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KSP Community CubeSat

K^2

By K^2
in Science & Spaceflight

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Ultimate Mission?  

104 members have voted

  1. 1. Ultimate Mission?

    • LEO Only - Keep it safe
      55
    • Sun-Earth L1
      5
    • Sun-Earth L2
      1
    • Venus Capture
      14
    • Mars Capture
      23
    • Phobos Mission
      99
    • Jupiter Moons Mission
      14
    • Saturn Moons Mission
      14
    • Interstellar Space
      53

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Endersmens

Endersmens

Posted
Posted
It looks very good, I'm impressed with how quickly you came up with that. I'm not very good with design or being articulate with design, but I will try. The background seems distracting/makes it difficult for my eyes to focus on the content/text. I feel if it was darker or maybe semi-transparent with a black background behind the space background, that would better. Or perhaps make the border between the content and the background a bit sharper or bolder. I'm not entirely sure, which is why I started this post with "I'm not very goo with design..."

Well the background is going to change at some point. Also, I didn't like make every single thing on there. I started with a base. All white, with blocks of random text to fill in. And I've changed all it's parameters and edited colors and moved boxes and added boxes and made more pages. Fun stuff. :)

Hey Endersmen, could you add a forums on the website to discuss the mission and parts? Here on the KSP forums, I think it's a bit to crowded.
Well, I mean were we can discuss all the parts and mission parameters in detail, without all the clutter of this thread.

Well, there are different pages on the site, such as project documents and the "phase I" page, where all this stuff will go. We will discuss it on here, and other places, and it will be compiled there for easy reading.

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Endersmens

Endersmens

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Ahh, so Phase I will be like a mini forum? Nice!

Well, google users can comment on the page yes, but i meant like we will discuss stuff here. Once we define phase I, I will compile the information on that page. Meaning that page will consist of all the info on phase I.

Also, I broke 100 rep points! I have two rep bubbles! AHHHH! :D :D :D

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K^2

K^2

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Uhh, temperature? Radiation levels? Gas/water consumption? Size increase/decrease? That sort of thing.

Said another way, what do we measure from the moss in the sat?

Hopefully, we'll be able to measure temperature, humidity, pressure, and either O2 or CO2 concentration. With some basic assumptions based on what goes in, we can pretty much get full atmo composition from that and how much of what is being consumed. This, indirectly, lets us monitor biomass growth. So long as nothing goes fubar, that's useful data. I don't know how practical it would be, but apparently, there is some interest in it.

Additionally, we can snap some pictures. Though, I suspect, these will be primarily to satisfy curiosity.

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Mazon Del

Mazon Del

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Are the cubesats always put into a quickly decaying orbit?

As the last thing we need is more small things in Earth orbit.

Sort of, you get what you pay for. Rapidly decaying orbits are cheaper, more elevated long term orbits are more expensive.

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Endersmens

Endersmens

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Just an update on Luis for others, he is out again this week, but he is doing research on answers to our questions and asking around. So he should have information for us soon.

Also, great work on that web site!

Thanks! But that information you mentioned. Is that something that could go on the website? It's kinda starved of information right now.

So, anyone who has info that should go on the site, just tell me.

Also, what is this? https://github.com/christok/ksatsim

I found it by accident and it has some info on it i could use, but i don't know where it came from, nor from who. Could someone shed some light?

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Nicholander

Nicholander

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K^2: Okay, Mars MAY be a bit much, but we can afford to push it, like first we do something in Lunar gravity, and then we change it to Mars gravity, so in the very unlikely event that it fails somehow because of that, then we still get the Lunar gravity data, so it'd be better then not equipping our CubeSat to get Mars gravity.

Endersmens: Earlier in our thread christok, a KSP forum member, was/is working with K^2 to make a sim for our CubeSat, and that's the Github thing for that. It's in C++ code by the way.

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NERVAfan

NERVAfan

Posted
Posted (edited)

I just found out about this and I haven't gotten through all 110 pages (sorry if I'm repeating something), but...

...I would suggest that instead of moss we could send up algae in a small sealed transparent container of water. Having our "plant" floating might help with the direction of 'gravity' changing between launch (rocket acceleration) and spinning-artificial-gravity: if we use plants in soil soil might end up falling in weird directions. But a sealed container of water shouldn't be affected much, the water would just find its level in the new gravity.

Is water allowed on cubesats? EDIT: that's probably a dumb question, sorry.

EDIT: This would also help with keeping it pressurized if the algae & water were in a sealed container of their own. And it could be made very small since the algae are microscopic individually (but visible en masse, so a camera can see them). I'd suggest filamentous algae ("pond scum") - they're basically aquatic "weeds".

It would be great to use Arabidopsis thaliana - it's the classic experimental plant (just like fruit flies and mice for animals, E. coli for bacteria, etc.) But while it's 'small', it's not THAT small.

EDIT x2: and we'd need an identical container of algae (or moss or whatever) on Earth.

Edited by NERVAfan
more algae stuff; formatting
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NERVAfan

NERVAfan

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Naming the CubeSat should probably occur when the funding occurs as it will act as a good source of publicity. I'm not sure, I'm new here.

This is a great idea and I look forward to contributing some how.

We could have a list (generated by us) of 10 or so names and the highest Kickstarter reward could be to pick one as the final name.

Sort of, you get what you pay for. Rapidly decaying orbits are cheaper, more elevated long term orbits are more expensive.

Also, small stuff like cubesats have their orbits decay much faster than big stuff like the ISS in a similar orbit, I think because of surface area/mass ratio (square cube law).

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K^2

K^2

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Also, small stuff like cubesats have their orbits decay much faster than big stuff like the ISS in a similar orbit, I think because of surface area/mass ratio (square cube law).

Precisely that. The ISS orbit would still give us about half a year to a year, depending on how much drag we get from solar panels, which should be more than enough. I have a feeling something else will go sideways well before the re-entry, anyhow.

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Nicholander

Nicholander

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NERVAfan, the point of our CubeSat is to study the effects of plants in sub-gravity, like Moon or Mars gravity, and to see how to react and behave in that environment. And this data will be very valuable when/if we want to grow food/crops on The Moon or Mars, like on a colony, and you can't get data for that with some algae floating in some water, just because of some concerns that the previous design (Which all of us has agreed upon) will break during launch. Many space agencies has sent satellites up with plants in them, so why can't we?

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christok

christok

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Also, what is this? https://github.com/christok/ksatsim

I found it by accident and it has some info on it i could use, but i don't know where it came from, nor from who. Could someone shed some light?

I started that. It's mentioned earlier in the thread but I don't blame you for not finding it :)

The idea was to get some sort of outline going. There isn't anything to see yet, as you may have noticed. I also need to rewrite some stuff where I guessed wrong about how it's going to work and upload what I've done. Sorry, but I had a major project at work and have been on call, so I haven't done as much as I should have. (I.e. nothing.)

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NERVAfan

NERVAfan

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NERVAfan, the point of our CubeSat is to study the effects of plants in sub-gravity, like Moon or Mars gravity, and to see how to react and behave in that environment. And this data will be very valuable when/if we want to grow food/crops on The Moon or Mars, like on a colony, and you can't get data for that with some algae floating in some water,

OK, yeah, good point, the gravity would have much less of an effect on algae suspended in water.

Why moss though? Moss is generally shade living, how well will it do in full sunlight? I'm not sure that is a good test of the gravity aspect since the sunlight may kill it/prevent it from growing much? What species of moss would be used?

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