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.