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2008-04-25 Science & Technology

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Posted by OldSpook 2008-04-25 09:41|| || Front Page|| [11133 views ] Top

#1 Much like the fastest computers in the world are no long the bing honking mainframes, but instead are clusters of smaller processors and computers tied together, so clusters can be applied to satellites.

What sucks is that it took this long for them to finally realize that small cheap clusters of common component satellites can and will outperform the big multifunction platforms. Clustering is the FM here.

ANd it makes them cheaper, smaller, easier to launch (and thus quciker to launch), and a lot less vulnerable to ASATs - you have to kill significant numbers of the cluster, not just one big satellite. And replacements could be quickly lofted.

Posted by OldSpook 2008-04-25 09:54|| 2008-04-25 09:54|| Front Page Top

#2 Well, at least it is progress in the right direction.

Posted by DarthVader">DarthVader 2008-04-25 10:19|| 2008-04-25 10:19|| Front Page Top

#3 If we can gang together small optics on the earth to get higher resolution into space, It would make sense to have smaller spy sats to get better resolution from space to earth.

Lets see what the company name is on your pen...

Posted by flash91 2008-04-25 12:42|| 2008-04-25 12:42|| Front Page Top

#4 Oldspook and associates may have simply had the wrong term to describe their idea. "Cheapsats" isn't going to be liked by contractors or the managers of the contract managers. Nano-Sats sounds more profitable (even though calling something that weighs 100# 'nano' is a stretch).

Posted by mhw 2008-04-25 12:49|| 2008-04-25 12:49|| Front Page Top

#5 All China would have to do would be to blow up enough satellites in orbit so that the volume of debris would cause a runaway chain reaction that takes out all the other sats. Alternate means of military communication will still be necessary.

Posted by gorb 2008-04-25 13:24|| 2008-04-25 13:24|| Front Page Top

#6 gorb: what, you mean a deliberate attempt to trigger a Kessler's Sydrome scenario? Even the Chinese wouldn't be so daft.

I hope?

Posted by Mitch H.">Mitch H. 2008-04-25 13:49|| http://blogfonte.blogspot.com/]">[http://blogfonte.blogspot.com/] 2008-04-25 13:49|| Front Page Top

#7 :-)

AFAIK, the Chinese have little or no assets to protect in space. It looks like most of their policy revolves around nukes, attacking neighbors, or defending the homeland. And probably without much help from central command. Don't really need much in the way of satellites to accomplish any of these goals.

Posted by gorb 2008-04-25 14:35|| 2008-04-25 14:35|| Front Page Top

#8 100-300# and beach ball sized is what we were touting. There were (are?) launch vehicles that can loft that type of load into low earth orbit from under the wing of a high flying B52.

Posted by OldSpook 2008-04-25 17:36|| 2008-04-25 17:36|| Front Page Top

#9 I read an interesting bit on clearing space debris with "a big ball of goo". A rocket is launched that when it reaches altitude, exudes a lot of sticky foam, forming a large ball around it. It normalizes the temperature of the goo by rotating in sunlight.

Then it intentionally collides with smaller objects laterally instead of head on, and they stick to the goo. It uses an irregular orbit to intersect a lot of space junk before burning up in the atmosphere.

Posted by Anonymoose 2008-04-25 17:46|| 2008-04-25 17:46|| Front Page Top

#10 Bangalore: India's space agency will launch a cluster of ten satellites onboard a polar satellite launch vehicle from the Satish Dhawan space centre at Sriharikota, about 90 kilometres from Chennai.

The launch rocket will carry the latest version of remote sensing satellite Cartosat-2A, an 83 kilogramme mini satellite, and eight foreign nano-satellites into polar orbit. The launch is scheduled for Monday morning.

Posted by john frum 2008-04-25 18:49|| 2008-04-25 18:49|| Front Page Top

#11 Lest we fergit, MSM > the polymers and compunds, etc. used in manufactur new supermaterials are predomin OIL-BASED, ERGO WE CAN'T DEV OR DEPLOY ANY "CHEAP SATS" OR "NANO-SATS", ETC. ADVANCED TECHS BECUZ THE WORLD IS SUPPOS RUNNING OUT OF OIL TO MAKE SAID TECHS???

Posted by JosephMendiola 2008-04-25 19:06|| 2008-04-25 19:06|| Front Page Top

23:33 Mike
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23:26 OldSpook
23:22 smn
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22:57 Frank G
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21:58 OldSpook
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21:54 OldSpook
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