A way to decrease the number of satellites?

This idea began while I was thinking of CubeSats.  On one hand, it’s great that our technology has gotten to the point when so much function can be fit into so small a space, but on the other hand I worry about orbits being filled with thousands of small, difficult to detect objects.  So I wondered about a, sort of CubeSat mothership.  The idea would be to have a larger satellite that would handle power, propulsion, and communication, but there would be attachment points for twenty or so CubeSat approximate instruments.  And if one of these fails, or if it was just a test of some system and the company wants to test something new, a spacecraft – crewed or robotic – could visit and remove the old and replace it with a new one.  As a benefit, the old one could even be returned to the ground for study. 

Not all CubeSats would end up on these motherships: they’d work great for Earth observation, not so much for testing new propulsion systems.  Also, I read that CubeSats have an average lifetime of a little over a year, which is good enough for some projects, but does seem short for someone with a passing interest in the industry. 

So I had this idea that was filed away in my brain for a year or more, but I remembered it one day and expanded it into my idea of an everything space station.  The ESSs, would be mass produced and I could see hundreds of them in orbit.  These would consist of four modules that would be launched on two rockets and dock in orbit.  Two of the modules would basically be the CubeSat mothership idea, just bigger.  There would be telescoping arms with attachment points and power/data jacks for twenty or more instrument packages.  This would be connected to a command module that would handle all the power and communications.  The third module would be a basic living space for four people.  The last module would have two docking ports and an airlock. 

How I imagine this would work, is you find some clear orbit, and you’d put twenty or so ESSs into this orbit, evenly spaced.  And instead of launching twenty Earth observation satellites, and twenty telecommunication satellites, and twenty whatever satellites into this orbit, you’d just attach the instrument packages to the twenty ESSs.  Instead of 400 satellites in whatever orbits, you’d have twenty in a well-defined orbit.  And you could have twenty more ESSs in a different orbital plane at a different altitude to give better coverage of the Earth.  And you could have normal satellites filling in whatever gaps there are.

But wouldn’t having hundreds of crewed space stations just make things more difficult?  Well, they’re not permanently crewed.  I was thinking they may only be crewed for one week every year.  A cargo craft would launch and dock, and then a crewed craft would launch and dock.  The crew would go in and do any maintenance or repair/replace any damaged instrument packages.  And once they’re done, instead of returning to Earth, the cargo and crew craft would just boost into a slightly higher orbit and wait for the next ESS to come into position and then dock with them and repeat the process for however long their supplies last. 

In addition to all the Earth observation and telecommunication packages, each ESS could have telescopes and other instruments on the outside.  And some could be set up for long-term experiments inside.  Some of these could be crystal growths or whatever, but you could even run the life support in the crew area for a week, then turn it off for a week, then turn it back on, and just see how many cycles your life support can go through.  That’s a random bit of data that might lead to something interesting, but there’s no other way to really get it.  I do think these ESSs would, not only reduce the number of satellites in orbit without decreasing the benefits of satellites, but would also give plenty of space for interesting and weird experiments that could never be done on permanently crewed space stations.

Just an idea.

Moon landing sale!

If everything goes as planned, then on Tuesday, April 25th, ispace’s Hakuto-R Mission 1 will land on the moon.  If successful, ispace will become only the fourth entity to successfully land a craft on the moon.  They will follow in the footsteps of the Soviet Union’s Luna 9 in February 1966, the US’s Surveyor 1 in June 1966, and China’s Chang’e 3 in December 2013.  The big difference between this lander and previous ones, is that it will be a private company doing it.

I am a big supporter of lunar exploration, so to mark this latest attempt, I will have a sale on two of my ebooks.  From Monday April 24th, through Friday April 28th, you will be able to grab my collection of essays The Moon Before Mars: Why returning to the moon makes more sense than rushing off to Mars, and my collection of stories all set on the moon A Cabin Under a Cloudy Sea and other stories for just the price of a click. 

Wishing ispace the best of luck.

Thoughts on Starship

I don’t really care. 

Don’t get me wrong, Starship is a technological marvel and all the engineers and technicians who worked on it should be applauded.  My issue with it is just burnout from waiting.  I know designing rockets is hard, but I’m just tired of hearing about some great rocket that “should fly next year,” only to wait five or six years before it finally flies.

In the rocket community, you’ll often hear about “Paper Rockets.” These are rockets that are designed, but for one reason or another – they often can’t raise the money – are never built and remain designs on paper.  Starship is not a paper rocket, but it’s in a second category of “Built But Not Flown Rockets.” Once it does fly, it will move into a third category that I call “Promise Rockets.” A lot of people will be passing out from excitement when Starship launches, but I’ll be like, “Yes, that’s nice, but can it actually fulfill all the promises made about it?” I won’t become excited until Starship moves into the fourth category of “Functional Rockets.” This will happen once it starts regularly carrying cargo to space.  What exactly that point is, I don’t know.  Probably something like ten, fully successful missions launched within a year.  Once that happens, I’ll be overjoyed with Starship.

