On Sat, Apr 27, 2013 at 9:40 AM, Gregory Muir <[email protected]> wrote:
> I'm curious if they ever have any problem with earth-based commercial > component > outgassing clouding the camera optics. I went to a lecture on the idea of putting a cell phone like object in orbit. The idea was that it should have a cost and size about like a phone. This is very different from a pico-sat (a 4 inch cube) because the pico sat costs $100,000 or more and the phone is under $500 The idea is that $500 satellites you don't have to care about failures. The plan was to place maybe 100,000 devices in orbit and as they fail just launch another 1,000 or so at a time. The proposal was to launch them from a rocket carried under an aircraft. The goal was an un-jamable world wide data network. The phones would self-organize into a mesh network. But no one is going to do this. But still the question lives on: "What could you do with a iPhone in orbit?" One idea was diagnostics. A big spacecraft like a space station of crew capsule headed to mars might toss a few outside so they could get photos of the exterior if they suspected a problem or if the phone is cheap just to get snapshot. But I'd bet a bunch they'd use a $100K pico sat for that. -- Chris Albertson Redondo Beach, California _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
