, and those had a known mechanism to de-orbit the things.

As to tossing one out the docking port, unstabilized objects will tumble.
The chances of getting a useful picture of the area of interest are small.

YMMV,

-John

==============




> On Sat, Apr 27, 2013 at 9:40 AM, Gregory Muir <engineering at mt.net> wrote:
>
>> I'm curious if they ever have any problem with earth-based commercial
>> component
>> outgassing clouding the camera optics.
>
> I went to a lecture on the idea of putting a cell phone like object in
> orbit.  The idea was that it should have a cost and size about like a
> phone.   This is very different from a pico-sat (a 4 inch cube)
> because the pico sat costs $100,000 or more and the phone is under
> $500   The idea is that $500 satellites you don't have to care about
> failures.  The plan was to place maybe 100,000 devices in orbit and as
> they fail just launch another 1,000 or so at a time.  The proposal was
> to launch them from a rocket carried under an aircraft.
>
> The goal was an un-jamable world wide data network.  The phones would
> self-organize into a mesh network.   But no one is going to do this.
> But still the question lives on:  "What could you do with a iPhone in
> orbit?"   One idea was diagnostics.  A big spacecraft like a space
> station of crew capsule headed to mars might toss a few outside so
> they could get photos of the exterior if they suspected a problem or
> if the phone is cheap just to get  snapshot.  But I'd bet a bunch
> they'd use a $100K pico sat for that.
> --
>
> Chris Albertson
> Redondo Beach, California
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