KSP Community CubeSat

[dharak1]

We need rad hard equipment for this mission.

[K^2]

Awesome That's a great start! Try building something that can transmit over 1km range and automatically find a target - that will definitely be a good 1st stage of testing if you don't want to buy an off-the-self station. And beware that the further you go the worse it becomes. And more expensive.

Know what? That's a good idea.

Transceiver and an on-board computer are not? And that's just a beginning, I'm afraid.

Tranceivers are much more reasonably priced than the solar panels needed to power them. And if worst comes to worst, I can pay for an MCU that will survive up there a couple of days out of pocket. It'd be nice to have ability to buy something specifically rated for space, however, so that we could count on it for a month of operation, at least.

[Kryten]

Why would it be more expensive? They just have to account for approx. 1 kg more mass. The cube is stuffed together with toothpaste and toiler paper.

Astronaut time isn't free.

Deploying from unmanned rockets carrying satellites requires structural modifications and tests. That looks a lot more serious.

That's the point of the cubesat standard; all sats have same size and mass distribution, so all launches can use the same deployer layout; meaning there's little calculation or modification needed. If they can't fill a slot or the sat fails tests, they just replace it with cubesat-shaped bit of ballast.

[dharak1]

We still need a place to assemble the cubesat and find out who will handle our funds and contracts.

[EpicRootHairCell]

I'm sorry if i offended you PakledHostage, i feel that cutting the quote did not change the apparent message or intention of you post and did so in order to reduce the size of the post and thus view it as justified.

[Nicholander]

We need rad hard equipment for this mission.

You don't say? (Stupid avatar refrence LOL)

Anyway, K^2, what are your ideas on what our first mission should do ounce in LEO?

Edited July 15, 2014 by Nicholander

[dharak1]

I say we do some maneuvering and see how precise we can get our moment while taking pictures of course.

[R0cketC0der]

I say we do some maneuvering and see how precise we can get our moment while taking pictures of course.

Just taking pictures doesn't really have any use, after all there are plenty of pictures already taken from LEO. I would like if we could do something more interesting.

[Rakaydos]

So you want to make a thread where future missions are discused? Yes, I know the future is fascinating, but those things are only ideas that will fly in many years. Those ideas should be developed later, and we haven't even decided what our first mission will do in LEO.

I believe it can be useful discussion, as something the LEO mission is practicing for, but not so useful that it merits cloging up the single discussion thread.

[Nicholander]

I see, though K^2 said that this thread is bassicly for devoloping the basic mission ideas, and making the first mission the most developed. Let's see what K^2 says.

[PakledHostage]

I'm sorry if i offended you PakledHostage, i feel that cutting the quote did not change the apparent message or intention of you post and did so in order to reduce the size of the post and thus view it as justified.

I wasn't offended. But I felt that you were quoting me out of context. I believe that, had you included my last sentence, it would have weakened your retort. I feel that you should have included it and argued the point you made above instead: That the KSP community has a higher percentage of "talent" than the population at large. I would have agreed with you then. But my point would still stand that talent alone won't get you anywhere. And so would my point that real life space flight isn't easy just because you are/were the smartest kid in your class. You need talent, hard work and luck to stand out, and you need a realistic plan to deal with the very significant technical problems involved in a project like this. So far, this idea doesn't stand out. That doesn't mean it won't ever stand out, but it doesn't stand out yet.

Edited July 15, 2014 by PakledHostage
Added a sentence to clarify my point

[lajoswinkler]

Astronaut time isn't free.

That's the point of the cubesat standard; all sats have same size and mass distribution, so all launches can use the same deployer layout; meaning there's little calculation or modification needed. If they can't fill a slot or the sat fails tests, they just replace it with cubesat-shaped bit of ballast.

I still think it's more complex to do it using a commercial satellite. Those are launched using smaller rockets so tolerances are strict. Soyuz preparation can surely tolerate such deviations (after all, 1 kg of body mass fluctuation is way below normal), and that astronaut time can't be so expensive. It's just releasing the cubes. They don't control them. They basically just release them using a robotic arm.

ISS already releases microsatellites every now and then.

[SciMan]

Airmchair astronauts never cease to amaze me - now you want to build a data rely satellite for NASA in a cube sat? Orbiting another planet?

It's as ridiculous idea as a purchase of RTG. If not more. You could probably buy an RTG of some Russian smuggler, but Martian data rely satellite in a cube sat is a joke.

BTW: I love how you spiced it up with some numbers to look more serious

You're right, trying to stuff a data relay in a cube sat is a joke. Not even close to enough space or mas for everything needed, even in a 6u sat.

