$227 per pound for delivery of payload into LEO | Communications Workgroup | Forum

$227 per pound for delivery of payload into LEO

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4:46 pm
October 29, 2010

biollante

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posts 16

Post edited 4:47 pm – October 29, 2010 by biollante

Found a link to this site, looked around and it seems its reasonable to put up a simple satellite to test communications or other projects. Unlike the Cloudlab, this would be able to be used for months before dropping.

http://www.interorbital.com/Ne…..Page_1.htm

"Payload space is currently available on

these pre-orbital test flights at a cost of $500.00 per kilogram

($227.00 per pound). Payloads can include TubeSats, CubeSats, or single

payloads weighing up to 30 kg. Universities, companies, or individuals are

encouraged to contact Interorbital if they would like to fly a test

payload.

Interorbital

Systems P.O. Box 662 Mojave, CA 93502-0662

EDIT – edit hyperlink

9:22 pm
October 29, 2010

Luke Maurits

Adelaide, Australia

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posts 1471

Good find!

I don't think this necessarily removes the need for Cloudlab, because it would be handy to test something for a few hours at a very low price before testing it for a few weeks at a higher (but still quite reasonable) price!

I have always figured that if the COSMoS program got to the point where we were ready to launch something before the Chimera program was ready to help launch it, we would use an external CubeSat launcher like this group, if we could find one reasonably priced.

Main CLLARE workgroups: Mission Planning, Navigation and Guidance. I do maths, physics, C, Python and Java.

9:30 pm
October 29, 2010

Luke Maurits

Adelaide, Australia

Admin

posts 1471

Just noticed, the $227/pound ($500/kilo) price is for some pre-orbital test flights of their CubeSat launching system. These will be suborbital flights of the rockets which they are doing as testing, as a precursor to actual orbital flights. I presume that the price will go up for orbital flights.

That's not to say this isn't a useful deal. $500 for a suborbital flight of a CubeSat is pretty damn cheap. If nothing else it would be a good general stress-test of the satellite, e.g. to make sure it stood up to the vibrations, accelerations, thermal loads etc. involved in a real rocket launch. It would also be useful if we were able to get it exposed to a vacuum environment as part of the flight.

Main CLLARE workgroups: Mission Planning, Navigation and Guidance. I do maths, physics, C, Python and Java.

2:57 am
December 10, 2010

brmj

Rochester, New York, United States

Member

posts 402

Luke Maurits said:

Just noticed, the $227/pound ($500/kilo) price is for some pre-orbital test flights of their CubeSat launching system. These will be suborbital flights of the rockets which they are doing as testing, as a precursor to actual orbital flights. I presume that the price will go up for orbital flights.

That's not to say this isn't a useful deal. $500 for a suborbital flight of a CubeSat is pretty damn cheap. If nothing else it would be a good general stress-test of the satellite, e.g. to make sure it stood up to the vibrations, accelerations, thermal loads etc. involved in a real rocket launch. It would also be useful if we were able to get it exposed to a vacuum environment as part of the flight.

Vibration, acceleration and thermal testing can be done cheeply on earth. Space-like radiation and pressure environments can be provided by Cloudlab. As nice a deal as that is, I don't think it has much to offer us.

In any case, cool find. It's interesting to see serious work being done on a OTRAG-style launch vehicle. I'll be looking forward to seeing if they get anywhere with that.

Main work groups: Propulsion (booster), Spacecraft Engineering, Computer Systems, Navigation and Guidance (software)

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