A school to provide the $50,000 launch..... Anything from keeping 50 hams from donating $1000 a piece and just buying a launch

• no school involved?

Sure, anyone. I havent priced the latest launch integratiojn costs from the Cubesat Program recently, but the $50k was their original plan...

On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 11:16 AM, Robert Bruninga bruninga@usna.edu wrote:

...

A last comment, a LEO would be virtually worthless for Emergency NET communications and HF is still a viable and reliable means of communications...

Well, I still think a bunch of 145.825 APRS digipeating satellites in LEO that would allow text-messaging from

anywhere

in the world at any time, downlinked into the

APRS-Internet

system and hence global internet connectivity is still a

great

way to go for basic messaging for emergency response.

With just

6 such tiny 4" cubesats, you could get a message

in-or-out with

no more than a half hour wait from the front panel of

your APRS

mobile radio. With a dozen of these, you could have

global

communications anywhere instantly or with no more than a

5

minute wait.

Our goal is to get more of these up there to join the

ISS

digipeater, but of the 4 we have lanuched so far, all

were

short-term orbits and so the most we have ever had

operational

at one time was 3 (PCSAT-1, ANDE and RAFT). That is one

of the

main reasons we wanted to see ISS on 145.825 to join the constellation. ISS was still on 145.800 during most of

the life

of those three birds (which were all on 145.825)

Today, with 6 AA NiCd's, a 19" whip antennna, and a 3.4"

square

APRS Microtacker TNC/Radio you can throw together an

APRS

satellite for under $400. Add cheap solar panels, a lot

of

sweat equity and then find a school to provide the

$50,000

launch, and bingo, A LEO satellite with great utility

that

anyone can use while mobile for text messsaging and

email from

the front panel of their APRS radio.

Please see the Microtrack TNC/Radio which can serve as

the

entire Comms, Command, Control and Telemetry module:

http://www.byonics.com/microtrak/mt-tt4.php

And see our cubesat project:

http://www.aprs.org/psat.html

though this web page needs to be significanly updated..

Bob, WB4APR

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