David,
Well as someone who just had a 3U CubeSat launched in December I may
be able to shed some light on the situation.
1) Price. We paid $240k, plus $6k refundable dummy fee. Not a problem
since it turned out to be a $1.5M project. but yea, we would fly more
if it were cheaper.
2) There were 40 CubeSats on the flight. At one time there were supposed
to be 70, with the capability of more. Several issues offloaded some of
the customers. Probably schedules, but we don't know.
3) Post launch support. One email. Basically we were told where the
carrier was before it started pitching stuff off. We have not been able to
determine the launch manifest, the relative sizes, deployment order,
deployment direction and even the status or the number of deployment
indicators. There was a clot of object reported by JSPOC a few days later
but that was about it. Over time some customers have reported which
objects are their satellites, several times repeatedly for multiple objects.
One satellite per launch would make this a much easier situation.
4) Preflight Support. We were told very little, with the excuse that
everything wass proprietary. Launch Dates slipped months. The funny part of
it was, there was no surprises. We launched about the worst time of year,
as they had told us we would, we just had to keep to a ridiculous schedule
because the 'Official document' said in the spring. Yea. The Sat had to
sit on a shelf, post final testing, for months. they delayed the flight
months, a week before integration.
5a) Orbit. 575 km more or less sun sync. The live feed showed a burnout
altitude higher, but my recording didn't work, and the official recording
cut off earlier than burnout. That's okay, every other source had
different orbital parameters anyway.
5b) The hour of launch wound up being really inconvenient. Maybe next
month we can start our mission if the drift is far enough to hit the
terminator.
5c) Month of launch was way off. May became December. 'nuff said.
6) BS and buttermilk. I can not complain enough about our payload
coordinator. With that many payloads, there were a lot of customers.
And guess what ? We talk back channels. Flat out lies. Misinformation,
BS deadlines, critical capabilities were misrepresented, and an
insulting and snotty attitude when they were caught. A lot of us spent
a lot of time on conference calls, muted, laughing and snarky when
they were lying. The Satellite Integration Facility moved 4 times.
7) Incompetence. Their deployment scheme was completely random. They
had no idea which direction everything was going off. The only thing
the fresh-outs from the university could do was run Monte Carlo simulations
(maybe STK?) for a week, and proclaim there was less than a 2% chance
of immediate collision in the first 10 hours. Somebody got a little to
cheap on the carrier spacecraft.
8) PODs. No P-Pod. They are to heavy. They had some old beater Isipods
(tapered inside dimension and smaller than spec, plus the dings and crud)
that they put out on loan, because they required a shake and vibe
spectrum for integration, but they used a different suppliers pod which
would hold four 3U CubeSats. The 4 banger was lighter per sat than
4 singles. I think you could build a much lighter unit, but have flight
like units available for the customer for their shake and vibe testing.
The Vibration spectrum never had any specs to meet, so who knows ?
9) If there were 40 people (unhappily) flying in December of last year for
$250k each, The question you have to ask yourself is :
"How often can I launch ?" It sure looks like once a week with people
beating a path to your door. Put them in line for date of launch, but
launch them into the orbit they want at the time of day that they want.
10) Delivering the Sat to HI may be challenging. We drove ours across
country. There were stories about TSA issues on aircraft.
11) Mass. Max was 5 kg. We only weighed 3.8kg. We have know idea
what anyone else weighed except what is in the news. We did have
a 1kg Steel plate as ballast, and considered a second.
Ultimately, cost is an important factor, but not the most, especially
if you have a limited amount of launches you can perform. I doubt if
you need to charge as little as $240k if you gave better service.
You can always lower the price later if you want to take more
business away from the ride-share suckers.
Just a few of my observations.
-Gar.
From: David Summers <dvidsum@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 8 Mar 2019 10:50:13 -0600
Subject: [AR] What makes a useful launch vehicle?
A question for all you guys out there building satellites:
Our rocket vehicle design has finally closed, and we are trying to make
the
corner from mostly amateur to mostly professional. We're talking with the
FAA about our launch license, and plan to start orbital flights roughly a
year from now if all goes well.
I want to make sure that we are making a vehicle that is useful, though.
There are significant reasons to make a smaller vehicle with our specific
technology (minimum gauge issues are virtually non-existent), but I don't
want to completely eliminate the market!
Would a launch of a 4 kg, 3U satellite to 600 km between 20 degrees and
sun
synchronous be a useful capability? Price is expected to be $95,000.
What would make or break this vehicle? (Obviously, until we fly we have
nothing, etc.)
Fun facts from my market research: There were 1058 3U micro-satellites
launched as of the beginning of the year - almost half of all satellites!
Thanks!
-David Summers