No one was talking about literally placing a cell phone in orbit. The idea was to design a tiny satellite with about the same cost, size and level of sophistication as a cell phone. For example it would be silly to have an LCD screen and a microphone. The reason for this was not to save money. The goal was a communications system that could not be shot down or jammed. And also that could be launched on a few hours notice from a set of small mobile launchers. I liked the idea of a self organized switching network
But no one has seriously done any work on this and it will not get built. On Sat, Apr 27, 2013 at 10:09 PM, Daniel Schultz <n8...@usa.net> wrote: > Jim Lux wrote: > >>It's been challenging to find out information like Center of Mass position, >>where the other GPS receivers are, etc. (complicated in part because half >>of station is measured in inches/feet, and the other half in meters) > > This reminds me of a story I heard about while building the packet module > power supply for the Russian module of the ISS. Apparently when the Russians > copied the type-N connector blueprints from the west, they used an incorrect > english to metric conversion factor, such that Russian-made type-N connectors > will not mate correctly with US type-N connectors (unless you use force). I > have not personally verified this story, just passing it along for your > consideration. > > On the subject of cell phones in space, since the cost of placing anything in > orbit is approximately equal to the value of an equivalent mass of pure gold, > efforts to do extreme cost reduction at the expense of reliability seem > misplaced. A $100K Cubesat costs about the same amount to place into orbit. > Getting the cost of the satellite down to a thousand dollars makes little > sense when it still costs $100K to put that satellite into orbit. If the > satellite dies early from radiation exposure you wasted the money that you > spent to launch it. And it is unnecessary to adapt terrestrial consumer > products for satellites when there are other good options to obtain components > engineered for the space environment at reasonable cost. AMSAT has decades of > experience in this area. > > Cell phones are consumer devices, exquisitely engineered for mass production > with reasonably high reliability (when used on Earth as intended) at minimum > per unit cost. Consumer electronics is a highly specialized area of > engineering, but so is space flight hardware. Using consumer electronic > devices in a space flight environment is a misapplication of engineering > principles and is destined to be a technological dead-end. > > Dan Schultz N8FGV > > _______________________________________________ > time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com > To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts > and follow the instructions there. -- Chris Albertson Redondo Beach, California _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.