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They really need to put the specs online and work on their presentation - I love everything I see at their website, but the site itself looks extremely amateurish...which is a pity, because their idea of fractional ownership of rockets has some merit. Also: http://www.interorbital.com/CubeSat%20BOOST-UP%20Program%20R... for a more detailed outline of their business model.

Meantime, the engineering challenge is: what would you like to do, given a power source, transceiver, ~200 gram payload (although apparently they're stackable in groups of 2, 3, 4), and a few weeks' worth of low-earth orbit?




It is probably only good for communications. A spinner with poor attitude control (you do not really have a lot of room for good mechanical or optical rate gyros, not to mention the lack of any means to perform orbital maneuvers) and small payloads will probably not work well for imaging or radar.

However, there are a lot of companies and universities looking into small satellites, since it is much, much cheaper than launching larger satellites with expensive payloads. There is a lot of research in the area and a lot of small sat conferences as well (e.g. http://www.smallsat.org/). If this pans out, it could be the end of the US government's large satellite oligopoly, which currently consists of only a few large companies like Lockheed Martin (disclaimer: that is where I work) and Boeing.


Get a double and put some attitude control on it. You should get almost a KG of payload that way. CO2 jets.




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