[amsat-bb] Only Half of the CubeSats Deployed into Space Work
Jim Jerzycke
kq6ea at verizon.net
Fri Jun 17 18:25:36 UTC 2016
Yep, space is evil, mean, and nasty to things we put there.
And getting there is NOT "half the fun".
And yet people stepped up and did very hard, painstaking work to "get it
right".
And they all did it for free, out of love of the "hobby".
The truest meaning of the word "Amateur".
I applaud them all, and thank them for being the trailblazers.
73, Jim KQ6EA
On 06/17/2016 06:16 PM, Robert McGwier wrote:
> Nothing would be more embarrassing to me than to be one of the cockiest
> schools in the United States, thinking that any student that goes there is
> highly superior to any other around, and then to have Lockheed Martin help
> them..... and to never be heard from at all after launch... That would
> not be in the state I am in so that I don't get in trouble with the
> government of the state I am in.....
>
> Space is a mean nasty place. Hard Vacuum, very energetic particles
> slamming you, micrometeorites and space junk clobbering, computers
> GUARANTEED to get into a failure mode, with probability 1. And then what
> do you do? Most don't know. Only experience tells you how not to have a
> dead computer or one acting in a stupid way and how to fix it.
>
> Everyone fails. Ask AMSAT. Our spacecraft have gotten better, less
> complex, but better at achieving the mission without failures.
>
> Our big efforts all were partially successful or failed at launch or are
> Microsats. The Microsats succeeded, 100%. What a team we had. It was
> made up of people who did things like, oh, coin the word cubesat and
> introduce the concept to the world, go on to be worth hundreds of
> millions of dollars and in at least one case, probably billions, work at
> the highest possible levels of government in highly technical fields and
> then start multiple companies on retirement, ..... some even still work in
> the Aerospace industry. Best team ever: Microsat team. Best technical
> individual on any AMSAT team ever: Karl Meinzer.
>
> The formula for success is good people with time to do the job right with
> luck and resources. Have good people who are dedicated to the task and
> then get lots of free help.
>
> The US government gave us environmental testing for Microsat. They wanted
> to make sure the team could test their spacecraft (we were the test dummys)
> which was in the chamber next to us. I know who paid for it and what it
> was and if I told you I would have to kill you ;-).
>
> Children in high school with teachers who might know how to spell the word
> spacecraft and hold a smartphone are not capable of the level of technical
> expertise needed.
>
> Things are getting better. You can just buy a good spacecraft now. It
> costs about 2-3 times as much as building one. With a 50% chance of
> failure, that means you should buy the thing and even then your payload is
> likely to fail with a perfectly functional bus.
>
> Bob
> N4HY
>
>
>
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