There was an article about nano-satellites on slashdot this afternoon, which cites a $30k figure for an individual satellite build and launch. At that price, obviously it’s a tightly constrained package; the same source cites $200k for a cube-sat, which is a bit roomier.
People are starting to think of these types of assets as “relatively” cheap components in constellations—rather than launching one very high-value, highly capable sat, launch a cluster of smaller/cheaper sats, which can potentially evolve over time as some of them are de-orbited and replaced.
There are some obvious x-risk and EA applications (as well as many potentially non-obvious ones!), like tracking and searching for Near Earth approaching Objects (ie, killer rocks from space), as well as all sorts of earth-based imaging applications and potentially space commerce applications..
I’m guessing the sums of money involved are probably still outside what’s practical for most of us in the EA/x-risk community, but I expect that this is going to be a growth sector, which means that prices may very well come down a lot over the next few years. Thoughts?
There was an article about nano-satellites on slashdot this afternoon, which cites a $30k figure for an individual satellite build and launch. At that price, obviously it’s a tightly constrained package; the same source cites $200k for a cube-sat, which is a bit roomier.
People are starting to think of these types of assets as “relatively” cheap components in constellations—rather than launching one very high-value, highly capable sat, launch a cluster of smaller/cheaper sats, which can potentially evolve over time as some of them are de-orbited and replaced.
There are some obvious x-risk and EA applications (as well as many potentially non-obvious ones!), like tracking and searching for Near Earth approaching Objects (ie, killer rocks from space), as well as all sorts of earth-based imaging applications and potentially space commerce applications..
I’m guessing the sums of money involved are probably still outside what’s practical for most of us in the EA/x-risk community, but I expect that this is going to be a growth sector, which means that prices may very well come down a lot over the next few years. Thoughts?