<story><title>SpaceX Launches Super-Heavy Communications Satellite</title><url>http://www.space.com/36852-spacex-launches-inmarsat-5-f4-satellite.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jjcm</author><text>I wonder if this is a good thing. On one hand, the common availability of cubesats would be so much fun from a hacker point of view, but on the other I worry that such a low cost per satellite will start to pollute space. If every bay area hobbiest has one floating in the sky, we&amp;#x27;re inevitably going to have ones that go unmanaged, rogue, etc with no plans for cleanup&amp;#x2F;repair if things go wrong.</text></item><item><author>tibbe</author><text>Aside: does that mean that Falcon 9 could carry ~20,000 CubeSats at the cost of 62M&amp;#x2F;20k = USD 3,100 per satelite? That would be awesome. Now if I could just find another 19,999 people who want to ride-share with me.</text></item><item><author>valuearb</author><text>According to wikipedia the Falcon 9 has increased GTO payloads from 4,500 kg to 8,000 kg from the 1.0 version to the Full Thrust version. And payload to LEO from 10,450 kg to 22,800 kg.&lt;p&gt;These improvements have been passed on to the Falcon Heavy, and it&amp;#x27;s expect to put 64,000 kg into LEO, just shy of the SLS&amp;#x27;s 70,000 kg.</text></item><item><author>kirrent</author><text>Interestingly, this launch wasn&amp;#x27;t within the original capabilities of the falcon 9 and was originally scheduled for a falcon heavy launch. The lengthening of the rocket, using densified propellants, and more changes meant that they could instead use a falcon 9 even though they couldn&amp;#x27;t recover it. It&amp;#x27;s a cool reminder of just how much the falcon 9 has changed.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>saulrh</author><text>Many of the cheapest, hackeriest cubesats are deployed into low orbits that decay within weeks or months. Space isn&amp;#x27;t &lt;i&gt;completely&lt;/i&gt; empty, only &lt;i&gt;mostly&lt;/i&gt; empty, and even minute air resistance is enough that things like the ISS need to thrust regularly to stay in orbit [1]. I believe it&amp;#x27;s a common mission profile for cubesats that&amp;#x27;re built as aerospace engineering senior projects, for example.&lt;p&gt;[1]: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.heavens-above.com&amp;#x2F;IssHeight.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.heavens-above.com&amp;#x2F;IssHeight.aspx&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>SpaceX Launches Super-Heavy Communications Satellite</title><url>http://www.space.com/36852-spacex-launches-inmarsat-5-f4-satellite.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jjcm</author><text>I wonder if this is a good thing. On one hand, the common availability of cubesats would be so much fun from a hacker point of view, but on the other I worry that such a low cost per satellite will start to pollute space. If every bay area hobbiest has one floating in the sky, we&amp;#x27;re inevitably going to have ones that go unmanaged, rogue, etc with no plans for cleanup&amp;#x2F;repair if things go wrong.</text></item><item><author>tibbe</author><text>Aside: does that mean that Falcon 9 could carry ~20,000 CubeSats at the cost of 62M&amp;#x2F;20k = USD 3,100 per satelite? That would be awesome. Now if I could just find another 19,999 people who want to ride-share with me.</text></item><item><author>valuearb</author><text>According to wikipedia the Falcon 9 has increased GTO payloads from 4,500 kg to 8,000 kg from the 1.0 version to the Full Thrust version. And payload to LEO from 10,450 kg to 22,800 kg.&lt;p&gt;These improvements have been passed on to the Falcon Heavy, and it&amp;#x27;s expect to put 64,000 kg into LEO, just shy of the SLS&amp;#x27;s 70,000 kg.</text></item><item><author>kirrent</author><text>Interestingly, this launch wasn&amp;#x27;t within the original capabilities of the falcon 9 and was originally scheduled for a falcon heavy launch. The lengthening of the rocket, using densified propellants, and more changes meant that they could instead use a falcon 9 even though they couldn&amp;#x27;t recover it. It&amp;#x27;s a cool reminder of just how much the falcon 9 has changed.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>maxander</author><text>If a cloud of 20000 cubesats were released by a single rocket, at least they would all be in approximately the same orbit, which is better than having 20000 cubesats spread out over 20000 orbits.  Not to mention, they don&amp;#x27;t stay up indefinitely- launched into a low orbit, drag eventually pulls them back down.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;d definitely buy a cubesat launch slot for 3k.  Perhaps someone should set up a kickstarter or something.</text></comment>