[time-nuts] OT - but of interest?

[Lizeth Norman]

Gentlemen,
One of the objects of the phone sat missions is to ensure deorbit for
exactly that reason. (As a matter of fact, it just happened today.) More
than a few of the new cubesats have deployable streamers to accelerate
reentry.

Why not a cloud of 100? Start small. Makes sense and sounds good.
73 de Norm n3ykf

On Sat, Apr 27, 2013 at 7:03 PM, J. Forster <jfor at quikus.com> wrote:

> 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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