Anyone rich enough to pay for a Jebidiah Doll to be put into Real Life orbit jsut for fun?

[Moonfrog]

Just had to ask this

[Hcube]

Not sure if that is a good idea because of orbital decay....

but on the other hand i'm pretty sure it's jebediah and not jebidiah

[stibbons]

That would be very, very boring.

Instead, go and have a look at the Community Cubesat people, who are working towards putting a real satellite in orbit.

[Moonfrog]

Clearly we think differently. Oh well nvm then. wasn't meant to be serious anyway.

[Jim Kernan]

I wonder how much it would cost though?

[jwenting]

as the old saying goes: if you have to ask the price, you can't afford it...

But think tens of thousands of dollars, IF you can hitch a ride on someone's rocket. If not, hundreds of millions.

[stibbons]

Most if not all Cubesats currently hitch on ISS resupply missions, and are essentially thrown out the side of the space station. A 1U cube, being 10cm a side and no more than 1.3kg, will cost around $10 000US give or take to get to LEO this way.

Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CubeSat

[Technical Ben]

One person did put a cheese into orbit. It was a bit hush hush. So no idea if it was as a test weight (so chosen randomly) a scientific test (bacteria/microbes etc), or to sell/own some very expensive "obital moon cheese"...

So stranger things have happened. Why not Twitter to Elon Musk or similar?

[eddiew]

You could probably send one up to the stratosphere under a helium balloon... strap a gopro, gps locator, and parachute to it and you might even get some good footage when he comes back down

[Kelvin Kerbin]

Just had to ask this

SpaceX Dragon can put 1lb in orbit for $10,000. A barbie weighs 7.25 oz. So, about $4,500 if you can convince Elon Musk to put it on his rocket. If he can land the booster then he claims he can cut costs by 100 so that theoretically brings the cost down to $45. The claim for the future is $10/lb which works out to $4.50 for the barbie.

Of course, barbie is pretty thin and Jeb is sort of chunky but he looks shorter than barbie so maybe it's a wash?

Edited April 15, 2015 by Kelvin Kerbin

[RainDreamer]

We are going to need a kickstarter for this.

Although, I think it would be better to have a scientific purpose behind it to justify such a price. We can have him in a cubesat along with other science experiments. Try to convince the cubesat people to place him in the cubesat.

You can also just try to spread awareness to more young people about this game, and hopefully there will be someone inspired enough by it to put it in their science experiments. There has been a group of high school students that had their cubesat launched to space: https://www.tjhsst.edu/students/activities/tj3sat/. So if we inspire more students and scientists, perhaps we will one day see them adding a kerbal to launch to space.

A question though...why not a valentina doll along with jeb?

[superm18]

Well some Swedish students just got the first ever donut into space with a balloon, so I don't see why not

[BagelRabbit]

Well some Swedish students just got the first ever donut into space with a balloon, so I don't see why not

Many people think that weather balloons send things "to space," and indeed, they can reach altitudes of about 100,000 feet. But that's actually only about a third of the way to space... and not even close to orbit (which is being in space and travelling at about 17,000 mph horizontally).

I think I've got a pretty good claim on the highest altitude a model Kerbal has ever gotten above ground level, at 2,872 feet AGL. This model rocket carried this model of Jeb in the nosecone as a counterweight for the GoPro.

This could easily be beaten by a good-quality weather balloon or by hitching a ride on a professional rocket, though. It's probably already been beaten, but I haven't seen any evidence of it yet...

The easiest way to get a Kerbal into space is to persuade an existing astronaut to take the guy up there. There are a certain number of lightweight 'personal belongings' that astronauts are allowed, and if we petitioned an astronaut to take up Jeb with the rest of his stuff, he or she might just do it. It would be quite inexpensive but it might require a little persuasion... are y'all up for writing some letters?

-Upsilon

[Rath]

I go to a school with someone who has 16 high end sports cars so if I can get them to play...

[sgt_flyer]

Well, if there's ever a small jebediah plushie, it might make it's way as the soyuz zero-G doll

(They had an angry bird once as a zero-g doll )

[liweih]

Maybe we just need to 3D print Jeb and kindly ask someone heading to ISS to bring it with him.

[AlexinTokyo]

ISS has a 3D printer - they could print one off and you've got Jeb in orbit for nothing more than the cost of the printing materials.

If you really want him to be in orbit by himself you'd "just" have to convince them to flush him out the airlock.

I suspect that might be a bit difficult, though.

EDIT: Alternatively, you could try to reproduce The Register's LOHAN mission.

Edited April 16, 2015 by AlexinTokyo

[boolybooly]

Polystyrene bead bag type Jeb would be nice and light, though might want to let the pressure off gradually or it could expand and blow the seams.

I have often wondered how close you could get to orbit with a rocket tied to a balloon and then fired off at 30° when in the stratosphere. With low drag acceleration would probably be pretty good.

[Technical Ben]

We could send a laser to one of the mirrors on the moon. If we spell "Jeb" in Morse code... does that count as putting him in "space"?

[Walker]

We could send a laser to one of the mirrors on the moon. If we spell "Jeb" in Morse code... does that count as putting him in "space"?

I've suggested "Jebediah Kerman" as a name that could be used on Pluto - on "ourpluto.org" site. But they don't not seem to like it... That would be cool though.

[Fel]

You know... personally... I think cube-sats sound very boring. *I have a point, just wait* I know that dealing with EM regulations alone just so you can transmit data to another satellite and piggyback your way to and from earth can give people a headache; let alone getting a direct band. In the end, you have what amounts to a computer going around the planet... and personal pride in achieving the task.

But I started thinking; sputnik could be seen from the surface of the earth, couldn't it? Yes it was just a cube-sat (Well, sphere, but it looked about the specified dimensions) Reflected light off the sun, but it could be seen.

So, rather than send a doll up to space, or a functional cube-sat... How much would it cost to CREATE a Jebidiah Constellation?

Make no mistake, I KNOW that the engineering for the "computer in space" cube-sat isn't going to be easy. Getting RCS on board and getting permissions for "Low dB radio transmissions" would be crazy. Having the software to orient the sat to reflect ambient light in a coordinated manner while running off of something low enough power consuming...

But the idea of seeing Jebidiah Riding a SRB across the night sky, for all the world to see, is golden.

[PlonioFludrasco]

Or Squad gives a Jeb doll to an astronaut for free and gently ask him to carry it to the ISS.

[LORDPrometheus]

I'm pretty sure if you asked Elon Musk would put Jeb in the next falcon launch he has stated that he loves Kerbal anyway an for that matter nasa has worked with squad so sending a plush Jeb to the ISS Is definitely not out of the question if the right strings are pulled though I think it would require the devs to initiate not the community

[Richy teh space man]

If moneys no object then why not a giant statue of Jebediah on the Moon? Kind of like Bender had in Futurama but this one saying moar boosters over short range radio or something along those lines.

[justidutch]

If it needs to be justified, "for science", then send up some Mystery Goo along with Jeb.