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Getting a satellite into space is ~50,000$ for a 1U cube sat when I looked around. You might be able to get NASA or somebody to send it up for free if it's educ

Getting a satellite into space is ~50,000$ for a 1U cube sat when I looked around. You might be able to get NASA or somebody to send it up for free if it's educational and they have room. So it's getting cheaper for sure! While that's certainly not the cheapest, it's now within reach of small startups/passionate makers which is exciting!

420codebro 8y ago
$50K - wow that is really cheap to put something into orbit.
convolvatron 8y ago
curious - is a cubesat enough of a footprint to gather enough solar energy to act as an RF relay until the orbit decays?
monocasa 8y ago
More likely in 50-100 years is manufacturing capacity in space gets to the point that building a 1u satellite up there is way cheaper than sending from a deep gravity well like Earth's. I imagine at some point, rockets will only be used for sending people and other things that can't be transmitted or manufacturered.
- jonfw 8y ago
  Still going to pay transport costs on getting raw materials to space, although I imagine raw mats will be densers and the volume savings will reduce costs.
  - monocasa 8y ago
    There's plenty of raw materials in space via asteroid mining, particularly everything you need for satellites.
    - penagwin 8y ago
      But on currently on earth we have many massive factories to collect, refine, and process just the raw materials. Those factories will require massive amounts of resources to boot, and we don't start with any resources in space....
      - monocasa 8y ago
        Right, so it's a bootstrapping question. If this was your long term goal, you'd right now be working on reusable rockets that you'd soon be using at cost to send up large quantities of infrastructure (cough cough Blue Origin and Space X, Space X being further along and openly talking about Starlink). Next step is mining asteroids for stuff like platinum and dropping it down to earth. Step after that is manufacturing with those raw materials in micro G. Now you have a complete manufacturing chain without gravity wells, and ostensibly a multi trillion dollar company.
        ngold 8y ago
        This is the exciting future of space. I love that comment sections are inevitably choked up with people say can't or won't since it's easy to say no.

420codebro 8y ago

$50K - wow that is really cheap to put something into orbit.

convolvatron 8y ago

curious - is a cubesat enough of a footprint to gather enough solar energy to act as an RF relay until the orbit decays?

monocasa 8y ago

More likely in 50-100 years is manufacturing capacity in space gets to the point that building a 1u satellite up there is way cheaper than sending from a deep gravity well like Earth's. I imagine at some point, rockets will only be used for sending people and other things that can't be transmitted or manufacturered.

jonfw 8y ago
Still going to pay transport costs on getting raw materials to space, although I imagine raw mats will be densers and the volume savings will reduce costs.
- monocasa 8y ago
  There's plenty of raw materials in space via asteroid mining, particularly everything you need for satellites.
  - penagwin 8y ago
    But on currently on earth we have many massive factories to collect, refine, and process just the raw materials. Those factories will require massive amounts of resources to boot, and we don't start with any resources in space....
    - monocasa 8y ago
      Right, so it's a bootstrapping question. If this was your long term goal, you'd right now be working on reusable rockets that you'd soon be using at cost to send up large quantities of infrastructure (cough cough Blue Origin and Space X, Space X being further along and openly talking about Starlink). Next step is mining asteroids for stuff like platinum and dropping it down to earth. Step after that is manufacturing with those raw materials in micro G. Now you have a complete manufacturing chain without gravity wells, and ostensibly a multi trillion dollar company.
      - ngold 8y ago
        This is the exciting future of space. I love that comment sections are inevitably choked up with people say can't or won't since it's easy to say no.