That wasn't the point I was making, but I have a bad habit of rattling on about something down to the most minute detail even if it doesn't make a difference to my actual point, so others missing my point is no big surprise.

My point was that a spacecraft that has that much power available for transmission hasn't ever been sent to another planet, so it might be something that NASA would be interested in, possibly enough to grant us the free GTO launch that the thing would need if we are to even consider doing that.

Please don't mistake enthusiasm for belief that this idea is actually going to go anywhere. I don't even consider this whole idea to be in the "sketch on the back of a napkin" stage, even if we do have a few proposed component layouts and stuff.

I'd bet it's a year out until we even have enough of a plan to consider funding issues.

Obviously the odds are very long on any of this getting off the ground, both literally and figuratively.

However, As Han Solo said, "Never tell me the odds!"

Also, technically my posts in this thread have been more "armchair engineer" than "armchair astronaut", 'tho I'll admit to being both .

Of course, I don't consider it to be an insult.

I'm only an armchair engineer because the college system in this country seems to be less about academic skills and more about if you can pay the admission price. Of course that's just my personal opinion.

[Skyler4856]

a phobos mission would be a first, and a trans-phobia injection burn costs less delta-v than a lunar burn.

[PlonioFludrasco]

a phobos mission would be a first, and a trans-phobia injection burn costs less delta-v than a lunar burn.

Yes, but going to Phobos takes many months, while going to the Moon (I was writing Mun LOL) takes few days. That doesn't mean that a cubesat lunar flyby is feasible....

EDIT Maybe when (if) they'll come back to the Moon we could ask for a ride...

[cpast]

For Phobos mission, how would you protect and control the satellite during aerocapture? As of now, that's never been done on interplanetary trajectories, both because it puts a lot of force (and a lot of heat) on the hardware, and because it's one-shot: if there's any issue, any miscalculation, you can't really fix it (unlike with aerobraking, which happens over hundreds of orbits *after* an injection *burn*, giving time to adjust as needed).

Now, that means that something transmitting data from the aerocapture could be interesting by itself, but it would definitely give anyone considering funding you or giving you things (e.g. a launch) for cheap/free pause.

[PlonioFludrasco]

For Phobos mission, how would you protect and control the satellite during aerocapture? As of now, that's never been done on interplanetary trajectories, both because it puts a lot of force (and a lot of heat) on the hardware, and because it's one-shot: if there's any issue, any miscalculation, you can't really fix it (unlike with aerobraking, which happens over hundreds of orbits *after* an injection *burn*, giving time to adjust as needed).

The problem is not the aerocapture itself, it's how to get to that point. If you are able to put your satellite to an aerocapture trajectory, you can easily (more or less) pack a few more fuel and do a capture burn.

[cpast]

The problem is not the aerocapture itself, it's how to get to that point. If you are able to put your satellite to an aerocapture trajectory, you can easily (more or less) pack a few more fuel and do a capture burn.

It's not a "little more fuel"; the Mars Global Surveyor capture burn was 977 m/s. That's why so many people are interested in aerocapture as a possibility, because it lets you avoid a very high delta-v maneuver. The issue is how to perform the aerocapture with the needed precision, and without destroying the satellite.

[PlonioFludrasco]

Right, but first you have to arrive there. With a cubesat

[cpast]

Right, but first you have to arrive there. With a cubesat

Well, yes. I'm just saying that even once you get there, you need to be able to have the cubesat survive. I don't see how it being hard to get a cubesat to a Mars transfer orbit makes capture easy.

[rkman]

The issue is how to perform the aerocapture with the needed precision, and without destroying the satellite.

Would't it basically be Curiosity-style in-atmosphere trajectory control (without the landing)? Tricky, but it has been done.

I suspect that getting the mass of thermal protection/aeroshell low enough is more difficult.

[PlonioFludrasco]

No, it's not easy at all. But if you compare it to the hundreds of difficult things you'll need to work on, at least it's a thing you can decide to avoid. Going for a mars flyby will be an enormous achievement too!

[Kevon87]

I voted for phobos, but with a twist. Buy two cubesats and link them together somehow, with the ability to decouple. Use one as an orbiter, one as an impactor. Equip the orbiter with a spectrometer and point it at the dust cloud formed by the impact of cubesat #1. Kind of like that mission to a comet that I can't recall the name of.

[RuBisCO]

Question: what is a KSP cubesat going to do?

[SargeRho]

Determining that is part of the point of this thread.