For a bit of clarification, I consider the Falcon 9 a Functional Rocket, but the Falcon Heavy is still a Promise Rocket.  (As of this posting, it has flown five times in just over five years.  If it ever flies six times in a year, I’ll consider it Functional.)  Other Functional Rockets are the Atlas V, the Ariane 5, the H-IIA, etc.  They don’t fly six or ten times a year, but they weren’t built to do that.  I guess in that sense, the SLS is also a functional rocket, since they only promised to fly it once every year or so, but it’s not a rocket I care for. 

So I hope they get all the data they need from this test flight, and that they quickly turn this built rocket into a Functional Rocket.  But until they do, I won’t get too excited. 

Random Story – Three quick stories

These are just odd little stories from my life.

#1

Years ago, I lived in a town with a big Mexican population.  And one day in mid-April or so, I was walking around the town and I saw a sign for “5 de Mayo.” For a few seconds in my head, I wondered, What the hell is five de Mayo?

#2

Many years ago, there was some issue with our landline.  A technician came out and fixed the problem, but we needed a new phone.  Well, he did have an old rotary phone in his truck, I think it might have been the last one he had, since most people had moved on to phones with buttons.  And my parents had dealt with rotary phones for decades so they were fine with it.

Well, some years later, some Amish started moving into our area.  And one thing about the Amish is that they can use phones, they just can’t have a phoneline to their house.  So if they needed to call someone, they went over to a neighbor and ask to use their phone.  My parents let it be known that the Amish could use our phone.  With the older Amish, there weren’t any issues.  But one day some younger Amish came over to use the phone and they had never seen a rotary one before.  Our phone was so old, the Amish didn’t know how to use it.  It was shortly after that my parents upgraded to a basic, cordless phone.

#3

I used to see ads for this store, but they only seemed to be “Great prices on items,” types of ads, and I had no idea what this store actually sold.  Well, one day I took a detour or something, and as I went down this road I rarely traveled, I saw one of these stores.  So a week or so later, I was bored one afternoon so I went to see what they sold.  They basically sold everything, from computers to refrigerators. 

I don’t know how long I was there before an employee came up and asked if I needed any help.  I said I was just looking, and went on my way.  But instead of letting me go on my way, this guy followed me around the store and popped in like every two minutes to ask if he could help me.  Like, I stopped for ten seconds to look at this eight-foot TV, and he shows up and starts going on with the price.  I say I can’t afford it, he goes on about payment plans.  I say I’m moving in a few months, he says they can store it for me until my new place is set up.  He did not take no for an answer, to the point, he even “went to his manager” to get me a 15% discount on the TV. 

After the second or third time he came up to me, I wondered, Can he not take a clue?  It was almost funny.  But when he’s giving me a business card with his name, and the manager’s name, and how this special discount would only hold for the next few days, I knew I had to go.  If he had just let me look, I probably would have stayed in the store looking around for another ten or fifteen minutes.  And I probably would have bought a … candy bar, or something.  But I left that store, and never went back.

A Space Junk Prize

 Some months ago, I wrote a post – A fun idea for a moon mission – about a robotic lunar program I would fund if I had billions to burn and wanted to help advance humans into becoming a spacefaring civilization.  The idea would be to 3D print bricks with actual lunar regolith to see how strong they would be.  I was thinking about this recently, and I wondered what other space missions I would fund – if I had billions to burn – to help humans in space.  What I came up with was the J-Prize, I guess, for space junk removal.

This would start with three small satellites, probably launched on an Electron rocket.  The first would be your basic cube sat, the second would be a larger cube sat, but with a solar panel sticking out so it would be odd shaped, and the third satellite would remain attached to the kick stage to help simulate a more massive satellite.  These would be put into slightly different orbits, but which are pretty much guaranteed to decay in the five-to-six-year range.  What exactly these satellites would do, I’d leave that to whoever builds them, probably schools or universities that I would give a free ride to orbit to.  There would be the understanding that these satellites would be given one year to function, but after that they would become targets for deorbiting tech demonstrations.  So they might function for the full five years, or get deorbited right after one year in orbit. 

The tech demonstrations would have three tiers.  The first tier would be to just inspect the satellites.  To that end, there would be symbols, or code phrases put on each.  Prelaunch photos of them would be blurred, and everyone who knows what they are would have to sign NDAs, so to get these codes you’d have to actually fly to these satellites.  And there might be two or three on each satellite, each worth X dollars.  For the third satellite, they might be big and easy to spot, but for the cube sat, they might just be a centimeter in size, so the imaging satellite would have to fly real close to be able to make it out.  So, unlike the other tiers which would pay out more for the larger satellites, for the first tier you’d make the most imaging the smallest.

