On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 09:43:19AM -0700, Keith Lofstrom wrote:
> 
> 1)  I will be presenting Server Sky to the AMSAT symposium next
> week.  AMSAT builds hobby satellites for amateur radio, in somewhat
> the same spirit as PTP.

Back from Baltimore.  The AMSAT meeting was interesting, and some of
the hardware-oriented PTP people would have had a great time there.  
These were almost all radio amateurs, almost all east coast, who
build metal boxes, circuit boards, and antennas, and launch the
suckers, piggybacked as ballast on larger launches.  Some of these
devices are "cubesats", 10cm unit cubes that fit in a little spring
powered box called a P-Pod that deploys 3 cubesats from the launch bus. 

A group of Naval Academy cadets are working on 1.5 unit cubesats
(two per P-Pod) with a plug-in compartment for scientific experiments.
When the experiment is over, the cubesat stays in orbit as an amateur
radio repeater.

There are a couple of groups working on Interorbital "tubesats",
which are somewhat smaller, cylindrical, for $8K a pop (assuming
they work).  Combined with an electrodynamic tether for raising
the orbit, I may use one of these for Server Sky testing.

> 2)  I can present Server Sky to PTP at next month's Monthly if you
> folks are interested.  There are some interesting possibilities
> that combine community mesh with space global connectivity, as
> well as some interesting phased array stuff that might be possible
> with distibuted beam generation.

My talk at AMSAT went well.  I am not a radio amateur (almost everyone
else had call signs), but I told them I worked the unlicensed low
power 12 cm band with PTP, and the 193 nanometer band, transmitting
terapixel images through semiconductor photolithographic steppers.
Photomask to chip distance is about the same number of wavelengths
as an L Band amateur satellite to ground station .

I would like to give a longer version of the Server Sky presentation
(more explanation of space stuff) at the October 28th monthly meeting,
and invite more folks from other groups.  If this works for people,
let me know.

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          [email protected]         Voice (503)-520-1993
KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon"
Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs

--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
The Personal Telco Project - http://www.personaltelco.net/
Donate to PTP: http://www.personaltelco.net/donate
Archives:  http://news.gmane.org/gmane.network.wireless.portland.general/       
                                        
Etiquette: http://www.personaltelco.net/index.cgi/MailingListEtiquette
List information: http://lists.personaltelco.net
To post to this group, send email to [email protected]
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
[email protected]
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---

Reply via email to