Proposed projects
From CSTART Wiki
CSTART is currently not actively working on any projects other than OHKLA and CLLARE, even though there are lots of tractable, fascinating things we could be working on. The reason for this decision (which will be formalised in the CSTART Bylaws once CSTART is incorporated) is to avoid spreading our limited resources too thinly.
However, we do hope to grow in the future to the point where we can profitable work on more things at once. To this end, we encourage the proposal of future projects by our community at any time. This page lists some proposed projects which have received sufficiently wide interest and enthusiasm to be likely future projects for CSTART.
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[edit] Proposed projects
Once the currently-under-development CSTART Project Lifecycle is more complete, there will be a precise process for the community to propose projects and a system for progressing projects from the "just an idea" phase to official project phase. To give you a taste of the sorts of projects which will be involved in this system once it is up and running, here are some ideas which have been discussed on the forum and met with general enthusiasm. They are listed in approximately increasing order of difficulty/complexity/cost:
[edit] DH-1 Reusable Launch Vehicle
This project is intended to expand on the concept of the reusable 2 stage launch vehicle as described in the book "The Rocket Company" by Patrick J G Stiennon. Amazon
The advantages of this design:
- Fully reusable first and second stages
- Practical payload of 2300kg
- Basic technical details have been calculated
- Provides a solution to the problem of low cost space access which can be expanded on by the open hardware/open source community
- Uses existing engines and standard aerospace materials and manufacturing techniques
Full details can be found in the Wikipedia entry DH-1 Summary.
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Image 1 shows the front view of the assembled booster (first stage) and payload (second stage).
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Image 2 shows the same assembly from the side. The person is in a roughly seated position in the payload/command module. This section is between the upper and lower tanks.
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Image 3 shows a closeup of the second stage with the two lines showing where the payload bay is located.
[edit] High Altitude Balloon Project
This project would see the CSTART community design, construct and launch a family of high altitude balloons carrying powered payloads featuring cameras, navigation and communications technology, etc. The aim would be to develop a very low cost way to test hardware and software for other projects in conditions which approximate LEO in some senses (significantly decreased atmospheric pressure, increased radiation, etc).
[edit] Modular Satellite Project
This project would see the CSTART community design and build a modular satellite "skeleton", which featured some basic systems, such as navigation, communication and station-keeping, but which did not serve any functions per se. Instead, the satellite skeleton would have the facilities required to attach a number of function modules (containing cameras, measuring devices, scientific payloads, etc) and retrieve data from these modules via a standardised and open interface and protocol, relaying the data back to Earth. Anybody interested could construct function modules to suit their purposes, and CSTART would organise commercial launches of these satellites loaded with the third party modules. In this way, the cost of launching modules into space would be split between the various third parties providing the modules, reducing the financial barriers to entry, and CSTART could take a small proportion of the third party payments and use it to fund other CSTART projects.
[edit] Open Space Telescope Project
This project would see the CSTART community design and build a space telescope (obviously on a much smaller scale than Hubble!), which would be commercially launched on the cheapest available rocket (Falcon 1?). CSTART would release any and all data recorded by the space telescope to the public under a Creative Commons Attribute license. The ability to control the telescope (i.e. determine the direction it points in and what sort of data it records) would be sold to anybody interested (e.g. university science departments, other space agencies) on an hourly or daily basis in order to raise funds for other CSTART projects.
[edit] Hybrid Clustered Launch Vehicle Project
Someone describe this.