The second tier would pay if you manage to deorbit the satellite early.  This could be accomplished by attaching some sort of drag, or attaching a small rocket to push it out of orbit, whatever.  The third tier would be if they manage to return the satellite intact to Earth. 

I have no idea what the exact prize amounts would be, but I’d say that the second tier would be more than enough to refund the cost of manufacturing the deorbiting satellite and launching it.  And, there would be bonus prizes.  Like, if a company successfully deorbits one of the test satellites, then for the next ten years they’d get $1 million for each piece of space junk they deorbit.  But if a company didn’t succeed with one of these test satellites, but they do succeed with some other junk within the next ten years, they’d get $500 thousand, or something.  Because the whole idea of this is to try to incentivize companies into finding ways to clean up space junk.  As such, I wondered if there should be a penalty if they damage a satellite and create space junk, but that would scare people off.  And that’s why these test satellites would be put into such short-lived orbits. 

So that’s my idea.  I’ll have to see what other ideas I can come up with to help humanity to become spacefaring, just in case I somehow become a billionaire and need some way to spend that money.

Short story – “Puppy Wuppy”

“Puppy Wuppy”

Jason ran into the kitchen and shouted, “This is it Sharon!  I’ve finally done it.”

Without looking up from her phone, Sharon asked, “What is it this time?”

“It’s a Human/Canine Translator.  Now dog owners will be able to have conversations with their dog.  We’ll make millions!”

Six months later

Sharon looked across the kitchen table at Jason and stated, “I want a divorce.”

Jason mumbled something in reply, barely lifting his head off the stack of legal documents. 

“‘We’ll make millions,’ you said,” she mocked.  “‘Every dog owner will want to have a conversation with their dog,’ you said.  ‘This is too big of a thing, if I took the time to do a full scale test one of the big tech companies would come in and steal my idea,’ you said.  Well maybe you should have let them steal the stupid idea.  Or better yet have done the full scale testing and discovered that half the dogs in America think their owners are idiots because they already talk to them like little babies.”

Her voice had steadily rose during her speech, but she paused for a moment to take a deep breath.  “You’re brilliant,” she said.  “You were able to imagine and then build a translator for people and dogs.  Yet you never took the time to think through how things work in the real world.  Yes, some dog owners bought the device to talk to their dog.  But then there were the paparazzi who bought them to get dirt on celebrities from their dogs.  Then police bought them because you don’t need a search warrant to talk to a dog about anything weird going on in a house.  And don’t get me started on the bestiality freaks.  And with countless people incensed at perceived invasions of privacy, the lawyers came out of the woodwork and they all figured out new and inventive ways to sue you.”

Sharon reached across the table and took Jason’s hand.  He didn’t lift his head.  “For eight years,” she said, “I’ve put up with your crazy schemes and inventions.  It took one of them to work for me to realize, I’ve had enough.”

***

I posted this years ago on a now defunct site.  I came across it while cleaning some folders and thought it needed to see the light of day again.  The idea came one time when I was trying to calm our old dog and wondered what he would have said if he could talk.  I realized how quickly any “puppy wuppy” stuff would become annoying.

Random Story – The teacher flipped us off

This is just an odd little story from my life.

Back in seventh or eighth grade, one day in – maybe history class – we had a substitute teacher.  To a seventh grader, she looked to be ninety, and she had a bit of a temper.  Older siblings had passed down the cruel nickname of Porkchop for her.  (I honestly can’t remember what her name was.)

Anyway, she’s teaching and she says something along the lines of there are five points to remember.  She raised her left hand with all her fingers held out.  With her right forefinger, she touched her pinky then folded it down while saying, “The first thing ….” We sat there and took notes.  For the second thing, she touched her ring finger and folded it, and we sat there taking notes.  But when it came time for the third thing, she touched her thumb.

So there she was, sitting in front of the class with her left hand held up with her fore and middle fingers up talking on about whatever.  And us students were all glancing at one another wondering which finger would she put down next.  And when she finally got the fourth thing, she touched her forefinger.

Now she’s in front of the class with her bony middle finger up to all of us, and we’re sitting there not believing it’s happening and trying not to laugh because we’d probably get sent to the office if we did.  And when the class ended like ten minutes later, we all rushed out and were laughing in the hall saying, “I can’t believe Porkchop flipped us off.”

At the time, I – and probably all of us – just figured she was old and didn’t know what she was doing.  But as an adult who knows some teachers, she probably just wanted to flip all of us asshole kids off.